The Dominion WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 1940. EXORCISING HITLERISM

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 184, 1 May 1940, Page 8

The Dominion WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 1940. EXORCISING HITLERISM

“Less and less do discussions matter about whether all the Germans are solidly behind Hitler, or what we propose to do with Germans of all kinds after the war,” declares the Manchester Guardian in an editorial quoted in the cabled news columns today. Our first affair, and the only one that matters at present, it adds emphatically, “is to win, and win handsomely.” This is plain, practica. , commonsense speech. We have seen enough of German methods since the war began to realize that we have to deal with a era y and treacherous enemy whose aggressive aspirations are limitless. n inkling of Hitler’s grandiose programme was recently given in the German weekly Die Woche, in a five-page article entitled: The World When Britain Is Defeated.” England is to be under . European discipline.” There is a suggestion that Canada might be given to the United States, while Australia and New Zealand would pass under the regime of “a more powerful neighbour.” In short, the British Empire and all the smaller neutral States, will become subservient to a new order in Europe of which the presiding genius will be HenHitler. . . . This may seem extravagant speech, but it supplies a sinister clue to the trend of German thinking. It is by no means an isolated revelation. These indications, taken together with Nazi methods of warfare, have already compelled, a revision of the idea entertained at the outbreak of the war that the . German people were rather the victims of circumstances over which they had no control, than, the willing and active participants in the aggressive and ruthless activities of their rulers. It is now realized that whatever the older, generation of Germans may think — privately — about Hitler and his methods, that immense proportion of the German population upon which, the active prosecution of the war depends — young Germany thinks and acts precisely as the Fuehrer wants them to think and act. It has been under his influence and mass control for nearly eight years. It has one point of view and one code of action — Hitler’s. That is the mentality, the mentality of ruthlessness and treachery of which the Nazi invasion of Norway is the latest and most convincing example, with which the Allies are at war. Mr. Hamilton Fyfe, discussing national characteristics, observes that the German people “like to be told what to do, and are prone toromanticise those who give them orders, as they did the Kaiser, and now romanticise Hitler.” But with the younger generation of Germans who have derived their inhibitions from the gospel of Hitlerism, the case is more serious. “Their mental attitude”, says Mr. Evelyn Wrench, editor of the Overseas Daily Mail, in his impressions of his contacts with the German youth, "was an unpleasant reminder that an all-powerful Government with an effective propaganda machine can persuade the young to accept almost any doctrine. This mental distortion is one of the major problems of contemporary Europe. It was impossible to get young Germany to look at current events from a European standpoint. What proportion of the nation,” he adds, “holds that any course of action is justifiable if German interests are advanced it is impossible to estimate; at the moment these views are held in high places and pervade' the minds of the Nazi legions.” Furthermore, there is reason to believe that the Nazi policy of force upon which Hitler has built his power in Germany, and which animates his foreign policy, has been destructive of social ethics in his own country. “According to official statistics,” states the Boston Transcript, of U.S.A., “crime among 16 to 18-year-old boys rose from 9418 cases to 16,231 and for girls of that age the corresponding figures were doubled. Altogether there were 3796 sentenced female youth in 1937, compared with 2454 in 1935 and only 1949 in 1933, the year when Hitler came into power. The reaction in Germany was typical of the Nazi regime.” It is therefore not only,.for the Allies, a question of overthrowing this hideous regime, but also of bringing the German people back to a new ethical point of view. Dr. Karl Barth, the famous exiled German philosopher, declares that while the peace which is to follow the -war must be “a wiser and juster peace” than the peace of Versailles, it may be that it “will have to be sterner both politically and militarily.” In other words, the reconstruction of Europe involves the moral reconstruction of the German generation which has been debased by the doctrines of Hitlerism.