The Times. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1939. Has Germany Any Peace Aims?

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 305, 27 December 1939, Page 6

The Times. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1939. Has Germany Any Peace Aims?

While neutrals, including many Americans, have considered that a statement of peace aims by the Allies would do much to clarify their thoughts as to the ethical justification for the war, it is remarkable that no such demands have been made upon the Third Reich. Is this because they believe Germany has no hope of winning this war, or that the National Socialist viewpoint is simply one of imperialism? asks a leading American pressman recently returned from Berlin.

The fact is that the National Socialists have no peace aims in the sense in which these arc understood in democratic countries. Bor these latter are concerned fundamentally with the question how can the peace which is to end this war be so fashioned that it will lead to greater European co-operation and understanding rather than to chaos. No such problem agitates the thought of Herr Adolf Hitler and his associates. They have only war objectives— not peace aims. To them there is no definite break between the two states called peace and war; the latter is simply the logical continuation of the former. Ever since they came to power, they have concentrated all their endeavours upon establishing the rule of might as its own justification.

National Socialist “Weltanschauung” (outlook oil life) may for a time have deceived many both within Germany and without as to its true content. But to-day, while some may still be led astray by its so-called “dynamism,” few can deny that its whole philosophy is mainly negative, that if it is anything more than a 20th century Teutonic nihilism, dependent upon violence for its victories, it has yet to be revealed. So little root did its doctrines take even among the leaders that at the first real sign of danger, they sacrificed everything—anticommunism, self-determination, Lebensraum, “blood and soil,” etc.

Herr Hitler has not talked of any peace terms. On the contrary he definitely stated in his Danzig speech, on September 23, “I have no war aims against England and France.” Translated into propaganda terms for German consumption this has become. “I have no idea what they (the Allies) are fighting for, unless it is to annihilate us.” The logical consequences which the German people are expected to draw from this arc that their enemies arc the real war-makers, the Germans simply defending themselves.

Internationalism as understood in the democracies could certainly occupy no place in any peace aims which Herr Hitler might offer. For his policy throughout has proclaimed the complete elimination of all internationalism. The National Socialists have not sought co-operation on equal terms with their neighbours, but rather the establishment of a world order politically directed from Berlin and economically subordinated to German ideas of “equality”—a pax teutonica, such another dictated peace as that against which they themselves have protested so loudly and so long.

Just as nowadays there is no room for free discussion in the Third Reich, so would there be none in any conference at which the present rulers of that land presided as conquerors. "When one remembers the lines along which National Socialist policy has developed during the past six years, it is clear that their peace would be an exclusive, rather than an inclusive, peace. It would aim not at uniting the whole of the European continent upon a basis which could be considered humanly lasting; that is, on a basis of justice and equality, but on the antiquated and unjust system of racial superiority.

Nothing would please the Third Reich better than an immediate end to this war by the recognition of the present European situation, including its aggressive gains in Czechoslovakia and in Poland.