Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1943. THE “INNOCENT” IN GERMANY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1943. THE “INNOCENT” IN GERMANY.

T'llM Washington correspondent of the “New York Tinies” was quoted yesterday as slating that Mr Roosevelt’s declaration, in his latest broadcast, that, the United Nations did not intend to enslave the German people “is regarded as continuation of reports that the phrase ‘unconditional surrender’ has been quietly dropped by unanimous opinion in Cairo and Teheran.”

It is believed (the correspondent added) that the United Nations will now conduct psychological warfare with the aim of letting the innocent know that they will not be punished with the guilty.

Before these suggestions are accepted al their face value it. may be as well Io remember that the Uniled Nations are committed to aims that can be achieved in no other way than by imposing on Germany the fact as well as the phrase ol “unconditional surrender.” Air Roosevelt’s “declaration that the United Nations did not intend to enslave the German people” in itself implied no departure from an Allied attitude long ago made clear and was incidental to an affirmation that the Allies were united in the determination that Germany must be stripped of her military might and given no opportunity Io regain it. Having said that the United Nations wished the Germans Io have a normal chance Io develop in peace as respectable members of the European Continent, the President added:—-

But we most certainly emphasise that word “respectable,” for we intend to rid them once and for all of Nazism, Prussian militarism and the fantastic and disastrous notion that they constitute a master race.

This is a declaration, as plain-spoken and uncompromising as could be desired, that the United Nations are determined to bring Germany to unconditional surrender. There is no other way in which the Germans can be rid of Nazism, Prussian militarism and the notion that they are a master race.

The problem by which the United Nations are faced in dealing with Germany is that of suppressing and ending the greatest outbreak, of criminality the world has ever seen. Responsibility for this outbreak centres largely in Hitler and those who have been associated with him in promoting murder and brigandage on an international scale or have been active participants in a frightful, catalogue of war crimes. These categories no doubt would include only a comparatively small proportion of the German people, but to assume on that account that all other Germans are to be classed as innocent of war guilt would be totally unwarranted.

Although there is no question of treating the bulk of the German people as war criminals, or of enslaving them, it would be repeating the terrible mistake that was made in 1919 and the years that followed not to take the fullest practical account of the fact that the Germans as a nation have shown themselves entirely tolerant of crime, committed in their name and on their behalf, so long as they think it will pay. Even now, when any reasonably intelligent and informed German knows that his country has lost the war, there is no tangible evidence of any disposition on the part of the people of the Reich to revolt against their gangster leaders.

The United Nations can in no other way carry out their determination to rid the Germans once for all, as President Roosevelt has said, of Nazism, Prussian militarism and .the notion that they are a master race than by imposing on the Reich a measure of control to which the way must be opened by her unconditional surrender. The United Nations are not desirous of becoming master races, lording it over an enslaved Germany. Their problem is that of securing themselves and others against future outrage by a nation which has demonstrated, in its development and in its acceptance of rampant evil and bestiality, that it falls far short of normal standards of morality and humanity. In dealing with that problem account most certainly has to be taken not only of Nazi gangsterclom and its positively responsible agents, but of the readiness with which the Germans as a people have submitted to a rule and rulers almost incredibly depraved and debased.