HITLERISM AND THE GERMAN PEOPLE.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 184, 31 December 1942, Page 3

HITLERISM AND THE GERMAN PEOPLE.

Sir,-So E. A. W. Smith thinks it was a sad blunder to quote J. B. Priestley. What sad blunderers the BBC must have been to keep him. talking over the air for the past two years and to quote him regularly in London Calling and the English Listener! But surely Mr. Smith has blundered in quoting a magazine dated as far back as April, 1941, in support of his uncalled-for attack on Priestley. My own quotation was from London Calling of August, 1942, which is at least much more recent evidence of Priestley’s powers of survival. I might just as easily have quoted other sources about opposition to Nazism within Germany — but that would have deprived Mr. Smith of the chance to avoid the original argument about Hitlerism and the German people and go witch-hunting instead after Mr. Priestley. As for XXX (Christchurch), I am in complete agreement with his opinion that it is the Russians and not ourselves who are going to have the big say in the future of Germany, but would like to point out that the Russians have frequently stressed the distinction between Hitlerism and the German people.

AUDAX II.

, (Wellington).

Sir-Some of your correspondents have been arguing that after the war Germans should be treated the same way that some (not all) Nazis treat Jews, and for the same reason-namely that the whole race is congenitally evil and a plague-spot in Europe. "XXX", however, reminds us that not our opinions on this matter but Stalin’s intentions will probably prevail. And Stalin has, under all provocation, steadily refused to threaten the German people as such. Such threats of vengeance can lose us the War (or at least greatly prolong it), by giving the ordinary Germans-who support Hitler because he led his people out of unemployment and despair, not because he led them into warno hope of a reasonabl. existence apart from Hitler’s continued rule. And -equally important-they can lose us the Peace, by diverting into endless military occupation and useless emotional outlet the energies that are needed to build a better world. This war has interrupted the economic problems which caused it-not solved them. Its colossal suffering will be justified only if we can, despite war, weariness and war emotion, use the fluid period at its close for a new deal all round. Nimitz Eisenhower Willkie (Wellington).