TheHighCostofVengeance.pdf

THE HIGH COST

VENGEANCE

Freda Utley

HENRY REGNERY COMPANY

CHICAGO

1949

This book was made possible

by a research grant from the

FOUNDATION OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, WASHINGTON, D.C.

HENRY REGNERY COMPANY

Chicago, Illinois

Manufactured in the United States of America.

To My Dear Friends

John and Joan Crane

Whose Help and Encouragement

Have Been Invaluable

In the Writing of This Book

Table of Contents

CHAPTER

PAGE

1. Road to War 1

2. The Spirit of Berlin 20

3. The Material Cost of Vengeance 54

4. Tragedy in Siegerland 104

5. German Democracy between Scylla and Charybdis 129

6. Nuremberg Judgments

162

7. Our Crimes against Humanity

182

8. Our Un-American Activities in Germany

211

9. How Not to Teach Democracy

232

10. The French Ride High

271

11. Conclusion

302

Do not be seduced by the prospect of a

great alliance. Abstinence from all injustice

to other powers is a greater tower of strength

than anything that can be gained by the

sacrifice of permanent tranquility for

an apparent temporary advantage.

—THUCYDIDES, The Peloponnesian War.

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Chapter 1

Road to War

Following World War I France and Britain refused to listen to the statesmen who said that you can have

peace or vengeance, not both. They broke their armistice pledge to Germany that peace would be made

on the basis of President Wilson's Fourteen Points and "the principles of settlement enunciated" by the

American President.* They continued the starvation blockade of Germany for six months after the

Armistice, in order to force the German democrats who had taken over the government to sign a dictated

peace. Having promised a peace without annexations or indemnities, they deprived Germany of territory

and imposed a crushing reparations burden on the newly established Weimar Republic.

Having promised general disarmament they disarmed Germany without disarming themselves. The

victors refused even to discuss the terms of peace with the vanquished who had surrendered on stated

conditions which were not fulfilled, and in general discredited democracy in German eyes by associating

it with broken pledges, national humiliation, and economic distress.

The Nazi movement, born from the dragon seeds planted at Versailles, and brought to monstrous growth

by the world depres-

* Referring to the Armistice, Maynard Keynes in 1919 wrote in his prophetic book The Economic Consequences

of the Peace : "The nature of the contract between Germany and the allies . . . is plain and unequivocal. The terms

of the peace are to be in accordance with the addresses of the President, and the purpose of the peace conference is

'to discuss the details of their applications.' The circumstances of the contract were of an unusually solemn and

binding character; for one of the conditions of it was that Germany should agree to Armistice Terms which were

to be such as would leave her helpless. . . . The honor of the allies was (thus) peculiarly involved in fulfilling their

part, and if there were ambiguities, in not using their position to take advantage of them."

sion which raised the total number of unemployed in Germany to six million, took power at the moment

of Europe's and America's greatest economic crisis. Inevitably, the second World War followed the first

after an interval of only twenty years.

Instead of learning that you cannot build confidence and security, democracy and prosperity, on a

foundation of hatred and vengeance, the victorious allies this time have torn Germany apart, deprived her

of all possibility of existence without exterior aid, and while unable to agree among themselves on a

peace treaty, have jointly reduced the defeated enemy country to the status of an African colony.

History is repeating itself with results likely to be even more tragic for Europe than the events which led

up to World War II. Once again the victorious allies are making it impossible for the Germans to place

their faith in democracy and justice, since they find justice denied and democracy mocked by the

occupying powers. Once again the German democrats are in danger of yielding right of way to the

totalitarians because legal methods and appeals to justice are again failing to obtain a fair deal for the

German people. Last time we produced Hitler; this time we may succeed in giving Stalin hegemony over

all Europe.

If France, following World War I, had been prepared to treat Germany as generously and intelligently as

England had treated France after Napoleon's defeat, Europe might have known another century of peace.

The long conflict between Germany and France could have ended on terms as advantageous to both, and

as conducive to European peace, as the Anglo-French collaboration which succeeded centuries of rivalry

and war between England and France. Instead, France sought a fictitious security by disarming the

Teutonic giant while giving him every reason to plot for revenge. The crushing burden of reparations the

Germans were required to pay, and the denial to Germany of a secure and honorable status among the

nations of Europe, so enfeebled German democracy that the Nazis won power and France was

overwhelmed by the forces she herself had created.

It may be true that the lesson to be learned from history is that mankind learns nothing from it. But the

explanation for the failure of the Western democracies to read the lesson of the immediate past seems

mainly due to the effect of war propaganda and the ignorance or lack of integrity of the molders of public

opinion.

The pen is still mightier than the sword and responsible for

more human misery when unscrupulously employed in "psychological warfare." As Samuel Johnson

wrote in the eighteenth century : "I know not whether more is to be feared from streets filled with

soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie."

War propaganda, and the falsification of history indulged in by a multitude of journalists, authors,

professors, and politicians has convinced the American public that the Germans have a peculiar aversion

to democracy and are an innately aggressive people who will always attempt to rule the world unless

kept down and taught to love democracy by a long period of instruction in a reformatory.

Only those who have studied the history of Europe know that Germany did not become a militarist nation

until centuries of French aggression, from the days of Richelieu to Napoleon's conquests had caused a

reaction which enabled Prussia to forge the modern German state out of the disunited and powerless

congeries of kingdoms, principalities, and free cities, which constituted "the Germanies" before the

French Revolution.

Americans who have had it dinned into their ears for years that Germany has attacked France three times

within living memory will be astonished at reading what was said at the time in Britain and the United

States about the Franco-Prussian War.

The London Times on July 16, 1870, wrote as follows :

The greatest national crime that we have had the pain of recording in these columns since

the days of the First French Empire has been consummated. War is declared—an unjust

but premeditated war. The dire calamity, which overwhelms Europe with dismay, is, it is

now too clear, the act of France, of one man in France. It is the ultimate result of personal

rule.

There can be no doubt as to the side on which the world's sympathies will be enlisted, and,

whatever may on former occasions have been the offenses of Prussia, she will in this

instance have on her side all that moral support which is seldom denied to those who take

up arms in self-defense.*

George Bancroft, the U. S. Minister in Berlin, reported as follows :

The leading statesmen as well as public opinion America regard

* Cited in Gustav Stolper, German Realities (New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1948), p. 218.

the present war essentially as an act of self-defense on Germany's part, and the outstanding

task is to insure Germany permanently, by a better system of frontiers, against new wars of

aggression on the part of her western neighbors, of which the past three centuries have

brought so large a number.

The tragedy of modern history is that the Germans have always been kicked around when they were

pacifically minded, with the natural result that the apostles of violence have again and again won the

leadership of the nation, following the failure of the democrats and antimilitarists to win a fair deal for

the German people, or protect them from attack.

Having finally girded their loins to resist French aggression and forced France to abandon her centuries-

old ambition to establish her hegemony over the Continent, the Germans proceeded, once Bismarck's

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