***************************************************************** * * * File: 20-1-95.TXT Dateilänge: 88 KB * * * * Autor: Josef G.F. Rothhaupt, München - Germany * * * * Titel: Ludwig Wittgenstein und Victor Gollancz * * * * Erschienen in: WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES, Diskette 1/1995 * * * ***************************************************************** * * * (c) 1995 Deutsche Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft e.V. * * Alle Rechte vorbehalten / All Rights Reserved * * * * Kein Bestandteil dieser Datei darf ganz oder teilweise * * vervielfältigt, in einem Abfragesystem gespeichert, * * gesendet oder in irgendeine Sprache übersetzt werden in * * irgendeiner Form, sei es auf elektronische, mechanische, * * magnetische, optische, handschriftliche oder andere Art * * und Weise, ohne vorhergehende schriftliche Zustimmung * * der DEUTSCHEN LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN GESELLSCHAFT e.V. * * Dateien und Auszüge, die der Benutzer für seine privaten * * wissenschaftlichen Zwecke benutzt, sind von dieser * * Regelung ausgenommen. * * * * No part of this file may be reproduced, stored * * in a retrieval system, transmitted or translated into * * any other language in whole or in part, in any form or * * by any means, whether it be in electronical, mechanical, * * magnetic, optical, manual or otherwise, without prior * * written consent of the DEUTSCHE LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN * * GESELLSCHAFT e.V. Those articles and excerpts from * * articles which the subscriber wishes to use for his own * * private academic purposes are excluded from this * * restrictions. * * * ***************************************************************** * * * Rothhaupt, Josef G.F. (1995) Ludwig Wittgenstein und Victor * * Gollancz - Briefwechsel, Dokumente, Hinweise; in: * * Wittgenstein Studies 1/95, File: 20-1-95; hrsg. von * * K.-O. Apel, F. Börncke, N. Garver, B. McGuinness, P. Hacker, * * R. Haller, W. Lütterfelds, G. Meggle, C. Nyíri, K. Puhl, * * Th. Rentsch, A. Roser, J.G.F. Rothhaupt, J. Schulte, * * U. Steinvorth, P. Stekeler-Weithofer, W. Vossenkuhl * * (3 1/2'' Diskette) ISSN 0943-5727 * * * ***************************************************************** Inhalt ------ A) Rothhaupt, Josef G.F.: Ludwig Wittgenstein und Victor Gollancz - Briefwechsel, Dokumente, Hinweise B) Wittgenstein, Ludwig/Gollancz, Victor: Briefwechsel 1) Wittgenstein an Gollancz (4. September 1945) 2) Gollancz an Wittgenstein (Briefentwurf) 3) Gollancz an Wittgenstein (11. September 1945) C) Gollancz, Victor: In Germany Now. A letter to the Editor. In: News Chronicle, No.30,975,p.2 (27. August 1945) D) Gollancz, Victor: What Buchenwald Really Means. London, Victor Gollancz Ltd. (24. April 1945) ************************************************************** A) Rothhaupt, Josef G.F.: Ludwig Wittgenstein und Victor Gollancz - Briefwechsel, Dokumente, Hinweise ------------------------------------------------------ Der Briefwechsel zwischen Ludwig Wittgenstein und Victor Gollancz und die beiden diesem Briefwechsel zugrundeliegenden Veröffentlichungen von Victor Gollancz, nämlich: der Zeitungsbeitrag "In Germany Now. A letter to the Editor" und die Druckschrift "What Buchenwald Really Means", sind unter biographischem, historischem, politischem und philosophischem Blickwinkel wichtige und markante Dokumente. Und es wäre zu wünschen, daß die (Wieder-)Veröffentlichung dieser Materialien Anregung sein könnte, sich - 50 Jahre danach - damit zu beschäftigen, denn sowohl über den biographischen Kontext bei Gollancz bzw. Wittgenstein als auch über die historische Verortung im Jahre 1945 hinaus sind ebenso Impulse zum Nachdenken enthalten, beispielsweise über Medien- und Gesellschaftspolitik, über Ethik, über das Verhältnis zwischen Philosophie und Politik, über "akademisches Geschwätz" und "praktisches Handeln". Der Veröffentlichung dieser Dokumente wurden zwei Beiträge vorangestellt. Zum einen diese Einleitung, die selbst nur editorische Informationen liefern und einige thematische Hinweise anbieten will. Zum anderen der eigens für diese Ausgabe der WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES verfaßte Artikel von Ruth Dudley Edwards zur Person und Biographie von Sir Victor Gollancz (1893- 1967). Frau Edwards hat bereits 1987 eine hervorragende, ausführliche Biographie über Victor Gollancz vorgelegt.*1* Stellungnahmen zu den hier veröffentlichten Dokumenten und zu den darin angesprochenen Themen sollen in der nächsten Ausgabe der WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES veröffentlicht werden. Zusagen für eine Stellungnahme dazu liegen bereits vor. Weitere Beiträge sind selbstverständlich willkommen. Mit Erlaubnis der Nachlaßverwalter Wittgensteins und der Victor Gollancz Limited konnte die Transkription und Herausgabe der Korrespondenz zwischen Ludwig Wittgenstein und Victor Gollancz bewerkstelligt werden. Die vorhandenen Originale dieses Briefwechsels sind in der Sammlung der "Victor Gollancz Papers" am Modern Records Centre an der University of Warwick Library enthalten. Bei der Beschaffung exakter Informationen über den Briefwechsel und bei der Erstellung einer philologisch präzisen Umschrift der Briefe war mir der Archivar Richard Storey am Modern Records Centre in Warwick behilflich. Wittgensteins Brief an Gollancz vom 4. September 1945 ist im Original (maschinenschriftlich, aber mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen von Wittgenstein und seiner eigenhändigen Unterschrift) erhalten (Signatur: MSS.157/3/PR/4/290). Bei der hier veröffentlichten Transkription werden alle Streichungen >...< und Hinzufügungen <...> von Wittgensteins Hand wiedergegeben. Orthographie und Interpunktion werden in der Transkription ohne Eingriffe reproduziert. Wittgenstein machte 1938 Ferien bei seinem Schüler und Freund Rush Rhees in Swansea (Anschrift: "c/o Rhees; 96 Bryn Rd.; Swansea").*2* Aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach hat er dort den Artikel in "News Chronicle" vom 27. August 1945 gelesen und wurde alsdann durch einen Freund - mglw. Rush Rhees - mit der bereits im April 1945 veröffentlichten Druckschrift "What Buchenwald Really Means" bekannt. Von Swansea aus dürfte er seinen Brief an Victor Gollancz nach London geschickt haben. So erklärt sich auch Wittgensteins Formulierung "as from Trinity College" bei der Ortsangabe des Absenders. Gollanczs Antwortbrief an Wittgenstein ist in zwei Versionen vorhanden, nämlich: der handschriftliche Briefentwurf und der maschinenschriftliche Durchschlag. Es sind mir bisher keine Informationen bekannt geworden, daß auch der Wittgenstein zugestellte Originalbrief erhalten wäre. Der Briefentwurf wurde von Gollancz handschriftlich auf den oberen Rand der ersten Seite von Wittgensteins Brief notiert. Er enthält keine Datierung, keine Anschrift und keine Unterschrift. Der nicht unterschriebene Durchschlag des Antwortbriefs an Wittgenstein (Signatur: MSS.157/3/PR/4/291) ist auf den 11. September 1945 datiert und mit Wittgensteins Anschrift am Trinity College in Cambridge adressiert. Bemerkenswert ist einerseits die Streichung "Thank you >very much< for your letter" im Briefentwurf und andererseits die falsche Namensschreibung "L. Wiltgenstein" im Maschinendurchschlag. Für den Wiederabdruck der beiden Texte von Victor Gollancz aus dem Jahre 1945, des Zeitungsartikels "In Germany Now. A letter to the Editor" und der Broschüre "What Buchenwald Really Means" wurde die Erlaubnis von der Victor Gollancz Limited erteilt. Den Beitrag in "News Chronicle" (und drei weitere Texte) veröffentlichte Gollancz September 1945 im eigenen Verlag in einer Druckschrift mit dem Titel "The New Morality. Four Letters". Bei der hier vorgelegten Wiederveröffentlichung wurde aus technischen Gründen Kursivdruck im Original durch Großbuchstaben wiedergegeben. Bis auf einige wenige offensichtliche Druckfehler blieb der Textbestand unangetastet. Die in der Broschüre "What Buchenwald Really Means" enthaltene Abbildung aus dem "Evening Standard" mit dem Kommentar "The whole German people should be wiped out for this! - Don't forget some of US are Germans, friend." wird im Beiheft dieser Ausgabe der WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES reproduziert. Die entsprechende Stelle im Text ist mit "{picture}" markiert. Diese beiden Texte von Victor Gollancz erfuhren in England und darüber hinaus weite Verbreitung und große Resonanz. So waren innerhalb der ersten Wochen nach dem Erscheinen von "What Buchenwald Really Means" im April 1945 bereits über 150 000 Exemplare in England verkauft. Und nach dem Erscheinen des Zeitungsbeitrags "In Germany Now" Ende August 1945 erreichten Victor Gollancz viele Briefe mit recht unterschiedlichen Stellungnahmen. Im Nachlaß von Gollancz sind mehr als 300 dieser Stellungnahmen - darunter eben auch jene von Ludwig Wittgenstein - für die Forschung (unter der Signatur: MSS.157/3/PR/4/1-313) zugänglich. Über das Thema der Beziehung zwischen Wittgenstein und Gollancz hinaus wäre die Aufarbeitung dieser Dokumente eine interessante und lohnende Aufgabe.*3* ************* Nun noch einige Bemerkungen und Zitate über die bzw. von den beiden Korrespondenten; zunächst zu Victor Gollancz und sodann zu Ludwig Wittgenstein. Zwei Textpassagen, welche Leben und Werk von Victor Gollancz beleuchten. Zunächst, sozusagen als Fremdeinschätzung, die Einleitung von Julius Braunthal zur deutschen Übersetzung des Artikels "What Buchenwald Really Means" aus dem Jahre 1948*4*: "Diese Schrift erschien im April 1945, also noch vor dem Kriegsende: Alliierte Truppen hatten damals bereits fast ganz Deutschland überrannt und die Höllenpforten der Konzentrationslager geöffnet. Das unsagbare Verbrechen gegen das Menschentum wurde nun ans Tageslicht gezerrt. Die Korrespondenten der englischen Presse schilderten in Worten und Bildberichten, was sie gesehen: die Skelette der Halbtoten, die in Schmutz und Ungeziefer herumkriechenden Opfer des Regimes, die Gaskammern und Folterbunker, die Galgen und den Auspeitschungsbock in den Höfen, die Berge halbverkohlter Leichen und die Knochenhalden der Ermordeten. Ein Aufschrei des Entsetzens ging durch England; ihm folgte ein Aufschrei der Verdammung des deutschen Volkes. In dieser Schrift, die sich ausschließlich an die Engländer richtet, unternahm es nun Victor Gollancz, die tiefere Verantwortung für jenes namenlose Verbrechen festzustellen. Sie ist ein Aufruf zur Besinnung, eine erschütternde Selbstanklage und eine leidenschaftliche Verteidigung des 'anderen Deutschland'. Sie ist gewidmet 'den Märtyrern aller Rassen, Völker und Bekenntnisse, die im Kampf gegen den Faschismus starben'. [...]" Und weiterhin, sozusagen als Selbsteinschätzung, ein Auszug aus der Ansprache von Victor Gollancz in Frankfurt anläßlich der Verleihung des Friedenspreises des Deutschen Buchhandels an ihn im Jahre 1960 (Die Laudatio für Victor Gollancz hielt der damalige deutsche Bundespräsident Dr. Heinrich Lübke)*5*: "I want to begin by telling you a Chassidic story. In case you don't know what that is, the Chassidim were a Jewish sect living in Poland during the eighteenth century, a sect that combined deeply religious and indeed mystical feeling with a tremendous sense of fun and jollity. A lot of stories have been told about them, and these have been collected by Martin Buber [...]. Well, it is told in one of these stories that a certain Rabbi, who had journeyed to a distant town to take up a new appointment there, locked himself up in a room on arrival, instead of immediately presenting himself to the reception commitee, which waited for him outside. Someone heard him pacing endlessly to and fro, and saying repeatedly 'What a WONDERFUL man I am!' 'I am probably the most learned man in the whole of Israel!''There have been few such saints as I.' When at last the Rabbi emerged, the man who had overheard asked him why he had acted in this extraordinary way. The Rabbi replied: 'It's a very bad thing to feel proud of oneself, particularly when there's no justification for it. Now of course I knew that the reception commitee would praise me far beyound my merits, but feared, nevertheless, that when I actually heard what they had to say I should believe them. So I have been saying it myself, over and over again. For no one, you see, can be impressed when he praises himself: and now that I've got used to this exaggeration by constant repetition from my own lips, there's no danger of my believing it when I hear it from yours.' That story came into my head when I read the draft of the LAUDATIO which your Excellency has just delivered, and which you were kind enough to send me. The only thing, indeed, that restrained me from locking myself up in my library and reciting it over and over again (and even, perhaps, improving on it) was the fear that my wife would think I had gone stark mad and would put me in a lunatic asylum, in which event I couldn't have come here at all." Die Ansprache wurde erst 15 Jahre nach Wittgensteins Brief an Gollancz gehalten, diese Erzählung wurde erst neun Jahre nach Wittgensteins Tod von Gollancz vorgetragen. Aber es liegt im Bereich des Wahrscheinlichen, daß Wittgenstein sich sowohl persönlich als auch philosophisch für diese chassidische Geschichte interessiert und sich über die Präsentation durch Gollancz amüsiert hätte. ************* In seinem Buch "Ludwig Wittgenstein. A Student's Memoir"*6* berichtet Theodore Redpath auch Wittgensteins Antwort auf die Anfrage, warum er sich in akademischen Lehrveranstaltungen nie über Politik äußern würde: "One day I asked him why he never stated any political views or discussed politics in any of his lectures. His reply was interesting. He said he COULD not do so but that one day he would give a lecture or talk explaining WHY he could not. He never gave such a lecture or talk while I was still attending his classes." Dennoch sind von Wittgenstein mehrere interessante und markante Gesprächsäußerungen, Manuskriptaufzeichnungen und Briefdokumente überliefert, in denen er 'politische' Ansichten vorbringt. Aber selbst seine konkreten Aussagen zur Tagespolitik haben oft einen weiteren biographischen Verstehenskontext und/oder einen breiteren philosophischen Reflexionshorizont. Einige Beispiele müssen hier genügen: So berichtet Fania Pascal in "A Personal Memoir"*7* über eine Begebenheit mit Wittgenstein in Cambridge am 28. September 1938, dem Tag vor dem "Münchner Abkommen" zwischen Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler und Mussolini zur Lösung der deutsch-tschechoslowakischen Krise um das Sudetenland: "For all I knew he might just have arrived from abroad. I caught up with him at the corner of East Road and Hills Road and we both stood looking on while five or six soldiers were digging shallow trenches on the green; they were about three or four inches in depth. It was the day before Munich; Mr Neville Chamberlain was making a stand, acting as though the country was preparing for war. We looked on in silence at the diggers' efforts. I turned to Wittgenstein to protest, to cry out that it's all a sham, that we are lost, but he silenced me by raising his hand forbiddingly. He said: 'I am as much ashamed of what is happening as you are. But we must not talk of it.' As often, when he stopped you from saying something he looked as though by speaking you would inflict a wound. This, by the way, is one of the few statements of a political nature for which I can quote him verbatim." Für das Jahr 1936 kann Maurice O'Connor Drury ein Gespräch mit Wittgenstein in Dublin über die Nazi-Herrschaft in Deutschland wiedergeben*8*: "WITTGENSTEIN: Just think what it must mean, when the government of a country is taken over by a set of gangsters. The dark ages are coming again. I wouldn't be surprised, Drury, if you and I were to live to see such horrors as people being burnt alive as witches. DRURY: Do you think Hitler is sincere in what he is saying in his speeches? WITTGENSTEIN: Is a ballet dancer sincere?" Und in einen seiner Manuskriptbände (MS137,135A)*9* trägt Wittgenstein am 28. Dezember 1948 folgende Bemerkung ein: "Humor ist keine Stimmung, sondern eine Weltanschauung. Und darum, wenn es richtig ist zu sagen, im Nazi-Deutschland sei der Humor vertilgt worden, so heißt das nicht so etwas wie, man sei nicht guter Laune gewesen, sondern etwas viel tieferes + wichtigeres." Detaillierte Recherchen und monographische Ausarbeitungen zu Themen wie "Wittgensteins tages-, kultur-, gesellschafts- und sozialpolitische Stellungnahmen", "Philosophie pro/contra Politik im Leben und Werk von Wittgenstein", "Wittgensteins philosophisches Vermächtnis und mögliche Implikationen für eine 'Philosophie der Politik'" etc. stehen allerdings noch aus. ************* Abschließend möchte ich an einem ausgewählten Beispiel andeuten, daß sich zwischen den philosophischen Gedanken von Wittgenstein und den gesellschaftspolitischen Überlegungen bei Gollancz bemerkenswerte Übereinstimmungen - man könnte auch von 'Wahlverwandtschaft' oder 'Familienähnlichkeit' sprechen - feststellen lassen. Wittgenstein spricht im "Blue Book", das er während des akademischen Jahres 1934/35 einigen Studenten in Cambridge diktierte, von einer menschlichen bzw. philosophischen Untugend, ja Krankheit: dem "Streben nach Allgemeinheit" ("craving for generality"). - Oder, wie er auch betont: "Anstelle von 'Streben nach Allgemeinheit' hätte ich auch sagen können 'die verächtliche Haltung gegenüber dem Einzelfall'" ("the contemptuous attitude towards the particular case").*10* Das Aufdecken solcher - oft eingefahrener, unzulässiger, irreführender, verhängnisvoller - Verallgemeinerungen ist eines der Hauptanliegen Wittgensteinschen Philosophierens seit Anfang der 30er Jahre - seit jenen Jahren also, in denen der Nazi- Terror in Europa zu wüten begann. Gollancz hält am 31. Juli 1947, etwa zwei Jahre nach dem Ende dieses Nazi-Terrors, im Schulungslager von Wilton Park vor fast ausschließlich Deutschen (Kriegsgefangenen und Zivilisten) eine improvisierte, engagierte, beeindruckende Rede unter den Leitgedanken "Die Deutsche Aufgabe" - "Die Englische Aufgabe" - "Die Aufgabe". Und er wendet sich dabei energisch gegen den "Hang zum Verallgemeinern", nämlich: "'Die Deutschen tun dies, die Deutschen tun das, die Deutschen tun jenes.' Und ich pflege zu erwidern: 'Sperren jene Deutschen Menschen in Konzentrationslager, die selbst ins Konzentrationslager gesperrt werden?' Die Leute reden einfach in bedeutungslosen Abstraktionen." - "Ich habe mein ganzes Leben lang diese Angewohnheit bekämpft, in wirklichkeitsfernen Begriffen zu denken, sozusagen in Massenbegriffen statt in solchen einer konkreten menschlichen Persönlichkeit." - "Hüten Sie sich um Gottes Willen vor einem vagen, nationalistischen Haß gegen jenes mythische Wesen: 'die Russen'." - "Wenn Deutsche mir erzählen, 'der Engländer' sei dies, das oder jenes, so erwidere ich stets: 'Meinen Sie mich oder Lord Vansittart? Wir sind beide Engländer.'" - "Es ist gerade jener Hang zum Verallgemeinern, der zum Krieg führt."*11* ************* Anmerkungen: *1* Edwards, Ruth Dudley: Victor Gollancz. A Biography, London 1987. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Wittgenstein und Gollancz wird darin auf den Seiten 406-408 behandelt und zitiert. Edwards bietet auch eine Auswahlbibliographie der Primär- und Sekundärliteratur von bzw. über Gollancz (S. 761-764). Einige für die Thematik wichtige Veröffentlichungen seien jedoch hier angegeben (darunter jene, die in "What Buchenwald Really Means" explizit erwähnt werden): Gollancz, Victor: The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror, London 1933. Gollancz, Victor: The Yellow Spot, London 1934. Gollancz, Victor: Shall our Children Live or Die? A reply to Lord Vansittart on the German problem, London 1942. Gollancz, Victor: "Let My People Go". Some practical proposals for dealing with Hitler's Massacre of the Jews and an appeal to the British public, London 1943. Gollancz, Victor: "Nowhere to Lay Their Heads". The Jewish tragedy in Europe and its solution, London 1945. Gollancz, Victor: Europe and Germany. Today and tomorrow, London 1945. Gollancz, Victor: The New Morality. Four Letters, London 1945. Gollancz, Victor: Leaving Them to Their Fate. The ethics of starvation, London 1946. Gollancz, Victor: Our Threatened Values, London 1946. Gollancz, Victor: In Darkest Germany, London 1947. Gollancz, Victor: Germany Revisited, London 1947. Gollancz, Victor: On Reconciliation. Two speeches, London 1948. Gollancz, Victor: My Dear Timothy. An autobiographical letter to his grandson, London 1952. Gollancz, Victor: More For Timothy. Being the second instalment of an autobiographical letter to his grandson, London 1953. Gollancz, Victor: Stimme aus dem Chaos. Eine Auswahl der Schriften von Victor Gollancz [in deutscher Übersetzung]. Herausgegeben mit einer Einleitung von Julius Braunthal, Nürnberg 1948. Gollancz, Victor: Versöhnung. Zwei Reden [in deutscher Übersetzung], Hamburg 1948. Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (Hrsg.): Victor Gollancz. Fünf Ansprachen anläßlich der Verleihung des Friedenspreises des Deutschen Buchhandels, Frankfurt 1960. Burger, Franz: Gollancz's Buchenwald never existed. [A criticism of 'What Buchenwald really means' by Victor Gollancz], London 1945. Geyer, Curt/Loeb, Walter: Gollancz in German Wonderland, London 1942. Vansittart, Robert: Black Record. Germans past and present, London 1941. *2* Den Angaben in Wittgensteins Briefen an Norman Malcolm ist zu entnehmen, daß Wittgenstein mindestens im Zeitraum zwischen dem 17.08.1945 und dem 20.09.1945 in Swansea war. Vgl. Malcolm, Norman: Ludwig Wittgenstein. A Memoir, Oxford/New York 1984,96- 99 (Briefe Nr.12-15). *3* Aus dem Katalog der "Gollancz Papers" soll hier nur die Beschreibung dieses Nachlaßpostens MSS.157/3/PR/4/1-313 (1945 Aug-Oct) wiedergegeben werden: "Letters to VG mainly following his letter 'In Germany Now', published in the NEWS CHRONICLE, 27 Aug 1945, with a few more general letters on related topics. Correspondents include: Ernest Bader (promoter of co-partnership enterprise:6-7); Sir William Beveridge (19-20); Birmingham Jewish Refugee Club (21-3); H. Runham Brown, hon. Sec., War Resisters' International (26); W.A. Bulmer (commercial representative in Bremen, 1930-45), wishing to place his inside knowledge at official disposal (29-32); Corder Catchpool (40-5); George Catlin (46); Rev. (Subs. Canon) L.J. Collins, with copy of letter circulated to members of the Fellowship of the Transfiguration of Our Lord (55-7); Editorial Board of COMRADE (Brit. Fed. Of Young Cooperators; 58-60); Maurice Cranston (62); Prof. E.R. Dodds (64-5); Kurt Hiller, German Socialist Freedom League (109-10); Kurt Joos, director of Ballets Joos Ltd. (121- 2); A. Kenworthy, re possible role of Left Book Club (130-1); Sir Robert Mayer (148); Count Albrecht Montgelas (159-64); Gilbert Murray (167); Rev. Dr. James Parkes (185-6); Peace Pledge Union (188-9); Lady Pethick-Lawrence (192-3); A.B. Rév, proposing a printed record of the names of those who died as a result of Nazi atrocities (219-23); Baron Wilhelm von Richthofen (224-5); L. Wittgenstein, critical of VG's methods of argument, with dismissive reply (290-1); 'rank & file German democrat' (301); cuttings (303-13)." *4* Gollancz, Victor: Stimme aus dem Chaos. Eine Auswahl der Schriften von Victor Gollancz [in deutscher Übersetzung]. Herausgegeben mit einer Einleitung von Julius Braunthal, Nürnberg 1948,47. *5* Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (Hrsg.): Victor Gollancz. Fünf Ansprachen anläßlich der Verleihung des Friedenspreises des Deutschen Buchhandels, Frankfurt 1960,35f (und 41f in deutscher Übersetzung). *6* Redpath, Theodore: Ludwig Wittgenstein. A Student's Memoir, London 1990,94. *7* Pascal, Fania: A Personal Memoir. In: Rhees, Rush (Ed.): Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford/New York 1984,39f. *8* Drury, Maurice O'C.: Conversations with Wittgenstein. In: Rhees, Rush (Ed.): Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford/New York 1984,138. *9* Hier wird die inzwischen allgemein übliche Bandbezeichnung verwendet, wie sie im Katolog zu "Wittgensteins Nachlaß" von G.H. von Wright ausgearbeitet wurde. Wright, Georg Henrik von: Wittgenstein, Frankfurt 1986,45-76. Diese Bemerkung über fehlenden Humor im NS-Deutschland ist bereits veröffentlicht in: Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Vermischte Bemerkungen. Eine Auswahl aus dem Nachlaß, Frankfurt 1994,147f, und in: Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Culture and Value, Oxford 1980,78. *10* Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Das Blaue Buch, Frankfurt 1984,37+39. Erstveröffentlichung in: Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Preliminary Studies for the 'Philosophical Investigations'. Generally known as 'The Blue and Brown Books', Oxford 1958. *11* Gollancz, Victor: Rede in Wilton Park. In: Gollancz, Victor: Versöhnung. Zwei Reden, Hamburg 1948, 40-58, hier 57f. Ebenso in: Gollancz, Victor: Stimme aus dem Chaos. Eine Auswahl der Schriften von Victor Gollancz, Nürnberg 1948, 276-293, hier 292f. Originalsprachliche Veröffentlichung in: Gollancz, Victor: On Reconciliation. Two speeches, London 1948. ************************************************************** B) Wittgenstein, Ludwig/Gollancz, Victor: Briefwechsel ------------------------------------------------------ 1) Wittgenstein an Gollancz (4. September 1945) ------------------------------------------------ as from Trinity College Cambridge. September 4th, 1945. Dear Mr. Gollancz, I have read your article "In German Now" in the "News Chronicle" of August 27th and was glad to see that someone, publicly and in a conspicuous place, called a devilry a devilry. A friend, when I praised your article to him, gave me your pamphlet on Buchenwald. I am deeply in sympathy with your severe criticism (and it cannot be too severe) of the cruelty, meanness and vulgarity of the daily press and of the B.B.C.. (Our cinema news reels are<,> if possible<,> more poisonous still.) It is because I strongly sympathise with your attitude to these evils that I think I ought to make what seems to me a serious criticism of your polemic against them. I shall try in this letter to put the main line of my criticism in a sketchy way; but I should like to have the opportunity some day of making what I mean clearer by word of mouth. I shall, in what follows, be blunt in order to be clear. There are two ways of diluting an weakening an accusation or criticism. One is to couch it in half-hearted and ambiguous terms. This is not what you have done. But there is another way, which is to embellish a point which you expressed forcefully by half a dozen subsidiary points which, even if they are not weak and dubious, draw away the reader's attention from the main issue, and make >your< polemic ineffectual. I know it is often difficult -2- to refrain from raising these side-issues. One does not wish to suppress them, sometimes out of vanity, sometimes because one doesn't want to make the article too purely aggressive and offensive. Yet, considering the terrible impotence of even the most forcefully written article, if it is to be heard above the shouting of the daily press and the radio, these sacrifices must be made. If you want to point out a foul scandal and to tell people, "Remove it, it stinks!", then, for Heaven's sake, don't add remarks about the lovely smell of roses. Such remarks, even if they are true, immediately put your writing on a wrong plane, on >that< of talk and inaction. If you really want people to remove the dirt, don't talk to them about the philosophical issues of the value of life and happiness. This, if it does anything, will start academic chat. In writing about the wrong attitude of people towards the Buchenwald horrors, e.g., did you wish to convince only those who agree with you about the Old and New Testament? Even if they do, your lengthy quotations serve to sidetrack their attention from the one main point. If they don't - and an enormous number who might be seriously shaken by your argument do not - they will feel that all this rigmarole makes the whole article smell slightly fishy. All the more as they will not gladly give up their former views. I will stop now. - If you ask me why, instead of criticising you, I don't write articles myself, I should answer that I lack the knowledge, the facility of expression and the time necessary for decent and effective journalism. In fact, writing this letter of criticism to a man of your -3- views and of your ability is the nearest approach to what >I cannot do< , i.e., to writing a good article myself. If this letter sounds impolite, this is not because it was my intention to be offensive, but because I have such difficulties in writing at all clearly that the additional task of expressing myself politely would have made it impossible for me to write >this letter< at all. Yours truly, ************************************************************** 2) Gollancz an Wittgenstein (Briefentwurf) ------------------------------------------- Dear Sir - Thank you >very much< for your letter, which I am sure was very well meant. Yours truly ************************************************************** 3) Gollancz an Wittgenstein (11. September 1945) ------------------------------------------------- 11th Sept. 1945. L. Wiltgenstein, Esq., at Trinity College, CAMBRIDGE. Dear Sir, Thank you for your letter, which I am sure was very well meant. Yours truly, ************************************************************** C) Gollancz, Victor: "In Germany Now. A letter to the Editor". In: News Chronicle, No.30-975, Monday, August 27, 1945, p.2 -------------------------------------------------------------- IN GERMANY NOW. A letter to the Editor SIR, - On Monday, August 20, there was an article in one of the daily newspapers from its Berlin Correspondent with the headline "Despair hordes swamp Berlin." Here are some phrases from it: "It is the turn of the Germans now ... the Poles and the Czechs who have turned their Germans out have done a thorough job. Along the borders of the British and American occupied zones and inside Russian occupied Germany, hordes of hungry, hopeless Germans, expelled from Sudetenland, from East Prussia, and from Upper Silesia, are gathering. "There are probably millions of them - but no one can count. There are old men, women with babies, children who have lost their parents, prisoners of war from camps in the Urals. "All of them know now that war does not pay. All of them look wretchedly unlike the so-called Master Race. ... You can see them coming in, hoping to stay, but going out again beaten and defeated, all of them. ... Twenty-four hours of feeding with watery soup, ersatz coffee, and black bread, and off they go again. ... "They say that their real troubles began after the Potsdam declaration 'that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, will have to be undertaken.' ... "They are arriving in a dreadful condition, their feet wrapped in rags, hardly able to walk at all. ... What is the future of these miserable millions? A British officer whose job it is to observe these things gave me one answer. "'Germany cannot support them, he said. They will die by the thousand this winter. The Germans are responsible for their own nationals, and they will be hard put to it to feed those already here.' "Truly, retribution has come to the Germans." ***** When recently I wrote to another newspaper about a similar piece of devilry, I was rebuked by the editor, who did not print my letter, for exhibiting "useless moral indignation." But isn't it precisely moral indignation that is wanted today? Isn't the world going to hell for the lack of it? Described in those phrases I have quoted, which can be read in a minute but which spell hopeless agony, hour by hour and day by day, for millions, is all the Nazi foulness against which we fought - the cruelty that spares neither old men nor orphans, nor even babies in arms, the self-centred nationalism, the racial intolerance, the hatred and revenge, and, what is at the bottom of it all, an utter forgetfulness of the only thing that matters - which is that a man is a man first, and a German, a Czech, or a Pole a long way afterwards. People talk of international machinery for controlling the atomic bomb. What a mockery this is when, even while they talk, the nations are showing, and more unashamedly than ever before, that they put national self-interest, or what they stupidly imagine to be national self-interest, before any virtue or any duty, no matter how intolerable, the suffering they may thereby cause to others. A sort of new morality is indeed springing up, which regards mercy and pity, William Blake's "virtues of delight," as not merely irrelevant, but positively disgraceful. ***** Only the other day the B.B.C, after telling us of the ghastly conditions in German hospitals, felt it necessary to conform to modern standards by hurriedly adding that it did so not to arouse pity for our late enemies, but because it would be inexpedient to permit the development of epidemics "anywhere where there are Allied troops." The menace of the atomic bomb will not be defeated by any paper schemes of international control, vital though that is. If nations continue to think in terms of national self-interest, then with relentless logic the final war will end us before - and that's the pity - mankind has even begun to realise a tithe of its potential greatness. Nor can there be any hope from the bogus internationalism, which is based on "enlightened self-interest." To help others merely because that's the best way of helping ourselves is to leave the basic passion of self-interest unimpaired: and when the conflict comes as come it must, between self-interest and the common good, it will be self-interest that will win. ***** Only one thing can save us, and that is an act of genuine repentance: a determination here and now to turn our backs on the whole evil tradition of self-interest and self-righteousness in international affairs - a determination, for instance, to feed Europe this winter not because if we don't we ourselves may suffer, but simply because it is right to feed our starving neighbours. It is only by striking out on this new path TODAY that we can escape utter destruction: for the evil has already gone deep, and if it is allowed to go deeper, recovery will be impossible. Knowing very well that our own actions are limited by those of others, I yet suggest that our new Government may prove itself the greatest that the world has ever known if, in this awful crisis of the human fate, it will dare to rise to the full height of the argument: if, first, it will act always for the general international good, and if, secondly - for this is no less important - it will begin the moral re-education of ourselves and others by avowedly basing its actions, not on enlightened self-interest, but on loving our neighbours as ourselves. VICTOR GOLLANCZ Brimpton, Berkshire. ************************************************************** D) Gollancz, Victor: What Buchenwald Really Means London 1945 (24. April 1945) ------------------------------------------------- WHAT BUCHENWALD REALLY MEANS by VICTOR GOLLANCZ [3d.net] London Victor Gollancz Ltd 14 Henrietta Street, W.C.2 TO THE MARTYRS OF ALL RACES, NATIONALITIES AND CREEDS WHO HAVE DIED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM "Ehrenburg assures his readers that all Germans are the same, and that they will all be held responsible in equal measure for the Hitlerites' crimes. He states: 'There is no Germany. There is only a huge gang who are scattering and fleeing, now that the time has come to answer for their deeds.' "There is no difficulty about showing that these assurances of Ehrenburg's do not correspond with facts. ... "... The Soviet people never did identify the German population with the criminal Fascist clique who are ruling Germany. Stalin said: 'IT WOULD BE LUDICROUS TO IDENTIFY HITLER'S CLIQUE WITH THE GERMAN PEOPLE, WITH THE GERMAN STATE. THE EXPERIENCE OF HISTORY SHOWS THAT HITLERS COME AND GO, BUT THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND THE GERMAN STATE REMAIN.'" -Georgi Alexandrov, PRAVDA, April 14th, 1945. "For they appeal from tyranny to God." -Byron. "We have no information whatever to suggest that they [prisoner of war camps] are in any way to be compared with the appalling conditions prevailing in the concentration camps FOR GERMAN POLITICAL PRISONERS such as Buchenwald." -Mr. A. Henderson, Financial Secretary to the War Office, in a written reply to a question in the House of Commons, April 27th, 1945; my italics. ********************************************** * * * {picture} * * * * "THE WHOLE GERMAN PEOPLE * * SHOULD BE WIPED OUT FOR THIS! * * DON'T FORGET SOME OF US * * ARE GERMANS, FRIEND." * * * * By permission of * * the "Evening Standard." * * * ********************************************** -2- WHAT BUCHENWALD REALLY MEANS This PAMPHLET is not, in the main, about the Buchenwald horror, but about the reaction to it. What needs to be said about the horror itself, the horror not only of Buchenwald but of camp after camp throughout the length and breadth of Germany? Only this. It has been going on, this sin against humanity - this sin so great that even to speak of it, even to think of it, makes one ashamed to be a man - it has been going on ever since Hitler came to power in the early weeks of 1933. There has never been the slightest excuse for anyone to plead ignorance of it. In that very first year I published THE BROWN BOOK OF THE HITLER TERROR, in which the first stages of the terror were exposed with a wealth of documentary and photographic evidence which allowed of no denial. Or should have allowed. For, quite apart from the indifference of the overwhelming majority of "ordinary" men and women, such an organ of Conservative and "Big Business" opinion as the "Morning Post" - since incorporated in "The Daily Telegraph" - was able to begin its review of the book with the words: "A blood-curdling compendium of 'atrocities' alleged to have been committed under the Nazi régime" (the inverted commas are the "Morning Post's"), and to end it like this: "Anything that is not corroborated up to the hilt from other sources will naturally be suspect, and the sane reader will be predisposed to sympathise rather with Herr Hitler than with his accusers." Shortly afterwards I published THE YELLOW SPOT, which detailed the cruelties, tortures and indignities committed, more specifically, against the Jews: and this was the beginning of a long series of books continued not merely up to the outbreak of the war but beyond it, the last of them being LET MY PEOPLE GO, in which I attempted, by describing what was happening in Poland, to arouse such a public opinion as would compel certain practical measures to be taken for the rescue of even a small percentage of these victims before it was too late. The effort failed: we know now that something like four million Jews - a quarter of the whole Jewish population of the world - have been massacred amid every circumstance of terror and shame. If you want to know what it was like, read this extract from a letter of a Polish-Jewish child: "I must now say good-bye. To-morrow mother goes to the gas chamber, and I shall be thrown down a well." I mention things I have published and written myself because, at such a moment as this, to recall that one has at least done something helps a little to assuage the pain of having done so little. But my own effort was, of course, a very small part of the whole. There were many other books: there were well documented pamphlets, especially those issued by the Labour and Communist Parties: -3- there was "The Manchester Guardian," "The Daily Herald," "The Daily Worker," "The News Chronicle," "The New Statesman": and even the Right Wing Press from time to time carried "headline" stories of fresh atrocities, for, whatever might be the editorial policy of these papers, the stories were "news" - and that, among journalists, is something sacred. No, there was never the smallest excuse for pleading ignorance. And now ask yourself, reader - what did YOU do about it? Nothing? Why? Because you didn't care enough? Because it was none of your business? Because you couldn't bear to think about it, and so averted your eyes? Or because - because - "well, what on earth COULD I, an ordinary, powerless individual, do anyhow?" They are poor answers, all those. They say little for your citizenship, for your humanity, for your active belief in the brotherhood of man. But at any rate remember them when we come, later on, to consider the collective responsibility of the whole German people for these outrages. That is all I want to say about the horror itself. Except perhaps this. You can do something NOW. Instead of satisfying yourself with feelings of hatred and indignation against the torturers, you can vow to give succour - not only now, when your emotions are aroused, but in all the years to come - to those of the tortured who still live, but oh! how precariously, and in what agony of mind and body! You can vow to give succour to them. Whatever may be their race, religion or nationality. EVEN IF THEY ARE GERMANS. That brings me to the heart of what I want to say. An influential section of the Press, and many writers and public men, are using these revelations - which are no revelations at all to those who have lived in an agonised consciousness of them, day after day, for twelve long years - as proof at last of the utter wickedness of all Germans, and of the "collective guilt" of the whole German people. And what is so shameful about this campaign is that, however ignorant the general public may be, these writers know very well that what is really proved beyond any possibility of doubt is the exact opposite. For who ARE these victims? Who are these men and women whose eyes stare at you from outraged bodies in the morning papers, and whose ashes accuse the whole world? Who are they who have made up the doomed population, not only of Buchenwald, not only of most of the other concentration camps of which Buchenwald is merely a sample, and maybe not the worst, but also of the Gestapo prisons and torture chambers, as at Cologne, which are coming to light all over Germany? I do not speak of the extermination camps in Poland, such as that at Auschwitz (which is merely the German name for Oswiecim), where for three years now millions of Jews have been slaughtered, with very little effort made, in spite of all our urgings, to save even some small proportion of them: I speak of the camps in the "Greater Germany" of 1939 - Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and the rest. Who are, who have been, their inhabitants? -4- Their present population - and it is a measure of the shame that has come upon humanity that such a word can be used in such a connection - is a mixed one. You could find in them, dead or dying, foreign slaves, Jews from all over Europe, resistance workers from the conquered countries, Russians, hostages, a very few British and American prisoners of war - AND GERMANS: German Communists, Socialists, Liberals, Christians and others who have dared in any way to oppose the régime, or have been considered "dangerous" to it. Ed Murrow talked in Buchenwald with a German Communist who had been there TEN YEARS: in another camp there was a German Professor who had made some slighting reference to Hitler. How many of these German oppositionists, these "innocent Germans," are now in the camps and prisons it is impossible to say: but the "Times" reports that in Buchenwald alone there were, at the time that it was overrun, three thousand of them. But consider, not merely the present moment, but the whole period of 1933 to 1945. Many of the vilest of these camps were established in the first year of the régime: nearly all of them before the war. THE BROWN BOOK OF THE HITLER TERROR shows - and showed early in 1933, when it was published - that even then there were no less than 45 concentration camps, great or small, containing between 35,000 and 40,000 German anit-Fascists: and I believe now that that was a serious underestimate. And now reflect on this: that from 1933 to 1939 there were no foreign slaves, no resistance workers, no prisoners of war, and that ALL the inmates were either "Aryan" or "non-Aryan" Germans. Moreover, the overwhelming majority, in this period taken as a whole, were political oppositionists: not many Jews, simply AS Jews, were in these camps before the war (though many may have been there for their political opinions), except for a short period after November, 1938. The persecution of the Jews took a different form: they were beaten up, deprived of civil rights, prevented from earning a living, and outrageously insulted. And then after the outbreak of the war they were deported East, to join their brethren in the gas chambers and incinerators of Poland. Over the whole period of 1933 to 1945 how many German oppositionists, how many "innocent Germans," have lived and died in Buchenwald and Dachau and Sachsenhausen and all the rest? No one can know: but it is possible to get at least some vague idea. First, consider the "turnover" in these camps - how men and women went there, died, and were replaced by others. Secondly, remember that there were twenty thousand survivors at Buchenwald when the camp was overrun, and that the records showed a death rate of five or six thousand a month. Finally, read this article from the Zürich WELTWOCHE of 9th March, 1945: and I will only say that there are the strongest possible grounds for believing it to be authentic and reliable. "Thus we get a comprehensive picture of a terrorist nursery (Terrorplantage) exploited down to the last detail for the ends of the war economy or for self-sufficiency. It will be understood that it is difficult to get the precise figures of the total number of prisoners -5- in all the actual German concentration camps - that is, excluding those camps in occupied territories and the specialised annihilation camps. But in any case the following average figures are hardly disputed: Buchenwald, near Weimar ............... 40,000 Sachsenhausen, near Oranienburg ....... 25,000 Dachau, near Munich ................... 11,000 Neuengamme, near Hamburg .............. 6,000 Gross-Rosen, in Silesia ............... 4,000 Fallersleben, near Brunswick .......... 4,000 Danzig-Stuthoff ....................... 4,000 Flossenbürg, Upper Palatinate ......... 3,000 Mauthausen on the Danube .............. 3,000 "To these must be added certain smalLer camps and the big ones which come under the KOMMANDANTUR PAPENBURG and are known by the names of Esterwegen, Boergermoos, Neu-Sustrum and Aschendorf, though exact figures for them are not available. "Why these figures? Because they reflect, besides all the various economic and military aspects, the true face of these concentration camps as well. Dachau and the rest of the most important camps were set up immediately after Hitler's seizure of power in the spring of 1933. The average numbers of inmates given were, until the annexation of Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, made up exclusively of Reich German opponents of the régime, a fact which at all events allows certain conclusions to be drawn about the existence of an active opposition to the régime, especially when the sentences passed by the People's Courts are also taken into account. According to information given by the prison authorities to a priest, in Berlin alone, at the penal institution of Plötzensee, in May, 1942, between 20 and 25 persons were executed daily, and in May, 1943, between 50 and 55 daily - almost all of them in accordance with sentences passed by the People's Court for activities hostile to the State. Of the persons who entered the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in November, 1938, numbering almost 22,000, more than 5,000 had died by March, 1939, of cold and debility. ALL THESE WERE REICH GERMANS. ... "Thus the concentration camps become a symbol of the actual German opposition; Dachau is a symbol in the mind of the world, but it is also a symbol in the minds of the German enemies of Hitler. It was there that the poet Ernst Wiechert suffered and that the Communist and former Lieutenant in the REICHSWEHR, Scheringer, was murdered: it was there that the Bavarian democratic politicans met their end and also Dean Zillikens of Mayen in the Eifel, who failed to greet Göring while on a walk - German victims from the Right as well as from the Left." What is the writer saying? That in the nine camps mentioned (apart from all other camps, big or small, and the innumerable Gestapo prisons and "Houses") there were AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT from 1933 to 1939, on an average, 100,000 GERMANS: and that of -6- the 22,000 in Sachsenhausen in November, 1938, between twenty and twenty-five per cent, were dead four months later - to be replaced by others. These two figures, taken together, will give you some idea of the total number of Germans who, since 1933, have gone to their death in Hitler's camps - or, more unhappily, have, year after year, somehow managed to live. And remember also that almost every one of these men and women was a hero. For the Jews, it is true, there was no possibility of salvation: they were doomed, beyond any hope of escape, by reason of their "blood." But all the others might, at any time, have gained release from unspeakable tortures by recanting. We have the record of one or two did: but most of them preferred to suffer, and, at long last, to die. And yet the very last impression that the casual reader gets, or, I am afraid, is intended to get from that section of the Press to which I have referred, is that the population of these camps has been largely a German population: and in only one or two papers have I seen the plain fact stated that here is, or has been, the German opposition: here is, or has been, that "other Germany," the existence of which has been denied by the stupid and the malicious. Or rather, a PART of the German opposition: to that I shall return. Mr. Beverley Baxter, Member of Parliament, said a few months ago that there might be some "good Germans" - say five or six of them. Does this enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Chamberlain, this gentleman who even to-day defends the policy of Munich - does he still think that figure a just one? Or, as he opens his "Daily Express" at the breakfast table and sees that pile of bones and ashes, does he wonder, with perhaps a touch of shame, whether he was mistaken? And if so, will he confess it? I say, then, that the evidence of these camps, far from proving that all Germans are vile and that the whole German people is "collectively guilty," proves the opposite. But that is only half the story. It is only half the story because, apart altogether from these hundreds of thousands who have gone to their death, the very existence of this hellish apparatus - these concentration camps, torture chambers, Gestapo prisons, spies, block wardens and the presence of an opposition, actual and potential, far more extensive than can be measured by the mere number of tortured victims. People go on repeating, as if they were drugged, "The whole German people has been solidly behind Hitler": and never stop to wonder why, if that is so, such an instrument of internal oppression, street by street and house by house, was necessary. Is there any direct evidence, other than that of the concentration camps, for the existence of this opposition? Well, I have already quoted, from the WELTWOCHE article, some figures of daily executions in one penal institution alone. Again, according to official statistics, there were already IN APRIL, 1939, 32,000 Germans in the penal battalions of the OT, most of them having gone there direct from the concentration camps. These penal battalions of the OT -7- and WEHRMACHT were to be employed on the most dangerous and disgusting tasks: and into them the GERMAN enemies of Hitler were drafted. Nor do we have to rely only on such facts as these. Some of our own war correspondents are using their eyes and their tongues: but what they write is drowned in the ocean of "collective guilt" propaganda. In the "News Chronicle," for instance, of Saturday, April 21st, there is a "splash" article on the front page by Mr. Henry Standish, War Correspondent, with the headline "The Living Dead of Belsen." In the course of it he says: "For me, the whole lesson of this camp ... is first the culpability of Nazi Germany WHICH IS ALL GERMANY ..." [my italics] In column four, on the same page, is a smaller article, with the less conspicuous headline "There is the other kind of German," by S.L. Solon, War Correspondent. Here it is in full: DUESSELDORF, Friday. "Here in the heart of industrial Germany where Left-Wing parties always had great followings, there are many Germans who really regard themselves as friends of the Allies. "Lt. Jacques de Gannernaecker, a French prisoner of war whose home is in Paris and who lived in the area, told me: "'There was considerable anti-Nazi sentiment in the Ruhr among the workers. They have been opposed to the war I think since the start, and many of them have been cruelly punished by the Nazi for their views.' "I came across concrete instances of how some German workers helped the victims of the Nazis. "One working-class family in a Duesseldorf suburb has for two years hidden two Jews, feeding them out of their own rations, to save them from the Nazis. "A Polish slave worker hunted by the Gestapo for his underground activity was sheltered by a German girl who helped him in his work." In the same paper on the same day Olle Ollen, for nearly three years Berlin correspondent of the Stockholm paper "Morgontidningen," and the last Swedish-born newspaperman to leave the Nazi capital, writes as follows: "There is bitter hatred stored in the hearts of a great many Germans, and it will be a terrible day when it is turned loose and runs across Germany like wildfire. "The workers in Moabit and Neukoelln will act when that day comes. ... "How many families are there in Germany who have relatives in concentration camps? How many have received the laconic message: 'Your husband, son, brother, has died. Inform where belongings should be sent.' ... "There is one category of political prisoners called 'Nacht und Nebel' - 'Night and mist.' If inquiries are made at the camp in which they are supposed to have been sent, nobody knows anything about them. "Their names have never been on any prisoner list. They -8- were gathered in 'annihilation camps' in which one week's stay means dysentery and internal sickness. On my way out of Berlin I saw some of these prisoners being taken back to the city when the Allied advance began. They had been marching several days. "Clad only in blue and white striped 'prisoners'' pyjamas and wearing wooden clogs, they could scarcely move and drag themselves an inch at the time. "I heard one of them shout: 'Salute Berlin. We'll never see it again.'" Finally, here is a cutting from the "Daily Herald" of Monday, April 23rd: "The first active underground anti-Nazi movement in Germany was found in Leipzig. "An American counter-espionage agent told a war correspondent that the organisation had hidden 41 British prisoners of war for five days, giving them three hot meals a day, and afterwards smuggled them through the German lines to the Americans, then 12 miles away. "Four of the prisoners were airborne troops captured at Arnhem. "Another resistance movement, said to be on a national basis, gave the Americans a list of Gestapo leaders in Leipzig." ***** If I wrote no more I should already have proved my point, beyond any possibility of refutation. All Germans are NOT guilty: on the contrary, hundreds of thousands of them have suffered and died for our own great cause of freedom and humanity: and I say that it is the meanest of sins to turn the very proof of their sufferings into a proof of their guilt, for that is what you do when, faced with the evidence of the concentration camps, you say "Every German is guilty." But I intend to write a good deal more; for I know, of course, exactly what the answer to all this will be. "Take all the people who are in, or have passed through, all the concentration camps, or have been shot by order of all the People's Courts: add to them all of the type to whom Solon refers: and still you have a small minority of the German people. The rest, if they have not actively welcomed these things, have at least acquiesced. THEY are therefore guilty." The Press is indeed already making this reply, so to say, in advance. The Weimar episode is typical. The people of neighbouring Weimar, it will be remembered, were marched to Buchenwald to "see for themselves." Some cried: some fainted: some protested that they knew nothing of what had been going on. The average Press comment is, in effect, that if they did not know it was because they "preferred not to know," because they "averted their faces": "anyhow, they did nothing about it, and so are guilty." Notice that the ground has already shifted, without anybody noticing it. It is no longer ALL the Germans who are guilty: it is now the great majority of Germans. Other, I suppose, than the children - up to what age? For anyone who says that a child of -9- one, or five, or ten, is "guilty" for what goes on around him is a caricature, not only of a Christian but of a man. I do not know, nor can these writers know, what have been the proportions of active Nazis, of active oppositionists, and of "acquiescers." However, let that go: say that the oppositionists have been a very small minority, and the acquiescers a very large majority: and what does the charge amount to? Simply to this: that a very small minority of Germans were heroes, and a very large majority were not. Let us ask ourselves just what was POSSIBLE once the terror, of which we now have the last awful proofs, was clamped down, as it was already clamped down in 1933? I do not believe - I never believed, as I made clear during all those years - that the régime COULD be overthrown so long as it was unopposed by the free peoples of the world: still less do I believe, or ever did believe, that it could be overthrown so long as many of these free peoples, or their Governments, actively supported it, as they did support it to their everlasting shame. People forget what an unspeakably efficient instrument of oppression is a modern dictatorship, with its machineguns, its airplanes, its tortures, and its spies, to say nothing of its propaganda, so bemusing to our still childish humanity. Even a few hundred thousand men, organised by such a tyranny, can hold down, without any possibility of effective reply, a people a hundred times as great or more. All the armies of Europe could not withstand the WEHRMACHT until Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States had slowly mobilised their giant strength: was it conceivable that the German people could withstand the S.S. and the Gestapo? Nevertheless many - many absolutely if not relatively - tried, as we have already seen: they tried, because there are some men and women whose sense of civic duty and human dignity is so great that even a hopeless protest against intolerable evil, and at whatever cost, is held preferable by them, and rightly held preferable, to surrender. More SHOULD have tried; to that I shall presently return. But for the moment: Put yourself, if you can, in the average German's place: imagine yourself a German, let us say, in 1938. You have heard ghastly rumours of what goes on in the prisons and concentration camps: every now and again you hear it whispered that a mother has had a note from the Gestapo asking to what address the clothes of her son, who has disappeared, are to be sent. There is an all-pervading atmosphere of mystery and terror: but there is no definite information, for there is freedom neither of the Press nor of discussion, nor even of private speech. You know that there is a spy in every block, perhaps in your very room: you know that if you say a word of criticism, or even ask an indiscreet question, a horrible fate, which you dare not even imagine, may befall you, AND, IF YOU ARE A PARENT, YOUR CHILDREN ALSO. What can you do about it? You can try to find out the whole truth about the concentration camps, with the knowledge that by the mere fact of doing so you are in all probability signing your torture-warrant: -10- and if you nevertheless survive, you may join an underground group, with the certainty that then nothing but a miracle can save you. WILL you do this? If you are a hero, yes; if not, no. Are you SURE you are a hero? If you have any doubt about it, read the Gospel according the St. John, Chapter 8, verse 7, and do not cast the first stone. I have tried to face this matter honestly in my own case. I have five daughters, whose ages run from sixteen to twenty-five. If I had been a German of 1938, and if my daughters' ages had run, say, from two to twelve, would I have run the risk - the risk that was almost a certainty - that they would become the things that sicken us when we see them pictured in the newspapers? Would my wife? I just cannot answer, for I do not know: I can only pray God that I may never have to make the choice. And I am a highly "political" person, whose life is actively motivated by a loathing of everything for which fascism stands: the majority of people are not. And now drop the fiction that you are a German man or woman in the year 1938, and remember what you actually were in that year - an Englishman or Englishwoman. Did you in fact - as I asked at the beginning of this pamphlet - "do something about it"? No? Why not? "It was no concern of mine: it was happening in GERMANY." This is apparently how Mr. Eden felt; for he said in a broadcast on January 5th, 1942, "The trouble with Hitler was not that he was a Nazi at home. The trouble with him was that he would not stay at home." Well, I am a Jew, and believe that we are all children of one Father: you are, perhaps, a Christian, and believe that we are all brothers one of another. Ought it to make one split hair's difference to you or to me whether the man, woman, or child who was enduring that shameful torture was a German or an Englishman, a Gentile or a Jew? "I couldn't bear to think of it, so I averted my eyes." It is just for this that the Press is attacking the Germans. "What on earth COULD I, an ordinary, powerless individual, do about it, anyhow?" You are the citizen of a democracy: you are supposed to control your Government. In the final analysis, no democratic Government DARE fly in the face of public opinion, if it is sufficiently strong and sufficiently vocal. But you "preferred" to allow your Government, year after year, TO PURSUE A POLICY WHICH ACTIVELY CONSOLIDATED HITLER'S POWER. I do not wish to introduce partly polemics into this pamphlet. But if anyone doubts the truth of the words italicised, and will write to me at the address on the cover, I will give him the titles of books and pamphlets in which the charge is proved beyond any possibility of refutation. Your case is morally worse than that of the "ordinary" Germans - and by "ordinary" I mean that great majority in every country, and not merely in Germany, who are not heroes, who "look after their own concerns" and "don't interfere in politics." For you knew exactly what was happening in the concentration camps; at least, as I have already said, you had little excuse for not knowing, for the facts were constantly being published in books, -11- pamphlets and Press. But the Germans knew only vaguely and by terrified hearsay. Moreover, there was no danger for you; whereas the slightest action would mean, for a German, the probability of torture and death. Finally, you were a member of a democracy, with all the rights and duties of a citizen; for the Germans civil liberty had utterly vanished. Does it seem odd that I should put heavier burden of responsibility on the common people of England than on the common people of Germany? It shouldn't, and for two reasons. The first I have just given: namely, the difference in their situations. The second is that there is no wiser rule of life than to blame ourselves and not others. The mote and the beam. But a deeper question may still be raised. By accusing the ordinary Englishman I put in its most extreme form the doctrine of political responsibility - of the direct responsibility of every human being for what happens to other human beings throughout the world. I hold passionately to this doctrine, which derives from a belief in the brotherhood of man: since I became a publisher I have tried to live in the light of it: and I could imagine no greater betrayal than to utter a single word which would seem to call this doctrine into question. Why, then, it may be asked, do I apologise for those Germans who made no effort, however hopeless it might have been, to overthrow their vile régime? It is not too much to say that there can be no final salvation for the world, no firm assurance of light and hope and happiness everywhere, until each single man and woman guides his life by this belief in political responsibility and the brotherhood of man, and until the children of every nation grow up in the climate of it. In other words, there can be no salvation until everywhere there is an active and vital democracy, and until that democracy thinks not merely in national but in international terms. It is our first and immediate duty to achieve that democracy here in Britain: it was the Germans' duty to achieve it in Germany. That is why I said that more Germans SHOULD have, in some desperate way, gone into active opposition. But there are varying circumstances and conditions in our temporal world, and it is by reference to them that a wise man will measure the gravity of this or that person's failure to measure up to this duty. Allow me, by way of illustration, to describe a personal experience. In the year 1938 I was speaking in support of China on a village green in the South of England. I described how Chinese babies were being bombed to pieces by the Japanese, and how the materials from which the bombs were made were being in large part supplied by the British Empire; and I said, "Each one of you is responsible." Is was, in the final analysis, true: I was right to say it: and if only one of that little audience was moved to become an active citizen by my words some good had been achieved. But when I noticed the looks of amazement and incredulity (I mean, amazement at my accusation of them) on the faces of those small gardeners and agricultural labourers, I reflected -12- a little. One I happened to know. He was of small intelligence; he hardly ever went even to the neighbouring town; his education had been poor; he read nothing, and had been brought up to read nothing, but the worst of the Sunday papers, and of that only the headlines: he worked long hours at small and mechanical tasks. He WAS responsible for what was happening in China: but who could compare his responsibility with mine, and who would have the hardihood to call him, in a pejorative and not merely a descriptive sense, "guilty"? By the same token, but by reason of a different set of circumstances, I "apologise" for those Germans who, in the shadow of this awful terror, went about their business. ***** I notice one or two leading articles which seem to recognise, in an uneasy sort of way, the truth of all that has so far been said, but are still unwilling, for psychological reasons, to give up the charge. So they shift their ground once more, and say "However that may be, the WHOLE GERMAN PEOPLE brought Hitler to power, and, on that count at least, must share in the guilt of Buchenwald." The whole German people? In the last election before Hitler became Chancellor (November, 1932), only 11,737,000 voted for him out of a total electorate of 44,373,700. And in the election AFTER he had become Chancellor (March, 1933), when the terror was already in full swing, out of roughly the same electorate only 17,277,200 voted for the Nazis, and 3,136,800 for the Nationalists with whom they were now allied. Some 5,000,000 abstained, and the remainder, some 19,000,000, voted for anti-Nazi parties - Socialists, Communists, Catholics, etc. Ignore, then, the appalling unemployment and under-employment of the Germany of 1929 to 1933; ignore the tendency of people in such a situation to vote for anyone who will promise them bread, hope and a job; ignore the absence of a firmly rooted democratic tradition, which was the result of previous history and by no possible argument the responsibility of the present generation; ignore the disastrous split in the progressive forces, a phenomenon, alas, not peculiar to Germany; say that any German who voted for Hitler, for such reasons as these, bears the guilt for Buchenwald: yet it still remains true that even after the establishment of Hitler over forty per cent. of the German electorate voted AGAINST Hitler and his allies, to say nothing of those who abstained. Forty per cent. of the German electorate cannot, therefore, be held responsible on this count; nor, presumably, can those who were children then or have since been born. Mussolini was in power for more than twenty years: his vile penal islands were the model for Hitler's camps. Hitler was far wickeder then Mussolini, but Mussolini was wicked enough: why, therefore, using the same argument, do we not hold every Italian responsible for what he did? I come now to a final question, and one concerned with perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the whole obscenity. "How could it happen that so many men and women were found, not merely to -13- acquiesce in the régime, but themselves to carry out, on a mass scale, outrages and tortures perhaps more appalling even than those of the Inquisition? Doesn't this show that there's something wrong with the German BLOOD?" It is almost impossible, in face of what these men and women have done, to keep one's head; but it is desirable to do so, and to ask, first of all, how many of them there were. No one knows: but the entire S.S. is supposed at the outbreak of the war to have numbered about 300,000, and the Gestapo machinery was almost certainly smaller. The actual gaolers and torturers were not a large percentage of the S.S. However, there is something shameful, in such a matter, about mathematical calculations: even if there were only ONE who had been found to do what the man of Belsen did, it would be as necessary to find an answer. The argument about "blood" is frankly nonsensical. If there is something wrong with German "blood" there is something wrong with English "blood," for the two are, in large measure, one and the same: there is something wrong with our Royal Family, whose German "blood" is very recent: there is something wrong with that considerable percentage of the United States armies whose German ancestry is near or remote. To use such an argument is to talk like a Nazi, who says just the same thing about the Jews - or, indeed, in the reverse sense, about himself. And if somebody replies "Anyhow, who except Germans ever behaved like this?", I tell him that in the German slaughter-camps of Poland many of the gaolers and executioners were Latvians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians: that, according to Miss Myrtle Wright, a Quaker Englishwoman who has just returned after four years in occupied Norway, the Norwegian quisling S.S. men in the Norwegian concentration camps "often outdid their German colleagues in brutality": and that when a concentration camp near Brussels was liberated, a Belgian prisoner told the Foreign Editor of "The Daily Herald" that most of the torturers were Flemish Belgian Fascists. And I ask him what he imagines went on under Codreanu's Iron Guard in Rumania, or indeed under men brutalised by Fascism anywhere? The horror is to be explained not by nonsensical myths about blood but by the plain facts of environment, conditioning and human psychology. There are potentialities both for good and for evil in every human being: who can look for a moment into his own soul and deny it? And the commonest of all the evils is that lust for power and domination, that desire to impose one's will and personality on others, one expression of which is cruelty. I do not believe, indeed, that any man or woman has ever been born on this earth, save perhaps one, in whom some germ of cruelty was not latent. For most of us, happily, this lust never even comes into consciousness; others suppress it early and easily, or sublimate it, or, by that divine alchemy which is the ultimate ground for hope and faith, convert it immediately and spontaneously into its opposite, which is love. But always it is, or has been, there. Now what Hitler has done is this. He has taken men and -14- women, mainly, but not exclusively, the young and undeveloped: he has put them, year after year, through a long course of training: and always he has worked on that little seed of cruelty, has fed it and watered it in the hope that ultimately it would become a monstrous growth and do his evil will. The process is familiar: it has been many times described. First, these boys are set to watch a mild whipping: and if you are surprised that some of them enjoy it, ask yourself why few editors reject a whipping "story" if it is on this side of obscenity or even on the other, and why, too, as the "Daily Express" so proudly boasts, people are flocking to see that great journal's exhibitions of "horror" photographs too terrible even to be printed in the Press. Next, they watch a severer whipping: then they are given the privilege of administering it themselves. The appetite grows by what it feeds on. Perhaps after that they watch an execution: and then a scene of downright diabolical torture. They are now ripe for hell: they become executioners and torturers themselves, and finally the man of Belsen. It is said that civilised men, if they once taste human flesh, become mad. These S.S. men are mad with that kind of madness. God forgive them, and those who made them what they are. ***** Can you read the various stages of the argument I have tried to set out, and still believe that ALL Germans are "guilty"? Surely it is not possible. What, then, do these writers mean when they say that "The Germans must be made to realise that they are COLLECTIVELY GUILTY"? If they do not mean, as they cannot mean, that EVERY German, including those whose ashes we are finding, is in any ordinary sense "guilty," they must mean that there is an entity, namely "the Germans," which is something other than the mere sum total of the German individuals who compose it: that this entity is "guilty": and that, THOUGH this entity is something other than the mere sum total of the German individuals who compose it, nevertheless, and paradoxically, just because every German "belongs to" it every German, including those whose ashes we are finding, is "guilty." I believe that this is precisely what these writers do mean. It is a foul conception, and indicates how very rapidly that depersonalisation, which is the greatest of all our modern evils, is proceeding. Stemming from Hegel, this idea of "collective guilt" is a throw-back, as fascism is a throw-back, to pre-Christian barbarism; and that decent and intelligent men should be solemnly discussing it is a measure of our corruption by the thing we have been fighting. What is it that, in the final analysis, makes it utterly impossible for the Judaeo-Christian tradition ever to compromise with fascism? Simply this: that for the one the ultimate reality is the human soul, individual, unique, responsible to God and man, while for the other this ultimate reality is some abstraction - a State, Folk or Collective which men have created out of nothing, and which has no existence except in their own vain imagination. For primitive men to think in terms of the collective -15- was natural; for the fascists it is artificial; that is the only difference between them. So far as Western civilisation, or what was to be Western civilisation, is concerned, the first great protest against the old blasphemy was made in the legend of Abraham pleading with the Lord to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah: "And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord. And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee; Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes: Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And He said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And He said, I will not do it for forty's sake. And he said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And He said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there. And he said, Behold I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And He said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake. And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And He said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake. And the Lord went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham; and Abraham returned unto his place." Later, the prophet Ezekiel was to carry this wisdom a stage further, and, deserting fable, to make his passionate appeal to reason and justice: "Now, lo, if he beget a son, that seeth all his father's sins which he hath done, and considereth, and doeth not such like, That hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither hath lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, hath not defiled his neighbour's wife, Neither hath oppressed any, hath not withholden the pledge, -16- neither hath spoiled by violence, but hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment, That hath taken off his hand from the poor, that hath not received usury nor increase, harth executed my judgments, hath walked in my statutes; he shall not die for the iniquity of his father, he shall surely live. As for his father, because he cruelly oppressed, spoiled his brother by violence, and did that which is not good among his people, lo, even he shall die in his iniquity. Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." And finally Jesus of Nazareth, substituting for justice the love that includes it, put in its simplest and highest form the doctrine of individual personality without which there can be no salvation: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." This Judaeo-Christian tradition is our inner citadel. We have been fighting to preserve it for our children: are we now to surrender it in the very moment of victory? I will leave it at that. I can only hope that the reader will at least give honour where honour is due, and, when mourning for the Russians and Jews and slave-labourers from many lands who have met their end in Dachau and Buchenwald, will find it in his heart to say, as I say, "Salute also to these German heroes of Dachau and Buchenwald: to these Christians, Jews, Communists, Socialists, Liberals, Pacifists and ordinary men and women, against whom Hitler employed all his malice, but could not prevail." For God sees them, I dare to think, as History will see them, sleeping side by side with the slain of our own nation in a common martyrs' grave: nor will they be grudged their place, for all will know, in the region where truth and generosity prevail, that, awful as were the sufferings of the British and Russians and Americans and all the Germans suffered more and suffered longer. BRIMPTON, April 24th, 1945. **************************************************************