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Map 12, 1945

535

characteristic Geneva solution. It confronted the conference

with a choice between a sterile legalistic formula and actualities. The f m r was preferred, and great-power unlty
breached. Mr. Stettiniws refused, even after Mr. Spaaks
statesman-lke plea, to consent to the Russlan request for
postponement. We won a dlplomatic victory that was a
moral defeat and may be the beglnning of a serious rift in
the big-power unanimity wlth whch the conference began
and which is the essential condtion of peace. England and
Holland seem to have been our only European supporters In
this; even China abstained.
The American consultants were told that Argentina was a

special case whose admission was required by the Chapdtepec conference. But the psincjples laid down by the Latin
American delegates in the debateuniversa1ity of the
new organization and non-intervention in tbe internal affairs of states applying for membership-lay the basis for
the adtnisslon of Franco Spain. Just as the Germans whittled
away the Versailles settlement piecemeal, so the process has
begun of whittling away the anti-fascist character of the
Unlted Nations: there wdl be new legalistic reasons for dew
compromlses with fascism. That is not the way to maintain
an entente with the U.S. S . R. or the stable peace an entente
would make possible.

Address to the German People

BY THOMAS MANN
This i s an actual message to the German people,
broadcast to them in the hour of NazzsrnJ catastrophzc
defeat. I t was prepured byGermanys
mort dzrtzngutshed scholav in exile and transmttfed by the Ofice
of War Information.

Santa Monlca, Cal., May G

have survIved, the pitlable remnants of the multitudes of innocent men, women, and children who were
sent to German concentration camps. Most of them
suffered a horrlble death, many at the last moment before
the arrival of salvation, their emaciated corpses and charred
bones were found along wlth the ingenlous contrlvances
which served for their extermmatlon. It 1s a solace to know
that these few havebeen wrested from the power of their
tormentors and returned tothe laws of humanity. For the
German, however, qulte different emotlons are mingled
with this feelmg of relief.
The thck-walled torture chamber that Hltlerlsm had made
of Germany is broken open, and our dlsgraceis bared to
the eyes of the world. Foreign commissions who have been
shown these lncredlble scenes report home that the horrors
they have seen exceed anything that men could imagine. It
is our dlsgrace, German readers and Ilsteners, for every
Germaneveryone who speaks German, wrltes German,
has lived as a German-1s affected by this shameful exposure. It is not a small clique of criminals who are Involved;
hundreds of thousands of a so-called German eh-men,
youths, and brutlsh women-commlttedthese
mlsdeeds in
morbid lust under the Influenceof the insane doctrlnes of
National Sociallsm. Call It the dark potentialitles of human
nature in general that are revealed here, but remember that
it was Germans, hundreds of thousands of them, who revealed those potentiallties. The world shudders at the sight
of Germany. Even the German who escaped in ample time
from the realm of Natlonal Socialist leadershlp, who did
not like to live in the vicinlty of these abodes of abomination, did notlike to go about hls business in ostenslble v ~ r tue and pretend to know nothing- while thewmd carrted
the stench of charred human flesh to his n o s t r i l c v e n h
s

0-

German is ashamed in the depths of his soul or the things

that were possible In the land of hls fathers and his masters.
It comes as a shock to such a German that in the twelve
years of the Hltler regime one thing only, Nazi rule, could
induce such human depravity in a people certainly not by
nature devoid of justice and morality. One of the last
commentators on the Goebbels radlo, a man named Fritsche,
shouted into the micrqhone that nothingcould alter the
fact that National Social~smwas the only appropriate form
of government for the German people and that Germany
was made for this regime. This he dared to sap to people
who, full of dire foreboding, had lived for more than a
decade under National Socialism and who now, amid the
ruins of their counixy, confronted a catastrophe the like of
which neither their own nor any ohcr hlstory has ever
witnessed. The only appropriate form of government for
the German people led them in just a few years into not
only the most terrlble but also the most disgraceful defeat;
so that Germany stands today as the abominatlon of mankindand the epitome of evil.Justice and truth strangled,
falsehood relgning supreme, liiberty trampled, character and
decency crushed, people drilled from childhood in the
blasphemous delusion of raclal superiority, inthe prllmacy
and rlght of violence, educated for nothing but covetousness,
rape, and looting-that was National Socialism. That is supposed to be German, the only form of government %ppropriate to the German nature. My readers and listeners
in Germany, you were unable to rid yourselves of this rule
by your ownstrengbh. The litberabrs had to come from
abroad. They have occupied your #brokencountry and WU
have to govern it for years. At least do not regard them as
yourenemies,as
Bishop Galen lncltes you to do. D o not,
Ilke this ill-advised cleric, regard yourselves pnmanly as
Germans, but as men and women returned to humanity, as
Germans who after twelve years of Hltkr want to be human
beings again.
Power is lost, but power is not everything. It IS not even
the main thlng. An8 German greatness was never a matter
of power. It was once German and may be German again
tc wm respect and admiration by the human contribution,
by the power of the sovereign spint.