THE "GERMAN PROBLEM"
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of chauvinists toward subservience to the foreign invader had been
proven to entire populations. (The few exceptions were such old–
fashioned nationalists as de Gaulle or the journalist Kerillis; but they
only proved the rule.) The underground movements, in other words,
were the immediate product of the collapse, first, of the national
State, which was replaced. by quisling governments, and second, of
nationalism itself as the driving force of nations. Those who emerged
to wage war fought against fascism and nothing else. And
this
is not
surprising; what is surprising precisely because of its strict, almost
logical, consequence is rather that all of these movements at once
found a positive political slogan which plainly indicated the non–
national though very popular character of the new struggle. That
slogan was simply EUROPE.
Hence it is natural that the "German problem," as presented
by the experts, should have awakened very little interest in the Euro–
pean Resistance. It was recognized at once that the old insistence
on the "German problem" would only becloud the issues of the
"ideological war" and that the outlawing of Germany would prevent
a solution of the European question. Members of the underground
were therefore concerned with the "German problem" only to the
extent that it is part and parcel of the European problem. Many a
well-meaning correspondent, who has learned his lesson from die
experts on Germany, was shocked by the absence of personal hatred
against Germans and by the presence, in the liberated countries, of
political hatred for fascists, collaborationists and their like, of no
matter what nationality.
The words which Georges Bidault, former chief of the
Fr~h
Resistance and now foreign minister, spoke to the wounded German
soldiers immediately after the liberation of Paris, sound like a simple
and splendid expression of the sentiments of those who fought against
Nazi Germany not with their pen<; but with their lives. He said:
"German soldiers, I am the chl.ef of the Resistance. I have come to
wish you good health. May you soon find yourselves in a free Ger–
many and a free Europe."
The insistence on Europe even at such a moment is character–
istic. Any other words would not have corresponded to the conviction
that the European crisis is first of all a crisis of the national State.
In the words of the Dutch underground: "We are experiencing at
present ... a crisis of state sovereignty. One of the central problems
of the coming peace will be: how can we, while preserving cultural
autonomy, achieve the formation of larger units in the political and
economic field? . . . A good peace is now inconceivable unless the
