GERMAN IMPRESSIONS
II
I answered: 'I can quite well understand that the general mass
of the people were first deceived and then terrorized by the Nazis.
What I can't understand, though, is that no section of educated
Germans ever put up any united resistance. For example, how is
it
that the teaching profession, as a whole, taught all the Nazi lies about
race and deliberately set about perverting the minds of the young?
I can't believe that this would have happened in England. A major–
ity of English teachers would refuse to teach what they considered to
be lies about history and biology. Still less would they teach their
pupils to lie. And they would have refused to teach hatred.'
C-- shrugged his shoulders and sighed deeply. 'Although
some teachers did in fact resist, right up to the end, nevertheless the
profession as a whole was swamped by Nazi ideas. Alas, too many
German teachers are militarist and nationalist in their minds before
they are teachers, and they think of nothing but teaching discipline.
Unfortunately this is also true to a great extent of the Universities.'
'If
you condeml! the whole teaching profession of a nation,
surely that is very serious?
It
implies condemning the whole nation?'
'You cut off the head of a king several hundred years ago. The
French also rose against their king and their aristocrats. The basis of
fre edom in the democracies is the idea that it is always possible to
revolt against a tyrant. The Germans have never risen against a tyrant.
Even today, it isn't the Germans who have risen against Hitler. The
Germans always submit.'
The C--'s had many complaints about the Occupation. What
struck me in conversation with them and with other intelligent Ger–
mans was the undiscriminating nature of these complaints. Some of
the things complained about, though distressing, seemed inevitably
the result of losing a war. For example, when Bonn University was
occupied (Bonn was first occupied by the Americans), an American
soldier was observed in the library tearing all those books which had
been rescued from the fire, and which were laid on a table, out of
their bindings, and then hacking at them with a bayonet. On being
approached by a Prok.<:Sor, he explained his conduct by saying: "I
hate everything German.' This story was circulated in University
circles as an example of American barbarity. To my mind, it illus–
trates nothing except the stupidity inevitably attendant on war. In
war, those countries which are invaded suffer from the defects of the
invader's civilization. Thus places invaded and occupied by the
Americans suffer inversely from the extravagance of American civil–
ization. The Americans, accustomed to a climate of over-production,
