936
PARTISAN REVIEW
their own freedom had no political implications, they regarded it
as personal, even in a certain sense as restricted to their physical
senses, and when it was threatened their instinct was to hide it within
a narrowing circle of friends, not to fight within society for it.
Nevertheless, I do not think that the worship of the sun and the
human body were a wickedness in some way secretly conspiring with
the wickedness of the Nazis. The fact that many Gennans were blinded
by the sun may have helped the Nazis but it did not cause them.
It
would be truer, I think, to say that what these young Germans were
seeking was a cure from the defeat, the exhaustion of the post-war
blockade and the inflation. They mistook the sunlight and preoccupa–
tion with the body for a new way of life, and before they had gained
sufficient strength they were overtaken by a new national disaster
which they could not understand. To say this does not excuse them,
still less does
it
excuse the sinister forces amongst the Germans them–
selves which were already working in Gennany. What I am suggest–
ing is that the condition of the Gennan youth which was to fall before
the Nazis at a later date
is
to some extent explained by post-war
conditions: and to the extent that this
is
true,
it
was a part of the
whole pest-war situation which had produced this Gennany. More–
over, I sec clearly that my own rdationship with these young Germans
to some extent involves me in their guilt,
if
they were guilty: I needed
their sun and their life of the body also, and to the extent that I
thought .all this was "real" I was one of those who neglected more
important realities.
If
I have been wakmg to them ever since, history
gave me more time and opportunity than it gave to this unfortunate
generation. Moreover when I took off my clothes in the Hambt-.rg
sun, I was baptised
in
the fate of Europe.
J
ceased to be sinlply
English, as my English critics were later to recognize.
