368
PATRICIA MARX
destroy him. I am thoroughly of the opinion that this is an area which
should
be
of interest even to the gentlemen of literature. Consider
merely one very fruitful example: obligatory military conscription in
this twentieth century. Compulsory military service is an invention of
the French Revolution as much as is the secret police and has com–
pletely changed the lives of people.
Consider only what irresoluble conflicts arise from the fact that
as one completes his eighteenth year, he is simply forced to put on a
uniform and start shooting.
MARX:
But if you're being attacked by an enemy, isn't it necessary that
you defend your country?
HOCHHUTH:
Absolutely. I am not a pacifist at all because I'm of the
opinion that it is irresponsible to allow oneself to be driven into traps.
Imagine simply what would have happened if the Russians
in
1941
had not defended themselves against the Nazis. What would have
become of the Russian people? However, for the Russian soldier this
did not produce a tragic situation, or hardly. He was fighting for his
country. A tragic situation occurred for any particular Russian soldier,
who was a passionate anti-Communist and who none the less had to
fight with the Communist army against the invaders, for the benefit of
Communism just as much as for the benefit of his country. This same
kind of tragic situation occurred, of course, for many Germans, who
could not possibly have wished that Hitler should triumph but who
no more wished that the Russians should march all the way to the
Rhine. Indeed there is no human conflict possible, conflict, let us say,
in marriage or in love or anywhere else, which does not get its most
fundamental intensification in the context of history.
MARX:
In the context of history as fatality, how would you define the
Pope's guilt or responsibility in terms of not protesting against the
slaughter of the Jews?
HOCHHUTH:
That is a question whose answer cannot possibly be reduced
to a simple formula.
So
very many things have contributed to the
Pope's behaving as he, unfortunately, did. Looking at it purely from
the outside, one can say, for instance, that fatality began with the fact
that on the very eve of the Second World War Pope Pius XI, who
was a very brave and very resolute man, should have died. Further–
more, again looking from the outside, it may have been only a
coincidence, but then again perhaps truly fatality, that his successor
should have been a Pope who in his perfectly legitimate predilection
for everything German, for the German people, overlooked the fact
that the Nazis were not "The Germans" but the despoilers, the
perverters of Germany, as well as of everything else.
