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RICHARD BUI\GIN
if you admire Napoleon or if you admire Cromwell, or if you admire
any violent manifestation, why not admire Hitler, who did what the
others did?
INTERVIEWER: On a much larger scale.
BORGES: On a much larger scale and a much shorter time. Because he
achieved in a few years what Napoleon failed to do in a longer period.
And then I realized that those people who were on the side of
Germany, they never thought of the German victories or the German
glory. What they really liked was the ideas of the blitzkreig, of London
being on fire, of the country being destroyed. As to the German
people, they took no stock in them. Then I thought, well, now
Germany has lost, now America has saved us from this nightmare, but
as nobody can doubt on which side I stood, I'll see what can be
done from a literary point of view in favor of the Nazis. And then
I created that ideal Nazi. Of course no Nazi was ever like that,
because they were full of self-pity; when they were on trial no one
thought of saying "Yes, I'm guilty, I ought to be shot; why not,
this is as it should be and I would shoot you if I could." Nobody
said that. They were all apologizing and crying because there is some–
thing very weak and sentimental about the Germans. Something
that I thoroughly disliked about them. I felt it, but when I went to
Germany I was feeling it all the time. I suppose I told you a
conversation I had with a German professor, no?
INTERVIEWER: No, you didn't.
BORGES: Well, I was being shown all over Berlin, one of the ugliest
cities in the world, no?
INTERVIEWER: I've never been to Germany.
BORGES: Well you shouldn't, especially if you love Germany, because
once you get there you'll begin to hate it. Then I was being shown
over Berlin. Of course there were any amount of vacant lots, large
patches of empty ground where houses had stood and they had been
bombed very thoroughly by the American Airmen, and then, you have
some German, no?
INTERVIEWER: No, I'm sorry.
BORGES: Well, I'll translate. He said to me, "What have you to say
about these ruins?" Then I thought, Germany has started this kind
of warfare, the Allies did it because they had to, because the Germans
began it. So why should I be pitying this country because of what had
happened to it, because
they
started the bombing, and in a very
cowardly way. I mean GOring told his people that they would be
destroying England and that they had nothing whatever to fear from
the English Airmen. That wasn't a noble thing to say, no? In fact,
