With this excerpt I conclude my intermittent Juchem ZGrams that summarized for German youth the bare outline of why guilt for non-existent "war time crimes" is such a useful political cudgel:
"It is always stated or implied that the years 1933-45 were launched on a faulty ideological foundation - that the German people after their (military) defeat in World War I were too (numbed), too boorish and too crude to understand and to appreciate the blessings of a democratic state, as implemented in the Weimar Republic.
Here Wolfgang Juchem writes in the little pamphlet, "Truth and Justice versus Lies and Hatred" I have been citing all this week:
"Besides the territorial losses, the German people were economically burdened on a scale no people on earth had hitherto ever been subjected to.
You can read about the details in every history book that deals with the subject. Our country was gagged, dishonored and shut out as an economic competitor. In 1919 the Times of London wrote: "Should Germany begin to trade in the next 50 years, we shall have fought the war for nothing."
The astronomical reparation demands of the victorious powers were intended to lead to the total collapse of the economy of the German Reich and to drive the political status of the country into complete chaos. The newly established democratic Weimar Republic had indeed little chance of survival. One chancellor superseded another in quick succession. On the average, government lasted a full six months. In this chaos there arose on the extreme left the dehumanizing Communist Party of Germany which was subservient to Moscow, and on the extreme right the National Socialist German Workers Party ("the Nazis") - this at a time when the democratic parties lost power, influence, conviction and credibility.
The Weimar Republic did not break down, as our enemies never cease to claim, because we do not understand democracy. It collapsed because the German people had been robbed of their livelihood and dignity and because they had been plunged into the bitterest poverty. With more than 6 million unemployed, they lost their trust in the ever-changing governments, and wanted nothing more than peace, order and economic recovery. The 30th of January 1933 marked the end of a democracy which from the very beginning the victorious powers gave no chance of survival.
If our young generation of today feels it has to criticize their fathers and grandfathers, they should bear in mind that it was precisely the youth of that time that was inspired to opt for a new idea: A way out of the inhuman Soviet Communism on one side and contempt for the soul-destructive capitalism on the other.
Only those who take the trouble to inform themselves of the misery of those years will understand that the vast majority were more than willing to trade their 'democratic rights' for work and bread. In our affluent, throw-away society it is very easy to be arrogant and smug and slander the past generation with the asinine comment: 'That could never have happened to us.'"
Thought for the Day:
"Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
(Friedrich Nietzsche)