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Volume IV · Page 83
| of the psychic characteristics of the German
people. This survey may be a small contribution to the effort to explain the
situation which shows that the defendants, and among them also Blobel, were not
"the cruel henchmen whose terror will be engraved in the darkest pages of the
history of humanity" according to the prosecution's assertion. The intention of
my statements is to bring out a part of the "underlying total connections of
our time." (Mitscherlich and Mielke, The Dictate of the Contempt of
Humanity [Das Diktat der Menschenverachtung].) In this respect I may also state that it is far from me to dispute or to whitewash any crimes which were ordered or executed under the National Socialist regime, but at the same time I would like to point out that, during the war, crimes were not only perpetrated by the members of the Axis but also by those of their military opponents. In my statements I would like to introduce you into the delicate sphere where there are opposed on one side loyalty and absolute obedience — in the National Socialist state an equivalent to life and freedom — and personal guilt and atonement on the other side. War with its far-reaching, rapid, and destructive weapons has not become any more humane. It is to be regretted that the Second World War has shown a retrogressive development in respect to the protection of the civilian population. This we were made to feel to a not too small extent in our own country too. The apocalyptic horsemen have for many years haunted Germany too, and they left behind their ineradicable traces. Many German towns with a culture of almost a thousand years have perished under a hail of bombs and it will not be possible to restore them, and in them innocent women, children, and old people lost their lives. It is unfortunate that especially when for years it had been systematically fostered by utilizing all possible means of propaganda, hatred has resulted in wild orgies of cruelty. "War has always promoted such outbreaks * * *." (Schenk, Letter from a Swiss to a German Student in "Europa vor der deutschen Frage" (Europe faces the German Problem) ). It is further said in this volume that it is deemed the highest ethics in Germany "completely to renounce one's own individuality and to recognize solely the state as one's conscience above which there is no higher binding authority". And Schenk states also the causes which exist for it according to his idea, by declaring, |
"It results from the specifically Prussian military education, from a conception of duty and from the ability to subordinate oneself, which for a century have been developed theoretically and practically in Germany * * *." |
