The Re-Education of Germany

, I THE RE-EDUCATION OF GERMANY CECIL LEWIS AMID all t~e discuss,io.n of war~aims by ~he statesmen ~nd writ~rs, , of the UnIted NatIOns' there IS one pomt, and perhaps one pomt alone, upon which a large measure of agreement has' been reached. It is that the German people must be re-educated. President Roosevelt ,demands 1n his 1943 Message to Congress that, the Germans shall abandon their philosophy. Vice::-President Wallace calls for "the supervis'lon or at least the inspection" of German schools. Even Lord Vansittart of the Foreign Office, who has produced probably the most vehement of all the denunciations of the Germans, thinks that such a process can be carried out.- "Nothing in history is impossible. The soul of a people can be changed. Other peoples have performed the feat. Why not.Germa~y? Because she has not yet really tried." The de~and is insistent, but it i~ vague. It is usually couched in the one word, "re-education." There is little evidence that anyone has examined the problem and faced its difficulties. There' must be few precedents for the successful application of an educatio 'nal programme by victors to vanquished. Three nations tried it for more than a century in the case ofPoland. We know now that not even the "efficient" Prussians succeeded in eradicating the national spirit of the ~~les within the Prussian borders~ Judgi!!g________ from facts given ,in the biography of Mme Curie by her daughter, the ruthless methods of Czarist Russia were ludicrously ineffectual. Austrian supervision and inspection of Polish and Czech school~ does , not appear to have been yery successful. Twenty years of ItalIan re~~ducation in Southern Tirol made not the slightest impression upon the' royalty of the inhabitants to their Austrian motherland.. It is clear that if fanatical nationalism in 'Germany is the cause of recurrent wars in Europe, it will he, if not impossible, at any rate extr~ordinarily difficult to find an educational cure. . But shall' we ever have the chance to try the cure? If German resistance is prolonged to 'the 'uttermost, bringing about a 'total " collapse~ we may find vario'us members of the Germ'an body at~ , tempting to escape from "Germany" by accepting fusion with neighbouring victorious powers, just as in 1918 the' Succession States· escaped frorri "Austria-Hungary." No German will wish to remain 259 260 '~ THE U~IVERSITY ,OF TORONTO QUARTERLY a German and share the burdens of a,crushing defeat. The separatist movements ofthe Rhineland and Bavaria, so conspic~ous after the last war, 'may revive' with more strength, and with much more encouragemen t from abroad than before. It has ~ven been suggested that a resurgent France might desire the increase of strength that the Rhineland would seem to bring her. In such an event it would be extremely difficult to discriminate between the fugitive members and the diminished Germany that would still bear that name. Austria will,almost certainly be detached from Germany as the result of an overwhelming vote. Yet some Austrians} from Hitler down, bear a large share of responsibility for the breakdown of European order and the outbreak of war. Some Austrians have become true Nazis, and as the name of Seyss-Inquart reminds us, have taken a full part in the torturing of subjugated countries. "Germany " has in the_course of his'tory co~tinually changed its geographical outline. It may be difficult to prevent further changes when the collapse comes, and it may be very hard indeed to decide what portions of Central Europe constitute Germany and are thus liable to compulsory re-education. ,I Let us, however, make the daring assumption that there will exist a clear-cut Germany of guaranteed and stable frontiers for a sufficient length of time to enable us to launch the experiment. We shall _ have to diagnose the trouble, to state what is the spiritual disorder from which the Germans are suffering. The History oj German Instability. Concerning the history ,of this spiritual disorder there are two schools of thought, or at any rate of opinion. The on'e sees the entire history of Germany from the time of Tacitus as...