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to power, .unitil the unleashing of innu-
merable crimes in-a Europe almost en-
tirely at their mercy.
Sir Hartley Shawcross has enumerated
the various. breaches of treaties, of agree-
ments , of promises which were the
prelude to, the many wars of aggression
of which Germany was guilty.
I propose today to prove to you all this
organized and vast criminality springs
from what I may be allowed to call a
crime against the spirit. I mean a doctrine
which ... aims to plunge humanity back
into barbarism, no longer the natural and
spontaneous barbarism of primitive na-
tions, but into a diabolical barbarism,
conscious of itself and utilizing for its
ends all material means put at the
disposal of mankind by contemporary
science. This sin against the spirit - is
the original sin of national-socialism
from which all crimes spring.
This monstrous doctrine is that of
racism:
The German race, composed in theory
of Aryans, would be a fundamental and
natural concept. Germans as individuall
!do not exist and cannot justify their
existence, except in so far as they belong
to the race or Volkstum, to the popular
mass 'which represents and amalgamates
all Germans. Race is the matrix of the
German people; proceeding therefrom this
people lives and develops as an organism.
The German may consider himself only
as a healthy and vigorous member of this
body, fulfilling within the collectivity a
definite technical function; his activity
and his usefulness are the exact gauge
and justification of his liberty. This na-
tional body must be "moulded" to prepare
it for a permanent struggle.
The ideas and the bodily symbols of
racism are an integral part of its political
system; this is what is called authori-
tative or dictatorial biology.
National socialism expressed German
traditions.
How can *feit  ,jain that Germany,
fertilized through *, centuries by classic
antiquity and Christianity, by the ideals
of liberty, Equality and social justicef
by the common    heritage of Western
humanism to which she had brought such
noble and prescious contributions, could
have come to this astonishing returu tq
primitive barbarism?
In order to understand it and to try to
eradicate from the Germany of tomorrfow
the evil- hy which, our entire civilization
came -so near to perishing, it must be
recalled that national socialism has deep
and remote, origins.
The mysticism of racial community wAm'
born of the spiritual and moral crisis
which Germany underwent in the 19th
century and which abruptly broke. ouvt-
again in its economic and social structure
through a particularly rapid industriali-
zation. National socialism is "in reality
one of the peaks of the moral and
spiritual crisis of modern humanity, con-
vulsed by industrialization and telwltn
progress. Germany experienced this iea-
morphosis of economic and social life not
only with an extraordinary brutality but
at a time when she did not yet possess
the political equilibrium and the cultural
unity which the other countries of
western Europe had achieved.
Over a people in this state of spiritual
crisis and of negations of traditiona
values the culminating philosophy of
Nietzsche was to exercise a dominant in-
fluence. In taking the will to power as a
point of departure, Nietzsche preached,
not inhumanity but superhumanity. If
there is no final cause in the univpto
man - whose body is matter which is at,:
once feeling and thinking - may mould
the world to his desire, choosing as his
guide a militant biology. If the end of
humanity is a feeling of victorious full-
ness which is both material and spiritual
all that remains is to insure the selection
of physical specimens who become th,
new aristocracy of masters.
One cannot, doubtlessly, identify. tJ
late philosopy of Nietzsche with the bru-
tal simplicity  of uational socialism.
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