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Military government weekly information bulletin
No. 34 (March 1946)
Highlights of policy, pp. [5]-12
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Page 7
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. 7
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