Nazi Apologetics

Extract

With the admirable intention of giving the English public reliable and authentic information about present-day Germany and in the hope of thereby promoting friendlier relations between the two countries twenty-one prominent Germans have collaborated to produce a book called Germany Speaks. In many respects the work is well done. It is an attractive-looking book, lengthy without being too discursive, and generous in the amount of information about many aspects of German life and policy. Unfortunately it fails to give anything like an adequate account precisely of those questions which have caused the average Englishman to take up an attitude which is at best distrustful, at worst positively hostile, towards Germany.

The fundamental principles behind the Nazi system, labour, social and economic conditions and Germany's external relations are of interest chiefly to politicians and intellectuals and the average man is prepared to admit the truth and justice of much that appears under these headings. The problems which do need an explanation if the ordinary Englishman is to be won over to sympathetic understanding of Germany and which are omitted or scarcely touched on in this book may be reduced to four.