Sven Hedin: Thoughts at the Beginning of a New Year
"There is no hope for peace, no future for a tormented and wayward humanity."
Title: Thoughts at the Beginning of a New Year [de: Gedanken am Anfang eines neuen Jahres]
Author: Sven Hedin [Wiki LINK]
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 03, Issue 03 (March 1949) [ToC LINK]
Page(s): 172-175 [LINK]
In scientific research, the world achieves unprecedented progress year by year, and through the power of human genius over the forces of nature, ever greater and expanding vistas continuously unfold. While the arc of natural science climbs ever higher into realms yet unreached, the arc tracing humanity and civilization plunges at the same pace and rhythm into ever deeper abysses of heartlessness and cruelty, far exceeding all that transpired in the darkest eras of the past. We need not recount the bloody and ruthless deeds on the battlefields of the Second World War. It suffices to reflect on the treatment the vanquished endure daily before our eyes. The gulf between today’s notion of humanity and that of the time when Poland was partitioned is vast.
The conquered land was torn apart, and its territories were parceled out among the three great powers. Thus, the Poles merely exchanged one state authority for another, yet not a hair on their heads was harmed, nor did they lose property or possessions. Still, the partition of Poland was branded in world history as a crime against a people’s sacred right to unfettered statehood, and the Polish people were by no means reconciled to the treatment they received. Many Poles then became revolutionary agents, intent on poisoning the life and existence of Europe’s peoples.
What verdict will future historians render on the treatment now inflicted upon defeated Germany? More than three and a half years have passed since the war itself ended, yet no peace has been concluded with Germany. The Berlin Congress of 1878, tasked with resolving a web of intricate issues affecting all the great powers of its day and assembling Europe’s foremost statesmen, lasted a mere month, from June 13 to July 13, and in those thirty days, it settled every outstanding question. By contrast, in these three and a half years, not one of Germany’s current peace issues has found resolution! Rather than aiding the Germans, already battered enough by defeat, to stand again through their own labor and restore Europe’s utterly shattered balance, every effort is made to render life for the vanquished as unbearable as possible.
Who benefits from burdening German industry with such numerous and harsh prohibitions and restrictions, stripping it of the chance for fruitful and beneficial endeavor? Why are Germans forbidden to resume maritime connections and traffic for people and goods? Why are they denied unrestricted fishing rights and barred from the now-critical whaling expeditions? Why is a relatively modest income taxed at 90 percent, snuffing out any prospect of profitable work? Why are the borders sealed tight, so that no German may travel abroad, degrading Germany into a hermetically closed concentration camp? Why do German patents lack all protection, ensuring no inventor steps forward with discoveries for technical or medical gain?
Why is no German permitted to earn money overseas, and why are Germans refused the right, granted to all democratic peoples, to govern their own affairs once a war has ended? If one probes a little deeper into the past centuries of German politics, it becomes clear that Hitler and National Socialism arose not from their own momentum but as a reaction to the Treaty of Versailles and a security policy blind to the truth that Germany and such a treaty could not coexist, forcing the former to resist. In truth, Clemenceau and Poincaré were the intellectual fathers of Hitler. Must the same tragedy, which claimed millions of lives, begin anew? Must the call for security once more provoke defiance and end in fresh catastrophe?
The German people seek only to live in peace, to secure life’s necessities through their own diligent toil, and, over the coming centuries, to transform their homeland’s field of ruins back into habitable land. As the year turns, day after day, newspapers and foreign telegrams brim with reports of that ceaseless flood of conferences, deliberations, and negotiations. Against the backdrop of these fruitless and hollow gatherings rises an ever more pressing question: what fate awaits Germany, and how long will it take the mighty statesmen to see that no true peace, no normal and orderly life, can take root in Europe while Germany is treated like a colony and its people like indentured laborers?
Looking back over the past 34 years, one cannot help but note that grave errors were made on the German side before and during both wars, and that after both conflicts, Germany’s foes committed blunders heavy with consequence. The German mistakes, debated and dissected for years, now hold no practical weight, their effects undone by the outcomes of the two world wars. Not so with the missteps of the Entente and the Allies. The treaty forced upon the German people at Versailles was neither statesmanship, nor business, nor common sense, but a political monstrosity, of which the Italian historian Ferrero said:
“Germany and the Treaty of Versailles cannot coexist.”
This coerced mismatch was destined to spark terrible explosions, culminating at last in National Socialism and the Second World War.
After the First World War, some Anglo-Saxons saw the ruinous nature of the Treaty of Versailles, consoling themselves that, had Germany prevailed, it would have imposed an equally disastrous, perhaps harsher, peace on its foes. Yet they forgot, and still forget, that during that war, Germany, as victor, twice concluded treaties with the vanquished: with Russia at Brest-Litovsk and with Romania at Bucharest. In those agreements, the defeated ceded land and accepted obligations, but humiliation was spared, and no unbearable burdens were laid upon them. Yet the Treaty of Versailles was a harmless child’s game beside the decisions reached at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam! The carving up of the German Reich’s territory and the transformation of its people into slaves through sharp prohibitions and restrictions embody an attempt to strangle 70 million souls, who, in Churchill’s own words, constitute:
“the most industrious, tractable, fierce, and martial race in the world.”
Europe’s intricate state system, crystallized over millennia through immense toil and vast loss of life, has been shattered before our eyes with a dilettantism and brutality that only later historians can fully define, judge, condemn, and call by its true name. Amid the field of ruins stretching across Europe’s heart, an Asian power has driven its claws into the continent as far as the Elbe. The future lies veiled in impenetrable mists. But this much is certain: the German people will never resign themselves to the humiliating state now thrust upon them. The reaction to the Treaty of Versailles was fearsome, but the reaction that will one day follow the Second World War will be more terrible still, just as Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam surpassed Versailles in horror.
This need not unfold as war. Nihilism and terror may prove yet more perilous forces for humanity, embraced by millions who enact their principles of destruction. For what follows, one may turn to the Book of Revelation! Will another seal in the book of human fate be broken? We have seen riders on red, black, and white horses, trailing war, plague, and death in their wake. Is the day of great wrath near at hand? Will we stand with the living seal of God upon our brows?
How can we hold our heads high when the future sits in judgment over our deeds, holding us all to account for the evils that have come to pass, when at this Nuremberg only just verdicts will be pronounced! Only one path can lead Europe back to the balance it knew before the Second World War. That path runs through the restoration of a Germany framed within its former borders, the reinstatement of its sovereignty and equality, and the removal of the chains binding its people fast. Were such a wise and reasoned step taken, thoughts of revenge would fade of their own accord, and Germany could rejoin the league of European nations with dignity.
Yet such a thought seems but a pious dream, a utopia, when one weighs the strength and scope of the forces arrayed against a peaceful, rational, and fruitful resolution of the world’s troubles. Let it not be forgotten that, until that step is taken, 70 million people, like dangerous plague bacilli, threaten humanity with a sickness beyond cure. For the bourgeois world especially, this is troubling, for it is not beyond possibility that a German nihilism and terror, fed by hunger, want, and despair, might join forces with Russian Bolshevism, forging a power so overwhelming that no resistance could stem its advance.
Some may claim I see the future in hues too dark. But I am not alone in my forebodings. From the ancient truth that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind, the English General J. F. C. Fuller ends his book The Second World War with these words:
“In 1919, in their Peace Treaties, the victors of the First World War sowed the wind, and, as inevitably as night follows day, in the Second World War they reaped the whirlwind. Having learned nothing and having forgotten nothing, and filled with envies, fears and greeds, they have repeated their evil, and for a second time have imposed an iniquitous peace upon the vanquished. Therefore, they have once again sown the wind, and will yet again reap the whirlwind. Evil breeds evil, and if you be blind like Samson when you cast down the pillars of the house of your enemies, its ruins will crush you.” [LINK]
The fourth postwar year nears its end, and still the same principles General Fuller so sharply delineates hold sway. There is talk that Germany’s western reaches will gain their own government and a measure of controlled freedom. Yet concurrently, the dismantling of hundreds of factories presses on, and the western German states are denied the Ruhr, the bedrock of their rebirth and flourishing. Out of fear, envy, greed, and a guilty conscience, they strive to keep Germany down, easing the way for the looming invasion from the East. Rather than rebuilding the bulwark that Germany alone could raise against that eastern peril, they pave the ground for the East’s planned conquest of all Europe, a step toward world revolution. So long as the Western powers cling to such principles, there is no hope for peace, no future for a tormented and wayward humanity.