What To Do With Germany
(Redirected from What to Do With Germany)
What To Do With Germany is a 1944 anti-German propaganda book by the Jewish-American trial lawyer Louis Nizer for the US Army.
- We still shudder at the hanging or eloctrocution of a convicted murderer. But we lull our squeamish sensibilities by citing the religious doctrine, "An eye for an eye " and justify the punishment as a deterrent to others. But what shall we say of the proposed extension of this doctrine to an extermination of the entire German people! A dozen resistant reasons instantly spring to mind. "The entire German people is not responsible; one can't convict a whole people" "such punishment apes the abnormal cruelty of the condemned and makes us his imitators" "you can't kill 80 millions" "it would create another crisis in Europe to wipe out one of its largest and most efficient populations" etc., etc. The French were accustomed to saying, "We must destroy Germany or make peace with her and to destroy her is an absurdity." But as the French have since learned, it is not easy to make peace with her. Others, stirred to consuming hatred by German brutalities, suggest that they be destroyed as a race by eugenic sterilization. They argue that if compulsory serum treatments are justified by their benefits to the community, sterilization of the German people might similarly be considered a protective measure to immunize the world forever against the virus of Germanism. They point out that the surgical procedure is simple, painless and does not even deprive the patient of normal instincts, or their gratification. Vasectomy, the operation on the male, simply requires a slight incision since the sperm duct lies just beneath the skin. The operation takes only ten minutes to perform and the patient may resume work immediately afterwards. Ligation of the fallopian tubes, the operation which renders the female sterile, is more difficult but not much more dangerous. There are about 50 million German men and women within the procreation ages, and it is estimated that twenty thousand surgeons performing about twenty-five operations daily could sterilize the entire male population of Germany within three months and the entire female population in less than three years. At the normal death rate of two per cent per annum or one and a half million people yearly, the German people would practically disappear within two generations. We reject this proposal but not because of German protests. They have forfeited all right to protest, for they themselves set this precedent. It is estimated that in Germany 300,000 people have been sterilized and in Poland 700,000 people. They have not been beyond the abolition of education so as to make populations slave-fit, the physical and mental corruption of the masses by pornographic and drug incitation, and the systematic extermination of whole peoples.
- So we will not heed the voice of Nazi protest. Too often have they claimed protection by hypocritical resort to the moral and ethical inhibitions of their enemies, which they themselves scorn as contemptible weakness. But our own consciences cannot be easily stilled if we resort to unmoral retaliation. If a world of justice is to be built revenge must be avoided. For in its wake are thousands of injustices and the lingering hatreds which are the devils of the future. Would not the innocent be punished with the guilty? When would the penalty cease? Would not the present generation of German children, dispersed throughout the world, defeat the purpose? Above all, religious and ethical concepts deprive us of the will to abolish a people. The horror of scientific mutilation is stronger than all the cold justification which logic can marshal. For though inhumanity begets inhumanity, we are ashamed of the offspring. The moral restraints upon us are the residue of centuries of slow civilizing processes. We need not be ashamed of them. Let us direct them into channels which will strengthen the regard for such values. We must not emulate the abnormal even in wreaking vengeance upon them certainly not in constructing a world of justice. The measuring yardstick of appropriate penalty must accord with common religious and ethical concepts. A program of compulsory eugenic sterilization or wholesale executions would arouse violent dissents in religious and other circles and breed new disunity among the victors. It would martyrize Germans who would, of course, rebel en masse. Unless there were universal confidence in the justice of the remedy, it would fail as a practical measure. Moral sanction must precede physical application. Furthermore, sterilization might solve the German problem for future generations but it would constitute no present solution. To safeguard posterity is admirable but there is a more immediate duty to ourselves and our children. We must forego the solution of sterilization. Such abnegation is far from misplaced sentiment. We shall see that there are methods available for stern punishment. At present it is enough to conclude that capital punishment or sterilization for millions of people is impracticable, and violates those moral precepts which limit even legalized murder.
High-ranking Allied politicians such as Winston Churchill, Robert Vansittart, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman read the genocidal book and wholeheartedly approved of its contents.
See also
- Germany Must Perish!
- Louis Nizer
- Mass rapes by Allied forces during World War II
- Claimed mass killings of Germans by the WWII Allies
