Synopses & Reviews
OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO ILLINOIS TO OSCAR AND PAULA SCHULTHESS HERMANN AND RUTH FISCHER trusted friends in Switzerland and Camda whose ajectm and solicitude have brought m to n new homltmd mdanem perspective TRANSLATORS PREFACE THE FORTHCOMING PEACE, LIKE THE WAR ITSELF, WILL be a historic experience of critical duration and the permanence of the peace will depend upon the founda tions on which it rests. Like the nature and conduct of the war, the nature and conduct of the peace will require, on the one hand, the constant correlation of principle and strategy and, on the other, the total and persistent mobilization of the resources and energies of human beings around the world. The motives and resources of men and of nations cannot be marshaled in support of war by an appeal to self-interest alone. It is always necessary to relate them to ends which transcend the immediate occasion and the nearer purposes of the conflict. Consequently, the danger to which any subsequent peace is exposed is the triumph of the nearer over the transcendent aims of the struggle because the passion and fatigue of battle have blinded the peoples and their responsible leaders to recon structive insight and direction. The immediate occasion of peril in the coming peace is, like the immediate occasion for the war itself, the Germany of na tional socialism. As the hour of National Socialist defeat draws near with the increasing triumphs of the United Nations, it is inevitable that the question What shall be done with Ger many should dominate the concern and the discussion of re sponsible and thoughtful people. Nor is it accidental that the debate over the fate of Germany after the war sooner or later turns intoa debate over the possi bility of the re-education of Germany. The vigor of the discus sion is a measure not only of the undisguised doubt that has over viii TRANSLATORS PREFACE taken many sincere people as to whether or not Germany c be re-educated but also of the recognition that the German pro lem is the focal problem of the peace. The democratic aims the war seem somehow to be sharply at stake in the disposing of the German problem by the United Nations. If Germany c be dealt with only in punitive terms, the democratic faith in t self-governing possibilities of men and nations seems to face glaring and fateful frustration. On the other hand, if Germai is somehow to be included within the world community of fr peoples, the possibility of redirecting the German people frc the cultural and political autarchy of national socialism towa such a world community must be counted upon. Slender ai difficult though this possibility may be, it is indispensable tc United Nations peace of responsible rather than merely vi torious power. Dr. Richters discussion of the German problem is eviden that the prospect for a democratic world community is less d mal than it seems. He believes that Germany can be re-ed cated, and his conviction is based upon an intimate and responi ble knowledge of German life and education. Since he writes a German who has found a new and welcome home in t United States, his work is a vindication of the democratic cha acter of the war and the peace. It means that there are Gerrna who have become exiles because they believed in and labor for democracy in Germany before the second World War ai it means that there are at the disposal of the United Nations i sources of thoughtand experience the use of which would si nificantly prove that the democratic aims of the victorious po s ers had already been culturally applied in a discussion of t peace which transcended the lines of battle and of victory ai defeat. Werner Richter was an undersecretary in the Prussian Mi istry of Education during the Weimar Republic. As such, he w the close associate of Carl Heinrich Becker, whose ideas co cerning the reform of German education after 1918 were fa reaching and genuinely democratic...