The Re-Education of Germany

Amid all the discussion of war-aims by the statesmen and writers of the United Nations there is one point, and perhaps one point alone, upon which a large measure of agreement has been reached. It is that the German people must be re-educated. President Roosevelt demands in his 1943 Message to Congress that the Germans shall abandon their philosophy. Vice-President Wallace calls for “the supervision or at least the inspection” of German schools. Even Lord Vansittart of the Foreign Office, who has produced probably the most vehement of all the denunciations of the Germans, thinks that such a process can be carried out. “Nothing in history is impossible. The soul of a people can be changed. Other peoples have performed the feat. Why not Germany? Because she has not yet really tried.”