| Description | Letter marked 'Personal' At end; marked 'Copy to Lord Lindsay of Birker'.
'You will remember that when I saw you at the Christ Church Gaudy we discussed the position at the Universities in Germany and I promised to send you a few reports which I had received. Unfortunately the copying of these reports took a longer time than I expected.
From letters and particularly from discussions with German colleagues I formed the impression that the Universities in Germany are practically completely in the hands of reactionaries many of whom had been quite openly active nazis. I know it is unavoidable that there are only a few professors at the German Universities who have the right mentality to educate the next German academic generation. What however does not seem to me unavoidable is that these few people have been given so little influence.
The situation at the present moment is that people who were actively anti-nazi and who tried to sabotage the German war effort or at least to do as little as possible to help, are regarded by the Germans as traitors and I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that many officials of the occupying forces share this view. I admit that it is very difficult for an Englishman to understand the position, as in this country it is unthinkable that any government could be as criminal as the Nazi government was. He will therefore irrespective of his political views always help his Government as much as he can - particularly in the case of war. To the small group of people in Germany who were clear thinking and courageous enough to realise the full consequences of the Nazi regime, there was no other course left but to try and prevent the victory of the Nazis, which they knew would mean the end of all they stood for, and to fight it during the war. Certainly more courage was needed to do that then for the average man to go to the front together with millions of others. You have heard of course of my friend Bonhoeffer who was actice in fighting the Nazis during the war together with his brothers and brothers-in-law, four of whom were executed by the Nazis. Incidentally I owe much information on the present state in Germany to Bonhoeffer who visited this country a short time ago.
From a letter which the Master of Balliol sent a short time ago, I know that you have heard of one particularly bad case - that of Professor Hilpert. When war broke out he went to France and fought the Nazis actively; after the French collapse he was handed over to the Germans and sentenced to death. As they needed him as a chemist his sentence was converted to four years imprisonment and loss of civic rights. After the war he naturally expected not only that his sentence woudl be squashed but that he would receive some kind of acknowledgement for his courageous fight agains the Nazis. However he found only deaf ears not only with the Germans, but also with the Occupation Forces and it was only the fact that I brought his case to the Master of Balliol's notice who in turn got in touch with your predecessor in office, that his case was taken up at all and after many difficulties Hilpert was rehabililtated. He sent me a few days ago the letter which he had received from the German Court - it consists of a few lines saying: [crossed out - he could now regard himself as] "Nach 4 Abs.4 des Straftil gungsgesetzes v. 9.4.20 RehaB1.1 8.507 - durfen sie sich jotst als unbestraft bezeichnen, soweit es sich um die getilgte Strafe handelt". This is the form of rehabilitation which the Germans think appropriate for a man who has risked his life to fight the peoople who brought all this disaster over Germany and the rest of the world. Hilpert writes to me again that if it had not been for Lord Lindsey's intervention, he would not even have got that far. Hilpert's case seems to illustrate the position very well.
I enclose two reports: the authors have given me permission to hand them on under two conditions a) that they will not be published and b) that they will not get into the hands of the German authorities. The author of the first one is Professor Kallmann, one of the chief collaborators of Haber - he is half jewish and married to an "aryen" and thus he managed to survive in Germany. He is a very well known physicist and is at present in charge of the former Haber Institute - the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry at Dahlem. That the position is really as he describes it I have heard from various other sources and friends of mine in this country who also have direct information. The second report is by Professor Jost, an excellent physical chemist, pure aryen, who has always remained decent even under the most adverse circustances and is one of the very few people who can be trusted. While Kallman's report is in a way on negative lines as he believes that as a non-aryen, he cannot stay any longer in the country, Jost's report is more positive and suggests a few remedies for the present situation.
Whether is is possible to improve matters I do not know. The main reason for failure is that there are so very few Germans who can be entrusted with the education of the next academic generation in Germany. One would need 10,000's of teachers of the right type and there are not more than a few dozen. I am sending you this letter and the reports more because I received the impression that the position is not generally realised. It may be that the only thing is to let things go on but to be quite clear about what kind of Germans we will have to face in 10-20 years time and to adjust our politics accordingly. ' |