We are in a transitory period of history of the greatest significance. An age is coming to an end which has been known less for its concept of order than for its concept of liberty. This striving for liberty released tremendous forces—so gigantic that in the end it was impossible to master them. The tremendous progress this era has unquestionably made in scientific and technical spheres we have dearly paid for with the shattering of all human order and the loss of peace in the entire world.
So far the profound reasons for such a disastrous development have hardly been discussed in this Court. But in order to understand properly the grave crimes and aberrations which are indicted here it is imperative to throw some light on the historical background.
The French chief prosecutor has already pointed out that the roots of National Socialism are to be found in a period far removed from us. He goes back to the beginning of the last century. He sees the first step to a leading astray of the German character in Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche Nation (Speeches to the German Nation). Fichte preached the doctrine of Pan-Germanism, he says, insofar as he wanted to see the world planned and organized by others, just as he himself saw it and would have liked it to be shaped. I cannot understand how this can be taken to express more than the universal human desire to take part in the shaping of a common destiny. Only the methods of such attempts to participate may, at times, be justly criticized.
A Swiss assertion, which also perceives in Fichte the cause of Germany’s going astray, seems to me to be clarifying in this respect. It does not, however, accuse him of Pan-Germanism, that is, of the will to subjugate foreign peoples, but rather reproaches him for having attempted at all to unite the Germans into one nation. It contends that this was an inadmissible attempt to imitate the French and British, whereas it would have been more suited to the German character to remain a nation made up of different peoples. For only as such could it have continued its historical mission of remaining the nucleus of a European federation. Judging by Fichte alone the development is therefore not so easily interpreted.
If one wishes to think historically, one cannot simply fall back on Fichte. For his Reden an die deutsche Nation was only an answer to the “Call to Everyone” which the French Revolution had sent out into the world, and they were directly provoked by the appearance of Napoleon I. One must go back over the chain of causes and effects to their very beginning. This, the beginning of a national and personal striving for liberty which has characterized the whole of modern times, we find in the Middle Ages.
The colorful play of national and imperial tendencies and struggles which had been the hallmark of ancient times was overcome by the conception of one eternal and omnipotent Christian Church. With this a static order superseded the dynamic forces of the time, an order which according to the doctrine of the Church was created by the Lord himself and was therefore by “the grace of God.” It strove to embrace all humans, and to lead them to peace and rest. It was the teachers of the Church in the Middle Ages who first ventured to subject war to the principles of law. Prior to that it was accepted as a natural phenomenon, like sickness or bad weather, and was often looked upon as a judgment of God. Men like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas opposed this conception and declared that one must differentiate between a just and an unjust war. They did this upon the basis and within the framework of a Christian belief, by which God had entrusted mankind with the fulfillment of a moral world order to bind one and all; an order which would provide the answer to the question of the righteousness or unrighteousness of a war.
When by the advent of the Renaissance and the Reformation the spiritual basis of the medieval order was shaken, this development into a universal world peace was reversed. Life, formerly tending toward stagnation and tranquility, now turned into a torrent which, as it swept ever faster through the centuries, gradually swelled to the present catastrophe. The individual, thirsting for freedom, cast off the shackles of Church and class distinction. The State, declaring itself sovereign, violated the universal order of God as represented by the Church. Not recognizing any superior power, it began to conquer as much living space as it could on this earth, unless the stronger will of another nation did not impose any natural barriers. Peace hence existed only in the naturally rather unstable equilibrium of powers obeying only their own laws.
Thus there came into existence world empires such as the British Empire, Russia, the United States, and the enormous French colonial empire, which as living space today comprise more than one half of the surface of the entire world.
The theory of war as a crime, created by Grotius, the teacher of international law quoted by the Prosecution, failed because it was incompatible with the dynamic power of this time. It represents, as we know, only an attempt to keep alive through secular arguments the afore-mentioned Christian concept of warfare. One cannot, however, derive justice from simple nature, for it knows no other measure than brute force, and always decides in favor of the stronger. Only metaphysically can justice be defined as an independent force set above natural impulses. Therefore the theory of Grotius necessarily petered out in the eighteenth century since, thinking in a purely worldly sense, it could not find a criterion for a just war.
This development from the old order to new liberty, in other words, the fight of all against all, found its climax and culminating point in the great French Revolution. By attempting to set human intellect upon the throne of God, they reached the apex of secularization. Human intellect, however, proved unable to balance the conflicting ideals of liberty, equality, and brotherliness, that is, to practice true justice.