THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Do you think it is necessary to read these passages about metaphysics?
DR. NELTE: I want to show in these pages that they are not metaphysical forces, and that the individual is not in a position to free himself through metaphysical forces. I shall—well, I think I shall continue on Page 121, immediately following my reference to Hitler’s character.
Perhaps I may just read from Page 120 at the bottom.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, if you tell the Tribunal that you have limited your presentation. I think you began yesterday at a quarter past 12. Go on then. Take your own course, but do your best to limit it, and go to Page 120 now.
DR. NELTE: The French prosecutor, M. De Menthon, has pointed to the “demoniacal” undertaking of Hitler and therewith pronounced a word which had necessarily to be brought up in a discussion which is dedicated to the investigation of events forming the background of these Trials. It is the natural endeavor of intelligent people to analyze the reasons for events which have deeply touched the fate of mankind in these days. If these events deviate from the regular happenings and the natural course of things so much that they sharpen our imagination, we take our refuge in metaphysical powers. I ask you not to consider the pointing to such metaphysical forces as an attempt to evade responsibility. We are all still under the impression of the attempt by a single man to lead the world from its course. I should not care to be misunderstood: The “demoniacal” is an incomprehensible yet extremely real power. Many call it “fate.” If I speak of fateful, metaphysical powers, I do not mean the fate of antiquity and of pre-Christian Germanism to which even the gods are necessarily subject.
I should like to make this quite clear: The demoniacal about which I am talking in this connection does not exclude the capacity of man to discern evil; of course, I believe that the demoniacal, should it become effective, does limit the capacity for perception. Principiis obsta. The old German maxim says: “Resist from the very start, the remedy will be prepared too late.”
Fate and guilt are not phenomena excluding one another, but rather circles which overlap, so that there are sections of life when both power groups are operative. I can only indicate here in a few words what things may be considered as being governed by fate: nationality, historical and traditional conditions of existence, individual origin, professional surroundings.
Mankind today cannot yet recognize the difference between the fateful, that is, the metaphysical powers which have become operative, and the persons who have appeared as tools of these powers; therefore the people who made their appearance as actors on the stage of this terrible drama are “guilty people” to them. The further removed mankind is from the events, the less it sees or feels the consequences, the more objective does judgment—divested of actuality and subjective instincts—become within the framework of the history of human development. In this way the active figures and their share in the events will be better recognized. But as long as we are under the recent impression of the events, we do, it is true, realize the border line between guilt and fate, but we cannot yet recognize it clearly.
No less a person than Marshal Stalin has pointed out in February 1946 that the second World War was not so much the result of mistakes of individual statesmen, but rather the consequence of a development of economic and political tension on the basis of the existing capitalist economic system.
I am now beginning Paragraph 3 on Page 120.