I had heard some of the uber-nationalism in Germany before the war, not quite to the extent listed here, but I had no idea that it continued after the war. In some ways, I had come to understand that German national spirit was kind of broken after WWI. It makes sense, in view of the interwar period.
Anyway, no real comment, but I look forward to the next essay.
I enjoyed this essay tremendously and should like to see the intended sequels.
Should you ever have the desire and opportunity to gather this essay and others like it into a book, you have in me one assured sale and assured reader.
One thing I had better say. Although the German behaviour in the war was on the whole criminal, it was not bad enough to be compared with their behaviour in the second frolic. There was still much in German society of inherited decency and common values, and many Germans, probably the majority, fought the war in a decent and often chivalrous spirit. Two anecdotes. A German unit on the eastern front (where the enormous length and depth of the battlefield made war of movement possible and entrenched defences less successful) came upon a largish country manor in which a few Russian soldiers seemed to have strayed by chance. The Russians, outnumbered by fifty to one, nonetheless fought literally to the last man. The German unit gave them a military burial and wrote on their common cross: "Here lie seven Russian gentlemen fallen in the defence of their homeland." Two: a middle-aged merchant from North Germany - I think it was Hamburg - too old to enlist, volunteered to be a spy in England, a country he knew well, and was sent.
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Anyway, no real comment, but I look forward to the next essay.
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Should you ever have the desire and opportunity to gather this essay and others like it into a book, you have in me one assured sale and assured reader.
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