Hitler’s Nazi Regime Has Many Defenders, No Defense–hays

The following is from the speech by Arthur Garfield Hays, who testified as an eye-witness in the “Case of Civilization Against Hitlerism” last night:

The Hitler regime has many, defenders but no defense. Anyone who has been in Germany recently can present the German answer to the indictment of civilization against Hitler which is here presented. The Nazis tell us that the Treaty of Versailles was vicious. We know it. They tell us that Germans refuse to pay tribute. We understand it. They tell us that the Germans demand equal rights. We approve.

But while they demand equal rights for the German government, we also demand equal rights for the German people. None of these so-called answers is responsive to the indictment of civilization and none of them has anything whatever to do with either Hitlerism or Nazism. The answer to the indictment would further report that the Fascists were the saviours of the world from Communism! They seem aggrieved that outside of Germany no one takes this seriously. They would conclude by stating that Germany is unified and spiritually uplifted.

But unified for what? Spiritually uplifted in what way? During the war nations were in a sense unified and spiritually uplifted, but it is this kind of unification and uplifting that civilization condemns!

I would tell the Germans that outside of Germany people were discussing the Aryan question, the Jewish question, the question of militarism, power and force, the question of education which would teach children that the only worthy life would end on a battlefield; the question of pomp, ceremony, uniforms, salutes, bands, meetings and martial exhilaration which would intoxicate people to believe in their own invincibility so that they would become dangerous to themselves and to others; the question of pathological exaggeration and tyranny of the state which leaves no one safe and under which the government is in no way restrained from seizing individuals, placing them in concentration camps, taking away their property and exercising the most ruthless power.

People in Germany may be comfortable but they are always apprehensive. One never says a word or writes a line without doubt and hesitation, and while he is in no physical danger when in the hands of the police, yet the S. A. Brown Shirt troopers swarm the streets many of them irresponsible ruffians who have rarely been obliged by the German courts to pay the penalty for their misdeeds, and over whom the police exercise little, if any, control. My safety in Germany–in spite of constant newspaper attack–as due partly to the thought that I represented the American bar. This was a mistake but I took no great pains to persuade the Nazis that they were wrong.

Democracy and liberty never seem a more valuable heritage than when one contemplates the tyranny and oppression which has terrorized the German people. Concentration camps may contain only 18,000 to 20,000 people at one time, but the annual turnover is sufficient to teach all Germans that the Hitler approval and salute is the only path to security.

The Jews are only one of the minorities which are suppressed. Their treatment is peculiarly shocking because they suffer the cruellest of punishments for the least of crimes–that of Judaism–a crime shared by some of the greatest figures in world history and of which no one is penitent.