The German Ambassador in Washington, Dr. Hans Luther, raised a protest against the anti-Hitler mass demonstration which recently took place in New York. Before that, he did not shy at announcing that only such Jews as had made mischief were forced to leave Germany.
It is very sad that a man who owes his whole career to the German Republic, who was even at one time its responsible political leader and in whose cabinet Gustav Stresemann served, should lend himself to lifting protests, at the order of the Hitler government, against demonstrations which he knows are only too justified from the point of view of world-conscience and general human culture.
Ambassadors and envoys are, to be sure, only the mouthpieces of their governments. In the notorious Arnim case, indeed, Bismarck even issued the judgment that they are only letter-carriers. At any rate, they are not responsible for every political action of their government. The custom has therefore grown up in European states which permits men of all political leanings to serve their country in the diplomatic corps and old diplomats to remain at their posts even when there are abrupt changes in government tendencies.
But the diplomat who represents a country continues to be regarded as its moral representative. And here there are boundaries on the other side of which a difficult moral joint-responsibility arises. The Hitler regime in Germany is not to be compared with any other government with which comparisons might suggest themselves. The rule of Hitler differs from all authorities in that it is the rule of immorality, trickery, cruelty and malice unexampled and incomparable. Whoever serves the system in a visible capacity covers it up to the world. The more his own good reputation can be exploited as an advertisement for Hitler, the greater the percentage of his own guilt in misleading the world through the devilish nature of this regime.
A case similar to that of Luther is that of the German ambassador in London, Herr von Hoesch. Only a short time ago, when Banse’s book created a painful sensation in England, he passed on, at the behest of his government, the announcement that Banse was a nobody and not a German professor at all. Thus he helped to relay a falsehood to the English people. For Professor Banse is Professor of Military Science at the technical high school in Brauschweig, where he still merrilly continues to teach, as an English newspaper has, in the meantime, established.
Ambassador von Hoesch, owes his whole career to the German republic and to Gustay Stresemann in particular. He was its representative to Briand and sunned himself in the special trust of Poincare. He too is now covering with his past and his good name the cruelty and inhumanities he knows are happening in Germany.
Even ambassadors and ministers do not have to be heroes. One really does not demand of them any declaration of war against Hitler. But: Stresemann’s most intimate collaborator, Herr von Schubert, and the former German ambassador to Washington, Herr von Prittwitz, stepped back quietly and without any fuss.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
