Ominous Parallel

The tragic story of German resistance to Hitler’s tyranny, before and during the war, remains significant because of the close and ominous parallel between the attitude of the West toward “the Germans” yesterday and “the Russians” today. This book (20 by Constantine FitzGibbon, Norton, $3.75), admirably points up the parallel. For it shows how again and again German resistance forces were discouraged and emasculated by the appeasement policies of England and France before the war, and subsequently by the lack of interest in London and Washington in a successful rebellion against the Nazi tyranny.

“After Munich,” Constantine FitzGibbon writes, “many Germans who sincerely loathed Hitler and his ways, lost all faith in the Western statesmen and peoples who had so apparently preferred dishonor to danger.” One thinks immediately of the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Chinese and other peoples under the Communist iron heel, and asks how many of them are later disheartened and disillusioned by the behavior of Western statesmen? For the Geneva Summit conference, and the evident desire of the West for peace—or peace of mind—at any price, may well have left them convinced, like most Germans two decades ago, that there is “no choice save to make the best of tyranny at home.”

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Freda Utley

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The tragic story of German resistance to Hitler’s tyranny, before and during the war, remains significant because of the close and ominous parallel between the attitude of the West toward “the Germans” yesterday and “the Russians” today. This book (20 by Constantine FitzGibbon, Norton, $3.75), admirably points up the parallel. For it shows how again and again German resistance forces were discouraged and emasculated by the appeasement policies of England and France before the war, and subsequently by the lack of interest in London and Washington in a successful rebellion against the Nazi tyranny.

“After Munich,” Constantine FitzGibbon writes, “many Germans who sincerely loathed Hitler and his ways, lost all faith in the Western statesmen and peoples who had so apparently preferred dishonor to danger.” One thinks immediately of the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Chinese and other peoples under the Communist iron heel, and asks how many of them are later disheartened and disillusioned by the behavior of Western statesmen? For the Geneva Summit conference, and the evident desire of the West for peace—or peace of mind—at any price, may well have left them convinced, like most Germans two decades ago, that there is “no choice save to make the best of tyranny at home.”