"The Savage Hun"

"The Germans are savage to a degree almost inconceivable to anyone who has not had actual experience of them, and are a people born to deceit."

It was Lord Vansittart who wrote, but he was quoting not himself but Velleius Paterculus, a 1st-Century Roman historian. He added similar testimony from Tacitus, Seneca, Symmachus, Claudian, Nazarius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Ennodius, Quintilian and Josephus. This battery of authorities punctuates Vansittart's latest book on Germany: Bones of Contention (Knopf; $2.75), which was published in Britain last March and appears in the U.S. this week.

Vansittart's preoccupation with German original sin also turns up in his constant --and inaccurate--use of "Hun."* This practice has done much to build the legend of Vansittartism, misconceived as a ferocious intent to wipe every last German from the earth's face. Yet Bones of Contention follows the line of Vansittart's former books in sober, well-documented, closely reasoned advocacy of a hard peace for Germany. Vansittart's flashes of hatred are incidental to his solid analysis of how the Germans got the way they are and what to do about them.

Not from Adolf. Vansittart is aware of his own overstatement. He prefaces his collection of ancient opinions of the ancient Germans with this broker's disclaimer: "Biology has nothing to do with the case ... by nothing more than literary coincidence were ancient Latin and Greek writers saying exactly the same things about the Germans as all Europe is saying today. ... I am [content] to start our abhorrence of Germany and the Germans from Friedrich, or Wilhelm, but not from Adolf."

This remark is the essence of genuine Vansittartism. After nearly 40 years as a British diplomat, Vansittart is convinced that the last peace was lost by the victors' tendency to put all the blame on a handful of men, on "economic pressure," or on the errors of other nations. Similar unreality, he thinks, imperils the present victory.

Vansittart rejects the idea that the German nation was enslaved and misled by the Kaiser and the Nazis. He finds the whole nation guilty. "In Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia, Greece, France, brave men and women defied alike Gestapo and German Army. In the teeth of seemingly hopeless odds [they] took to the hills and forests. . . . Were there no hills or forests in Germany?"

The Cure. For the sake of a peaceful Europe, says he, Germany must be weak. And it must be dismembered, perhaps occupied for a generation, stripped of many industries, educationally reformed by the victors, thickly sown with intelligence officers watching for any signs of V-102. Nor can Germany be reshaped merely by putting "democratic" German elements in power. "The German Right are undoubtedly the bloodiest men that have ever defiled the earth. ... I insist upon their being totally liquidated as a political party or force. ... I prefer the German Left. I am not, however, fool enough to take the German Left on trust again."

More Stupidity. Vansittart makes a good case for the guilt of the German nation as a whole and for a hard peace. Why, then, are his conclusions widely doubted and attacked in the U.S. and Britain? Vansittart blames stupidity in high places. Readers who are dissatisfied with that answer will get little help from Vansittart on how to go about a hard peace without wrecking Europe. Never does he face up to the geopolitical fact that Germany is the heart of Europe. He brushes aside but does not really meet the argument that a stable Europe requires a strong Germany.

Even so, Bones of Contention is more specific--and more hopeful--than Vansittart's preceding Black Record and Lessons of My Life. He fears that the great powers will again forget the German danger--but believes that the small nations will remember. If they are allowed to participate in occupation and control, says he, Germany may not rise again.

To date, only four powers participate in the occupation of Germany. Only the Big Three will attend the Potsdam conference.

*Racially, there is no connection between the Germans and the 4th and 5th-Century Hun hordes.

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