Hubris Remembered

Twenty-five years ago, Hitler's planes and Panzers invaded Poland, plunging Europe and eventually some 53 nations into the planet's bloodiest war. At the time, Hitler pretended that the Poles had forced him to fight. But in ceremonies across the nation last week commemorating the ugly anniversary, West German leaders were in no mood to shrug off their country's responsibility for the war.

In Aachen, West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt unveiled a memorial to European unity with the plea that "the dead of the nations of Europe shall not have passed into nothingness." Free Democratic Party Leader Erich Mende in a broadcast beamed into East Germany reminded his listeners that it was Stalin's pact with Hitler a week earlier that had made the rape of Poland possible.

The most forthright remarks came from Chancellor Ludwig Erhard: "Today we Germans are reminded of the calamity of 1939 with special force because it was unleashed in our name by a brutal ruler. It is quite clear that Hitler carries the prime guilt for World War II . . . The words which the German leadership then spoke in blind arrogance, hatred and megalomania betray such hubris and gross disregard for realities that this happening must remain a constant lesson and warning to future generations."

Not every German agreed. A public opinion survey last week indicated that only 30 out of 100 West Germans felt that the Nazi regime was solely to blame for World War II. Seven percent put all the blame on other countries, and the majority (51%) felt Germany and its former enemies equally to blame.

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