Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 3: Washington and New York
thor’s grand indictment – his anti-Germanism may conceivably stem from his
French ancestry – but as you follow his argument it becomes more and more
cogent and the true proportions of this war emerge with great clarity.”
His reviews of books on the war expressed the historical concept that he had
found in de Sales’ nonsense. Scoffing at Howard K. Smith’s claim that “If we can
offer (the Germans) a real alternative to extermination, the nation, though it may
not succumb to actual revolution, will fall into our hands,” Fadiman wrote:
“The world has been appeasing the Germans ever since their human wolf
packs broke out of their forest lairs in the time of Arminius. The result is a
Europe on the verge of suicide.”
This was followed by his obvious approval of “Hemingway’s extraordinary
[…] suggestion that ‘the only ultimate settlement’ with the Nazis is to sterilize
them. He means just that, in a surgical sense.” Of course, Fadiman also saw no
distinction between Nazis and other Germans and ridiculed Dorothy Thompson’s
“passionate argument” for such a distinction as well as her conviction “that our
postwar efforts must be directed toward the construction of a European federation
of states, with Germany, under democratic leadership, occupying a leading position.”
Although Fadiman never advocated the killing of all or most Germans, at
least not in so many words, this was the clear sense of his declarations. After all,
what else can be done with “wolf packs who broke out of their forest lairs,” who
are now trying to enslave the rest of the world, and who “understand” only if you
“kill them” and must not be given “a real alternative to extermination” 144
Clifton Fadiman was only a very prominent and semi-official example of a
“school of thought” that existed among leaders of opinion in the U.S. during the
war. James J. Martin and Benjamin Colby have published longer studies of Allied
propaganda based on hatred of all Germans, the latter presenting a particularly
thorough study of the Writers War Board.
The climate of wartime opinion in Britain, of course, was about the same and,
on account of England’s earlier entry into the war, of longer standing. In reacting
to Hitler’s Berlin Sportpalast speech on the initiation of German air raids on British
cities (quoted above), the London Daily Herald gloated that Hitler had made
“a frantic effort to reassure his raid-harassed people” who “are in an extremely
nervous condition and stay awake even when there is no alarm.” The same issue
of the Herald goes on to present the recommendations of the Reverend C. W.
Whipp, vicar of St. Augustine’s Leicester:
“The orders ought to be, ‘wipe them out,’ and to this end I would concentrate
all our science towards discovering a new and far more terrific explosive.
These German devils (that is the only word one can use) come over our cities
and turn their machine-guns on women and children.
Well, all I hope is that the RAF will grow stronger and stronger and go
over and smash Germany to smithereens.
A Minister of the Gospel, perhaps, ought not to indulge in sentiments like
144
New York Times (Oct. 29, 1942), 20; New Yorker (Apr. 18, 1942), 62; (Sep. 12, 1942), 53; (Oct.
24, 1942), 64f; (Nov. 28, 1942), 82; (Dec. 5, 1942), p. 82.
95