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Note : on the side of caution : I have not compared the text reproduced below with the Holy Writ, as of this writing. I think it very much probable that the quotation is accurate, however, due to the controversial nature of these data one might be wise to check the authentics carefully.
In other words, this is a request of the reader not to rely on my reports, which are on the �to the best of my knowledge� bases, but rather check everything out for self, before feeling any certainty — neither I nor anyone are immune to false data, which may have been deliberately planted at any places. (WPT, 28 Apr 05).
From Account Settled, Hjalmar Schacht 1949
The racial question played a great part at the Nuremberg trail particularly in connection with the persecution of the Jews, and the prosecution brought forward ghastly revelations concerning its nature and extent. Racial preservation is certainly an important problem wherever widely different racial mixtures are present on a large scale. Racial preservation is not a German invention, or even a National-Socialist invention. It is superfluous to mention such non-German names as Gobineau and Houston Stewart chamberlain. The Americans themselves have a much more extreme representative of such
ideas in the person of Madison Grant, who sees a whole series of dangers arising out of the famous �melting pot� which constitutes the United States. It is a tragic irony that one of the most disagreeable applications of the racial theory is found precisely amongst the Jews themselves, and it is documented in the Old Testament in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Consider for instance, the tenth chapter of the Book of Ezra: �And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them. Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel. Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of you fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land and from the strange wives. Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do.�
The racial problem is not so acute for the German people that anyone is justified in basing political demands on it. And the balderdash about �the Nordic master race� talked by some of the National Socialist luminaries was treated with ridicule by the German people. This propaganda about the master race sprang from a very lively feeling of inferiority on the part of those who indulged in it. The leaders of the nazi party were certainly not ideal Nordic types.
As far as racial feeling towards the Jews is concerned, I have always considered the Old Testament idea of the Jews as �the Chosen People� highly distasteful and provocative. As a Christian I believe in brotherly love to all who bear a human countenance. On the other hand I have always been a conscious and convinced German, not in the sense of any narrow-minded nationalism, but from the feeling that I must stand four square where God has pleased to plant me and develop such talents as He has
pleased to give me. And I have always been proud to belong to a people who have been amongst the leading cultural nations of the earth for a thousand years, a people who have given the world men like Luther, Kant, Goethe and Beethoven, to mention no others. Nationalism to my has never meant anything beyond the strivings of a people to forge ahead by their moral stature and intellectual achievements and win a leading position in the cultural sphere. All peoples are entitled to self-respect. But self-respect presupposes respect for others too. The maintenance of our own special qualities does not mean the disparagement of the qualities of others. The recognition of others� achievements can only encourage our own.
( Abrechung mit Hitler, Hjalmar Schacht
Rowohltverlag, Hamburg 1948. )
Translated by Edward Fitzgerald
London : Weidenfel & Nicolson, 1949, pages 175 - 176.
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