Emily Greene Balch Quotes
We have lived through the flood time of fascism and of the nazism which ran its meteoric course at a cost to mankind in suffering and waste beyond all computation.
Balch, Emily Greene. "Toward Human Unity or Beyond Nationalism." Nobel Lectures, Peace 1926-1950, edited by Frederick W. Haberman, Elsevier Publishing Company, 1972, pp. 335-346.
Helms was then a young agent of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Berlin.
The Russian troops had surrounded Berlin and were closing on the bunker. Hitler announced that he intended to commit suicide. 8 days later he did.
Both of these famous Americans were admirers of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. They both accepted medals from the German dictator. And both of them were apologists for German aggression and urged the United States not to side with England and to stay neutral in the War. The next year Germany declared war on the United States.
Although Churchill, FDR, and a few other world leaders also recognized this reality, most people, even in America and Europe were not yet knowledgeable about the danger of Hitler and Nazi Germany. What is fascinating is that a theoretical scientists—one whose work had little to do with reality could be that perspicacious to identify major political trends. But Einstein was not only one of the world’s great scientific thinkers but he was a very sophisticated political and philosophical thinker.
The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, preceded him with the announcement of declaration of war against Germany, but it was left up to the Foreign Minister to explain the implications. This was the first time in history that a nation had used radio to communicate such momentous events to its population.
This quotation is important because there are some who believed that the professional German Soldiers did not respect Hitler and his murderous policies. This quotation shows that at least publicly Donitz had no problem extolling Hitler above all others. After the war Donitz was found guilty of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and using thousands of slave laborers in his shipyards. He was sentenced to 10 years, one of the lightest sentences if the German War Crimes Trials.
The allies—mostly under American Pressure—only tried the highest ranking Nazi war criminals. Many wanted to try the rest, but they did not prevail. Lord Russell, the English prosecutor at Nuremburg resigned in protest as he had case files on over 100,000 Nazi war criminals who were never prosecuted. The main object was to use those officials to establish a strong anti-Communist government in post war Germany.
Emily Greene Balch was an American economist, sociologist and pacifist. Balch combined an academic career at Wellesley College with a long-standing interest in social issues such as poverty, child labor, and immigration, as well as settlement work to uplift poor immigrants and reduce juvenile delinquency.
