Word: vansittart
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...Vansittart [TiME, July 16] conveniently "forgets" to take into account the fact that the "Germans" of whom Velleius Paterculus wrote were the people who lived in northern Europe in the land which then included not only present-day Germany but also the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, northeastern France, Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. These same "Germans" make up the Saxon element of the inhabitants of the British Isles, and it seems to me that the English must be not a little proud of their drop of Saxon blood since they constantly refer to themselves as "Anglo-Saxons...
...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...
...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...