Henri to Yvette.

Gen Tpt Coy
Italy

5 July 1944

I want to talk about three things in this letter darling. And this time, I will try to order my thoughts to get them under control, so I can explain to you what I think…(Ehrenburg talks of strangling the Germans with our hands. Yvette is disgusted, Question about hatred)

Hatred is a great problem, Yvette. Great and difficult. And like you I think of it a great deal. You see, this war, much more than others, will leave for a long time stains on humanity and the world. The end of the war will bring a heap of problems, one more tragic than the other, one more difficult to resolve than the other and from which all the chaos will create a revolutionary situation. Depending on the conditions the working class will or will not profit by these objectively favourable conditions to construct a new world, the only possible one, the socialist world.   That’s why there’s the class struggle. The working class struggle which takes account of the strength of “not wanting any longer to live as it is and more, not wanting any longer to live as it used to live.”  That’s the whole thing. That’s the axis around which turn other problems, secondary but attached, and the great struggle which cannot be ended except by a revolution which will save human dignity, the triumphant proletarian revolution… A huge number of problems confronting us now are much greater than those after the last war….

1, Housing problem

2. Readjustment of millions of men and women to the civilian life. .. to go from a life where all personal initiative is destroyed to one where personal initiative is a prime condition of subsistence.
3. The new European generation, More than any other this war has left the new generation filled with horror: under-nourished and full of fear. What sort of man will he turn out?
4. German youth. Race theory, superiority, divine mission to rule the world, by bombs, what will take the place of this strong faith? A great void will be there which, if its not quickly replaced with socialist values can cause ravages that will surpass those of this war… None of these problems can be resolved if there is no socialist revolution.

The same thing applies to hatred, darling. It’s one of the problems..The Nazis have exterminated the largest part of the Jewish people, that’s a fact. It’s a fact that they massacred the kids and the women in Polish and soviet villages; it’s a fact that they have debased man to the level of a serf…. A mother who sees her daughter raped then brutally murdered can only hate the perpetrators of the crime and wish for vengeance…. All that has to be and there is no point in boggling at it. And in the time of struggle too, hatred is necessary. Sometimes it takes the place of the most diabolical weapons that could be overpowering. (The defenders of Madrid fought with hatred against the superior forces of the attackers; at Leningrad and Stalingrad the same thing happened…. It is just because of that that I see hatred as one of the tragic post war problems.

Wherever I am and whenever I can I try to combat this sentiment which, if it is not stemmed, strangely recalls Nazi bestiality reversed. For a long time after its destruction Nazism will have left traces everywhere, even among those who defeated it.  The Hitlerien slogan in Germany: The Jew is to blame, down with the Jew! has infected Polish anti fascists, Jews, Yugoslavs, French with the slogan: “The boche is to blame. Death to the boche!’ This simple, clear slogan wipes out the fact that  “the boche” was the first great victim of Nazism and the greatest victim of Nazism. This simple slogan suddenly wipes from the hearts and minds of men the fundamental principles of historical materialism.

My point of view only provokes general hilarity. I am aware of it and it makes me feel bad. But I go on, despite people treating me as a “stupid humanist”. You see, my heart is filled with the same burning hatred against fascism as that of most of our friends.  But for a revolutionary, the hotter the heart, the cooler must be the head. My heart is human and it hates, with a limitless hatred, fascism and the fascists for all their crimes…But my head intervenes to stop the hatred just there before it is transformed to reversed Nazism. That is my point of view. And although they laugh and call me the Don Quixote of universal socialism, although they call me a romantic idealist (is there something pejorative about that?) I will continue under the general laughter to say to them: OK comrades, where will this hatred lead? And I believe profoundly that I am the realist, that I hate the most because I don’t want only to destroy the Nazis but also and above all Nazism.…

I understand emotional hatred. I don’t sanction it, but I understand it. But what I refuse to follow is hatred built on the speculations of an intellectual brain.  I understand Stalin’s order of the day: Death to the German invader”, an order of the day necessary for fighting against a cruel enemy.

But I can not follow Ehrenburg’s order of the day: “It’s not enough to kill a German, you must want to strangle him with your own hands!”……

When an artist wants to express hatred, how will he do it? Just saying “Lets kill the fascist soldiers!” expressed nothing; at a time when everyone is killing the fascist soldiers. He has to express hatred differently… Then how can he express hatred? . He exaggerates… And in saying “you must want to strangle them with your own hands!” he denounces Nazi barbarism and expresses his hatred.  You see in this case, it is important to know whether he serves a good or a bad cause that’s all…

I don’t know whether I have expressed the exact truth of what I feel. But your love for me will help you understand what others find difficult…