"
The German people still clung desperately to those ideas after the
armistice, as I found in Cologne and other towns, and as friends of
mine who had visited Berlin told me after peace was signed. The
Germans refused to believe in accusations of atrocity. They knew that
some of these stories had been faked by hostile propaganda, and,
knowing that, as we know, they thought all were false. They said
"Lies-lies-lies!"--and made counter--charges against the Russians and
Poles. They could not bring themselves to believe that their sons and
brothers had been more brutal than the laws of war allow, and what
brutality they had done was imposed upon them by ruthless discipline.
But they deplored the war, and the common people, ex-soldiers and
civilians, cursed the rich and governing classes who had made profit
out of it, and had continued it when they might have made peace with
honor. That was their accusation against their leaders--that and the
ruthless, bloody way in which their men had been hurled into the
furnace on a gambler's chance of victory, while they were duped by
faked promises of victory.
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