The Kindly Ones

by Jonathan Littell

I have thought about the difference between German colonialism, as it was practiced in the East during those years, and the colonialism of the British and the French, in principle more civilized. There are, as Voss stressed, objective facts: after the loss of its colonies in 1919, Germany had to recall its cadres and close its colonial administration offices; the training institutes remained open in principle, but didn’t attract anyone, because of the lack of prospects; twenty years later, a whole specialized field of knowledge had been lost. That being the case, National Socialism had given impetus to an entire generation, full of new ideas and greedy for new experiences, which, as regards colonization, were perhaps just as valid as the old ones.