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What John Smith
Thinks of ..J^ans Sckmidt
By CECIL BROWN
An observer and reporter of world affairs asked the question across the nation. Here's how Americans feel about
Germans.
WHAT John Smith thinks of Hans Schmidt, even in the midst of war-time passions, is not simply a case of John saying, "Hans, I intend to beat you into a pulp." The attitude of the American toward his economic, or social, or even physical counterpart in Germany is entangled in many factors.
John Smith is supposed to be an average American, but an average American is quite as difficult to find as an average Englishman. With respect to the American attitude toward the Germans there are two welldefined and easily recognized John Smiths.
John A. Smith is fighting the German people, the men and women of Germany. John B. Smith is fighting the Nazis and, to him, the German people are all right.
This double standard applied to the people of Germany forces the two John Smiths in the United States to see two Hans Schmidts in Germany. One is an evil fellow with a swastika on his arm — he's probably in the German army. The other is the much more numerous German whom John Smith thinks has been misled, heiling Hitler while he hates the
Nazis, an unwilling \ictim of all that Germany has done in the past ten years.
So Americans see two different kinds of people in Germany. Both the amount of hatred Americans feel for Germans and the extent of our extenuation of the Germans are tied up with America's history, hatred for all war, extensive isolationism, confusion about why we are fighting this war, hesitancy about facing the full impact of international responsibility, a skepticism about what we are told, and the relative smallness of our casualties, compared to that suffered by other nations.
What both the John Smiths think of both the Hans Schmidts of Germany is based on a sun,'ey I made through thirty-five of the most populated states, asking questions of people in all economic groups from coast to coast.
One of the many questions I asked was: "Are you fighting the German people?"
Slightly more than fifty percent of the Americans I questioned answered in the negative. Their usual answers were, irrespective of their economic or regional grouping: