Reference no: EM131491089

a) Identify the source;

b) Discuss the meaning of these excerpted texts, and;

c) Say something about the context in which they appeared (what, where, why, when, addressed to whom etc.). for each of the following.

1) "The easiest and hence most widespread explanation of the present misfortune is that it was brought about by the consequences of the lost War and that therefore the War is the cause of the present evil. There may be many who will seriously believe this nonsense but there are still more from whose mouth such an explanation can only be a lie and conscious falsehood. . . . Didn't these apostles of world conciliation . . . . glorify the benevolence of the Entente, and didn't they shove full blame for the whole bloody struggle on Germany? . . . Will you claim that this was not so, you wretched, lying scoundrels? It takes a truly Jewish effrontery to attribute the blame for the collapse solely to the military defeat. . . ."

2) "Our strength lies in our quickness and our brutality....only in the East have I put my death-head formations in place with the command relentlessly and without compassion to send into death many women and children of Polish origin and language. Only thus can we gain the living space we need."

3) "When high officials of the SS and the police call for atrocities and brutalities and publicly praise them, then within the shortest spell of time only the brutal will rule. With astonishing speed men of the same sick leanings and character will come together, in order to give full vent to their beastly and pathological instincts, as is the case in Poland. There is hardly any way to hold them in rein; for they must rightly feel themselves officially authorized and entitled to any atrocity."

4) "The Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin....Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

"But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour."

5) "We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us."