Can Germany Become Peaceful and Law-Abiding?

From GI Roundtable 10: What Shall Be Done about Germany after the War? (1944)

A peaceful and law-abiding Germany is a result which everybody desires. Can anything be done by the United Nations to bring it about? It is believed by many that something can be done; and that is, to provide in the terms of peace for the eventual admission of Germany, on a basis of full equality, into the organized community of nations, “open to membership by all peace-loving states, large and small,” which the governments of the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and China are (by the Declaration of Moscow) pledged to form. Germans, it is assumed, will not want to be excluded from this world organization. But it is generally agreed that Germany can be admitted only after she has given sufficient evidence that she is a peace-loving and law-abiding state, and that such evidence, in view of her past record, cannot be given in a short time or by words only. (She was for seven years a member of the League of Nations.) Here again, then, it will be up to the Germans. They will he put on probation, and the United Nations can only wait and see whether there is so great a change in the spirit and ruling ideas and the conduct of the German nation that it can safely be welcomed into the organized world community as a loyal, trustworthy, and cooperative member.

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