K.J. Germer
260 West 72nd St.
New York, N.Y.
March 1, 1945

Dear Grady,

Since writing you last I got yours of Feb. 3rd – but also, which is very important – the long expected Divorce papers which you mailed Dec. 3rd and which took extraordinarily long. Both Sascha and I can now go ahead with the citizenship.

Your letter was very interesting, but you must excuse me if I do not answer to some of the subjects you mention the way I would have to. I will say one thing that I know the Nazis very well from personal experience and there is one thing: they just don’t and can’t compromise. Totalitarian means exactly what it says: they will fight until the very finish. There is something insane in the Nazi mentality. So there can’t be considerations of clear thinking or of reason. Their acts are dictated by quite irrational sources.

I have never been able to discuss matters with a Nazi. They just think: ‘Oh, he is not one of us and can’t understand the height of our thinking’. That leads to forcing the Nazi way upon their opponents by Concentration camps and all the rest. So now: nobody can tell when the European war will be over. It is not decided by battles won, as in former wars. You have got to conquer the territory where even one Nazi is alive, inch by inch.

Yes, I would love to have some of the poems you mention. I understand your ‘Bitterness’. Unfortunately, the feeling of bitterness can be produced. There are innumerable Germans who probably also have Bitterness, therefore the fanaticism with which some of them keep on.

In LXV/V you will find the passage: ‘I will burn through the grey city in the old and desolate land; I will cleanse it of its great impurity.’ I have often thought that the Germans had it coming to them, they they had to be purified so as to discover, or better be made ready to discover, their True Will, and do it. It lies, so it seems to me, on an altogether different plane. ‘Therefore strike hard and low, and to hell with them, Master!’

Yes, things were going well in California, but Smith has turned up as a danger, and it is up to Jack to prove himself.

Lots of love to you and good luck from both of us. It might interest you to know that I was born in Wuppertal, 15 mils from Duesseldorf. It was formerly divided in two separate towns: Elberfeld and Barmen. I came from the former. You boys will soon be there. Think of me should you pass through it.

As ever
Karl

NOTE: Thank you to Frater Orpheus for this material.