Appels aux Allemands

Between 1940 and 1945, exiled in the United States, Thomas Mann delivered 56 monthly radio broadcasts in German, aired by the Office of War Information: addresses intended to awaken the German people’s conscience in the face of Nazi atrocities. In incisive terms, Mann described the Nazi regime as an “abominable system, founded on lies, plunder and murder,” and Hitler as “a wretched charlatan of history.” This is the same pen that had attacked Hitler since 1933. His own preface, written midway through the series (1942) and placed at the head of the edition, revealed his doubts: “To call a people to revolt is not yet to believe, deep in one’s heart, that it is capable of it.”

As early as 1946, these texts were translated into French by Pierre Jundt, a certified professor of German known for his translations of theological and literary works, for publication by Éditions Flinker, newly founded in 1947 by Martin Flinker (1895–1986), an Austrian-born bookseller and literary critic who had fled Vienna in 1938 with his son Karl and eventually found refuge in Tangier. Besides his publishing activities, Flinker also published essays by writers such as Paul Celan, Joseph Breitbach, Robert Musil and Joseph Roth, contributing to the promotion of German culture in France. His son would continue the family legacy by founding an art gallery in Paris, the Galerie Karl Flinker, which exhibited major artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Kupka.

The volume is preceded by a critical introduction by Edmond Vermeil, a Resistance fighter and companion of General de Gaulle in London, and a specialist in German history and civilization at the Sorbonne.

From the library of Georges Pompidou (bookplate).