“Even Hitler is given a context by serious historians- the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and the failure of Weimar Germany- whereas rampage murderers, like slaves once before them, are portrayed as having killed without reason.”

— Mark Ames

Part II: The Banality of Slavery, page 58.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)
Context: Yet what's missing from Cullen's explanation is a context for Harris' rage attack on Columbine High School. Even Hitler is given a context by serious historians- the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and the failure of Weimar Germany- whereas rampage murderers, like slaves once before them, are portrayed as having killed without reason. Their murder sprees were and are explained as symptoms of the perpetrators' innate evil, or of foreign forces, rather than as reactions to unbearable circumstances.

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Mark Ames 29

American writer and journalist 1965

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“The Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St Germain are kept alive by Bolshevism in Germany. The Peace Treaty and Bolshevism are two heads of one monster. We must decapitate both.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Interview with George Sylvester Viereck, 1923 https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/17/greatinterviews1
1920s

“The Holocaust would have been unimaginable without the Nazi Party; the Nazi Party would have been unimaginable without Hitler; and Hitler’s rise to power would have been unimaginable without the unique circumstances that brought the Weimar Republic to ruin. To hear Goldhagen tell it, mass murder was all set to go: a century-long build-up of eliminationist anti-Semitism simply had to express itself. But the moment when a historian says that something had to happen is the moment when he stops writing history and starts predicting the past.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, As Of This Writing (2003)

“Shortly after the British government had protested Hitler's violation of the military clauses of the Versailles Treaty on March 16 and then joined Italy and France in proclaiming their determination to uphold the sanctity of treaties, it had, behind the backs of its two Stresa allies, negotiated a naval agreement which violated the naval clauses of the Versailles Treaty and gave Hitler the right and encouragement to build all the warships his shipyards could construct for at least ten years.* The Naval Pact was signed in London on June 18, 1935, without the British government having the courtesy to consult with France and Italy, or later, to inform them of the secret agreements which stipulated that the Germans could build in certain categories more powerful warships than any the three Western nations then possessed. The French regarded this as treachery, which it was. They saw it as a further appeasement of Hitler, whose appetite grew on concessions. And they resented the British agreeing, for what they thought a private gain, to scrap further the peace treaty and thus add to the growing overall military power of Nazi Germany.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

“We know how to handle these murderers, these rapists, these criminals. We've done this before … in Drenica in 1946. We killed them. We killed them all. Of course we did not do it all at once. It took some time.”

Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006) Yugoslavian and Serbian politician

Testimony of Gen. Wesley Clark at the Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Disputed

“Judging others by themselves, the English, who are blinded by their loyalty, have always thought that the Germans did not abide by their pledges inscribed in the Versailles Treaty because they had not frankly agreed to them… We, on the contrary, believe that if Germany, far from making the slightest effort to carry out the treaty of peace, has always tried to escape her obligations, it is because until now she has not been convinced of her defeat… We are also certain that Germany, as a nation, resigns herself to keep her pledged word only under the impact of necessity.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Letter to Charles de Saint-Aulaire, French ambassador to Britain (c. December 1922), quoted in Leopold Schwarzschild, World in Trance (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1943), p. 140.

“The plans of Adolf Hitler for aggression were just as secret as Mein Kampf, of which over six million copies were published in Germany. He not only openly advocated overthrowing the Treaty of Versailles, but made demands which went far beyond a mere rectification of its alleged injustices (GB-128). He avowed an intention to attack neighboring states and seize their lands, which he said would have to be won with "the power of a triumphant sword."”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Here, for every German to hearken to, were the "ancestral voices prophesying war."
Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)

“There is a difference. If you kill to take money or rob, it is plain murder, but if you kill because of political reasons, that is a political murder.”

Rudolf Höss (1901–1947) German war criminal, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp

To Leon Goldensohn, April 8, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

“Some credible scholars say that making mass murderers famous motivates other mass murderers. (One might even argue that this article is part of the problem). Elliot Rodger sent his lengthy diatribe to the media before he went on his killing spree -- correctly predicting that his actions would propel his ideas (such as they were) into the marketplace of ideas on a digital billboard larger than he could ever have enjoyed had he not amplified them with his psychotic rampage. Accordingly, should we not silence him? Wipe his words from the Internet forever? Let him be forgotten?”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

“The Government must not insist too much on the fact that Germany will integrally fulfil the conditions of the peace treaty. For all parties have been unanimous in considering that the treaty is unfulfillable.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech to the National Assembly (8 October 1919), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 331
1910s

“The bombs I dropped on Germany between 1940 and 1944 maybe killed a Rilke or a Goethe or a Hölderin in his cradle. And yes, of course, if it had to be done over, I would do it again. Hitler had condemned us to kill. Not even the most just causes are ever innocent.”

Romain Gary (1914–1980) French writer and diplomat

As quoted in Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2003) by Tzvetan Todorov, p. 217

“Even Hitler is given a context by serious historians- the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and the failure of Weimar Germany- whereas rampage murderers, like slaves once before them, are portrayed as having killed without reason.”

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Mark Ames 29

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