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The time in which I write ... has a horribly swollen belly, it carries in its womb a national catastrophe ... Even an ignominious issue remains something other and more normal than the judgment that now hangs over us, such as once fell on Sodom and Gomorrah ... That it approaches, that it long since became inevitable: of that I cannot believe anybody still cherishes the smallest doubt. ... That it remains shrouded in silence is uncanny enough. It is already uncanny when among a great host of the blind some few who have the use of their eyes must live with sealed lips. But it becomes sheer horror, so it seems to me, when everybody knows and everybody is bound to silence, while we read the truth from each other in eyes that stare or else shun a meeting. Germany ... today, clung round by demons, a hand over one eye, with the other staring into horrors, down she flings from despair to despair. When will she reach the bottom of the abyss? When, out of uttermost hopelessness --- a miracle beyond the power of belief --- will the light of hope dawn? A lonely man folds his hands and speaks: ``God be merciful to thy poor soul, my friend, my Fatherland!'' -- Thomas Mann, Dr. Faustus (1947, written in 1945)
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