From the beginning of the book:
Taking advantage of the unthinkability of their atrocities:
"the very immensity of the crimes guarantees that the murderers who proclaim their innocence with all manner of lies will be more readily believed than the victims who tell the truth."
Weder dem Vergangenen anheimfallen noch dem Zukünftigen. Es kommt darauf an, ganz gegenwärtig zu sein. - Karl Jaspers
("Neither the past nor succumb to the Future . It is important to be completely present")
Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
No paradox of contemporary politics is filled with more poignant irony, than the discrepancy between the efforts of well meaning idealists who stubbornly insist on regarding as "inalienable' those human rights which are enjoyed only by the citizens of the most prosperous and civilized countries, and the situation of the rightless themselves.
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