WILLY BRANDT IN INTERVIEW WITH HORST SCHÄTTLE, ZDF, DECEMBER 1988
When Hitler came into power,
you decided to leave Germany.
First you moved to Norway, then to Sweden.
Later on...
you were always confronted about this decision
with an undertone of "Willy Brandt chose the easy way out".
Yes. First of all, calling it an "easy way out" is objectively wrong.
Many people who left had a difficult time.
I didn't have it as hard as many others,
but many people were on the edge of despair
outside of Germany, especially in France.
France was more difficult than elsewhere.
There was the view that those who went into exile,
"immigrants" as they were called,
had plenty to eat
while the rest starved.
This is objectively incorrect.
At the time, I left...
for two reasons.
Firstly,
the illegal, or secret leaders of my group in Berlin
said they needed someone to go to Oslo.
I was helping to organize that someone else be sent, but that failed,
so I was told to go.
I couldn't have stayed in Lübeck at the time.
I could have gone to another part of Germany perhaps.
But I wouldn't have been able to stay in Lübeck.
If I had, I would have been arrested.
And especially in the early period of the Nazi occupation,
a number of bad things happened locally.
So I left in a fishing boat from the Baltic Sea.
I went to Denmark, and from there to Oslo, where I was expected.
But if you put aside all these little incidents,
then I have to say in retrospect that I can't see
why there was a national duty
to allow oneself to be imprisoned or beaten to death.
Or simply beaten.
I have great respect for how other people choose to live their lives,
but I just can't understand that it was a national duty
to go to war on Hitler's behalf.
I know many people had no other choice.
And I know how many people
did it not just because they had to,
but because of their convictions at the time.
Or because they believed
there was no other solution for the nation.
All I ask is to respect those who say it was not less honourable
to risk their lives fleeing from Hitler's regime
than it was to take part in it.
To formulate it cautiously.