Justice as the Source of Conversion

W.H. Auden is one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, who grew up in England but who spent some of his life in the United States. In November 1939 he found himself in a German-language movie theater in New York City, which was showing an official German newsreel celebrating the Nazi victory over Poland. At that point, the US had not entered the war and so German films could be shown freely in American theaters.

Auden was startled by the shouts of “Kill the Poles!” that rose from the audience of ordinary German immigrants. These immigrants were under no coercion to support the…