-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
BETRAYAL - Our Occupation of Germany
Arthur D. Rahn
Former Chief Editor of Intelligence Office of the Director of Information
Control
Office of Military Government, Germany
Book & Knowledge
Warsaw, Poland
pps. 237 (no date) out-of-print
-----
--"The Nazi women living in the Highland Colony, a settlement built for elite
early members of the Nazi Party and for the participants in the 1923 Nazi
Putsch, not only refused to move when Kzler came with orders to evict them,
but even called American MPs and had the Kzler arrested for disturbing the
peace. An American MP told one Kzler that if he did not keep his mouth shut
about the situation in this Nazi housing colony, he would be sent back to
Dachau again. Many of these Nazi women, of course, were under the protection
of high American officers."--
---" NOT until I sat down to write this book and reflected on my experience
and organized my notes did I realize that what had seemed to me and my
friends in Germany to be a chaos of corruption and incompetence had actually
been a planned development following a very definite pattern. In fact, it has
become increasingly clear that the pattern of events in Germany from 1944 to
mid-1947 mirrored in sharp perspective what was happening at home in America.
Developments in Germany, too, have paralleled our actions in the United
Nations and our relations with the Soviet Union, Greece, Spain, China,
Britain, Israel � with the entire world."---
Om
K
--[2]--
CHAPTER TWO
The Democratic Potential
A Healthy Resentment
"I think that the victory of the American people and their allies in this war
will be far more than a victory against fascism and reaction and the dead
hand of despotism of the past. The victory of the American people and their
allies in this war will be a victory for democracy. It will constitute such
an affirmation of the strength and power and vitality of government by the
people as history has never before witnessed."
-From speech in Washington, September 23,1944.
WHAT the GIs expected, this overhauling of Germany, was a tall order. It
would have required the same kind of initiative, determination and enthusiasm
that the combat troops, who never wanted to return to Europe to fight another
war, had shown on the battlefield. And maybe even more, because this final
battle, the battle of the occupation, was to be waged in peacetime without
the inspiration and drive that's developed in war. In any event we were going
to have a hard job with these corrupted and apathetic Germans accustomed to
being ordered and to falling in line. They had been the only people in Europe
that had taken no organized large-scale action to assist in overthrowing
Nazism, even during the last weeks when the war had obviously become
hopeless. The French, Norwegians, Yugoslavs, Czechs and Poles and the
Hungarians and Roumanians too, had risen up to expel the in invader and to
overthrow their native fascists. But the Germans had failed. We had had to
liberate them from Nazism.
Unfortunately, however, it is not generally known that among the nazified
automatons, there were elements at the end of the war that could have been
propped up to lead a democratic crusade in Germany. The task of remaking the
nation would have been completely hopeless if we had had no possibility of
cooperation from the Germans themselves. At best, of course, the reliable
anti-Nazis or non-Nazis were very few in number. All of them had to be
mobilized in a unified effort against a possible resurgence of the Nazis and
for the democratic regeneration of the country.
As early as October, 1944, we had recognized the possibility of utilizing the
resentment of the civilians who had demonstrated in front of the Wehrmacht HQ
demanding the acceptance of our ultimatum. We had suffered a defeat in
neglecting this opportunity. But at the end of the war, the situation was
more favorable. With the intensification of the Nazi terror against the weary
German population from the time of the fall of Aachen to VE day, the
resentment against the Party leaders and the readiness for a democratic
regeneration had increased and spread among a larger portion of the
population.
The beginning of April, 1945, I went to Mainz to study this development in
the attitudes of the Germans. Mainz, a city about the same size as Aachen, a
little more than a hundred miles away, had experienced this intensification
of the resentment against the Nazis in the five months elapsing between its
fall (in mid-March, 1945) and the fall of Aachen (mid-October, 1944). When I
arrived in the city, I found the Mainzers still angry about the suffering
they had had to endure in the past few months. From conversations with a
varied group of citizens, I pieced together a history of the events before
the fall of the city and was able to appreciate the deep antagonism the
Mainzers bore the Party leaders.
On March 16th, just a week before we took Mainz, the retreating Nazi troops
had blown up the Rhine bridges and everyone in the city knew that the
promised Wehrmacht reenforcements were not going to arrive. The Volkssturm
(the auxiliary troops mobilized at the fall of Aachen) and many of the
regular Wehrmacht soldiers dropped their arms and hid in the cellars. The
Party bosses who had been shouting so courageously Goebbels' slogans: "We
will hold out to the last man, to the last bullet" � ran off, too. That very
day, Oberbuergermeister (Lord Mayor) Ritter sent his furniture across the
Rhine to Lauterbach. His neighbors heard him screaming at his chauffeur for
not packing enough champagne and a ferry load of his cases, supposed to
contain art treasures, was found to contain wine casks. The next day, on the
17th of March, the Nazi police president left. A silent resentful crowd
massed at the Rhine and watched him ferry across the river with all his
possessions. The Mainzers were enraged against the Party. During these last
days, no one dared wear a Party badge or put on a Party uniform in the city.
One man in an SA uniform apologized to everyone that he had no other clothes
to wear. A cold stare was the answer to the Hitler salute. The Mainzers
openly discussed news heard on the foreign stations. Some citizens became so
bold that they publicly harangued the troops to shoot the Pay-Gays
(Parteigenossen � Party members).
Yes, the Mainzers had had a good lesson with the Nazis. There was plenty of
reason for their wrath.
After the 30-minute air bombardment of February 27th, when practically the
entire ancient city was destroyed in a raging conflagration and thousands of
the citizens had been entombed in the rubble, suffocated by gases or burned
alive, life in Mainz became very primitive and full of hardship. There was no
gas, no electricity and little food. Water had to be drawn in pails from the
Rhine. Mobile kitchens served a thin soup twice a day and a little bread at
night. The women waited apathetically on the long queues for four and five
hours to collect their meagre family rations. There were no potatoes or
vegetables. The Nazi officials had transported all the local food stocks
across the Rhine. In the hysteria immediately following the raid, those who
had been bombed out fought brutally for seats on the evacuation trucks and
trains, and the old and the weak were pushed aside and forced to remain
behind. But in a few days the weary evacuees returned on foot to the
destroyed city � the Nazis had made no arrangements for their care at the
reception centers.
When the American troops began to shell the city, the Mainzers found that the
Nazi officials had pocketed the money assigned for the construction of
shelters and there was not enough to accommodate the entire population. The
Bonzen (Party bigshots), of course, were well provided for. Then to add to
the fury of the Mainzers, the SS rounded up the 16-year-old Labor Service
boys, armed them with machine guns and ordered them to fight to the last. But
the citizens had had enough. They took away the arms and sent the children
back to their parents. In the countryside, the women destroyed the tank
barriers their husbands and sons in the Volkssturm had been forced to erect.
After the fall of the city on March 22nd, the Mainzers learned that the Nazis
had blown up the water pipeline to the city, run off with the plans of the
electric cables and left a time bomb to blow up the chief bakery. Then the
Wehrmacht broadcast a report of stiff fighting in the city and announced that
the citizens were suffering severely on account of the abolition of German
currency and the lack of food. The MG officer had supposedly been shot during
bread riots. Some days later, Goebbels about-faced and broadcast a
denunciation of the Mainzers for their failure to resist and delay the
American forces. The Mainzers knew the first radio reports were deliberate
propaganda lies. When they saw our material, they knew that further
resistance would have been foolhardy, even if they had wanted to hold off the
American troops.
The Nazis had been exposed as cruel, inefficient, corrupt, selfish and lying.
Mainz had had enough of them.
In my conversation with representatives of different social and political
groups in the city, I found general agreement about the Nazis. "The people
are fed up with the Nazis and look upon you as their liberators," Ferdinand
Stenz, one of the wealthiest men in Mainz, assured me, and his young,
vivacious French wife, nodded enthusiastic agreement. The Stenz's were the
first Mainzers I interrogated.
"You don't know how glad we are to have this opportunity to talk to you, we
never have a chance to discuss our problems and ideas at length with anyone
in authority, German or American," they declared, when I came to visit them.
They spoke in rapid, excited French, which they assured me had always been
the language of Mainz and Rhineland "society." They immediately apologized
for their "mean" quarters. They had been forced to retreat to a large
multi-family dwelling with a narrow, gloomy staircase and large garage-like
rooms furnished with plain, heavy, uncomfortable oak chairs, tables and huge
chests of drawers. But Stenz, a tall, thin, nervous businessman with
fashionable heavy horn glasses and a limp from a war wound was still very
conscious of being "upper-class". He boasted of his international connections
and his English, American and Dutch relatives. He laughed at how, with his
savoir-faire, he had been able to put the stupid Gestapo men in their place
when he had been summoned to explain his ostentatious association with Jews
and his statements in criticism of the regime.
I think I asked one question that evening and then listened intently, turning
from one to the other as the conversational football was passed back and
forth. In their opinion, the Americans would have to discriminate carefully
between the Nazis � all "prizefighters and parvenus" � and the non-Nazis. The
Nazis would have to be rooted out. "You must start with the good families and
the men of affairs. The German masses are stupid. I any case, you must keep
our officials, no matter how good they are, under constant surveillance with
a secret police." Although very pro-American, well-known and respected in the
community as anti-Nazis, the Stenz's needed considerable guidance and
direction. Neither of them was active in Mainz affairs although they were
willing to be of assistance.[*] They spent their time acting as observers and
formulating suggestions to present to the MG officers. [* Stenz offered me a
warehouse full of newsprint � a huge supply that furnished our MG newspapers
throughout the Zone for about six months. It had belonged to his brother, the
former owner of the local newspaper.]
Next I spoke with Herman Butz, a handsome 23-year-old, wavy-haired film
actor, a former student at the universities of Munich and Freiburg and a
writer of very bad satirical anti-Nazi verse. He claimed he had learned from
his devout, Catholic father, a wealthy coal merchant, to consider himself a
"man" rather than a German. Complaining that German youth knew nothing about
world affairs or politics except that Nazism was brutal and inhuman, Butz,
theatrically waving his hands to emphasize his statement, declared,
"Democracy to us is only a name, something floating about in the air."
During our conversation, I noticed that he would sometimes lower his voice to
a whisper. He smiled self-consciously. He had whispered whenever one of the
workmen busy repairing the second floor of the MG building, where we were
sitting, would walk near us. "A habit we learned under the Nazis."
Butz thought the Germans expected America to cleanse their country of fascism
and to help in establishing a real democracy. He was sure we would find
hundreds of disillusioned young people eager to assist in an anti-fascist
revival of their country. He was anxious to do something himself, but he
didn't know where to offer his services.** [ ** Three months later I found
Butz still unemployed, doing odd jobs for his father, and I helped him obtain
a position as an announcer at Radio Munich.]
Two Russian DPs took me to see my next contact, Heinrich Sohl, a man who had
hidden them in his cabin just outside Mainz when the Nazis were herding all
the forced laborers across the Rhine. Sohl, a sixty-year-old tailor and
pre-1933 Communist member of the city administration, was exuberant at the
expulsion of the Nazis. "We German anti-Nazis have faith in the United
Nations," he declared. "Roosevelt himself said: 'We must support the Germans
who were not fascists."' (It was April 13th, Roosevelt had died the day
before!) The local Communists, according to Sohl, were now more numerous than
ever before and were desirous of cooperating with the other anti-fascists in
the administration of the city. He himself was waiting to be called to a post
where he would be able to put his experience to use.
Every morning in front of MG headquarters, obsequious, sniveling Willi Kuhn,
a Cologne journalist, waited to ask me for cigarettes or to grovel for other
favors. He, too, he assured me had been an anti-Nazi. Once he had declared
aloud in a Luxembourg drugstore that the Nazis would never win the war. The
store was crowded, some Nazis were present, but he had said it anyway. In
addition, he had belonged to an anti-Nazi group in Cologne, which, from what
I could gather, assembled periodically and bemoaned its misfortune at living
in a country ruled by Nazi gangsters. But Kuhn did write several articles for
possible use on our radio or in our press. He needed much guidance and a
strong injection of backbone.
"Come in, come in, how happy I am to see you," exclaimed Dr. Betz, one of the
two Mainz physicians who had not joined the local Nazi medical association.
Like Stenz, the man of affairs, Betz rejoiced at the opportunity to speak
French, which he spoke more abominably than Stenz and twice as fast. With
obvious relish, Betz gave me information on Dr. Richter, the former head of
the Nazi medical association. Betz had incurred Richter's wrath by continuing
to collaborate with Jewish physicians after 1933 and by refusing to
contribute to Nazi charities. Betz was friendly, undoubtedly reliable, and
like the others, anxious to assist in rebuilding a better Mainz.
Then there was a little man named Schneider, a worker who sputtered with
excitement at his first opportunity to present evidence against local Nazis.
He assured me that many of his friends would be just as enthusiastic about
providing such material. People like Schneider had difficulty in directing
information about Nazis to the proper people. German and American officials
were so overworked that they could not follow up evidence of the kind that
Schneider was able to provide.
Dr. Schmidt, the head of the theological seminary, was too busy to be able to
see me for an extended interview, but he found time to dictate a long history
of the events in Mainz from the time of the great air-raid to the fall of the
city. The numerous other individuals with whom I spoke were equally as
enthusiastic about being of assistance. The spirit in the city among the
anti-Nazis was inspiring.
The Nazis in Mainz, on the other hand, were as despondent and beaten as the
anti-Nazis were elated and enthusiastic. I spoke with three leading Party
members. Wilhelm Haertner, formerly the chief bridge designer for the
Wehrmacht, a man with an ascetic mien and Van Dyke beard, who bore the title
of professor (awarded to him by Hitler himself) with disarming dignity,
insisted that as an "artist" he knew nothing about anything and felt no
responsibility for any events of the past twelve years, but he was seared.
Dr. Richter, head of the Nazi medical association, looking like Stenz's
description of Nazis as "boxers and gangsters," a real movie version of a
Party member with his big bald head, dueling scars and general sullen,
porcine appearance, and Georg Wittig, a softspoken old schoolmaster, both
moaned that they had been "lied to and betrayed" (belogen und betrogen).
Hitler had promised them victory, but at the beginning of 1945 (four months
before VE day), they had begun to lose faith, realizing that Goebbels had
been duping them with his propaganda. They had, of course opposed Hitler's
discrimination against the Jews. � (Two of them were now in prison for their
cruelty to the Jews.) The charges against them, naturally, were mere
"hysterical denunciation."
The Nazis in Mainz were demoralized and frightened. Jakob Steffan, the Police
President, and the most vigorous official in the city administration, a
prisoner for six years in the Dachau concentration camp, was rounding them up
and putting them behind bars or forcing them to clear the rubble and repair
the sewers. When I was finally able to corner Steffan � he was always on the
run or in the midst of an important conference � he told me: "They (the
Nazis) are going to have to rebuild at least in small measure what they have
destroyed."
Steffan was the anti-Nazi hero of Mainz. As soon as I arrived in the city, I
was immediately referred to him, just as the MG officers had been when they
entered the city on March 23rd, the day after Mainz fell. An aggressive
Social Democratic Reichstag deputy until 1933, and a participant in the July
20th (1944) Putsch against Hitler, he had fought the Nazis right untill the
day we arrived, traveling through the countryside during the last week of the
battle to convince the Volkssturm leaders of the uselessness of further
resistance. He told me he had organized 10,000 men from "mouth to ear" in the
Mainz area to cooperate with us when we would begin to attack the city.
Since the "liberation" Steffan had been working exuberantly and tirelessly.
"See Steffan" had become the watchword in the city. Anti-Nazis needing living
quarters "saw Steffan" and a Nazi was moved to make room. A dangerous Nazi
was still free; somebody "saw Steffan" and another Nazi went to jail. He
carried an inordinate burden in the administration of the city.
Stocky, well-built, youthful though in his fifties, Steffan had tempestous
energy and exhausted his listeners with his enthusiastic, intense
conversation. "We will show the world that the majority of Germans are
upright and will merit a place among the nations of the world," Steffan
assured me and I nodded agreement. "Now the German people can appreciate
Matteoti's famous words: 'Freedom is like the air and the sun. One must lose
them in order to appreciate them."'
When I left his office, I said: "We would not be so uncertain of our task in
Germany if there were men like you throughout the nation."
"But there are", he replied, "in every city, there are antiNazis. They will
come forth. If you use them, the job will not be an impossible one."
A good partner for Steffan was Michel Oppenheim, the levelheaded,
unemotional, efficient and reliable assistant to the mayor. He had been the
head of the Jewish community in Mainz and was one of the last Jews remaining
in the city, having escaped being sent to a concentration camp through the
assistance of some anti-Nazi officials in the local Gestapo. A few days
before I spoke with him, he had met his son, a Counter Intelligence agent in
the US Army, for the first time since their separation many years before.
Although cognizant of the difficulties to be experienced in rebuilding his
country, Oppenheim was nevertheless electing to remain in Germany. Like
Steffan, Oppenheim, too, was badly overworked.
I was not favorably impressed by the mayor. Dr. Walter had been the only
member of the former Nazi city administration who had not joined the Party
even though the Nazis had attempted to bribe him to do so with a promise of a
good position in the provincial government. The Bishop of Mainz had
suggested, him to MG as a suitable mayor for the city. In my conversation
with him, he belligerently emphasized that the Germans shared the guilt for
the war with many other nations, including America, and insisted that we
would have to send back the prisoners of war as quickly as possible to
rebuild their homeland and that we, too, would have to assist in rebuilding
Germany. This was even before the war was over. A combat GI would have told
this German where to get off in no unprofane terms. I was not surprised to
read several months later, in September, that the French (who occupied Mainz
in July) had dismissed Walter from his position and appointed someone else in
his place.
The MG detachment responsible for the appointment of these officials, for the
enthusiasm of the anti-Nazi elements in the city and for the general
administration of the area was composed of four majors and about 10 GIs and
NCOs. Originally there had been 12 officers responsible for the 250,000
inhabitants of Mainz and the surrounding countryside, but eight of them had
been transferred to other districts after we had broken across the Rhine. One
of the enlisted men was the only person in the detachment who spoke German.
None of the officers had had more than a brief conversational course in the
language.
Much of the time at Military Government Headquarters was spent in passing on
travel permits, acting on complaints against our troops for plundering, rape,
and shooting rampages, in following up reports on the whereabouts of
important Nazis, assisting the German police against pillaging foreign
workers, and investigating subversive activities of Nazis in the country
areas. In addition, each officer had a full set of special assignments
(health, security, etc.), which were themselves full time jobs.
When we consider that the entire Nazi administration and most of the Nazi
institutions had collapsed at the fall of the city, we can appreciate why
this MG detachment was unable with its limited personnel to administer
satisfactorily the 250,000 Germans of the area living under war conditions.
Whole rural areas under its jurisdiction were practically unsupervised and
there were reports of Nazi gangs running rampant, of Americans being shot at
by Werewolves and of lynchings of DPs. Even in the city, the capable,
conscientious MG officers and the handful of energetic German administrators
were limited in what they could attempt.
To their credit, however, was the enthusiastic anti-fascist spirit of a large
portion of the population and the joy at the "liberation". We were fortunate,
of course, in finding so many Germans who had developed such healthy
attitudes concerning the future of Germany. The individuals with whom I
spoke, surely only a small number among the many people who had developed
this healthy resentment against the Nazis, were in agreement about the
necessity for punishing the war criminals, putting the Party leaders to work,
reconstructing the countries overrun by Hitler's armies, for paying
reparations and for the desctruction[sic] of the German armament industry.
Even Stenz, admittedly an apolitical businessman, was insistent about the
necessity for careful differentiation between the Nazis and the anti-Nazis.
Butz told of the possibility of making use of the hundreds of disillusioned
young people who could be inspired to assist in an anti-fascist revival of
their nation and the expectation of the German people that we would help them
and lead them in democratizing their country. Sohl expressed his faith in the
Roosevelt plans for Germany. Schneider, the worker, was enthusiastic about
helping to bring Nazis to justice.
What was so amazing in Mainz was the unity of opinion among such a variety of
people about the pressing problems confronting the city. Stenz, the
businessman, Sohl, the Communist, and Dr. Schmidt, the head of the
theological seminary, were in basic agreement about the Nazis, about
democratization, reparations and the destruction of the German war potential.
Many of our MG men could have learned from some of these Germans, who were
accepting unreservedly the Eisenhower Declaration and the statements of the
President and of the other United Nations leaders about the purposes of the
war against Nazi Germany.
But Mainz had been under the Nazis for 12 years. Although a widespread
resentment against their excesses and brutality had developed during the last
months of the war, a thorough democratic regeneration of the city required
careful planning and a long-range program to overcome the demoralization,
con-fusion and nazification resulting from the years of Goebbels' propaganda
and Gestapo terror. For all the goodwill of the MG men and of their German
appointees no complete victory
over the Nazis was possible without the establishment of a firm democratic
base in the people, utilizing the determination, enthusiasm and anti-fascist
unity that existed at the time. In Mainz we had an excellent opportunity to
make use of the anti--Nazi resentment of the population while it was still
fresh and militant.
Jakob Steffan had been very reassuring when he told me that we would find
anti-Nazis with whom to work in every German city. But unfortunately, neither
he nor MG was even working with all the anti-Nazis in their own city. To
establish a firm democratic base in Mainz, they had to assemble all the
democratic forces � the representatives of the churches, of the pre-Nazi
democratic parties, of the different professions, of the trade unions, of the
anti-Nazi businessmen � and involve them in activity. These leaders could
cooperate with MG and the German officials in planning the future of the
city, discussing and clarifying fundamental ideological questions like the
question of guilt posed by the mayor in his conversation with me, in
mobilizing the youth, rounding up the Nazis, assisting in maintaining
security and assuring proper distribution of food. If given a chance to
participate in planning the future of their city, Stenz, Butz, Schneider,
Sohl � all the anti-Nazis with whom I had spoken � would have worked at their
task with the same vigor and enthusiasm that Steffan had shown after he had
been appointed the municipal police president.
Three months later, shortly before Mainz was taken over by the French, I
returned to the city to visit my friend Jakob Steffan, who had since been
appointed Regierungspraesident of Rheinhessen, the official in charge of the
entire area about Mainz. Looking out of the window of his office at the block
of destroyed buildings across the street, Steffan remarked: "Yes, we are
ready to begin all over again, anew. If you people weren't here, we would
have a real revolution and set up a true people's republic."
I didn't fully realize what he meant then. MG had been persevering,
conscientious and anti-Nazi. He meant, of course, that MG had not provided a
real basis for a dynamic and lasting democratization of the city. That
required mobilizing the people. Our failure to initiate such a popular
democratic movement at this time was to have lasting repercussions in the
history of the occupation. Never again were we to have such an opportunity to
introduce a program of democratization in our Zone. But this was more than
1067, the SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) book of
directives, had foreseen.
"The Anti-Fascist Bastards"
"We shall bear our full responsibility, exercise our full influence, and
bring our full help and encouragement to all who aspire to peace and freedom."
--From speech in New York, October 23, 1944.
Mainz is on the west bank of the Rhine. Further north on the east bank are
the great industrial centers of the Ruhr with their pre-1933 traditions of
militant opposition to the Nazis. Because these cities had to wait longer for
their "liberation," the citizens were angrier and more aggressive when we
finally arrived than the Mainzers had been. Their opposition to the Nazis was
also further developed and better organized.
At the end of April, shortly after I left Mainz, the GIs entering
Duesseldorf, one of the largest of the Ruhr centers, a city with a population
of 540,000, saw individual Germans white-washing over the Nazi slogans
painted on the walls and tacking up posters. Some of the fellows walked over
to see what the announcement was. "Damn, these Germans, you never know what
you're going to find next with them." There was usually one fellow who could
make out the German for his buddies, a German-American GI from Milwaukee or a
Jewish fellow who knew some Yiddish and got along in German. The posters
called for complete support of the American Military Government, carried the
orders we had broadcast to German civilians on our radio and urged united
resistance against Nazi subversive activity. The organization responsible for
the placards was the ANTIFAKO (an abbreviation for Anti-Fascist Fighters
Organization), a group including representatives of all the local anti-Nazi
factions � the workers of the powerful trade union movement in the city, the
businessmen, Catholics, Communists, etc. and was presumably the kind of
anti-Nazi council that had appeared so desirable in Mainz.
Now the GIs didn't see anything wrong with Germans showing a little spirit
and initiative. But after the combat troops, came MG. The posters were torn
down and the group was ordered to dissolve. According to the local Gestapo
records of arrests and imprisonments for anti-Nazi activity � records
available to MG � the Duesseldorf Antifako had been formed as early as 1943
and had been active since then in propagandizing the civilian population and
transient Wehrmacht troops.
Like the Duesseldorf Antifa (as the anti-fascist councils were generally
called), numerous other anti-Nazi underground groups had been formed in 1943
after the battle of Stalingrad in response to the appeals of the Free Germany
Committee broadcasts over Radio Moscow. This Committee had been formed by
anti-Nazi German � emigres and disillusioned prisoners of war captured at
Stalingrad to provide the nucleus of an eventual popular anti-Hitler
movement. General von Seydlitz, a representative of a famous Junker military
family, had volunteered to head the Committee, which quickly became a mass
organization of officers, soldiers and intellectuals. In time allotted to
them on the Moscow shortwave transmitter, Free Germany speakers analized the
situation at the front, explaining why victory for the Nazis was unattainable
chimera and pointed out to their countrymen at home how they were being
further and further enslaved and oppressed for the benefit of a small number
of Bonzen (bigshots) and German industrialists. Catholic and Protestant
clergymen, Junkers, intellectuals and ordinary soldiers all directed their
appeals to their own groups at the front and at home.
The defeat at Stalingrad had considerably undermined German faith in ultimate
victory. Germans in various parts of the country told me that even Goebbels
had been unable to hide the implications of the shattering defeat inflicted
on the "invincible" Wehrmacht at the Volga. There were muffled drums on the
radio, and the Fuehrer decreed three days of mourning. Every town in the
Reich had sons "missing at Stalingrad" and so numerous were the women in
mourning that the government semi-officially discouraged the wearing of black.
It would have been unrealistic in 1943, however, to expect even the mild
demonstration of the Aacheners or the expression of any disagreement among
Army commanders or of willingness to desert among the troops. In the Reich,
potential opposition leaders had either been murdered, imprisoned or were
being kept under constant surveillance. The indoctrinated youth was still
fanatically loyal. The war profiteers were making too much money to think of
collaborating with the enemy as did the Veltrup men a year later in Aachen.
In addition, the Nazi terror apparatus, the traditional obedience to
authority and the chauvinist nationalism of many of the Germans militated
against any significant anti-Nazi action aside from the formation of small
underground anti-Nazi cells.
After the successful opening of the second front, however, the doubt and
pessimism after Stalingrad developed to widespread defeatism, especially
among some of the top military leaders. Many of the aristocratic militarists,
fearful of a revolution perhaps more vigorous than that of 1919, joined with
some sincere German democrats (like Mainz's Steffan) in the abortive July
20th Putsch, six weeks after D-Day. The Free Germany Committee, blamed by
some of the Nazi propagandists for the revolt, took advantage of the
confusion to broadcast a speech by Field Marshal von Paulus urging the end of
the hopeless war without further unnecessary bloodshed and destruction. From
then on, judging by the ever-increasing attacks we read in digests of Nazi
broadcasts and of the Nazi press, the Free Germany propaganda began to take
hold.
The Nazis rounded up all the collaborators in the Putsch as well as all
suspected potential opposition leaders, but they could not prevent the troops
and the civilians from realizing that defeat must be very likely if the
generals were ready to revolt. Eventually, as one defeat followed another,
PWs (prisoners of war) began to recount to our interrogators the bitter jokes
circulating among the Landsers about the secret "V" weapon, which Hitler had
promised would bring final victory. It was actually a pole with a white flag,
they declared, or a rocket to carry Hitler to London to sue for peace or
nothing more than the sick, old and helpless replacements scraped from the
bottom of the draft barrel.
To counter the increasing apathy and discontent among the troops and
civilians, the Nazis characteristically instituted a new series of terrorist
measures: the mobilization of the Volkssturm, the forced evacuation of areas
in the line of the allied advance, the extermination of the families of
soldiers who deserted and the posting of SS men behind the lines to shoot men
who retreated. Resentful of Nazi cruelty, weary of bombing raids, aware at
last of the lies of Goebbels' propaganda and the corruption of the Party
leaders, the people waited eagerly for the end of the war. In Aachen, the
citizens demonstrated for the surrender of their city; in Mainz individual
citizens assisted in bringing about the disintegration of the defense; in
Duesseldorf the anti-Nazis formed a committee to coordinate the efforts of
the opposition against the Nazis.
But in some communities the Antifas � often based on the original Free
Germany Committees, but considerably broadened to include the enlarged
anti-Nazi coalition � mobilized the population for actual open warfare
against the Nazis and the SS. In Wuppertal, the enraged citizenry led by the
local Antifa rose up and saved their city from complete destruction and
unnecessary bloodshed. A textile center od[sic] 400,000 in the Rhineland,
Wuppertal had long been a home of anti-Nazi activity. Before 1933, Goebbels
himself and squads of storm troopers had been beaten up by the local
population in street fighting. After the establishment of the Nazi regime,
mass trials were held in the city and thousands of workers were sentenced to
long terms at hard labor. At the end of the war, more than 7,000 Wuppertal
citizens were being held in concentration camps and prisons for anti-Nazi
activity.
The Antifa had organized the uprising carefully. At a given signal
detachments of workers seized important buildings and communication points.
The leaders of the revolt succeeded in persuading detachments of Wehrmacht
troops to join them and after bloody street battles, the workers and the
troops overwhelmed the SS and captured the Gauleiter (Nazi governor of the
province), the chief of the Gestapo and many prominent local Nazis.
The citizens formed an anti-fascist municipal council, established an
anti-fascist armed police force and waited to greet the American troops, who
entered the city three days later, without meeting any opposition or
suffering any casualties "This is the way we like to take a town," said the
GIs.
But after the combat troops, came MG. "We do the appointing and administering
here," the officers promptly announced and disarmed the police and dissolved
the Antifa. They didn't want any "bolsheviks" thinking they could take over
now that the Nazis had been kicked out. The MG officers then proceeded to
appoint their own kind of German officials, the Aachen type. In September, a
few months later, the MG-appointed police president was being investigated by
the British, the final occupiers of the area, for war crimes against Russian
forced laborers. MG had preferred him to those who had revolted against his
kind.
Perhaps the strongest and most representative of all the Antifas was the one
in Leipzig. This city of the ancient fair, the home of a powerful trade union
movement and famous center of anti-fascism before 1933, the city whose mayor,
Goerdeler, had been one of the organizers of the July 20th Putsch, was
naturally a leader in this anti-fascist movement. When American troops
entered Leipzig, on the morning of April 18th, they saw white flags on all
the buildings. There had hardly been any resistance from the Nazis and there
were very few casualties among our troops in the battle for this very
important industrial center. The National Committee of Free Germany, one of
the first formed in Germany in response to the Moscow Radio, had roused the
people against the SS and facilitated our entry. Leaflets had been
distributed a week before we arrived. Mimeographed propaganda and instruction
sheets had been posted on walls and kiosks with a ten-point program for
cooperation with the allies, punishment of Nazi criminals, abolition of the
blackmarket, efficient organization of rubble clearance and reconstruction
and the establishment of an antifascist administration and police force.
Bewildered by all this Free Germany Committee activity, MG initially took no
action although individual MG officers objected to the authority being
exercised by the group. During the first week, the committee attempted to
assist the Americans in rounding up important Nazis and in the selection of
anti-Nazi municipal officials. Recruitment booths were opened to enroll new
members in the anti-fascist crusade. Additional mimeographed literature was
distributed. The members of the committee, which included Catholic and
Protestant leaders, trade unionists, Social Democrats and Communists, former
inmates of concentration camps as well as participants in the July 20th
Putsch, were filled with enthusiasm at the opportunity to start a new
democratic regime in their city.
But this enthusiasm suddenly disappeared when an MG major declared to a Free
Germany Committee deputation: "I wish we had fought for this city. We would
have shot you people along with the SS. You bastards are no better than the
Nazis."
The subsequent dissolution of the committee ended the organized anti-fascism
of Leipzig with all its enthusiasm, energy and hope. Steffan, the police
president of Mainz, had told me: "In every city, there are anti-Nazis. They
will come forth. If you use them, the job will not be an impossible one."
Well, they had "come forth," the anti-fascists, the people who considered
themselves the inheritors of another German tradition than that of Frederick
the Great, Nietzsche and Alfred Rosenberg. These were the Germans about whom
the GIs would say: "Hell, you've got to put some Germans in control, the best
ones are those who fought the Nazis and really want to fix up this country.
We don't see anything wrong with these guys."
But for MG, guarding against the "red menace" and "communist infiltration" by
"Moscow agents," frightened and cynical enough to wish that we had fought for
this city � with our guys dying so they could have their little joke against
the "bolsheviks" � it meant -nothing to reject with an order the whole
development from the initial doubt after Stalingrad, through the dangerous
period of the organization of small underground anti-Nazi cells to the
upsurge of hatred and the final revolt against the SS � against the SS, the
gangsters who had murdered unarmed American prisoners at Stavelot. As though
you could find as many trustworthy Germans as you wanted just by looking
around and picking them out.
But even after the war was over and the occupation was established,
independent Antifas continued to spring up all over the Zone. The Germans
were frightened. The Nazis were still running around loose. In many
communities, the Americans were as ignorant and lax about the Party members
and the reactionaries as they had been in Aachen. The terror of the last
months of the war had shaken people of all classes, professions and
ideologies. They united to see to it that the Nazis and the terror would not
come to power again.
But the tragic end of this hopeful political development was symbolized in
the MG intelligence bulletins from all over the Zone. MG officers divided
their reports on German subversive activities into two categories: a. Nazi
subversive activity; and b. anti-fascist subversive activity. The major in
Leipzig had spoken for many of his colleagues when he said: "You bastards are
no better than the Nazis."
". . . Enough With the KzIer"* [Kzler (pronounced kahtsettler) is the
convenient German abbreviation, unchanged in the singular and plural, for the
former inmates of concentration. camps.]
"The price for civilization must be paid in hard work and sorrow and blood.
The price is not too high. If you doubt it, ask those millions who live today
under the tyranny of Hitlerism."
--From radio talk to the nation, April 28, 1942.
In many cases our troops had arrived at the concentration camps just in time,
spare minutes ahead of the SS machine guns; Himmler had ordered the
extermination of all the Kzler to prevent their liberation by the allied
troops. Our men walked in dazed horror through the piles of shriveled,
unburied corpses, the crematories and the torture chambers. They realized
what the Kzler had experienced. Any man who could endure what these prisoners
had gone through must be a man of iron. The GIs were generous and
sympathetic, as Americans are. They provided the Kzler with food and clothing
and our medics nursed them.
The combat men understood that our victory was the victory of the
concentration camp inmates, too. They knew the Kzler honestly welcomed us as
liberators, not like the obsequious Nazis who thought they could escape what
was coming to them if they groveled before us and did a good soft-soap job.
But unfortunately, even most of our frontline men did not really appreciate
the Kzler � who they were and why they had been imprisoned. That was the
fault of the army orientation people. On our bulletin board in the Hotel
Bristol in Bad Nauheim, as on bulletin boards in detachments all over the
Zone, there were Information and Education Division posters showing pictures
of emaciated living skeletons and piles of corpses, for which the Germans as
a whole were blamed. The German political prisoners were to be pitied and
fed, sure, but who told our fellows that these Kzler were Hitler's first
opposition, the men we could best rely on in democratizing Germany.
Our men did not realize that some of the Kzler were really the first
casualties in the United Nations war against Hitler, having been prisoners of
war since 1933, when Hitler used the dictatorial power granted him by the
Reichstag to jail those whom he labeled "enemies of the Third Reich" � the
Communists, his bitterest opponents; the trade union leaders (to please the
industrialists and eliminate another potential resistance group) ; and the
Jews, whose property was confiscated and handed over to the Nazis, the
businessmen and the industrialists as the first booty. Next he turned on the
Social Democrats and the anti-Nazi intellectuals. And after 1937 and 1938
when Hitler initiated his attacks on the Churches, Catholic and Protestant
anti-Nazis joined the other antifascists in the concentration camps. To start
out on his program of international aggression, Hitler first had to defeat
the internal "enemies of the Third Reich." * The political prisoners in the
concentration camps had been our allies, Hitler's first victims. [* According
to the President of the German Democratic Republic, Wilhelm Pieck, almost
50,000 members of the Communist Party alone were murdered by the Nazis.]
In the concentration camps (almost there alone) the opposition to the Nazis
was continued and the spirit of resistance was intensified. A great
brotherhood of anti-Nazi struggle was forged among the Kzler. In Buchenwald,
one of the largest of the camps, a tightly-knit anti-fascist movement
comprising some 20 international sections and representing all political
anti-fascist groups operated effectively in disseminating the latest news
from BBC and Radio Moscow, in conducting passive resistance against the SS
guards, in forging passes and medical certificates to save the lives of
individual inmates and in protecting the group against spies and informers.
For many of our combat men and for the few MG officers who practiced the
policy of sharp discrimination between the Nazis and the anti-Nazis,
imprisonment in a concentration camp for anti-Nazi activity was a good
recommendation for appointment to a position of leadership in the new local
administrations. But here, too, the combat men were ahead of the general run
of MG officers in their clarity about our aims and in their determination to
win a complete victory over Nazism and German militarism. Timorous, defeatist
MG officers were frightened by the "red menace" � the Communists formed the
largest single contingent in the camps � and were wary about appointing Kzler
to administrative positions. * [* The case of the town commissioner of the
small Bavarian community of Schaeftlarn is a good example of the difference
of attitude between a combat officer and an MG "occupation official." The
commanding officer of the American troops that had captured the village had
appointed the Kzler to be the town commisioner. A few weeks later, however,
when the Kzler announced to all the local Party officials that he was going
to clean them all out of the local administration and hold them accountable
for the funds of the Nazi Welfare agency, these Nazis denounced him to the
newly-arrived American MG lieutenant as a "communist" and he was removed from
his position. The local mayor, however, an admitted member of the Nazi Party
since 1933, was allowed to remain in office. The Kzler unsuccessfully
petitioned for reinstatement, noting, for one thing, that he had in fact not
been a Communist, having been imprisoned by the Nazis for Social Democratic
activity.
The combat troops, in this instance, as in many others, had captured the town
from the Nazis; the MG officer had lost it again and the "bolshevik bogey"
had once more been the cause for our retreat.]
SHAEF was certainly at fault in neglecting to provide clear direction to the
MG officers and the occupation troops about the Kzler. Although according to
the directive of June 21, 1945, the Kzler were to be granted the same
treatment as foreign displaced persons, many officers were lax even in
assuring the Kzler of this limited advantage. Almost everywhere the
non-fraternization ruling, forbidding social contact with the Germans, was
enforced against the ex-concentration camp inmates as well as the rest of the
population. An American lieutenant I knew was actually warned by his superior
officer that he would be brought up on charges if he continued to visit his
18-year-old cousin, the last survivor of a family that had been gassed at
Auschwitz, whom he had found after weeks of searching. And when Kzler making
their way home on foot would ask for food or for a place to sleep, American
troops, knowing little about the former political prisoners, would often tell
them bluntly that we gave no special treatment to any German or would send
the emaciated, ragged "beggar" to the local German mayor for German "charity."
Only a very few MG officers recognized their obligation to appoint Kzler to
important positions in the new, "democratic" German administrations,
regardless of the possible lack of experience of the former political
prisoners. (A considerable portion of the Kzler did recuperate sufficiently
to be able to assume positions of responsibility.) Cedric Belfrage, our
Information Control press officer in charge of licensing newspaper editors in
the Western District (all of the Zone except Bavaria and the Berlin sector),
was one who gave preference to the Kzler. "We may not have the finest
journalism," he told me, "but we will have an anti-Nazi press."
. But in August, 1945, four months after VE day, our investigators in various
cities of the Zone were reporting widespread dissatisfaction and
disillusionment among the Kzler. At the same time, MG intelligence bulletins
from different areas of the Zone were complaining about the former political
prisoners, who were "obstructing the proper functioning of the local
administrations with their constant protests and criticisms." Very few MG
officers were able to write home what my friend Captain Joe Shrank, MG
officer in Kusel, wrote to his wife on June, 5, 1945. One month after VE day,
Joe already boasted almost complete denazification in his two counties and
perhaps the best record of de-nazification and anti-fascism in the
American-occupied territory.
"Several veterans of Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps have returned
home to Kusel and the vicinity. I do not know how they made their way so far.
These were once men. I do not believe that any care or recuperation, however
solicitious and loving, can return these men to a normal state. I will not
attempt to describe them to you. One of them is particularly vivid in my
mind, a young man in spite of the deep lines of suffering on his face,
leaning on two canes and his whole body from head to foot shaking as if with
the ague. A Jew returned from Buchenwald yesterday to Glan-Munschweiler.
Sofsky, the Buergermeister, outdid himself in caring for this man. He threw a
Nazi out of his house and gave it to him. Sofsky then arranged for the bank
(did I tell you I reopened the bank with a non-Nazi director?) to loan him
enough marks to get started in his old business of cattle trading. And all in
one day! Incidentally, the wife of the SS major balked at obeying Sofsky's
order and resisted the gendarme who was doing his duty. He threw her into the
clink and when she comes before our MG court this Friday, I will put her in
jail for six months."
Rejected by MG, the Kzler found themselves in a demoralizing situation.
Except for the small core of other anti-Nazis, who were frequently having a
difficult time themselves in the "new democracy," the German population
resented the returning political prisoners. For them, the Kzler represented
collaborators with the enemy, the people who gained at the defeat of the
Reich. They were, as Hitler had called them, Volksschaedlinge, disgraces to
the German people. In our propaganda, the placards we had posted on the
public bulletin boards in every village and town, in our newspapers, on our
radio programs and in our concentration camp films, we had described the
corpses and starved bodies in the camps and asked "Who is guilty?" But we had
failed to present the political prisoners who emerged from the camps as
German heroes, courageous anti-Nazi fighters and the new 'leaders for the
regeneration of the nation. We had merely utilized the Kzler to impress the
Germans with their guilt and with their responsibility for their crimes
against the world. Naturally, they resented the Kzler.
When the democratic, German licensed press attempted to enlighten its readers
about the significance of the concentration camps, the reaction of the
nationalistic population was most unsatisfactory. In a flood of letters to
the editors of the outspoken Frankfurter Rundschau, a paper with several
Kzler on its staff, the readers complained that they did not want to read
anymore about "the past" or objected vehemently to the "attacks on German
honor" supposedly implied in the paper's articles on the concentration camps.
Even many of the so-called anti-Nazi and democratic conservative German
leaders resented the publicity given the Kzler. Herr Knappstein, later to
become an assistant to the minister for denazification in the Hessian
provincial cabinet and one-time editor of the defunct Frankfurter Zeitung,
the former New York Times of Germany, a paper that had managed to adapt
itself very well to the Nazis, told me that he considered the journalistic
level of the forceful anti-Nazi Frankfurt paper very low. He added with a
sneer, "Of course, that's what you Americans must expect if you insist on
employing Kzler." Knappstein, who was living in a very large, comfortable,
slightly damaged mansion, regretted that we had appointed Kzler as editors
without considering that the "subtle anti-Nazi activity" of the Frankfurter
Zeitung deserved more recognition than the dubious efforts of the people who
had had themselves thrown into concentration camps.
In the nationalistic rural communities where the peasants referred to them
contemptuously as "traitors," the Kzler had particular difficulty in
readjusting themselves. In one such community, the village of Lindenfels, the
former head of the local Communist Party, was unable to obtain any work when
he returned after ten years in a concentration camp. The mayor of the
nazified community, a slippery individual who had somehow never joined the
Nazi Party, offered him jobs four and five miles out of town, knowing that
the Kzler was too weak to walk that far daily and not strong enough, in any
case, to do farm work. This anti-Nazi ended up on public charity, referred to
maliciously as a "no good."
But in the cities, the situation of the Kzler was often even more critical
than in the hostile country towns, as the following letter reveals, written
to the local MG newspaper in June 1945, by a former prisoner at Dachau
describing his return to Munich and his disillusionment:
"The disappointment was great. We did not expect any special reception. We
ex-Kzler are simple and modest. But we did expect adequate living quarters,
food and an elimination of red tape. We were exhausted. All of us were sick.
But everyone of us had to go through all the red tape to receive our 40 marks
($4.00) and our ration points. My comrades were running around all day
attempting to buy or to obtain at least a shirt. Finally we were billeted at
the Stieler School. Liberated Kzler were in charge of the billets. They did
what they could, but the facilities were limited. The city government had
made no preparations. There were no washrooms or sinks. We had no towels, no
messkits, no blankets, etc. That was our convalescent home in Munich. This
was not what we had fought for.
"Some of the city employees were helpful, others were uncooperative. The Nazi
spirit has not disappeared in some cases. We cannot do anything. We are
always told that the directives come from higher headquarters � from the
Americans. I have found that the Americans show real understanding when
reasonable suggestions are made to them. I speak English fluently and can say
that the Americans act like gentlemen, but they say that we have to help
ourselves, that we must learn to administer our own country.
"I remember my dead comrades. They died as martyrs for freedom. What is
Munich doing for their survivors?"
Dr Karl Ruedrich
Ehrengutsstrasse 5.
To protect themselves and facilitate their negotiations with MG and the
German administrations, the Kzler banded together and formed their own
cooperative welfare agencies. In Munich, at the largest of these
cooperatives, thousands of former inmates were registered and provided with
special identification cards. In July, 1945, I saw lines of hundreds of
people waiting patiently with requests for jobs, clothing, shelter,
information about missing relatives and with complaints about individuals who
had denounced them and had them sent to concentration camps or about Nazis
who were still living in comfort while they were barely able to provide for
themselves. Requests for medical care were frequent too, since most of the
Kzler were suffering from severe physical debility and needed long rest cures
in sanatoria with sympathetic care and good food. Such care was almost
non-existent.
On my second trip to Munich a month later in August, 1-945, I brought the
officials of the welfare agency a huge box of cigarettes, soap, canned goods
and some odd articles of clothing contributed by fellows in our detachment.
The entire staff of the office assembled to gaze at the treasures I had
brought. Such a gift for these first fighters against Hitler was a phenomenon.
A particularly difficult problem for the returning Kzler was the job problem.
The Nazis in business and industry were 'hardly sympathetic to the Kzler. The
MG officers rarely gave them preference in administrative positions. On the
other hand, astute conservative German officials frequently appointed them to
unimportant positions in license bureaus, in the post office, etc. to get rid
of them. The Kzler were considered objects of charity. Frequently in order to
obtain a position they were even forced to submit to demoralizing
humiliation. In Munich Police Sgt. Kohl, who had been denounced by his
superior, a Lt. Hase, and imprisoned for anti-Nazi activity back in 1934, was
rehired in 1945 as a subordinate to this very Lt. Hase, the man who had
denounced him.
Anti-Nazi businessmen, too, were stymied in their attempts to start again.
Those who had either been forced to sell their enterprises or had them
confiscated frequently found that there was no legal basis for demanding the
return of their property from the Nazis or Nazi-sympathizers who bad taken
them over. In many cases the Chambers of Business and Industry refused to
grant them licenses for new business enterprises. Little or nothing was being
done to provide anti-Nazis with at least an equal chance to compete with the
Nazis and the non-anti-Nazis who had been able to maintain and expand their
businesses during the Hitler regime.
Housing, however, provided the most demoralizing problem of all. Throughout
the Zone, Kzler were submitting the a[d]dresses of important Nazis who should
have been forced to move to provide living quarters for anti-fascists. It
would have, of course, been feasible for MG to order the mayors of German
communities to make Nazi dwellings available to the Kzler. Instead, there was
a confusing overlapping of authority, Nazi sabotage and American
indifference. In Munich when German anti-Nazis would obtain requisition forms
from the municipal housing authority, they would be rebuffed by sharp-tongued
Nazis, who would demand to see the American countersigning of the order. The
Nazi women living in the Highland Colony, a settlement built for elite early
members of the Nazi Party and for the participants in the 1923 Nazi Putsch,
not only refused to move when Kzler came with orders to evict them, but even
called American MPs and had the Kzler arrested for disturbing the peace. An
American MP told one Kzler that if he did not keep his mouth shut about the
situation in this Nazi housing colony, he would be sent back to Dachau again.
Many of these Nazi women, of course, were under the protection of high
American officers.
Throughout the Zone conditions were similar to those in Munich. On August
27th � three months after the end of the war � the Frankfurter Rundschau
complained in an editorial: "There is a much too drastic contrast today
between the material condition of the Nazis and of their victims and if this
condition continues, we will turn ourselves into a laughing stock... The
victims of the Nazis in the concentration camps... have received publicity
for months all over the world... And in Frankfurt hundreds of these victims
of fascism are going around without a decent suit of clothes, not to mention
their more tragic needs."
Seven months later, after attacking the local municipal administration for
its continued failure to aid the Kzler, the same paper indignantly reported:
"Almost a year after the liberation, the Allied (four Power) Control Council
has had to issue a law guaranteeing living quarters to the victims of
fascism." But by March, 1946, it was too late, people were weary of hearing
about the misery of the Kzler. They had had enough with the Kzler. The term
"Victim of Fascism" was no longer a term of special honor in the American
Zone.
Thus, instead of finding the Nazi criminals hanging from the lampposts and
the other Party members evicted from their homes and doing forced labor in
the streets, instead of receiving a joyous and triumphant welcome and being
offered leading positions in the new administrations in just repayment for
their early opposition to the Nazis � the political prisoners of the Nazis
returning home after years of suffering in their anti-fascist struggle met
disillusionment, cold indifference bureaucratic red tape and a great swindle
people were calling "democracy."
What had we done at the very beginning with our possibilities for completing
the victory, putting into effect the proclamations of the President, our
idealistic directives and the hopes of the GIs? We had been blind to the
possibility of harnessing the resentment of a large portion of the population
against the Nazis at the very end of the war; we had rejected the embryonic
democratic movement of the Antifas with their program for establishing a
strong, united effort of all the anti-Nazi forces; and we had callously
ignored the Kzler, who merited special treatment, having earned the right to
be considered our allies in the regeneration of Germany.
This was clear: if we did not step in with aggressive democracy to fill the
vacuum left by the collapse of the Nazi regime, the reactionaries, the Hitler
followers, masters of treachery and subterfuge, would creep back again.
pps. 29-58
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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