-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
-----
--Now it was discovered that the whole department was corrupt. The police
president, the Rundschau reported, had been giving preference in hiring to
former regular army soldiers and officers � called "the 12 year men" after
the length of their enlistment period. Under Nazi law these men had not been
allowed to join the Nazi Party and were, therefore, not excluded from the
police force by the denazification laws. They were, however, the most
fanatical Nazis and the most militaristic of all Germans.
That was the introduction. In February, 1946, it was discovered that an
efficiently organized group of Nazis in the police department had formed
their own so-called Justice Bureau and were holding special investigations
and forewarning and protecting local Nazis.--
---" 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
--[3]--
CHAPTER THREE
Crew Cuts And White Collars
"The issue of this war is the basic issue between those who believe in
mankind and those who do not � the ancient issue between those who put their
faith in the people and those who put their faith in dictators and tyrants.
There have always been those who did not believe in the people, who attempted
to block their forward movement across history, to force them back to
servility and suffering and silence."
--From report to Congress, January 7, 1943.
"WHO can object to the appointment of a 'conservative?' Conservatives are
reliable and experienced. Their large incomes .and good positions evidence
their capability. Even the word 'conservative' implies restraint, dignity and
stability; in such, contrast to 'radical' or 'red', which immediately suggest
hysteria, troublemaking and impatience. You're safer with a conservative."
Had the combat men been informed of this rationalizing double-talk, they
would have been infuriated. "As though the men who had an easy life making
money during the war can be relied on to demilitarize Germany or rebuild this
country into a peaceful nation," they would have exclaimed in disgust,
remembering what they had learned from their orientation lectures, the army
movies, the Stars and Stripes and Yank, the Army magazine. "Who can expect a
German who has been screaming at his subordinates all his life and grumbling
about the 'stupid masses' to lead others to democracy? And what kind of
denazification do you guys expect from a German whose best pals are Nazis,
who had a good position under Hitler and liked a lot of what the Fuehrer was
doing? Expect such a character to organize a popular anti-Nazi movement? And
what do you think this yes-man with his good clothes, and his 'jawohl, Herr
Captain' says about us when he talks to his cronies?' Do you think he likes
seeing us here? Why, this guy learned to sing Deutschland Ueber Alles when
kids the same age in America were singing Ring Around the Rosie."
Well, was the anti-Nazi orientation to be discarded when the, war was over?
Or had we really meant what we were saying?' It was hard to tell. Just a
month after VE day, right in Frankfurt, the HQ city of the US Army of
Occupation and the seat of Military Government (until MG moved to Berlin at
the end od[sic] 1945) and the town best known to GIs throughout the Zone �
almost as though it was done purposely to show that the starry talk of the
war was over and "reality" had returned again � MG appointed a mayor who had
been a Wehrmacht major, an expediter in a large munitions plant that had been
turning out war materials for use against GIs all during the war, and a Nazi
theoretician advocating, among other Hitler doctrines, the use of Fuehrer
dictatorship as the best way of running a city government.
MG was enthustiastic about their official, too. "Blaum is a good man, he's
efficient, he's had organizational and administrative experience, he'll get
things moving, he's the man we want," they said. Blaum, however, something of
a prima donna, did not want to accept the position � too much responsibility,
too much danger of making enemies and too little opportunity for the future
since he might be voted out of office. after a year. But MG was determined.
They promised him their full support and offered him an extraordinary
contract committing the city of Frankfurt to pay him and his six assistants
for a term of 12 years even if he were voted out of office in the meantime.
During these first months, the Frankfurt citizens were too busy just keeping
alive to bother much about their municipal administration. They knew little
about their mayor and nothing about his agreements with Military Government.
But as the summer moved along, life became more normal. Big American
bulldozers were piling the rubble along the curbs of the more important
avenues. Requisitioning of houses for the HQ .compound was coming to an end.
Stores were reopening and factories were starting back to work. The first
American movies were being shown in the neighborhood theatres. Then Suddenly
at the end of August, the Frankfurter Rundschau lashed out editorially at the
inefficient bureaucracy in the city administration and demanded. "When are we
going to have a city council?" Since the publication of the Potsdam
Declaration the first week in August, with its authorization of political
parties and guarantees for democratic local government, Frankfurt political
leaders, trade unionists, churchmen and other leading citizens had been
urging the Oberbuergermeister (Lord Mayor) to establish a council to assist
him in administering the city, as other mayors had done even months before.
But Blaum wanted no assistance. "Talk doesn't help," he complained, "what we
need is more efficient organization and more experienced administrators."
Ten days later came the big "attack." (Unused to any democratic opposition to
public officials, the local citizens were startled at the criticism voiced by
the newspaper). The Rundschau printed as its lead story Blaum's speech to the
first session of the city council, which he had finally reluctantly
appointed. According to the paper, Blaum had expressed regret that the
denazification of the municipal administration was leaving him without
properly qualified personnel to run the city. (The newspaper editors did not
know, of course, that Blaum. had even threatened MG with his resignation if
the denazification program was going to necessitate the removal of his
"indispensable specialists, who," he insisted, "may have been members of the
Nazi Party, but were not really Nazis.") What was strange, however, as the
paper pointed out, was that when a councilman, suggested the council might be
able to recommend replacements, one of the mayor's assistants immediately
retorted that practically all vacancies had already been filled. The mayor
and his assistants wanted no suggestions in the selection of municipal
personnel, certainly not from the "leftists." "With such a philosophy guiding
its leader" the paper warned in its editorial, "our present municipal
administration will not master the political and practical problems of the
hour."
Blaum, the ex-army major, was furious. He took to the radio and wrote an open
letter to the paper explaining that he had never opposed denazification; he
had merely regretted the lack of replacements for the large number of
specialists being dismissed. But Blaum had had enough "insubordination." From
now on, he announced, the proceedings of the city council were to remain
secret.
I went down to Frankfurt to investigate the reactions of the citizens to this
unprecedented "attack" on a leading official. It was the end of September,
1945, about the time when Eisenhower recalled Patton to Frankfurt for a
report on the corruption and lack of democracy in Bavaria. The political and
religious leaders of the city, I found, were divided into two camps. Blaum's
supporters praised him as stable, hardworking, trustworthy and efficient. His
opponents countered that he was undemocratic, high-handed and impossible to
work with. The MG officer said: "Yes, Blaum is something of a problem, a
little temperamental. But he's a good man � efficient, hardworking, the best
possible choice for the job."
When his secretary ushered me into his office in the handsome mansion that
was being used as the mayor's palace, Blaum rose from behind his expansive
bare oak desk and advanced energetically to great me. He was immaculately
though conservatively dressed. He looked much younger than his 55 or 60 years
probably because of his square haircut so typical of German bureaucrats. I
thought he held himself a little stiff � ex-Major Blaum. Since it was late in
the afternoon and I was anxious to return to our headquarters, I asked Blaum
immediately about his run-in with the newspaper. He leaned back, turned his
chair a little to the side, looked up in the air, coughed and started to
orate. I had to push him back to the subject.
"Oh, I don't think the affair very important at all," he declared. "This was
just an example of the kind of 'leftist' and 'Nazi' attacks to be expected
from such a paper." (Several of the editors of the Rundschau had been sitting
in concentration camps while Blaum was shouting Heil Hitler! and trying to
improve the Nazi munitions output). "After all," he continued "many of these
people who have been imprisoned want things to move faster than is possible."
Blaum. was one of those who did not want any changes in Germany. He was
content to return Germany to what it had been years back.) Leaning forward to
emphasize his point, he added: "Sometimes criticism should be kept within the
administration, too."
In general criticism of the newspaper, Blaum stated: "I think that a German
paper ought to do more than just publish MG handouts. The population wants to
know more than what MG presents to them. They want to know the actual
situation (as though MG did not present the truth!) in other parts of
Germany. And the people don't want the past constantly thrown up at them
either." (Blaum was referring to the accounts of Nazi atrocities and stories
of the concentration camps being published in the paper.)
The needling of the mayor continued. At the beginning of November, the
Rundschau printed an open letter of protest signed by the leading citizens of
one of the Frankfurt boroughs demanding an investigation of the corruption
and inefficiency in Blaum's municipal housing bureau. Blaum's reaction was
characteristic. He forbade city officials to issue any statements to the
press or answer any questions from reporters. First he had made the
proceedings of the city council secret; now he wanted to keep all the
activities of the administration from the press.
At last on November 13th, the Frankfurt autocrat was irrefutably exposed in a
Rundschau editorial entitled "Fuehrer Principle or Democracy." The editors
had found an article by Blaum in the 1940 issue of the Reichsverwaltungsblatt
(German Administration Yearbook), an important official publication edited by
the Chief of the Reichschancellory, Reichsminister Dr. Lammers, one of
Hitler's closest collaborators and one of the leading Nazis in Germany. Blaum
had attempted to show how the Fuehrer principle of autocratic dictatorship
had been employed "successfully" in German civil administration in
Alsace-Lorraine even under the Kaiser. (Blaum had been a member of the
Strasbourg municipal government then.) "The city charters," he had written,
"introduced then (before World War I) made the position of mayor in
Alsace-Lorraine really a Fuehrer position. The municipal council was under
the chairmanship of the mayor. It had no authority to discuss the current
administration or the appointment of civil servants or officials... The
accomplishments of the Strasbourg administrations were due to the healthy
Fuherer principle." * [* Blaum was in complete agreement with Hans Frank, the
noted Nazi theoretician and-war criminal, who had written the following about
the Fuehrer principle: "There the Fuehrer principle in administration means:
instead of the results of a majority vote, to entrust in each case the
decision to a definite person with clear-cut authority who will be solely
responsible toward above and who will carry out the execution of the decision
toward below." (German Law, Volume 11, Berlin, 1941, p. 2626, as quoted in
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pg.
1107, Vol. IV.)]
Now it was clear to the people why Blaum had tried to center all authority in
himself; why he had delayed appointing the city council; why he had regretted
the removal of specialists under the denazification laws and had refused to
accept any suggestions for replacements; and why he had rejected the joint
program recently submitted by the four political parties for preparing the
city against the hardships of winter. Now it was plain, too, why he had
dictatorially declared the sessions of the city council secret and had
forbidden city officials to speak to the press. He admired Fuehrers!
Now MG knew of his past, too � if they had not known before �, but our
officers maintained an "impartial" silence, benignly smiling at the "healthy
democratic difference of opinion" between the mayor and the newspaper, and
Blaum remained in office.
After this expose, a storm broke against the mayor. In De-cember, the
Rundschau attacked conditions in Blaum's police department. Three months
before when Kommissar Fries of the criminal police had suddenly been turned
over to the French for war crimes activity in Alsace, it was suspected that
all was not well in the police force. Now it was discovered that the whole
department was corrupt. The police president, the Rundschau reported, had
been giving preference in hiring to former regular army soldiers and officers
� called "the 12 year men" after the length of their enlistment period. Under
Nazi law these men had not been allowed to join the Nazi
Party and were, therefore, not excluded from the police force by the
denazification laws. They were, however, the most fanatical Nazis and the
most militaristic of all Germans.
That was the introduction. In February, 1946, it was discovered that an
efficiently organized group of Nazis in the police department had formed
their own so-called Justice Bureau and were holding special investigations
and forewarning and protecting local Nazis. The situation was so embarrassing
for Blaum that MG had to announce that it was assuming charge of the police
force. That stopped the questions from suspicious citizens. In May, 1946,
however, the French requested that Dr. Reichelt, second in command of the
police, be delivered to them as a war criminal. He had been a member of the
SS, another city official active in Alsace-Lorraine during the war. (Had
Blaum been distributing positions to his former associates in
Alsace-Lorraine? *) Shortly afterwards, the chief of police himself was
dismissed, no explanation being offered. [*In the article he had written for
Dr. Lammers in 1940, Blaum had presented himself as an authority on
Alsace-Lorraine, urging the germanization of the provinces, the forced
-expulsion of Frenchmen from the," areas and their replacement with "good
German stock." Also good Hitler doctrine.]
There was a whole series of exposes of Blaum's associates. The Rundschau
pointed out that a certain Dr. Schwander, the pre-1918 mayor of Strasbourg
whom Blaum had praised in his 1940 Fuehrer principle article, was acting as
Blaum's personal advisor � presumably teaching him how to carry out the
Fuehrer principle in Frankfurt. At the end of November an official Blaum had
sent to represent him at a meeting of the Frankfurt Kzler, described Germany
as the "Reich occupied by enemy troops." The Kzler protested that only Nazis
and ultra-nationalists considered us the enemy and not the liberators of
Germany. A few months later it was discovered that City Councilman Keller,
the official in charge of public education, had once declared that Hitler's
methods "thrilled and convinced" him. That helped to explain the complaints
about Nazis in the school system and the reports of military drill in
classrooms. Then the reason for the inefficiency of the housing office was
discovered, too. A clique of former officers, who as military men had never
been � never been allowed to be � members of the Party, were in charge there.
In all the city departments there were militarists and pro-Nazis in positions
of authority.
Blaum's connections with industrialists and businessmen from his days in the
munitions plant continued while he was mayor. Over the objections of
o[p]ponents who thought such work a task for the municipality itself, Blaum
made a covert arrangement with three local building firms for the
establishment of a corporation to clear the rubble. But evidently even Blaum
was not over-confident with his business arrangement, for he rejected
challenges to a race in reconstruction from the city of Dresden and from one
of the boroughs of Berlin. Almost a year after Blaum had set up his
corporation, the city council had to issue a direct appeal to the public for
assistance � the streets were not being cleared and the rubble was not being
removed. Under Blaum's plan only 150 men had been working on the huge job;
thousands were needed. But Fuehrers like Blaum do not believe in rallying the
people for a united popular effort.
It's difficult to say how much they were encouraged or supported by their
friend the mayor, who, according to MG Law No. 8, was responsible for the
denazification program in the city, but, in any case, the Frankfurt
businessmen and industrialists shared his dislike for denazification and were
sabotaging the program by failing to turn in reports on the political
backgrounds of their employees. Of course, the corruption in the police
department and the presence of dubious elements in other municipal agencies
made this sabotage comparatively easy.
The denazification program as a whole was in a bad muddle in Frankfurt. Not
everybody accepted the sabotage of democracy resulting from Blaum's Fuehrer
dictatorship without offering opposition. In January, 1946, the trade unions
voted to end their participation in the denazification program because the
denazification court procedures, like the sessions of the city council, were
kept secret. The decisions of the minority members of the investigating
committees were not published and the chairmen of the courts were chosen on
account of their legal training (and were frequently politically compromised
themselves) rather than on account of any proven antifascism. Blaum rejected
this request for more democracy and firmer anti-Nazism. The denazification
appeal boards he had appointed were exonerating 90% of all the Nazis who came
before them.
Two months later, the unions attacked the Lord Mayor in an open letter
published in the Rundschau for the delay in reconstruction and the ease with
which Nazis were escaping their forced labor in clearing rubble. But it was
difficult to fight against the autocratic mayor, supported as he was by MG.
The Frankfurters were helpless, for example, when Blaum withdrew all the
voting lists the day after he had promised the city council he would post
them for public examination. Several members of his administration, it was
discovered, had been, listed as ineligible to vote on account of their past
relations with the Nazis. Blaum was protecting them.
Finally, in the June, 1946, elections, Blaum's opponents obtained control of
the city council and were able to oust him. Significantly, it was only
through the action of the citizens that this Fuehrer was unseated. MG had
supported him consistently. At his last appearance before the city council on
July 19th, Blaum reported on his activities during his thirteen months in
office, repeating his old complaint that "the most difficult crises for the
city administration arose from the dismissals demanded by MG of people whom I
considered merely nominal Nazis." He announced for the first time, to the
astonishment of the councilmen, that he had frequently threatened MG that he
would resign if denazification were not slowed down. But Blaum was finally on
the carpet. His opponents accused him of stifling the democratic development
of the city With his Fuehrer policy, of splitting the community into sharply
opposing factions instead of unifying all groups in the fight against the
common hardships, and blamed him for the delay in reconstruction, the muddle
of denazification and the retention of militarists and Party members in
leading positions in the administration.
Blaum replied with his trump card. "It's all right if you dismiss me, but
you'll pay me just the same," he announced upon presenting the letter
describing his agreement with MG, according to which he and his six advisors
were to be paid for a period, of twelve years even if they were voted out of
office before the end of that term.
After much haggling, the municipality was able to escape this obligation. But
then when every one was thinking they had rid themselves of Blaum once and
for all, a fellow reactionary came to his assistance. Premier Geiler, head of
the Hessian provincial, government, announced that he was considering Blaum
for the very important post of Minister of Interior in the provincial cabinet
(head of the provincial police and supervisor of the municipal
administrations, no less). A howl of protest went up from Frankfurt, and
Blaum. disappeared temporarily from public life.
Blaum. was a real German "conservative" � "reliable, sophisticated, capable
and dignified." But unfortunately only a few Americans discovered that for a
German "conserving" meant opposition to "too much democracy,"
ultra-nationalism and hostility to any basic changes in that social order
that had been responsible for the tyranny, oppression and plunder of the past
twelve years. Blaum, of course, was not an isolated example in our Zone. All
over we had appointed similar reactionaries to positions of authority. Dr.
Geiler, the premier of the Province of Hesse, was a Blaum. type � a
"conservative." Our experiences with him were similar to our experience with
Blaum. As soon as Geiler, a former professor at the nationalistic,
Nazi-dominated, undemocratic University of Heidelberg, had been installed in
office, he proceeded to appoint like-minded men to his cabinet, some of whom
had to be removed, by MG after a few weeks because their potential records
were so flagrantly objectionable. During his 13 months in office there were
messy scandals in the food and justice ministeries, a logical result of his
appointment of German businessmen intent upon personal gain and typical
conservative politicians, renowned for their political irresponsibility, to
important governmental positions. A regular old-time autocratic German
bureaucrat himself, Geiler refused to testify before the parliamentary
committee investigating charges of corruption in his food ministry. A "good"
German, he publicly expressed his sympathy for the ex-officers living without
pensions and without the opportunities for employment they used to have. He
never was so solicitous of the Kzler. Like Blaum and other German
conservatives, Geiler objected to "too much democracy." He became enraged at
newspaper criticisms of his government; he did not "consider it suitable at a
time when our land bleeds from many wounds and is occupied by victor states
(!) to use the press for such political objectives..." ("Victor states" was
one of the terms for the occupation powers used by nationalists whose pride
had suffered at the defeat of the Nazis and the subsequent "disgrace" of the
occupation.) Ever chafing under our supervision, Geiler attempted to seize
control of the provincial information services before we had transferred this
authority to the Germans. Once at a public conference he openly expressed
opposition to another occupation power, the Soviet Union.
All over the Zone there were similar "conservatives" in power � such men as
Adam Stegerwald, one of the politicians chiefly responsible for aligning the
Catholics behind Hitler in 1933, acting as the Regierungspraesident of
Mainfranken (one of the five divisions into which Bavaria was divided); Treu,
the mayor of Nuremberg, who had to be removed in December, 1945 because of
his opposition to our denazification program; the first mayor of Bremen, who
according to the anti-Nazis had not been allowed to join the Party only
because of his previous membership in the Masonic Order; Mayor Adenauer of
Cologne, who was eventually dismissed by the British for his laxity in
denazification and exaggerated nationalism. And in Munich, as we shall see,
the entire Bavarian provincial government as well as the local administration
was in the hands of dubious "conservatives" and pro-Nazis.
Instead of utilizing the aggressive nucleus of anti-Nazis who were
enthusiastic about rooting out militarism and ultra-nationalism once and for
all in order to be able to look forward to a future of peace without
oppression, we turned to the staid, unreconstructed conservatives who
provided typical old-time German leadership, established undemocratic,
bureaucratic administrations and stifled the potential democratic force
latent in the resentment of a large portion of the population against the
Nazis at the end of the war. These men had failed once before to stop Hitler.
Many of them had even helped him to power. Now in more difficult times, they
could hardly he expected to withstand reaction, much less develop a peaceful
and democratic Germany.
The undermining of our war objectives was subtle. The German administrators
looked all right, seemed intelligent and experienced. They did little that
was overtly anti-democratic. Their leadership was all negative, however � a
kind of immeasurable slowing up, entangling and complicating, which was
dangerous at a time when a powerful, positive impetus was required.
Capitulation throughout the Zone to these defenders of the "old way" was more
than a mere temporary setback. This was the beginning of a great reversal.
Only a timely, thorough and courageous substitution of a dynamic democratic
policy would have ensured the consolidation of the victory envisioned by the
GIs and the wartime President and prevented an eventual collapse of the
occupation.
pps. 59-71
--[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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