[CTRL] [4] BETRAYAL

[Kris Millegan]

 -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
--[4]--
CHAPTER FOUR

Prelates In Politics

Germans After All

"And above all, it (victory) shall not be imperiled by the handful of noisy
traitors � betrayers of America and of Christianity itself � would-be
dictators who in their hearts and souls have yielded to Hitlerism and would
have this Republic do likewise."
--From radio talk to the Nation, April 28, 1942.

IN a sermon delivered a few days after VE day a protestant minister in
Stuttgart summarized the attitude of many of the Evangelical clergy toward
Hitler, boldly declaring:

"We are asked now why we put up for twelve years with this man whom we now so
universally revile. The answer is not difficult. We enthusiastically admired
many of his aims � the liberation of the people from the chains of that
dictated peace; the amalgamation into one Reich of all Germans, who want to
live together; the fight against communism and other forces of destruction..."

Our men were not prepared for such an attitude from the clergy. The churches
had a reputation for being an uncompromising antifascist force and not for
being in general agreement with the Hitler program. The combat GIs and
officers were frequently ahead of the average MG officers in their
understanding of what had to be done in Germany and how to do it, but
practically all Americans in the occupation, no matter what their wartime
experience or philosophy about the Germans, were uninformed and naive about
the churches. For MG, the church leaders not only had an anti-Nazi and a
"safe" (there was no suspicion of their being "reds") reputation, but they
also had the advantage of representing the only institutions still intact in
the country. MG officers were usually pleased at having the clergy to assist
them in dealing with the population and in organizing the municipal
administrations. In fact, from the time of Aachen � where our experience with
the Bishop had been so unfortunate � it appeared that it would become
customary procedure for our occupation officers to go directly to the clergy
for consultation as soon as they arrived in their cities.

Like the "conservative" politicians, the clergymen were frightened at the
"bolshevik menace" now that the anti-communist Nazi "bulwark" had been
removed. From the very first, throughout the Zone priests and ministers were
interceding for Party members, urging the appointment of "conservatives", and
warning MG against the "red menace" inherent in our revolutionary
denazification program. The entire political outlook of the churchmen was
determined by their fear of the "communists."

In September, 1945, Landesbischoff (State Bishop) Dr. Thomas Mueller, head of
the Evangelical Church in the province of Hesse, assured me that "old
Hindenburg, an honorable Christian", was the kind of German he wanted to see
back in power. Mueller was not concerned that Hindenburg had been a
militarist, a monarchist and a member of the old Junker class to whom
democracy was completely uncongenial. Mueller admired Hindenburg because the
old Marshal had been a "strong leader" who knew how to "save the Reich from
the marxists." In September, 1945, Mueller was again afraid of the "reds"
just as Hindenburg, his hero, had been in January, 1933, when as President of
the tottering Weimar Republic, he had called upon Hitler to assume the
chancellorship to put down the "bolsheviks." The head of the Catholic Church
in the same city, Darmstadt, Dr Degen, the representative of the Catholic
Bishop of Mainz and an old friend and admirer of Kurt Schuschnigg, the
reactionary and undemocratic chancellor of Austria, was in general agreement
with the Evangelical Bishop. Degen wanted a strong ruler now because he did
not trust the "despicably stupid German masses." (Degen did not conceal his
equal contempt for the Americans, including the local MG detachment.)

>From our very entrance into Germany, important church leaders were expressing
opinions dangerous to our aims. The renowned Bishop of Muenster, the
venerable von Galen, called the "Black Bishop of Muenster" by the Nazis for
his stubborn opposition to Hitler's anti-church campaign, grumbled to one of
our intelligence men a few ' days after we had captured his city: "We don't
want you here. We can solve our own problems � we Germans, alone. For us, you
are the enemy." And a preacher in the Cathedral of Regensburg brazenly
abjured his congregation for their supine submission to the occupation powers
shortly after this city had fallen. One of the Bavarian bishops stubbornly
refused to attend the showing of our concentration camp film because he
considered it "humiliating."

These individual utterances did not necessarily represent official church
policy, however. That's why we awaited impatiently the conclusion of the
meeting of the Catholic Bishop's who were assembling with our permission once
again in their annual episcopal conclave at the historic Catholic city of
Fulda in August, 1945. At this meeting they customarily drew up a pastoral
letter to the Catholics of the nation. We had no idea what to expect � a
strong appeal for a democratic regeneration of Germany and for cooperation
with the occupation powers, an attack on the "bolsheviks" and a defense of
"German honor" or a purely religious epistle. The powerful Catholic Church,
of course, could be a considerable help to us, or a considerable hinderance.

At the conclusion of their convention, the Bishops delivered a letter
(translated into very clumsy English) to the local MG officer for
transmission to General Eisenhower. In the very first sentences they
expressed their nationalistic unfriendliness recognizing grudgingly the
Allied (Four Power) Control Council as the "highest public power in Germany"
as ,a result of the "complete military overthrow of Germany." The remainder
of the lengthy epistle was belligerent and hostile. The Bishops demanded an
end to expulsions of Germans from the East, insisted on the importation of
food to end German hunger and warned that the present distress of the
population would "bring the German people to desperation by which once more
new troubles will be caused for the whole world." This was a scarcely
disguised threat of rebellion or war. Then in a deliberate slur on the
occupation troops, the Bishops urged the arming of the German police and
strong Allied countermeasures against rape and lawlessness on the part of our
troops. They objected to our denazification pro,gram, alleging (just as
conservative political leaders like the mayor of Frankfurt were doing) that
the dismissal of "indispensable specialists" was hampering reconstruction.

Quoting "the country people" as saying that "life in the -time of the air
raids was more supportable than at present when they are alarmed by attacks
of strolling bands," the Bishops implied that the occupation powers were
unable to maintain order without the assistance of the Germans themselves.
And then to remind the occupation powers of the political influence of the
church, the Bishops suggested they could be ,of use in soliciting "their
faithful people to take a loyal attitude towards the present holders of the
public power." They -did not state what would be the price of their
cooperation, but ,it was clear that they were demanding some special
consideration.

A month later, I had a long conversation with the Bishop of Limburg's
advisor, a sophisticated, well-traveled priest who spoke English almost
without a trace of an accent and with authentic American idioms The Bishop
had just been reprimanded for publishing a pastoral letter containing
undisguised opposition to the occupation powers and praise of the Wehrmacht
troops, who had been "loyally performing their duty to their country." The
Bishop's advisor told me that it .was difficult to restrain the elderly
prelate from issuing nationalistic statements in opposition to the occupation
powers: because he considered himself "a Prince of the Church and' above
criticism."

Taking advantage of their immunity and special prerogatives as Princes of the
Church, the Bishops were advocating openly what the lay "conservatives" only
dared. to hint at � opposition to the occupation, threats of disobedience and
sabotage of denazification. The clergy were coming forward as the leaders of
the German nationalists. Nowhere in the Fulda letter, did the Bishops call
for democratization, for peace and' for cooperation with the occupation. It
had probably been toomuch to expect that Bishops who had supported the Hitler
dictatorship (except when it attacked the Churches directly), prayed for Nazi
victory and tolerated Nazi oppression and terrorism should suddenly have
become apostles of peace and democracy just because the German armies had
suffered a total defeat.

The international reputations of both Churches for their "resistance" to
Hitler are exaggerated and are based almost solely on their opposition to the
Nazi anti-church campaign initiated after 1935 and not on any general
rejection of Hitler's policies. In the Protestant Church, hundreds of'
pastors actually joined the SA and the Nazi Party even before 1933. Although
the Catholic Church did at first forbid its followers to join the Nazi Party
and to wear Nazi insignia, the Catholic Bishops joined with the Evangelical
Churchmen in publicly avowing their support of the Fuehrer after Hitler had
been appointed Chancellor of the Reich by von Hindenburg on January 30, 1933.
The Catholic Center and Bavarian People's Parties voted for the Empowering
Act, which granted Hitler dictatorial power, and then, without waiting for a
decree from the Fuehrer, meekly dissolved themselves.

Like the Evangelical leaders, the Catholic Bishops rejoiced at Hitler's
battle against the "red menace." But the Catholics ,also "announced their
willingness to further the national awakening" because they "greeted the
strong emphasis on authoritarian philosophy and the organic incorporation of
individuals and groups into the state," as the Bishops announced .at their
meeting at Fulda on May 30, 1933. According to The Sentinels of the Church, a
history of the relations between the Bishops and the National Socialist
movement published under the auspices of Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich with an
introduction by Prince Alois von Loewenstein, the chairman -of the permanent
council of the German Catholic Convention, Hitler's authoritarian Fuehrer
principle provided a basic reason for the church support of his regime:

"If the change of spirit and society in the occident is characterized by the
fact that the democratic principle of rule by the majority is being replaced
by the Fuehrer principle., then this temporal development is in conformity
with the tenets of the Catholic Church. In the Roman Catholic Church, the
authoritarian Fuehrer principle has characterized the theory and practice of
the church from its very founding... The Bishop of this (Nazi) state and
society established on authoritarian principles is the religious leader, the
spiritual Fuehrer alongside the political Fuerher."

.In July 1933, the Pope signed a Concordat with Hitler. From then on, right
through to VE day, the Catholic Bishops and. priests held religious services
celebrating Nazi political successes, conducted funeral masses for Nazi
bigshots, assisted in inauguration ceremonies for Nazi officials, instituted
prayers for Hitler's welfare and for Nazi military victory, constantly
reiterated their support of the Fuehrer, as the following chronology,
demonstrates:

1935: The Catholic Bishops called upon the Saarlanders to vote for
reincorporation in the Reich. The devout Saar was ready to obey the clergy in
whatever they advised.

1936: When Hitler called for a popular referendum to ratify his reoccupation
of the Rhineland in violation: of "the Versailles treaty, the Bishops ordered
the following declaration read in all. their churches: "We give our vote to
the fatherland... All Catholics vote 'Yes' on all questions in the referendum
and support before the entire world the honor, freedom and security of our
German fatherland."

In August, 1936, a month after the commencement of the Warin Spain, the
Bishops at their annual meeting in Fulda congratulated Hitler for his
intervention in Spain and promised their support "in the fight against the
ever-increasing threat of world bolshevism, which shows its sinister hand in
Spain, Russia and Mexico."

1937: In a New Year's message to the Fuehrer, the Bishops pledged him their
support in his drive against the "red menace." (By this time, Hitler had
started his offensive against the churches. The Bishops were still willing to
support him. They considered his "anti-bolshevik" crusade so valuable that
they feared showing any opposition that might weaken his government.)

1940: On August 22nd, a year after the outbreak of World War II and after
Hitler had enslaved Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and
France, the Bishops announced at Fulda that "after the final German victory,
special ceremonies of gratitude to the German troops and of loyalty to Hitler
will be announced."

1943: In August � six months after the crushing defeat at Stalingrad � the
Bishops issued a pastoral letter proclaiming the "justice" of Hitler's war,
declaring that "Germany is waging an heroic struggle to protect the homeland
from bolshevism and to preserve it from incalculable disaster."

There were, of course, many members of the lower clergy of both Churches who
were sincerely and completely antiNazi. Anxious to cooperate with the other
anti-fascists, these men rejected the hysteria about the "red menace,"
recognizing that fighting the "bolshevik bogey" meant making common cause
with the reactionaries and pro-Nazis. One of these. anti-fascist clergymen,
Dr. Michel of the working class St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church in Darmstadt,
told me: "I have always treated Catholic Communists as Catholics but have
fought Catholic Nazis." Priests like him had taken theirplaces in the
concentration camps alongside the other antiNazis. No history of anti-Nazi
opposition would be complete without an account of the heroic struggle of the
anti-fascist clergy against Hitler.

Like the other anti-fascists, these clergymen were our allies. They supported
our program of denazification, demilitarization and democratic regeneration
without any nationalistic reservations. Friedrich Wiedmann, the anti-fascist
Evangelical minister of the Martinsgemeinde of Darmstadt, assured me that he
had never anticipated anything other than the kind of denazification we were
carrying out. "Everything even smelling of Hitler must be exterminated," he
declared. But unfortunately, these lower clergymen were only a small minority
among the churchmen and were not the formulators of church policy. Priests
and ministers with strong anti-Nazi opinions were snubbed by their colleagues
and berated for being "bad Germans."

But the church leaders of both denominations, like the nationalist officers,
the industrialists, the bureaucrats, and the professors, had rejoiced that
Hitler regained "German honor," rebuilt the Wehrmacht and embarked on a
"just" war of "heroic conquest." Fearful of "bolshevism" they had willingly
allied themselves with the Nazi Fuehrer. And when peace came, they did not
suddenly become trustworthy democrats. No one of the Bishops of either Church
in the American Zone has come forth as a democratic leader or as an ally of
the occupation.

Yet among the thousands of pages of daily, weekly and monthly printed and
mimeographed reports poured out by military and MG intelligence of all
echelons, I don't remember ever seeing a comprehensive analysis of the
politics of the German Churches, the most powerful individual political
forces in our Zone. Our men knew only what they had read at home, how the
Bishops had fought for their parochial schools and for the maintenance of
their ecclesiastical prerogatives. Neither the troops nor the MG personnel
received any instruction on the dangers of unreserved reliance on the clergy.
On the other hand, because the priests and ministers were so useful, many MG
men did not want any information about the political unreliability of the
churches. In addition, highest headquarters almost indiscriminately favored
all MG efforts to work with the religious leaders. The "bolshevik bugaboo"
among our officials, of course, was no small factor in fostering this dubious
collaboration.

Munich Again!
The Prince Bishop Of Bavaria

"We shall not be able to claim that we have gained total victory in this war
if any vestige of fascism in any of it. malignant forms is permitted to
survive anywhere in the world."
--From message to Congress, September 14, 1943.

"And when may I have an audience with his Eminence'?" Baron von Kassel, the
Cardinal's emmisary�who himself related this anecdote to one of my contacts
was startled. He had been sent by Faulhaber, Cardinal of Bavaria, to request
an interview with the colonel, who, after all, was the commandant of the
province. But the sophisticated nobleman did not indicate his astonishment.
An audience was arranged for a few days later. All Military Government was
talking about how the colonel was unable to work in his excitement at having
been granted an audience by a Cardinal.

And so it was that Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber became the, Prince-Bishop
of Bavaria.

His Eminence suggested that men with "high moral standing and positions of
business and intellectual leadership, people of experience and of
conservative reliability, who understood the particular Bavarian problems" be
appointed -to administer the province and its capital. To the Cardinal, these
characteristics applied to the old leaders of the Bavarian People's Party,
the pre-1933 Catholic separatist, monarchist, conservative party � the
Cardinal's own party.

: These were the people Egon Fleck and I found in control in July, 1945.
Colonel Powell, Chief of Twelfth Army Group Psychological Warfare, had told
Fleck, one of our best intelligence men, and me: "You fellows have a good
nose for rooting out intelligence. Go down to Munich and get a complete,
objective picture of what's going on down there. Dig up as much dirt as you
can." A general on Patton's staff had assured the colonel that he was able to
obtain any intelligence be wanted from some American expatriates who had
remained in Germany during the entire Hitler period and knew everything about
Bavaria. He had no need of Powell's special investigators, he said. Fleck and
I were to show the general that there was a lot going on right in his own
backyard that he knew nothing about.

We left Bad Nauheim on July 5th after celebrating our first peacetime 4th of
July. We were both groggy after 8 hours in the jeep. It was a long trip with
many detours, for the Nazis had destroyed bridges and wrecked the road along
the stretch. When we reached the outskirts of the city, Fleck pointed to a
large blue and white traffic sign: Dachau 8 kin. (5 miles). That was sobering
� Dachau, where tens of thousands of anti-Nazis had been tortured, starved
and worked to death or had succumbed to medical "experiments."

A few minutes later we were in the city. Everywhere, on the round advertising
posts, the telephone poles, on the walls of buildings, on rubble heaps, there
were large placards with a long announcement. It was an appeal from the Lord
Mayor of Munich to the Nazis, urging them to donate clothing for the use of
former concentration camp inmates and advising the Party members that this
was their chance to make good for what they had done while they were in
power. "It's that easy to repay, is it?" Fleck remarked. He had narrowly
escaped imprisonment in Austria in 1938 and had no sympathy for the Nazis.
"It's a wonder it doesn't occur to the mayor to levy clothing from the Nazis
to clothe the people they hounded instead of wheedling it out of them."

As we drove on, we saw here and there signs with swastikas advertising the
old Volkischer Beobachter, the chief newspaper of the Nazi Party. They were
still there after two months of American occupation. And Fleck called my
attention to a sign on a public telephone booth at the entrance to a
government building: "Jews are forbidden to use this apparatus."

When we finally arrived in the center of the city, near the famous gothic
Rathaus (city hall) where the huge stone figures step out of the tower when
the ancient clock tolls the hour, we saw crowds of Germans watching companies
of PWs in unfamiliar brown uniforms shoveling the rubble along the curbs and
sorting bricks into piles. These were Hungarian PWs assigned by General
Patton, the Military Commander in Bavaria, to clean up the city. Outside
Munich there were SS internment camps, where war criminals were resting in
the sun and living comfortably on 2,000 calories a day (more than the people
of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, not to mention the people of the
devastated countries of Eastern Europe, were receiving). I did not see any
civilian Party leaders with picks and shovels, either, as I had seen in Mainz
three months earlier, where the aggressive police president had rounded them
all up and put them to work.

Before drawing up the list of politicians, city officials, union leaders,
churchmen, resistance leaders and businessmen we were going to interview,
Fleck and I read the limited intelligence available in our detachment files
on Bavaria and Munich. Bavaria was a tough area for MG administration,
provincial, chauvinist, hating the Saupreuss (the pig of a Prussian) and
reactionary. The church was the chief power in the land. Many of the citizens
longed for the "old days" when Bavaria was ruled by the House of Wittelsbach,
and there was the pomp and grandeur of a royal court for the nobility and the
local big businessmen. Munich, the big city of the province, the Nazis called
the "Capital City of the Movement," for it had been the center of the 1923
Nazi Putsch, in which Bavarian nobles and officers had backed Hitler in an
attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

In the cities of Bavaria, on the other hand, there were powerful trade unions
with a history of active struggle against the local reactionaries. Munich was
the capital of the shortlived "bolshevik" republic of Kurt Eisner after the
first, World War.[*] Under Hitler anti-Nazi workers filled the concentration
camps scattered throughout the province. Some of the lower clergy too,
including the dean of the Catholic priests of Munich, Pfarrer Muhler, had
been imprisoned for anti-Nazi activity. There was a Free Germany Committee in
Munich, and a few days before our troops entered the city, a group calling
itself Freiheitsaktion Bayern (Freedom Action Bavaria) had attempted to
liberate the city from the Nazis. They had succeeded in taking the radio
station and other public buildings but were gradually being overwhelmed when
out soldiers stormed the city.[ * After an existence of about three months,
the Bavarian Republic, like the many other revolutionary governments and
local administrations established at the end of 1918 and the beginning of
1919, was ruthlessly suppressed by the counter-revolutionary officers'
regiments. On February 21, 1919, Kurt Eisner, the Prime Minister of the
Bavarian Republic was waylaid near his home and murdered by two shots in his
head. The killer, the highranking army officer, Count Arco-Valley, was
eventually given a suspended sentence and a high position by the national
government.]

When the MG colonel arrived, he was faced with a discouraging task. Life in
Munich was disrupted. The city was onethird destroyed. Over 120,000 dwellings
had been bombed outThere was no municipal administration in operation. There
were no police, and some 30,000 DPs, many of them survivors of the notorious
Vlassov Army of Russian deserters and traitors, others, Balts who had been
members of the SS, were robbing on the streets, raping and looting. There
was, however, one strong force in Munich, in all the province � his
Eminence.- the Cardinal, the religious and spiritual leader of most of the
10,000.000 Bavarians.

The cynical jokes about the power of the Cardinal and MG's dependence on him
had reached our headquarters. Although Faulhaber was renowned for his
struggle against the Nazis for the retention of the church schools and the
rights of the clergy, we were very suspicious about the political activity of
any churchman. We suspected, too, as one of the anti-Nazi priests in Munich,
a Kzler, later assured us, that the Cardinal's "influence and activity during
the past 12 years (under Hitler) is largely exaggerated,," Faulhaber had long
exhibited authoritarian sympathies and opposed democracy. We knew his famous
description of the 1918 revolution, which overthrew the monarchy (Faulhaber
is a royalist) and the militarists, as "perfidy and high treason (which)...
will go down in history forever with the mark of Cain." It was a pastoral
letter he issued before the March, 1933 elections, which according to the
semi-official church history published under his auspices, The Sentinels of
the Church, was "responsible for the defeat of the Bavarian People's Party
(and the victory of the Nazi Party) in Old ' Bavaria." After Hitler obtained
dictatorial power, Faulhaber appealed to Cardinal Hayes of New York and
Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago to stop the attacks against Nazi Germany
appearing in the American press. He deliberately avoided taking a stand on
the Nazi persecution of the Jews; in fact, there is evidence that he was not
out of sympathy with Hitler's anti-Semitism. Fleck and I discovered that the
military defeat of the Nazis had not changed Faulhabers authoritarian
sympathies, his ultranationalism, his admiration for the military, his
friendship for the local Junkers, the men of industry and commerce and his
opposition to the trade unionists and the democrats.

The Cardinal's chief political tools, were Fritz Schaeffer, the Premier of
Bavaria, and Anton Stadelmayr, the 2nd mayor of Munich and the real head of
the city administration. A former leader of the Bavarian People's party in
the Reichstag, Schaeffer was responsible for that party's support of the
Empowering Act of March, 1933, by which Hitler obtained his dictatorial
power. So suspect was his political history, that a year after he had been
appointed to office, MG forbade him to engage in any political activity at
all. There had been enough data available in 1945 to necessitate his
immediate exclusion from Bavarian political life, but the Cardinal had wanted
Schaeffer to be premier.

Stadelmayr was no more trustworthy. A leader of the Bavarian People's Party
in the city of Wuerzburg, Stadelmayr had adjusted himself to the Nazis and
had remained mayor of the city for a year after Hitler had come to power.
Then he had quarrelled with the Nazis on some technicality concerning the use
of municipal funds for national purposes, resigned and gone to Munich to
obtain his doctorate at the university. In 1939 and 1941 � the correspondence
on the case is still extant � the Munich Party headquarters wrote to the
Wuerzburg Party asking permission to enroll Stadelmayr. Both requests were
rejected because of Stadelmayr's difference with the Nazis in 1934. In 1944,
however, a year before the end of the war, when it was clear to everyone
except the real fanatics that the war was lost, Stadelmayr entered the Party,
his membership being made retroactive to 1939. When confronted with these
facts, however, the Public Safety officer in Munich, the man in charge of
denazificiation in MG, declared in Stadelmayr's defense: "Well, after all,
Stadelmayr is a family man." Stadelmayr remained in office for six months,
resigning finally with the pious explanation that he was voluntarily giving
up his position "because of the burden of membership in the Nazi Party on my
conscience."

Under the leadership of the Cardinal and his men, Schaeffer and Stadelmayr,
the provincial and municipal administrations were honeycombed with Nazis and
senile, stubborn reactionaries -men who made the "conservative" Mayor Blaum
of Frankfurt seem like an actual "bolshevik" by contrast. All but one of the
provincial cabinet ministers were members of the old Bavarian People's Party
and exponents of the Cardinal's policies including his exaggerated tolerance
of former Nazis. In the Ministry of Economics, for example, Dr. Lange, the
minister and one of the Cardinal's men, had appointed a Nazi District
Armaments Production Chief to head the provincial Chamber of Industry and the
former Nazi Chief of the German Economics Board for North Bavaria to be his
own assistant.

In the city, clearly recognizing at the outset that there was going to be no
dynamic anti-Nazi policy, Stadelmayr brazenly appointed Dr. Jobst, the
adjutant to the former Nazi mayor of Munich, to be his own assistant. Jobst
had not only been a Party member but had also been a political leader in the
National Party Leadership, thus one of the most important Party officials in
the Reich. Another of Stadelmayr's "democratic" appointees was a former
fraternity brother of his, a Dr. Meister, a close friend of Weber, the chief
Nazi of Munich and personal friend of the Fuehrer. Although Stadelmayr
insisted that Jobst and Meister were "indispensable," the shamefaced American
MG officers prodded by the constant complaints from the local anti-Nazis had
to dismiss him.

In July, two months after the capture of the city, there were still four
party members in important, confidential positions right in the mayor's
office. In the whole administration, however, the situation was deplorable.
Under the Oberbuergermeister and the Buergermeister � Scharnagl and
Stadelmayr (both Bavarian People's Party men) � there was a council of the
heads of the 11 city departments. When Fleck and I were In Munich, three of
these positions had not been filled. Two of them were headed by People's
Party men; 4, by former Nazis; one, by a "conservative" non-partisan; and
one, by an old Social Democratic civil servant. The strongest party in the
city council, therefore, was the Nazi Party. And according to one city
official with whom we spoke, between 50 and 80% of the civil employees in the
city were ex-Nazis.

The Cardinal's men had no compunctions about collaborating with Nazis. They
were generally conservative businessmen and professional politicians who had
profited well during the Nazi regime. If they themselves had not joined the
Nazi Party, many of their friends, relatives and associates had. Once in
power through the favor of the Cardinal and of MG, these politicians were
determined to maintain their position and willingly solicited the sup[p]ort
of former Nazis to do so. The Bavarian People's Party alone could not retain
control of the city administration indefinitely; it was a minority party. The
Cardinal's men were not going to cooperate with the "bolsheviks."

The Cardinal skillfully sabotaged our denazification program to win allies
for his anti-"bolshevik" politicians. He declared that the treatment of the
Nazis was to be governed by the precept: "Love thine enemy," and his priests
were crowding the corridors of the Rathaus petitioning for the exoneration
orrehabilitation of the Party members. Every Friday at the secret meeting of
the leading municipal authorities at which the records of public officials
who had been members of the Nazi Party were investigated, the clergy provided
recommendations for Nazis, attesting that these individuals had been good
members of the church, had contributed to the collections for the rebuilding
of destroyed churches and could not, therefore, have been real Nazis. The
Cardinal himself was granting special letters of Church protection to
individual Nazis like the former high SA officer and chief adjutant to
Gauleiter Wagner, Karl Oberhuber.

The Eisenhower Declaration had practically been discarded two months after
the war not only in regard to the Nazis but also in regard to the
militarists. The Cardinal was a lover of the military. In World War I he had
won renown as the Kriegspfaffe (war parson) and was knighted for his
extraordinary services by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. In a New Year's letter
written in 1930 for the Bulletin of the 9th Infantry Division Veterans
Association, he lauded military training "in the King's uniform" as a "school
for life." It was no wonder that he should have sponsored the appointment of
Generals Pirner and Ranner, Col. Kopfmueller and Lt. Col. Lorneck, all former
General Staff officers, to head the police department in the Bavarian
Ministry of Interior.

But the most brazen appointment of all was that of the notorious 72-year-old
Oberst (Colonel) von Seisser, the deputy chief of staff of the High Command
South in the first World War, as police president of Munich. Fleck went to
visit this moth-eaten lion. Fleck, a courageous little guy in his for, ties,
put the fear of God into these hardened old Nazis and militarists, tapping
his pencil in impatience, prodding them with embarrassing questions and
forcing painful admissions out of them. When he entered his office, the
senile old man came hobbling from behind his desk to greet him. "I'm the man
who shot at Hitler," von Seisser announced gleefully. Even if that were true,
and it wasn't, von Seisser's fame will rest rather on his having signed along
with von Ludendorff, von Kahr, von Lossow und Adolf Hitler the proclamation
announcing the new "National Socialist Government" in the Putsch of 1923. The
entire police department was filled with von Seisser's appointments, called
"Seisser men" by the population. Needless to say, aside from wheezing about
having shot at Hitler, the old man had nothing to tell us. "If they insist
upon appointing dogs," Fleck commented wryly, "they might at least appoint
live ones."

The Cardinal's protection of Nazis, reactionaries and militarists extended to
industry and business. In industry, the workers, not permitted to organize,
were at the mercy of their Nazi bosses. Factory owners were laying off men,
often discriminating against non-Nazis, declaring, they had no material or
money to run their plants. Workers complained that many of these shutdowns
were pure sabotage. In the BMW (Bavarian Motor Works), one of the largest
industrial establishments in Germany and the biggest in Munich, only Nazis
were being put to work. In the Allach subsidiary of the BMW, the manager, a
Herr Dorls, had been a druggist until appointed to this position by the
Goering's Air Ministry shortly before the end of the war. The managing
director, Herr Scholl, had been a Wehrmacht District Production Chief. On the
personnel committee were former Party representatives and officials of the
Nazi German Workers Front.

The key food industry, particularly, was under the Cardinal's influence and
was especially nazified. I learned from a reliable informant that on June
6,1945, the Cardinal, Premier Schaeffer, a certain Dr. Weiss and Minister of
Agriculture Rattenhuber held a secret meeting at which they decided which
Nazis would be allowed to continue activity in the provincial food industry.
There was, of course, no MG representative at this "denazification"
conference. Rattenhuber assured all questioners that he was afraid that the
Munich food supply would be disrupted if he removed the Nazis from the food
industries and administration. Over 90% of his assistants and associates, by
his own admission, were former Nazis. "I don't know," he declared with
disarming innocence and concern for the public, "where the city will find
money to pension (!) them if I fire them."

As a result of Rattenhuber's sympathetic inactivity, the Nazis were
prospering and boldly enriching themselves, and Munich was sick with the
blackmarket. I went to the Sendlingertorplatz, a great open square outside a
medieval gate to the inner city to see the blackmarket for myself. There was
an MP post on the square and MPs were standing all around, oblivious to the
hundreds of people jammed into the small grassless park. The "operators" were
conducting transactions in a whisper or by pointing and there was a constant
suppressed hum as of a vast beehive. Upon catching sight of my uniform, some
blackmarketers attempted to hide their wares, but most continued unafraid,
offering me bolts of cloth, shoes, jewelry, cameras, etc. There were some GIs
selling cartons of cigarettes at $2 a pack. Bread sold for $2.40 a loaf � 100
times the legal price. A bar of American army soap went for $3. Pfarrer
Muhler, the dean of the Catholic Priests, told Fleck that he had been offered
as many bicycles as he wanted at $200 apiece and up to 3,000 cans of meat at
the regular blackmarket price of $20. * The blackmarket was a big business.[
* Since the mark actually had a purchasing power about three times its dollar
equivalent, these prices have to be tripled to be appreciated.]

At the end of June, the food crisis had become so alarming that the city
officials called a special meeting to discuss measures to prevent a complete
breakdown in the supply. His Eminence the Cardinal � who really had no
business at such a municipal conference � suggested that the Munich
administration rely on the prestige and power of the church to guarantee the
feeding of the city. Faulhaber offered to send out a priest to exhort the
peasants (who were holding back their produce for higher prices or selling it
on the blackmarket) in the name of Christian charity to give and sell food
for the city population. That which would be donated free by the peasants
would be distributed by the church; the rest would be turned over to the
municipal authorities. Instead of requisitioning transport for the public
welfare, the officials agreed to accept the trucks offered by his Grace, the
Prince von Arenberg, a venerable wealthy Catholic nobleman of old
GermanFrench lineage. The church food was to be distributed to the Catholic
kindergartens, to the Catholic charity kitchens, to needy Catholic families
selected by the parish sisters � and, in keeping with "Love thine enemy," to
the Nazis and high officers held by the American Counter Intelligence Corps
at the Stadelheim internment camp.

When young Dr. Kroth, a Communist councilman, objected to the distribution of
food among the Nazis and militarist prisoners and war criminals, declaring
that any over abundance should be given first to needy anti-Nazis and not to
the men who were the cause of the general misery, the Cardinal's men replied
piously with their precept. When Kroth added that such an act by the church
and the city officials would be a sign of support of these criminals against
the Americans, who in any case, would not allow the distribution of food
among the very people they had just been fighting, Buergermeister Stadelmayr
retorted: "The Americans will certainly not be opposed if the prison chaplain
requests that it be done."

The housing, situation was as bad as the food situation, with Nazis refusing
to register their apartments, taking advantage of the courts to avoid
eviction and conniving with officials in the municipal housing office. Even
our people were falling for the "Love thine enemy" approach. When a Kzler
asked an MG man why Nazis were allowed to remain in their homes while
homeless anti-Nazis were left to shift for themselves, the officer replied
with what had already become a characteristic American rationalization for
incompetence and laziness: "We Americans do not want to be as tyrannical as
the Nazis." We were, of course, "loving our enemies" and discriminating
against our friends. Although there were no materials or skilled labor
available even for building barracks for the population during the coming
winter, the Cardinal had obtained permission from MG for the repair and
rebuilding of four or five churches and of the Residenz, the palace of the
royal house of Bavaria. Rumor had it that Crown Prince Rupprecht, then in the
Vatican, was to be brought to Munich by his Eminence.

In this environment the anti-Nazis were rapidly becoming demoralized. Both
the Freedom Action Bavaria and the Free Germany Committees had been dissolved
soon after the city was occupied. An MG major, unconsciously echoing another
MG major in Leipzig, had declared: "I met these anti-fascists in the Ruhr,
they're all bandits." The Nazis, on the other hand, were amazed at the events
following the capture of the city. Having themselves acquired considerable
experience in dealing with political opponents, they expected to be -put to
forced labor, to be imprisoned and thrown out of their homes, etc. They had
not counted on "Love thine enemy." They developed two tactics against us. On
the one hand, they attempted to ingratiate themselves with the Americans at
parties, in bed and in business, and, on the other hand, they sought to
stimulate ,discontent and confusion by sabotage, blackmarketing and
rumormongering. Already by July, two months after VE day, the "too bad you're
not a Nazi, you'd get some place" type of joke was current in the city.

The Nazis had become brazen and belligerent. Anti-Nazis were receiving
threats of revenge for reporting Party members to MG or the municipal
administration. By July three different leaflets signed by a "Freikorps Adolf
Hitler" threatening "all traitors and grovelers before the enemy" with death
"not only for the individual, but for his entire family and eventually for
the whole community" had been distributed in the city.[*] But when Specht,
head of the local Free Germany Committee, complained to Oberbuergermeister
Scharnagl, the, Bavarian People's Party mayor of Munich, about the presence
of Nazis in the administration and the absensce[sic] of an antiNazi policy in
the city, Scharnagl replied: "I do not take part in the fight against
fascism. I leave that to the Americans." The important question was: to whom
were the Americans leaving the fight?[ * The Freikorps or terrorist guerilla
bands of officers were first formed under the clandestine supervision of the
German General Staff after the first World War to defend the nation against
"bolshevism" and to fight the occupation powers. In an orgy of terrorism and
atrocities, they stamped out the 1919 German revolution.]

While Fleck and I were investigating the Cardinal's activities in Munich,
some of our other investigators were traveling through southern Germany and
Austria interviewing the leading Catholic clergymen in this area. Our men
found these Bishops, priests and Cardinals discussing a "Catholic Danubian
Federation" to include Bavaria, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, which would act
as a central European anti-"bolshevik" stronghold. Dr. Wilhelm Berger, the
Evangelical superintendent of the church district of Starkenburg, had warned
me in Darmstadt that "the Catholic Church will always look to, Rome rather
than to Germany..." In dealing with Cardinal Faulhaber in Munich, MG was
involving itself in far more intrigue than in dealing with unaffiliated
German reactionaries like Blaum, the ex-major, armaments expediter and Nazi
theoretician whom we had appointed mayor of Frankfurt.

Cardinal Faulhaber had extensive plans and he was frequently "looking to Rome
rather than to Germany." From mail intercepted by our Censorship Branch we
knew that he was treating with the Vatican and Crown Prince Rupprecht for a
possible restoration of the monarchy. Failing that, he was determined to
maintain, in any case, church domination of Bavarian politics. He was the
leading exponent of the Ordnungszelle Bayern (cell of order of Bavaria), a
concept -of Bavarian chauvinists, which sought to ensure the maintenance of
"stability" and "order" in the state of Bavaria in the event of a "bolshevik"
trend in the rest of Germany. "Order" meant, naturally, the retention of
everything the way everything had always been � the retention of the landed
nobility, who had vyed with the Prussian Junkers for positions on the German
general staff of the old government bureaucrats, the "moderating" influence
of the church, and the undermining of the "revolutionary" denazification
program and the rejection of any attempts to expropriate Bavarian industries
and businesses belonging to Nazis and militarists. "Order", in the final
analysis, meant the establishment of a kind of clerico-fascist state with a
repressive anti-"bolshevik" regime like that in Franco Spain.

Although the Schaeffer ministry was replaced in October, 1945, after Patton
had been removed from his post in Bavaria, the Cardinal's men remained in
leading positions in the provincial and municipal administrations,
cooperating with each other for the maintenance of the Ordnungszelle Bayern.
[*] But, Faulhaber had accomplished what he had set out to do during the
first months of the occupation. He had stifled the Antifa forces in Bavaria,
which had been so weak that they needed careful propping and could not bear
any strong opposition like that offered by the Cardinal. He had assured the
hegemony of his reactionary cohorts, the men who had backed Hitler against
"bolshevism" in 1933, and had sabotaged denazification in its initial stage.[
* They work together like one great fraternity. Faulhaber had appointed the
brother of the mayor of Munich to be Bishop of the city. Another of the
Cardinal's men, Anton Pfeiffer, Denazification Minister in 1946, effected the
exoneration of the mayor's son, a member of the Nazi Party. Another official
saw to it that the mayor's son obtained a comfortable appartment[sic] in
which to live. Kzler meanwhile were doubling up in great discomfort.]

"The Cardinal is the greatest man in Germany today," -whispered his faithful
old secretary as one of our men was leaving after an interview with
Faulhaber. Although he may not be "the greatest man in Germany" � at least
from a democratic, anti-Nazi point of view � still as Cardinal of the largest
province of Germany (now that Prussia has been broken up), spiritual leader
of devout, obedient millions of Catholics, and the important representatives
of the Vatican, he is very probably the most powerful political and spiritual
personality in the nation. When Fleck and I were in Munich, he was certainly
not our ally � that is, if we were still committed three months after the
death of Roosevelt to the accomplishment of the Eisenhower Declaration and
the honoring of our war dead.

Pps. 72-94
--[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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