-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
-----
--When my friend Sam returned to visit the town where he had previously been
stationed, he asked a woman he had known how she had voted in the recent
elections. She burst into tears. She would have liked to vote for the Social
Democrats and Communist candidates whom she considered good and capable men,
but the priest had warned the parish that that would be a mortal sin. In May,
the Neue Zeitung, the MG-published newspaper, reported that a Bavarian priest
urged his congregation to vote for the CSU candidates, calling them
"candidates of God" and the Socialist candidates "candidates of the devil."--
---" 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
--[9]--
CHAPTER NINE
The Opposition To The Opposition
The Common People
"Democracy can thrive only when it enlists the devotion of those whom Lincoln
called the common people."
--From a[d]dress to Democratic National Convention, July 19, 1940.
"The new trade union movement is based on real democracy, tolerance and
humanity. lt evidences this new spirit in its respect for the ideological and
political convictions of its members, in its eradication of Nazi and
militarist philosophy and its constant effort for the reconciliation of all
peoples and for world peace."
WHEN I read this statement issued by the Free German Trade Unions of
Frankfurt on December 14, 1946, I was struck by how well it expressed the
sentiments and attitudes of the many individual German trade unionists with
whom I had spoken. The German workers, I had found, had an openness and
frankness and a healthy outlook that was often lacking in many of their
countrymen. I suddenly realized this characteristic of these people one
afternoon in July, 1945. After a full day of interrogating workers, I stood
at the gate of the large Henschel Locomotive Works in the city of Kassel
waiting for a jeep to pick me up and watched the workers pouring out of
factory buildings. It was after five o'clock and they were on their way home.
They looked very much like American workers, though somewhat shabbier. None
of them owned an automobile and only a few had bicycles. They shouted
greetings to workers they hadn't seen during the day, slapped each other on
the back when they said goodbye, called after friends about children and
wives. There was good humor. It was good to go home.
These seemed to be good, simple people. On talking with some of them during
the day, I'd found them cooperative and sympathetic and likable (and I still
had a strong aversion to Germans, for it was only two months after VE day).
As I watched them separating at the gate and going off in different
directions, I thought to myself: "We could probably accomplish something in
Germany with these people on our side if they stick together and we give them
plenty of support."
There was every reason for them to stick together. The forty or so with whom
I had spoken in Kassel and the many others I had met in other cities �
Socialists, Communists, Catholics � were in complete agreement on practically
every basic issue.
Unlike many of the intellectuals and middleclass Germans, -none of them
intellectualized about Hitler, the "oppression' Of Versailles, the "bolshevik
menace" or about the "disgrace" of the occupation. "We will never be able to
repay for what we have done in other countries in Europe, never," one worker
in Kassel told me, covering his face with his hands and shaking his head in
shame. Workers like him had directly experienced the barbarism and oppression
of Nazism. A middleaged mechanic explained: "I lost my house, my wife, my two
sons and now I'm all alone. That's what I got from Hitler. Another. a
streetcar conductor, smiled at my naivete when I asked what good Hitler had
accomplished for German labor. "Some men," he said "were glad to get jobs
back in 1934 and 1935, but only the Nazis enjoyed the Kraft durch Freude
(Strength through Joy) excursions and vacations. Otherwise we worked longer
hours, ate less and couldn't speak up to protect our rights. We were tied to
our jobs. They fired us arbitrarily, spied on us and mobilized us in our free
time into the Volkssturm (the civilian auxiliary military force). By the end
of the war, we had become slave labor."
"We've had enough of this gang," declared a Bavarian worker who had spent
most of the Hitler period in a concentration camp and had lost six members of
his family, killed for anti-Nazi activity. "We've had enough," the workers
seemed agreed on that. Now they were pushing denazification, cleaning out
their own plants, when MG permitted them, and demanding a thorough purge of
all Nazi and militarist influences.
The workers are on guard against the resurgence of any of the powerful
supporters of reaction. Knowing better than anyone else how their employers
benefitted under Hitler, paying lower wages, working their men longer hours,
participating in the huge war production, profiting from the slavelaborers
and the plunder from all Europe, the trade unionists seek the punishment of
the industrial and financial magnates responsible for Hitler and the war.
Traditionally socialist, regardless of their political or religious
affiliations, the workers desire the nationalization of the natural resources
and the nationalization of enterprises owned or controlled by Nazis or
militarists. Their unions press for a strong shop stewards' law for worker
participation in the administration of individual factories to encourage an
increase in production, to curb blackmarketing and sabotage and to exclude
the possibility of the kind of secret rearmament that was accomplished after
the first World War. Mindful of the political role of German industrialists
and financial interests under the Weimar Republic and determined to prevent
the big business leaders in the future from exercising "special pressure on
the government and the national economy and (acting) as the sponsors and
instigators of fascism," the zonal conference of the trade unions in October,
1946, demanded that even business and industrial associations, organizations
comparable to our National Association of Manufacturers and Chamber of
Commerce, be composed of both employers and employees.
Of course, the "conservative" forces in our Zone have sought to weaken the
unions internally and to curb their economic and political power. The Church
has unsuccessfully urged the establishment of Catholic unions to split the
united force of the workers. The Bishop of Aachen, remembering that it was
the trade unions that protested most strongly the reactionary administration
he had helped to establish back in October, 1944, complained two years later
that "the workers have not yet understood the necessity of creating a
Christian trade union organization."
Our conservative politicians and officials have succeeded in excluding the
trade unions from participation in the trusteeships established by the
provincial governments for enterprises confiscated from Nazis and
militarists. Hardly any nationalization of war-profiteering concerns has been
accomplished and in Hesse, where nationalization of certain industries was
provided for in the constitution and was overwhelmingly supported in a
plebiscite, its enforcement was entrusted to a committee which at first did
not include a single labor representative. There is no effective shop
stewards law and the trade unions' influence in denazification has been kept
to a minimum.
Anti-labor MG officials in highest headquarters have assisted the
"conservatives" against the unions. Our policy makers refused to authorize
the establishment of a unifying and directing provincial or zonal union
organization and the labor movement was long hampered by the resulting
divergence in the structure and form of organization which developed from one
town to another. Many local MG officers deliberately delayed licensing unions
in their areas. And in Berlin we even attempted to sponsor a separate civil
service union to split the united labor organization there. Fortunately, the
three leading political parties disowned this "American" union, a revival of
a disreputable German Nationalist association, and the attempt was a failure.
In addition, we have attempted to dissuade the unions away from industrial
organization (like that of our CIO), interfering in their internal affairs
despite our talk of democracy.
Despite all their difficulties and handicaps, the workers in the American
Zone have succeeded in organizing a zone-wide trade union federation
affiliated to the national organization in Berlin. They have unanimously
rejected any division in their ranks, determined that they will "no longer
(permit) division by politics or ideologies to waste the force of the
workers," as the Free Trade Unions of Frankfurt declared in a resolution in
December, 1946.
But after they leave their factories at five o'clock in the afternoon, the
workers, united in their trade unions and in their hopes and objectives, are
weakened by a critical political division in their ranks. The two political
parties to which most of them belong, the Social Democratic Party and the
Communist Party, ordinarily called the workers' parties, are not united and
are scarcely even cooperating. Unfortunately, the German workers have not
shown themselves (at the time of this writing) capable of developing a
unified political organization to represent themselves in the American Zone.
Some of them have fallen prey to "red-baiting," to the propaganda about a
mythical western orientation and to the antiSoviet hysteria. In addition,
most of them have revealed once again their traditional, unquestioning
obedience to their leadership and have fallen under the rule of machine
politicians.
Right after VE day, in the wave of enthusiastic antiNazism, there had been
manifestations of developing unity between the two workers' parties. Among
the leaders of both parties who had been in the concentration camps and had
worked together in the underground, there was, of course, a strong bond of
unity. Kurt Schumacher, the present head of the anti-unity Social Democratic
Party in the Western Zone, had assured Albert Buchmann, the leader of the
American Zone Communists, while they were both still in Dachau that he would
never allow any division to come between the two parties if they were ever
liberated. In any event, there were no important ideological differences
between them at the end of the war.
The sentiment for unity was strengthened when the Socialists saw us appoint
"conservative" unreliable politicians to office, flirt with the Church and
reject the proven anti-Nazis. In July, 1945, Thomas Wimmer, an official in
the Labor Office in Munich, and Gustav Schieffer, a well-known Bavarian trade
unionist, told me how Bavarian reaction under the Cardinal was usurping
control of the province and reinstating all the former collaborators with the
Nazis. They were indignant and frightened. This time, they insisted, they
were not going to stand by and surrender again to the Junkers and the big
business interests. They were going to unite with the Communists, who they
believed had greatly increased their strength since the overthrow of the
Nazis, to fight against the common enemy. "Communists like our friend City
Councilman Hirsch are real democrats, we can work with such people," Wimmer
told me, shaking his head to emphasize his assurance. They had evidently
considered and discussed this new policy of cooperation thoroughly. When I
left Wimmer's office, the two doddering old men pounded the table
theatrically and shouted with determination: "After all, we are still
revolutionaries."
Throughout the Zone, the two workers' parties were working together. In
Frankfurt (as in Munich and Stuttgart) they had established agreements for
mutual consultation and joint action, frightened at the reactionary policies
of Oberbuergermeister Blaum and his clique. Similarly, in numerous towns and
counties, joint councils of the two parties were established even before the
political parties had been officially authorized. Generally, both Communists
and Social Democrats cooperated closely in organizing the Antifas and in
establishing the Kzler cooperative welfare agencies.
Finally, on December 22, 1945, Buergermeister Maas of Wiesbaden and the
Hessian Minister of Interior, Venedey, representing the Social Democrats and
Oskar Mueller, the Hessian Minister of Labor, representing the Communists,
called a meeting of the leaders, of the two parties in the Wiesbaden locality
at which the assembled delegates issued an appeal for the unity of the two
parties into one workers' party. Two months previously, I had spoken with
Mayor Maas. He was a pleasant old man about seventy, a determined fighter for
his trade unionist following. In a weary, deliberate voice, he had told me:
"I'm tired of our fighting among ourselves, And I don't want my grandchildren
to go through a period like the one we've just had. There's no reason why we
shouldn't unite. That's the only way we can assure our future."
Buergermeister Maas had lived through many SPD struggles. He remembered how
the party leaders, except for a small group, had rallied behind the Kaiser in
1914 in a war of national aggrandizement in violation of the 1918 Basle
agreement of the Socialist Internationale. Then it was that the Socialists
had split, with the anti-war faction under Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Pieck
later developing into the German Communist Party. Maas recalled, too, how
Ebert and Noske and other Socialist leaders had sanctioned the crushing of
the rebellions of the workers all over Germany in 1919 by the ferocious
officer regiments. He had seen how the Social Democratic leaders had shut
their eyes to the clandestine rearmament of the big Ruhr coal and steel
magnates cooperating with the General Staff. It was clear to him, too,
looking back, how futile had been the internecine struggles between the
Socialists and the Communists before 1933. Had the Socialists accepted the
Communist offer to hold a general strike in 1932 and again in 1933, Hitler
would probably never have come to power. Then his sons had been off to war
and his city had almost been completely destroyed. Now, in his old age, he
wanted to prepare a peaceful future for his grandchildren.
A week later, however, the provincial conference of the Social Democrats
meeting at Frankfurt answered the Wiesbaden call for unity with this
declaration: "Every attempt must be made to develop a positive unified belief
in Democracy among the working class... but the question of unification of
the two workers' parties can only be decided after Germany is unified, the
peace treaty has been ratified, a national party meeting has been held and
the Socialist International has taken a position on the quesion." That was
the way the party bosses said "no."
This rejection of the two party unity was the result of a long development.
>From the very beginning of the occupation, the Social Democrats, like all the
other Germans, recognized the scarcely concealed prejudice of many of our MG
,officers against the Communists. Some ignorant MG officers lumped the
Socialists in with the Communists, calling them both "reds" and "dirty
bolsheviks." Weary of battling and anxious to get off to a good political
start, Social Democratic leaders many of whom were old men desirous of
obtaining, governmental positions that offered good salaries and prestige,
began to exaggerate their differences with the Communists in order not to
have to suffer under the same opprobrium. On the other hand, many MG officers
prided them,selves on their predilection for Social Democrats, exhibiting
their "liberal bent" without exposing themselves before their superiors as
"fellow travelers" who supported German Communists. In both cases, Social
Democratic politicians stood to gain by distinguishing themselves from the
Communists and by avoiding cooperation with them.
But it was the election campaign which broke the political unity of the
workers. The Social Democrats could have joined with. the Communists to
ensure a large combined trade union vote. Perhaps they would have done so if
the first elections -had been in the cities. But our time-schedule MG men had
foreseen much more than they admitted. In the rural areas, the left was
generally weak and the Communists had practically no organization or
following at all. Their decimated leadership was almost entirely concentrated
in the big cities. The Social Democratic party machine in the country, on the
other hand, was, by and large, intact. The Social Democrats, therefore,
believed they could win offices without cooperating with the Communists.
In appealing for votes, the Socialist leaders catered to the -political
prejudices of the farmers, attacking the "bolsheviks" almost as much as they
attacked the Nazis. Initially, there had been no basic differences in the
platforms of the two parties although the Socialists insisted that they did
not share the guilt for Hitler's crimes because they had warned electing him
to office meant war. Once having determined to break with the Communists, the
Socialist leaders began subtlely and circumspectly to attack the Communists
for their "ties to a foreign power." As American-Soviet tension increased on
an international scale on the questions of Poland, Iran, Greece, Spain and
the Atom bomb, the boldness of the Social Democrats increased. They began to
boast of their "western orientation," of their support from the British Labor
Government and from the French Socialists, and joined in the "conservative"
and clerical chorus fulminating against the Soviet Union.
Along with the other anti-"bolsheviks" however, the Social Democrats, armed
in addition by their rejection of the collective guilt, have also taken to
attacking the occupation in general, opposing us as well as the Russians.
Their spokesman, Schumacher, has been appealing to German nationalism in
denouncing the payment of reparations, our failure to supply the Germans with
more food and threatening all kinds of insubordination if we do not listen to
his protests.
Rejecting unity with the Communists and constantly fighting the "instinctive
desire of the workers" (as one Socialist leader described it) for the unity
of the workers' parties, the Socialists have made alliances with the other
anti-"bolshevik" political groups, compromising with the reactionaries
against the interests of their trade union following. In Bavaria,
particularly, the party leaders have engaged in such disreputable dealings
with the Cardinal's wing of the Christian Social Union that they have been
openly reprimanded by the rank and file.[*] The original shout "we are still
revolutionaries" of Wimmer and Schieffer in Munich in July, 1945 has become a
very polite whisper. Like the Christian Democrats � the other wing of the
so-called "democratic middle" � the Social Democrats have followed a course
of retreat and compromise away from their original program. [ * Hoegner, the
leading Bavarian Social Democrat, was favored with the following "compliment"
by Dr. Baumgartner, the "Christian" Minister of Agriculture and protegee of
the Cardinal, in the spring of 1947: "Dr. Hoegner is a good Social Democrat
of the King's Bavaria."]
But workers, as we shall see, have begun to rebel at the adjustments with
reaction and the internecine strife inspired by their Socialist political
leaders, and the Socialist Party is in danger of splitting in two.
The "Menace"
"...labor-baiters and bigots and some politicians use the term 'communist'
loosely, and apply it to every progressive social measure..."
--From campaign address, October 5, 1944.
On April 3, 1946, Lt. Col. Swoboda, the president of the military court, the
man who a year and a half earlier had been primarily responsible for the
appointment of Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers to administrative positions in
Aachen, our first German city, gave a lesson in democracy to two Communist
anti-Nazis, one of whom had spent ten years in Nazi prisons and concentration
camps. "After secret deliberations," he declared sternly and officiously,
"the court sentences you, Gerhard Jurr, and you, Wilhelm Kammermeier, to five
years imprisonment.''
As the prosecutor had declared, the judgment was "not so much a question of
the individual case at hand as an example to the German public."
Actually, this was a Sacco-Vanzetti witchhunt. There was little basis for the
case. Captain Kent, the MG officer in the Berlin borough of Schoeneberg, had
arrested the two Communists for distributing a leaflet which supposedly
applied pressure on government employees and interfered in the functions of
MG. Only one copy of the leaflet had been "distributed," however, and the
contents showed no attempt to interfere with MG affairs. On the contrary, the
leaflet urged all Communist party members to be sure that only capable
Communists were appointed to positions, and that all orders and directives
from MG were immediately put into effect. Aware of the anti-Communist
prejudice among most American MG officers, the Communist functionaries were
attempting to see to it that the Americans could neither accuse them of
incompetence or disobedience.
The very day of the "distribution" of this single leaflet, Capt. Kent issued
an order forbidding such circulars in the borough offices. Jurr immediately
ordered the leaflet destroyed and had another, conforming to MG's
requirements, sent out in its place. But for this "crime" the Communist
leaders were held along with 10 witnesses in the huge concrete airraid
shelter on the Friedrich-Karl Strasse in Tempelhof from February 25 until
their trial in April. There was electric light only a few hours a day,
otherwise the shelter was in total darkness. The first two weeks the
"prisoners" were allowed no visitors. The food was bad and the prisoners
became very weak. It was as though they were being tried for high treason.
Five years imprisonment to "provide an example" is a long time for a man who
had just finished 10 years in Nazi prisons (the court refused to take into
consideration the anti-Nazi activity of the two defendants).
One can comprehend the extent of the injustice in this case only when one
considers that the "Christian" and "conservative" politicians who preach
rebellion, sabotage denazification and food collection and call for war among
the United Nations are not only not punished but are even rewarded with the
highest positions in our Zone!
Two or three days after Lt. Col Swoboda had provided his, lesson in American
democracy, I met one of the witnesses who had been detained in the airraid
shelter at Tempelhof, a young fellow about 30, a simple worker who spoke with
a broad Berlin dialect. He was exhausted and bewildered. "We had been
expecting so much from the Americans," he told me in a tone of great
disillusionment. "Our friends and relatives had told us so much about
America."
He told me how hard it was for him to support himself and his mother, who was
sick. He had to share his ration with her because she was living on the
"starvation ration" of the nonworkers, and he was always weak. "I have no
strength to struggle anymore. I thought that would be all over when the Nazis
were defeated," he told me. "Now I don't know what to do. My mother is
frightened. Just the other day an American officer came to visit her while I
was at work. He asked her why I was a Communist and told her I would probably
get along better if I did not remain in the Party."
Although our antagonism to the Communists is in keeping with our general
occupation policies, it is amazing how without any official directive against
the Communists, the anticommunist hysteria swept right through MG, involving
almost everybody. Of course, there were exceptions, especially back in 1945,
when you frequently heard MG officers say: "These Communists are certainly
hard workers, when you give them a job, you can be sure it'll be carried
out." In fact, I remember hearing one MG officer in Stuttgart state that if
he were a German, he would certainly vote for the Communists since they were
the only ones with a clear and definite program.
I think it would be difficult for any MG officer, even those frightened by
the "red menace", to deny that the policy of the Communists in the American
Zone has conformed to the Potsdam Declaration and has been characterized by a
sincere and complete willingness to cooperate with MG in the accomplishment
of the original aims of our ocupation.[sic] From the very first days, even
before VE day, when we used to receive illegal (i. e., unlicensed) leaflets
issued by the Communists containing appeals for cooperation with the
occupation authorities and united resistance to Nazi underground terror,
rumormongering and the blackmarket, the Communists had shown themselves to be
unreserved supporters of MG.
Called the "most reliable anti-Nazis" by Dr. Walter L. Dorn, the deputy to
the chief of Military Government, at a press conference in Wiesbaden in
September, 1945, the Communists have consistently shown themselves to be the
best supporters of our denazification program, the best watchdogs over
Denazification Courts, the most active bloodhounds after the Nazi Bonzen and
the war profiteers. Communists had a disproportionate number of positions on
the denazification boards, too, inasmuch as the law calls for the appointment
of proven antifascists to be judges and prosecutors. The comprehensive law
for the Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism instituted in
March, 1946 was primarily the work of Heinrich Schmitt, the former Communist
Minister for Denazification in the Bavarian Cabinet.
The Communists have constantly brought to the attention of our authorities
the existence of situations and groups imperilling the development of
democracy in Germany, thereby gaining the enmity of the German nationalists,
who threaten them with terrible vengeance. They have exposed militarism and
chauvinism in schools and universities and have pressed for the inclusion of
legal safeguards in the provincial constitutions against the possible
resurgence of reaction.
On the other hand, as sponsors of the Antifas, of the cooperation among the
democratic political parties and of the organization of democratic,
non-partisan women's, youth, cultural and sport groups, they have helped to
mobilize the anti-Nazi elements in the population and to build a popular
bulwark against the resurgent reactionary forces.
These attempts to assist in putting the Potsdam directives into force have
provided the prime reasons for the present hysterical red-baiting in our
Zone. According to a letter I received at the end of 1946 from one leading
German Communist functionary, this agitation against the Communists had
become more vicious and intense a year and a half after VE day than it had
ever been. Those who fear the results of a thorough, long-overdue land
reform, punishment and expropriation of the warmongers and the Nazis, the
payment of reparations to Germany's wartime victims and the institution of
the social changes necessary to establish a firm foundation for democracy in
Germany have turned against the "bolsheviks" with a fury.
The "foreign allegiance" of the German Communists is a favorite theme of
attack for these anti-"bolsheviks" � for the Socialists, who boast of their
ties with England, the Vatican-oriented Christian party and for the
Junker-militarist-big industrialist Liberals, who assure us of the similarity
of their points of view to those of our own Herbert Hoover. It is, however,
clear to anyone who studies the platform statements of the various parties
that the Communist Party surpasses all the others in its direct and constant
concern with specifically German problems � denazification, reconstruction,
the blackmarket, the democratization of the economic base of the country, of
the civil service, of education, etc. And in its avoidance of barren
demogogic "issues" like eastern and western orientation and now existent,
rhetorical bogeys.
Unfortunalety,[sic] in league with the "conservative" politicians, the
senile, power-seeking Socialist bosses, the Church and the industrialists and
Junkers, MG joined the fight against the Communists particulary since the
announcement of the first elections and the assumption of an anti-Potsdam
policy. In some communities, the authorization of the Communist Party was
delayed on various pretexts by local MG officers, and the already
overwhelming difficulties of the Communists in- the antagonistic rural areas
were increased.
Because we had failed to appoint Communists to important positions, they had
had little opportunity to prove themselves to the nazified population. In
Bavaria, for example, there was not a single Communist on the editorial board
of any the 30 or so licensed newspapers.[*] We intimidated the Communists so
that many feared admitting membership in their party. In the summer of 1945
several German civil servants in Munich whom I interrogated begged me not to
tell MG they were Communists. They were afraid of losing their positions.[ *
One of the leading officials in the Bavarian Information Control Branch was
violently anti-"red", declaring on one occasion: "When we go home we'll know
how to deal with organizations like the American Labor Party and the trade
unions, we've had experience with those Communists over here."]
By the beginning of 1946, the anti-Communist feeling had developed into an
actual hysteria in many MG offices. I remember how on February 25, 1946, one
of the fellows in our office came running down the hall opening all the doors
and announcing exultantly: "We just received news from Berlin that 12
Communists have been arrested for interfering in MG affairs." That was the
Jurr-Kammermeier case.
There were so many MG "attacks" on the Communists throughout the Zone, that
most Germans believed we are attempting to frighten possible recruits away
from the party and to discourage the Socialists from collaborating with the
Communists. One of the worst of these incidents occurred in the summer of
1946. On the morning of July 22, 1946, about 2:30 a. in., Ludwig Ficker, a
State Secretary in the Bavarian Cabinet and General Secretary of the Bavarian
Communist Party, was awakened by four American soldiers, who stormed into his
house, guns poised. They searched his rooms, violently breaking open the
drawers to his desk and rifling through his closets. They ordered him to go
with them immediately. At the military prison at the Ungerer Strasse in
Munich, he met Wilhelm Specht, the former head of the local
Free Germany Committee, and Alfred Meislinger, a Communist city councilman
and many-year inmate of a concentration camp. At the prison, Ficker was
taunted and forced to stand at attention flat against a wall. He was locked
in a toilet. Every half hour he was violently awakened. Finally, the next
afternoon he was grilled about his activities in the Communist Party and his
supposed espionage for the Russians. At 6:30 in the evening Ficker and two
others were released. Several others, however, were retained for further
investigation.
A few days later Military Government issued a statement declaring the arrests
had been a "mistake." The Munich newspaper, which had published an account of
this arrests, did not carry the MG explanation, however.
Considering the suffering that most of the Communist leaders had endured in
their years of concentration camp torture (a large proportion of them Kzler),
most of them have been amazingly patient in the face of the attacks of
reaction and of the open antagonism of MG. Quiet-spoken Oskar Mueller, the
former Communist Minister of Labor in Hesse, told me back in the fall of
1945: "We German Communists have to look rather at how much you have
accomplished for us, rather than at how many mistakes you may have made or
may be making. You are responsible for ridding Germany of the Nazis. We
showed ourselves incapable of doing that alone. Those of us who suffered
under the Nazis are profoundly grateful..."
Despite our open antagonism to the Communists, they have been the only party
which has not exhibited nationalist opposition to the "victor and enemy" in
Germany. Other German politicians seek to escape responsibility for their
incompetent handling of administrative and economic affairs by blaming MG for
all their difficulties. But the Communists have rejected this approach. On
November 18, 1946, for example, at a Communist campaign meeting in Frankfurt,
the guest speaker, Ewald Kaiser, the chairman of the Communist Party in
Nordrhein-Westfalen (British Zone), declared: "The Communist Party must
reject the view that the guilt (for the food crisis) lies on MG alone as Dr.
Adenauer (a leader of the Christian party) and the Social Democrats insist."
The German Communists serve the cause of world peace not only by calling for
a firm democratization of their country but also by seeking to foster the
amity among all the occupation powers. Unlike other political groups, they
renounce the political advantages to be derived from playing on whatever
disagreements may exist among the Big Four. Unlike the Socialist leaders who
have joined the anti-Soviet crusade and reject any responsibility for the
rise of Nazism and unlike the nationalists who preach war and appeal to
"national honor" to gain votes, the Communists have consistently argued that
Germans have to earn the right to deal as equals with the United Nations.
Thus in August, 1945, Albert Buchmann, the present head of the Communist
Party in the American Zone, declared at a public meeting:
"One thing that we must recognize is that the foreign nations are not going
to be bargained with. Even if one or two per cent of the German people did
show opposition to the Nazi destructive spirit, our people as a whole are not
to be excused. We must demonstrate to the other nations that we are willing
to pay reparations. It must be presented as a willing action on our part. We
must recognize in this action that we will have hardly repaid for the crimes
of the Nazis, but that we are ready to repay. The sooner we become convinced
of the need to repay of our own free will, the sooner will the foreign
nations have confidence in us and recognize our maturity." * [ * It is clear
why Communists like Buchmann dedicate themselves so completely to the fight
for the democratization of Germany and for world peace. In his testimony for
the Nuremberg trials, a pre � 1933 trade union leader and an inmate of
Dachau, where Buchmann was imprisoned from 1933 through 1945, Mathias Lex,
declared: "Buchmann, as another example (of particularly harsh treatment by
the SS guards), a Communist, was inhumanly punished for suspected assistance
(to another prisoner) to escape. He was made to jump into a canal, to dive,
to kneel, and was repeatedly threatened with a pistol in order to force a
confession from him." Pg. 600, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggresion,[sic] Vol. 5, U.
S. Gov't Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 1946.]
Despite their shortage of trained, experienced leaders, the suspicions of the
populace, the unfriendliness of MG, the attacks of the other parties and of
the Church and their unwillingness to cater to the nationalism and Nazism of
the population, the Communists have been advancing. The membership of the
Communist Party in the American Zone even in 1947 was considerably greater
than it was in 1932. They owe their increasing strength to their
indefatigable activity, their positive program dealing with immediate issues
and their efficient development of special committees � on agriculture,
education, finances, reconstruction, women's affairs, etc. � which make
exhaustive studies of individual particular problems and then offer practical
definite suggestions for solution of difficulties.
The Communist Party will grow with the mounting dissatisfaction of the
workers with the present bungling policy for maintaining a social order
unable to cope with the critical problems of food, homes, employment, disease
and the resettlement of the millions of expellees in a nation that has lost
almost one-half its national wealth. The workers, the people in Germany with
the best reputation for fighting and defending democracy, have been
bewildered and confused by the "bolshevik bogey", the attacks against the
Soviet Union and the palaver about western orientation, but they are
determined not to return to the helplessness and division of the Weimar
Republic.
There have been convincing indications of dissension within the ranks of the
Socialists as a result of the increasing grassroot demands for political
unity among the workers. Although the party discipline of the Socialists is
strong and the workers generally continue to obey their leaders, individual
factory unions have passed resolutions demanding the unity of the worker's
parties. The party bosses have had to prevent unity-minded political leaders
from speaking at party meetings and to remove some of them from important
positions. Venedey, the Hessian Minister of Interior, who participated in the
Wiesbaden unity meeting of December, 1945, was expelled from the party in
June, 1946 and forced out of the provincial cabinet shortly thereafter. "I
had the audacity," Venedey explained, "to have a free opinion. But the
Schumacher (the leader of the party in the western zones) element is
intolerant and does not allow any divergent opinions. That is the reason for
my expulsion." A year later, in the spring of 1947, fourteen leading
Socialist functionaries in Frankfurt resigned from the Party, protesting the
dictatorial attitude of the bosses.
It has always been the misfortune of the German people to fail at decisive
moments in their history. They exhibit the kind of revolutionary fervor that
existed for a brief period in 1945 and then compromise with reaction,
succumbing again to the hegemony of the original ruling groups, the
militarists and the anthoritarians.[sic] The present Social Democratic
leadership is pursuing this path of compromise and capitulation. It is a
question, however, how long the workers with whom I spoke back in the spring
and summer of 1945 are going to follow these leaders.
pps. 163-181
--[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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