-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 ----- ---" 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 ----- CHAPTER TEN Denazification Becomes Renazification "I shudder to think of what will happen to humanity including ourselves, if this war ends in an inconclusive peace, and another war breaks out when the babies of today have grown to fighting age." --From annual message to Congress, January 7, 1943. "IT appears," declared Lt. General Clay, the Military Governor of Germany, in a speech to the provincial premiers of the American Zone on November 7, 1946, "that the denazification law has been used to return as many persons as possible to their former vocations, rather than to punish the guilty." But just a few weeks before, in an official conference, General Clay had counseled his MG officers more "realistically" about denazification and the Germans charged with its administration, stating: "You have to be careful in handling Pfeiffer (the Bavarian Minister of Denazification). Remember, he is an old-line reactionary and a strong nationalist. If you offend him on those subjects (bungling in denazification, etc.) he might resign." * [* Reported in a dispatch from Munich by Edd Johnson, the special correspondent of the Chicago Sun and PM, October 3, 1946.] There were many subjects on which MG officers could "offend" Dr. Pfeiffer, for under the direction of this "old-line reactionary and strong nationalist," at least 60% of the Nazis who were automatically to be classified as "major offenders" had either been acquitted or classified as "followers" and dismissed with minor fines. In addition, the Bavarian Denazification Courts responsible to his ministry had brazenly exonerated more than three-quarters of the German officials removed from government positions by our MG officials on account of their political unreliability. Dr. Pfeiffer might have resigned in a huff if an American had suggested that as the father of two Storm Troopers and the brother of a dangerous Nazi interned by the Americans, he himself was politically suspect. General Clay no doubt realized that the hypersensitive "old-line reactionary" might resent any insinuation, too, that as the general secretary of the leading right-wing politicians who had supported the Empowering Act, the law which granted Hitler dictatorial power in Germany, he had no moral right to judge the political histories of his fellow Bavarians. *[ * The right of these discredited old politicians who had voted Hitler dictatorial power to hold office and even to direct the denazification program in the new anti-Nazi democracy had never been challenged under the denazification law until January, 1947, when the public prosecutor of a Stuttgart Denazification Court suddenly indicted Rheinhold Maier, the Wuerttemberg-Baden provincial Premier, and Wilhelm Simpfendoerfer, the provincial Minister of Culture both of whom had supported the Empowering Act of 1933 as men bearing considerable responsibility for Hitler's rise to power. As a test for the entire denazification program, the case inspired sharp discussion in the press and at meetings of the political parties and of the trade unions. In an attempt to explain the speech he had made as leader of the Staatspartei (State Party) in the Reichstag in support of the Empowering Act, in which he had praised the "great national aims proprosed by the Chancellor (Adolf Hitler) ", Maier revealed that he had urged his party to support the Act out of fear of the Nazi and nationalist deputies, who were "drunk with power." He was not to be trusted to fight back against the Nazis. Simpfendoerfer, who was also the head of the provincial Christian Democratic Union, had not only supported the Act and publicly declared -his satisfaction with Hitler's elimination of the "flabby" Weimar Republic but had also accepted an invitation from the Nazis to remain in the Reichstag as their guest after the dissolution of all the parties except the NSDAP. In his rejoinder to the indictment, he accused the prosecutor of a "seditious tendency" and suggested that the entire case was "in the service of a shady conspiracy of very dark men behind the scenes (the 'bolshevik bogey' again!) aiming to torpedo the new state." The reaction of the Minister of Denazification was to dismiss the public prosecutor immediately. The prosecutor replied by exposing the minister's dubious reservations about the basic principles of denazification. The Minister opposed imposing more severe punishments on the early Party members, whom he insisted were often "idealists", because that would prevent people from identifying themselves with causes in the future for "idealistic reasons!" A parliamentary commission appointed to investigate the two ministers split, as was anticipated, along party lines, the Christian democrats and the Liberals supporting the ministers, the Socialists wavering and finally capitulating and the Communists disassociating themselves from the exoneration. One of the members of the investigating committee, Rektor Kling, had been a guest of the Nazis in the Reichstag in 1933 just as Simpfendoerfer had been! Denazification was now "safe" for the former collaborators with Hitler] Why did not General Clay want this "old-line reactionary" who was obviously not to be entrusted with administering our denazification program to resign? Presumably the General was satisfied that a Cardinal's man and a friend of some of the leading Bavarian industrialists, businessmen, aristocrats and former Party leaders would at least not turn denazification into a "radical program for social revolution." The "bolshevik bogey" was haunting the denazification program, too. In fact, a special branch officer in charge of denazification in Munich openly admitted to Edd Johnson of PM and the Chicago Sun in October, 1946 that "a very high official from Washington... recently in Germany... told us: 'You must not be too hard on these Germans or they will all turn Communist.' " The formulators of the original denazification directives had followed the theory that in order to preserve peace and establish democracy in Germany, we would have to deprive all the politicians, administrative officials, the businessmen and industrialists, the militarists, the Party heads, the Nazi ideologists in the schools, the churches and the press, radio, etc., all those who assisted Hitler to gain control of the nation and profited from his regime of plunder of power, leadership and influence. In addition, to render such a program effective, we would have to replace all these unreliable Germans with the men who had fought with the greatest determination and courage against the Hitler regime. As we have seen, however, some of our leading officials deliberately sought from the very beginning to subordinate the revolutionary character of denazification, hampering the program with their timorous compunctions and their bureaucratic approach of correcting papers (Fragebogen the many-paged political questionnaires). In the delay and confusion of our red tape, the early resentment of many of the Germans against the Nazis and their determination to remove the party members and the collaborators from positions of authority was stifled, and the unique opportunity for accomplishing an immediate clean sweep was irretrievably lost. The revolution was filed away in the Fragebogen alphabetized in the cabinets of our public safety officers. In any case during the first months, ever fond of success, HQ published regularly impressive reports of our denazification "accomplishments." As early as August, 1945, Eisenhower's report "revealed," for instance, that Frankfurt could be considered completely denazified Frankfurt, where Blaum the Nazi theoretician was the Oberbuergemeister and the entire administration was rotten with pro-Nazi and militarist termites! Somehow, despite all the brave talk, denazification rapidly began to bog down, and at the end of September, HQ issued Law No 8. This law restricted Nazis to ordinary labor unless they were cleared by the denazification boards to be set up by the mayors and the county councilmen. Although advertised with even greater ballyhoo than our original denazification method, the whole program, particularly as it affected industry, soon proved to be corrupt and maladministered. We could expect no revolutionary results from the ultra-conservative, nambypamby politicians we had appointed as mayors and county councilmen. Practically every appeal to the review boards ended in favor of the Nazis. Employers listed Nazis as ordinary labor but continued to use them in their former supervisory capacities. Hundreds of firms failed to submit the required reports on their employees. Nazi businessmen put their enterprises in the names of friends and relatives and continued to administer their affairs as usual. Wealthy industrialists merely retired to the Bavarian lake co[u]ntry to sun themselves until business would revive and the "denazification nonsense" would come to an end. Finally, we were forced to admit that Law No. 8, too, was a failure and in March, 1947 we instituted the Law for the Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism, a theoretically comprehensive and effective law, which was to be administered completely by the Germans with gradually decreasing supervision from MG. Unfortunately, this law came too late. All Germans, no matter what their political orientation were weary of the constant upheaval, now to continue indefinitely, for the new act necessitated the repetition of most of the investigation previously accomplished under the MG denazification and under Law No. 8. By now, too, the antiNazis most desirous of a thorough denazification were too weak to apply sufficient pressure on the conservative politicians to assure proper execution of the provisions of the law. The conservative politicians in charge of denazification took their cue from the Church* and right-wing opposition to the law and perfected our Fragebogen approach to the program, applying an exaggerated legalism and discouraging the people with interminable cases and involved argumentation about juridical niceties. Dr. Ziebbel, chief of the Legal Branch in Pfeiffer's ministry, officially announced that the decisions of the denazification boards were not to be based on the evidence obtained in the investigation of the individual on trial but on the legal correctitude of the cases. In keeping with this directive, an appeal court in Ansbach reversed the sentence of three years of forced labor imposed on an industrial engineer on the grounds that he could not be punished for maltreatment of concentration camp inmates (who had been forced to work under him during the Nazi regime) because the law contained no provision for such .a crime! [* The Evangelical Council (the governing body of the German Protestant Church) declared in a letter to Lt. General Clay soon after the law was published that it "feels unable to tell the German people that this Act and its execution will in all parts serve divine justice and truth."] The legalistic approach to denazification, which we had instituted at the very inception of the occupation, especially benefited the industrialists and businessmen, many of whom had never been forced to join the Nazi Party. Some of our highest MG officials had been afraid that the thorough application of our original denazification directives would result in a severe blow to the German private enterprise system, which had been so compromised under Hitler because of the widespread collaboration of the industrialists and businessmen with the Nazis. Such officers immediately exhibited a definite diffidence about applying the denazification directives to these German gentlemen, whom, on the other hand, they frequently appointed to high administrative positions in the ,.government and economic boards of the Zone and accepted as anti-Potsdam allies to assist in the rehabilitation of German industry. In his testimony before the Kilgore Subcommittee in February, 1946, Russel A. Nixon, the former acting head of the Decartellization Division, exposed the reticence of many of our policymakers to denazify German business and industry. He declared: . "This directive to arrest key industrial and financial figures has not been applied to the United States Zone... As a result of (the)... lack of a specified operational policy and of clearly assigned personnel to handle the problem, shockingly few industrial and financial leaders in the United States Zone in Germany were in our custody at the end of 1945. Those few who were in custody had been arrested only on a hit-and-miss basis, and, for the most part, not because of their financial and industrial leadership in the Nazi Reich but because of notorious political positions." As an example of the attitude of some of the leading MG ,officials toward denazification, Nixon cited the case of Richard Freudenberg, the largest leather and shoe manufacturer in Germany and one of the richest of all Nazis. Although Freudenberg had held administrative positions which put him in the mandatory arrest category according to our book of directives, he was exonerated of all responsibility and guilt and acquitted by a vote of four to one in the HQ denazification appeal board. The dissenter in the vote, Colonel Babcock, representing the Public Safety Division, declared: "I voted against this man because if he is reinstated, he will supervise the removal of lesser officials... and it will be ridiculous for us to remove smaller Nazis and leave the big one in." The representative of Ambassador Murphy, a man named Reinhardt, retorted with the real reason for Freudenberg's. acquittal: "What we are doing here through denazification is nothing less. than a social revolution. If the Russians want to bolshevize their side of the Elbe that is their business, but it is not in conformity with American standards to cut away the basis of private property." The representative of the Industry Division agreed, declaring: "This man is an extremely capable industrialist, a kind of Henry Ford." * [* This material is from Elimination of German Resources for War, pp. cit., Part 11, pp. 1543-1550.] When, in July 1946, the Social Democratic Premier of Bavaria, Wilhelm Hoegner, succumbing to various pressures and listening to advice from various quarters, replaced Heinrich Schmitt, the aggressive Communist Minister of Denazification,, with the "old reactionary and nationalist", Anton Pfeiffer, it was essentially because the conscientious Schmitt had no, special sympathy for pro-Nazi profiteers and insisted upon the punishment of these bigshots. Pfeiffer could be trusted to continue the policy of some of our leading MG officials in the denazification of business and industry. Schmitt himself gave the following explanation for his dismissal: "It is not by chance that the first discussion of my dismissal commenced after the sentencing of the war profiteer, Leonholdt, who bought the Steinheil Works in Munich for 7,000,000 Marks just two. weeks before the end of the war. The day after the decision, Leonholdt's counsel complained: 'The judgment shows that this law can be used against all those who made a lot of money in the last twelve years; thus the law paves the way to socialism."' After Pfeiffer took office, there commenced a "conscious political game of turning followers into major offenders and major offenders into followers", as the radio commentator Hans Gessner de[s]cribed the progress of denazification in Bavaria. Gessner sharply attacked Pfeiffer's light sentences for Nazi profiteers and financial backers and I-Lis heavy sentences ,on petty Nazi Party members in a series of broa[d]casts until he was dismissed from his position at Radio 'Munich. He publicized cases like that of Josef Witt of Weiden, a man who enriched himself by b[u]ying up Jewish businesses and became a millionaire many times over as the owner of a chain of textile factories and of a large mail order business. Although an auxiliary member of the SS, a Party member from 1937, and ,a donator of 260,000 Marks to the Nazi Party, Witt escaped with a fine of 2,000 Marks (8200), less than one per cent of -what he had voluntarily contributed to the Nazi Party.* [* Not only in Bavaria have the industrialists who supported Hitler been escaping with ridiculously small fines. In Hesse, Wilhelm von Opel, the head of the Opel Automobile Works, an enterprise that had a major responsibility in motorizing Hitler's army (it is owned by General Motors), ,employing in its Ruesselsheim plant near Wiesbaden about 13,000 workers (8,000 foreign workers during the war) was declared a follower by a denazification board and fined $200. This important industrialist had participated in conferences with Hitler as early as February 1933, according to the chairman of the shop stewards of his plant. He had signed an appeal for support of the NSDAP just before the Empowering Act was put to a vote and was congratulated by Nazi' officials. on his 70th birthday for being one of the "active supporters of the (Nazi) development." Another industrialist, Dr. Wille, a director of the Dynamit A.-G., an ammunitions plant near Marburg, was arrested. for having denounced German and foreign workers to the Gestapo as well as for being a war profiteer. He was quickly released and the public prosecutor responsible for his arrest was suspended no reason given. The list of big industrialists who have been "punished" with small fines or acquitted is long and distinguished in the American Zone.] On the other hand, against the small fry the law has been .applied to with vengeance, Gessner contrasted the case of Josef Witt with that of a simple postman, a man with seven ,children, a Party member from 1939 till 1942 (when he resigned), who was fined $200 also and forbidden to hold any public position. The postman received the same fine as the profiteer. By January, 1947, the Frankfurter Rundschau actually found it neccessary in an editorial to remind its readers of the original intentions of the denazification program: "Recognition is obviously disappearing of the necessity to render the profiteers of the Nazi regime harmless, particularly since they are the only ones who combine the interest in the resurgence of this regime with the necesssary[sic] financial power to sponsor it. Dozens and hundreds of so-called business leaders are in the meantime escaping with a laughable fine..."* [* Back in August, 1945, a few weeks after the publication of the Potsdam Agreement, Col. Charles S. Reid, the Chief Property Control Officer, had expressed this very idea, since forgotten, declaring: "If we leave the economic power of both big and little business in their (Nazi) bands, a potential and actual totalitarian control will remain from which Nazism... will be resurrected."] But it was not only with the businessmen and the industrialists that the program has been undermined. With the acquittal of Fritzsche, (Nazi propaganda), Schacht and von Papen (Nazi banking, industry and international duplicity) at Nuremberg, the entire theoretical basis for denazification was shaken. And a few weeks later General Clay announced a Christmas (1946) amnesty of three hundred of the leadingNazis former members of the cabinet, of the General Staff and of the SA who were released on parole and protected from the action of the German denazification courts. How could anyone sentence the other Party members if these bigshot Nazis were allowed to go free? Some of the German politicians have adapted themselves very well to this policy of leniency to the leading Nazis, interfering in the denazification proceedings and applying political pressure to protect their Party member friends and associates. The Fraenkische Post, for example, exposed Pfeiffer's. intercession for a leading Ortsgruppenleiter (regional leader) of the Nazi Party, a Baron von Poelsitz in Aschbach. Such finagling on behalf of the Nazis was not unusual for Pfeiffer or for the other German officials concerned with denazification. In this respect, too, some of our highest American officials provided the model to the Germans. In April, 1947, Binder, the Hessian Minister for Political Liberation, replying to a question of the provincial Communist Party, revealed that Prince Philip of Hesse, an SA-Obergruppenfuehrer (Storm Trooper General), the Nazi Regierungspraesident (Regional Administrator) of Kassel, had been granted permission to leave his prison cell to visit his castle from December 24 until December 28, 1946 upon the wish and authorization of the American officials. And from January 27 through January 31, 1947, the Prince had been granted an additional four days on the order of Ambassador Murphy himself, in response to an appeal from the Queen of Bulgaria! The Nazis, of course, have been encouraged by these developments: the rejecton of the original revolutionary approach, the entanglement in bureaucratic red tape and in legalism, the leniency with the big industrialists, the amnesty of the top Party leaders, the protection afforded individual criminals by American and German authorities, and the accompanying resentment of the population at the corruption and the constant upheaval in the Zone. By 1947 denazification had broken down. Members of the courts and even public prosecutors in numerous towns were being exposed as former Party members. Nazis were permitted to testify in each other's defense. Bribery, intimidation and deliberate perjury, all served the Nazis in good stead. "Democratic" politicians feared to "touch" denazification, and a member of Hessian parliament declared that members of the denazification courts were generally being considered "free game" to be hunted down at will by the Nazi elements. The denazification program had collapsed. Macht die Bahn Frei Clear the Way the Nazis used to sing. Clear the way, the Nazi columns are marching down the street. We and our German associates have been clearing the way. pps. 182-191 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substancenot soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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