-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 ----- CHAPTER SEVEN In The Name Of Christ... "...we can begin to build, under God, that better world in which our children and grandchildren, yours and mine, the children and grandchildren of the whole world must live and can live..." --From report to Congress, March 1, 1945. THE Bishop of Regensburg, who. had proclaimed that "socialism is an antithesis to Christianity and much more dangerous now than Nazism", declared: "Some idealists think that the Church doesn't need a party. I am not one of these idealists." It was "practical" churchmen like this Bishop who fostered the establishment of the Church party, the Christian Democratic Union. When I was in Darmstadt in September, 1945, all the priests and ministers of the city were discussing the advisability of 'organizing a "Christian" party. Landesbischoff Mueller of the Evangelical Church told me that he had just tentatively rejected the suggestion of the Catholic Bishop of Mainz that the two Churches collaborate in the formation of such a party. What most definitely characterized the "Christian" party about which all these clergymen were talking was its completely negative program: opposition to the Communists. Perhaps the most important and certainly the most interesting figure in Darmstadt political life that September was the mysterious Maria Sevenich. Several of the religious leaders and the MG were very suspicious of this woman, who was attempting to organize her own movement for German reconstruction. Fraeulein Sevenich had a dubious political history. Before Hitler, she had been by turns a member of the Social Democratic Party, a member of the German Nationalist Party the party of the Junkers, the officers, the industrialists, the monarchists, and the most nationalistic of the Germans a Communist student leader at the University of Frankfurt and, finally, a supporter of the Socialist Workers Party, a leftist splinter group. She had been expelled officially by the first three parties and possibly by the fourth. . Although Fraeulein Sevenich had fled Germany in 1938 and had been captured by the Nazis in France in 1942 and imprisoned, rumor had it that she was actually a Gestapo agent responsible for the arrest of numerous genuine anti-Nazis. Since her return to Darmstadt in the spring of 1945, Maria Sevenich had been engaged in political activity as a "Christian." (She herself had been baptized a Catholic, had since forgotten her religion, had taken to attacking it, and now was making use of it again.) Like many of the other "Christian" politicians back in September, 1945, Fraeulein Sevenich was still confused about what kind of party the Church party should be. Some of the party leaders thought of the Christian party as a middle-class organization and called it a bourgeois party. Others, like Adolf Leweke, head of the Frankfurt railway workers union, considered all the pre-1933 parties discredited and wanted the "Christian" party to be a new, broad progressive party. In any case, there were only a few hundred professional politicians and clergymen concerned with the problem. The conservatives, in general, the chief backers of this party, had either been supporters of Hitler or well-paid collaborators with the Nazis. They were badly demoralized by the defeat and disorganization of their businesses and were hesitant about engaging in political activity. Not until the wind-up of the January campaign did the Church party become a party with a large following and with a basically unified program. Fraeulein Sevenich had told the MG political affairs officer that she was organizing a great "Christian" anti-Communist party composed of members of both Churches and particularly catering to the despairing German soldiers "who had lost everything and had only religion to rely upon," to the youth tainted by National Socialism and disillusioned, "whom the Church would redeem," and to "deluded" ex-Nazis. But for the sincere anti-Nazi Catholic priest of the Saint Elizabeth Church, Dr. Michel who was not interested in promoting inter-party strife, Fraeulein Sevenich, had another explanation of her political aims. She told him she was out to induce Communists to give up their antireligious program and return to the church. The MG political affairs officer, a conscientious young captain, was worried about her. "You can't tell what people like her may do after we leave this country," he told me. He wondered how she was able to live without any apparent means of support or how she found ways to travel around so much. Unfortunately, she had gone to Bavaria for a political conference while I was in Darmstadt and I was unable to speak with her. When I told one of the local priests where Maria had gone, he smiled and murmured. "Things are different in Bavaria." There the Catholic Church under Cardinal Faulhaber was the unchallenged political power. I ran across no mention of Fraeulein Sevenich again until December, 1945, when I noticed her name among the signatories on the Christian Democratic Union's petition for provincial authorization and read in one of the German newspapers that she had delivered a stirring speech at the national conference held by the Christian Democratic Union at Godesberg. Maria was now enrolled in her fifth political party. The CDU (Christian Democratic Union) was a Sammelbecher (collection pot), A catch-all party backed "unofficially" by both Churches, including among its followers industrialists, intellectuals, peasants, great landowners, monarchists, Catholic "communists", separatists, conservative businessmen, socialist trade unionists and former army officers "Christians" all. In such a collection chances were that Maria Sevenich would be able to remain a long time withouth[sic] being expelled as she had been three times before in her political career. Finally on Sunday, March 10, 1946, I was able to hear Maria Sevenich. She was speaking at the Helipa Movie theatre in Bad Homburg, where our detachment was stationed. I was enthusiastic at this opportunity because I wanted to find out how the Christian party had developed since the previous September, when I had spoken with some of its leaders in Frankfurt and Darmstadt. As a leader of the CDU in the province of Hesse and supposedly one of best orators and drawing-cards in the party, Fraeulein Sevenich presumably would express the official platform of the party. When I arrived at the movie theatre and saw Maria Sevenich on the stage, I laughed in amazed reassurance. This woman who was called the dangerous political personality of Darmstadt was a gentle person about 45 with graying hair, a sweet face ond[sic] a clear, soft complexion, very warm, motherly and feminine. She opened her address with a fervent appeal for unity of the two Churches and for Christian approach to current problems. This was what I wanted to hear. I was interested in learning how closely the "Christian" party would conform in its program to the policies of the two Churches as enunciated by the Church Councils and by individual bishops. The Churches had consistently attacked denazification, railed against the' Soviet Union, rejected the guilt of the Germans, openly, praised the Wehrmacht for "doing its duty," an generally provided leadership to the most nationalistic and reactionary elements in the nation. Denazification was Maria Sevenich's first theme. She said in a quiet voice, a look of pain and sorrow on her face: "I shuddered when I read the denazification. law, as a Christian I shuddered. I would think it unfortunate if the German people would not protest this un-Christian act. No good can come of this campaign of hate." Like many of the church leaders, Maria was sure that all Nazis who had attended church regularly must have been anti-Nazis. This was nothing new, Maria was merely echoing the clergymen from all over the American Zone and cleverly taking into account the fact that 35 to 40% of the people in the Zone either had been Party members themselves or were related to people who had been Nazis. The audience middle-aged people, women in furs and men in homburgs (which had actually originated in this famous spa town, Bad Homburg), a group of Hitler Youth and former Wehrmacht soldiers monopolizing the front rows of the balcony and some nuns with their orphan charges murmured enthusiastic approval. Many of those present were war profiteers and ex-Nazis living on the money they had accumulated during the war. The theatre became hushed as Maria shouted her challenge: "What is the greatest danger to Germany today?" Sternly she replied: "The greatest danger to Germany today is the wave of heathenism from the East. The terror now taking place against the Germans in the East is the most frightful misery our people has ever known. Only Christian love can redeem the refugees from this inferno. Germany's great mission today is to lead the Western world in a great crusade against Eastern heathenism." Maria's audience understood clearly that she was calling for war against the Soviet Union under German leadership. They were satisfied. People were nodding their heads in approval. The Hitler Youth boys and ex-Wehrmacht men crowded in the front rows of the balcony were in a huddle, talking excitedly. This "bolshevik bogey" harangue was not unfamiliar to them. The only difference now was that it was being preached in the name of Christ and not in the name of Hitler. Maria's next task was to excuse her audience for their support of Nazism without appearing too obvious in her rational ization of their spinelessness or active Nazism during the previous twelve years. First she declared them guilty. The German people had committed terrifying atrocities. The concentration camps and the persecution of the subject peoples and minorities could hardly be forgiven. The audience was silent. "But," asked Fraeulein Sevenich, "where must we look for the guilt?" This was the crucial question. Maria had the satisfactory answer: "We must look to the other political parties now opposing the Christian Democratic Union." The very people who were the first to be thrown into concentration camps the Kzler were responsible. They had failed to provide sufficient opposition to Hitler in 1933, she declared. "And here," thought her delighted audience, "everyone has been saying that these people were the most determined opponents of the Nazis. But Fraeulein Sevenich must know, wasn't she herself in a concentration camp?" In addition, Maria confided, one must look to the other nations of the world in assigning the guilt for the terrorism and the war. "Why hadn't they done something? With their democratic freedom they had been able to know what was happening. Under the Nazi terror, the Nazi press censorship, it had been impossible for the Germans to know anything." The audience applauded gleefully. But there was a voice of discord. A woman sitting directly in front of the stage shouted, "That's not true, we all knew." The audience jeered. But Maria had the answer: "And if you knew, what did you do about it?" Maria waited exultantly for a reply. The audience applauded. Why, a guard at the bloody Ausschwitz concentration camp, where four million human beings had been destroyed in huge ovens, had told Maria he had no idea what was happening inside this camp. That being the case, it was, of course, impossible for the well-dressed citizens of Bad Homburg, who had been busy enriching themselves during the war, to know what was going on. Maria had done her job well. The audience was relieved But Maria still had to deal with the emigres. The speeches of the renowned author and anti-Nazi, Thomas Mann, had been troubling the Bad Homburg intellectuals. And Maria had the answer here, too. "Only those who had remained in Germany," she trumpeted, "had shown they had courage to fight against heathenism. (Maria herself had been an emigre since 1933). I have no respect for Thomas Mann, for the louder a man spoke against Hitler in foreign countries, the more he was applauded. He risked nothing." Then Maria addressed the ex-soldiers. "If the soldiers returning home to find their cities destroyed, their futures uncertain, are not provided with Christian leadership, they will turn to nihilism what has happened, for they thought they were fighting for a good cause and as soldiers they had only done their duty." "That's right." The shouts came from the balcony. "She's right." As the audience left the theatre, I heard people exclaim: "You know, we have been too spineless... We need more women like her... It's about time we let the occupation powers know how we feel..." Maria had known her audience. Alternating from a hushed, half-stifled whisper to a loud challenging husky alto, adjusting the rhythm of her speech from a measured pace of warning to an almost hysterical call to war, she molded her audience, drawing her listeners through a gamut of emotions self-pity, righteous indignation, hate, will to vengeance. And when she had roused them, I thought I detected a suppressed smile on her face. And they did respond, they had become used to such oratory during the thirteen years of Goebbels! It did not occur to Maria's listeners that she had not offered one concrete suggestion for reconstruction, rubble clearance, eliminating unemployment, resettling those arriving from the East, for reform, for just denazification, for a general democratic regeneration. Nor did they realize or perhaps they did not care that talking much of love, the speaker for the ,Christian party had only a program of hate to offer. For several weeks, there was little news of Maria Sevenich. According to notices in the German newspapers, she was continuing her speaking tour, visiting one village after another, propagating "Christian" politics. But suddenly, on July 5, 1946, the Neue Zeitung, the Military Government newspaper published for the German population, printed a lengthy quotation from a speech delivered by Maria before a youth organization in the ancient university town of Marburg. The editors introduced the account with the advice that "all enemies of democratic development will be delighted with what follows." Maria had gone all out at this meeting. "One must call things by their name," she announced, "whether the Allies like it or not. I am referring to denazification. Denazification is intolerable. It is laying the foundation for a bolshevization of Germany. The outside world reacts better to an honest fight than we may think, and if it should react unfavorably, that would be excellent for our cause (what cause was Maria thinking about?). After all, the Allies have not come here with the dogma of infallibility. A good deal of their mistakes must be charged to the emigres. These people lived abroad and do not know conditions that prevailed here during the past few years. They are full of hatred and resentment. Particularly the Jewish emigres, for reasons which we fully understand, of course, have forced false opinions upon the Allies. We have to cope with the greatest difficulties and obstructions with those emigres who now run around in Allied uniforms." Having long since forgotten the danger of resurgent Nazism or being little concerned with this danger, Maria warned: "We now stand before the same decision that faced us in 1933. The enemy is bolshevism." Maria never talked about building democracy, and she opposed denazification. How far did she want to go in fighting "bolshevism?" In 1933 anti-"bolsheviks" in the Reichstag had voted Hitler dictatorial power to fight the "menace." But "bolshevism" was not the only enemy, evidently. Under the banner of pseudo-Christian righteousness, Maria practically called for rebellion against the occupation, thundering: "I wish we had the courage with which He told the truth not only to the Pharisees and the wise men, but also to the Romans, the occupation power of that day. Then our Fatherland would be better off." Maria was hailed by the young people at the meeting as a heroine. It was CDU policy to cater especially to the disillusioned, sullen and rebellious young people. Maria was doing her job well. Two weeks later, on July 22, 1946, the chairman of the CDU (and the man who became provincial deputy minister president in December, 1946), Dr. Werner Hilpert, sent a long statement to Military Government about Maria Sevenich, in which he declared: "On the basis of the article in the July 5th issue of the Neue Zeitung... the chairmen of the CDU have ordered Maria Sevenich to cease her speaking until the affair has been clarified. In addition, Fraeulein Sevenich has been ordered to cease all activity for the party and not to appear as a representative of the CDU in the constitutional assembly." Affixed to this statement, however, was the final report of the subsequent investigation conducted by the CDU provincial leadership. "'In reference to the further activity of Fraeulein Sevenich with the CDU, the investigation has shown that there is no cause for imposing restrictions on her activity." Having three times been expelled from political parties, Maria had at last found the party that would keep her. The CDU, the most important political party in the Western Zones, accepted and supported Maria's incitement to disobedience and to war. Maria was advised by the party leaders to go the British Zone "to rest." But at the end of July, newspapers from the British Zone were reporting that Maria was taking her "rest cure" on a campaign tour for the September elections in that Zone. Results of these elections two months later showed a sweeping victory for the CDU. Maria was on the right horse. Maria's history and we shall hear more about her is significant because it traces the development of the so-called "democratic middle," which in theory many Americans believe is the political group we should support, from the period of restrained thought impatient criticism to open exhortation to resistance. Her story reveals what had happened since the first suppression of the Antifas, the early support of reactionaries and the propagation of the "bolshevik bogey." This development was a result of our timetable sell-out, our new economic policy in Germany and our alliance with the Church. Before the first elections, I had found many of the Christian leaders to be consistently and honestly anti-Nazi and democratic although often confused and over-concerned with the "red menace." Dr. Hilpert, one of the heads of the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce and Industry and later the chairman of the provincial CDU and vice-premier of Hesse, pooh-poohed the red-baiting by "conservatives" of the aggresive Frankfurter Rundschau. As a former inmate of Buchenwald concentration camp, Hilpert assured me he naturally supported such an uncompromising anti-fascist paper. The following March, after the January elections, however, this same Dr. Hilpert declared in a speech at the town of Giessen that he hoped that the denazification program would not be administered by "super anti-Nazis but by correct-thinking Germans." His audience knew that meant easy punishments and escape from deserved retribution. This was hardly the statement of a confirmed, uncompromising anti-Nazi. The CDU became a haven for Nazis seeking protection against denazification, for authoritarians, nationalists and militarists all of whom hastened to adopt "christianity" and "democracy," the best insurance in Germany. Since the first election, we have had to order the elimination of numerous Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers among the candidates, elected officials and leaders of this party. The dismissals of important CDU personalities have followed in an unbroken sequence, affecting even top figures in the party. But the disobedience of the "Christians" has past the stage of individual falsification of political questionnaires and individual acts of insubordination. In June, 1946, MG had to disband two Christian Social Union organizations in Bavaria for flagrant violation of our orders. In Wuerzburg, one of the larger cities of our Zone, the 200 members of the local CSU had unanimously reelected their old chairman, whom MG had publicly barred from all political activity, and taken an attitude "at variance with the denazification and demilitarization program of Military Government," as the official report stated. Similarly, in Viechtach county, the candidate submitted by the CSU for the County Council (Kreistag) had been a member of the SA and SS. In September, the Bavarian CSU official publication was placed under censorship for having attacked the Soviet Union in two successive issues. After the first elections pro-Nazi "Christian" officials like Dr. Hans Thiemo, the Christian Social Union Landrat (county head) of Wolfratshausen (Bavaria) clearly demonstrated what would happen in our Zone if MG were to withdraw and the dominant party in our Zone were to take power. According to a March, 1946 issue of Neue Zeitung, the German language paper published by MG, Thiemo had set up a little Fuehrer dictatorship. His rural county was adapted to a revival of Nazism. Of the 3,000 inhabitants in the county seat, 1,300 had been Nazi Party members; of the 40,000 people in the rest of the county, no fewer than 8,000 had been Party members. Thiemo established a governing Council of Thirty, composed of leading local Nazis. After the January elections, he rejected the mayor elected in one of his towns and replaced him with one of his friends, a former Nazi bigshot. Through various manoeuvres, Thiemo and his friends prevented the denazification court from functioning and adjusted political questionnaires to their own liking, commenting on many of the questionnaire forms: "nothing prejudicial known." He favored former officers, appointing them to positions "befitting their backgrounds." In an interview with a German journalist, Thiemo indicated his undemocratic philosophy, declaring that one has "to treat the peasants rough." Thiemo had no love for the occupation power and exhibited his antagonism openly, declaring at a speech in the village of Bauerberg on December 2, 1945. "We've got to realize that the enemy stands in our land and will suck our last drop of blood." By announcing that "in a short time our money will be completely worthless" and that "all unpleasant happenings in the administration are to be blamed on the Americans alone," Thiemo succeeded in dissuading the peasants from delivering their quota of hay. And in his monthly report for November, 1945, Thiemo wrote to his immediate superior: "No one here feels any sympathy for the Americans except for a couple of parasites." Inspiration to this brazen opposition to the occupation was found in the harangues of the Bishops of both Churches. The active counselors and supporters of the CDU, the churchmen, openly campaign for this party in the elections. When the Bavarian Bishops issued an electioneering circular before the January elections and declared: "We Bishops do not mix in party politics and we take no stand for or against individual parties... Vote Christian!"; it was clear to all the faithful that they were to vote for the Christian Social Union. On the local level, the pressure was more direct. In the village of Schemmern in Hesse, the two local pastors visited each peasant home and urged their flock to vote for the CDU and against the Social Democrats who believed in the separation. of church and state. 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." "For the important election to the new Landtag, one must choose only those men who not merely represent your economic and social interests but also your religious interests, who bravely fight for Christian schools and education, for Christian principles in economic and social life," declared the Bishops of Mainz, Fulda and Limburg in a pre-election pastoral read in all their parishes in November 1946. "And especially should our brothers and sisters from the East recognize their duty to come forth for Christ and the Church through their testimony and their decision," continued the Bishops, subt[l]ely invoking the "red menace." "If we each do our part," the prelates assured the faithful, "we may expect that the Lord God will give his blessing for the reconstruction in Hesse." In December, 1946, the Protestant ministers of Frankfurt joined their Catholic colleagues in scoring the "godles" draft of the Hessian provincial constitution being submitted to the people for ratification. The constitution contained a mild measure for nationalizing some industries. No one in Germany today doubts that the Churches are directly intervening in political affairs. They are, in fact, the leading political force in the Zone. Their party, the Christian democratic or Christian Social Union is by far most powerful. They bear much of the responsibility for the political developments in our Zone including the direction taken by such "Christian" leaders as the notorius, influential Maria Sevenich, the demogogic, ultra-nationalist orator who rallies the Germans to opposition to- the o[c]cupation and to war against the Eastern "heathens." On our MG people, however, rests the responsibility for the premature elections which entrenched these dangerous forces, for the failure to sponsor the trustworthy and aggressive antiNazi elements and for assuming an economic policy in Germany which forces us to seek allies among such dangerous, belligerent pro-Nazis. pps. 134-147 --[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! 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