-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 ----- --"For more than 700 years Bavaria has been free, happy and satisfied as an independent state under the reign of the House of Wittelsbach..." declared the application of the monarchists for MG authorization of their King and Homeland Party. This was the voice of the Cardinal speaking for the old nobility, the industrialists, the army officers and the Bishops, Now that Prussia was divided up, Bavaria was the largest and most powerful principality in the Reich. It would have to take the lead in opposing "Red Berlin"! Under a king "accountable only to God and not necessarily to the people," as Baron Franz von Redwitz envisaged the new monarchy, Bavaria would really be an Ordnungszelle, a cell of order.-- ---" 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 --[8]-- CHAPTER EIGHT Deutschland, Deutschland Ueber Alles! We're Most Like You..." "I am not for a return to that definition of liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few." --From Fireside Chat, September 30, 1934. BUT an American officer has already spoken to me, how many more times will we be questioned?" Herr Ellers, an official in the large Sandoz Chemical Works (a firm with branches in the United States), spoke quietly, a little meekly, but with annoyance. We had licensed his party, the LPD, the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany, and he could not understand why we insisted upon interrogating the leaders so frequently on their motives and objectives. Of course, his party was reliable. The Liberal Democratic Party was the German party most like the two American parties, Herr Ellers assured me. It was the only party that advocated an eventual complete return to free enterprise, to the economic structure of the Weimar Republic, when independent businessmen and industrialists were given free rein in commerce and industry. (Herr Ellers did not mention that under the Weimar Republic they had also been given free rein in politics with unfortunate results for democracy). "Why all this talk about the Kzler," and from Eller's tone it was clear that the ex-concentration camp inmates provided a frequent topic of conversation with him. "I, too, opposed the Nazis. Never did I sign my letters with the required 'Heil Hitler!' and that was dangerous. And I, too, suffered. I was bombed out and lost my home." I looked around at the plush, overfurnished, undamaged Victorian apartment to which Herr Ellers had been forced to retreat and remarked: "But it wasn't the Nazis who bombed you out, Herr Ellers, it was our fliers." He shrugged his shoulders and smiled weakly: "Well, we've suffered a lot from you, too." He had o[sic] good salary in 1933, Herr Ellers, and it had continued to rise during the Hitler regime. It was difficult for him, one could see, to determine who was his worst enemy, we, the conquerors and shamers of his country and the bombers of his house, or the Nazis, who had made mistakes and been corrupt. What had happened to all the industrialists, civil officials, businessmen and professional people who out of nationalism, love of the army, concern for the national honor and fear of "bolshevism" had thrown their votes, money and influence behind the Nazis? They had not been imprisoned in the concentration camps nor had they joined the emigres. During the Hitler period they had lived well, their businesses had flourished, they had received promotions and positions of prestige, while the anti-Nazis had been persecuted, demoralized and beaten. Now, of course, everybody was a democrat after his own fashion. The old militarists, nationalists and pro-Hitler elements were also democrats — many of them Liberal Democrats. Because of their mutual fear of the "red menace," the leaders of the LPD and the CDU were holding discussions preparatory to a merger of the two groups. Although in keeping with their Bismarck traditions, the Liberals opposed the Church leadership in the CDU and the lip-service of the Christian Democrats to socialism and were unhappy at having to cooperate with the left-wing faction in the CDU, it was primarily on account of their militarism that the Liberals finally rejected the suggestion of a single unified middle-class party. Herr Dombrowski, the representative of the CDU in the conversations between the two parties and the former editor of the Frankfurter Generalanzeiger (his warmth toward me noticeably decreased when he realized I had not come to offer him the editorship of a licensed newspaper), told me that the Liberals had balked at subscribing to the following statement in the CDU program: "We desire above all to wrench out by the roots the idea of force that has been implanted in our people as a spiritual disease during the last 200 years of Prussian-German history." At a public meeting two months later, Oberschulrat (school supervisor) Korff, one of the LPD leaders, confirmed what Dombrowski had told me, declaring: "...this party (the CDU) repudiates German history of the last two hundred years, whereas the Liberal Democrats acknowledge the German past with pride." Proud nationalists and militarists, the Liberals rejected the collective guilt of the German people. "It is inconceivable how political leaders, judges and even (italics mine) officers could possibly have participated in such bestialities," declared the Liberals in a campaign statement in January, 1946. The implication was that we Americans and the German anti-Nazis were exaggerating the atrocities and that the admirable German officers could not have committed the crimes of which we had accused them because that would have been against their code of military honor. At the beginning of 1946, one of the Liberal leaders was removed from office by MG for having declared that our film on the concentration camps was merely exaggerated propaganda. Ever grumbling at the occupation and sneering at the "collaborators with the enemy," the Liberals think to themselves: "After all, you are the enemy, we have to deal with you without exhibiting shameful humility and must constantly attempt to regain our prestige and power." As early, as September, 1945, the leader of the party in Frankfurt, Dr. Fertsch, a director of a large cleaning and dye plant which was, by the way, practically unscratched in the war, complained that the local newspaper had refused to publish a letter he had sent to the editor criticizing the Americans for not allowing him to continue his business in the section of the plant they were not using. He shrugged his shoulders in disgust and expressed genuine surprise when I told him that German newspapers were not permitted to criticize the occupation powers, especially with such sharp and antagonistic letters as his. Despite their stubborn intransigeance, the Liberal Democrats are accepted by MG with few reservations. The Liberals claim similarity to the great American parties — that is all right. They emphasize free enterprise—that is American. That is conservative and "reasonable." They reject Church interference — that makes them more American than the Christian Democrats. They are in firm opposition to the "reds" — nothing wrong with that. Some high-placed Americans look with favor on the consistent outspoken opposition of the Liberals to the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration. LPD leaders protest the dismantlement of German industry for payment of reparations, Allied prohibition of war industry in Germany and bitterly attack the cession of territory to Poland in the east, threatening revenge if their demands are not accepted. "As the President of the United States explained in his 12 points, America would never consent to the cession of portions of friendly (italics -mine) nations without consent of the population, we ask that this policy also be applied to the purely German regions of the East.. A transfer of these purely German regions in the East could never be recognized by Germans as a just solution..." the Liberals declared in a campaign statement published in January, 1946. They had very quickly forgotten what the German troops had done in Poland and Russia and that their country had recently signed an unco[n]ditional surrender. Their economic objectives (the return to unfettered, free enterprise) are widely discredited among the German people, and the Liberals conceal their real purposes behind demogogic[sic] appeals to German chauvinism, talking war to avoid talk of social reform. The Liberals have no constructive suggestions of importance On the other hand, they fight bitterly against necessary social and economic reforms. Inasmuch as all the other parties favor some degree of socialization, the Liberals proclaim themselves the official opposition and promise to unite all the dissatisfied and disaffected, authority-loving Germans. In one respect, however, the Liberals are not in the opposition. Along with the other non-Communist parties, the LPD specializes in the "bolshevik bogey." A campaign appeal in November, 1946, was introduced with the large headline: "The Communists Ask You To Say Yes." They were referring to the referendum on the Hessian constitution. If the "reds" said yes, that was to be sufficient reason for opposing the constitution. The distinctions between the opportunistic LPD and the CDU right-wing are very tenuous. The Church provides the directions for all the reactionaries in Germany. Strangely enough, in Hesse, it was the LPD that supported the public subsidy of parochial schools most firmly and the LPD that subscribed whole-heartedly to the pastoral letter of the Catholic Bishops of Hesse, warning of the dangers of socialism in the new constitution which was being supported by the CDU and the two Workers' parties. With the growing bankruptcy resulting from incompetent leadership and the failure to stimulate and sponsor popular participation in reconstruction in our Zone, it is probable the Liberals and the right-wing Christian Democrats, who are now in control of the CDU, will be cooperating more and more closely, uniting all the dangerous nationalists in one camp under the segis[sic] of the Churches. Campaigning to turn the clock back, the Liberals went from approximately 7% of the vote in the zonal elections in June, 1946 to more than 11% of the vote in December, six months later, when they won the support of many right-wing "Christians" who objected to the CDU collaboration with the Sociallists. At the end of 1946, although still a minority party, they were the third party in the Zone and about twice as strong as the Communists, the "bolshevik-menace," against whom they and the other non-Communist parties are devoting such a large share of their demogogic[sic] campaign oratory. The Unveiling of the Swastika "We will not accept a Hitler-dominated world. And we will not accept a world, like the postwar world of the 1920's, in which the seeds of Hitlerism can again be planted and allowed to grow." --From world-wide radio address, May 27, 1941. >From the plains on the north and on the east in one of the richest agricultural valleys in all Germany, the Hessian farmers can look up from their fields as they have for seven hundred years and see against the sky the stone watchtower dominating the walled baronial castle and the spire of the cathedral, where tombstones of the nobility date from the eleventh century. The peasants come to market in Friedberg, this old feudal seat and center of an area that includes the famous spa, Bad Nauheim, as they have for a thousand years, buyingand selling in the medieval three story buildings with the sloping, shingled roofs and flat fronts and their ancient inscriptions proclaiming their age (some of them go back to the fourteen hundreds) and the business to be transacted there. In 1945, after the end of the war, Friedberg like the towns and villages surrounding it was practically undamaged. The historic landmarks of the dukes of Friedberg were in as good condition as they had been under the Nazi regime, as they had been twelve years before on the great celebration of March 21, 1933. That evening the entire town was bedecked with bunting and flags. To martial music and in the light of blazing torches, the citizens of the town and the surrounding countryside were demonstrating their loyalty to Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler and their support of the Empowering Act, the law granting Hitler dictatorial, emergency power which was about to be voted upon in the Reichstag. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm of the demonstration that evening was disturbed when, in the midst of a rousing hymn, an enraged local Party leader in the crowd pointed to the tower, which was bedecked with the flags of the various organizations participating in this ceremony of allegiance and shouted: "Who is responsible for this outrage?" There was no Hakenkreuz flag, no swastika, on the ancient tower! The next day, Dr. Leuchtgens, the deputy mayor of Friedberg, whom no one could deny to be a "good German," for he was a solid German People's Party man and a member of the nationalistic, militarist Landbund (Country League), published an explanation in the local paper "of the regrettable incident which disturbed the celebration." He had personally supervised the preparations for the demonstration, making arrangements befitting the "high significance of the day" (the granting of dictatorial power to Hitler and the death-blow to German democracy). "Unhappily," he declared in his statement to the press, "the Hakenkreutz flags were not hoisted on the wa[t]chtower although other flags were flown there. I myself had not considered the beflagging of the watchtower necessary since the assembled flags of the groups and organizations were to be exhibited on the breastworks... During the night, officials of the city administration without my knowledge hung out flags on the watchtower — omitting, however, the Hakenkreuz flag... I regret the incident and understand the indignation which it caused. The independent and insolent action of the subordinate office of the city administration will be punished." Twelve years later, after VE day, though the Nazi leaders had fled and the Americans had appointed other leaders, life had not changed very much in the area about Friedberg. The peasants in the prosperous farming villages were still delivering up their assigned quotas of food. The rich evacuees — businessmen, industrialists, professional people and the families of Party leaders — in Bad Nauheim continued to walk the streets and sun themselves in the park. In various ways, however, the Americans had made life more difficult. They had taken over the baths and many of the hotels. They required the merchants to obtain all kinds of licenses for business traveling, etc. In addition, there were the questionnaires of political reliability — a nuisance. Then there were the refugees to come from the East to crowd the local population. The occupation was to blame for the discomfort and humiliation. Where were the courageous Germans who used to speak out courageously against the Versailles treaty? "If there were still a Wehrmacht, they would not dare to treat us this way... If Hitler had only not been betrayed by the corrupt local leaders and by the generals!" To mobilize these disaffected, unreconstructed, country ultra-nationalists who rejected the Christian party and the Liberals for compromising with the "bolsheviks" and for cooperating with the conquerors, local Fuehrer presented themselves and organized political parties suited to the philosophy and temperament of their neighbors. In Kreis Friedberg, it was Dr. Leuchtgens, the deputy mayor back in 1933 who stepped forward as the organizer of the NDP (dropping out two letters from NSDAP, the abbreviation used by the Nazi Party), the National Democratic Party. It was "National" because it was the party of the nationalists; "Democratic" to ,cater to the occupation and put MG off-guard. During the Nazi regime, Dr. Leuchtgens had not joined the Party although he had become a member of the Nazi Lawyers Guild and of the Nazi Welfare Organization. His son-in-law, a resident of nearby Bad Nauheim, however, had been arrested by our Counter Intelligence Corps as a dangerous Nazi activist. For Leuchtgens and the other super-Germans, the signal for activity was the September announcement of the projected January, 1946 elections, the elections which Eisenhower assured us and the Germans was to stimulate democratic political activity in our Zone. In the political rallies of this party, (actually half-party, half Freikorps) the entire Nazi heritage was exhibited — the idea of the New Order, the Versailles martyr complex, the hatred of the Jews, the anti-"bolshevik" hysteria, the, contempt for "decadent democracy." To these people our insistence on democracy was a poor joke, indicative of our softness and our failure to understand the "German character." In the original proclamation of the party, Leuchtgens advocated a "regent of the realm" to be assisted by "regents of the states," comparable to the Fuehrer and his local Gauleiters (Nazi governors). For a parliament he would have representatives of the "seven professional groups" into which he had arbitrarily divided the German people, a la Mussolini. The ultra-nationalists heard the emotional harangues, the. warlike, Goebbels' demogoguery[sic] they wanted to hear from the National Democratic leaders, whose campaign literature was filled with such typical Nazi exhortation as this appeal in the original National Democratic platform statement: "Working people in city and country, Germans from all provinces, of our Fatherland unite... Close ranks... On our flags (?)... we write in blazing letters the principles and aims of our DEBAB (Democratic Citizens, Workers and Peasants Party)..." Although the party platform contained a condemnation of' Prussian militarism (pointedly changed from the or[i]ginal condemnation of all militarism), the leaders did not conceal their admiration for the German war tradition. "We are rightly proud of the enormous military effort," declared Dr Buchenau. a school teacher and one of the organizers of the party, "which. our men demonstrated in this and in the last World War. No one should minimize their fame." At another party meeting, Buchenau came out for military training for youth because young men "should have strong discipline of the kind taught in the army." Leuchtgens himself advocated the establishment of a Reichswehr like the one authorized by Versailles, which later formed the nucleus of Hitler's armed force. Although Leuchtgens and his fellow National Democrats favored the establishment of the Western bloc advocated by ,Churchill to provide opposition against the Russians, with whom he could see no possibility of cooperation, the National Democrats were motivated by a concern for German "honor and glory" rather than by any particular affection for anyone or pair of the occupation powers. Buchenau explained: "What counts in our opinion is the totality of the German idea... Where German is spoken, there is Germany... Deutschland Ueber Alles to us refers to a superior civilization (cf. Hitler's superman theory)... We believe in the unity of the nation when we use the term national, a unity of Greater Germany (Grossdeutschland — Hitler used the same term) like that of Great Britain." Like the Nazis, the National Democrats sought to win the support of the clergy with a program for "positive Christianity." In their statement of policy, the party leaders declared: "Religion will be an inner requirement for us, no lip service. It will not accompany our life, rather our life will be religion." According to one of the Party campaign leaflets, the differences between the National Democratic Party and the Nazi Party, in general, were not of major consequence. The NDP was going to benefit from the Nazi Party's mistakes and enroll former Nazis into its own ranks. "We want to gather in our ranks all the capable elements willing to reconstruct who offer their help in holy earnest for the resurrection of the Fatherland... We want no new party bosses (Parteibonzentum) but realistic, capable, honorable, impeccable personalities in every position... The mistakes of the National Socialists, we do not want to repeat. Whoever affiliated himself out of honorable conviction about the good aims of the NSDAP; whoever was transferred into the party through an association (as members of the Stahlhelm had been), guild or other organization; whoever entered the party through pressure or concern over the future of his family shall not be defamed by us if he did not commit any crime against his fellowmen." The last sentence covered practically every former member of the Nazi Party — almost all of them would be welcomed into the National Democratic Party. Some of our fellows who visited the NDP meetings and German civilians with whom I spoke told me they found the same solemn mood that had been so characteristic of the pre1933 Nazi meetings. The audience was in complete sympathy with the speakers and booed down and intimidated anyone who disagreed with what was said. In our Information Control Weekly Intelligence Summary we warned against the dangers in the appeal and program of this nationalist neo-Nazi party. Higher headquarters demanded an immediate investigation. But it was difficult to obtain any action from the Counter Intelligence detachment in Bad Nauheim. Some superficial investigation was conducted, the party application for a provincial license was delayed and then let drop, but the NDP remained active in the counties where it had been first organized, and in January, 1946 it won the local election in Bad Nauheim. Other Stahlhelm-Swastika splinter parties emphasized a religious ideology. It was politic to stay close to the Church. Herr Fenchel, the Fuehrer of the Christian Country People of Giessen, and a member of the Stahlhelm before 1933, insisted that none of the four large parties properly represented the farmers and opposed the affiliation of farmers to the trade unions because the labor organizations did not operate on a "christian" basis. Like Leuchtgens, Fenchel hated the occupation powers, particularly the Soviet Union. Bitter and stubborn, he determined to fight back and act as a martyr-example to his nationalist followers by refusing to accept German evacuees from the East in his large and roomy house. This action evidently did not seem to him to be in contradiction to all his talk of Christian principles and of German Volksgemeinschaft (the Nazi concept of the German people's community-hood). He was arrested by the MPs, deserted by many of his followers, and his party, disorganized without its strong Fuehrer-leadership, dissolved in September, 1946. Another party, as we shall see, took its place on the ballot, reassembling all of Fenchel's followers. In Wiesbaden, the famous health resort, long the hang-out of the international smart set, now badly damaged and despairing of rebuilding its tourist trade for many, many years, a group of real estate men formed the Citizens and Farmers Party, purportedly splitting off from the Christian Party because they insisted that except for some of the Catholic elements, the CDU was not really conforming to true religious principles. A Christian party, the Citizens and Farmers real estate men declared, would have been more tolerant of former Party members. Unlike the Wiesbaden CDU leaders, who were generally progressive and trustworthy, the Citizens and Farmers Party men very suspicious characters, former Stahlhelm, German Nationalist Party and German People's Party (rightist, nationalist parties) leaders and officials in Nazi organizations. Faced with the confiscation of their property in the event of a strict application of the denazification and demilitarization law and of the arrival of the refugees, these real estate men were primarily concerned with preventing any encroachments on private property rights. They disagreed with the Christian leaders who were prepared to make some concessions on this score. Like all of the Stahlhelm "good Germans," they were relying on the country people for support, appealing to the "property instincts" of the peasants, the people whom we had selected to be the first to "enjoy the benefits of democracy" in the elections of January, 1946. The difference between the Wiesbaden group and the Liberal Democrats lay in their disagreement as to whether the "righteousness" added by the Christian label would gather sufficient votes to make the accompanying dependence on the Churches worthwhile or whether the peasants had become anti-clerical as a result of the Nazi propaganda. But this disagreement became academic as the Liberal Democrats more and more demonstrated their adamant opposition to all compromise with the leftist parties and with the left-wing of the CDU on nationalization, trade union rights and "national honor." By September, 1946, the Liberal Democratic Party was clearly recognized as the opposition party, the party of the rightist nationalists and militarists. The National Democrats and the Citizens and Farmers men were satisfied. On September 23, 1946, occurred the logical culmination of this resurgence of the reactionaries. At a meeting in Frankfurt, the leaders of the National Democratic and the Citizens and Farmers parties merged their groups with the Liberal Democratic Party. The rightists were now all together. After a year of separate experiments at assembling the dangerous elements, they had consolidated themselves into a solid anti-occupation, promilitary bloc which was dedicated to sabotaging denazification, rebuilding German war industry and launching a crusade against the Soviet Union in order to regain German "honor." Less than a year and a half after VE day, the anti-trade union, anti-democratic, pro-Nazi forces had not only overcome their original consternation and disorganized retreat but had even gone on the offensive. Now it was the democratic forces who were retreating. Out of the Mothballs "For more than 700 years Bavaria has been free, happy and satisfied as an independent state under the reign of the House of Wittelsbach..." declared the application of the monarchists for MG authorization of their King and Homeland Party. This was the voice of the Cardinal speaking for the old nobility, the industrialists, the army officers and the Bishops, Now that Prussia was divided up, Bavaria was the largest and most powerful principality in the Reich. It would have to take the lead in opposing "Red Berlin"! Under a king "accountable only to God and not necessarily to the people," as Baron Franz von Redwitz envisaged the new monarchy, Bavaria would really be an Ordnungszelle, a cell of order. Counting on the assistance of the Cardinal, the royalists hoped to press for a plebiscite on the monarchy, while there was still much political confusion. They counted on the chauvinist resentment of the Bavarians against the refugees from the East, their fear of communism and their desire for an easy way out of all the confusion and suffering. The announcement of the licensing of the party resulted in jeers and cries of alarm from all over Germany. Non-Bavarians accused the Bavarians of separatism, of pretensions to replacing Prussia, of attempting to preserve the position of the Junker landlords, the anti-democratic, anachronistic, militarist hang-overs from the eighteenth century whom more advanced democratic nations had long since eliminated. They recalled the sorry political history of Rupprecht, the pretender, who had once been an influential patron of the Nazis. The French and the Russian occupation authorities, also, openly expressed their disapproval of this dangerous political development. (The British were fostering monarchist parties in their own Zone and were not concerned.) Embarrassed by this unmistakable, widespread opposition to the licensing of a monarchist party, MG failed to permit the authorization of the King and Homeland Party outside Munich. And in May, 1946, Major Peter Vacca, the intelligence chief in Bavarian MG, declared briefly: "The party was disbanded on orders from higher authority. No further royalist or monarchist activity will be permitted in Bavaria." The monarchists disbanded, disappearing among the ranks of the Christian Social Union, but their influence did not end. In August, 1946, three months after the dissolution of the royalist party, the right-wing CSU representatives in the Bavarian constitutional assembly urged the establishment of a two provincial parliament, in which the upper chamber or Senate would be composed of non-party representatives of the social, economic, cultural and communal groups of the province. This had been the proposal in the monarchist party program. Like the upperhouse advocated by Leuchtgens' National Democratic Party in Friedberg, it was modeled on Mussolini's fascist senate. With our premature elections, our destruction of the Antifas, our coddling of the Churches, our blundering bureaucratic approach to denazific'ation, our admiration and support of the very elements we had fought to destroy, we bore the responsibility for the resurgence of German reaction, for the emergence of the nationalists, the warmongers, the saboteurs of the Potsdam program. In the early months of 1946, the ultra-nationalists were experimenting for the best method of regaining power. By the end of the year they had consolidated themselves and clarified their strategy. By the end of 1947 they would be ready to dictate terms to the occupation power. pps. 148-162 --[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. Substance—not soapboxing! 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