-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 TWELVE We Cried Peace "The wedge that the Germans attempted to drive in western Europe (the Rundstedt offensive of December, 1944) was less dangerous in actual terms of winning the war than the wedges which they are continually trying to drive between ourselves and our allies. "We must resist this divisive propaganda " we mustdestroy it with the same strength and the same determination that our fighting men are displaying as they resist and destroy the Panzer divisions." --From State' of the Union message, January 6, 1945. "IT is not clear when the war will end" said Ernst Seifert smiling. A former director of the University of Wuerzburg and the medical officer of the Wehrmacht 13th Army Corps (a colonel), Seifert was sitting in the Wuerzburg prison, where he was being held as a high officer in the Storm Troopers, an automatic arrest. I did not comment on his surprising answer—it was April 24th, 1945, about two weeks before the German capitulation and it was clear even to the most fanatical Nazis that the war could not last another month. He continued: "The Russians are advancing very deep into Germany. The danger of bolshevism is great for America." "But you are not answering my question," I interposed impa-tiently." "It's hard to say just when the open conflict will begin." "You know very well," I declared, "that Hitler is our enemy and the Russians are our allies. I'm asking you when you think the war against Hitler will be over." "That is not clear. When I heard the Fuehrer's speech on March 1st, I said that he had always been right and I believe he will be right again about victory." >From his remarks, it was clear that this slovenly, stubborn and amazingly limited (for a surgeon, a university official and a colonel) Storm Trooper was not counting on any secret weapons. He was expecting the Americans and the Russians to begin to fight each other as soon as their armies met. Of course, not all Germans had succumbed so completely to Goebbels' final propaganda line that war between the Allies was inevitable shortly after a defeat of the Reich. But Goebbels' indoctrination did not disappear upon the entrance of the American troops. The first months after VE day we used to think that the hysterical rumormongering among the Germans was humorous. Whenever an American division was moved, it was being sent to the front, according to the Germans. There were tales of Russian gun emplacements and tank concentrations. The Russians and the British were supposed to have skirmished. The Russians were bombarding Rostock. The Germans were terrified of the Russians. One of the final terror slogans of the Nazis with the German troops was Sieg oder Sibirien! (Victory or Siberia!), victory or captivity "worse than death." Because of the many years of constant anti-Soviet horror propaganda, we in Psychological Warfare found this slogan a difficult one to combat. The Russians were held in fear because of the vicious, intense war that had been fought on the Eastern Front, the vast scale of the battles and the tremendous casualties. During the last weeks, the Germans had fought for every village fanatically against the Russians, but on our front they had surrendered all but key strategic points to us as we rolled through the country. Because so many Germans had friends and relatives in America, they trusted us more. Mindful of the destruction and murder they had committed in the Soviet Union, they feared just retribution. The Russians might force the Germans to rebuild the devastated areas in the Soviet Union. They certainly would demand enormous reparations. They were already responsible for the decision to, transfer territory to Poland. They might even bring "bolshevism to Germany." Out of their fear and hate, the Germans concocted and disseminated all varieties of atrocity tales about the Red Army troops, the clergy bearing much of the responsibility for this rumormongering. The Catholic Caritas and the Evangelical Inner Mission immediately began to collect alms for the "suffering Germans" in the east, using lurid tales to increase the size of their collections. In one instance, the Inner Mission circulated a report by a Protestant Minister written in the same Nazi jargon that had been used to describe the supposed Czech atrocities against the Sudeten Germans in 1938 and the supposed Polish atrocities against the Silesian Germans in 1939 — and equally as. false. The author of the pamphlet, it was discovered, was a former Nazi. In October, 1945, in an attempt to study the origin of the atrocity stories, we in the Information Control Intelligence Section interrogated a large number of German refugees arriving from the Russian Zone. Careful questioning revealed a tendency to color and exaggerate charges against the Russians. Much of what they reported was mere hearsay. Frequently, general hardships arising from the war were considered "atrocities." On the other hand, about one-third of those interrogated stated that they intended to return to visit in the Russian Zone. One man who related a particularly characteristic exaggerated horror tale was discovered to be a former SS man. He admitted having invented his story after a local German official had advised him "to make conditions in the Russian Zone sound as bad as possible." >From dissemination of horror tales to demands for revenge is not a big step. Here again the Church provided leadership, calling for a holy crusade against the Soviet Union when the great war was hardly over. As early as August, 1945, at the national conclave of the Evangelical Bishops at Treysa, a Professor Ivant of Koenigsberg thundered: "We must not let the borders of the Evangelical faith be pushed back... We must not shun any means, of fight for our Church... We must not let them take our territories which are purely German and are the homeland of our Evangelical religion." In 1946 after the elections, "conservative" politicians like Maria Sevenich took up the call for the crusade against the eastern heathens. The disillusioned youth looking for an outlet for its repressed energies and disillusionment listened eagerly. At the March 1946 political meeting at which I had heard Maria Sevenich speak, a former Nazi jumped up when a Communist attempted to protest something Maria had said and shouted: "What is happening in the Russian Zone is worse a thousand times than anything we Germans ever did in Russia or in the concentration camps." His comrades yelled raucous agreement. And in September, 1946, at a great youth meeting sponsored by the Christian Democrats in Hesse, a former officer delivered an impassioned speech in which he deplored the way the revolutionaries of 1919 had ripped off the epaulets of their officers and warned that such a disgrace could not be tolerated again. The last two wars, he exclaimed, were political and economic wars, the next one would be religious, a crusade against the heathens of the East. Naturally, the clergy and the -nationalists recognize that without assistance there can be no possibility of their conducting their "christian" crusade and they have looked for allies among the Americans. By constant pressure and subtle hints and suggestions, they quickly developed a sympathy among many Americans for the "suffering" of their compatriots at the hands of the Russians. Playing on the loneliness and the fear of communism of many GIs and officers, the fraeuleins and the German gentlemen achieved considerable and widespread success in fostering the anti-Soviet alliance. In the spring of 1946, the MG officer in Nuremberg had to issue a sharp warning against the divisive propaganda being disseminated by the local Germans among the American troops. Originally, there was much sympathy for the Russians among most Americans. In January, 1945, I saw a sign on a mess tent in the First Army sector reading: "Russians welcome to eat here." This was in recognition of the vast advances being made at that time on the Eastern front. And on January 30, the Stars and Stripes announced in its editorial: "'Uncle Joe's Boys' may inspire alarm in some sections of the armchair brigade but to the man in the street they are 'ours' and to the fighting soldiers they are heroes." There were, however, officers and men among our troops who retained their anti-Soviet bias even during the days of the heroic Red Army offensives. During the last months of the war, I remember reading reports of Army interrogators asking German prisoners whether they would be willing to fight with us against the Russians. In Supreme Headquarters, many of the brass, belonged to the "armchair brigade" described by Coe Stars and Stripes. One of the prime manifestations at the end of the war of the anti-Soviet antipathy of these high officers and their lack of true cooperation with the Russians (and of a lukewarm orientation about fascism) was exhibited in the handling of the Displaced Persons or DPs. Although at the Yalta Conference we had agreed to return all the Soviet citizens who had been living in the Soviet Union in 1939, "exceptions" were permitted by individual American officers of Russians and Ukrainians who objected to going back home. "We do -Dot force people to go where they don't want to," they ex[c]laimed "democratically" and self-righteously, happy to find that these "democratic" elements did not like the Soviet regime. Actually, under the Nazi oppression hundreds of these people had betrayed their neighbors and retreated willingly with the Germans. We even delayed many months before sending the criminal and traitorous Vlassov Russian SS troops back to a deserved punishment. We seemed to have a particular affinity to all the rabid anti-Soviet elements among the DPs. Baltic Germans who had come to Germany in 1940 were singled out for displaced persons' treatment although they had elected to come to Germany as Germans. Many of them had sons and husbands in Nazi SS units. With the Poles, the London government representatives conducted an intense terror propaganda campaign. Once the Lublin government was established, the London Poles had no excuse for continuing to exist except to administer the Poles in the DP camps and in the Anders armies. As a result, the British-paid Polish officers representing the London government did their best to convince their countrymen not to return home. Many of these Polish DPs, however, were not just simple confused people but psychopathic anti-Russians " a menace to peace. In a conversation I had with a group of Polish WACs " liberated prisoners of war, DPs " one, an officer, remarked that when we Americans would go east to fight the Japanese, she and her fellow WACs would also go east " to fight the Russians. The others nodded enthusiastic agreement. A Polish colonel, a liaison officer in charge of DPs and a London government man, assured me that war between Poland and Russia was inevitable. "But little Poland can't fight Russia alone," I commented naively. "Oh no," he replied with a broad smile, "you and the British will help us." This was in July, 1945, a month before the Potsdam agreement. The Yugoslav Chetniks, monarchists and often traitors have been less subtle in their activities. In the early months of 1946 investigations disclosed that a regular army organisation was being formed among the thousands in American DP camps. The total of these Yugoslav troops was put at 40,000. One characteristic of all these DPs is their burning hatred of the Russians and their eagerness to participate in a crusade against the Soviet Union. The American interrogators who asked German prisoners of war whether they would fight with us against the Soviet Union back in 1945 are, no doubt, counting on these dubious elements for the same eventuality. After the was was over, in most MG officers there was a feeling of rivalry with the Russians but no general antipathy. When we withdrew from Leipzig, which was to become part of the Russian Zone, we removed as much machinery, printing equipment, railroad stock, etc., as we could. Along with the pessimism and cynicism about our occupation and lack of policy at the end of 1945, there developed a general suspicion of and antagonism toward the Russians. Actually, although most of us did not then realize it the bases for the growing antagonism between us and the Russians were to be sought in the high policy squabbles on reparations, denazification, demilitarization and the rehabilitation of German industry, consequent to the new policy that was being substituted by the big businessmen in MG for the Potsdam policy of Big Power cooperation. By the beginning of 1946, in pursuit of their new tactics, our statesmen were assuring the world that we were being forced into a bizonal union with the British because the Russians and the French opposed German unity. Inasmuch as the establishment of German unity was an essential provision of the Potsdam Agreement, these policymakers insisted that the Russians were the ones who rejected the Big Power declaration. This was mere self-righteous talk, however. Whenever the Russians and the French posed the question of Four Power supervision of the rich Ruhr arsenal, both we and the British refused even to dispute the suggestion. Our officials wanted that area for our own businessmen. In addition, we had stymied all strivings toward national unity, preventing the trade unions,* the women's groups and the youth groups from establishing nation-wide organization.** [* In January, 1947, for example, Leon Werths of the Labor Division If Military Government declared that he was opposed to a unified German trade union movement because it favored the Soviet Union. He failed to add that such a unified trade union movement was also a guarantee against a resurgence of reaction.] [** The Swabian People's Youth, perhaps the best youth organization in our Zone, was dissolved because its leaders had dared to attempt to establish contact with the Free German Youth, the youth organization of the Soviet Zone.] Both the German "conservative" and the American businessmen-officials in charge of MG who are rabid anti-Soviet warmongers today are the very people who have always opposed the Potsdam Agreement and our own original war aims, their pious declarations and humanitarism professions not withstanding. Now they talk of a "holy" crusade against the Eastern "heathen" and a "democratic" war against communism, but the are really concerned with far more mundane "practical" issues. Like the Hitler oratory on the "bolshevik menace", their demogogic slogans cover more cynical motives. The German industrialists who have lost their factories in the East and their American and British mentors, many of whom have been deprived of their interests in the Soviet Zone and the Polish regained territory (like the Harrimans, who have lost large mining interests in Silesia) are concerned with profits and not with ideals or ideologies. They are not interested in such questions as the Party membership of the industrialists or the contribution of business and industrial enterprises to Hitler's war. Defenders of free enterprise "no matter what and with whom," they are less concerned with raising the level of German industry in order to benefit the German people (as they insist) than they are to be able to clip coupons again. They fear the productivity and economic stability of the Soviet Zone and the success of the trade union-administered factories and are worried at the increasing demands for nationalization of industries and for participation of the trade unions in the management of plants and businesses in the West. They are concerned at any possible loss of profit and at any blow to free enterprise "no matter what and with whom." The Junkers seeking refuge and obtaining new lands in the British Zone (like Schlange-Schoeningen, the head of the bizonal Food Administration) and retaining their holdings in Bavaria either hope to regain their confiscated estates in the East or to prevent any land reform that will deprive them of their estates in the West. They are ready to take their colonel's uniforms out of the mothballs and to resume their ancient military profession to "crusade against Eastern heathenism" or to "fight the spread of communism." They are watching some of our military diehards, men entrusted with the execution of the new rehabilitate-German-industry policy whom they believe are also ready to put their military training to use against "the spread of communism." (In these conditions, "communism" of course, may include a thorough and revolutionary denazification, democratic land reform, the nationalization of industries belonging to war profiteers, Party members or collaborators and the true demilitarization of the country, as prescribed by Potsdam.) They are ready. The industrialists are ready to resume war production in the Ruhr under British-American supervision and with our economic assistance. The Church is ready to provide the ideological direction in the "holy war." The Junkers and the militarists, the amnestied and exonerated SS men and Nazi leaders are ready to command the Army and the people in the struggle. And many of the young men trained only in war and despairing of the future, chafing at the shame of the defeat and inflamed by the passionate demogoguery of the "conservatives" are ready, and the rabid anti-Russian DPs are ready, potential cannon fodder for the decisive holy war of "democracy" against "bolshevism." Germany is still a menace to world peace. German militarism is not dead. Worse, the nationalists have found allies among some of our own political leaders. This has been the result of the development in our occupation policy. pps. 204-212 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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