Straws in the German Wind

by GIORGIO DE SANTILLANA

1

SOMBER convoys of the U.S. Army on all highways, with headlights blazing in full day, bring into the soft and toneless German landscape a note of darkness at noon, Frowzy and unsmiling GI’s, in full campaign accouterment, ride along without looking, like men going to battle. Bulldozers tearing up the earth for new flying fields and cantonments; high wire fences; verboten signs, military road signs; “No Germans Allowed” signs in the best hotels, snack bars, rest camps; reserved areas — all these remind the German (at least in our zone) that his country is the advanced deployment ground of alien forces under the shadow of war. Thousands of mulatto babies are now coming of school age, a startling addition to the vast assortment of conquerors’ children that Germany has to bring up. The German either has no comment or he will say wryly: “We are the only country that will not let go of its invaders.”

When it comes to their own fate, their thoughts still center in the West of which they want to become a part. Europe and European affairs are their watchword. Reminded of the other “20 million Germans beyond the Iron Curtain, they will say as if speaking of a relation that has settled in a distant continent: “Sometime, let us hope, well be able to take up again with them.” The gap has grown undeniably.

On our side, there is the euphoria of the business boom, cars, vacation spots, fast spending, night life. Production has risen to index 158, taking that of 1936 as 100. German exports increased about seven times in the last four years. Instead of a debt with the European Payment Union, West Germany now has a credit which has risen to $450 million and is still rising. The Ruhr is already overtaking Britain in steel production. The moment our offshore orders for armament are placed in Germany (this is expected to happen with fiscal 1953) it can turn out ordnance, steel castings, precision instruments, and jet engines of a quality to challenge ours or anyone’s.

After laboring for five years to draw the teeth of the Ruhr complex, the Allied authorities are realizing with mixed feelings that the Ruhr has enough teeth left to chew up its competitors. Partly this is due to our own help ($3.4 billion) which allowed Germany to build modern machinery from scratch while other countries are burdened with obsolescent plants; partly to the cheap and willing labor market (there are 10 million refugees to provide a labor pool, and 1.5 million are still without jobs). This recovery is fired by the collective fury with which the Germans have plunged again into work, as if to forget. They are going, they say, to build up the new Europe.

For many thoughtful ones among them, this is an act of true acceptance. As an atonement for the dreadful past, and because they need a saner atmosphere, they welcome a merging of Western Germany into the new federation now being born. They want to be at peace with their neighbors, intent on larger constructive tasks. Such is, in fact, the Bonn government’s avowed policy. In 1946, it had almost unanimous backing. Western Germany was then plastic, it was awaiting a shape from the outside. There is still some of that feeling around. But today there is also something else. The unprecedented economic boom has given back to the Germans some of their self-confidence, and the pressure of our solicitation has done the rest. They are in a condition to ask themselves: “What was so wrong with us, anyway, except that we didn’t succeed in the end.‘”

Who is haunted by such thoughts? I would guess, at least one German out of two. Those who are exempt arc in the main certain strong-knit confessional groups (mainly the Catholics) and the Social Democrats. Together, they make up onehalf of the electorate. The Social Democrats alone have a steady 40 per cent of the votes. The trouble is that the two horses don’t pull the same way. The Catholics are the government party, and collaborate with the Americans to the limit of their diminishing powers. The Social Democrats have gradually hardened into opposition, and sometimes into bitter feuding. The aggressive implacable campaigning of Schumacher may have made it look like one man’s obsession; yet now that he is dead, the resistance of his party to our influence continues unabated.

The reasons are not far to seek. Labor is surely benefiting from fuller employment, and has won its successes in the democratic light, notably the Mithestimmung (participation in management), but at the same time it is aware that American policy is building up, even if not intentionally, a Rightist coalition in the world which offers no chance for the rise of a socialist Germany. Organized labor has made itself thus — mainly out of desperation — a champion of “national independence.” It can meet strong popular feeling on that level. It keeps alive the question of Eastern Germany, where its greatest strength would be if there were any chance of free voting; it is opposed to rearmament and the Atlantic alliance under the present terms.

This in it sell is a sad stale of a flairs, for in our irritation we should not allow ourselves to forget that the Social Democrats, with all their faults, were the last to withstand Hitler uncompromisingly, and they are the only ones who keep a serious watch against the resurgence of old tendencies. Notwithstanding their nagging, they are our natural allies, and showed themselves such in the hour of peril. We can hardly remember it now, it seems so far off, but there was a time during the Berlin airlift when even the Bevan group in England were on our side, and the German Social Democrats were standing powerfully and unshakably by us in the face of what appeared an imminent Russian invasion.

The Korean War has changed all that; or rather the hectic military, economic, and social reactions to Korea that it called forth in the U.S. There is no doubt that we have lost the sympathy of the European labor blocs and of a good part of independent or intermediate opinion including most of the young age groups. With the awful uniformity imposed by mass communication media, all of our commentators at once are discussing what is wrong with European morale. It would be more to the point to try to see what happened to us and to our statecraft in the confused period since 1950. The recent cloak-and-dagger scandal of the BDJ (“League of German Youth”) is a case in point. In 1950, as a countermeasure to the expected Russian invasion, our Central Intelligence Agency hastily organized a corps of German guerrillas. A camp was set up in the Odenwald under the screen of a commercial enterprise; weapons and training were provided for several hundred “youth” who turned out to be battle-seasoned veterans of the SS. The whole operation cost us only $10,000 a month, and so far it might be said to make some sense, even it unpleasant. The trouble is that the CIA went on supporting and covering the organization, quite unbeknownst to our top authorities, until September of this year, when a raid of the German police, and subsequent disclosures of the alarmed Minister President of Hesse, revealed in their files (so it was claimed) a list of people to be “suppressed” in ease of emergency. Communists were on that list, but far more conspicuous were the names of Social Democrats, including Schumacher himself. Ibis story goes on doing us no end of harm.

It is probable that the American officers in charge were unaware of those lists, but no European will believe it for a minute. Since it is well known that our political majority will oppose any form of “socialism,” this particular indiscretion was taken to reveal the type of briefing now being given in the new political warfare of which the Americans talk so loudly. It is unfortunately too true that the ill-concealed aversion of our authorities towards the Social Democrats created the climate in which this silly thing was allowed to grow up and explode.

2

TODAY, in any case, we have to play with the team that has been selected for us by circumstances and there is a realistic common sense in making us work with the Right, for it is fast growing in numbers and power. The ingrained need of the Germans for authority loads them back to their old masters, and they, in their turn, are not choosy as to who comes under their banner, even if they are not always pleased at having their ranks swollen by embittered refugees from the East and from Sudetenland (17 per cent of the vote) who hate everybody all around and raucously voice impossible claims, or Nazi faithfuls (largely farmers) who have at last found a haven and a protective coloring, after being disbanded again and again in their attempts to reorganize. Those splinter groups are a serious problem for tomorrow; as of today, and so long as prosperity lasts, control of the Right is in the hands of the business class, who are coöperative with our policy and strongly “European” in their point of view.

Their concern for Europe can indeed be at times disconcerting. Hitler himself, they will tell you, had captured their confidence by promising that he would integrals Europe without a war. He cheated them; he went to war. Now they slid hope that it can he done without a war, and under our leadership.

Beneath the disarming surface, however, these people are thinking their own thoughts. At a large and fairly international dinner party, the host was asked how it happened that there were no Americans present. “We don’t ask them to our houses,”he said coldly. “They had a ban on fraternizing, didn’t they? Now they can wait.”

This seems to be a general attitude. It is only too understandable, for these men felt the lash in the Year Zero, as the Social Democrats never did; and it is easier for us than for them to forget it. They were thrown out of their houses with a few hours warning to make room for Allied personnel. Their valuables and watches were “liberated.” Administrators and business leaders went into automatic arrest, as did all officers from the rank of major up. I hero were misery, humiliation, nervous breakdowns, and broken homes till around. Meanwhile, the business concerns were run by substitutes who played up to the occupation authorities mainly in the hope of replacing their former superiors. The patents were confiscated, a loss which is growing in the public imagination into an astronomical figure.

Allied policy in the first phase was aimed in fact at the elimination of a whole class, which was rightly considered an accomplice of Hitler in his adventures, even though with that class went most of the experience and business capacity. Then suddenly the policy was reversed: plants were restored to their former owners; the breaking-up of industrial concentrations ceased; the labor organizations which had previously enjoyed Allied protection were unceremoniously pushed into the background.

Thus, through our very considerateness, we are saddled with at least one problem that the Russians do not have, however many they have on their* own; for they swept the Last German members of the business-owner class before them in panicflight, and now they are silting in our lap. One thing must be said for them: many have proved willing to start again from the bottom, and have added to the outburst of “free enterprise.”

The Rhine-Westphalia industrialists to whom such favors are shown are no doubt polite to us. But their altitude can be rendered as follows: “The Allies first tried to break us and found it did not pay. Now they come to us hat in hand. Whatever mistakes we made have been more than paid for. Now the slate is clean. Henceforth, we shall talk business on our own terms.” These things, of course, they say among themselves and not to us. But the tinge of contempt for a conqueror who proved vacillating is unmistakable.

It must be added that the present world picture is not likely to contribute to the Germans’ education. Here they are, the indispensable center piece of any world settlement, courted on both sides for reasons too obvious to induce respect. There was a deep and disregarded psychological truth in the weary ohne mich (“count me out”), the German’s answer to our pep talks about saving civilization. It implied a recognition that he was disqualified for the time being, and also that it would be better for him to stop playing soldier and concetrate on the healing process of his country. It was, in a way, a positive attitude, and the germ of needed change.

Had it been at all possible to carry out the Potsdam agreements, Germany, disarmed and quiescent, might have grown into the factor of equilibrium that is needed at the heart of Europe. This did not come to pass, mainly because Russia really did not want such a Germany to arise. Today, in the face of the Russian danger, the German will conclude that the Americans, despite their moralizing, are quite willing to take him as he is, provided he can be useful to them, and that they care more for his war potential than about the alarm and hostility that a rearmament of Germany is bound to arouse among European nations on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

3

ONE of the most obstinate dodges of the German is to refuse responsibility for what he is and unload it on history. Europe, he will repeat and repeat, found its settlement with the Treaty of Westphalia three centuries ago, but it was at the price of handing over the German people to be dismembered between rival states and rival religions, and telling them to make the best of it. This is certainly what Germany got as a background, at a time when America was getting the Puritan heritage instead: such a difference is bound to lend to cross-purposes. The consequences of that ancient split have no doubt also been gruesome for Germany. Today the same country finds itself split again, this time lengthwise instead of crosswise, and told again to serve faiths fanatically opposed to each other. This is not a good position for a nation to be in: least of all for the German, who has a memory like the elephant s for any wrong, real or imaginary, that he has suffered in the course of time, and an incapacity’ for self-examination unparalleled in history.

Such considerations may appear remote in the making of our present policy, practical and oncstep-at-a-t ime as it has to be in this welter of world problems. They are nonetheless important if we do not want to be outwitted and outmaneuvered as we have frequently been in the first phase of the cold war.

They help to explain, for instance, the private outburst of a statesman very close to the Bonn government: ‘"We were led by expediency to put on the table the card of German rearmament, for we knew we could get anything out of the Americans with it, but believe me, it is a shameful job, for only we can know how little the offer means. No nation placed as we are should even play with this idea, and we Germans least of all. An army is meant for the defense of the nation; today, we must start from the fact that if ever war broke out, there would be no nation left to defend. So we’ll have an army looking for its raison d’être, and that will be more headaches. Yes, I know, that army is supposed to be scattered eventually among other European units, but that is something for the future, if and when. The first thing that we are supposed to do now is to build up a twelve-division force by itself, with its own new officer corps, oh my God. Meanwhile, the Russians will start an East German army to counter ours, and that’s all we shall have gained.”

If a West German army there has to be, we can at least chalk up a definite asset. The Prussian officer class is gone, root and branch. The new army will be predominantly officered by South Germans, and that ought to make a difference. The new commanders are sober-minded men, who intend to make the best of a difficult job. Some of them are even close to the Socialist party, although they do not care to advertise it. They themselves were part of the army conspiracy against Hitler, and that qualifies them for respectability; but how many men will they find who really share their attitude and are not simply playing along with them? Automatic arrest, which was the common lot of officers, and months of punitive fare behind barbed wire do not induce an automatic conversion to Allied ideals.

What of the spirit these men will bring with them? And what of the new officer material which is going to be drawn from the narrowly and aggressively nationalistic middle class? We have been exposed to a number of Peróns and Naguibs in our time, but we forget that the original spirit in these coups of the officer class arose in Germany at the time of Napoleon. An army which adds to itself a nation, such is the Prussian formula through two centuries; and its most classic gambit was when the Prussian army under Yorck went out to light the Russians and came back as their ally. The Germans are obstinately dwelling in imagination in those dark times which were the beginning of their greatness. This may explain why their present statesmen are apprehensive, and Theodor Blank, their Defense Minister, most of all.

Such are the problems that loom ahead. Meanwhile. everybody agrees that economic strategy has top precedence. And here come today’s problems: West Germany has simply crashed through by shouldering her competitors aside, but foreign markets are limited and their saturation is in sight. Going over the world situation, they run up against the same problem which is worrying other European leaders: the incalculable expansion of American industry in the last decade. If U.S. armament production levels off, the world is going to face a renewed drive for exports. There just are not enough markets to go around. The original distribution foreseen in the Marshall Plan was for a major part of West German trade to go towards the East. But the cold war has put an end to that, and hawkeyed inspectors check items against a long list of verbotens. “Would you believe it,” said an official in comic despair, “even plastic toilet seats are forbidden items. Why? Aid and comfort to the enemy, of course.”

Every European nation suffers more or less from the economic barrier, and also from American export-import policies. This leads Europeans back to the necessity of a united economic front for survival. Thus, the European protestations of the West German business class are genuinely meant. The difficulties begin when one tries to find out what they mean by international coöperation.

“We were dead set against the Schuman Plan at the outset,” a leader of the steel industry remarked to me, “for we wanted to go it alone. Then we realized that the European idea required our cooperation and we accepted. And now look at the way we are treated.”

“Meaning exactly what?”

“Well, it was obvious that we were bound to gain control of the Authority in a couple of years’ time. Anyone could have figured that out. Now the time has come, the facts are there, and the French are raising difficulties. Would you believe it ? ”

This ludicrous rage against the French seems to permeate German opinion from high to low. Even the Social Democrats, in their present nationalistic attitude, are fanning the fire. The French don’t know enough to yield and retreat to a subordinate position, thinks the German, and that shows that they are an incurably decadent nation, unrealistic, pigheaded, and hostile-minded. The inevitable reaction of the French is a hardening nationalism, which accounts largely for their outbursts against NATO: much more, certainly, than the fear of a German armed contingent per se.

Several responsible French leaders will admit, privately, that the economic race is lost, and that it would be better to go with good grace into some realistic arrangement with the Germans. But the Germans, as usual, are only bent on imposing cartel restrictions to suit their convenience. “After all,” they will say, “Europe means us, doesn’t it?”

In the beginning, West Germany had cautiously probed the British and tried to drive a wedge into the Anglo-American partnership. The British were blandly unresponsive, and the Germans retreated, baffled as usual by what is to them the mystery of Anglo-Saxon solidarity. The weakest link in the Allied chain was obviously France, and their instinct more than their reason told them that it was that link that must be battered down if Germany was to recapture her bargaining power. Their press started a campaign against France. The British in their zone slapped it down hard, the American authorities apparently did not take notice. For the Germans, that was an unmistakable opening, and they charged through the gap like a bull into the china shop beyond.

There is apt to be more of that in the Cut future, since our announced new Republican policy is to increase German production without a ceiling, by means of private American capital. The profound resentment of the Germans against General Eisenhower is tempered by the thought that he is a temporary ally who has announced he will build up the German potential. On the wings ol desire, their fancy turns again to the renewed chance for a deal with Russia, as reflected in the alarming rise of the ranting Refugee Party, backed under cover by the Communists in the recent municipal elections.

4

THERE is still, of course, good common sense in high places. “ To be the single point of leverage of the U.S. in Europe would he katastrophal,“ a government authority admitted. “When the time comes for a deal, we must have a United Europe with us. This is reasonable enough. The train of thought behind those words, however, should be made clear.

It seems to be agreed in Germany that. Europe has a secondary role in American policy, which is bound to aim at the control of Asia as its chief interest. This brings up the threatening shadow of a Russo-American deal in Asia at the last extremity. At that point, France and England might go along, as they still have a stake in that game, and Germany would be left out in the cold. This would indeed be a “catastrophe.”That is why Europe must be united by then - behind the Germans. Otherwise, says the still small voice, would it not be the part of wisdom to beat the rap and try fora private deal with Russia now?

The more conservative German recoils from this idea as another kind of “catastrophe,” No. There must be a united Europe. It would give a chance for a strong neutral bloc, a third force between the superpowers locked in contest. The other way appeals to the adventurous and reckless. They are falling again for the old geopolitical dream of Eurasia. The idea of joining Russia in order to dominate it eventually might seem a trifle unrealistic under present circumstances, but the German of a certain stripe, convinced as he is of the absolute superiority of his country in all fields, does not have the shadow of a doubt. Germany is lull of such political “weirdies.”

There is not so much naïveté in all this as a predetermined frame of thought. The German cannot think of Europe without conjuring up in his mind the glamorous idea of a supranational Empire, Holy, Roman, or otherwise, and although he is willing to accept alien command if it is there, he expects in time that leadership will fall into his own hands because of the sheer importance of his contribution. Which other nation, he will ask, can match all the rest of the continent put together in production, in pig iron, in profundity of thought and feeling? Anyone who does not fall in with his conclusions must have ulterior motives — it shows again the Machiavellian disposition that is characteristic of foreigners.

Actually, the whole line of German thinking comes down to this: the Americans are not going to be the loaders of Europe, they are already retreating into their own problems, so it can only be Germany’. Of course, with American delegation. Later, we shall see.

Everything in Germany’ lives under the sign of “we shall see. As events are shaping up, there is no fixed anchor to the people’s thoughts at any point. If Europe develops into a going concern under the Atlantic alliance, well and good, they will come to terms and play their part. If there is an opening, they will try to drive the other nations into a neutral bloc. If things do not look hopeful in the West, they will revert to cynical and reckless nationalism. Meanwhile, they will gladly go in for any kind of economic association with us — so long as it amounts to our investing capital right there in Germany.

Germany Between East and West was the title of General win Seeckt’s book thirty years ago. It still provides the theme. ‘The Fatherland is still on the spot, but much more grievously now because of its own insensate actions in the recent past, and of our own unwise solicit at ions in the present. Unless we provide a solid frame from outside, defining both the possibilities and the limitations, Germany will go on being a sinister hazard to itself and to others. Impelled now to even worse duplicity than formerly by the partition of its own territory, tirelessly figuring out several ways at once, indignant at the alarm aroused among its neighbors by its behavior, unable to draw conclusions, waiting for it does not know what, Germany left to itself will be forever trying to square the circle.