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GRUESOME HARVEST The Costly Attempt To Exterminate The People of Germany By Ralph Franklin Keeling Enslavement Allied attacks against German manpower have
proceeded along three main fronts: enslavement,
denazification, and physical incapacitation through
undernourishment. Our present discussion will take
up the first two of these, with starvation
postponed for special treatment. President Roosevelt on October 21, 1944,
promised that "the German people are not going to
be enslaved, because the United Nations do not
traffic in human slavery." In the preceding month
of Quebec, however, he had used strong pressure to
obtain Mr. Churchill's acceptance of the Morgenthau
Plan which called for "forced German labor outside
Germany." Pravda writer Boris Izakov wrote that
when in the following February at Yalta the
proposal was advanced to force German workers to
rebuild war-damaged areas, "President Roosevelt
called this a healthy idea."[1] It was at
this meeting that Mr. Roosevelt pressed the
Morgenthau Plan and won Mr. Stalin's ominously
ready acceptance. Although at Potsdam it was solemnly promised
again that "It is not the intention of the Allies
to . . . enslave the German people," thousands of
Germans had already been marched eastward into
Russia's yawning slave camps. More that a month
earlier, on June 29, 1945, the following had been
published: It has long been an open secret that Russia
maintains under the direction of the NKVD (secret
police) a vast army of Russian slaves, varying in
number form 10-20 millions, mainly recruited as
"political unreliables."[3] The presence
and importance of this huge slave force explains,
among other things, the profitability and frequency
of Soviet Russia's many "purges": they are
primarily a device for rounding up prisoners for
enslavement. It is not surprising, therefore, that
the Soviet Union should jump at the opportunity to
enslave millions of defeated enemy civilians and
soldiers and, to avoid special criticism, induce
her allies to do likewise. When it was learned that
the Soviets were impressing German civilian
personnel for service in factories being removed to
Russia, Britain and the United States protested. In
reply the Russians produced a proclamation signed
by Gen. Eisenhower a year earlier requiring that
German authorities must carry out any measures of
restitution, reinstatement, restoration,
reparations, reconstruction, relief or
rehabilitation as the Allied representatives might
prescribe, to accomplish which the Germans must
"provide such transporation, plant equipment and
materials of all kinds, labor, personnel,
specialists, and other services for use in Germany
or elsewhere as the Allied representatives may
direct." Since the document did not require
four-nation agreement, the Russians are permitted
by it to act unilaterally. After it was produced,
Britain and the United States had to withdraw their
protests. A few crippled and ailing Germans who have
survived the ordeal have been returned from the
Russian slave camps to Berlin where American
correspondents have obtained first hand accounts of
what is happening. German Red Cross girls went at 9
a.m. on the morning of September 10, 1946, to meet
a 20-car trainload of returning forced laborers. As
the sealed cars were opened by the armed guards who
had been riding on top, the girls were greeted with
thin, scabby-faced men in rags begging for water or
hysterically calling for help in removing the dead.
A professional nurse told the story: The daily diet in Russian slave camps is soup
and lectures on the glories of Communism and the
evils of western democracy. The slightest
disobedience is penalized by such heavy work that a
third of the culprits die within three weeks from
exhaustion. A tenth of the slaves died during the
first year, according to those who have
returned.[5] If prisoners released by the Russians as unfit
for further forced labor happen to recuperate, they
are re-impressed and sent back for more.[6]
Moreover, able bodied Germans we have released who
have returned to their former homes in the Russian
zone are arrested by the Russians and sent to the
Soviet Union for enslavement, on the pretext that
they have been rendered "politically unreliable"
through exposure to British or American
influences.[7] Refusal of released
prisoners to return to the Russian zone has created
a major problem, which France has attempted to meet
by permitting the men to remain in France as a
special class of citizens. When the war ended, we enjoyed a decided
advantage over the Russians in German esteem. Aware
of the barbarities of the NKVD's treatment of
slaves, German soldiers did their best to avoid
falling into the hands of the Red armies,
preferring instead to surrender to the British or
Americans. German prisoners who were to be turned
over to the Russians often committed suicide or
tried to incapacitate themselves by slashing their
bodies with knives, razors, or bits of
glass.[8] Persistent reports coming from
Russia, however, tell of large numbers of German
prisoners joining the Red Army, after
indoctrination in Communism, and justify the fear
that ultimately the huge German prison army in
Russia may be successfully converted into a potent
military force which may someday be turned against
the West. [9] France, according to the International Red
Cross, had 680,000 former German soldiers slaving
for her in August, 1946. 475,000 of their number
had been captured by the United States and later
turned over to the French for forced
labor.[10] French treatment of her slave
subjects is revolting to the civilized conscience.
In an article entitled, "We Should Not Resemble
Them," FIGARO reveals: Gathering his facts from numerous reliable
sources, Louis Clair writes in THE PROGRESSIVE of
"the horrible conditions in the French camps of
German POW's." He says: After we had delivered the first 320,000
prisoners, the French returned 2,474 of them to us,
claiming that we had given them weaklings.
Correspondents described them as "a beggar army of
pale, thin men clad in vermine infested tatters."
All were pronounced unfit for work - three-fourths
of them on account of malnutrition - and 19 per
cent had to be hospitalized. Associated Press
photographer Henry Griffin, who had taken pictures
of the corpses piled in all German concentration
camps, including Buchenwald and Dachau, said of the
men: "The only difference I can see between these
men and those corpses is that here they are still
breathing."[13] Asked to investigate, the Red Cross reported the
prisoners were receiving inhuman treatment. Upon
our threat to stop further transfers the French
protested that they must have more prisoners or
suffer heavy financial loss. It then came out that
the French Government was hiring the men out to
French employers for which it collected regular
union wages, an average of 150 francs per day per
man. Out of this, the government paid each prisoner
10 francs, and stood their daily cost of upkeep of
perhaps another 40 francs, leaving a daily net
profit of 100 francs per slave. In the aggregate
the French Government thus stood to make a profit
of over 50 billion francs a year from its German
slaves!" [14] No wonder it became upset
when we threatened to stop handing them over. When we resumed deliveries, we took pains to
make sure that the prisoners were in satisfactory
physical condition. The men would be lined up and
examined, their mouths opened and inspected, their
chest thumped, their joints tried, their eyes, ear
and teeth looked over, as if they were horses being
offered for sale. GI's witnessing this spectacle
were overheard to remark: "Gee! I hope we don't
ever lose a war." In the summer of 1946 a hopeful development
which may bring an end to the slave traffic in
France put in its appearance. It began when
prisoners newly arrived from American POW camps not
only refused to work in French coal mines but
persuaded prisoners already there to follow their
example.[15] A month later some of the
prisoners were freed and then hired to work at full
union wages, frankly as a measure to increase
output.[16] The experience proves that in
this modern world at least men when free produce
more abundantly and profitably than when
enslaved. On December, 5, 1946, it was announced that the
American Government had requested the repatriation
by October 1, 1947, of the 674,000 German POW's it
had turned over to France, Belgium, The
Netherlands, and Luxemburg. France had agreed to
release its 620,000 of this number but gave no
definite pledge of when they would be freed. The
French Government also disclosed that the United
States, in a Dec. 21, 1945, memorandum, expressly
stipulated that the Germans captured by the
American Army and handed over to France were
chattels to be used indefinitely for forced labor
as part of France's war reparations from Germany.
Meanwhile reports continued to pour into the press
that conditions in the French slave camps remained
as bad or worse than before - starvation diets,
little protection from the elements or disease, in
filthy, vermin-infested quarters. Great Britain in August, 1946, according to the
International Red Cross, had 460,000 German
prisoners slaving for her,[17] and as in
the case of France bringing in a handsome profit to
the War Office. Upon embarking from our ports the
prisoners were given to understand that they were
being sent home; when they learned upon arrival in
British or French ports that they were to be worked
indefinitely as slaves, they became sullen. As one
British officer said, "It takes us several weeks to
bring them around where they will work
hard."[18] A British contractor employing German slaves for
skilled work is reported to have remarked: Among other projects, the prisoners were forced
to build in Kensington Gardens a British victory
celebration camp to house 24,000 empire troops who
marched in the Empire's Victory Day parade. One
foreman remarked: "I guess the Jerries are
preparing to celebrate their own downfall. It does
seem as though that is laying it on a bit
thick."[20] The British Government nets over $250,000,000
annually from its slaves. The Government, which
frankly calls itself the "owner" of the prisoners,
hires the men out to any employer needing men,
charging the going rates of pay for such work -
usually $15 to $20 per week. It pays the slaves
from 10 cents to 20 cents a day, depending on the
character of the work required, plus such
"amenities" as slaves customarily received in the
former days of slavery in the form of
clothing, food, and shelter.[21] The
prisoners are never paid in cash, but are given
credits, either in the form of vouchers for camp
post exchange items or credits against the time
when they will be liberated. In March 1946, 140,000
prisoners were working on farms, for which the
Government collected $14 a week per prisoner,
24,000 on housing and bomb damage clearance, 22,000
on railroads, mostly as section hands, the balance
at odd jobs, such as digging weeds out of the
Thames river or serving as menials for GI brides
awaiting shipment to America.[22] According to revelations by members of the
British House of Commons, about 130,000 former
German officers and men were held during the winter
of 1945-46 in British camps in Belgium under
conditions British officers have described as: "Not
much better than Belsen." The prisoners lived
through the winter in tents and slept on the bare
ground under one blanket each. They say they are
underfed and beaten and kicked by the guards. Many
have no underclothes or boots.[23] In the summer of 1946 an increasing number of
prisoners were escaping from British slave camps
with British civilian aid. Accounts of the chases
by military police are reminiscent of pre-Civil War
pursuits of fleeing negro fugitives.[24] By
mid-September public indignation had risen to such
a pitch that the British War Office announced that
plans were under way to release 15,000 slaves per
month, with preference given those displaying
"genuine democratic" convictions. Army officers and
important Nazis would not be repatriated under the
plan. However, promises were made to improve
conditions in the camps.[25] The official International Red Cross report in
August 1946 showed that our own government, through
its military branch in the German zone, was
exacting forced labor from 284,000 captives,
140,000 of them in the occupation zone, 100,000 in
France, 30,000 in Italy, and 14,000 in
Belgium.[26] Slave holdings of other countries, as reported
by the Red Cross, were: Yugoslavia 80,000; Belgium
48,000; Czechoslovakia 45,000; Luxemburg 4,000;
Holland 1,300.[27] Keeping these millions of Germans away from
their families is a direct attack against the
German home and family, and in this respect serves
only Communism. Still the tie that binds the men to
their loved ones has remained strong. A dispatch
from Geneva tells a touching story. An attempt is made by British officials to
justify the enslavement on the grounds that the men
are prisoners of war, and that as such they can be
forced to work under the Geneva Convention rules.
It is said that the war is not yet legally ended,
that the prisoners are still soldiers of the German
Government, and that when they return to Germany it
will be the responsibility of the German Government
to give them their pay accumulated as soldiers and
prisoners. This argument rests on the assumption
that there is a German government. But they also
argue that repatriation of the prisoners cannot
take place, as called for by the Geneva Convention
as soon as hostilities are over, because there has
been no armistice or peace treaty signed with
Germany, and that none can be signed at present,
because there is no German Government. By similar double-talk they justify feeding the
prisoners rations well below army standards on the
pretext that the Geneva Convention which requires
standard army rations has expired with World War
II; yet, when press representatives ask to examine
the prison camps, the British loudly refuse, with
the excuse that the Geneva Convention bars such
visits to prisoner-of-war camps.[29] The International Red Cross, the highest
authority on the subject, roundly condemns the
slave system. As related from Geneva: A Red Cross observer condemns the enslavement in
these words: It must be emphasized, moreover, that many of
the slaves were never German soldiers. Many were
civilian Germans held in America during the war,
including seamen picked up before we entered the
war, former legal residents of the United States,
and persons brought here by force from Latin
America for having pro-German sentiments. Even
anti-Nazi Germans who have voluntarily returned to
Germany from America to help the military
government rebuild the destroyed countries and to
help families and friends in dire need have been
nabbed for enslavement.[32] In sharp contrast with our treatment of German
war prisoners was German treatment of American war
prisoners. Allan Wood, war front correspondent of
the London Express, in summarizing German treatment
of their prisoners said: Lieutenant Newton L. Marguiles, Assistant Judge
Advocate of Jefferson Barracks, said in St. Louis,
Mo., April 27, 1945: Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall, on Jan.
5, 1945, wrote to the National Commander of the
American Legion: The American Red Cross in 1945 reported
officially that "99 per cent of the American
prisoners of war in Germany have survived and are
on their way home." German treatment of Russian war prisoners was on
a par with Russian treatment of German war
prisoners. Since Russia had not signed the Geneva
Convention, neither it nor Germany was bound by its
provisions. And it must be remembered that the
atrocities in German concentration camps did not
involve war prisoners, but people supposed to be
German, people who now proudly admit, those who
have survived, that they were members of the German
underground, saboteurs, doing their best to
obstruct and defeat the German war effort. The
treatment they received, while deplorable and
inhuman in the extreme, is on a par with Russian
treatment of her political prisoners. If one is to
be condemned, so must the other, if there is to be
justice. Otherwise, we are guilty of rank
discrimination, condemning a crime committed by
one, condoning or overlooking it when committed by
another. If we really fought this war to stop such
things, the war will not be over until the inmates
of the Russian slave camps are also liberated. If
we fought a half trillion dollar war to free those
in German camps only, but not to free those in
Russian camps, an explanation is due. In any case, we must ask ourselves what we would
do if we should go to war with, let us say, Russia,
and were beset from within by an "underground"
movement of sabotaging Communist
fifth-columnists. An attempt has been made to justify enslavement
of the common man of Germany on the ground that the
Nazi government exacted forced labor from foreign
workers. It is true that the Reich had millions of
imported workers, but it is also true that, except
for special cases such as war prisoners coming
under the Geneva Convention, they were for the most
part paid and fed well. Dr. James K. Pollock, for 14 months with AMG
[American Military Government], said of
Germany's "forced laborers": "I think some of the
persons found themselves better off than at any
time in their lives before."[36] A mass of
evidence proves that this is true and that Allied
war propaganda to the contrary was greatly
exaggerated. Besides, there can be no justification
for punishing the average citizen of any country
for the sins of its political leaders. In July, 1946, Max H. Forester, chief of AMG's
coal and mining division when asked, "What did the
Germans do to get efficient production for forced
labor that we are not able to do with Germans
working the mines?" replied: "They fed their help
and fed them well."[37] The American Federation of Labor in the summer
of 1946 came out strongly against the slave system
as a fundamental threat to free labor all over the
world. Calling attention to tariff laws which
specifically forbid the importation from foreign
countries of goods produced wholly or in part by
convict, forced, indentured, or any other form of
involuntary labor,[38] AF of L spokesman
Herbert Thatcher warned in a radio address that the
slave labor system may grind down trade and
production to a level that can lead to another war.
Conditions of slave labor in Britain, France, and
Russia, he said, "menace world peace and they
destroy world trade." - "Therefore, the American
Federation of Labor," he concluded, "calls upon the
United States government to propose to the United
Nations that all member nations renounce the use of
forced labor and agree to bar the products of
forced labor from world trade."[39] Upon his return from the Nuernberg trial Justice
Jackson, who had served as U. S. chief prosecutor,
reported to President Truman that German
industrialists and financiers could be tried "on
such specific charges as the use of slave labor."
He went on to say: Willis Smith of Raleigh, N. C., President of the
American Bar Association, in defending the
Nuernberg convictions said: Germany under Hitler was ruled by the single
National Socialist German Workers party, with all
other parties outlawed. The system in this respect
was similar to that of the Communists of Russia who
since the 1917 coup d'etat have enforced a one
party system upon the Russian people and treated
all dissident political opinions as treason. Rejecting parliamentarism, the Nazis followed
what they called the leadership principle. The
chief leader or "Fuehrer" exercised supreme
authority; under him descending layers of
subordinate leaders spread out fan-wise through all
branches of society to bring the entire German
nation under centralized party control. After it took over, leaders in all walks of life
found it necessary or expedient to join the party
or one or more of its affiliated organizations.
Among its 7,500,000 members were nearly all
government workers, professional men, scientists,
technicians, professors, teachers, writers, and
businessmen inducted as "führers" of business
and compelled under heavy penalties, such as
confiscation of property, to conform to party
policies and mandates. White collar workers,
craftsmen, and technicians had to fall in line to
be eligible for promotion. Membership expanded
rapidly during the war and the period of high
tension immediately preceding. Party and nation
became so closely identified that to join was to
display patriotism; to refuse, to invite
penalization for disloyalty. In short, almost
everybody in Germany with brains, skills, and
managerial ability belonged to the Nazi party, or
one of its affiliated organizations and obeyed its
orders. By placing sole blame for the war on Germany and
therefore the Nazi party, by declaring the war to
be one of aggression, and by outlawing aggression
as a crime against humanity, Germany's conquerors
have condemned the Nazi party, its affiliates, and
its millions of members as criminal. The punishment
meted out at Potsdam, if carried out to the letter,
would mean the virtual liquidation of Germany's
middle and upper classes. The blanket incrimination rests upon an infirm
base, as revealed in the Potsdam denazification
decrees. In one breath they order that all
"discrimination on grounds of . . . political
opinion shall be abolished"; yet in the next breath
they permanently dissolve the Nazi party and its
affiliated organizations and institutions, ban
propagation of Nazi political opinion, without
identifying it in particular, and call for severe
punishment of all Nazis simply for being Nazis. Potsdam commands that "Nazi leaders, influential
Nazi supporters and high officials of Nazi
organizations and institutions . . . shall be
arrested and interned" and that all lesser Nazis
"shall be removed from public and semi-public
office and former positions of responsibility in
private undertakings." In attempting to carry out these unusual edicts,
which were looked upon as a purge order "to throw
the rascals out," the American military government
issued "Law Number Eight" to denazify business and
various mandatory removal edicts, the exact
provisions of which were military secrets, to purge
government of all Nazis. Approximately 3,000,000
German men were affected in our zone out of a total
population of 16,682,000. Our occupation
authorities jailed 75,000 and earmarked another
80,000 unreturned war prisoners for internment for
being important Nazis; ousted more than 100,000
from public office; and denuded business of
managerial and technical talent by firing and
demoting hundreds of thousands of
others.[42] In other words, we set out to ruin the lives and
reputations of three million men in our zone alone
because, as they see it, they made a "political
mistake." In consequence, the Germans are afraid to
identify themselves with any political party or to
express any political views, for fear of being
punished later on, just as the Nazis are being
punished now. Most important of all, the zone and its people
have been denied the economic benefits which would
accrue if these men were permitted to do the work
which they alone by talent, training, and
experience are capable of performing. Putting the
zone's most productive men in pick and shovel gangs
and filling their places with incapables has been
one of the chief contributing causes to the zone's
economic paralysis. Our occupation authorities have been confronted
with two opposing mandates which often set them to
working at cross purposes. They were ordered at
Potsdam to secure enough production to supply the
needs of the occupation forces and the "displaced
persons," with enough left over "to enable the
German people to subsist without external
assistance." In the attempt to carry out this
mandate some of our zonal authorities, for example,
might be out scouring the zone with scanty success
for trained personnel to run the undermanned
railway system. But at the same time, some of our
other authorities, attempting to enforce the
denazification decrees, would be out ahead of the
others nabbing and jailing trainmen and locomotive
engineers, because they had been Nazis. Administration of the denazification decrees
proved to be a task of forbidding magnitude. The
limited AMG personnel found it impossible to get
the three million Nazis properly registered, their
questionnaires filled out and tabulated, and proper
files set up. Nor could individual trials and
hearings for so many be properly conducted,
especially when each error added to the rising tide
of German indignation. Fearing organized resistance, we carried out in
Gestapo fashion one of the greatest mass raids in
history. Striking at daybreak without warning, our
troops halted every vehicle in our zone, checked
the papers of civilians and soldiers, and swept
through every German house from cellar to attic.
Although the German populace had supposedly been
under the influence and domination of criminals and
criminal organizations for a dozen years, according
to the men in charge "the search showed less crime
than perhaps would be uncovered in a similar action
over a comparable area in the United
States."[43] A few months of experience proved to us that in
the denazification program we had taken hold of a
very hot iron, impossible to hold, yet difficult to
drop. We therefore tossed it to the Germans for
them to handle. The law turning the job of denazification in our
zone over to the Germans was largely formulated by
one Heinrich Schmitt, a corpulent Communist
Quisling serving under AMG as Bavarian
Denazification Minister. The execution of the law
was also partly placed in his hands.[44]
This sort of thing is a logical outgrowth of the
program which automatically places political
responsibility on former political neutrals or
active anti-Nazis, including Communists, who, with
Communist Russia signing the Potsdam Declaration,
must be accepted as "democratic." The law is designed to permit some Nazis,
otherwise condemned, to prove their innocence or
pay the penalties and be restored to citizenship.
It sets up five catgories of war criminals and
potentially dangerous persons, namely: 1) Major offenders, 2) offenders broadly
described as Nazi activists, militarists, and
profiteers, 3) lesser offenders, 4) followers,
constituting the broad membership of the party and
affiliates, and 5) persons exonerated after a
tribunal finds them innocent. Penalties for those in the first category range
from death or life imprisonment to imprisonment for
five or more years with or without hard labor.
Those in the second category may be imprisoned for
a period up to ten years. Those in lower categories
are subject to a variety of "sanctions," including
loss of citizenship and the right to vote,
debarment from public office, loss of personal
rights such as the privilege to own an automobile,
demotion in position with heavy cut in
compensation, discharge from position, confiscation
of property, and employment only at ordinary labor.
[45] To make matters easier, we granted an amnesty to
all Nazis in our zone under 27 years of age who had
no special charges against them. The action
readmitted to citizenship about a million men who,
as General Clay put it, had become Nazis before
they were old enough to know what they were doing.
He failed to explain why the same consideration
might not apply to most of the older men as well.
At any rate, the action was accompanied by a
statement to the effect that it was the desire of
the military govemment "to offer encourgement to
the youth of Germany to understand and develop a
democratic way of life."[46] Unfortunately, most of those pardoned under the
blanket order were in France, Britain, Belgium,
Holland, Russia or elsewhere for indefinite terms
performing forced labor in the manner of
convicts. Within a few months left wing critics again
began to complain that the elaborate German court
system which had been set up to adjudicate the
million remaining cases was far too lenient, that
it was permitting Hitler's Hordes to creep back. In
November 1946, Lt. Gen. Lucius D. Clay expressed
concern over the leniency being shown Nazis in
German courts. Setting a 60 day deadline before
which the Germans must prove they had developed
"the will to do this job which is not present
today," he warned that the military government was
ready to take back the job of denazification unless
the German courts tightened up. The day before the
following Christmas, Gen. McNarney proclaimed a
general amnesty for approximately 800,000 "little
Nazis" in the U.S. zone. Included were minor Nazis
whose incomes during the calendar years 1943 and
1945 were less than 3,000 marks and whose taxable
property in 1945 did not exceed 20,000 marks. Nevertheless, in the autumn of 1946 the Allied
Control Council's Coordinating Committee passed
general denazification laws for the whole of
Germany patterned after the American zonal law,
with enforcement, however, left entirely to each
zonal authority.[47] This loophole permits
the other occupation governments to continue to
denazify as they see fit, which thus far has been
with greater reasonableness and leniency than have
been exercised in the American zone where
enforcement, in other words, has been far more
rigid and drastic than elsewhere. At Stuttgart Mr.
Byrnes was able to boast that denazification in the
American zone had been completed. Less than four weeks later, the Nuernberg
tribunal handed down its momentous decision. Out of
22 arch-Nazis the Allied court, which certainly
cannot be accused of judicial neutrality or
leniency, and which tried the cases on four
all-embracing counts, gave the death penalty to
only 12, life imprisonment to three, prison terms
ranging from 10 to 20 years to four, and acquitted
three. If three of the very highest Nazis were free
of all guilt, and four others were only partly
guilty, the broad party membership could not be
seriously guilty at all. This means that the
denazification decrees which condemn all Nazis
without trial are thoroughly unjust. The Nuernberg
proceedings themselves have been roundly condemned
for violating basic principles of Anglo-Saxon
jurisprudence, particularly for condemning on the
basis of ex-post facto law, for placing partisan
judges on the bench, and for excluding evidence
that would reflect on the victorious powers. But
the verdict handed down at Potsdam was still worse,
for there a blanket verdict of guilty was
pronounced, without even a pretense of trial,
evidence, or testimony. Under the present
denazification laws, all Nazis are still guilty,
unless they can prove themselves innocent in the
face of procedure which permits violation of the
accepted rules of evidence.[48] The Nuernberg tribunal also tried various Nazi
organizations to determine whether or not they and
their members were criminal. The SS, Gestapo, SD -
elite guard, secret police, and security police -
and the higher brackets of the Nazi leadership
corps were adjudged criminal organizations. This
means that for acquittal, some 400,000 members must
prove they were forced to join or knew nothing of
the criminality. Punishment ranges to the death
penalty. On the other hand, the SA - original storm
troopers - was dismissed as not linked with
conspiracy to wage aggressive war, and the General
Staff, High Command, and Brown Shirts were found
not guilty. Certainly, then, the broad masses of
the German people could not be guilty, and should
not be punished. The denazification program in general and the
Nuernberg trial in particular violates our
traditional ideas of justice; on the contrary, they
embody the Nazi and Communist concept of
jurisprudence - the liquidation of ideological
opponents. As Barron's weekly says: Even worse, we have permitted Communists, whose
worst doctrines and those of the Nazis are
identical, to continue to preach and agitate and
even to work their way into key positions in our
military govemment. When we first arrived the
Germans were strongly anti-Communist; they have
since started fleeing our zone and entering the
Russian where they are welcomed into the Communist
party and even into the Red Army, in whose ranks
they may someday be able to get their revenge
against us. Denazification in the Russian zone has been far
more enlightened and less economically disruptive.
The strong men of the Kremlin could hardly take
seriously the condemnation of all Nazis as
criminals when they know full well that their own
party, which rules Russia much as the Nazi party
ruled Germany and which demands the same blind
obedience of its members, is guilty of every act
for which we so strongly condemn the Nazis: wars of
aggression against peaceful neighbors, wars of
nerves, confiscation of property of whole classes
without compensation to the owners, violation of
treaties and agreements, hostility toward religion,
concentration camp atrocities, slave labor, looting
and abusing conquered countries, the use of fifth
columns and Quislings, one-party rule by terror
with the aid of civilian informers and a brutal
secret police system, stifling of human rights and
individual liberties of all kinds, and even the aim
to conquer the world. The Russians know this and so do the Germans.
When we condone the one and condemn the other we
become ridiculous in the eyes of both. The attitude of the Kremlin toward
denazification was expressed years ago and probably
has not changed since. Russia in partnership with
Hitler had just attacked, defeated, and partitioned
Poland and Hitler had proposed that since the issue
which had started the war had been settled, all the
belligerents should stop fighting and call a
general disarmament conference. Britain and France
had declined with the terse remark that they would
fight on for the "extermination of Hitlerism." The
Kremlin scoffed. Its reaction, which is probably
still its inner conviction, was reported by the
Associated Press from highly censored Moscow (Oct
9, 1939), as follows: Potsdam's decrees calling for the "extermination
of Hitlerism" have been highly useful to the
Kremlin, however, for they have provided a basis
for the liquidation of the German "bourgeoisie" and
therefore set the stage for ultimate communization.
The necessary expropriation of property has been
accomplished through confiscation of the holdings
of Nazis, absentee fugitives, "war profiteers," and
other classes of synthetic criminals. But once a
nominal Nazi in the Russian zone has been
dispossessed he is offered a chance to redeem
himself. He is given his job back if he works
satisfactorily for six months with clean-up crews.
Denazification is thus linked to "Aufbau" or
reconstruction.[50] Minor offenders have
been tried in German courts and penitent Nazis are
invited to join the Communist party.[51]
According to Reuters, German military officers have
been taken into the Red army by invitation. When
the officers cross the zonal frontiers they are
nominally "arrested," placed in quarantine camps,
and invited to enlist. Upon acceptance, they are
given preferential treatment. In other words, the
union of the Red and Nazi armies has
begun.[52] In her zone, Russia is taking full advantage of
the many points of similarity between her own
system and that of the Nazis under Hitler. Some
Germans are remarking that "Communism is nothing
but National Socialism under a different
name."[53] While we continue to pound away
at the evils of Nazism, which we apparently
consider as something unique, Russia, which our
army men have been ordered not to criticize,
matches up these evils to those of her own system
and thereby facilitates the desired transformation
from the one to the other. By eliminating the "bourgeoisie" in our zone we
have played into the Kremlin's hands, for the
action has removed the principle barrier to the
establishment of the "dictatorship of the
proletariat," and ultimate absorption of the zone
into the Soviet Union - the Kremlin's own United
Nations. Our entire denazification procedure has
been highly satisfactory to Moscow, for the greater
the chaos, despair, and disgust we create, and the
greater the resentment of the German people
becomes, the stronger becomes the grip of
Communism, and the closer we come to losing
everything for which we fought the war. Reference Notes: |