What Shall We Do With Germany?
» What shall we do with the Germans when the war ig won? Shoot them? Here are some alternatives.
by LOUIS FISCHER
1
FOR at least ten years after this war all belligerents, victors as well as vanquished, will be so weakened from loss of life, blood, and wealth that a large-scale reopening of hostilities is unlikely. The true function of the peace is to prevent wars in the period following this first decade of peace by sheer exhaustion. The threat of a new world war will arise twelve or fifteen or twenty years after the end of the present conflict. The primary purpose of the peace settlement, therefore, is to deal with the dangers and difficulties that will appear, not two years after the war, but twenty years after the war.
Proposals for Germany’s annihilation and disruption are counsels of despair. Because the peace planners cannot cure, they wish to kill.
Of course one can argue that Germans are incorrigible and must be sterilized, pulverized. If Germans are incorrigible we are doomed to a hundred years of policing Germany against her will, and we shall tire of it.
But perhaps there is a cure. Germany may actually be getting her re-education right now. One of the purposes of decisively defeating Germany is that the defeat itself will constitute a big piece of re-education. Two defeats in two major wars, each costing millions of casualties, are a bitter lesson for any nation. A military collapse in this war, accompanied by devastating bombings and the physical invasion of Germany, should convince large numbers of Germans that Germany can never win a world war.
Germany had a perfect army in 1914, had many allies, won most of the battles for four years, and then lost the war. This time Nazi Germany was well prepared for aggression and rigorously organized by a dictatorship against any anti-war revolts from within. She conquered many countries and vast territories, and again she lost the war. To be bled white and then to lose — to lose twice — will make another world war an unattractive proposition to Germans.
Comparing the Kaiser war with the Hitler war, Germans will see that in both cases Russia lined up against them and America came in to turn the tide against them. In both cases bright prospects at the beginning turned into black doom at the close.
All this cannot but impress Germans with the inevitability of their defeat in any world war. When this war is over, every German family will count its dead and crippled and its vanished wealth; the country as a whole will contemplate its ruined economy and ruined prestige. For what? For nothing. The millions of personal ledgers and the public ledger will show no gains — only endless, tragic losses. Realization of defeat will produce a terrific emotional impact which may shock Germany out of its nonsense about war and militarism. Conceivably, Germany could become a pacifist nation after she is subjected to the “unconditional surrender” which Roosevelt and Churchill promised at Casablanca.
Russia will loom large in Germany’s picture of gloom. No matter who sweeps back their last battalion and ends the war, and no matter how many victories they win in Russia, the Germans will know that it was the Red Army which made the first and biggest contribution to their defeat.
The attitude of Germans towards Russia after this war will consist of begrudged respect and fear mixed, strangely, with a certain attraction. Russians have always liked Germans and admired their thoroughness; but Germans, though they usually got on well with Russians, had a low estimate of Russian ability to manage, to build, and to wage war. Even so, an influential school of German political thought, represented by Bismarck and his followers, felt that Germany ought never to be on bad terms with Russia.
Kaiser Wilhelm II disregarded this principle to his cost. Between 1919 and 1933, Germany and Russia usually lived amicably together, and even Hitler, for all his highly advertised anti-Communism, did not end all ties with Russia the moment he came into office in 1933. On the contrary, he sanctioned large Nazi Government credits for Russia in order to expand trade relations. And subsequently, in August, 1939, he concluded a pact with Stalin.
This traditional German view of Russia will, after the present war, grow into a profound conviction that Russia must be reckoned with as the major factor in any calculation of Germany’s future. Russia may be exhausted when the war closes, and much in need of repair, but Germans know Russia’s resilience and capacity of recuperation. They will realize that the new Russia which has learned the trick of industrialization and the use of modern weapons of war must hereafter be the chief concern of Germany’s foreign policy.
With Russia in the opposite camp, Germany cannot possibly win a war; that is the real significance for history of the Nazi reverses on Soviet soil. To Russia’s vast and protective geographical bulk, her rich reserves of manpower, and her fabulous natural resources has now been added the ability, demonstrated in this war, to make and to use machines. That new factor is of epochal importance to the future of Europe and Asia. It may alter German psychology and Germany’s role in the world.
Some Germans will assuredly dream of a RussoGerman military combination later in the twentieth century to conquer Europe and defy the world. But doubts will plague these schemers: Will Russia join such a partnership? Will not theopposing coalition again be too powerful by that time, for who knows what new powers — such as China and India — may weigh heavily in the balance against a Russo-German alliance? In any event, it would mean a third world war, bloodier than the last because we are all becoming more proficient in the science of killing—a war the outcome of which could be as disastrous for Germany as the First and Second World Wars. Moreover, Germans will comprehend that in any future Russo-German war axis, Germany might easily be the junior member and might, even in victory, gain less than Russia.
2
WHEN Hitler’s regime crumbles and falls under United Nations military blows, the shape of the immediate peace to come will depend, in great measure, on who occupies Germany. Will America and England march in quickly and seize key cities, bridges, railway lines, and frontier posts in Germany, or will the Red Army enter too and take over part of the country? Nobody can know in advance. The United Nations may reach a preliminary understanding on the matter, or it will be determined by the location of the eastern front and of the AngloAmerican front against Germany in the West.
If the Nazis have been pushed back out of Russia and the Soviet forces are somewhere in the Baltic states and Poland when German generals ask for an armistice, the Red Army may be in Berlin first. But if by that time Anglo-American forces have smashed through Italy and reconquered France and Holland, boys from Kansas and Liverpool may patrol Germany’s heartland. If Germany surrenders or if there is a sudden internal collapse in Germany, all the victorious armies may start rushing towards German territory, and some forces could come in aeroplanes and drop parachutists. Before they arrive, an interval of chaos may be expected in which anti-Nazis will wreak vengeance on fellow Germans who were Nazis.
When the occupying armies restore order they will establish contacts with the civilian population. Germany is a large country of about seventy million inhabitants whose friendly assistance would facilitate the work of the occupying force; a sullen German attitude would obstruct that work.
The attitude of the German people towards the occupying armies will reflect the attitude of the occupying armies towards the German people. Some Germans will welcome foreign military occupation after Hitler’s surrender. For it will mean tranquillity instead of civil war. Unless there are strong foreign armed forces in Germany, the defeat of Hitler will sound the signal for the outbreak of a fierce struggle among various German classes for political power. It will be a bloody struggle, for Germans will hate the men who made the war and who helped make Hitler.
Twice in one generation the German people have seen the same groups of their countrymen — the Junker estate-owning squires, the big industrialists seeking expanded markets for their manufactures, the militarists dreaming of conquests, and the Prussian bureaucrats willingly serving all these groups — catapult Germany into world wars which they did not win. The venom and bitterness that are now accumulating among the German people against their masters should not be underestimated.
In wartime, the people go along. They dare not disobey. They are powerless before the secret police, the official propaganda, and the mass psychosis which grips any nation at war. But when defeat comes, there is a letdown, a search for culprits, as in all the defeated countries of the last war. Russia, verging on defeat in 1917, dethroned the Czar and scrapped his absolutist system. Austro-Hungary, in 1918, cracked up into its national component parts; the Hapsburgs lost their crown. Turkey got rid of Sultan and empire. Germany drove out the Kaiser and the monarchy and established a republic.
These changes ran deep in Russia, Austro-Hungary, and Turkey. But the so-called German Revolution was a very polite affair. No one stepped on the grass. None of the institutions and few of the personnel of the old regime were discarded. For a few months the monarchists, warmakers, and reactionaries hid in their political lairs until the storm born of the 1918 debacle blew over. But in 1920 the anti-republicans made a bid for power, and within a few years — sometimes in republican disguise, yet just as often in full monarchist regalia — men and groups who ruled Germany before 1914 were back in the limelight and in office. Thereafter it was only a matter of time before the Kaiser’s held marshal, Hindenburg, inducted Hitler into office and Germany began to prepare for a second world war.
This, in pill form, is the history of Germany from 1919 to 1939. It is a very bitter pill for the German people, and they will remember it. They will realize that if Germany is to have peace it must crush the groups and interests that made the war in 1914 and lost it in 1918, made the war in 1939 and lost it in the 1940’s.
Will the occupying armies sanction and abet the elimination of these warmaking, backward-looking German groups? To do so would constitute a peaceful social revolution designed to obviate the necessity of bloody civil war. That civil war is brewing in Germany today. The foreign occupying armies will have the choice of suppressing it and saving the Junkers, armament makers, militarists, and encrusted bureaucrats, or of directing it into legal channels. Should they suppress it, they will merely postpone it and will have to sit on the lid while violent revolution continues to ferment under the surface.
One can well imagine what will happen in a Russian zone of occupation in Germany. If the Russians, loyal to Stalin’s famous Order of the Day, of February, 1942, show sympathy for the German people and wipe out the enemies of the people, Germany may begin to look to Russia for its salvation and its future.
In ordinary circumstances, Germans will prefer America to Russia. After this war, Germany will be tired, hungry, and sick. Parts of the country will have been ruined by enemy air raids. Only America can send aid. Ever since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Soviet Russia has suffered from a scarcity of food, and at the present moment, according to official statements published by the United States Lend-Lease Office, “millions of persons are starving” in the Soviet Union. The longer the war lasts, the hungrier and more exhausted Russia will become, and when the fighting ends she herself will need foreign food, medicines, and machinery. Post-war Germany, therefore, cannot expect supplies from stricken Russia. Instead of aid, Russia would introduce violent strife, and if Germans will pine for anything when hostilities cease it will be for rest and order.
America, accordingly, can win Germany’s heart if we fill her stomach, and conquer her soul if we wisely assist in the birth of a new Germany wherein the warmaking elements will be deprived of their economic and political power to do evil. The alternative will be to throw Germany into the arms of Russia. Soviet Russia is not strictly communistic herself. But she could export communism to Germany.
Nobody who has lived long under a dictatorship wants more of it. The Germans will not wish to exchange brown dictatorship for red. They will have had enough tyranny. Theonly people who enjoy dictatorship are the few at the top who exercise it. The millions submit because they cannot help themselves. But they do not like it. It frays their nerves, offends their sense of personal dignity, and cramps their individuality. After this war, the nations most eager for freedom will be those dictatorship countries that have been without it for years.
Germany, therefore, will welcome outside help to set up a free democracy. Help from the West wall seem more desirable than the political supremacy of Russia. For apart from all else, the Germans will know that sooner or later America and England will leave Germany. They will not be so sure of Russia’s intentions.
None of these considerations will count, however, if Russia, fully grasping the causes of Germany’s troubles, insists on the ousting of the militarists and reactionaries, whereas the democratic occupying armies do just the opposite. In that case, many Germans will prefer the courage and clarity of Russia’s policy to the vacillation and conservatism of the other United Nations. Nothing is certain about the future except that it is uncertain. But this one can say with assurance about Germany after the collapse: what was will be very unpopular. If the democracies try to keep the past alive they will fail.
3
How can armies of occupation help re-establish democracy in Germany without, seeming to impose the will of a foreign country on the German people? Very simply. An army which enters a foreign country, either in war or after a war, needs the aid of local citizens. The foreign army cannot actually administer the water supply, the traffic system, the care of health, the distribution of food, and so on, without subjecting itself to an inordinate strain and at the same time irritating the population. For these and other obvious reasons, an occupying army must immediately find local people to collaborate with it in the administration of the district, the province, and ultimately the entire country. It is in the choice of these local citizens that the occupational army can determine the future trend of Germany’s politics.
An American general, at the head of the brigade of American troops, marches into the Cologne area with instructions from the United Nations to occupy it and “carry on.” He will find the city of Cologne in ruins. The population will be hungry; there will be epidemics; production in factories must be restored. Otherwise, through lack of foot!, clothing, and facilities, the epidemics will spread and the population will grow sullen and restive. The American general must get in touch with some outstanding, able Germans to help in this gigantic task of administration and restoration.
Will he summon an old regime politician and a former colonel of the Reichswehr? Or will he inquire who are the anti-Nazis of Cologne, the church leaders and the progressive laborites, the forwardlooking businessmen and liberal-minded Germans who, during the horror of the Hitler nightmare, had silently and secretly opposed fascism? The general will need engineers to remove the debris and resume production; he will need physicians and lawyers, newspapermen and radio commentators, retail merchants and representative housewives, police officials and registrars. The persons he selects will acquire prestige through the selection and the population will look to them for the alleviation of their misery.
By giving these local people a certain amount of independence, the general will prevent them from being regarded as foreign stooges, and if these Germans do indeed reduce suffering they will win popularity. The American general may also have to search in concentration camps for the best anti-Hitlerites; or, if the camps have meanwhile been disbanded, he can examine the lists of former political prisoners and discover among them the men and women who would continue the struggle they waged while Hitler still tortured Germany.
Gradually, by this normal process, new figures and new elements in the population will emerge and become ripe for leadership. On the national scale, the same procedure will take place. All of Germany will require new regulations, laws, and edicts. New courts will try Nazi criminals. Demobilized German soldiers will ask for employment. The farmers among them can be settled on the lands of the big Junker estate owners who always formed the backbone of the militaristic caste in Germany and who stood by Hitler through thick and thin. If these farmers get land from the occupying armies they will be grateful and they will coöperate.
The Junkers, who mulcted the treasury of the German Republic and of the Hitler government to the tune of many billions of marks, have always been unpopular with Germany’s land-hungry peasantry, especially in East Prussia. Germans will begin to see the dawn of a new day of prolonged peace if the economic power of the Junkers is broken. The farmers will appreciate the blessings which the victorious democracies have brought them. They will become pillars of the new German democracy. The militaristic, aristocratic, Pan-German Junkers will be replaced by simple, hard-working, peaceful dirt farmers. That will be a shift in the direction of peace and democracy.
The German army will be disbanded. The military equipment that remains will be confiscated. Factories will not be permitted to manufacture arms. But that is only a first step. The industries must be supervised, first by the occupying armies, and then by the German government, which, for a white at least, will feel the pressure and influence of the United Nations. Ultimately, of course, the nature of that German government will decide the future of the world’s relation to Germany.
If the government is not controlled by industrial oligarchs, land barons, financial wizards, and militarists dreaming of expansion, then Germany and Europe and the rest of the world can look forward to a period of peace. The United Nations will put the responsibility for peace and for the absence of war preparations squarely on the German government.
The political “commissars” who accompany the American and British and other armies which occupy Germany will make the peace. They will be the peace conference. There may never be an old-fashioned peace conference after this war. The peace will not be born in a hothouse at Paris or London. The peace will grow; it will grow gradually. It will be written by the thousands of United Nations officers and soldiers who enter German territory and by the Germans who collaborate with them. Together they will create the new democratic Germany.
4
BUT what about the millions of German children taught in Nazi schools and reared on fascist ideas? How can they be purged of their Hitlerite psychology, their racial prejudices, and their faith in force, cruelty, and dictatorship?
The German youth which swallowed the Hitler doctrine did so because it knew nothing else and because it was told that democracy, the other system, was rotten, depraved, and unworkable. The first blow to this miseducation will be the victory of the so-called “depraved” democracies over Hitler. The German indoctrinated youth will have to say, “There was something wrong with what the Nazis taught. The democracies were able to beat us. Therefore they were not so decadent as we have been told.” The next step in this re-education will consist in showing the German youth that democracy can work in Germany. Seeing is believing. If they see that democracy brings Germany prosperity, dignity, and liberty, whereas fascism brought none of these and only death in war, they will prefer the new to the old.
The alternative is to line up all German children between the ages of eight and eighteen who have been inculcated with Nazi dogma and shoot them. There must be about ten million German children between the ages of eight and eighteen. It would require a lot of bullets and a lot of American firing squads to kill them. Those bullets would kill German bodies and shatter the soul of the democracies. That would not be a very Christian way or a very effective way of making peace. Germany would never forgive or forget, and such wholesale murder in cold blood would only provoke retaliatory murder later on.
If we shoot ten million German children we might as well shoot all seventy million Germans. Otherwise those who remain alive will be sure to indoctrinate every newborn child with hate and fascism. And if we do not shoot the children, but try to reeducate them in democracy while we are imposing a foreign dictatorship upon Germany, we shall not get very far.
The foreign bayonet and the teacher’s ruler do not go together. The Germans are a proud people. They would no more accept education from foreign conquerors than Americans or Britons would. One merely has to imagine a German military occupation of the United States with Germans running the schools of Ohio, Missouri, and the whole country — painting our national heroes as knaves and demons, and everything in our history as foolish — to realize that any such operation on Germany will certainly fail.
Peace in Europe depends on the birth of a new Germany from which the remnants of the old regime will have been expunged. It is paying Hitler far too big a compliment to say that he enjoys the unanimous support of the German people. He has had enemies within the gates for many years — else why the packed prisons, the concentration camps, and the ruthless terror? The liberal churchmen, the responsible progressive laborites, forward-looking businessmen, the Social Democrats, and some Communists are as much anti-Hitler as ever. The pacifists still abhor him. Many common folk may have thought that Hitler could solve Germany’s problems and therefore supported his regime while, with the help of democracy’s appeasers, he won bloodless conquests for Germany in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, in Memel.
Some Germans began to doubt Hitler when he invaded Poland, and by the time Germany is defeated tens of millions of Germans will understand the folly of ever having believed that fascism could bring Germany any benefits. A tremendous questioning and intellectual inquiry must today be proceeding inside Germany. Germans are analyzing their past and finding out their mistakes. Many nations have been aggressors; England and France were aggressors in past centuries. They changed; others can change too. In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Russians talk about Napoleon and the French as we talk about Hitler and the Germans, while the French laugh at the unwarlike softness of Prussia.
History teaches bitter lessons. Failure is the sternest teacher. The hope of the world is that not only Germany, but her enemies too, will learn the lesson we are trying to bring home to Germany: that aggression, narrow nationalism, and imperialism do not pay in the modern world. For if Germany becomes a new Germany and other countries take the path that led her to disaster, we shall have more wars. No change in Germany can last unless it is accompanied by similar changes in many other countries. We can induce and help Germany to oust her anti-democratic, chauvinistic, expansionist elements. But if her neighbors and conquerors do not do the same, Germany will slip back into her old ways. There cannot be a new Germany in an old world. There can only be a new Germany in a new world.