A Socialist Defector. Victor Grossman
to attend anti-fascist schools. They too were eased out as soon as possible, but unfortunately their influence on training practices could not be eliminated. Even worse, two extremely bad decisions were made, intended, it was explained, to avoid any resemblance to either Soviet soldiers or American troops, but rather to harken back to older military traditions considered progressive, basically the fight to free Prussia from Napoleon’s occupation. Thus a new uniform was designed that looked far too much like that worn by the Wehrmacht. Worse yet, a military tradition, allegedly far older than Hitler and used in many other countries’ armies but horribly weighted in Germany, was also adopted, at least for ceremonial marches: the high-kicking goose-step. The inevitable result: constant attempts to label the People’s Army as neo-Nazi, as opposed to the democratic nature of the Bundeswehr.
Blindly stupid as these two decisions were, a look in depth at the two armies showed weightier differences, not only in the 9-to-400 ratio and very brief careers of old Wehrmacht generals in the East but in a fateful concept, doggedly maintained in the West: “We soldiers simply served our nation patriotically, only the SS committed atrocities” or “Hitler was to blame, not us.” General Heusinger’s words to his officers were clear: “Let us stick to the old principles, the principles we used to have.” Only in the past few years has this line been dropped, at least officially.
The difference was visible in the naming of army camps (Kaserne), which were, in West Germany, “reminders of valiant traditions.” Here are some of the heroes they chose to honor:
• Maj. Gen. Eduard Dietl, one of the first officers to join the Nazi Party in 1921, stated (before a fatal plane crash), “We are engaged in a battle of destiny for the German people, while the Jews of the whole world have united to destroy Germany and Europe.… War is the relentless purifier of destiny. I declare solemnly: I believe in the Führer!” The Kaserne was named after him as late as 1964 and not renamed until 1995, and even then against the will of his war veteran admirers.
• Gen. Ludwig Kübler fought partisans in Yugoslavia and was condemned to death in absentia by a Yugoslav court for his atrocities. Quote: “Terror against terror … in war everything is proper and justified if it leads to success.”
• Col. Helmut Lent shot down 110 planes and received the highest Nazi decoration. Air Force boss Hermann Goering called him “an enthusiastic soldier, a hard and tough fighter and shining hero … not only a soldier but a passionate supporter of our National Socialist worldview.”
• Col. Werner Mölders fought for Franco as a Condor Legion pilot and, before dying in a crash, shot down more Allied planes than any other pilot. Bonn also named a fighter squadron after him.
About a quarter of the four hundred Bundeswehr camps were named for such “heroes” of the First or Second World War. Only eleven had opposed Hitler, usually in the plot of July 20, 1944. After years-long efforts by the Green Party’s Petra Kelly, all Condor Legion names were finally dropped in 2005, despite bitter resistance from former Inspector General Trettner, who had helped command it. Many Nazi names were altered in 2012 and 2013, perhaps under pressure from new Eastern European allies. But some still stubbornly bear the names of military men who fought for Hitler to the end.
THE NAMES OF the 173 GDR army bases were completely different. Nine derived from the Peasants’ War of 1525, sixty from anti-war activists before 1933, and 108 had been anti-fascist resistance fighters. Not one was a First or Second World War hero. Here is a sampling:
• Thomas Müntzer, the preacher who led poor peasants and early members of the working class against the feudal lords until he was defeated and beheaded in 1525.
• Robert Uhrig, an active Communist and anti-Nazi, led a large underground group in Berlin factories with ties to anti-fascist groups in Copenhagen, Prague, and Amsterdam. Arrested with two hundred others in 1942, he was sent to Sachsenhausen and beheaded in August 1944.
• Hugo Eberlein, a top Communist leader, worked in exile in France to unite Communists, Social Democrats, and other anti-fascists against Hitler. He was able to escape capture there and flee to the USSR, only to get caught up in the Stalin-era purges. Arrested and deported to a camp in the far north in 1939, he was executed in 1941. Taking his name, I think, was an honorable decision.
• Anton Saefkow, arrested in April 1933, was kept in Nazi prisons and camps until July 1939. After his release, he began organizing again and helped create the largest underground organization, with connections to the group planning Hitler’s assassination. The Gestapo was able to break it up; it arrested Saefkow and beheaded him. He ended his last letter to his wife Änne with a sentiment which became basic for many people in the later GDR who tried to keep his memory alive—including his peace-activist and historian daughter: In this final letter I want to thank you, my comrade, for all the greatness and beauty you gave me in our life together…. Not until today did these lines and thoughts of you bring my first tears since the sentencing. Until now my mind helped me withstand thoughts of the pain which will tear me apart. As you know, I am of a fighting nature and will die courageously. I wanted nothing but to achieve goodness in the world.
Such names of GDR bases, many such names, were dropped in a single day after unification in 1990.
16—A Journalistic Episode
Here is a rare example of justice finally prevailing in West Germany, this time in the field of journalism.
An extremely popular Sunday TV program, similar to Meet the Press, featured Werner Höfer and guest journalists. Viewed by millions, also in East Germany, many like me found it interesting, even snappy, despite Höfer’s smart-alec, supercilious tone. I did not like his decidedly right-leaning views, but others evidently did; after seventeen years Höfer got a Federal Cross of Merit and directorships of two West German state-owned TV channels.
Few knew that in 1962 a GDR Politburo member, Albert Norden, had raised questions about Höfer’s past. Norden, once a refugee in New York, whose father, a rabbi, had been killed at Theresienstadt, was an expert on old Nazis. As usual, the Western media ignored all “propaganda from East Berlin.”
But an old classmate and friend of the victim never gave up his fight to unmask Höfer, and his story was finally published by Der Spiegel in 1987. It seems that Höfer had written diligently for the worst of the Nazi press. Of course, whole squads of leading West German journalists had done the same. But a special tragedy was involved here. In September 1943 one of Germany’s best young pianists, Karlrobert Kreiten, age twenty-seven, had privately uttered his fears that Germany’s war, “already doomed to defeat, … would lead to the total downfall of Germany and its culture.”
A visiting neighbor reported his remarks, the Gestapo cops were informed, he was sentenced, and, despite pleas by leading musicians, executed by hanging. Star columnist Werner Höfer then wrote an op-ed article not only justifying but praising the hanging of an artist “who sowed not faith but doubt, not confidence but libel, not morale but desperation,” adding that “no one today can feel sympathy and, in the case of an artist who does wrong, call for more forgiveness than for any normal wrongdoer.” His words were a clear threat to all other doubters.
In 1987, Höfer squirmed and lied, claiming the newspaper had altered his words. But there it was in black and white, and this top TV journalist finally had to quit in disgrace after seventeen self-righteous years. Two questions remained: Had he ever changed his views? And how many other top journalists, without such an episode or persevering accuser, remained on the job? (Christian Felchow, “Der Fall Werner Höfer,” Spiegel Online, June 2, 2010.)
17—Powers Behind the Throne
One group has too frequently been ignored in discussions of postwar Germany. As early as the First World War it was Big Business that bore the main guilt for aggression, aggrandizement, “Big Bertha” artillery monsters, and poison gas. The November Revolution ended its war in 1918 and raised hopes for a peaceful, even socialist Germany, but it was soon able to smash such hopes and renew its interrupted drive to conquer Europe and regain its former colonies. A decade later, when millions of angry, often desperate, Great Depression victims threatened such plans, it turned to a brutal movement and a leader with a