Reading Eagle (September 1, 1944)
ON THE RECORD —
Allies need German help to destroy Nazism
By Dorothy Thompson
The nearer we come to Germany the less we seem concerned with what is happening inside Germany. Our official attitude is that the problem will be solved by purely military means – by occupation. Three armies will march into assigned areas, or the areas will assign themselves by the movement of our three armies, and the country will be taken over.
At this point, the three Allied governments and their armies will face a problem unprecedented in the history of the world. They will enter a country in complete collapse without a government or administration that can be used, and – as far as any of us know – without a policy regarding what we hope to create in Germany.
That moment is imminent. When it breaks, the much-debated question of whether there are “good” Germans becomes irrelevant. We shall have to find “good” Germans – good, at least, for our purposes. The “goodness” or “badness” of individual or groups will depend wholly on our aims.
Our avowed immediate purpose is to liquidate Nazism and punish war criminals. That automatically throws out practically the whole administration, central and local.
Now, however one draws the frontiers of Germany, it is an area containing 60 to 80 million people, it is an area containing 60 to 80 million people, highly organized, centrally administered, deeply bureaucratized, and living in a narrow space, a fact which in itself demands a high degree of integrated administration. It is industrial, not agricultural, already demoralized by bombings and shifts of population, and containing 10 to 12 million foreign workers. It obviously cannot be administered by Americans, Russians and Britons without the aid of thousands of Germans. But what Germans?
Normally speaking, the people on whom we could count would be self-appointed. They would be individuals who, in the course of the war and its preceding period, have emerged as opponents of the Nazi regime, and they would be, en masse, those once-organized groups who, by all their traditions, and by the record we have, have been anti-Nazi.
Presuming foresight of the situation that is now looming upon us, we would have been in contact with such people, giving them every aid. That they exist has been proved from the type of government the Nazis have set up; otherwise, there would not have been so terroristic a control over the home front.
And in the last month we have had proof of it in the plot which involved high-ranking officers of the General Staff, as well as many civilians. Dr. Karl Goerdeler, for instance, was an active, plotting anti-Nazi since the early days of the Hitler regime, and his connections were not only with part of the Reichswehr but with the old Social Democrats and trade unions. How strong he may have been, I do not know. But the conspiracy existed, and could have been strengthened.
There are all sorts of symptoms that anti-Nazis made overtures to the Allied powers and tried to get aid tin overthrowing the Nazi regime – both before and since the war began. As far as we can see, they failed completely, and the plot was discovered and its leaders liquidated by the Gestapo.
In the days of the plot, the attitude expressed by inspired American publicists was: We will not be cheated out of our victory; we demand unconditional surrender. But that is not the question. The question is: Who is going to surrender? And what will come after the surrender?
Actually, the unconditional-surrender formula is in the wastepaper basket. Surrender implies authority that can and will surrender. The Nazis will not. The French Fascists have not even surrendered in Paris and Marseilles. They have had to be dislodged, house by house, and could only be dislodged by Frenchmen, because we don’t know who they are or where they are. It is unlikely that the German Nazis will show less fight than the French Fascists – but what Germans are going to help us?
The Russians have a German group who will help liquidate Nazism. But we have not. The reason is not that there are more pro-Russian Germans than pro-Western. The reason is that the Russians consciously foresaw a situation.
The situation we have met in France has astonished at least our correspondents. It is a revolutionary situation. But it is an organized revolution, with its partisans assisted by our arms, the majority of the people with it, and with personnel to conduct it. It is a Sunday-school picnic compared with what we will confront one of these days in Germany. For Germany is not only the most powerful center of fascism but the last stronghold of all the Fascists of Europe. And for whatever policy we pursue – the breakup of Germany, the truncating of Germany, the government of Germany without division – for any choice, we shall have to have assistance.
Are we doing anything to encourage and organize such assistance? Do we know yet what policy we shall seek assistance for? Or are we doing all we can to bring about the discouragement and liquidation of any group that might help us?