European Document /A Separate Peace

...The Special Departments are responsible for peacetime kidnappings, killings, and sabotage...

...In this climate, Schmidt's few supporters on the matter have been reduced to arguing in effect that the Pershing II and Cruise are the one guarantee Germany has that America will share in its fate should worst come to worst...

...Schmidt has staked his credibility within the Alliance on the installation of the Pershing II and Cruise missiles-which, we were told in no uncertain terms by Horst Ehmke, deputy chairman of the SPD caucus in the German Federal Parliament and one of Schmidt's few major SPD supporters on the question, are a clearly needed deterrent to the unprecedented Soviet build-up of SS-20s...

...Yet it should be noted that Rau was the sole SPD leader on our itinerary to go so far as to "denounce the state of martial law in Poland and demand the release of all political prisoners and the restoration of freedom of association and trade unions...

...Then--in direct contradiction of a statement issued jointly with President Reagan last January--Schmidt volunteered: "Jaruzelski is not acting on orders from Moscow, he believes to be acting in the i n t e r e s t s of the P o l i s h nation...

...This is one matter on which the Left leaves the SPD alone...

...In 1972 he orchestrated the most severe wave of political arrests and repressions to have occurred anywhere in the USSR in the post-Stalin era...

...But most compelling has been the challenge posed by the Left, with its mish-mash of pacifist, neutralist, antinuclear, environmentalist, proThird World, anti-American, and other youthful enthusiasms...

...According to one study cited to us, West Germany is responsible for 30 percent of the food Poles are eating...

...Upon assuming the mantle of top Ukrainian Chekist, Fedorchuk moved with swiftness and brutality...

...Meanwhile, Fedorchuk's p r e d e c e s s o r as Ukrainian KGB chief had been known on occasion to invite leading Ukrainian dissidents for what the Kremlin feared were amicable chats...

...An American official who has lived in Berlin for years remarked that it is simply the logical decline of a party that has been in office too long...

...The New Repubfic recently reported on the SPD mood in these words: "The West Germans are deeply committed to d&ente, but they are even more committed to the alliance...

...Moreover, he moved decisively to undermine the authority of Ukrainian Party chief Shelest...

...More broadly, " t h e network's lapses in the making of this documentary also raise larger questions," Kowet and Bedell said...

...Schmidt have been sending parcels to their many Polish friends--' 'some of them Comm u n i s t s . " Concluded Schmidt: " I realize what I have said will not be popular in America, particularly among Americans of Polish origin"-nor among Poles of Polish origin, I should imagine...

...In 1970, a f t e r Fedorchuk had proved himself sufficiently loyal to the Moscow a u t h o r i t i e s , he was named to the sensitive post of chairman of the Ukrainian KGB...

...In a continent shaken by Eurocommunism and Hollanditis, the United States could at least look to West Germany as its staunchest supporter in the Alliance...

...Rather, he has made a reputation for himself as a tough and reliable hangman in his 43 years as a security apparatchik...

...Richard Vigilante examines the author of The Naked and the Dead...

...The TV Guide criticism came on the heels of a CBS squabble with the White House over an hour-long show by Bill Moyers called "People Like Us...

...Stephen Tanner takes a look at the author of Ragtime...

...The article, impressively documented though occasionally overstated, accused CBS of "inaccuracies, distortions and violations of journalistic standards" in a 90-minute show in January...

...Colonel General Vitaly Fedorchuk, who for twelve years headed the ukrainian KGB, has been appointed the chairman of the USSR's Committee for State Security...

...As President Reagan sadly learned in Europe in June, the easiest way for the United States to heal the rift that has developed between Bonn and Washington is to subscribe to the views of NATO's European minions...

...Are their novels literature or feminist brochures...

...On the eve of the massive anti-NATO, anti-Reagan demonstration in Bonn, perhaps Schmidt felt discretion to be the better part of valor...

...And if they didn't jump to this conclusion on their own, well, Tom Shales, the acerbic television critic of the Washington Post, was available to show the way...

...West Germany, however, conditioned by the procedures of d&ente, by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski simply has refused to budge from viewing the Soviets in anything but European terms...

...If this documentary is any evidence, then the answer may be no...

...As the Herald unequivocally put it: "Fedorchuk fired off reports to Moscow charging that the leadership of the Ukrainian Party was not helping the KGB in carrying out its work effectively...

...On the bus to Bonn, one of the Germans asks about my previous trips to his country and my impressions...

...The SPD leaders speak of American aid to West Germany after World War II and how one good turn deserves another...

...He has written on Soviet and East European topics for the New Republic, National Review, Inquiry, the New Leader, and The American Spectator...

...It must be stressed that the West German public has responded magnanimously: 30,000 parcels are being shipped to Poland daily (postage free, the government presumably covering the mailing costs...

...That show, billed as "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception," had attacked General William C. Westmoreland for allegedly underestimating the enemy's forces in Vietnam in order to convince his superiors in Washington that the war was going well...

...ing relations between Bonn and Washington, as well as to reassure the United States of West Germany's boundless devotion to the Western Alliance...

...For the first time in their lives, my sons have something to believe in--peace," a veteran Bonn correspondent who has worked in the capital since day one of the Federal Republic told me at lunch one afternoon...

...some of the best conservative writing of recent t i m . " Our writing on such issues as the Cold War, liberalism, education, the media, the New Right and the Moral Majodty has brought favorable mention in publications as diverse as the Washington Post, New Oxford Review and the Congressional Record...

...I have deep compassion for the Polish n a t i o n , " Schmidt continued, and added that he and Mrs...

...nearly two-and-a-half times the proportion of Ukrainians in the Soviet population...

...But our German allies should not delude themselves into thinking that the major source of the problem has been Ronald Reagan, nor spend too much time assuming that eventually Reagan will have to "come around...

...Ostpolitik has brought West Germany closer to East Germany than previously thought possible, it has stabilized the situation in Berlin, and it has allowed West German influence to be felt throughout the Soviet bloc...

...This development is noteworthy less for the obvious generational conflicts it suggests ( " a breakdown of Germany's traditional patriarchal structure," according to the above American) than for the timid, misdirected response of party elders to this fundamental assault on the SPD's legacy and principles...

...We can say, however, that 'The Uncounted Enemy' was often arbitrary and unfair in its approach to a subject that surely demanded all the objectivity and thoroughness that the journalists of CBS News could muster...

...Thus remarked Johannes Rau, governor of North Rhine-Westphalia and SPD deputy chairman...

...Then came the election of Ronald Reagan, which--Schmidt's open contempt for Jimmy Carter notwiths t a n d i n g - c a u g h t West Germans unawares...

...A SEPARATE PEACE We are collected by our German hosts at the Cologne/Bonn airport, and suddenly a number of tired American travelers who minutes before in Frankfurt were oblivious of one another begin to partake in friendly introductions all around...

...26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982...

...And, they insist, who can blame them...

...In America, the Reagan victory symbolized renewed recognition of the USSR as a global menace...

...Is his writing an attempt to create literature or does he simply put together attractive ideological tracts...

...Moreover, the West Germans exhibit a curious confidence in their own cultural, economic, and political s t r e n g t h - - a n d a concomitant contempt for the Soviets in these areas...

...The truth is, Shales said, he's a buddy of Richard Nixon, a pal of Reagan...

...is openly proud of the humanitarian aid his country is providing...

...From everyone else we heard expressions of sympathy for the Poles coupled with a reluctance to say anything inflammatory about the Jaruzelski crackdown...

...We do not know whether [the CBS producers] were right about General Westmoreland and his military-intelligence operation," they wrote...

...Why not j o i n our growing list of readers...

...In power since 1969, the German Social Democratic Party is about to go under...

...THE K.G.B...

...They didn't because voters were taken with his ideas...

...According to a 1974 issue of the clandestine dissident journal the Ukrainian Herald: "The KGB comp l e t e l y slipped out from under the control of the Ukrainian Party leadership...

...THE ROCKFORD PAPERS' new series, "The Monumental Literature of Dwarfs," continues its critical look at contemporary Amedcan literature with essays on the following celebrated authors: I~HRILYN FREN~HI and M/~Y GORDON...

...It's the kind of writing that earned us the Freedoms Foundation's 1981 George Washington Honor Medal...

...w With the pummeling CBS endured this spring at the hands of the White House and TV Guide, folks at the network of a conspiratorial frame of mind might have concluded that the fight wing was piling on with malice aforethought...

...Peregrine Worsthome, associate editor of London's Sunday Telegraph, says: "1 always benefit from reading The Rockford Papers which seems to me to include some of the best conservative writing of recent times...

...Though I am confident this is precisely the message our hosts wished to convey, I would reverse the emphasis: In the SPD's view, West Germany is above all committed to d~tente...

...Shelest was purged and with him thousands of party cadre deemed to be unreliable on the basis of " n a t i o n a l i s t d e v i a t i o n . " With Fedorchuk's crony and Shelest's replacement Volodymyr Shcherbitsky firmly entrenched as Ukrainian Party First Secretary, Fedorchuk had an even f r e e r hand in eliminating pockets of dissent both within the Ukrainian political establishment and outside...

...by Adrian Karamycky the Kremlin was coming to regard as not tough enough on Ukrainian national dissent...

...We are at an outdoor r e s t a u r a n t , high above West Berlin's Havel lake, dining on venison and watching the sun disappear into the mist and trees far away...

...With regard to the people of Poland, we reacted with much sympathy when they joined the free Solidarity movement...

...GORE VIDAL...

...Westmoreland...

...Even Schmidt, who has been known to use stronger language in discussing the peace movement, said that he "resents" its being depicted " s o vituperatively" in the United States...

...There is intense public pressure in West Germany that nothing be allowed to jeopardize West German access to East Germany...

...There definitely is a limit, though, on how seriously these charges should be taken," he huffed...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982 25 cue d~tente...

...We are a medium-sized power in Europe' '--an ingenious formula which washes West German hands of any greater responsibility in meeting the Soviet threat...

...What has happened...

...People suffer . . . . An arms race to bring down the Soviet system I'm against...

...NORMAN MAILER...

...E. L. DOCTOROW...

...The White House strategy was to keep Reagan out of the spat, have Gergen deliver some overall criticism of the show, and let the Department of Health and Human Services pick apart the particulars of the four cases chronicled by CBS...

...About Solidarity: When there is no food, the government can only react Stalinistically...

...I wish to read, to think, to write--to re-create m y s e l f . . . " The speaker is a handsome, youthful SPD diplomat, brought to our final gathering by one of our traveling feminists who for all her credentials sits at his side clearly enchanted by the soothing music of his continental English...

...After all, the Post had reviewed the show favorably when it was aired back in J.anuary...

...His instinctive caution regarding Walesa speaks for itself...

...When asked why the West German government has not accompanied humanitarian aid with greater pressure on Jaruzelski, Helmut Schmidt replied by defending the general: "Jaruzelski is certainly not loved by the Kremlin...

...What touched off the Shales tirade was the magazine's article in May entitled "Anatomy of a Smear: How CBS News Broke the Rules and 'Got' Gen...

...In this he was merely echoing no less a personage than Willy Brandt, who remarked to us that " I have experienced worse things in my lifetime than young Germans demonstrating for peace...

...CBS refused on the perfectly appropriate ground that Administration officials get_ plenty of network time to air their views...

...Why, if you really had a mind to, you could dredge up heaps of circumstantial evidence suggesting [TV Guide owner Walter] Annenberg has a vested political interest in anything that makes the network boys look like rascals...

...They're sitting on tons of arms which they'll exploit externally . . . . Americans must see the interests of partner too . . . . I'm not sure of my plans...

...And so, the unspoken nationalism that has been injected into German attitudes toward the Alliance has become more...

...Apparently Fedorchuk's competent handling of the post resuited in a promotion to head the KGB's Third Directorate, whose function is to ensure the subservience of the military to the Party leadership...

...lilt am fi)r changement only in the long run...

...Is he still the great white hope of American literature or an artifact of ideological follies...

...Yet there can be little doubt but that neutralist pressures have undermined Schmidt's own foreign policy with regard to NATO...

...Fedorchuk, 63, is a man untainted by such embellishments...

...Are the network news divisions, with their im...

...A perverse corollary, referred to by Ehmke, is increasing German suspicion that the U.S...

...However humanitarian, though, the aid is clearly intended (by the government, at least) not to revivify Solidari W but simply to stabilize the Polish situation--in other words, to resTHE MONUMENTAL LITERATURE OF DWARFS . . . CONTINUES...

...Viewing developments in Poland as " a tragedy of Greek dimensions," Schmidt insisted that "a rebellion would serve nobody's interest...

...discernible in the SPD's insistence that ddtente be maintained--at all costs, and with no disruptions...

...meuse power to influence the public's ideas about politics and recent history, doing enough to keep their own houses in order...

...The number of KGB men and undercover agents increased sharply...

...Conspiracy theories in this country don't just comecheap," he wrote in a review excoriating TV Guide for attacking CBS...

...Stephen Macaulay studies this prolific author of best sellers...

...Send us your coupon today so you don't miss a single issue of our new series...

...Assuming we are still exchanging pleasantries, I recall six wonderful days spent in the Bavarian Alps in 1973...

...Housecleanings were conducted in the u n i v e r s i t i e s , in academic institutes, and in the top levels of the Ukrainian Party...

...Is the author of Myra Breckinddge a brilliant observer of manners -- as the liberal critics want us to believe - - or just an astute muckraker seeking the annihilation of the conventions that form the rudiments of civilization...

...But aside from the questionable ploy of seeking rebuttal time, the White House did unusually well in combat with a television network, combat that often is self-defeating because it brings back memories of Spiro T. Agnew and his crusade against the networks...

...24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1982 For what was left unsaid in our many meetings with high SPD officials from Chancellor Schmidt and Party Chairman Brandt on down is that the crisis in U.S.-West German relations just might be a reflection of the SPD's own domestic crisis...

...Whatever the threat posed by the Soviets, the Left rejects the "Euromissiles" out of hand as but another manifestation of Washington's arms race obsessions, a response which plays on growing concern in the Federal Republic that in the event of a European war Germany will be the first to go...

...By the way," Willy Brandt was to remark to us in several days, "the Federal Republic of Germany is not a world power and has no ambition to be one...

...intentions...

...They're free...

...Others spoke of the negative impact of the worldwide recession, high unemployment (e.g., ten percent in the major industrial city of Cologne, according to its Lord Mayor), and West Germany's growing vulnerability to foreign (i.e., Japanese) competition...

...As the think-tank arm of the faltering West German Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Helmut Schmidt, the foundation has arranged the trip to clarify the West German position on the many issues disruptWladys/aw P/eszczynski is managing editor of The American Spectator...

...HETMAN While Leonid Brezhnev's monthlong disappearing act has again fueled speculation about his eventual successor, one succession of no small importance to Soviet citizens has already occurred within the hierarchy of the t o t a l i t a r i a n state...

...It was about alleged victims of Reagan's budget cuts, and David R. Gergen, the White House communications director, asked the network to allow an Administration spokesman to appear on the show to deflect any blame...

...It is a grim tribute to Fedorchuk's thoroughness that today Ukrainian political prisoners account for over 40 percent of the Soviet Union's known political prisoners...

...Though still a minority within the SPD itself, the Left in its inimitable way has succeeded in turning the SPD leftward in a manner reminiscent of the New Left's successes within the Democratic party during the late sixties and early seventies...

...This permits them to remain both unconcerned with the dangers inherent in extending economic ties with the Soviet bloc and willing to stomach the humiliating payments extorted by the East Germans and Soviets in return for this access to the East--and even on occasion for the release of a hapless German from Communist hands...

...On the spur of the moment, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation has invited a group of American journalists representing five opinion magazines, ten major metropolitan dailies, several news services and labor publications--and including two free-lance feminists-for an "information" visit to Bonn and Berlin on the eve of President Reagan's European trip and the NATO summit...

...We would watch Walesa on television and think how remarkable that this is going on inside a system like that, and we hoped he won't go one step too far...

...In snarling at TV Guide, Shales didn't ask such questions, and he hardly mentioned the magazine's evidence at all...

...and USSR will strike a strategic deal leaving Western Europe on a limb...

...With access to some internal CBS documents, TV Guide reporters Don Kowet and Sally Bedell wrote that the show's producers had stacked the deck against Westmoreland, keeping out exculpatory material, coaching a friendly witness, yanking quotes out of context, and misrepresenting some events...

...Fedorchuk thus succeeds Yuri Andropov, a ruthless functionary who has returned to the Party Secretariat and who inexplicably is being hailed as a liberal by some Western commentators, apparently because he speaks English and collects modern art...

...But my host is serious: "A lot has changed since then," he cautions, and indeed it has...

...Betsy Clarke writes on perhaps the most-hyped contemporary authoresses...

...F o r the fact is that Ronald Reagan made his full share of those gaffes, blunders, and mistakes that are supposed to derail the campaigns of potential presidents...

...But now the SPD's poor showing in the June 6 state elections in Hamburg--Schmidt's backyard--must be regarded as a blow to the Chancellor's prestige as well...

...In the immediate postwar period, Fedorchuk is said to have served as head of the KGB's Directorate of Special Departments in East Germany...

...At that time the Party First Secretary in the Ukraine was one Petro Shelest, whom Adrian Karatnycky is Research Director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and an editor o f Workers Under Communism, a new quarterly journal...

...Like many others ("Every day is a Solidarity Day h e r e , " Brandt declared), Schmidt...

...Should the SPD lose in the next round of regional elections, in Hesse on September 26, its fate in the near term will be sealed...

...Shales might have frowned on this counterattack, but then his misty-eyed admiration of CBS News is tempered only when he catches the network going after Teddy Kennedy too harshly...

...As late as 1979 there seemed to be no such thing as the peace movement, no revulsion at U.S.-NATO strategies, no deeply felt suspicion of U.S...

...There has been an enormous change for the better between the Hitler Youth demonstrators and today's . . . . I won't condemn them...

...The SPD confirmed this dedication to d~tente by its response to the suppression of Solidarity in Poland...

...Fedorchuk's machinations eventually bore fruit...

...Only the personal popularity of Chancellor Schmidt, it is said, and the inability of the Christian Democrats to produce a candidate of comparable stature has been keepirg the party (ruling in a coalition with the liberal Free Democrats who are also in decline) afloat...

...In Bonn someone had said, "The Germans are a Romantic people, they need something to cry a b o u t . " Thinking back on our five hours in a somber and empty East Berlin earlier in the day, I can only guess what they wouldn't all give to be sitting next to me...