LETTERS
Editors: Dissent is to be commended for publishing Robert Heilbroner's essay and the critical responses to it. The essay and the various responses go to the heart of some of the most troubling...
...Pachter defeats his own line of argument by contemptuously categorizing latecomers to the Resistance as "people who had first served Hitler...
...It seems Mr...
...he and the others rejoiced in the fall of the Republic, ignored Hitler's anti-Semitic ravings, and (never mind whether my calendar needs a minor correction) served him enthusiastically as long as he tolerated them...
...Miller is referring to, won reinstatement only after four court cases...
...Another problem with the data is that the 328 official cases only include those definitively denied civil-service jobs and fail to count those who have appeals pending or have been reinstated...
...Concern in the West has repeatedly saved lives of potential victims and, given the efficacy of Czechoslovak censorship, such postcards will be noted...
...Pachter meant what he said literally, he must know, in the first instance, that German officers did not take oaths to defend any flag, but pledged allegiance to the Reich's Constitution, to the Reich's legal institutions, to the Reich's President, and to their superior officers (Reichsgesetzblatt 1919, p. I419).This oath was modified in December 1933 to read "people and fatherland" instead of "Constitution," and it left out the President (Reichsgesetzblatt 1, 1933, p. 1017...
...On the contrary, Professor Hoffmann must know that I defended them (and him) against a diatribe by Kenneth Galbraith in the New York Review of Books...
...Second, Claus von Stauffenberg "marched with the Nazi flag" like every other soldier (including First Lieutenant Harro SchulzeBoysen and Lieutenant-Colonel Vincenz Muller, who are Communist heroes), without committing any breach of loyalty, after a presidential decree of March 12, 1933, had given the new flag official status (Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1933, p. 103...
...The essay and the various responses go to the heart of some of the most troubling aspects of the socialist tradition...
...there is also an entire chapter on the plans of the Socialists...
...During a house search on May 30th he refused to surrender to a policeman a personal letter of good will written to him by Prof...
...Beate Bongard, the dismissed teacher I assume Mr...
...The dramatic efforts to establish cooperation with the Communist underground, particularly on June 22 and July 4, 1944 (more fully covered in my book than anywhere else, so far as I know), when the Socialists Dr...
...Goerdeler "had resigned from his post as mayor of Leipzig when the Storm Troopers removed a statue of Felix Mendelssohn from a public square [in Leipzig...
...He refers to 328 rejected civil-service applicants out of 450,000 in 18 months...
...The reverse order is correct: the statue incident occurred after Goerdeler had been price commissar (incidentally, not a post that involved him in any crimes of the regime), he was relieved of his duties in this capacity on June 1, 1935, and the statue incident and Goerdeler's resulting resignation occured in 1937...
...It is the duty of democratic socialists to criticize any society where violations of their principles occur...
...If Mr...
...He then suggests that "What there was must be characterized as an attempt to save as much as possible, not of honor but of territory...
...I asked why they waited until they were fired or until the disaster was upon them...
...This myth, that only the right conducts witch-hunts, was put to rest in the May 22, 1978 Spiegel, the liberal newsmagazine comparable to Newsweek...
...I stated: "They proved that at least not every German was prepared to march and die with Hitler...
...The freedoms of thought, speech, religion, and all the other freedoms in the Bill of Rights are to be equated with the freedom to consume...
...To call him "an unimpeachable left-winger" is strange...
...Is it possible all Berufsverbot cases in the entire state (and more...
...Kristol attempting to destroy their own legitimacy, that the existence of capitalism requires a free society...
...This might tell one something about life in a dictatorship...
...Pachter read my book he must be aware of what I think turned these men and women, and some of Hitler's former supporters, into enemies: the threat of world war, of the destruction of Germany, of Europe, of civilization...
...It would be tiresome to cite all the references to the labor movement throughout my book, and my book is available and so can be its own witness...
...In point of fact, neither the "labor 435 movement" nor the later "officers' revolt" made any systematic or organized attempt at overthrowing Hitler before 1938, i.e., before the war and in order to prevent the outbreak of war, and the "labor movement" never attempted it after 1938—except in cooperation with the "officers' revolt," because they understood that the military alone had the potential to carry it off...
...Yet, students are aware of the risks of signing petitions and joining groups that are clearly watched by the security police, even if the groups are perfectly legal...
...he was a confused national-bolshevist who had no contact with the labor movement...
...I have criticized socialist societies and will continue to do so...
...487-488...
...The only way to eliminate this from happening is to "play" to the most reactionary of business organizations and ideas . . . to the lowest common denominator of business thought...
...We might end up with the kind of repression among intellectuals that terrorists throughout the world tell us breeds violent revolution...
...To name him, or the saintly Bonhoeffer, in one breath with Goerdeler, Hitler's Price Commissar, or with the ex-Free Corps leader Beppo Roemer, whose indiscreet conduct delivered a hundred Communists to the Gestapo, is almost an insult...
...The figure of 328 for the shorter period has itself been disputed...
...but Beck, Moltke, Maass, Dr...
...Many have been astonished to find, when graduating and seeking employment, that innocuous activities have been held against them...
...Simsa signed Charter 77 and has been subject to persecution ever since...
...The merit of Heilbroner's essay is that it forces us to face this weakness...
...172 of his book) that General Oster acted to save Germany from defeat and did not consider himself a traitor...
...This would create a "monolithic" free-enterprise mentality, to match the mythical "monolithic" Communism that we have been led to fear...
...I can assure him that before writing my review I checked all his 30 references to Communists and Socialists...
...Since Mr...
...That is all most probably know about this country...
...Reichwein (not Leuschner, as Mr...
...It is not only the failure to cover the entire period of repression that limits the value of official data...
...Kristol's colleagues in the business world and those of the "New Class" whose ideologies have not yet become socialistic ought to view Two Cheers for Capitalism with an even greater dread than the socialists...
...The teachers' union of Giessen-Wetzlar (population 100,000) in Hesse has received the names of 32 victims among its own membership...
...This is a slander of the men and women who lost their lives by slow strangulation on thin ropes slung over meathooks, on Hitler's specific orders, for having dared to resist and ultimately to overthrow him, and for having plotted against his evil regime for many years, as the Gestapo investigations showed...
...This experience helps silence others...
...Pachter reproaches me for being "almost totally silent about the underground work of the labor movement that preceded the officers' revolt...
...A Proposal for a Democratic Market Economy," Journal of Comparative Economics, September 1977...
...after the death of President Hindenburg in August 1934, all soldiers had to swear personal allegiance to the FiThrer, Adolf Hitler (Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1934, p. 785...
...thus again, if Mr...
...Editors: There are plenty of arguments socialists can use to oppose the ideas Mr...
...6) I had no intention to "slander" the conspirators, nor did I say anywhere that they are "suspect...
...Miller does seem to acknowledge that occasional procedural abuses have occurred in civil-service employment decisions...
...Some of those in the Resistance transcended nationally oriented patriotism and acted in the interests of mankind by working for the defeat of their own country...
...They include references to Stalin, to the workers' parties' pre-Hitler stand, but also to "Prussian Socialism," to Soviet spy organizations, and other irrelevant matter, and, of course, to Leber's contacts with Stauffenberg's and Moltke's circles—which had no organizational backing—but precisely not to the activities of the underground groups of the various workers' parties, their organization, their papers, their personnel...
...2) 1 asked why these people helped Hitler in the first place...
...Pachter had looked up in the index such words as "Communist," "Socialist," etc., he would have come upon at least 30 references in each case...
...There was no "desperate last resort," but a fully understood selfsacrifice...
...Third, the West's greater political democracy should not exempt it from needed criticism...
...He put only Jews, Socialists, and Communists into the concentration camps...
...This was construed as resisting the authorities...
...Pachter might have avoided giving the impression that all those involved in the July 20, 1944 plot had the same concepts for the time after the overthrow of Hitler...
...My answer was: The politics of the aristocratic, conservative, military, and administrative opposition were determined by their narrow class outlook...
...Yet, to see the similarity between the two epochs one must realize that McCarthyism in America probably did not result in more than 5,000 dismissals of public-sector employees in a nation having three times the population of the Federal Republic (Ralph Brown, Loyalty and Security, 1958, pp...
...Perhaps Mr...
...And this despite the fact courts ruled the article in question was a clear rejection of terrorism...
...To Our Contributors • When sending manuscripts, please make sure that you do not send your only copy...
...The intolerant implication is that early resistance was good, no matter how prejudiced and unthinking, whereas conversion was self-serving and morally suspect...
...4) I knew Harro Schulze-Boysen...
...In West Germany a similar process is occurring...
...Regardless of what one may think about the fine points of Stauber's proposals—and I suspect that Prof...
...With the partial exception of Bogdan Denitch's response, neither Heilbroner's essay nor the various ; critiques approach the kind of articulated concept that I think is necessary...
...Does the management of markets and profits in our economy inevitably lead to the management and control of thought...
...5) It is true that Beck and Moltke did not think they could save anything...
...He is trying to give a detailed structural account of how socialism, contrary to Heilbroner, could become more than "a movement within welfare capitalism" while still retaining some significant reliance on a market mechanism...
...Charles E. Lindblom may be right when he suggests that they are "not radical enough"—the fact remains that Stauber's work on "market socialism" moves away from the endemic level of abstraction that plagues the discussion and toward the necessary specificity...
...Capitalism, we are told, is the logical outgrowth of a Democratic nation (or is it the other way around...
...Such a detailed concept would need to be revised and debated as we went along, but it would serve a salutary function...
...317 and 319) that Stauffenberg hailed both Hitler's political and military 436 victories...
...Miller and other readers might still find even 4,000 victims not comparable to the toll under America's McCarthyism...
...Robert Havemann who saved his life with "war-important" scientific work while imprisoned in Brandenburg Penitentiary for his Communist underground activities...
...That and the fact that the eolice came to get, from his wife, the medications Simsa needs to survive suggests that he is alive...
...Simsa was arrested and held incommunicado ever since...
...The Editors Mr...
...Dr...
...Pachter's words were intended to have a more general meaning, the implied accusation does not stand—unless, of course, the intention is to reproach resisters for breaking their oaths as soldiers or government officials...
...For many resisters, early ones and later ones, served him throughout, engaging in resistance while they served him, and these include such unimpeachable left-wingers as Harro Schulze-Boysen and Dr...
...But it is also true that Moltke declined to take part in the coup, and that many other officers refused to violate the oath they had sworn to Hitler...
...As for Marxist professors, many of them would not be employed today if they did not gain tenure in a more tranquil era...
...structural reasons (notably, the planning mechanism) can be given for this, and history has a way of turning against even the best of our efforts and expectations...
...In short, we have a devastating critique, an inspiring vision, and shortterm democratic strategies, but we do not have an articulated concept of the structures of democratic socialism—the structures ensuring that socialism indeed turns out to be as democratic as we desire and hope...
...Ernst Niekisch, Ewald von KleistSchmenzin, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Dr...
...The tradition is quite strong when it comes to articulating a critique of the existing capitalist social order, and it is equally strong when it comes to inspiring us with an alternative vision of society...
...First, the piece was not about East Germany...
...Even tenured faculty experience considerable insecurity...
...Who has the moral right to criticize the dissidents in Soviet Russia for not carrying the masses along with them...
...In practice, almost all states use the same procedures, no matter which party rules...
...The need for such an articulated concept is urgent for precisely the reasons Heilbroner indicates—"no one has yet observed this socialism in reality," the "socialisms" we have observed have all been authoritarian...
...This, I believe, is the major question raised by Mr...
...Jan PotoCka shortly before the latter's death...
...Helmuth James von Moltke, a high-ranking jurist in OK W I Amt Auslands international-law section, wrote to a friend in England, Lionel Curtis, in 1942 (p...
...Pachter further maintained that I "cannot explain what turned these former supporters of Hitler into enemies," and that therefore I "also cannot explain why their coup had to fail...
...317) the legends about a particular "march" of Claus von Stauffenberg "with the Nazi flag...
...Nor do I disagree with Peter Hoffmann's claim that "the threat of war, of the destruction of Germany . . . turned these men . . . Hitler's former supporters into enemies...
...Kristol's work...
...and, that resistance to Hitler was suspect insofar as it lacked mass support...
...The statistics of McCarthyist repression underline the limitations of using victimization rates as the prime measure of the societal consequences of an era of loyalty probes...
...A detailed, articulated concept would be a translation of, not a substitution for, the vision, but it would replace the vision as the immediate or middle-range goal of the strategies...
...Editors: I would like to inform your readers about the fate of another person whom Erazim Kohak mentioned in his article, "Religion and Socialism," in your spring issue...
...Your readers can help by writing postcards (airmail postage 21c) to his wife, Mrs...
...Leland Stauber of Southern Illinois University...
...Kristol's plan, then, would not only eliminate socialist ideas from public debate but could also lead to narrow and inflexible definitions of the prevailing capitalist viewpoint...
...Berthold von Stauffenberg (Claus's brother), to mention only a few, had no illusions about Germany's future frontiers, or about the certainty of military occupation by Allied troops...
...It would enable us to show just how, with a greater plausibility than is now possible, a socialist society could indeed be kept under democratic control and realize democratic values...
...Kristol is really advocating a corresponding erosion of our freedoms of thought and speech...
...Milena Simsova, Volfola 12, 6120 Brno-Pole, Czechoslovakia, letting her know that they had learned of Jan S' imsa's arrest and that they hope for his early release...
...Stauber's work is accessible in three places: his forthcoming book, Market Socialism and the Problems of Control...
...Abuses of democratic rights in East Germany were not referred to in the Dissent article for several reasons...
...That some—like Oster, Stauffenberg, Gisevius, Canaris, Trott, Kleist, and many others—took this desperate step will remain a testimony to the fact that even in a country's deepest degradation some men of courage are capable of redeeming action...
...McCarthyism's impact was not only felt by those who lost jobs, but by the far greater number who lived in fear or were silenced by self-censorship...
...q Editors: Max Miller's reply, in your Summer Issue, to "McCarthyism in the German Civil Service," in the Winter 1978 Issue, which I co-authored with Monica Jacobs, betrays ignorance of the current situation in the Federal Republic as well as that of the United States in the McCarthy era...
...It is such weaknesses of the official data that have led to widespread skepticism and prompted fact-gathering committees to assess victimization at about 4,000 persons over the entire period since Berufsverbot has been instituted...
...Oster, Bonhoeffer, and others acted in the same way, not as a "desperate last resort," but ever since 1933, and before the war as well as during the war, regardless of whether it was going well for Hitler or not...
...Moreover, there is evidence that official data from individual states used to produce the number 328 do not correspond to the number of cases reported by victims in those jurisdictions...
...A Reappraisal of Practical Experience...
...Hoffmann admits (pp...
...3) I have charged that Professor Hoffmann either does not know or does not report accurately the various underground movements on the left...
...But he prefers to believe they are prevalent only in states ruled by conservatives...
...It stated in an article devoted to the Social Democrats' handling of the Radicals Decree, "The embarrassing inquisition of politically undesirable candidates is in no way a peculiarity of CDU (Christian Democratic Union) governed states...
...and the contacts between "labor movement" and "officers' revolt" are documented throughout...
...It was a "desperate last resort...
...In Lower Saxony, tenured professors had to sign a specially designed loyalty oath or risk their jobs when they defended freedom of speech for a student who had written a controversial article on terrorism...
...Second, each German state blames its own violations of human rights on the "need" to protect its people from the "other" Germany's subversion, rather than its own shortcomings...
...Berufsverbot, which is based on the Hamburg (or Radical) Decree of January 1972, has been in operation 61/2 years...
...Won't the enactment of Mr...
...But Professor Hoffmann himself admits (p...
...However, Mr...
...A university strike in Berlin in 1976 was necessary to assure at least the temporary reappointment of two nontenured professors...
...Jan Simsa, the son of the Christian martyr Jan Simsa whom Kohak cites repeatedly, has been held in prison in Czechoslovakia since last May...
...Moreover, she could not return to a tenured position she lost, but to an untenured job with lower pay and lower benefits...
...It entirely excludes data from West Berlin...
...597 in my book): "We hope that you will realize that we are ready to help you win both the war and peace...
...Pachter's reference is not clear, I have refuted in my book (p...
...If capitalists are, as Lewis Coser tells us, "oblivious to their true interests," it seems businessmen, in trying to manage thought in this country, run the risk of working at cross purposes...
...Socialists and members of the "New Class" alike should oppose any plan for intellectual management, for this would erode capitalism as we know it in favor of a more totalitarian order and make a gradual social democratic evolvement that much more difficult...
...Arvid Harnack, who worked in high government positions in the Air Ministry and Economics Ministry, respectively, until late in the war, and Dr...
...Those Resistance groups that were conservative are suspected of having been reactionary, primarily interested in preserving an old class structure and undemocratic class privileges, and in general the might of the German Reich, including Hitler's conquests...
...Miller's estimate of the number of its victims is inaccurate...
...Regarding the dispute on the Berufsverbot ("job-ban") policy, Mr...
...if Mr...
...In short, he is working toward that "sober estimation of socialism" that Heilbroner calls for, by articulating a structural mix of market and planning mechanisms that would ensure that socialism as socialism could indeed remain democratic...
...Before responding to the specific problems with his analysis, however, a comment is required on the tactic employed at the outset of his discussion: questioning the character of those who write critically of West Germany without mention of the authoritarianism in the East...
...Leber and Dr...
...Dissent readers hardly need to learn about the existence of repression in East Germany...
...It seems to me, however, that the whole discussion suffers from a certain abstractness that points to the need for a greater specificity about just what we mean when we speak of "democratic socialism...
...For years, we in this country have been nurtured on the myth that freedom in politics must be accompanied by freedom in economics...
...but numerous of those later hanged for resisting cited the massacres of Jews as primary motivation for their resistance when they were interrogated by the Gestapo...
...And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Goerdeler receives somewhat similar treatment from Mr...
...Pachter: Dr...
...Frequently a reinstated 437 applicant or job holder must be satisfied with a job inferior to the one they had or sought...
...Editors: Henry Pachter's review of my book, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945 (Dissent, Summer 1977), stressed two points: that resistance to Hitler was suspect if it began late and was triggered by a realization of the dangers for Germany caused by Hitler's policies...
...Appeals and reinstatement (when and if it occurs) often take years...
...nevertheless, after Hitler's bloody coup of June 30, 1934 (the so-called Roehm revolt), Goerdeler accepted the post of price commissar...
...434 By limiting intellectual freedoms, aren't capitalists like Mr...
...It is true that Goerdeler hoped for a long time to keep intact the German frontiers of 1938, perhaps wider ones...
...come from one small area...
...This is why I would like to call attention to the recent work of Prof...
...The great weakness, however—and I find this reflected both in the essay and in the responses—is the failure to specify in any significant detail just what kinds of structures we have in mind that will allow us to translate the socialist vision into democratic reality...
...Kristol expressed in his recent book, Two Cheers for Capitalism...
...s, A postcard written by Jan Simsa the day after his arrest was handed over to his wife two weeks later...
...For example, the German head of Amnesty International wrote to President Walter Scheel stating the organization was having difficulty getting German citizens to sign petitions in its campaign for the abolition of torture in the world...
...The men of July 20, 1944 did not have any masses behind them—nor did the Socialists and Communists...
...Kristol's program for managing political thought in this country were to come about, I'm afraid it would undermine the philosophical foundations of the capitalist system he so cherishes...
...I think my criticism of both the men of the July 20 conspiracy and of professor Hoffmann's attitude to them springs from an intrinsic problem, not from prejudice or animosity...
...Beyond these aspects, which had to be looked at because Mr...
...True to the heritage of his father, Jaz...
...The democratic socialist tradition, it seems to me, has three great areas of strength and one great area of weakness...
...438...
...Havemann, who surfaces in Professor Hoffmann's letter, is not in his book—and that was precisely what I objected to...
...Stauber is trying to show in laudable detail how the capitalist class could be eliminated while various aspects of the market might be retained under socialism without becoming "the main order-bestowing system" that Heilbroner worries about...
...Lewis Coser has done an admirable job of enumerating them...
...The same article denies that Constitutional Court rulings of 1975 or the SPD guidelines of 1976, designed to promote some elements of due process in Berufsverbot hearings, were effective in curbing violations of civil rights...
...However, it is also necessary to present to different audiences information and analyses they have not been exposed to, rather than just provide comforting reinforcement of long-held beliefs about the world...
...In the private sector, we have witnessed an erosion of our economic freedom to consume through cartel, monopoly, and market-sharing arrangements...
...Berthold von Stauffenberg put it on July 14, 1944: "The worst thing is knowing that we cannot succeed and yet that we have to do it, for our country and our children...
...Professor Hoffmann still seems to think that these people were merely mistaken about Hitler's character...
...The program of destruction begun against the Jews in 1939 and 1941-42 could not have been foreseen before the war...
...But to recognize this does not mean that those tragic heroes are above political criticism...
...The policy does not prohibit student activism...
...Pachter finds it "confusing" that "Claus von Stauffenberg, who carried the bomb into Hitler's bunker, had marched with the Nazi flag at a time when his officers' oath pledged him to defend the flag of the Republic...
...For example, the official data claim only 29 rejected applicants in the state of Hesse (which has a population of 5.5 million...
...If Mr...
...Pachter implies) met with Saefkow and Jacob of the underground Central Committee of the German Communist party, showed that the Socialist and Communists were by force of circumstances just as isolated from the masses as the conservative groups...
...1) 1 said: "I do not deny that the conspirators of 1944 were idealists in their own way, or that their motives were honest...
...and a recent three-part series in In These Times (May 3-9, 1016, and 17-23, 1978...
...The intellectual management of this country under Mr...
...A third area of relative strength is the tradition's ability to generate realistic short-term strategies for the immediate future, but the current unreconciled division of socialist efforts between a "full employment" and an "antinuclear" strategy suggests that this strength will remain vitiated in the United States until, in one way or another, we are able to develop a unified democratic socialist party...
...Kristol's proposed management of thought itself be, in his own words, "inimical to corporate survival...
...Pachter contends that the "earlier resistance of the labor movement] can claim that it did not wait to denounce Hitler until defeat stared Germany in the face, and it was not conducted by people who had first served Hitler as price commissars, staff officers, financial advisers, and ideologists...
...As Dr...
...Here is precisely the riddle of the 20th of July, 1944, if seen as a conspiracy of conservative officers and high civil servants: their code of honor permitted them to see that they had wrought dishonor...
...but they could restore their honor only by risking to bring the dishonor of treason upon themselves...
...The effect of the Berufsverbot policy on students is more complex...
...Joseph ROmer, Nikolaus von Halem, and many others belong in this category...
...I agree that there was no large popular movement against Hitler's regime after 1933, and I said so many times in my book...
...Indeed, I said: "The officers and diplomats who had helped Hitler prepare his war were honestly amazed and shaken when they found out that he actually wanted war...
Vol. 25 • September 1978 • No. 4
