German Monarchist Underground

...But the majority of the masses remember the shortcomings and evils of the former Kaiserdom...

...The monarchists among the army officers have not seen the light They do not really hate Hitler and all his works...

...That the Nazi leaders reckon with the potential power of the monarchists was shown when all statues reminiscent of the monarchy were removed from the public squares throughout the Reich and royal funerals made strictly private affairs...

...Hundreds of thousands of Bavarians have found in their mailboxes a printed leaflet which began: "We are ready to fight for you, Royal Highness, and for the freedom of our beloved Bavarian fatherland till our last breath, but never for Prussia and Hitler the usurper...

...He is young, good-looking, with dark wavy Jiair and combines royal aloofness with the democratic touch...

...So would the pious Protestants who have suffered with them under Hitler...

...At this time," he wrote, "a flood of political feeling and resounding oratory has obscured our former conception of State...

...It "accepted*' the Republic but by 1930 it was frankly monarchist This is whst the organization has remained all through its outwsrd cooperation with the Nazis...

...Many of them never liked it...

...The monarchists argue that a new beginning could be made with a carefully chosen king who has the hindsight to see that the mission of the fatherland lies along the paths of peace to a civilized greatness that will be honored by all the nations...

...But Hitler's brand, tyranny (in which they were to be partners) wrapped in gaudy benefits to the masses, offered them ssnctusry...

...Democracy was a temporary bastion to them against Communism and they considered real Socialism almost as great a threat to their caste interests...

...Life has done a ftrst-rate publicrelations job for him via birth, adventure and more recently an excellent marriage...

...But it is also good news to another secret faction that has no love for liberty, as we know it, and no hate for Hitler—the Underground of the monarchists...

...Starobin says, in bold face type, "We know where Watt gets this phrase 'free trade unions.' He gets it from the same German Social Democrats who filled the 'free German trade unions' with poison against the Soviet Union in pre-Hitler days, who fanned the 'Bolshevik bogey' and so did half of Hitler's job.-' "Germans must be awakened to their responsihilty for Hitler's crimes...

...The Bund der Aufrechten (League of Upright Men) grew from a few score ex-army officers and their wives who hailed from Kaiserdom at its meetings...

...They do not want any part of it and hope that the aspirations of the monarchist underground will not be taken seriously by the planners of the future of a defeated Germany Communists Adopt Vonsittortism as Policy a An article by Joseph Starobin in the Daily Worktr of May 13 attacks Robert J. Watt for his ILO speed" distinguishing "between the German people and Hitler's generals," as Starobin puts it...

...It spells stability and liberty, the monarchists promise and they add that the Allies might well find it a logical, intermediate step to Democracy...

...But they are Germans first and accept whatever will serve the aggrandisement of Germany...

...These royalists have many sympathizers among the Nazis who see the possibility of a speedy transition from the Nazi government and society to a People's monarchy...

...The monarchist underground has been drawing its strength from organizations functioning since the early days of the Weimar republic...

...The sight of millions of "Berliners" on the streets of the city in silent demonstrations as the funeral procession of Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, oldest grandson of the Kaiser, passed slowly had been a lesson to them...

...To the extent that they do not awaken, his crimes are their crimes...

...No one doubts that at least some capitalists in the Third Reich have learned their lesson...

...ThUS monarchism has seeped down from the German aristocratic circles, where to be a gentleman is to be a royalist, to the rank and file in the Army and on the home front...

...in the form of territorial changes, or long-term work of German men and machines rebuilding Europe...

...Shortly after his return to Europe, he took as his bride Kyra, the daughter of the pretender to the throne of the Romanoffs...

...There was talk a few years ago that the Fuehrer in hit last will would reinstate the Hohenzollerns in the person •f Auwi, his "true friend*' but much hope hat btea abandoned...

...Their secretly distributed program urges a large measure of Socialism and a coalition government...

...These substantial citizens have been sickened by the Fuehrer's inspired juggling of finance and industry as he used and then discarded them...

...Up to the present, the chief weakness of themonarchist Underground has been the inability of its factions to agree upon a candidate...

...The underground monarchists hope to take their place in the van of the forces that will shape the future of the Fatherland...

...The underground monarchists have been spurred on by the last words of the old war lord, Paul von Hiqdenburg...

...The Bund aimed not at the restoration of Wilhelm or any of his sons necessarily, but of the system that had served well in the past and was identified with some of the best and proudest traditions of the Reich...

...In his will, the German President affirmed his faith that the Reich must eventually return to a monarchy...

...Starobin gives the clue—"Germany's responsibility must be discharged by reparations...

...Their only quarrel with the Fuehrer is that he failed to make good on his promise—"Tomorrow the World...

...In spite of the Gestapo, there is a widespread secret movement, with headquarters in Munich, the cradle of National Socialism, urging an independent kingdom under Crown Prince Rupprecht, who htt kept aloof from politics...

...They supported Nazism as the only possible bandwagon on which they might ride to their goal—Kaiserism...

...The criminals must be punished—all of them," writes blood-thirsty, vengeful Starobin...

...Practically unknown to the outside world, this movement is the oldest and possibly the best entrenched in Greater Germany and has harrassed the Nasi leaders perhaps more than any other opposition...

...But the only two organized forces in the Fatherland are the Army—monarchist-minded despite the infiltration of Party members—and Himmler's S.S., his Gestapo and other police forces...

...It seems Tas if all our sacred traditions have been destroyed...

...which of two opposite, contradictory policies he will finally follow depends upon the changing realities of power politics, not upon moral or politic*1 principles, -fie may find von Seydlitx and the other generals in his Union of German Officers very osefw —or ha may ulfsSjadj-dk discover that they too (bar* guilt for the war and iW Nazi atrocities...

...Many of the German Catholics—one third of the population—are not averse to restoration...

...The Catholic Center Party had served the Kaiser well before it Berved the Republic...

...Starobin declares that the German anti-fascists "were defeated, which is part of their responsibility for what happened (sic...

...This contrasts with Stalin's repeated declsrations earlier in the war that the Nazis, the Generals, the Junkers, are responsible for aggression, not the German people, and similar statements by Moscow's Free German Committee...

...The monarchist underground has propagandized that monarchism is very much alive in Europe...

...Monarchists became so numerous in the later days of the Republic that they overflowed their organizations and were gradually absorbed into the Deutsrhnationale Volkspartei, the German Nationalist People's Party...

...As conditions have grown worse for them under the Fuehrer, they have been reminded that under the Kaiser Germany was the first civilized country to introduce social welfare measures on a very large scale, health and disability insurance, unemployment benefits and old age pensions...

...Next to the Bund der Aufreehten, the Thole Gesellachaft was the*most influential monarchist-organisation in the Republic...

...Far from it...

...A hereditary monarch, chosen carefully as a symbol of a new peaceful Germany, would prove they say the only alternative to dangerous unrest in Hittel-Europa for generations...

...As business of any kind with the Nazis is definitely out of the question, the monarchists calculate that the Army is the only answer...

...Prince Hubert, the second son, an unpolitical army officer, has never had any royalist backers...

...It is working well in England and in Scandinavia and is popular in Belgium and Holland...

...Originally a political body of old conservatives at a time when monarchism was supposed to belong to the past, it represented the interests of the landowners, from ten-acre homesteaders to hereditary owners of small principalities...

...Among the brothers of the Crown Prince, only one has ever been considered as a possible successor to Hitler- Prince August Wilhelm, Auwi, as he is popularly known, has collaborated closely with tie Natis for years, a fact that has excited derisive comment because of his pronounced non-Aryan looks...

...The Volksmonarchisten—the People's Monarchists—who were the backbone of the party, have appealed directly to the masses with their message of a liberal, Imperial State...

...Not only the German bigwigs and farmers have been conditioned to the return of Kaiserism by the monarchist underground but the industrial workers have been bombarded with propaganda, too...

...Then...

...Many landowning Junkers, industrialists and bankers began to work immediately again in a movement not for the Kaiser but for Kaiserism...

...But the flood will abate...

...The agitation for it in Spain and Italy is played up...

...But he is ruled out on the record of his public and private life...

...When they raised their right arms in stiff salute to the swastika, they had no illusions about the Hitlerian version of the old Roman "bread and circuses" policy for the people...

...He bears the name identified with proud tradition—his kinsman...

...On the day Kaiser Wilhelm II scurried across the border to safety in Holland, royalist sentiment went underground...

...J TRICTLY legitimism would give first consideration to Wilhelm, eldest son of the late Kaiser and the exCrown Prince...

...Leaders of the monarchist movement are convinced that its followers in all classes would favor the old system as a bulwark against Bolshevism...

...and the best of them will not flinch from this responsibility...

...When collapse comes to the Hitler Reich, the monarchists hope to have their great opportunity To avoid chaos, they assume the Allies must deal with the representatives of a recognized and stable German group...

...Separatist monarchist movements have also gone underground in such former independent states within the Reich as Bavaria and Saxony...

...Auwi still has some promoters among the Nazis who call themselves "Auwisten...

...They oppose the Nazis persecution of religion and their rabid anti-Semitism...

...Friedrich, the third son, has spent much of his life in England—as his brother Louis Ferdinand's liaison officer and unofficial press agent...

...Scandal has never touched him...

...Through the top-ranking officers, they honeycombed the Army...

...He is reported interned in England at present after a like experience near Ottawa, Canada...

...The deep resentment which Bavaria always felt over the domination of Prussia finds expression now in a royalist underground...

...Why...

...out of the eternally moving sea of our national life, there will again emerge the rock on which the hope of our forefathers was anchored, and on which almost half a century ago, the future of our fatherland was founded—German Kaiserdom...

...He has worked in American and European factories, and his friendship with Henry Ford and Lily Damita has given him a "good press...

...They took good care that Prince Eitel Friedrich, the second son of Wilehlm II, made his last journey in secret, far from the people who might be indulging in memories of "the good old days...

...In their underground propaganda, they stress the economic and social advantages which the monarchy would offer to the peasants and the workers...

...German Monarchist Underground Barkers Seek Allied Support in Creation of "Stable Postwar Regime By Albert A. Bradt tHE shadow of the Fuehrer's coming defeat, spreading over the Third Reich, heartens those who hsve worked end endured for Democracy in hiding under the swastika...

...The Communists seem to have gone over to Vansittartism, to have abandoned, at least temporarily, the tactic of appealing to the German people, promising "» strong and independent Germany," and a just peace— with the prospect of a close military and economic alliance between Russia and a semi-Stalinized Germany...

...Prince Louis Ferdinand, fell in the Napoleonic wars...

...But while the Bund, with its purely political aim, has been driven into hiding, the Thule Gesellschaft, whose membership overlaps the Bundists, has not been unmolested because the society professes to be interested chiefly in preserving the "best families" and their "moral standards " Rudolf Hess was a prominent member of this group...

...The people's monarchists propose to eliminate the Jews from public life and the professions but promise to give them an opportunity to collaborate in a German state as a vital economic factor...

...Their chief objection to his system is that it failed...

...He goes on to castigate Watt for urging the rebuilding of free trade i unions in Germany, "as though that were the most immediate problem of the United Nations.'" (Watt did not say it was either the most immediate or the most important problem...

...They do not want to , become governments-in-exile, except for the Stampfers, the Treviranus and Bruening crowd, who offer themselves to the State Department on the claim that they can do a better job than Hitler did...

...They still feared democracy nearly as much as communism and would welcome the familiar normalcy of a monarchy...

...But in customary fashion, Stalin keeps open the alternative road...

...Russit wants slave labor battalions and German heavy I industry...

...Recently there have been reports that the majority will unite in promoting Linus Ferdinand, son of the Crown Prince...

...And the Fuehrer assured them that a monarchy was not incompatible with National Socialism...

...The Une is changing again...

...Romantic figure, familiar alike w>th regal robes and overalls, in direct line of ascent to the Imperial power of the Hohenzollerns, he seems to be a highly promising choice...

...But in welcoming all help from these anti-fasicsts, they should know and we must know that we cannot build international policy upon them . . ." Starobin continues that a real peace must be "a hard peace...

...They tolerated the Weimar Republic and, biding their time, undermined it...