THE ARMY AND GERMAN DEMOCRACY

...But there are other issues to be faced, too...

...A currency reform and other economic measures have been introduced which the Soviet Uniop has vowed tu wreck...

...These facts have nothing to do with whether the defendants in these trials deserved what they got...

...Krg.irdless of whether or not this was <t wise step, it was certainly daugci - ous for Military Government to talk too loudly about democracy...

...On the contraiy, every effort has been made to hush up the facts, and prominent German clergymen with incontestable antiNazi records have been publicly branded as liars by American officials for having exposed some of the conditions above described...

...2) The strong bars of segregation that still separate Allied personnel from the German population should be lowered and wherever possible abolished...

...Neither democracy nor u healthy economy can grow under conditiuns of total insecurity...

...To be sure, Allied tribunals handed down far fewer death sentences than did those of the Nazis...

...the defendant before an Allied court has a better chance than the defendant before the average Nazi People's Court...

...Despite the unanimous protests of the German clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, no court of appeal has been established to review these cases and appeals to the U.S...

...At the municipal elections in Berlin and in the Ruhr, 'the overwhelming majority of the people have turned their backs on totalitarianism and have endorsed Western ideas of representative government...

...While the threat of Russian occupation remains imminent, most people will give thought only to their private salvation and not to the reconstruction of an economic and political edifice which appears doomed for renewed destruction...

...If they cannot be trusted to establish democratic gov- * ernmeht in Germany, no Germans ever can...

...One may well question the wisdom of those who, following the formul.i of Unconditional Surrender, advocated the abandonment of the classical con...

...As one prominent American, recently returned from a study of civil liberties in occupied Germany, said to me: "We are busy all the time tellin ; the Germans not to do the naughty tilings we are doinjj...

...This is a vital factor in the European political picture which no Allied statesman can afford to overlook...

...Democratic Germans, in countering this propaganda, are gravely handicapped by every Allied act which provides new ammunition for the enemies of democracy...

...After the First World War, the League of Nations, spurred by England and France, helped in the rehabilitation of Greeks transplanted from Asia Minor...

...Such powers of supervision, advice, «nd veto as must be retained by the occupation powers should Ix1 vested in a tripower Control Commission, whose powei s would be clearly defined by an Occupation Statute...

...Unlaws and institutions of the occupied country and intervenes in domestic affairs only where required in Uie interest of the occupation forces...

...In the British Zone similar conditions were brought to light in the trial of the guards of the Bad Nenndorf and Neuengamme internment camps...

...This is necessary to vindicate the prestige of American justice and to redraw with bold and clear strokes the line of distinction, now blurred, between democracy and totalitarianism...

...It also means openings for emigration...

...No doubt the United States and Great Britain have every reason to hesitate before adding new commitments to their already staggering burden, of national defense...

...There can be puppet dictators, but there is no such thing as a puppet democracy...

...Once Allied authorities in Germany start acting a.s democratically as they talk, they will have taken a major step in re-establishing German democracy...

...ccpt of occupation as envisaged in the Hague Conventions, which re-speck...

...Supreme Court have been rejected on the spurious ground that the war crimes courts in Germany are international tribunals, whereas in point of fact all but the first Nuremberg trials were purely American affairs...

...Military Government courts and other ad hoc tribunals of doubtful legal standing, applying questionable procedures, were set up, some of which bore a painful resemblance to the notorious Nazi People's Courts...

...and last but not least, a series |f>f war crimes trials were conducted which violated nil accepted rules of evidence by reversing the burden of proof, by refusing the defense access to documents and recourse to crucial witnesses, and by accepting hearsay and anonymous statements on a par with sworn affidavits...

...All special and (id hoc tribunals should be abolished...

...Until now Military Government officials have been free to intervene in the internal administrative aflairs of Germany at any point they desired...

...a preposterous and basically unjust system of denazification was installed, of which so pioininent a liberal as Lord Beveridge felt compelled to say that it was a procedure "fit only for a totalitarian state...

...A wholly new conception of occupation must be evolved, one which lacks tho connotation of "oppression" by the occupying powers and* of "collaborationism" by the occupied, but which is rather a form of partnership...

...Many may actually have deserved worse...

...Similar efforts on the part of American authorities arc conspicuous by their absence...

...Already the Communists, ably assisted by die-hard Nazis, are using the questionable practices of American courts in Germany and infringements of civil liberties to "prove" to the German people that Western democ• racy is no better than Communism or Nazism...

...The United States a«d Great Britain ought now to take the initiative in the United Nations to secure aid for the rehabilitation of millions of simple farmers and artisans \\ hose uprooting they once aided and abetted and indeed advocated * * * ASSUMING THAT the cold wai between East and West continues indefinitely, the Western powers will not much longer be able to close their eyes to the problem of defending a Western Germany which they themselves have disarmed...

...Nevertheless, none of the occupation powei s has so far squarely faced up to I he dilemma involved in their simultaneous desire to reform Germany from the outside and to fosfer the growth of democracy...

...Whether good or bad, it is always arbitrary...

...They regulate domestjt: and foreign trade, determine the structure of industry, reform and control the currency, establish standards and issue directives to which the constitutions of the German States and the new federal constitution of Germany have to conform...

...Most Germans would have full v understood, had they been told that after what happened in Europe under the Nazis, they would have to he ruled for a number of years by fiat of tieAllied powers...

...The more reason quickly and generously to give full power and responsibility to the German people in the management of their own affairs...

...What they find verv difficult to swallow is the constant an 1 blatant discrepancy between democratic teachings and dictatorial practices...

...The abandonment of this concept led inexorably to the assumption of lull governmental powers by the victorious, nations and fo the installation ol a de facto military dictatorship...

...In the meantime, however, the expellees must be cared for and integrated as much as possible into the German economy...

...A nation's education, to be sure, can be carried out only by its own intellectual and political leaders...

...yet their efforts can be either assisted or discouraged from without...

...The plain fact of the situation is that Ihese expellees have only one ardent desire: to go home...

...Having gone as far as they have in re-establishing representative government, a return to sheer military dictatorship is unthinkable...

...terror, in other words, was not a deliberate instrument of government so much as a by-product of authoritarian Allied rule...

...If the adamant attitude of Soviet Russia forces the Western powers to continue indefinitely their occupation of the Western half of Germany, every effort ought to be made to prevent the usual irritations- and anomalies of occupation to 'poison the relationship between Germany and the West...

...It is cold comfort to these people to be told that in case of trouble Europe would be defended at the Pyrenees or, at best, at the Rhine The knowledge of beintj an expendable quantity may for a while inspire reckless fearlessness...

...If the German people are to be convinced that the ways of the Western world arc better than the rival systems of Communism or Fascism, something should be done to bring Allied policies in line with Allied preachings...

...In their struggle against princely potentates they placed less emphasis than Americans on popular suffrage, more on equality before the law and on government by laws rather than by men...

...PUTTING AN END to destructive economic policies in Germany is a most important point in a program to improve the wcupation of that country, but it is not the only one...

...the Western Powers, in contrast to th" Soviets, have bee n turning over more and more responsibilities to the German people an I their elected representatives, and no country has gone as far along this road as 'the United State...

...The State Department, in a recent statement concerning the Western European Alliance and the forthcoming...

...This is not so because the German people are innately wicked, but because they are human...

...TO BE SUHE...

...Of all the countries of Europe, Western Germany is now the most exposed and threatened...

...The Western occupying powers have asked th" democratic leaders of Germany to draft a constitution and to establish a government in open defiance of Soviet, opposition...

...Such propaganda is* no less effective because it is spread by means of whispers...

...The future of representative government in Germany will therefore hinge very largely on the Occupation Statute now being drafted...

...They were simply welcoming what they were convinced meant the return of the rule of law...

...This argument applies with equal force to Gwrmuny as to Franc* . Britain, Belgium or Italy...

...Boeker, German scholar who recently returned from an extensive lecture tour of Germany...

...When the inhabitants of hundreds of German towns and villages welcomed the arrival of American and British troops, they were neither try- . ing to curry favor with their conquerors nor to disclaim their patriotic sentiments...

...To give German democratic leaders tin- shadow of power without its substance would merely serve to discredit democracy...

...Nothing the Nazis did caused such profound indignation and revulsion among the German people, especially as the regime revealed its terroristic character ever more fully in the course of the war, than the fact that Hitler and his group had done away with the time honored institutions of the Rechtsstaat...

...The Allies have so far played ostrich to the fact of this problem...

...While intend - iriR to do the former, the occupation powers have all too often done the latter...

...In that they were deeply disappointed, and nothing has so shaken German belief in the Western powers as the realization that they brought only a different kind of arbitrary rule...

...This different approach no doubt had its drawbacks, but it also had its advantages...

...This should also be the guiding idea governing all travel regulations into and out of Germany...

...It resulted in giving Germany a judiciary and a civil service which, under the Empire no less than under the Weimar Republic, iiad few rivals in the world as regards their integrity, impartiality, and respect for civil rights...

...The only effective way to prevent the rise of a German nationalistic isolationism is to encourage rather than discourage personal and professional contacts between individual Germans and other nationals...

...A NEW and most important test of Albed sincerity will come with the passing of the long expected Occupation Statute that will define and limit the power of the occupation authorities...

...HERE ARE some suggestions a.s to how this might be done: <)) Military Government m the Western zones should be abolished as being incompatible with democracy...

...The opposite has unfortunately all too long been tlx1 case...

...Military Government is of necessity the very opposite of democracy...

...They can initiate legislation and can interfere at will in the administrative and judicial processes of government...

...To G e r m a n s the "rule of law" ("Rechsstaal") is what "democracy" is to Americans...

...This means more production facilities, not less...

...Although the light sentences passed contrast sharply with the sentences meted out to German war criminals, an effort at least has been made by the British Army to cleanse its own reputation...

...The presence of eight million expellees in Western Germany from the eastern part of the country, the Sudetenland, and the Balkans gravely affects the country's future and poison...

...brutalities in internment camps were not as widespread as in Nazi camps...

...Thisrequires a continuous search for new approaches and a radical reorientation of thought and emotions both among the German people and the occupying nations...

...m the long run it is bound to havea corroding and demoralizing effect...

...They are absolute dictators to the extent to which they choose to exercise their powers...

...But the function of a court is not to pass moral judgment but to dispense justice bv a strict and impartial appli - cation of the law...

...It is time for them to choose clearly between the one or the other...

...All this increases the danger to lil'i and liberty for millions of Germans in (use their country should be whollv overrun by the Soviets...

...a HABEAS CORPUS was as unknown , during the first two years of occupation as under the Nazis, and to this day it is unknown in the French Zone and severely limited in Bizonia...

...Occupation officials are not responsible to the people whom they rule and only very remotely responsible to the people back home to whom they owe their jobs...

...Responsibility for Ihe expulsion of these millions lies not only with the Soviets and their satel lites, but with Western statesmen as well...

...It means an abandonment of preconceived notions on both sides...

...North Atlantic Pact, has said that *i sense of military security is essential for the political and economic stability of Europe...

...Nothing in the world will persuade them that this is not their natural right and that they will not some day do so...

...The three Military Governors of the Western zones of occupation are the de jacto government of Western Germany...

...Yet, until they have devised an effective plan of defending Europe at least at the Elbe, their efforts at European reconstruction will be built on shifting sand...

...What is at stake in Germany is respect for American justice and the prestige of democracy itself...

...3) The judicial power, except in certain clearly defined cases directly involving the occupation forces, should be returned to an independent German judiciary...

...its political life...

...As long as the occupation powers, for instance, destroy peaceful production facilities, it is idle to expect the German people not to resent them...

...An appeals court should be established with the power to review all cases decided by special courts of the occupying powers Where generally recognized standards of civilized trial procedures were violated, the facts should be established, the culprits punished, and retrials ordered...

...THE OCCUPYING POWERS in particular must come to realize that to the extent to which they continue to be the de facto government of Germany, they must become the champions of the legitimate interests of the German people The inevitable alternative is that they incur the hostility and opposition of the people whom they control...

...They cannot have both, because they arc mutunlly contradictory...

...But above all, it requires an international rehabilitation effort...

...Since the downfall of Hitler, the left-of-center Social Democrats and the right-of-center Christian Democrats together have held the allegiance of about 80'i of the German people...

...Yet recent revelations about maltreatment of prisoners, about confessions extorted by the constant threat of extradition to Soviet Russia, and about the application of third degree in all its bestial refinements in the case, for instance, of the defendants and witnesses of the Malmedy trials, are shocking by any standards...

...As the terror increased, so did the longing of the people for a return to their traditional concepts of government...