Faces in the German Crowd
HOTTELET, RICHARD C.
Faces in the German Crowd The Unquiet Germans. By Charles W Thayer. Harper. 275 pp. $4.00. Reviewed by Richard C. Hottelet Veteran CBS foreign correspondent Few questions are more important...
...Is a new nationalism gnawing the woodwork...
...or collapse into the all-too-familiar monolithic clump of totalitarianism...
...Charles W. Thayer poses it here in several familiar ways: Will German democracy endure, or are its arteries already hardening...
...Yet, the existence of this remarkable (and, in German history, unprecedented) coalition is treated as evidence of latent instability...
...The dilemma of the Social Democratic party is one of the most interesting and significant problems of German politics...
...It is in the nature of a democratic political party to bring together conflicting interests...
...This is perfectly true but, nevertheless, misleading in a real sense...
...Thayer himself provides enough contrary information...
...They are all genuine, without doubt...
...He was, in fact, an old Prussian General Staff type (in the good professional as well as in the bad political sense) —a sort of German military Henry Wallace—who was easily captured by the Communist-fronters when he broke with the Government's policy...
...Looking back to the private armies and the Saal-schlachten of the Weimar Republic, one might well say, "Thank God...
...The roaring crowds, cracked skulls and general frenzy are absent from political contests...
...Overriding nil speculation is the fact that West Germany has laid the solid foundation of a two-party system, that in three national elections in eight years the voters have overwhelmingly supported the parties of the democratic center...
...It stands or falls together with its Western partners—and the recent election shows that most Germans recognize that it does...
...Like Henry Wallace, he eventually saw through the motives of the claque that played on his ego and pulled away from them to complete obscurity...
...Quite deliberately, Thayer shies away from answering any of these questions definitively either way, although he chooses to leave the impression that the outlook is anything but bright...
...Where it counts, in voters' turnout, the electorate has racked up a non-apathetic total of 80 or more per cent...
...Much evidence to help a reader make up his own mind is simply and colorfully presented— perhaps too colorfully, but that is one of the shortcomings of history by anecdote...
...But they are valid as political testimony only if they are representative...
...One might have hoped, too, for a more complete report on the interesting case of Bogislav von Bonin...
...One concerns the seemingly profound observation that Germany has never had a revolution, from which flows the conclusion that the roots of some old order are intact and that a "restoration" is always possible...
...Here, the author seems to follow an approach shared by many of our colleagues, but not necessarily the more correct for all that...
...There is no reason why democratic politics in Germany should be more perfect and more symmetrical than thev are in any other country...
...After Adenauer, what...
...Are not the \ears between 1118 ami...
...As a matter of fact, the force which maintains these always divergent, usually selfish, frequently narrow-minded and sometimes sordid pressures in a state of balance benefiting the whole is the elemental force of democratic life, just as the key to the physical universe is the power which knits the atom...
...Germany can find the satisfaction of its legitimate aims as a democratic state only as a member of the Western community...
...One hears of the brilliant young chemistry student who has gone into politics to serve the tradition of the Scholls, who perished in rebellion against Hitler...
...Then there is the now classic reservation that no forecasts can be made beyond the next depression...
...There will not be a depression in Germany without a depression in Western Europe, and in that case all bets are off for considerably more than the Federal Republic...
...Only time will provide the proof, of course, but at this time there is far more factual evidence for than against...
...Kurt Schumacher's Prussian antecedents and his reflections on nationalism while in a concentration camp are not really adequate in explaining its origins...
...And an analyst of the German scene might be wise to take a closer look at the life and times of Franz Josef Strauss, whose democratic aims and two-fisted performance make him one of the strongest newcomers in the political arena...
...Rut among all the manifestations of so complex a development the reporter or historian must distinguish between dominant and recessive characteristics, between twitches and trends...
...Now, to be quite fair, a jumble—a confused, materialistic, complacent, self-centered mush—is, indeed, one of the aspects of German life...
...Reviewed by Richard C. Hottelet Veteran CBS foreign correspondent Few questions are more important than the future of Germany...
...It would not be too difficult to quarrel with the interpretation that the military reforms of von Baudissin have been discarded...
...German "apathy" in political questions is another judgment which has its roots more in logic than in fact...
...say, 1949, with their almost incredible violence, their biological and social change, as much of a revolution as any in modern history...
...This party is composed, as Thayer points out, of discordant factions...
...West Germany is no longer the special case in which odd and unpredictable things can happen at any time...
...A few sighs are heaved over the loose-knit composition of the Christian Democratic party...
...But, as Thayer does not relate, von Bonin did not stay captured very long...
...Nationalistic arguments, even those as well contrived under democratic auspices as the SPD's campaign with the "German Manifesto" and its argumentation throughout the course of the Saar problem, have failed completely to win mass support...
...Instead of sketching a clue-pattern of the immense social and political forces at play in today's Germany, they form a jumble...
...Will the attraction of trade and profit pull Germany eastward...
...The personal histories of a number of personal acquaintances are smoothly told...
...There is the soldier son of a Prussian general and—most interesting by far—the son of a woodcutter in a tradition-bound Bavarian village...
...And that, alas, they are not...
...Two other points are worth making...
...Is the old military spirit of Prussia making itself felt again...
...Cancel it out and the state will fly apart in scores of bickering parties, as Weimar did...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 41
