Bonn Is Not Weimar
HOTTELET, RICHARD C.
Bonn Is Not Weimar Germany and Freedom. By James Bryant Conant. Harvard. 117 pp. $3.00. Reviewed by Richard C. Hottelet Veteran foreign correspondent; CBS reporter in Germany, 1947-1957 In...
...In saying that the German people are jealous of their democratic freedom, the author has gauged that climate correctly, in my opinion...
...And he asks whether things will go wrong again...
...Despite occasional excesses and definite shortcomings, the Bundestag has performed as well as any other parliament and it is nothing short of misleading to harp on failings in Bonn which are taken for granted in Paris, London, or Washington...
...The Wagnerian penchant for self-indulgence and self-deception which twice led Germany to destruction has largely —almost completely—been overcome...
...Here again, Dr...
...Germany's positive action in concert with its European neighbors —in such matters as the Coal and Steel Community, Euratom and the European Common Market, and the reconciliation with France—illuminate the crucial fact that German megalomania is a thing of the past...
...Conant describes the elaborate safeguards which will keep the military in its place...
...Conant strikes his balance after reviewing an impressive body of fact...
...The elections, the development of political parties, of local, regional and national government, of the press and radio, the schools and universities, the courts and the economy—all testify to a continuing desire for decent stability in a free society...
...The majority of Germans recognize today that security and freedom depend on membership in the free world...
...The German problem has ceased to be the dilemma of one nation...
...He compares the undeniable political stability of the Bonn Republic with the increasingly morbid harum-scarum of Weimar...
...The position of the Army in the new German state is and will remain a touchstone of democracy...
...Those forces which would be strong enough to turn the Germans back upon the path of political insanity would at once turn all Europe into a madhouse...
...Conant's judgment...
...Conant suggests that Germany is no more likely again to be the source of upheaval than, say, France, Britain or Italy...
...He analyzes the remarkable growth of legislative responsibility...
...And, however many isolated facts may be cited to indicate the opposite, the student of Germany who sees the problem in the round is rather likely to agree...
...But in this and other fields safeguards, constitutional provisions and legal institutions are not worth the paper they are written on if the political climate and the public mood do not support them...
...Conant's conclusions are roughly these: that the great majority of Germans look back on the Nazi period with horror or distaste, that they have fashioned for themselves the stable framework of a democratic state, and that they have come to terms with the world around them in such a manner as practically to rule out future bloody collisions in the name of German national interest...
...CBS reporter in Germany, 1947-1957 In Germany and Freedom, this year's Godkin Lectures at Harvard, a mellow and scholarly observer sits back and takes a long look at the German problem...
...He asks himself what went wrong—specifically in permitting Hitler to come to power, but also, by extension, in Germany's earlier domestic growth and its adjustment to its neighbors...
...It goes without saying that no nation can be placed eternally in any category—good, bad, or indifferent...
...The salient facts of the past ten years amply bear out Dr...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 23
