Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR NEO-ORTHODOXY In his review of The Protestant Search for Political Realism by Donald B. Meyer ("From Innocence to Realism," NL, January 8), John Braeman neatly illustrates one...
...If it were true that former Nazis (a very loose term, incidentally, because there is an enormous moral and political difference between a fanatical Nazi racist and someone who accepted membership merely to keep his job) control "the judicial system, the Foreign Office, the universities and schools, the police," etc., how is it that no neo-Nazi has ever been elected to the Bundestag and that the whole foreign and internal policy of the Adenauer Administration has been as different from Hitler's as day from night...
...The Nazi policy of exterminating the Jews was not in the least influenced by Globke...
...Richard H. Rice TWO CROOKED MIRRORS May I express my radical disagreement with William Henry Chamberlin's appraisal of Professor D. F. Fleming's The Cold War and its Origins ("Two Crooked Mirrors," NL, January 22...
...While the Nazi elite, lives in power and affluence, their victims in the many lands occupied and plundered by them have received little or no restitution...
...Are the widows of Heinrich Himmler, Herman Goering and the S.S...
...Writing the commentary on the Nazi racial laws was part of the price he had to pay in carrying out this double role...
...But this would hardly invalidate neo-orthodoxy or allow us to hope, as apparently Braeman does, that some rationalistic historian could bury neo-orthodoxy in a historical trunk dated 1962...
...He was a professional civil servant, a member of the Center Party, who stayed at his post on the advice of prominent Catholics, because he was able in this way to get advance information of Nazi moves which he was able to relay to the German underground...
...To ignore these and many other shocking facts about the Nazi return to power in West Germany, which Tetens emphasizes, is to render a grim disservice to the free world...
...As for anti-Semitism, which Chamberlin dismisses as of no importance, is not its existence proven by the fact that Jewish restitution was made possible only with the help of the Social Democrats and that the members of Adenauer's party voted almost unanimously against it, and even branded it as an "act of moral depravity...
...generals receive generous pensions—including S.S...
...Why do so many infamous Hitler and S.S...
...In addition, it is a courageous investigation because it takes real courage to challenge the prevalent, extremely one-sided opinions inculcated by our press, radio and television in the minds of the American people...
...Hitler's former State Secretary, Franz Schlegelberger, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947, which was commuted in 1950, is receiving a monthly pension of 2,890 marks...
...Winchester, Mass...
...Brooklyn, N. Y. Theodore N. Lewis William Henry Chamberlin replies: I welcome the opportunity to put straight a few of the factual misstatements and exaggerated distortions of emphasis which weaken the case Rabbi Lewis tries to make...
...While I share that hatred, I cannot ignore the truth about present-day Germany which, unfortunately, Chamberlin does...
...The payment of reparations to Israel (a Tmost valuable asset in that country's balance of international payments) and of restitution to individual survivors of Nazi persecution (a very valuable asset to many individual Israeli citizens) was carried out at Adenauer's initiative and could not have been put through the Bundestag if his party had "voted almost unanimously against it...
...Nothing testifies to the moral depravity of the German judiciary more than this shameful ruling—undoubtedly by former Nazis who control the judicial system, even as they do the Foreign Office, the universities and schools, the police and, to a large extent, the press...
...Pitirim A. SoROKIN William Henry Chamberlin's slighting reference to T. H. Tetens' The New Germany and Old Nazis is colored by his hatred for Soviet Russia...
...It is a real landmark...
...No future competent historian of the cold war can afford to neglect Fleming's monumental study...
...General Karl Wolff, who shipped five thousand Jews daily to Treblinka...
...he resigned some time ago...
...Suppose—this would be great supposing!— that we gained, all of a sudden, international amity...
...Could it be that Braeman longs for a time when better international relations will allow us the luxury of Utopian political and religious ideas...
...Braeman says that the author "has not seen neo-orthodoxy with sufficient historical perspective to assess its real intellectual character...
...Tetens emphasizes Konrad Adenauer's obstinacy in retaining as his Secretary of State Dr...
...DEAR EDITOR NEO-ORTHODOXY In his review of The Protestant Search for Political Realism by Donald B. Meyer ("From Innocence to Realism," NL, January 8), John Braeman neatly illustrates one of the main insights of neo-orthodox theology— the human pretension of standing outside history—by scorning the intellectual vigor of neo-orthodoxy...
...Adenauer does not "retain" Oberländer...
...Their claims were dismissed on the technical ground that "the statute of limitations had expired...
...Why does Adenauer retain as Minister for Expellees and War Victims Dr...
...Hans Globke, a Catholic, was never an "ardent Nazi," or a Nazi of any kind...
...Hans Globke, an ardent Nazi and the author of Hitler's race laws which paved the way for the extermination of millions of Jews...
...Then perhaps we would develop Utopian intellectual movements—movements, no doubt, that would obscure the unpleasant truths of neo-orthodoxy...
...butcher Rheinhard Heydrich entitled to the handsome pensions which they receive—but not the widow of the executed General Sack, because he belonged to the resistance movement...
...Of course no amount of restitution can repair the infamous genocidal crimes of the Nazis...
...Nashville, Tenn...
...But the members of the present German government are not personally responsible for these crimes and have done what was in their power to make amends, by bringing many Nazis guilty of atrocities to justice and by appropriating considerable sums for the survivors...
...In my opinion, Fleming's work is the best—most scholarly, most objective and most complete and documented— history of the cold war among the many American books devoted to this subject...
...Theodor Oberländer, who was a high S.S...
...Why does Adenauer keep this man in the cabinet...
...unit which he commanded...
...The Polish exprisoners, who survived the slave labor at Auschwitz while working for I. G. Farben, brought suit in German courts for compensation...
...officer and directed the annihilation of Jewish and Polish intellectuals of Lemburg in July 1941, by a special S.S...
...To dismiss the data which Tetens presents is most dangerous...
Vol. 45 • February 1962 • No. 4
