Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR CHINA AND WAR In his article, "Khrushchev's 'Conservative' Opposition" (NL, November 27), Robert Conquest writes: "When the Chinese speak of the inevitability of war they clearly...
...I was referring to an ancient and deep-seated attitude...
...The Chinese desire for war does not in any way contradict Zagoria's point that the country is in a bad state economically and otherwise...
...How could such a Government desire war...
...As for West Germany, for all its prosperity today and stated good intentions to reimburse DPs and others who suffered from German war crimes, it has not yet done so with many of them—this, almost 17 years later...
...Germans willfully damaged Slavic cultural landmarks, even to such a world figure as Tolstoy...
...If the Germans had not acted like animals, many of them might not now be "trapped like animals...
...How about some justice for former DPs and other victims of Nazi oppression who still bear physical scars and tattooed numbers put there by Germans...
...In all instances, Germany looted industrial machinery and parts and committed unnecessary indignities on individuals and property...
...I often read this in a variety of papers and periodicals, but I have never seen it documented...
...How minor these discomforts are to the crimes perpetrated by conquering Germans...
...The Russians view this from the opposite angle: As General Telensky wrote in Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn in October 1960, "A global war would probably mean the end of half mankind, and the more active and cultured half at that" [My emphasis...
...In particular, the columns of William E. Bohn have been a source of enjoyment, combining his perspective (a function of his years) and his basic humanity (a function of his experience...
...New York City Alfred Sundel I have been a subscriber to The New Leader all of my adult life and have experienced the gamut of intellectual and emotional excitements engendered by the diversity of opinions presented in its pages...
...Because we acknowledge the totalitarian character of the present regime in East Germany, must we then forget that other dictatorship which was, if anything, more cruel, and which in large measure shaped the present face of both East and West Germany...
...For example, "In 1848 they [the Germans] voted for a republic and in 1962 they live under a dictatorship...
...Does Bohn subscribe to the Nazi racist theory of the inferiority of the Slavs and superiority of the Germans...
...Without Soviet military, economic and diplomatic support China is a third-rate power whose survival is questionable...
...I hope I will be forgiven...
...When a man of Bohn's intimate involvement with humanity is guilty of forgetting, however, the shock is overpowering...
...I simply cannot forget that it was Germay that invaded Russia...
...his writing in the past proves he is capable of greater wisdom...
...What is the significance of this dubious historical fact...
...I am really confused by what seems to me to be a serious contradiction in interpreting the Chinese position...
...Gas chambers, crematoria and concentration camps do not bespeak literacy and civilization and human feeling...
...When ordinary men are guilty of forgetting the German war crimes, it is not shocking, merely something to be expected...
...Perhaps the fact that the Russians are now ruling dictatorially over descendants of the republicans whom my father led more than a hundred years ago made me a little sentimental...
...And there are plenty of precedents for wars being started by dictators in trouble at home precisely to divert attention from these troubles...
...BEHIND THE WALL In the course of William E. Bohn's article, "Behind the Wall" (NL, January 8), I came across some rather shocking statements for an informed, liberal magazine to have published...
...New York City Helen Mears Robert Conquest replies: This is indeed an important question, but to document it properly would require a good deal more space than a letter affords...
...Brooklyn, New York Sidney Helfant William E. Bohn replies: I was glad to receive these letters...
...While I do not go so far as to subscribe to the theory that the Germans should be "trapped like animals," I find it interesting that Bohn has failed to mention, in this context, that the "trapped" were very recently the trappers —with a vengeance...
...But the basic reason for Peking's attitude is surely that a nuclear war might be expected to reduce the world to the Chinese level: This is one simple way for China to catch up not only with America but also—and perhaps particularly—with Russia...
...I did not mention the Nazis or many other groups or events because I was not attempting to write a history of Germany...
...Why didn't they...
...But, at the risk of being called a Hun-hater, I feel I must take issue with his final personal remarks, where he concludes that East Germans "are trapped like animals" and assumes a clear tone of asking American sympathy for them because of this circumstance...
...Moreover, this seems to me another instance of his convenient neglect of real historical fact...
...Why, may I ask, did Bohn fail to mention the intervening 114 years, particularly the period from 1933-45...
...Against whom...
...Of course, doctrinaire super-Stalinists cannot in any case be regarded as motivated by simple common-sense considerations...
...I, for one, therefore find it a little hard to sympathize with East Germans merely because their mail is censored and "vegetables and fruit are especially hard to secure" in Slavic-controlled East Germany...
...I have written at length about Hitler and his crowd—and I expect to take to my typewriter again whenever fascism shows its head...
...New York City Hilda Schorr I read William E. Bohn's article "Behind the Wall" with great interest for the good reportage in the letter he quoted on conditions in East Germany...
...If Conquest has concrete documentation I would be most appreciative if he could let me have it...
...Now they are trapped like animals...
...Bohn, I'm afraid there's been some serious backsliding in that country from the days when its people "were highly developed Europeans...
...DEAR EDITOR CHINA AND WAR In his article, "Khrushchev's 'Conservative' Opposition" (NL, November 27), Robert Conquest writes: "When the Chinese speak of the inevitability of war they clearly mean desirability...
...My article, I want to make clear, was concerned with the present situation in East Germany...
...A stated German intention was to exterminate the Slavic peoples after they had finished up with the Jewish people...
...they planned to repopulate Slavic lands with Aryans...
...It was therefore with profound shock that I read his article on the life now being led by East Germans...
...In the same issue of The New Leader, Donald S. Zagoria writes that "Peking is in the midst of an economic crisis that is expected to last at least for three years...
...No, Mr...
...For what purpose...
...R. C...
...Consider what the Germans would have done—and have done—if the situation were reversed...
...Words are cheap, but where are the deeds...
...I did not say that I regard the Russians as wild men or even that the present-day Germans have this view of them...
...Besides, the East Germans had time to escape...
...Again, "Hundreds of years ago they [the Germans] were highly developed Europeans who looked down on the Russians as wild men...
...In fact, German invasions have pressed across Slavic borders three separate times in 40 years in this century...
...Not only the Germans but other advanced nations on Russia's western borders looked eastward in fear, mingled with a sense of superiority...
...It seems such an unlikely attitude for Peking to have—especially at this time, when their domestic situation, apparently, is so serious...
...Too often these days, justifiable toughness toward Soviet totalitarianism is vitiated by a kind of historical doublethink regarding Nazism and its well-documented, incontrovertible bestiality...
...They were shocking not so much for what they said, but for what they left unsaid...
...For Bohn to succumb to this cold war malaise is unfortunate...
...This is on record in the Nuremberg Trials proceedings...
...Each word in the last paragraph in his article mocks the millions of corpses that irrefutably indict the German people (east and west of the wall) for crimes of unparalleled enormity...
...In the last two instances, besides exterminating eight million or more civilians in the most inhuman ways, Germany deported huge numbers of Slavs for forced labor...
Vol. 45 • March 1962 • No. 5
