On East Germany's Peace Movement

...These young people pleaded for the disarmament of both superpowers, an objective that theoretically echoes the desire of the Party...

...In the 20 years I served on the Peace Council, I never heard anyone challenge the policies or resolutions laid down by the Party machine...

...We should point our finger at ourselves as well, for the revolution in relations among nations will only be successfully completed if there is also a revolution in the minds of the overwhelming majority of the people of this world...

...Its slogan: "Beat the swords into plowshares...

...Has it had a similar influence...

...To be sure, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, young people in East Germany dread war and yearn for peace...

...When mass demonstrations by the West European peace movement against the proposed stationing of American missiles in Europe took place, Manni the Great decided that East Germany should hold mass demonstrations against the American (not the Soviet) missiles, too...

...a revolution of almost unimaginable dimensions had begun: The political antagonisms between nations would, for the first time in history, have to be resolved without armed conflict...

...One of the most impressive indications of this for me, as a person of a devout non-religious faith, is the stand taken by the Catholic Church in the United States...

...Suddenly, the fantastic scenery changed...

...Yet, paradoxically, their inhumanity has always been man's most effective means of advancing his humanity...

...But if one looks behind the facade, one finds that the Peace Council is ruled by a single individual, Manfred Feist, in the manner of an old-fashioned Oriental despot...

...A global democratic mass movement for peace would profoundly help to alter prevailing attitudes, and greatly enhance the learning process of the politicians who must walk the road of peace...

...Indeed, the United States owes its emergence to a military confrontation, and even today Americans are quite rightly proud of their War of Independence...

...I was a member of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force...

...Arrogant, narrow-minded, uneducated, autocratic, bureaucratic, a bully to everyone beneath him, he is a servile, spineless creature to his boss, Politburo member Hermann Axen...

...Yet, after being degraded for months in waving units, they very naturally tend to hate both the Party machine and its "peace movement...

...The official youth organization, Free German Youth, was ordered to establish so-called "waving units," groups of young men and women whose main function was to wave to the Party leaders at the huge rallies...

...so, in effect, are the president, the vice-presidents, the general secretary, and the entire presidium...

...I myself was severely criticized by the Party leadership for an article I published in a philosophical journal where I explained that the words of the Jewish prophets Isaiah and Micah coincided with communism's vision of a world without war...

...Our troopship sailed into Japan's Inland Sea, one of the most beautiful parts of the world...

...The perversion that is the dictatorial model of socialism makes the development of a genuinely democratic mass movement for peace impossible today in the Communist nations...

...But I remain convinced the time is not too far off when the dictatorships in the Communist countries will be overcome and peace movements in the East and West will walk hand in hand, so that mankind can learn to be truly kind to man...

...What are the chances of the peace groups in the East and West uniting to form a world-wide democratic mass movement...

...I saw this with my own eyes...

...To me it looked like the dress rehearsal for the destruction of mankind...

...it worried that in some way, some day, its unconstitutional dictatorial power might be questioned...

...On the one hand, as individuals we have not sufficiently absorbed the wholly new situation that has made war obsolete...

...Its courageous and forthright position regarding the danger of nuclear war would seem to me to have been impossible at the time ofthe Cold War...

...Nevertheless, the article was posted in virtually all the churches in East Germany...

...There lies the tragedy and the insoluble contradiction of the dictatorial model of socialism: A society which claims as its highest moral law the beating of swords into plowshares, feels compelled to beat up participants in a peace movement seeking to do precisely that...

...The Peace Council meets regularly several times a year to discuss its policies and its activities...

...Manni does not tolerate any opposition...

...Moreover, far from arousing support, it has in fact alienated the population at large, and especially young people, from the struggle for peace...

...Before attempting to answer those questions, I should perhaps note the obvious: that the differences in the nature of capitalist and Communist societies necessarily produce important differences in the nature of their peace movements...

...In one respect, though, peace organizations everywhere have to be alike if they truly hope to achieve the goal of radically reordering relations among nations...

...But the whole affair had to be staged...

...That is, they have to be open, mass movements inspiring people to struggle for peace...

...in both the U.S...

...the final rehearsal at Hiroshima may any day become the final premiere for all of us...

...The crystal clear, deep blue water was filled with fish we had never seen and dotted by little green islands...

...Still, the Party machine feared the independent character of this peace movement...

...strange birds flitted along the surface and filled the air...

...The two superpowers arm to disarm, trying to maintain a balance of power...

...As in all the other Communist countries, the members of the Peace Council are appointed by the Party apparatus...

...War had out-warred itself...

...For months these waving units were drilled in how to march past the reviewing platform, how to turn their heads toward the Party men and smile up at them, what slogans to shout, and when to jubilate "spontaneously" before those two great peace fighters, Manfred Feist and Erich Honecker...

...The problem facing mankind over the last four decades is double-pronged...

...Nor could it be otherwise...

...And that is where the peace movements in the East and the West come in...

...From this one might assume it is a fairly democratic institution...

...So instead of welcoming the initiative of the young people and discussing their views with them, the Party had the police beat them up and put them into prison...

...As young as I was at the time, I realized that with Hiroshima we had entered a qualitatively new era...

...last September...

...Manni the Great heads the Department of Foreign Information in the so-called Great House, the seat of the Party machine in Berlin's Marx Engels Platz...

...The sea became a muddy brown, there were no fish or birds, the little islands were blackened and barren...

...Franz Loeser, a former professor of philosophy and prominent member of the East German Communist Party, requested political asylum in the U.S...

...In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that an independent peace movement of young people emerged in East Germany not long ago...

...But the bal-ance-of-power strategy is really an expression of their impotence, of their inability to devise new ways to deal with political hostilities...

...He controls every aspect of the East German Peace Council, from selecting its officers, presidium and general membership to deciding when meetings will be held, who will be allowed to speak and what may or may not be said...

...His department prepares the speeches of the Peace Council's president and the resolutions that are to be passed unanimously by the membership...

...and the USSR, war remains a part of the popular repertoire...

...On the other hand, our leaders have failed to find a better method for waging ideological battles, let alone for settling concrete disputes...

...I had seen Coventry, Rotterdam, Dresden...

...Despite the official Party rhetoric calling for a united international peace effort, this dictatorship is doing everything possible to destroy or prevent such a world-wide effort...

...Thus our years since Hiroshima can be compared to those of an infant trying to learn to walk on a rough-hewn path—the road of peace...

...So war, and especially the threat of a nuclear war, are still with us...

...They are fully aware of being used not to protect the peace of the world, but to protect the glory and power of the dictatorship...

...Consequently, the United States stations missiles in West Germany, the Soviet Union retaliates by stationing missiles in East Germany and vice versa...

...But what I saw here was completely different...

...Clearly, the peace movement in the West has developed into a strong democratic mass effort, and is helping to change our world for the better...

...Feist is of course not suited to lead a peace movement in our time—except for one qualification that in East Germany is enough to override all of his negative qualities: He is the brother-in-law of Erich Honecker, the general secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, chairman of the State Council, and chief of the Armed Forces...

...It is through wars that new and higher forms of society have come into being: slavery, feudalism, capitalism...

...Having left the United States during the Cold War period, and having lived for the past 25 years in East Germany, I was deeply impressed upon my recent return by the changed attitudes of the American people and their representatives toward the question of peace...

...What about the peace movement in the Communist countries...

...Now let me go on to describe the East German Peace Council, the official peace movement, on whose presidium I served for the last 20 years...

...More precisely, "Manni the Great," as his underlings derisively refer to him, is a typical Stalinist apparatchik...

...They were mountains of ruins where desperate people crawled around...

...We all know how difficult and painful this learning process has been...

...Despite the continued persistence of military adventurism, the recognition that war has become obsolete has made tremendous strides in the minds of the man in the street and in the thinking of influential men in the establishment...

...The East German peace movement, in short, is merely a rubber stamp for official policy...

...We would be making it too easy for ourselves, however, if we cynically pointed our finger at the frustration and bewilderment of the politicians...

...Wars have been the worst scourge of the earth, killing billions of people, causing untold suffering...