THE GERMANS WHO STAYED HOME
Reimann, Guenter
The Germans Who Stayed Home Majority 'Were Not Real Nazis CIVIL LIFE IN WARTIME GERMANY, by Max Seydewitz. Viking Press. $3.50. Reviewed by Guenter Reimann TO get a realistic view of people in...
...He writes extensively about the German Moscow Committee, about the profound impression made on the Germans by broadcasts from Moscow of captured German generals, counts, and S.S...
...We should thus welcome any accurate information that will help to fill this gap that has remained wide open...
...Max Seydewitz's book is intended to cover the "story of the home front—how Germans lived and labored under the terror" during the war up to the time of the Yalta Conference...
...Despite occupation now of much of Germany we know little of how the various social classes have reacted to the war and to the breaking up of the Nazi regime...
...The reader should also be aware of the fact that Seydewitz follows a "fellow traveler's" line...
...Generalizations can be very misleading...
...Still less convincing is his faith in "a truly democratic state" to be created in Germany as a result of Yalta, a state that will be "free of all foreign influences" and will grant the German people the same rights accorded to other peoples including freedom of press and expression...
...But Seydewitz also tries to defend the "party line...
...The material will be new to those who have not had the opportunity to read wartime German periodicals...
...Civil Life In Wartime Germany provides no sensational inside stories...
...This is particularly true of generalizations about the people in Germany where class distinctions have always been much sharper than in this country, where the upper classes were more subject to militarist imperialist traditions and the lower classes to internationalist, anti-militarist, and anti-capitalist movements...
...Formerly a leading left-wing Socialist in pre-Hitler Germany, he is now a leading fellow traveller in Sweden...
...Stalinists will not, however, find this book too useful—despite the fact that the author praises Teheran and Yalta, that he writes that the Big 3 want only to liberate the German people from Nazi rule, and that he does not reject plans for use in various parts of Europe of forced German labor...
...SEYDEWITZ'S material demonstrates that the over-^ whelming majority of the German people were not real Nazis, that they were forced to slave for the regime in much the same way as the 8 or 10 million foreign workers...
...But the style and the habit of quoting extensively from newspapers and speeches make it somewhat difficult reading...
...So far so good...
...The author lived in Stockholm as a political exile from Germany and relied for his information mainly on careful study of German newspapers and magazines and occasional talks with travelers from Germany...
...Of this, however, he offers no convincing evidence...
...officers...
...But so long as the system remained intact the "craftily organized terror" made revolt impossible...
...His book provides much factual data on life in wartime Germany, on labor conditions, and on Nazi policies and Nazi influence among various strata of the German population...
...Reviewed by Guenter Reimann TO get a realistic view of people in enemy countries is almost impossible for Americans living on another continent and dependent on sources of information that present a partial and therefore distorted picture...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 20
