The German Question

A YEAR has now passed since the overthrow and the complete occupation of Germany. What progress has been made in this critical year in the solution of the German problem? A dispassionate answer with justice to all sides can only be that the progress made has been utterly disappointing. A year ago Germany was a molten mass ready for pouring into the right moulds. The moment for this was missed; the metal has cooled and toughened. A year ago, when this book was written, it was possible to indicate the paths to a real solution of the German problem and to have confidence in their practicability. Today it must be confessed that at critical points the exact opposite has been done of what should have been done, and that an opportunity has been let slip which all eternity cannot bring back. Warnings have gone unheard, appeals have fallen on deaf ears. Few people in the world venture to speak out on this subject, and yet everyone knows its extreme gravity, and knows it so well that everywhere a feeling of hopelessness and desperation is spreading. This feeling is understandable, and yet it must be most strenuously combated, lest we should resign ourselves to the doom that threatens. Thus we are bound to speak openly of errors, neither in denunciation nor in exculpation, but in the effort to make clear what should be done better in the years to come.

After the failure of every attempt to bring down the Nazi regime in time, and to establish contact during the war between the German opposition to the regime and the Allies, any solution of the German question was bound to be a desperate enterprise; this was at all times obvious. It was known that the victors would have to take over the government of a country left by its rulers in a state of material, political, and moral ruin. This was realized, and it was realized what it involved. Perhaps the vast mortgage of the ruined cities, of the chaos of the displaced persons, of the passions inevitably aroused by Germany’s criminal masters, crushing though it looked, was still underestimated. But on top of all this there came further encumberments of any constructive German policy, errors which did more than all else to make the situation desperate. It was anticipated the four Powers would share out the occupation of Germany, but not that they would demarcate their zones so arbitrarily and shut them off from each other with such crippling effect on German economy, or that things would happen in the Russian Zone which would destroy the basis of the German food supply and would fill West Germany with millions of uprooted refugees.

This vast mortgaging faced the victors, who were not out simply to trample on the vanquished, with a most difficult and thankless task. In spite of this, astonishing results have been achieved in some directions; all the more credit is due for them. But it was in the very nature of so unique a task that serious errors should be almost unavoidable. This applies particularly to the ticklish problem of denazification, the handling of which has been complained of as too irresolute in some places and too harsh in others. Inevitably in the vast number of borderline cases the necessary schematism produced hardships and robbed reconstruction of competent man-power. Many cases could be quoted of bitter injustice persisted in in spite of all representations. The psychological results of these are scarcely taken seriously enough, and a remedy would be greatly facilitated if relations of confidence were established between the occupying authorities and the genuine and proved anti-Nazis, whether Christian, Socialist, Liberal, or Democrat. The thesis of undifferentiated guilt of all Germans, Nazi and anti-Nazi alike, deserves to have been posthumously invented by Dr. Goebbels. It has been desperately depressing for all anti-Nazis, and it has led to a penal instead of a re-educative treatment of all Germany. Only so can measures be understood which give the impression that it has been considered of no importance to have regard to their possible reactions among Germans. When all the inhabitants of a whole district of a great city are compelled at a moment’s notice to clear out in order to make way for families of officers of the occupying armies, what else are they likely to become but convinced Nazis, Communists, or anarchists?

As was to be expected, in the Russian Zone a terrorist system has been established that is little different in essence from the past National Socialist system; its political “life” is indistinguishable from that of Nazism. Confining ourselves to West Germany, it is clear that if it is not to be subjected virtually to chronic famine or else to become a permanent burden on international charity, it must be given economic unification and quick aid to its industries for the intensification of agriculture through the provision of fertilizers (i.e., products of the chemical industry) and machines, and for the assurance of the import of additional foodstuffs and fodder by the export of manufactures, coal, and steel. This is plain to every clear-headed person in the world. And yet the Russians and a still powerful American group have conspired to block this path of elementary common sense by the resolutions of the Control Council aiming at the de-industrialization of Germany. It would be difficult to criticize this policy more sharply than has been done in the Economist, the Manchester Guardian, and the Times. It is conjuring up a catastrophe that will give Europe a demonstration of the extent to which its own health is dependent on the healthy state of German industry.

As regards the coal of the Ruhr this is plain to all, whatever they may think in other respects of Germany and the Germans. But the Ruhr coal production cannot be increased unless the iron and steel industry is able to supply its machinery and tools, unless the miners are properly fed, and unless to this end agriculture is supplied with fertilizers and machines and industry in general is enabled to pay with its products for the necessary additional foodstuffs and raw materials from abroad. So one thing dovetails into another, and it does not show much sense if anyone imagines that the Ruhr coal which Europe needs can be delivered by a Germany condemned in general to hunger, poverty, and unemployment. Those who want Ruhr coal must want also the manifold and comprehensive conditions on which its production depends.

But if Ruhr coal matters, so also, and no less, does the combination of measures that can only drive even the Germans of good will into a crippling despair—a combination that would deserve admiration if the purpose was to instill into the Germans the temper of the most vicious chained dog and forcibly to turn them into old or new Nihilists. Even enlightened anti-Nazis are beginning to ask themselves sadly whether all has not been in vain, and whether there is any sense in working for a future for their children, while the Nazis scornfully ask them whether they still place faith in the wartime propaganda that declared that the Allies were not out to destroy Germany. A terrible number of Germans see no alternative to emigration, anywhere and under any conditions. As one of them wrote to me, “A sound factory that cannot produce because it is forbidden to, creates more bad blood than a whole lot of bombed cities.” There are many who declare that he is right.

The solution of the German problem as a whole depends on the solution of the further problem of Russia’s attitude to the world and of her relations with the Anglo-Saxon Powers. At present the practical question, and one that is growing steadily graver, is whether West Germany at least can be saved for Europe, thus, probably, saving Europe herself. If one described this situation with such brutal candour twelve months ago there were many shakings of the head, and only a few weeks ago the Times Literary Supplement, in the course of an otherwise approving review of the Zurich edition of this book, charged me with going too far in attributing to the Russians the intention of acting independently in Germany. Today all but the Communists probably agree that the main thing is to preserve West Germany from relapsing into nationalism and National Socialism, without handing it over to the Communist variety of totalitarianism.

Both dangers have certain principal causes in common, namely perplexity, disappointment, and hopelessness. Thus a successful battle with these causes will diminish both dangers and contribute toward giving the upper hand to the more rational of the Germans. A most disturbing question is, indeed, whether the disappointing way many Germans have reacted to their country’s ignominious downfall, and their growing political obduracy, does not point to incapacity for political and moral regeneration. On the other hand, we do not know how many Germans would have remained deaf to all reason if the past policy of the victors had been different. That experiment was not made, and this, properly understood, gives some ground for hope. For if the right policy had been followed and the situation had then been just as bad, it would indeed have been hopeless.

That the experiment of a less faulty policy for Germany was not made when all was in its favour, means certainly that the first round has been lost; but only the first round. Nothing can bring back this first year, in which the soul of the Germans could most easily have been formed; but it was clear all the time that a true inner recovery could only be expected from a long process in which the Germans became familiarized with radically different forms, conceptions, and aims, of political life. This is indeed a task for which the modern Jacobinism is particularly ill-equipped. Whatever may be the general situation in regard to the dogmas and the institutions of mass-democracy, they are as unsuitable as could be for Germany. If the ideals of the république une et indivisible, of mechanized democracy with its mass parties and of the peuple vertueux, are applied here there will be bitter disappointments to come. We are even in agreement with Edmond Vermeil’s view that Germany’s ill-fortune consists largely in the fact that for generations it has been attempted to make her into a “nation” by main force. It should now at last be realized that in this matter the Germans are as untalented as could be, and that consequently a democratic rebuilding of Germany can only proceed stage by stage from the bottom upwards, the Germans being given autonomy, indeed, as soon as possible at the lowest levels, the aim being a genuine federation of the resuscitated states. If this political programme is united with a reasonable economic and social one, the main lines of which are indicated above, there will at last be placed before the West Germans an objective they can pursue, and one that will preserve them from being caught by a new mass-ideology of a nationalistic and communistic character. If then the lessons of past administrative mistakes are learnt, the important step will have been taken on which depends the effectiveness of all criticism and all recommendations: the conditions will have been created that will enable the anti-Nazis, on whom everything depends, joyfully and hopefully and without bitterness to take over the responsibility for a new phase in German history and to restore their country to Europe.

WILHELM RÖPKE

Geneva, May, 1946