9th January 2009
In last week's post I wrote about Patrick Gordon-Walker, who was one of the first British news reporters to visit Belsen concentration camp, five days after its liberation by British army forces on April 15th 1945. When he was there, he recorded the first Jewish service held in the camp, which was later broadcast by the BBC.
The description of Belsen and the conclusions he drew from this, form only one part of his book ‘The Lid Lifts’. In this week’s post I’ve written about his impressions of other parts of Germany, as described in the book, during two tours following the advancing British and American troops; the first from February 24th to March 1st and the second in the final days of the war, from April 16th to 22nd. On his second tour, in April 1945, he covered 1,250 miles, travelling from West to East, across what was soon to be the British Zone of Germany, from Luxembourg via Aachen, Krefeld, across the Rhine to Essen, through the industrial area of the Ruhr, to Brunswick and Wolfenbüttel, north to Celle and Belsen, and then back east again via Dortmund, Bochum, Essen, Düsseldorf and Aachen.
‘The Lid Lifts’ is the diary of these two tours, plus some concluding reflections. In the introduction he described the book as follows: “I kept a diary during these two trips – describing without art or afterthought what I saw. This diary follows. It is probably the best way of conveying what Germany is like today. There is no overall generalised picture. There are only innumerable impressions of a country, reeling and rocking on its feet. To this diary I have added certain conclusions and reflections based on my experiences as a whole.”
In the final chapter, titled ‘Reflections in Tranquillity’ he tried to sum up what he had seen, “draw a picture in as firm outline as I can manage” and at the end provide “my personal opinions on some of the problems of the future.” (It’s interesting to observe that he wrote two separate concluding chapters to the book. In ‘Reflections in Tranquillity’ he makes no reference to Belsen. His thoughts on the concentration camps are covered in the previous chapter ‘The Challenge of the K.Z.’ which I described in my post last week.)
Patrick Gordon-Walker was a very junior member of the post-war British labour government and had no official responsibility for policy towards Germany, but as one of the very few members of the government who spoke fluent German and knew something about the country, it seems likely that he had at least some unofficial influence, perhaps in his role as parliamentary private secretary to Herbert Morrison. He certainly remained interested in German affairs. As late at 1974, the same year he retired as an MP from the House of Commons, he took part in a conference, organised by a group of British and German historians, on German emigration and resistance to Hitler: “The ‘Other Germany’ in the Second World War”, attended by many of the German socialists he had known from their time as exiles in London during the war.
I have quoted some extracts from his book below at some length, not because I want to argue that Patrick Gordon-Walker’s views were right or wrong, but because much of what he advocated, as his personal opinion, became official British policy, such as: the re-education of POWs, the promotion of democracy from the bottom up, the reversal of the non-fraternisation policy, and the concern for the future German youth.
Like many other British observers (described in previous posts on this blog) he was shocked by the scale of destruction he saw all around him:
“The most emphatic impression that today’s Germany leaves in one’s mind is the fantastic scale of the destruction…. Some of the destruction was due to last-minute defence of towns – Düren and Jülich paid with their lives as towns for their defence. In most cases the destruction seems to have been due to air attack. But all of it – all the significant destruction was done since last autumn. Everywhere you hear – the real destruction was done in twenty minutes last October, last November, last December, this March. The destructive power of air raids seems to have made an advance in kind in the autumn of 1944…. In Germany today you can see the exact price of fighting on till five minutes past twelve.”
In addition to physical destruction, the social fabric of the country had collapsed. “In Germany, the whole apparatus of a modern state, capable of sustaining a population of millions, lies in destruction. That’s the lasting impression one brings back from Germany. Just below the surface you find a parallel social collapse. The Nazi party has run away; the army is in our prisoner-cages. These were the two principal organs of state. Without them there is no central Government. This does not just mean no Cabinet, no Ministerial Departments. It means no post, no telephones, no pensions, no law-courts. It means each community is isolated unto itself. The only means of movement is on foot. Local government too has collapsed. The whole apparatus for looking after sewage, trams, schools, has just packed up… Garbage has not been collected for months in Germany: in every town stand derelict trams where they last came to a stop. Most of them are not even overturned. German towns are Pompeiis petrified by the volcano of modern war.”
“The second most obtrusive impression left by Germany today is the vast number of Displaced Persons, as they are called. In all there are some ten-twelve millions of foreign workers and prisoners. They present a problem of vast dimensions. As a result of the allied victory the greatest slave-revolt in history has taken place in Germany – a white revolt. The slaves are the masters. And as they roam and wander, taking what they will, plundering and sometimes killing their oppressors and recent masters, they add to the German confusion and collapse. This problem is a passing one: it will be solved by the physical removal of the foreigners to their own countries.”
“There is one other extraordinary characteristic of Germany today. It is a country without men. Never do you see a young German man, except those pouring back to our prisoner cages. The streets are filled with women, young boys and men over sixty.”
There was no sign of resistance or any ‘Werewolf’ organisation. “There is total revulsion against the war and all it has brought in its train” together with “sincerely expressed bitterness against the regime and its leaders … here and there are groups of individuals who have not given in – in particular some of the Hitler Youth. But these traces of an embryo resistance movement seemed, in my observation, more than overweighted by the general readiness to denounce such people to the Allies. I am pretty confident that there is no danger of a mass-resistance. No immediate danger: what happens in the future depends on many things, some of them under our control.”
What of the future?
“For a long time the problem of Germany will be the problem of material reconstruction on a scale that it is hard to imagine. So vast that more destruction may have to be done: many buildings are unsafe – many must be completely pulled down. Towns, or sections of towns, may have to be burned. When I was in Brunswick the early hot spring-sun came out. At one there was the smell of death. Under the ruins of many towns must lie hundreds, even thousands of corpses - waiting to revenge themselves upon the living by spreading disease.”
In general, his impressions of the British Military Government were favourable. They were “sympathetic and firm, took their job very seriously and worked extremely hard.” But although Military Government was “tackling its immediate problems with vigour and considerable success” he was concerned that there appeared to be no long term aim. Military Government had “shown itself adept at rubble clearing. What is lacking is any policy beyond getting things running again as quickly as possible. There is vigour but no direction.”
In his view, Allied policy should be based on a positive engagement with the German people, not upon the fear of future German aggression. Taking the policy of non-fraternisation as an example, he argued that, although it was appropriate for Allied troops to conduct themselves with “a certain dignity and restraint”, the order had been imposed, to some extent, due to a fear that “our conquering soldiers will be wheedled and twisted by the diabolically clever Germans.” This was wrong and a better approach was to allow and encourage Allied soldiers to engage directly with German people. “One of our aims is to bring democracy to Germany; this can only, in the long run, be done positively, by regarding our soldiers as practical prophets of democracy – by bearing ourselves as moral and confident victors over evil.”
Another example of the need for a positive policy, as he saw it, arose from British and American fears that myths might form in Germany, similar to those that were formed after the First World War and subsequently exploited by Hitler, (such as the legend that Germany was only defeated by a stab in the back). Rather than “fight against the formation of all myths” it would be better to “encourage the right myths and create the possibility of their birth by our own positive and confident policy.”
“We want a Germany that is purged of national socialism and militarism – and of the myths that go with these things. But we also want a Germany that is, in the end friendly, co-operative, and truly desirous of democracy – that is desirous of our way of life and of the idea and impulses that underlie it. A Germany friendly to Western civilisation must be our ultimate ideal.”
Germans should not be treated as an oppressed people. “If Germans remain a proletariat in the heart of Europe – there can be no certainty of peace. Some fifty million people who reject Europe, who come to regard themselves as a permanent outcasts and react as outcasts, are an immense danger … The only policy an oppressed people need have is to upset the applecart in the hope that there will be some apples to pick up at the end … One of the evil consequences of such a course is that a people becomes conditioned to the ways of a proletariat nation – conspiracy, violence, ruthlessness and exaggerated nationalism.”
Foreshadowing subsequent events, he went on to say that the greatest immediate danger, so he believed, was a split between the occupying powers (ie the British, Americans, French and Russians) with “each power playing off its own Germans in its own zones and in its neighbour’s zones against the German adherents of other occupying powers.” Although neither Communism nor Democracy were well understood within Germany, both, in his view, could have a great appeal. “For Communism in the sense in which many Germans who profess themselves communists understand it, there certainly is a future in Germany – namely in the sense of radical egalitarian solutions. German socialists want much the same thing. Their persisting fear of Communism is a mixture of dislike of communist ethics and methods and of distrust of Soviet domination of the party.”
The ideal solution, in his view, was the development of democracy from the bottom up, through local trade unions, local government and other cooperative undertakings: “In the long run Germany’s fate might be a happy one. Democracy might be learned from the bottom up without capitalism. For there are at the moment none of the preconditions for capitalism. Co-operation will prove far more efficient and easy to organise. Capitalism could no doubt be revived in Germany: but it would have to be done by deliberate interference from outside – by the same sort of interference that would be necessary for the organisation of Communism in the technical Russian sense.”
Finally he mentioned two other problems; both related to “the absence of German manhood – the main cause for the lack of initiative in Germany today.” The first was the need to prevent young people becoming disillusioned and to harness their enthusiasm and energy to work for the community in a time of need, and for democracy. The second was to re-educate the millions of prisoners of war, and encourage those who were “eager to learn preach and practise Democracy” so that some would return early to their own country and others could be “sent as missionaries amongst the remaining prisoners.”
“By these means the new manhood that grows up in Germany and returns to Germany can become a force for good. Eager to do the hard work of rebuilding, starting schools and hospitals again, practising democracy and finding a peaceful and fruitful outlet for German energies.”
References:
Patrick Gordon-Walker, The Lid Lifts (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1945)
Lothar Kettenacker (ed), The ‘Other Germany’ in the Second World War: Emigration and Resistance in International Perspective (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1977)
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