Editorial
" This is where we came in, and everything thathappened before will happen again," according tomany people who know Germany well. They see theunrolling of the same chain of events: rampant na-tionalism, a feeble democracy, and then, not toofar off, a new militarism and a new German - Russian pact. There is another school of thought among ob-servers of German affairs- a school that listens tothe Cassandras, takes their warnings seriously, andyet keeps its shirt on. Let it be said at the outsetthat The Reporter keeps its shirt on.
On July 9, 1943, speaking of the Free French, whohad asked the United States for diplomatic recog-nition, President Roosevelt said:" There is noFrance ." Had he been alive on V- E Day, he couldhave said with far greater accuracy:" There is noGermany ."
The German people had been left without in-stitutions, without agencies of law enforcement, justas there were no leaders who could speak for themor to whom they had given a measure of their con-fidence. For twelve years, actually, they had had noinstitutions of their own, and the unconditionalobedience that Hitler had exacted led them to theirunconditional surrender to the Allies . The machineof the Nazi party had established total control overtheir lives; it ruled their schools, their factories,their churches, their leisure time, their emotions.With the collapse of the Nazi machine, the mono-lithic nation overnight was reduced to the dust ofits smallest component elements, the men and wo-men of Germany . On these men and women themilitary governments of the four allied nations hadto exert their rule.
The military governments assumed the task ofadministering a revolution to the German people.It was called de- Nazification. For the Russians , thiswas an easy task, assuming that they ever took itseriously, for they are in the business of revolution.The military governments of the three democraticnations, the United States , Britain , and France ,
were ordered to do the impossible- to conduct arevolution according to Standard Operating Pro-cedure and with some respect for the due processof law.
Northern Italy alone, among the regions of thetwo Fascist nations, had some days of real revolutionon its own, after the partisans had taken over thefunctions of government and before the Anglo-American armies had arrived in strength. Mussolini himself, and a large number of Fascist leaders, weresummarily executed, together with quite a fewinnocent people. In Milan, a well- known general ofthe Fascist militia was sought as a prize catch by theembattled partisans- an easy catch since everybodyin town was familiar with his reddish beard. Actual-ly, as the story goes, five men, all with reddish beards,were shot. A few days later, it was discovered thatthe close- shaven general was safely in jail. This isrevolution.
We Have No Names
Our military government was to bring democracyto Germany . It was given the responsibility ofscrutinizing every particle of the shattered nation,practically every man and woman above a certainminimum level of civic importance, and then it hadto decide who was fit and who was not fit to holda position of responsibility.
In the military rule of Germany , as in that ofItaly and Japan , we were facing a task for whichwe had no precedent, no blueprint, and no expert.We could make of Germany neither a colony nora kept nation. We could not let the Germans goto the Far Right nor to the Far Left. We had to exertpressure on the interests, the motives, the instinctsof the Germans so that some time, somehow, theycould unite themselves in a Germany vaguely re-sembling a peaceful democracy. We had, so to speak,to run the primaries in Germany ; we had to selectand certify the politicians whose claim to leadershiphad ultimately to be ratified by the German people.Just as there are no traditions for what we hadand still have to do in Germany and in other parts
The Reporter, October 11, 1949
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