Most of them stayed out of Hitler 's prisons andhis party; most are just entering big- time politics
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German politiciansnever have made a
good impression on
the rest of the world.Germans of ability
and integrity haveusually followedsuch pursuits as philosophy, music, andscience, leaving statesmanship to a lineof willful, and often unscrupulous,characters like Frederick, Bismarck,Wilhelm II , and Hitler .
During the Nazi years, most promi-nent Germans of democratic leaningswere done away with. During the pastfour years, many Nazi leaders have diedby the bullet, the rope, or the cyanidepill. The survivors- with the exceptionof a lucky few- are those whose indif-ference or prudence kept them out ofNazi Party leadership on the one hand,and the dungeons of the Gestapo onthe other. Into this last category fallall but a few of the emerging leaders ofthe West German Federal Republic .
Ten of the more prominent of these
men are:
Dr. Konrad Adenauer , seventy three
, leader of the Christian Demo-cratic Union( C.D.U.-C.S.U. in Ba varia ), and first Chancellor of the WestGerman Federation.
Professor Theodor Heuss , sixty- five,President of the Federal Republic ,and a leader of the Free DemocraticParty.
Dr. Kurt Schumacher , fifty- four,leader of the Social Democratic Party ( S.P.D. ), and of the opposition.
Dr. Carlo Schmid , fifty- two, Social Democratic Party whip in Parliament .
Max Reimann , fifty, Communist leader of western Germany , and mem-ber of the Bundestag( lower house).
Dr. Ludwig Erhard , fifty- two, Min-ister of Economics in the West German government, and Adenauer 's chief
Economic adviser, right- wing C.D.U.leader.
Dr. Erich Köhler , fifty- four, Presi-dent of the Bundestag, and a C.D.U.leader.
Karl Arnold , forty- eight, Presidentof the Bundesrat( upper house), Min-ister- President of North Rhine- West phalia , and left- wing C.D.U. leader.
Alfred Loritz , forty- seven, head ofthe Bavarian Economic Reconstruc-tion Party.
General Otto Ernst Remer , promi-nent in the extreme nationalist Ger man Rightist Party, militarist.
Of these men, only two, Schumacher and Reimann , opposed the Nazis vigor-ously enough to get sentenced to longterms in concentration camps. Onlytwo, Schumacher and Heuss , weremembers of the Reichstag before 1933.Four held responsible positions underthe Nazis ; one was a heavily- decoratedhigh officer; at least one was an ardentNazi . All have been critical of the occu-pying powers.
The most important of the group is,of course, the Chancellor, Dr. Ade nauer . He was born in Cologne , wherehis father was an underpaid govern-ment functionary, and has spent mostof his life there. Early in his career,Dr. Adenauer moved from law prac-tice into politics, but because of hisintense regionalism, he was a localrather than a national figure. He wasLord Mayor of Cologne from 1917 till1933, when he incurred the displeasureof Hermann Göring and was removedfrom his post. He withdrew to his homeon the Rhine and to the practice of law.
Twice during the Roehm purge,and again after the attempt on Hitler 'slife in July, 1944- he was arrested andquestioned, then released. Today he in-sists indignantly that he was never in-
Dr. Kurt Schumacher
volved in any plots against the Nazis ;he has never been an adventurer, hesays. Instead, he kept himself busy rais-ing his seven children with all the au-thoritarianism of a good German , andputtering about in his large garden. Hehas been married twice, the secondtime to Gussie Zinsser, the daughterof a Cologne doctor, Dr. Ferdinand Zinsser , who was born in New York .It is an interesting footnote on finefamilies that the American High Com-missioner for Germany , John McCloy ,and the Ambassador to Britain , Lewis Douglas , are both married to Zinssergirls, American cousins of Mrs. Ade nauer . She died in 1948.
Adenauer has always favored a fed-eration of German states, and after theFirst World War he even grew quiteserious about the idea of an indepen-dent Rhineland , a fact that makes himhighly acceptable to the French , butsomewhat less so to the British . In 1945,British military government officers re-moved him summarily from his posi-tion as Mayor of Cologne , which Amer icans had given him earlier that year,but the British now insist it was anunderling's error.
Neither his Rhenish regionalism norhis devout Catholicism prevents Aden auer from being an able politician, notabove giving the devil his due andbeating the drum of renascent German nationalism. In a speech last spring hesaid," It was the German Army whichcapitulated, not the German people."His partners within the C.D.U. rangeall the way from left- wing leaders likeArnold , who believes in nationalizingsome industries, to the extremists of theright, with their enthusiasm for laissez-faire. Both sides have pushed him hard.No economist himself, Adenauer has
The Reporter, October 11, 1949