After the Reich (2 page)

I have tried as much as possible to use individual accounts to give the flavour of the time. Many of these are by women. There is an obvious reason for this: there were not many men left. Those who survived did so in a variety of places, from internment camps to Soviet mines. The subject is so vast that I have had to use a broad brush. Some elements are immensely well covered, such as the American Zone and the beginnings of the Cold War. It was the start of the American century and the end of isolation, after all. Other parts of the story are hardly told: the French occupation, for example. Because I wished to give the tenor of everyday life at the time, I have divided the book into four parts: the first looks at the chaos that followed the end of the war within the lands that were then Germany, and the punitive stance of the Allies; the second looks at the day-to-day existence of the Germans and Austrians; the third examines crime and punishment; and the fourth introduces the chronology and records the major political developments from Potsdam to the foundation of the two German republics. The Austrian State Treaty lies outside the scope of this book, as it did not occur until 1955.

My ‘Germans’ are the German-speaking peoples as they are massed in central Europe. I have therefore included Austria, which called itself ‘German Austria’ until it was annexed in 1938, and subsequently became part of the Greater German Reich. I mention the South Tyrol in Italy, because Austrians saw that as part of their lands, as well as other satellites in Yugoslavia, for instance. I have also examined the plight of the so-called ‘ethnic’ Germans who were expelled, mostly from Czechoslovakia, but also from Hungary and Romania. Elsewhere ‘Germany’ is defined by its 1937 borders, and I have referred to towns and villages by the names Germans would have known. Where possible I have included the Polish or Czech names too.

Although it was my first intention to study the German-speaking peoples as they suffered their chastisements on the ground, I soon realised that it was impossible to make any sense of what was happening without reference to what was taking place on Mount Olympus: the Allied command HQs and the political forces behind them. I had to travel
de haut en bas
and vice versa - to examine the effect of the occupation on the Germans, but also to look upstairs at what the Olympians were doing, and see what they had in store. On the other hand I have always tried to focus on Germans, not on the Allies.

The book is the fruit of my long acquaintance with both Germany and Austria. My interest began during a short stay in Cologne in my mid-teens and a meeting with one of the two modern German novelists whose writings have most coloured this book. I was a guest of the Böll family and one afternoon the later Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll came to tea. He introduced me to Underberg, the viciously powerful bitters, and I can still feel the wave of fire travelling up from my stomach to my cheeks. We argued about Irish Republicanism, which he favoured. It wasn’t until much later that I began to respect his books, and admire the picture of the returned soldier in those early stories and novels.

I met Ernst Jünger many years later, through my friend the eccentric hotelier Andreas Kleber, who was then still in possession of his family hotel, the Kleber Post in Saulgau in Württemberg (incidentally one of the first venues for the writers’ group Gruppe 47). One night I had dinner with Jünger there and the two of us spoke to ZDF television about the meaning of Prussia. Jünger was a writer from the generation before Böll, but outlived the younger man by decades. He was a mere ninety-seven when I met him and had another six years to live. Again conversation turned to drink: the bottle of Pommard he consumed with his wife every night (he had two-thirds of it, he confessed), and his real love - Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

He became more serious when he complained that he could not wear his Pour le Mérite medal, which he had won in the Great War, when he had been left for dead on the field of battle. He was, I think, the last surviving
military
holder of the medal. The Allies had swiftly banned the wearing of decorations, and the Federal Republic has followed suit. War could not be officially celebrated, and that went for acts of heroism too. I recalled the First World War memorial in the little park in Berlin-Friedenau where I had stayed with friends. The inscription had been chipped off: in Germany such things were taboo, while in Britain war memorials were still placed at the focal point of any town or hamlet. In Germany there were no more heroes. The Germans had lost the right to them.

Friends of mine, even published historians, have often told me that the Germans ‘deserved what they got’ in 1945: it was a just punishment for their behaviour in occupied lands and for the treatment of the Jews at home. This book is not intended to excuse the Germans, but it does not hesitate to expose the victorious Allies in their treatment of the enemy at the peace, for in most cases it was not the criminals who were raped, starved, tortured or bludgeoned to death but women, children and old men. What I record and sometimes call into question here is the way that many people were allowed to exact that revenge by military commanders, even by government ministers; and that when they did so they often killed the innocent, not the guilty. The real murderers all too often died in their beds.

It is true that some of the old men and a lot of the women had voted for Hitler, but it should be recalled once again that he never achieved more than 37.4 per cent of the vote in a free election, and in the last one he was down to 33.1 per cent.
¹
That meant that, even at his most popular, 62.6 per cent of the German electorate were unmoved by his programme. Of course, at that point it did not propose the slaughter of the European Jews (he never made any public statement on this subject other than dark allusions that have become easier to read in retrospect); nor did it mention his desire to confront Soviet Russia and enslave the Slavs; nor did it hint that he would eventually bring the roof down on the German house and kill a large number of its inmates. It is possible that he might have secured more votes that way, but I think not. To make all Germans responsible for the relatively docile Hitler of 1933 is to apply the Allied weapon of collective guilt. Collective guilt makes them all responsible: women, old men and children, even newborn babies - they were German and they could also be slaughtered or starved to death. Indeed, the Soviet propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg exhorted the Red Army not to save ‘the child in its mother’s womb’.
²

There were many Russians, Poles and Czechs who were not ashamed to feel that way in the heady days of liberation. Some of them were as young as fifteen at the time they joined
ad hoc
police squads and they may still be alive today and healthy; but I think few of them would now own up to the acts of terrible violence they committed.

If children are included in collective guilt, this could be accepted on the basis that they were going to grow up to be Germans and therefore possibly Nazis. Then, of course, we need to determine at what age a child becomes a German, and can be blamed for the crimes of his country. It is clearly not twenty-one (when many are already in the army), or eighteen (when they were likely to have been called up, and were often among the bravest and most ruthless fighters), or sixteen (when they had already been drafted into anti-aircraft units or, like Günter Grass, about to be forced into the SS), or indeed younger (Hitler Youth boys as young as twelve distinguished themselves in the Battle of Berlin). Maybe in an indoctrinated society a cut-off point for guilt needs to be imposed at seven, and, if so, a date needs to be fixed when the child had attained that age. Was it 1933 or 1945 (twelve years after the last free election)?

Of course the real reason why the Allies imposed the idea of collective guilt was that it was a useful way of depriving the Germans of rights and national sovereignty. Once their guilt was assumed, they could be punished. They were to be at the mercy of the Allies until their conquerors had decided what to do with them, and in the meantime they could not protest about their treatment.

Then there is the issue of tit-for-tat. The Anglo-Americans wisely fought shy of exacting reparations because they realised that they would then have to pay to feed the Germans; and that if they left the Germans an industrial base they might be able to feed themselves. The tit-for-tat school of retribution and revenge goes back a long, long way. Historically minded Germans might blame the French for the Thirty Years War (which caused bloodshed on a similar scale to the Great War) or for the territorial ambitions of Louis XIV. More might recall the Napoleonic invasion of Germany and the occupation of Prussia. Bismarck was famously intractable in 1871 when the French demanded mercy, saying there was not a tree in his country that did not bear the scars of the French years. Then the jackboot was on the other foot. On each occasion there were territorial cessions and crippling reparations to pay. Someone needed to cry halt. But the business surfaced again at Versailles in 1919, and there was the same punitive peace. After the Second World War most wise men understood that a peace treaty would have been a farce. It was left to what Churchill called ‘our consciences to civilisation’ to determine how the enemy was to be treated.

Post-war Germany is a problem that has taxed me for years and it is hard to know now who has helped me with this particular book. Some, perhaps many of them, are already dead. Some names stand out in my mind, others were often nameless people I met on my travels, and who unburdened themselves over a late-night drink, or a second glass at lunchtime.

In London my friends Karl-Heinz and Angela Bohrer have been constant in their encouragement over the years. Karl-Heinz was kind enough to give me an extensive interview on his childhood in post-war Germany. Angela long ago gave me a copy of her mother Charlotte von der Schulenburg’s privately printed memoirs. I also learned much from the writings of her aunt, Tisa von der Schulenburg, and from my meetings with her. My neighbour in Kentish Town Nick Jacobs, owner of the German-specialist publisher Libris, was kind enough to lend books and copy interesting articles. In Oxford I thank Sudhir Hazareesingh; Robert Gildea for providing me with some suggestions for reading on the French occupation of Germany; and Blair Worden for explaining the role of Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Germany provides me with many memories and much assistance, from my friend Ursula Heinzelmann in Berlin; Gertrud Loewe; Eva Raps in Wiesbaden; and in the wine country growers told me of their experiences of the immediate post-war years. The late Prince Franz von Sayn-Wittgenstein in Munich sent me his privately printed memoirs; Daria Fürstin von Thurn und Taxis the unpublished memoirs of her uncle Willy; and Christiane von Maasburg gave me permission to quote from the
Magisterarbeit
she wrote on Nikolaus von Maasburg. A kind lady in Hildesheim recounted harrowing details of the trek she undertook from Pomerania as a child of six; the retired border guard Captain Schmidt in Coburg told me no less moving stories of his childhood in Silesia; an anonymous man in Malbork, Poland, briefly informed me of how he evaded the Polish authorities after the war; an ethnic German woman in Opolne offered to pray for me, if I gave her ten marks; a former Danzig policeman I met in Titisee-Neustadt told me about his time in an American camp in Passau, surrounded by members of the French Division Charlemagne.

In Vienna, enormous thanks are due above all to my friends Christopher Wentworth-Stanley and Sebastian Cody. Christopher found me literature on post-war Austria and read a part of the manuscript, as did Ambassador Erwin Matsch. Sebastian was kind enough to read and comment on a number of chapters. Johannes Popper von Podhragy sent me articles from his late father’s archive. Dr Wolfgang Mueller provided me with much help and a useful book list. On Lake Bled, Janez Fajfar showed me the wonderful mural in the hotel he has run for decades in the palace where Tito and Stalin fell out in 1947. In Prague I was counselled by Dr Anna Bryson and in Sofia by my old friend Professor Evgeni Dainov.

I am also grateful to all those who helped locate or donated pictures: John Aycoth in Washington, Sebastian Cody and Christopher Wentworth-Stanley in Vienna, Lady Antonia Fraser, Livia Gollancz and Dennis Sewell in London, Manfred Pranghofer and Rudi Müller of the Oberhaus Museum in Passau, Bob McCreery, Klaus Mohr of the Sudetendeutsches Archiv in Munich, Bengt von zur Mühlen of Chronos Films in Berlin, Eva Reinhold-Weisz of Böhlau Verlag in Vienna, Elisabeth Ruge of the Berlin Verlag in Berlin, Thomas Urban of the Herder Institut in Marburg, Mrs C. Skinner at Eton College, Manfred Grieger and Ulrike Gutzmann at Volkswagen in Vienna.

My thanks are due to the staffs of the British Library and the German Historical Institute. At John Murray I am grateful to my editor Roland Philipps, to Caro Westmore and Rowan Yapp, to Douglas Matthews, for making me yet another exemplary index; and to Peter James, whose demanding questions sent me back to my books over and over again.

I would also like to thank my family for their patience, especially in the last days when my body was over-charged with adrenalin and I was able to think and talk of little else.

Giles MacDonogh

London, October 2006

Chronology