Exorcising Hitler

by Frederick Taylor

  24 NA Kew FO 371/55436 Denazification Measures: Meetings of Denazification Committee 1946. Monday, 4 March 1946.

  25 NA Kew FO 371/55436 Denazification Measures: Meetings of Denazification Committee Appendix ‘A’ to SCD/P(46)30 dated 23 May 1946, Denazification of Legal Profession.

  26 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 60.

  27 For this account of the demobilisation process and the condition of the army in early 1946 see Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, pp. 223–4.

  28 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 61.

  29 Clay personal to Hilldring, 8 December 1945, in Smith, ed., The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, vol. I, p. 130.

  30 See Schnatz, Tiefflieger über Dresden: Legende oder Wirklichkeit?, pp. 145f., ‘Ursachen der Legendenbildung’.

  31 The role of Neumann and the quote ‘Nuremberg of the Common Man’ (Jörg Friedrich’s phrase) appears in Olick, In the House of the Hangman, p. 119. For the involvement of Marcuse as well as Neumann see Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, pp. 23–5. See also Barry M. Katz, ‘The Criticism of Arms: The Frankfurt School Goes to War’, in Journal of Modern History, vol. 59, no. 3 (September 1987), pp. 439–78.

  32 Mark Blumenson, Patton: The Man Behind the Legend 1885–1945, p. 281.

  33 Grossmann, Jews, Germans and Allies, p. 138.

  34 Blumenson, Patton: The Man Behind the Legend, p. 281.

  35 Ibid., p. 282.

  36 Report of Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE), cited in Grossmann, Jews, Germans and Allies, p. 140.

  37 See Joseph W. Bendersky, The Jewish Threat: Anti-Semitic Politics of the US Army, p. 391. And for the following information about Keating’s memorandum.

  38 Clare, Berlin Days, p. 152. And for the major’s further remarks.

  11 PERSIL WASHES WHITE

  1 NARA College Park RG 260 390/47/19/1 Box 168 Records of the Office of Military Government, Bavaria, Weekly Intelligence Reports 1945–47 Intelligence Annex to Weekly Report for Period 8–15 Nov 45, p.5.

  2 NARA College Park, as above, pp. 7f.

  3 NARA College Park, as above, p. 12.

  4 Account of conference in Koop, Besetzt: Amerikanische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland, p. 111.

  5 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 64.

  6 Military Government Information Bulletin Number 64/21 October 1946, p.27.

  7 See Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p.72.

  8 Ibid., p. 73.

  9 Ibid., p. 69.

  10 NARA College Park RG 260 390/47/19/1 Box 168 Records of the Office of Military Government, Bavaria, Weekly Intelligence Reports 1945–47 Periodic Report for Week Ending 28 August 1946, p. 18.

  11 Quoted from report, as above.

  12 Quoted in Olick, In the House of the Hangman, p. 183.

  13 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, pp. 191f. And for the poll figures.

  14 Ibid., p. 193.

  15 Ibid., p. 199.

  16 NARA College Park RG 260 390/47/15-16/6-3 Box 7 Public Safety 23 October–13 December 1946, Memorandum John P. Bradford to Mr Schweizer, 10 October 1946 Subject: Situation in Landkreis Vilsbiburg. And for the following quotation.

  17 NARA College Park, as above, Memorandum John P. Bradford to Mr Schweizer, 11 October 1946.

  18 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pp. 141f: ‘In 1936 . . . 62% of all German taxpayers reported annual incomes of less than 1,500 Reich marks, corresponding to weekly earnings of just over 30 Reich marks.’

  19 NARA College Park RG 260 390/47/15-16/6-3 Box 8 Denazification. Press conference of Bavarian government 22 June 1946.

  20 Military Government Information Bulletin Number 64/21 October 1946, p. 8 (cont. p. 27).

  21 Ibid., p. 27.

  22 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 73.

  23 NARA College Park RG 260 390/47/19/1 Box 168 Records of the Office of Military Government, Bavaria, Weekly Intelligence Reports 1945–47 Periodic Report for Week Ending 16 October 1946, p. 18.

  24 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 74.

  25 Figures in ibid., p. 81.

  26 NA Kew WO Elten (War Crimes) Trial Petitions. Translation of signed statement by Hans Renoth 12 July 1945.

  27 NA Kew WO 235/55, as above. Submission to C-in-C (2 pp.) and note initialled (illegible) by a brigadier of the Department of the Judge Advocate-General, 29 January 1946.

  28 See entry by Brian Bailey in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edition 2010.

  29 Law-Reports of Trials of War Criminals, The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Volume II, London, HMSO, 1947 (Case No. 10 . . . Trial of Josef Kramer and 44 Others) Part I p.4 B: THE CHARGE.

  30 Ibid., Foreword, p. x.

  31 Both quotations from lawyers’ remarks at the Bergen-Belsen trial from Bower, The Pledge Betrayed, p. 182.

  32 Law-Reports of Trials of War Criminals, The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Volume II, London, HMSO, 1947 Part XI, pp. 119f.

  33 Bower, The Pledge Betrayed, p. 187.

  34 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 87.

  35 See obituary of Sir Edward Playfair by Noel Annan in the Independent, 23 March 1999.

  36 Time magazine, 12 November 1945, ‘The Nations: Temperature Down’ (satirical rendering of British accent the magazine’s, not this author’s).

  37 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, pp. 89f.

  38 See entry by Michael Carver in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edition 2010.

  39 Noel Annan, Changing Enemies: The Defeat and Regeneration of Germany, p. 150.

  40 Ibid., p. 163.

  41 Koop, Besetzt: Britische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland, pp. 76f.

  42 Clare, Berlin Days, pp. 148f.

  43 Figures in Annan, Changing Enemies, p. 206.

  44 See the case of Paul Kistermann in the Aachen district 1946/47 in NA Kew FO 1013/303 Public Safety, Denazification (Farmers and Farm and Agricultural Workers), especially the report by Lt Col. C. H. Gilbert, Commander of North Rhine-Westphalia Regional Food Teams, to Regional Economic Officer, 22 March 1947, which details the lengthy history of this case.

  45 Koop, Besetzt: Britische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland, p. 77.

  46 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 109.

  47 Report by Ian Cobain in the Guardian, 17 December 2005: ‘The interrogation camp that turned prisoners into living skeletons’.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, pp. 100f.

  50 This volte-face seems to have been a conservative rather than a radical move by the British officials, who had become increasingly concerned about serious political and economic unrest in the Ruhr. The co-decision-making (Mitbestimmung) was in part designed to head off demands for wholesale nationalisation of the iron and steel industry. See Diethelm Prowe, ‘Economic Democracy in Post-World War II Germany: Corporatist Crisis Response, 1945–1948’, in Journal of Modern History, vol. 57, no. 3 (September 1985), pp. 451–82.

  51 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, pp. 103–5.

  52 Annan, Changing Enemies, p. 205.

  53 Ibid.

  54 For both quotes see Hansard online, HL Deb 12 November 1947 vol. 152 cc587-646. Lord Pakenham (1905–2001) later succeeded to the earldom of Longford. He served in Labour governments 1945–51 and 1964–8, but became especially well known to the general public in Britain for his quixotic campaigns, first against pornography and then for the release from prison of the serial child murderer Myra Hindley.

  12 DIVIDE AND RULE

  1 See John Young, ‘The Foreign Office, the French and the Post-War Division of Germany 1945-46’, in Review of International Studies, vol. 12, no. 3 (July 1986), p. 224.

  2 Koop, Besetzt: Französische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland, p. 181.

  3 Quotation from ibid., p. 183.

  4 See Kossert, Kalte Heimat, pp. 71–86, ‘Deutscher Rassismus gegen deutsche Vertri
ebene’.

  5 See Overmans, ‘Das Schicksal der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges’, in Müller, ed., Das Deutsche Reich, Band 10, Zweiter Halbband, p. 464, for the IRC figures and opinions, and an analysis of the official death figures, which are contradictory. Koop, in Besetzt: Französische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland, takes an uncharacteristically naive view of James Bacque’s work in this regard, describing it as belonging to an ‘independent study’ (whatever that means in this context) and giving credence to the Canadian writer’s sensational figure of between 167,000 and 300,000 – i.e. roughly one-fifth to one-third of all German prisoners of the French.

  6 Koop, Besetzt: Französische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland, p. 81.

  7 Ibid., pp. 120f.

  8 See Der Spiegel, 19/1970 4.5.1970, ‘Ist das nicht ein wüster Traum? Spiegel-Report über das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs 1945’.

  9 Interview with Dr Helmut Schnatz (born 1934), Koblenz, 11 June 2009.

  10 Interview with Helmut Nassen (born 1928), Koblenz, 11 June 2009.

  11 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 160.

  12 See interview with Egon Plönissen.

  13 See NARA College Park RG 260 390/47/15-16/6-3 Military Government of Bavaria Record of the Intelligence Director/Records of the office of Director Intelligence Records 1946 Box 7 Memorandum Major Peter J. Vacca to Brigadier General Walter J. Muller, Director, 19 April 1946. And depositions by Frau Franziska Rösner and Frau Elisabeth Schmidtbaur.

  14 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 158.

  15 Ibid., p. 164.

  16 Ibid., p. 182.

  17 Ibid., p. 181.

  18 Lutz Niethammer, ‘Schule der Anpassung: Die Entnazifizierung in den vier Besatzungszonen’, in Spiegel Special, 4/1995, p. 93.

  19 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 182.

  20 See Niethammer, ‘Schule der Anpassung’.

  21 Naimark, The Russians in Germany, p. 376. And for the following.

  22 See Der Spiegel, 40/1992, ‘Straflager: Vorhöfe zur Hölle’, pp. 77–9.

  23 Ibid., p. 81.

  24 Naimark, The Russians in Germany, p. 383.

  25 Ulrich Frodien, Um Kopf und Kragen: Eine Nachkriegsjugend, pp. 173ff.

  26 Interview with Joachim Trenkner.

  27 See Hermann Wentker, ed., Volksrichter in der SBZ / DDR 1945 bis 1952: Eine Dokumentation, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Bd 74, 1997, p. 10.

  28 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 137.

  29 Interview with Lothar Löwe.

  30 Ibid., p. 152.

  31 Ibid., p. 143.

  32 See Halder, ‘“Prüfstein . . . für die politische Lauterkeit der Führenden?”’.

  13 HOPE

  1 CC5797 Secret ‘Conditions in Germany’, 26 May 1946 From Clay to Chief of Staff, in Smith, ed., The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, vol. I, pp. 212–17. And for the following.

  2 John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History, pp. 28f.

  3 See Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, p. 108.

  4 For Stalin’s speech see Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History, p. 94.

  5 Kennan from Moscow, 26 January 1945, quoted in ibid., p. 106.

  6 Text of Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’, 22 February 1946, available online at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/

  episode-1/kennan.htm. (Some definite articles added by this author in lieu of cable’s abbreviations.)

  7 For the American response see Judt, Postwar, p. 110.

  8 Figures in ibid., pp. 120f.

  9 Ibid., p. 109.

  10 Clay to Echols, 19 July 1946 (letter), in Smith, ed., The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, vol. I, pp. 236–43.

  11 See Clay to Byrnes (handwritten letter), 19 August 1946, in ibid., p. 255. Clay and his wife had visited the Byrnes on 10–12 July in Paris, where the Secretary was slogging through yet another meeting of foreign ministers (which meant that Clay would have been directly familiar with Molotov’s manoeuvres). In the letter he thanked Byrnes for managing to ‘raise my spirits’ and for lending an ear to his local problems in Germany when the Secretary had the whole world picture to consider.

  12 Ibid., p. 237, n.2.

  13 From Clay personal to Schulgen, ibid., p. 247.

  14 See Time magazine, 16 September 1946, ‘Foreign Relations: Journey to Stuttgart’.

  15 James F. Byrnes, speech in Stuttgart, 6 September 1946. Available online at http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/ga4-

  460906.htm.

  16 See John Gimbel, ‘Byrnes’ Stuttgarter Rede und die amerikanische Nachkriegspolitik in Deutschland’, in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 20. Jahrgang, H. 1 (January 1972), pp. 39–62.

  17 Lucius D. Clay, quoted in Beschloss, The Conquerors, p. 227.

  18 From Clay for War Department, 16 September 1946, CC3769, in Smith, ed., The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay, vol. I, p. 263.

  EPILOGUE

  1 See article by Lars-Broder Keil in Die Welt, 6 August 2007: ‘Vor 75 Jahren wurde in Deutschland die erste Autobahn eingeweiht. Von Adenauer. Und Hitler hatte nichts damit zu tun’ (75 Years Ago in Germany the First Autobahn was Inaugurated. By Adenauer. And Hitler Had Nothing to Do With It).

  2 NA Kew FO 1013/701, ‘German Officials: Dr Adenauer’, Memorandum from (Sir) Charles Ferguson, General (retired), 10 July 1945. The writer of the letter (1865–1951) had gone on to be Governor-General of New Zealand.

  3 Annan, Changing Enemies, p. 172.

  4 Full text available at the website of Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik, http://www.hdg.de/lemo/html/

  dokumente/JahreDesAufbausInOstUndWest_erklaerungAdenauer

  Regierungserklaerung1949/index.html (in German).

  5 Kossert, Kalte Heimat, p. 171.

  6 Annan, Changing Enemies, p. 210.

  7 Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany, p. 210.

  8 Ibid., p. 211.

  9 Ibid., p. 212.

  10 Herausg. Norbert Frei, Hitlers Eliten nach 1945, p. 278.

  11 Manchester, The Arms of Krupp, p. 780.

  12 For the post-war careers of the IG executives see Jeffreys, Hell’s Cartel, pp. 346ff.

  13 Judt, Postwar, pp. 152f.

  14 See Frei, Hitlers Eliten nach 1945, p. 284, for Adenauer’s first memoranda of August 1950 regarding a possible ‘contribution to defence’ (Wehrbeitrag).

  15 Kossert, Kalte Heimat, p. 171.

  16 See in general ibid., pp. 266–305, ‘Die Abwicklung des Kriegsverbrecher­­­­-problems’.

  17 Quote from Schmid, ibid., pp. 299f.

  18 See ibid., p. 277.

  19 Frodien, Um Kopf und Kragen, pp. 180ff.

  20 Interview with Lothar Löwe, Berlin, 25.03.2008 (these words in English).

  21 Ibid.

  22 Ibid.

  23 For an account of this conference see Hans Dieter Müller, ‘Ich werde Deutschland wiedervereinigen, ob Sie es glauben oder nicht: Geschichte und Analyse des Springer-Konzerns’, part 1 in Der Spiegel, 3/1968 (15 January 1968).

  24 Figures in Der Spiegel, Nr 17/1968, pp. 44f.

  25 See Rudolf Augstein, ‘Ist der Staat noch zu retten?’ in Der Spiegel, 39/1967 (18 September 1967), a transcript of his lecture to the ‘Freie Gesellschaft’ of Hamburg at the Auditorium Maximum of the University of Hamburg, 7 September 1967.

  26 For Springer in 1967 see Ben Witter, ‘Mit Axel Springer am Wannsee’, in Die Zeit, 49/1967, and for his charm in the early days, see Clare, Berlin Days, pp. 159–60. Clare ended up working for Springer after he left the army, and stayed with Springer-International as the company’s UK representative until his retirement.

  27 See http://www.axelspringer.de/artikel/Unternehmens

  grundsaetze_40574.html (German) and http://www.axelspringer.

  de/en/artikel/Corporate-principles-for-a-liberal-world-view_40575.html (English). There are now five, with the reunification ambition replaced by one of German integration in Euro
pe, and since 11 September 2001 a clause specifically emphasising support for the transatlantic alliance with America.

  28 Judt, Postwar, pp. 271f.

  29 Ibid., p. 355.

  30 See Time 10 January 1955, ‘It just happened’. The full English title was ‘The Answers of Ernst von Salomon to the 131 Questions in the Allied Military Government “Fragebogen”’, translated by Constantine Fitzgibbon with a Preface by Goronwy Rees.

  31 See ‘Es war ein Kampf: Rudolf Augstein über die Spiegel-Affäre und ihre Folgen’, in Der Spiegel, 43/2002 (21 October 2002).

  32 Margaret Bourke-White, Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly: A Report on the Collapse of Hitler’s ‘Thousand Years’, p. 5.

  33 Cited in part 4 of the Spiegel series by Peter Brügge on the ‘new nationalism’ in Germany, ‘Rechts ab zum Vaterland’, in Der Spiegel, 21/1967 (15 May 1967).

  34 See the series in Der Spiegel about Axel Springer’s rise, entitled ‘Ich werde Deutschland wiedervereinigen, ob Sie es glauben oder nicht’, in Der Spiegel, 3–8/1968.

  A Note on the Author

  Frederick Taylor was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School, read History and Modern Languages at Oxford and did postgraduate work at Sussex University. He is the author of the acclaimed bestsellers Dresden and The Berlin Wall, both of which have appeared in many languages, and also edited and translated The Goebbels Diaries 1939–1941. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives in Cornwall.

  By the Same Author

  Dresden

  The Berlin Wall

  Copyright © 2011 by Frederick Taylor

  Maps by John Gilkes

  Excerpts from Wladimir Gelfand, Deutschland-Tagebuch 1945–1946: Aufzeichnungen eines Rotarmisten.

  A. d. Russischen von Anja Lutter und Hartmut Schröder © Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 2005

  Excerpt from Noel Annan, Changing Enemies, copyright © 1995 Noel Annan. Reproduced by permission