Beaten But Not Defeated

by Merilyn Moos

  That she did return marks, I suggest, her final acknowledgement that Siegi was the person she was going to settle down with, an acknowledgement however which, from the little she told me, was based as much on weariness as love. I did ask her why she came back, rather than finally completing her degree. (The US was still holding an essentially isolationist position so there was no reason for her, at her third attempt, not to finally finish her studies.) ‘I couldn’t start again,’ she said. ’You do under-stand?’

  One personal complication, which falls outside this story, was the arrival in the UK of Lotte’s niece. R., who had come over from Berlin on the Kindertransport early in 1939, aged nine. It had been Siegi, as far as one can judge from the heart-breaking letters from Lotte’s parents, R’s grandparents (who were looking after R.) who had negotiated for R. to reach safety here. Siegi and Lotte accepted ultimate responsibility, but Siegi would not have realised, I suspect, that Lotte would not be around when R. arrived. Fairly soon after Lotte returned, both she and Siegi were interned, Lotte either imprisoned or interned for close on a year. The young German girl was moved around from one place to another and when she finally became unhappy, it seems it was Siegi who finally succeeded in retrieving her. She lived with Siegi and Lotte for most of the last years of the war and until she went off to College in 1947.

  The risk and reality of internment, 1940

  Along with so many émigrés, Siegi’s time at the Institute was not an entirely happy one. There was a real risk of internment and even of deportation.

  Altogether, during the course of World War Two, around 25,000 German-speaking men, i.e. not just from Germany, and maybe 400 women, Jewish and/or anti-Nazis, were interned for varying periods in British prisons and internment camps (Brinson, 2003).173 Kushner (1989) suggests that one factor behind internment was the growing antisemitism in the 1930s.174 Anti-alien prejudice was incited by several newspapers which had been pro-appeasement and soft on Fascism, and which were to the fore in suggesting that many refugees were really Gestapo agents (Calder, 1980).175 The Joint Intelligence Committee supported by the British Minister at the Hague, Sir Neville Bland, was quick to proclaim their fears of a Fifth Column (Calder, 1980).

  But Brinson and Dove (2014) present an alternative emphasis. Antisemtism, they argue, was commonplace in the 1930s; what motivated MI5 in particular, and the Home Office to a significantly lesser degree, in the policy of internment was their crusade against Communism and Communists, Jewish or otherwise. Kell (whom we have already encountered), then the head of MI5, even came up with the analysis that German and Soviet intelligence were collaborating, a position not supported by the Home Office (Brinson and Dove, 2014).

  It had not been the original intention of the British government to introduce mass internment partly because so many of the refugees, certainly up till 1938, were different varieties of political opponents of Nazism and/or victims of antisemitism, not people likely to be rooting for the Nazis. But as the Nazi jack-boot subjugated most of Europe, the Home Office changed its mind (Brinson, 2003). Decisions on internment were taken at 120 Tribunals who considered 73,800 cases, three-quarters refugees. Only a few hundreds were put in Class A, to be interned immediately, 64,200 went into Class C, who were not seen as a security risk, although, as with Siegi, this could still lead to internment. Some B’s were interned, others not. There appears to have been randomness to these decisions (Calder, 1980).176

  In 1940, there were approximately 1000 ‘aliens’ in Oxford, of whom 477 were from enemy countries (Weindling from The Times, 25.5.1940).177 Oxford University briefly demanded their blanket internment. The level of hysteria was acute. A reflection of the atmosphere at the time was that refugees were excluded from working in university hospitals, on the grounds they might have contact with military casualties; the Registrar was worried that ‘aliens’ in laboratories might blow the whole place up, and opined that ‘enemy aliens’ might commit sabotage and therefore should be excluded from all [university] departments (from letter from Registrar to Vice Chancellor, 25.5.1940 from Weindling). He contacted the Home Office (21.5.1940), expressing his concern about sabotage and asking ‘when the comb-out of aliens is going to begin’. At exactly the same time, Oxford’s chief constable, afraid of German invasion in May 1940, was of the opinion that special security measures should be applied, a position supported in the same article in the Times (25.5.1940).

  Weindling argues that the Home Office helped to diffuse the tensions, after the Registrar in July 1940 softened his line to argue the Home Office could assist the harmless and academically useful. At this prompt, the Home Office suggested a series of alien gradings for academics at Oxford, which was later introduced by Oxford University’s own Vice Chancellor’s committee, ranging from 1-3 depending on usefulness and level of risk in July 1940. The ‘C’ class was later applied to interned German and Austrian academics on 1.8. 1940.

  Siegi’s residence permit had been renewed on the basis of his job at the Institute. But, although the Oxford Refugees Tribunal found in late October 1939 that he - and Lotte - should be exempted from internment (McCloughlin), in 1940, after the fall of France, Siegi, along with Burchardt and many outstanding economists were interned as ‘enemy aliens’. A furious Keynes intervened on their behalf with the Home Secretary (Hagerman).

  In fact, Siegi along with only five other aliens out of the forty odd Oxford ‘alien’ academics listed (Weindling from SPSL 129/1 University of Oxford UA CQ/11/17file 1) were categorised as class 1, the most reliable and important group.178 Class 1 referred to aliens ‘engaged in work directly related to the war effort’. In fact, there was significant criticism from some Oxford dons of how few names were allowed into Class 1, and RG Collingwood protested at the irony of those fleeing to find freedom being interned (Weindling UA/CQ 11 /17).

  Siegi and his work achieved the highest rank! Yet, if one follows Weindling, Siegi would not appear an obvious choice for Class 1 - the University committee was suspicious of younger men because of the instability of their allegiances - and though Siegi was by now 36, this still was likely to be seen in academic circles as bordering on ‘youth’. The Committee also had a preference for men with good honours degrees in science and medicine which could be put to use - my father had no degree and knew no science (UA CQ/17/11 file 1). Nonetheless of the six men in Class 1, three were statisticians. Siegi’s work on the economic problem of mobilising resources for war purposes and the distribution of scarce resources must have been seen as being of national importance. This categorisation is testimony to his success in being seen as a safe pair of hands.

  Siegi was interned on the 22 July 1940, roughly at the time the University Committee put him into a Class 1 category. The effect, according to Weindling, of being a Class I, was that the university would intercede most forcefully on your behalf to ensure speedier release. Apparently, release from internment was followed by an invitation to tea with the Registrar and an offer of further assistance. I wonder what my father’s response was to that! The Institute independently also threw their weight behind Siegi’s demand to be released (letter from Bowley, 22.8.1940, in personal possession).

  In fact, Siegi did not have a ‘bad’ internment. According to him, he was sent to a camp in the Highlands (apparently via a stop-over in a disused mill in Derbyshire, according to a letter from Andrews, 26.6.66).179 Within days of his arrival, the High Command, my father told me, had realised their mistake (maybe because he was about to become an economic advisor to De Gaulle) and insisted Siegi join them at the High Table. ‘I would much have preferred to be with the rest of the men on the floor,’ he told me. ‘I couldn’t bear the High Table’s airs and graces.’ A few key émigrés, in particular Marschak, however reacted more adversely to being interned and headed out to stay forever in the US. Siegi was let out after only just over two months on the 3 October 1940, so was held for a slightly shorter time than the average 3 months, and a far shorter time than Lotte, presumably after the intervention of Oxf
ord.

  Siegi was put under further strain when Lotte’s recent past caught up with her. In March, 1940, the Aliens Department of the Home Office declared Lotte to be a Soviet agent ‘who should not remain at liberty’. Lotte was picked up instantly and taken to Holloway Prison. The speed and severity is more remarkable as far fewer women than men were suspected or interned. (This has mostly to do with gender stereotypes.) MI5 had been given the power to arrest all persons on its security list, though their concern was ostensibly more with potential Nazi sympathisers, than possible Soviet agents. Lotte insisted she did not know what she was being accused of. Indeed, she had good grounds for her ‘confusion’. The first group of MI5 suspects ‘included possibly as many anti-Nazis and Jews as it did genuine Nazis‘ (Brinson 2003).

  The reasons for Lotte’s imprisonment in Holloway and then Internment lie in her visit to Krivitsky in the US whom she suspected correctly might know about Brian (McCloughlin). What she did not know was that Krivitsky had become an important agent for the British and suspected her - and other Communists, such as Kuczynski - of being a spy for the USSR and dangerous. It seems likely that Lotte never knew why she had been arrested, though her letters from prison (which she knew could well be read by the authorities) praised how she was being treated. Her imprisonment came only seven years since she had fled Germany and four years after she had escaped her ‘confinement’ in the USSR. She had had an eventful - and paranoia inducing - few years.

  Siegi was allowed to visit Lotte once a fortnight for thirty minutes, on receipt of a visiting order from her personally. This involved visiting war-time London from Oxford, which would have required careful arranging. He - again - mounts a campaign to get her released from Holloway, revealed in their almost daily letters - which suggest they are now fully reconciled (in personal possession).

  We have Lotte’s many letters from this time. They are largely to do with the day-to-day trials of existence first in prison, then in the Isle of Man, rather than with what Siegi is doing or any political issues. There is however evident concern that Siegi or she might be sent on to Canada or Australia, as thousands were who were interned (especially if Communists or suspected Communists, though there is no indication Lotte or Siegi knew that). The impression overall is that Siegi stuck faithfully and patiently to Lotte through a lot of thick and thin.

  This time, Siegi’s campaigning on Lotte’s behalf was successful. Lotte was found not to be a high security risk and sent on to Port St Mary on the Isle of Man in early June and released in November (McCloughlin), having been forcibly kept away from home for eight months.

  It is arguably at this point, when Siegi and Lotte had both been released from internment and become central in the care of Lotte’s niece, R., that they first started to feel that Britain was becoming their home.

  Die Zeitung

  Siegi became a contributor to Die Zeitung between 1941 and 1944. This was almost certainly as a result of Siegi knowing Johannes Uhlig, pseudonym of Peter Conrad, a left wing German Social Democrat who had been the economics editor on the prestigious German daily, Frankfurter Zeitung, and who co-founded and was a member of the editorial board of Die Zeitung. Siegi will have known Uhlig as a fellow statistician at Oxford.

  Die Zeitung was founded in January 1941, essentially supported by the British Government, in the form of the Ministry of Information (Abbey, 1995).180 Its political provenance, beyond appealing to anti-Nazi German speakers in the UK and consolidating pro-British feeling, was broad, and open to dispute. A German paper for German speaking exiles had been mooted ever since 1938 when German refugees had started to arrive here in any numbers. There is some debate as to who set Die Zeitung up and for exactly what purposes but the support of the British government, both for its initial establishment and its - sometimes contested - continuation, was essential. It was presented as being essentially non-political, though resolutely anti-Nazi, a mechanism for giving German exiles in Britain some sort of united voice and, as the government saw it, helping to overcome the exiles sense of grievance at having been tuned into one sort or other of enemy alien. Further purposes were supposedly for distribution in the Reich, to influence neutral Germans to support the Allies, and for German POWs but it is not clear how far any of these aims was achieved.

  The government agreed on a run of 20,000 and that they would compensate the publisher in the likely event that subscriptions did not meet the cost of production (Abbey, 1995). Initially a four page daily, it was to become a twelve page - and probably more successful - weekly in early 1942 (Abbey, 1995). The Government laid down as a condition of its support that it had its ‘man’ on the team, who although he theoretically had the power to censor, seems to have operated more to curb excesses and even to try to resolve the very real acrimony with its German speaking political opponents (Abbey, 1995). Die Zeitung ended with the end of the war.

  Its small editorial team, including Uhlig, included many who had held positions of significance and responsibility in Germany pre-Nazis, with a tendency therefore amongst some towards conservatism. There was some ambiguity as to how far this team saw itself as providing some sort of mechanism for uniting all anti-Nazi forces and providing some form of alternative leadership in exile. There seems to have been some quite bitter disagreements about such a grand aim on the editorial board, and some of the Social Democrats withdrew. The Social Democrats may also have feared - wrongly - that Die Zeitung might become a vehicle for Communists, carrying on an old and deeply felt unwillingness to collaborate. The Communists, after the collapse of the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1940, did indeed want to write for Die Zeitung but were firmly rebuffed.181 The Foreign Office had stipulated that the paper should not become too revolutionary (Abbey, 1995) but it seems unlikely that the editorial team needed reminding of that!

  Die Zeitung was criticised by its left opponents because Lothar and Haffner, two of the leading members of the editorial team, had left Germany ‘late’, i.e., 1936 and 1938 respectively (Abbey, 1995) and were therefore not seen as proper anti-Nazis. Lothar’s defended himself in the New Statesman, a definitively left though non-aligned weekly (quoted by Abbey, 1995, from the New Statesman 3.5.1941) ‘German Social Democratic Party…do not like us. Why? I do not know. Perhaps because some of us hold socialistic views without belonging to any ‘party’ or ‘group.’ Lothar’s use of the New Statesman, confirms his willingness to be identified as on the left.

  Many of the contributors to the paper were socialists (Palmier, 2006) and there was ‘space’ for a non-aligned left, such as Siegi (and Lotte). Uhlig worked alongside Hans Lothar, another of the moving spirits behind Die Zeitung’s establishment and who became in effect its editor till his death (Abbey, 1995). Siegi was invited to write for the paper’s economics page, presumably through Uhlig. (After the war, Uhlig made a new career for himself writing economics articles for German newspapers (Abbey, 1995).)

  Siegi would have been careful about the company he was in and would not have wanted to write for either a CP dominated journal or one controlled by the British government. Maybe Siegi’s willingness to write for Die Zeitung and their willingness to take his articles was because of Lothar’s unaligned but left leaning politics, despite the paper being backed by the Government and with an essentially conservative editorial Board. Moreover, the editorial board’s continuing refusal to allow CP writers would have reassured Siegi. As with his work for the Free French, it seems likely that Siegi saw his role on Die Zeitung to do with carrying on, as best he could given his limited opportunities, with the anti-Nazi struggle.

  Lotte, released from the Isle of Man in late 1940, was writing for them by 1941. In effect, she was first imprisoned by the Government and then wrote for them, it is the case that the position of a leading MI5 member was that ‘alien refugees […are] likely to be useful for us for propaganda purposes in times of war᾿ and for whom exemption from internment could be considered (Brinson and Dove, 2014).182 While this can only be conjecture, I have often wondered whether so
me sort of ‘deal’ was done. Siegi and Lotte must have both taken the longer view and understood the paper’s significance. Lotte, pen-name Maria Lehmann, wrote a series of short stories, some of which were much praised. Siegi, pen-name Alfred Lehmann, concentrated on a variety of economic issues, such as the importance of silver, allied shipping, S. American economies and much else besides.

  Siegi’s many economic articles, written over about three years, are notable for being so politically unremarkable - this was the work of an economist wanting to do his bit for the war effort, not that of a revolutionary. Both he and Lotte stopped writing before the end of the war, as a result, I suspect, first of Lotte’s - almost fatal - illness, and in 1944, my birth.

  Siegi’s writings 1938-1947

  Hidden away in Siegi and Lotte’s London home, were the typed drafts of a number of political articles, none of which seem to ever have been published, written during the War about the future of the world and of socialism. Though not dated, their content strongly suggests they were written when the outcome of the War was still uncertain. Here Siegi is attempting to build up an alternative political philosophy to ‘the God that failed’. He is still actively pursuing his commitment to socialism. The articles bear no resemblance to the neo-Keynesian economic work he is being paid for at the time.

  The articles suggest that Siegi did not consider an outright German victory likely but, with a profound awareness of the collaborationist tendencies in sections of the British ruling class, did not entirely rule out some sort of peace deal between the West and the Nazis. Some of his writings have the pessimistic tone associated with James Burnham and, later, Orwell in which Siegi feared the world might be divided between a number of quasi-authoritarian regimes.