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.Subsequently Military Government officials reported privatelythat they were again having trouble in getting Germans to takeresponsible administration positions.*Unfortunately for the democratic cause, when some Germanworkers at Essen were arrested by the British for their refusal todismantle the Bochum Iron and Steel Works, or to permit its beingdismantled, there was no such powerful popular support for themas the Communists had organized for their leader, Max Reimann.They were sent to jail unheralded and unsung.Nor did the Social-Democrat trade-union leaders do anything effective to prevent theuse of British troops to compel the Bochum workers to give way,after the British had announced, on January 5, 1949, that therewill be sufficient British troops standing by to insure that the jobwill start, and that if the Bochumer Verein workers try to interferethis time, we are prepared to take counter measures. A year earlier, in January 1948, the Social-Democratic leaders inthe British zone had been intimidated by the double threat ofstarvation and British tanks into preventing the general strike de-manded by the rank and file.The Ruhr workers had been literallystarving that winter of 1947-48 when for a long period the dailyration had been reduced to 800-900 calories, which is less thanthe Nazis gave their concentration camp victims.Finally the tradeunion leaders had been called into a conference by the Ministerof Food of North-Rhine Westphalia and told that there were only3,000 tons of fat in the whole Ruhr area.The question was whether* New York Times, February 4, 1949. 146 THE HIGH COST OF VENGEANCEto divide it so as to give a four-week fat ration to the miners, onwhose labors all industry depended, or to give each worker anounce a month for two months.The trade-union leaders had refused to decide this awful ques-tion.Then the Minister of Food, having referred the decision tothe Economic Council at Frankfurt, was told that even the 3,000tons did not exist that in the whole of North-Rhine Westphaliathere was only 460 tons of fat, which constituted a bare week ssupply for the miners if no other Germans received any fat at all.In this desperate situation an appeal was made to Bavaria, whichcame through and supplied some fats. If we had allowed a general strike as was demanded by a thirdof the Ruhr workers, one trade union official said to me, the lastpossibility of acquiring fats would have been destroyed by the stop-page of transport. We told the workers the truth, he continued, and asked themto continue working without any fat ration.We prevented riotsbelieving that if they occurred, the British would have used tanks,and there was a real danger that the Russians would then havecome as our liberators from Anglo-American tyranny.Anythingwas preferable to that. In that terrible month of January 1948 Boekler had told theBritish and American authorities that they had better use theirtroops to get food from the German peasants, rather than sendtheir tanks against the Ruhr workers.It was hard in the Ruhr to resist the conclusion that by theirlaw-abiding nature, their pacifism, and the mixture of respect, trust,and fear with which they regarded the British Labour Government,the German Social Democrats had indeed made themselves ap-pear to be quislings.As in the late twenties, they were losing popu-lar support and preparing the way for their own demise.If most of the Ruhr s trade-union and Social-Democratic leadersappeared to have learned no more than the Occupation Powersfrom the tragic history of the past thirty years, the same could notbe said of other Social-Democratic leaders in Germany.In anearlier chapter I have spoken of the clear-sighted and courageousBerlin Socialists.The views of Carlo Schmidt, the Social-Demo-cratic leader from the French zone, offered a similar contrast.Carlo Schmidt is an outstanding personality.The son of aFrench mother and a German father, he combines Teutonicstrength and determination with Gallic wit and fire, and love of GERMAN DEMOCRACY BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS 147life and beauty.A poet, a philosopher, and a professor of interna-tional law, as well as an eloquent speaker, Carlo Schmidt is too wellknown in the European literary world, and too influential, for theFrench to dare imprison him.Lesser German heroes of the re-sistance against French tyranny are summarily disposed of by theSûreté.But Carlo Schmidt, who ruled a French province duringthe days of the German occupation, and achieved an enviable rep-utation for justice and fair dealing and courage in protecting theFrench from the Gestapo, is a man who can neither be smeared noreasily repressed.I met Carlo Schmidt first in October 1948 in Bonn, where hewas a delegate to the Parliamentary council endeavoring to ham-mer out a Constitution for Western Germany.In late NovemberI met him again in Berlin where he had come to help his Social-Democratic colleagues in the elections.On both occasions I wasimpressed, not only by his intelligence and understanding of theproblems of our time, but also by his humanity and freedom fromclass, racial, or national prejudices.Like Ernst Reuter of Berlin,and unlike most of the Socialists I met in the Ruhr, Carlo Schmidtrepresents a new, nondoctrinaire, Socialist movement, which ismore liberal than socialist, more concerned with the preservation offreedom and the basic values of Western civilization than witheconomic theories [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.Subsequently Military Government officials reported privatelythat they were again having trouble in getting Germans to takeresponsible administration positions.*Unfortunately for the democratic cause, when some Germanworkers at Essen were arrested by the British for their refusal todismantle the Bochum Iron and Steel Works, or to permit its beingdismantled, there was no such powerful popular support for themas the Communists had organized for their leader, Max Reimann.They were sent to jail unheralded and unsung.Nor did the Social-Democrat trade-union leaders do anything effective to prevent theuse of British troops to compel the Bochum workers to give way,after the British had announced, on January 5, 1949, that therewill be sufficient British troops standing by to insure that the jobwill start, and that if the Bochumer Verein workers try to interferethis time, we are prepared to take counter measures. A year earlier, in January 1948, the Social-Democratic leaders inthe British zone had been intimidated by the double threat ofstarvation and British tanks into preventing the general strike de-manded by the rank and file.The Ruhr workers had been literallystarving that winter of 1947-48 when for a long period the dailyration had been reduced to 800-900 calories, which is less thanthe Nazis gave their concentration camp victims.Finally the tradeunion leaders had been called into a conference by the Ministerof Food of North-Rhine Westphalia and told that there were only3,000 tons of fat in the whole Ruhr area.The question was whether* New York Times, February 4, 1949. 146 THE HIGH COST OF VENGEANCEto divide it so as to give a four-week fat ration to the miners, onwhose labors all industry depended, or to give each worker anounce a month for two months.The trade-union leaders had refused to decide this awful ques-tion.Then the Minister of Food, having referred the decision tothe Economic Council at Frankfurt, was told that even the 3,000tons did not exist that in the whole of North-Rhine Westphaliathere was only 460 tons of fat, which constituted a bare week ssupply for the miners if no other Germans received any fat at all.In this desperate situation an appeal was made to Bavaria, whichcame through and supplied some fats. If we had allowed a general strike as was demanded by a thirdof the Ruhr workers, one trade union official said to me, the lastpossibility of acquiring fats would have been destroyed by the stop-page of transport. We told the workers the truth, he continued, and asked themto continue working without any fat ration.We prevented riotsbelieving that if they occurred, the British would have used tanks,and there was a real danger that the Russians would then havecome as our liberators from Anglo-American tyranny.Anythingwas preferable to that. In that terrible month of January 1948 Boekler had told theBritish and American authorities that they had better use theirtroops to get food from the German peasants, rather than sendtheir tanks against the Ruhr workers.It was hard in the Ruhr to resist the conclusion that by theirlaw-abiding nature, their pacifism, and the mixture of respect, trust,and fear with which they regarded the British Labour Government,the German Social Democrats had indeed made themselves ap-pear to be quislings.As in the late twenties, they were losing popu-lar support and preparing the way for their own demise.If most of the Ruhr s trade-union and Social-Democratic leadersappeared to have learned no more than the Occupation Powersfrom the tragic history of the past thirty years, the same could notbe said of other Social-Democratic leaders in Germany.In anearlier chapter I have spoken of the clear-sighted and courageousBerlin Socialists.The views of Carlo Schmidt, the Social-Demo-cratic leader from the French zone, offered a similar contrast.Carlo Schmidt is an outstanding personality.The son of aFrench mother and a German father, he combines Teutonicstrength and determination with Gallic wit and fire, and love of GERMAN DEMOCRACY BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS 147life and beauty.A poet, a philosopher, and a professor of interna-tional law, as well as an eloquent speaker, Carlo Schmidt is too wellknown in the European literary world, and too influential, for theFrench to dare imprison him.Lesser German heroes of the re-sistance against French tyranny are summarily disposed of by theSûreté.But Carlo Schmidt, who ruled a French province duringthe days of the German occupation, and achieved an enviable rep-utation for justice and fair dealing and courage in protecting theFrench from the Gestapo, is a man who can neither be smeared noreasily repressed.I met Carlo Schmidt first in October 1948 in Bonn, where hewas a delegate to the Parliamentary council endeavoring to ham-mer out a Constitution for Western Germany.In late NovemberI met him again in Berlin where he had come to help his Social-Democratic colleagues in the elections.On both occasions I wasimpressed, not only by his intelligence and understanding of theproblems of our time, but also by his humanity and freedom fromclass, racial, or national prejudices.Like Ernst Reuter of Berlin,and unlike most of the Socialists I met in the Ruhr, Carlo Schmidtrepresents a new, nondoctrinaire, Socialist movement, which ismore liberal than socialist, more concerned with the preservation offreedom and the basic values of Western civilization than witheconomic theories [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]