The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-08-07
Liberal Viewpoint
by DIR. HARRY ELMER BARNES

4
TN 1917 military idol Of the German people
l. was portrayed in entente countries and the
United States as a brute little better than a
gorilla In 1884 his death stirred the respect and
sympathy Of peoples even in former allied states,
| more deeply than the passing Of any other war
time figure save possibly Albert of Belgium. Such
was the trick of history and fate in the case OF
Marshal Paul Won Findenburg
Shortly after the United States entered the
World war, I was in an audience at a great
| popular meeting held at Columbia university and
| listened to a speech made by a former Amer
lean girl who had married Polish nObleman.
She had entertained, under threat Of force so
she said the famous field marshal when the
victorious German troops entered Warsaw.
She portrayed Won Hndenburg as a sodden
and brutal giant with the morals Of guinea pig
| and the chiyalry of a hog. The picture was one
of unrelieved brutality and vulgarity. 1t made
a tremendous impression on me and believed
it at the time.
This attitude toward Won Hindenburg was
not far from that which prevailed during the
DAYS when the allied war propaganda and pa
triotic lies prevailed. Postcards actually pic
lures of the latest Russian pogrom against the
Jews before the war, depicted helpless women
and children shot down IN heaps III PoASh tehe-
ments and alleys
Even when Won Hindenburg was elected
president of Germany in 1925 Americans re-
garded it as ominous. The best that even those
friendly to Germany could say was that the folly
and vindictiveneSs Of the allies had received its
appropriate and natural response from Ger
many So fragile did the preliminary verdict OF
history prove.
IF at any future time the career OF Won Hin
i denburg is used to point a moral for youth,
he will stand out perhaps above all other persons
in human history as the man who was ready
At least I can think of nobody else, not even a
scientific specialist who devoted a long lifetime
so laboriously and exclusively to a single end,
namely, to master geography of the Masurlan
lake area, the key to the defense of east Prussia
against any Russian invasion of Germany.
Paul Won Hindenburg was born in Posen in
1847 and spent his whole life from boyhood as a
soldier. Becoming a cadet in 1864, he gave his
first blood for Germany at the Battle Of Sadowa
in 1866 when Bismarck crushed Austria and took
the first step toward German unity He served
in the Franco-PrusSian war four years later and
was present at the French collapse at Sedan
He entered the War academy at Berlin and
spent the next forty years as daily student OF
military science He boosted that after the
Franco-Prussian war he never had read book
outside his speciality. Taking a military post at
Konigsberg in east Prussia in the '80s he began
his thirty years of concentration on the swamps
and boys of the MaSurian lakes
WON HINDENBURG was a sober and devoted
| ' student of military affairs. He wasted no
| nights IN typlcal army SpreeS or gafnDlng, DuG
spent the hours in porting over maps of the
lake area. He constantly travelled over the re-
gion and supplemented his map knowledge by
| personal observation. With friends and COM
panions he trampled over boys and through un-
derbrush driving imaginary Russians before him.
In time he directed the annual maneuvers Of
the army in this area and rehearSed many times
| for the great drama of Trannenbarg.
And then in the end it seemed that his
dream of defending the Fatherland never would
be realized. In 1911 he retired from active serv-
ice, but continued even more zealously his per-
| sOnal travels over the MaSurian lake region, on
foot, horseback and in motor car. There was
not square yard that he did not know
whether it would support duck, man, horse or
cannon
During this period of three years retirement
he also saved Germany from disaster in 1914 by
fiercely opposing and defeating a project to
drain and reclaim the Masurian swamps Had
this been carried out it would have facilitated
| the passage of the Russians and hampered Won
Hindenburgs strategy.
An old man of 81, Hindenburg ready
but not eXpectant when Prinzip's pistol at
Sarajevo on st. Vitus' day, 1914 set off the
world confagration.