Evening star., 1945-05-20

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Germans, he says, have always led
strictly private lives. immured in
universities and studies. Germans
in public life, on the other hand,
have consistently made aggression
their profession. Between the two
worlds, state and spirit, there has
been a complete cleavage, with the
condition that, when the state did
step into the cloister with evil COM
mands the good" men there, the in
tellectuals and philosophers, obeyed.
So there is no group, he says, with
both the morality and the backbone
which will be needed to carry Ger
man leadership through the period
of reformation.
United Nations Supervisors
What can be done? DR.. Ludwig
believes that the United Nations will
have to build on the old German
habit of obeying uniforms. There
will have to be set up United Ma
tions supervisors to every aspect of
German life, and these men, if they
are to be respected, will have to use
tough German manners. 1t sounds
like an odd formula for teaching
democracy, but DR.. Ludwig warns
against anything less drastic. If we
use what We think of as fair play,
he says, his countrymen will take
that as mere stupidity and fear. If
they aren't allowed to goosestep into
freedom, they won't go. That is his
view of it.
He is somewhat careless about his
factS-aS he always is He tells us,
for instance, that no German schol-
ars resigned their university posts in
protest against Nazi teachings. That
thousands went into concentration
camps for their convictions is some
thing which he does not mention.
At the same time, he is intriguingly
amusing in some of his suggestions.
On the matter of the much-mooted
"re-education," for example, he pro-
poses that German teachers be al
lowed to resume their jobs, but with
a uniformed United Nations super
visor in every lecture room.
A Plea for Trust
DR.. Koch-Wesers book pleads for
a more merciful treatment. A good
part of it is given over to review
ing the history of the republic
denying the now frequently heard
charge that the general staff began
preparing for new war long in
advance of Hitler. The picture
which the book presents is of a
government trying in good faith to
turn over a new leaf. The failure
came, it tells us, only from the
world wide depression, which
created large unemployed class
and so provided Hitler with the
needed malcontentS for a party.
The book, therefore, is a plea for
trust in new republican Ger
many to be administered by good
Germans. One feels the authors
perfect sincerity but one also sus-
poets that he may not have been
the kind of man to recognize vii
lainy.
On one point, however, he and
DR.. Ludwig are in near agreement
and that is as to the future of the
Jews in relation to the Germans.
Both take dark view. Dr. Ludwig
says that Jews must not try to live
in Germany again, at least for cen
turies. DR.. Koch-Weser does not go
so far but warns the Jewish victims
of the Nazis against trying to exact
vengeance or taking an active part
in the postwar regime. DR.. Lud-
wig is a Jew himself and DR.. Koch
Weser fell under the Nazi ban
by having one Jewish grandparent.
6oth were refugees. The similarity
Of their views on this point is i'm
pressive.
Put side by side, these two books
offer fairly typical demonstra-
lion of the two prevailing schools
of thought-that of the hard peace
and that Of the soft. Both aim at
making suggestions for the end of
reforming and re-establishing Ger
many, but they see different-even
opposing-means.
Mr.. Maxi, tackling the postwar