GERMANY IN DEFEAT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25851, 23 May 1945, Page 4

GERMANY IN DEFEAT

ENIGMA FOR CONQUERORS LITTLE SIGN OF CONTRITION By James Lansdale Hodson LONDON, May 2. Thirty miles from Bremen, Germany. I have been in Germany four days, have flown over parts of it and motored 400 miles visiting, among other places, Munster, Wesel, Osnabruck, and the concentration camp at Belsen. There are two Germanys, indeed I daresay more than two. There is the Germany of the towns, dead, desolate, and bombed to a degree that we in England do not know. In these towns one is moved to say, “ One civilisation that was Hitler’s is ended—there is nothing left. Can we, the United Nations, establish another civilisation in its place?” But between those destroyed towns—at all events near the Rhine and between, let us say, Munster and Osnabruk—is what is called smiling and prosperous countryside. Indeed, if smiling is the term used, one could say this region of farms is laughing uproariously. I have never seen a lovelier countryside nor apparently a more prosperous and well-cultivated one with crops springing up, sleek cattle, and crowds of poultry. The spring sowing is done and it looks as though the harvest will be good. Harvest and After And yet what happens after this harvest? The crucial time for food in Germany, or so officials of the Military Government say to me, will come six months hence. The Ruhr has 4,000,000 people, and a large proportion of them may die of starvation next winter. For a smiling countryside has its problems too. Its land of old men and women and children and “ slave labour ” has dona a vast amount of work and that labour is dispersing. Some of it, true, is remaining, obeying the request to stay : on and ensure the harvest. But enormous numbers are trekking. One sees them in groups—Russians, wearing green jackets—the Germans made their garb—and besides these, Poles, Czechs. French, and others. Who can appraise their numbers or their intentions? Camps have been or are being established for them. One estimate says there are 8,000,000 of these folk and that 1,000.000 children have been born to them. A head official of the Military Government spoke of a new race of stateless people in Europe, and who shall say he was wrohg? For all tire exceptionally vast and difficult problems that- the Military Government has to wrestle with the Military Government Is, I think it is fair to say, inadequately staffed. This may be nobody's fault, but the tasks, are gigantic and the need for brains, materials and food infinite. Our purse is not bottomless. But it is laid down that the Military Government may employ Germans for menial tasks. Is shorthand-typing a menial task? The Americans are using German girls for this freely. We are not yet. Do we need to revise some of our ideas and quickly? Do we need to see afresh this problem of Germany in a. new perspective? I do not know; I merely put the question. Repercussions of Chaos I have not yet seen the Kuhr and Essen. Those who have say to me it iooks finished for a century. Probaoly it is noi, uut we can regard with small concern 2.000.UU0 iu the Ruhr dying. I do not imagine we do so regard it. I merely ask who knows the repercussions of this empty chaos in the middle of Europe. But again when one turns from that gloomy view to something factual, what surprises there are I Taxe Osnabr uck. Osnabruck is one of the few towns under British military government where some civil administration was still functioning when we took over. The Germans say three-fourths of Osnabruck's houses are uninhabitable. Nobody knows at tho moment just how true that is. But Osnabruck has 60.000 people left of its former 100,000. The head of the Military Government, when I saw him, said the health of the people was remarkably good, and that it would be remarkably good even on a peace-time standard. Only one or two small factories are working, and no amusements In the shape of concerts or theatres are allowed—no assembly except for religious worship. I sat in a hilly street in my car in the sun for over half-an-hour. and the German folk walking and strolling by, elderly, middle-aged and young folk looked astonishingly cheerful. Often they were smiling. They seemed well dressed and well nourished. They bore no signs of deep depression that they were invaded and conquered. You might have thought that many of them were on holiday, as, in a sense, they temporarily are. They showed no evidence that my car was there —they Ignored it. Are they friendly? The Military Government officials are divided on that; some say “Yes others say friendliness is wearing off for they see it is getting them nowhere. Add to that that an officer who has had to visit 30 burgomasters in that region said that all but two were friendly, and that usually the burgomaster pulled out a bottle of wine and wanted to shake hands. In this officers view a lot of those burgomasters—and some are old men of 60 to 80—might be farmers of Sussex or Yorkshire —seemingly without much guile and not politicians. One asks oneself: How accurate is that? You will observe that Germany to-day is a perplexing country.

Fraternisation Perplexities

How is non-fraternisation getting on? Perplexity here, too. The official view is that it is rigid and rigidly observed. But of course it is not- quite. How couid it be? There are those friendly burgomasters; there are soldiers left in billets while officers go off to duty, and sometimes there are pretty German girls cleaning those billets. An officer went back to his billet a day or two ago, and it was a German girl who called the batman. "John," she cried. There are German shorthand typists in American offices. There are the German policemen we are using to keep order here and there, usually auxiliary policemen —former butchers, bakers, and so forth. \ Human nature cannot indefinitely withstand human contacts. If the Germans behave themselves and act in a friendly and helpful way. the barrier will inevitably be broken here and there AS one officer put it, "Eisenhower is at war with the sexual instinct.” The German girls are smiling and making eyes aj our men. There has been no recorded treacherous behaviour by civilians so far. The worst offences have been carrying arms and staying out after curfew. (The curfew is at 10 p m.) For carrying arms, sentences of 10 years’ imprisonment have been meted out. There is one sense in which our men are feeling non-fraternisation perhaps more than the Germans for e.ur men came here after France and Belgium and Holland, where friendships were formed. But the situation is eased a littte or a lot by the “ slaves being freed —and displaced persons moving over Germany. The altogether startling question I saw on a notlceboard nailed to a tree on thj west bank of the Rhine, Are you armed? was less significant than I thought. Bui our men go about armed none the less. One can add the next question: Do th« Germans show signs of contrition of sorrow for what they have done? I have met nobody who thinks they do, and 1 have met some who feel that before long they will wear their old truculence, in a lovelv countryside where the impacl of war ‘seems at a superficial glance very slight it Is hard to see how they can fee l close to wha* the Nazis have dong to men in far countries. Is Germany Repentant? -

A friend who saw old Field-marshal von Mackensen recently told me that the old man s:.id Germany ought to have won—lhey had everything. It was the German politicians who had let the country down. These damned Americans—wha.. were they doing in Europe? No business here at all. But on this question of contrition there mav be one view in destroyed cities and another in a smiling countryside. Anyhow, do defeated people ever do much but writhe under defeat and hope for revenge no matter how distant? An American war correspondent said at breakfast, •• i would not like to be a German on the read to Berlin.” His companion said, ‘ I would not like to be a German going anywhere—and If I had to be z German I would choose to be a German Jew. Sav, that’s kinda’ fur.ny, isn't it?" f have written about the Belsen concentration camp in another article. I was there to-day; 300 are still dying every day. It has been extermination by starvation. We are to make a film of the place. Every German ought to be forced to see it. Yet I suppose most of them will swear it is faked. But Belser. camp arraigns Germany all the time. Its depth of horror is etched in acid on the mtna of any man who beholds it.