The way to relieve the pressure is to relieve the pressure. If, at whatever cost, the salvation of Germany, and therefore of Europe, and therefore of civilization, must be achieved, the test of every measure must be the test urged by the late Prime Minister of India: “Does it add to tension or not?” The Occidental who deplores the renunciation of both right and might implied here must narrow his eyes to an Oriental squint and keep them on the ball. If the Germans make the rest of the world suffer because they themselves suffer, and if they themselves suffer because they are under pressure, why, the first thing to do is to get the pressure off them. Niceties such as right and might must wait.
Take the pressure off them, and they might become insufferable. But they became insufferable with the pressure on them. Take the pressure off them, and they might claim that they won the last war. But that would be better than their claiming that they will win the next war. Take the pressure off them, and they might rearm. But they always have anyway. Take the pressure off them, and they might go Communist. But they did go Nazi.
The trouble is that the relief of the Germans would require something like the prior reconstruction of the world. To initiate—even to contemplate—a program of relief, there would have to be the kind of world that did not react to the proposal by asking, rhetorically, if the Germans are to be coddled for their crimes and paid off for losing the wars they started. It would have to be a world that could see beyond the end of its nose and turn that nose—together with the rest of its face—from the past to the future. It would have to be a world with—a Weltanschauung.
To say that this is not the kind of world we live in, or are soon likely to, would be to supererogate. A world that was disposed to relieve the Germans of pressure would have to be a world that itself was not under pressure, a world that breathed freely. So far are we from living in such a world that the two powers now dividing the world there is are both falling victim to the paranoid panic which brought Germany to its present pass, both of them sacrificing all other objectives to encircle their encirclers. In this one respect, at least, has Goebbels’ perverse prediction been validated: “Even if we lose, we shall win, for our ideals will have penetrated the hearts of our enemies.”
In such a world—the world we live in—such dreams as a United States of Europe are no further advanced in Europe than World Federalism is here. The Europa Union movement, in Germany as elsewhere, is widespread among, and only among, nongovernmental intellectuals, and especially among the young. At the University of Munich 88 per cent of the students, in a random sampling, favored “the unification of Europe” over “German sovereignty.” But “the unification of Europe” means different things to different men—to some peace, to others war. And it is an ideal much more nebulous, and much more limited, than democracy. In the context of the world struggle, European Union means, first, military union of non-Communist Europe; second, economic union (presently supported by both the young idealists and the old cartelists); and last, if ever, political union. And any union that left Germany divided would take place only on paper, if there.
There may be a possibility that the relief of the Germans would interest the Russians, who, after all, invented Russian roulette. As the Germans now are, the Russians are afraid of them, and with good reason. “It is now clear,” said the London Times in 1954, “that neither Russia nor the West can agree to German unification on terms compatible with their national interests. The linch-pin of Western defense—West German cooperation—remains the hard core of Russian fears. And the main Western anxiety—Russian armies in the heart of Europe—is, in the Russian view, the indispensable condition of Soviet security. In the state of the world today, neither fear can be discounted as mere propaganda.”
In such a state of such a world, it might be that the United States of America, by seizing the initiative and proposing German reunification on other than nonnegotiable terms, would have to sacrifice its immediate national interest in order to satisfy the Russians that their own interests would be served (or at least not disserved) by agreement. If such a thing has never before been done—if a nation has never sacrificed its immediate national interest in order to advance that of another—it might be done for the first time in history on the utopian basis that the relief of the Germans, at whatever sacrifice of immediate national interest, would create the possibility of saving civilization.
The cure of the Germans will not be free in any case, nor is it guaranteed by any prescription. If Germany is thought of—as it seems to be now, and mistakenly—as somebody’s satellite, nobody will bother to do anything about it except to prepare it for war, including civil war. And war is not good for the Germans. Only if the interested great powers decide that ultimate self-interest is more interesting than immediate self-interest will they be interested in relieving the Germans of pressure. But it would not do at all to have the great powers undertake the relief themselves; the quick switch from exploitation disguised (unsuccessfully) as benevolence to a program of genuine benevolence would only mystify the Germans.
After many, many years of thinking it over, and at very close range, Mr. McCloy, the retired United States High Commissioner for the Occupation of Germany, came to the conclusion that it might have been helpful to have had neutrals sit on the bench at Nuremberg in 1946. There were those who, in 1946, suggested a neutral tribunal at Nuremberg, but they were not listened to, and it is now too late to listen to them. But it is not too late to listen to those who now suggest that neutrals sit on the border in Berlin.
The disadvantages to the West—or to the United States—of finding a way to reunite Germany would be immense. A unified Germany, although it would be anti-Communist, would be Socialist, because four-fifths of the East Germans are Social Democrats; and there are some Americans who do not like Socialism. In addition, the “abandonment” of Germany would mean loss of face for the United States, a prospect most obnoxious to Occidentals. Worst of all, it would mean the surrender of the whole present policy of containment by force—at least in Europe—and the whole present ambition of liberation by subversion and insurrection. It would mean that wherever and however Communist expansion would be stopped—assuming that such things are stoppable by military means—it would not be stopped by war on the Vistula, the Oder, the Elbe, or the Rhine. It would mean that Europe could not be “held.”
But the alternative prospect of having to depend upon the Germans to “hold” it is not attractive, either. The Germans have not been—and are not going to be, in the next six months or six years—transformed from first-class totalitarians to first-class freemen. When we remember what most of them so recently and habitually were, or at least did, it seems hardly worth the trouble, if the Germans must save us, to be saved from Communism.
In this lugubrious circumstance, a circumstance in which any program of real relief is, perhaps, so unrealistic as to be unworthy of consideration, there are, nevertheless, a few things that the United States could at least avoid doing without being accused of utopianism. On the eve of the German election of 1953, a New York Times headline said, “U.S. Scans Food Aid for East Germans. Weighs Plan To Ship Surplus Stocks To Help Adenauer and Embarrass Russians.” Two weeks later Dean Heinrich Grüber of the Berlin Protestant Cathedral told his congregation: “When a charitable project is undertaken without the true spirit of love, the blessing turns into a curse. We will gladly cooperate with those who work to relieve hardship, provided only that they do so without mental reservations and without devious intentions. But we refuse to co-operate with those persons or powers who use works of charity to disguise their political and propaganda warfare.”
No nation gorged with unmarketable surpluses in a starving world will ever relieve another by exploiting the other’s hunger for a couple of weeks to win an election. And a nation which, as a matter of public policy, attempts to do so attempts to do what it shouldn’t. Neither the New York Times headline nor Dean Grüber’s sermon was broadcast by the “Voice of America”; it is not nearly so hard to find ways to take the pressure off the Germans as it is to want to.
The story is told—apocryphal, we may hope—that a friend of John Dewey’s encountered him on the street one day long ago in wet windy weather, with his little boy. The boy was standing, rubberless, in a puddle of water, and Dewey was watching him from the shore. “You’d better get that child out of that puddle,” said the friend, “or he’ll catch pneumonia.” “I know,” said the philosopher. “I’m doing it as fast as I can. I’m trying to figure out a way to get him to want to get out.” It does not seem likely that the United States Government will take a chance on the Germans’ catching pneumonia. It has their health—not to say its own—to consider. If our government cannot, for reasons of State, demonstrate democracy to the Germans, in the hope that the Germans will take to it some day, private agencies may still try. There is no law, German or American, to prevent the construction of, say, a Vereinigte-Staaten-Haus across the street from every Amerika-Haus in Germany. There are plenty of vacant lots. Amerika-Haus would advertise, FREE LECTURE, and Veieinigte-Staaten-Haus would advertise, FREE DEBATE.
Children misbehave under pressure. The greater the pressure, the worse the misbehavior. The affected child may be the quiet type, but one day he burns the whole house down. If we are his parents, we may relieve him by ignoring his minor depredations; by setting him a good example; and, if possible, by loving him. In so far as he recognizes the parental authority—but only in so far as he does so—he may be gently controlled. The Germans do not recognize our parental authority, however well behaved they may be, and the danger of acting on false analogy is considerable. What is more, their depredations are rarely minor, and it is not always easy to love them. But the cure is probably somewhat the same. At least, beating the Germans has had the same consequences as beating the child.
America has a great name in Germany; it used lovingly to be called “Little Germany” among the Germans, and every one of my ten Nazi friends had one or more relatives, no further removed than second cousin or uncle, who had emigrated to the United States. It may not be arrogant to assume that the Germans look to us, even now, for light. If they do, it would be nice if we Americans could manifest some of the compassion that relieves the compulsive child. It appears that the big things that ought to be done cannot, for reasons of State, be done, even if the failure to do them means the ruin of the State. It may be all the more urgent, then, to do the little things; and St. Francis’ words, “I come to you in little things,” may still be the clue to the cure of the Germans.
But maybe nothing can be done for the Germans, in which case, whatever anyone else does, we should let them alone. The proposition that anybody can do anything about anybody else is absolutely indemonstrable. Doctors of the body abound, but there are no doctors of the soul, or psyche. A great psychoanalyst once pointed proudly to a former patient and said: “He used to be the unhappiest rotter in town. Now he’s the happiest.” It may very well be impossible for one whole people, except by their example, to help another whole people transform their character; and that may be why, until 1945, it was never attempted. But a one-tenth-of-one-per-cent chance is one-tenth of one per cent better than no chance at all. It is risky to let people alone. But it is riskier still to press my ten Nazi friends—and their seventy million countrymen—to re-embrace militarist anti-Communism as a way of national life.