Unknown Germany AN INNER CHRONICLE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR BASED ON LETTERS AND DIARIES BY HANNA HAFKESBRINK NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1948 Copyright, 1948, by Yale University Press Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Introduction In the light of a development which has ended in dicta­ torship and war, the picture of a Germany opposed to war and inclined toward democracy may seem unreal and irrelevant. Why turn to a past conflict, the reader may ask, when we are wrestling with the problems of a new and greater catastrophe? Or he may remind me that even if the picture of the Germans in the first World War should prove to be more favorable than commonly as­ sumed, we are now dealing with a people whose sins against humanity have been demonstrated beyond doubt. It is not the intention of this book to deny or blur the gruesome facts of this latest phase of German history. Against the background of a better Germany these facts can only look darker. But I should like to suggest that as in the first World War we may not know the whole pic­ ture even this time. I should like to propose that in addi­ tion to the horrors broadcast through all channels of public information there is another less publicized story of human dignity and worth. Only fragments of this second story are beginning to be known but they reveal enough to make it safe to assume that as in the first war we have missed an essential part of the complex German picture. The reports of German resistance, particularly of the tragic episode of July 20, 1944, when thousands of Ger­ mans paid with their lives for the ill-fated attempt to over­ throw the Hitler regime, are only beginning to penetrate the barriers of wartime censorship.1 This makes it difficult 1. See Allen Welsh Dulles, Germany's Underground (New York, 1947), particularly pp. 81-96 about the Kreisau Circle of resistance against National Socialism. See also Deutsche innere Emigration, ed. by Karl O. Paetel (New York, 1946); Hans Bernd Gisevius, To the Bit- iv Unknown Germany to evaluate the character and the scope of this movement. But its existence can no longer be denied. Similar trends are evident in recent election returns from Germany which have shown strong support for the programs of a Christian and Social democracy—the very movements so strongly reflected in the autobiographical documents of the first World War. Even if we discount the opportun­ istic factor in these latest returns, there seems to be no doubt that once again German men and women have in­ dicated their preference for the principles of a Christian and Socialist humanism. Those who have received letters from Germany have been impressed even more deeply by the evidence that Germany has by no means squan­ dered her spiritual inheritance irrevocably.* 2 We may take these signs as new confirmation of the fact that in the economy of the spirit no force is perma­ nently lost. Like microorganisms which lose their potency under adverse conditions, spiritual forces may be driven into temporary dormancy by circumstances but regain their potency for constructive use when conditions per­ mit. Nothing is more detrimental to the miracle of this reactivation than the cold atmosphere of distrust. This ought to forbid us the role of cynical observers of the German drama. However limited the numbers of the genuinely constructive forces in Germany may be, it will be in no small measure within our power either to help them to grow or to force them into oblivion again. History has repeatedly proved that one cannot lay the foundations of a constructive peace with a purely nega­ ter End (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1947); Ulrich von Hassell, The von Hassell diaries, 1938-1944 (New York, Doubleday, 1947); Fabian von Schlabrendorff, They Almost Killed Hitler, based on the personal account of Fabian von Schlabrendorff, prepared and edited by Gero v. S. Gaevernitz (New York, Macmillan, 1947). 2. See Letters from Germany. With an Introduction by Oswald Gar­ rison Villard (Washington, Chicago, 1946). Introduction v tive attitude toward the enemy. It is well known from their memoirs that many of the statesmen in charge of the grave task of negotiating the peace terms after the first World War, against their own better judgment, fre­ quently had to yield to public opinion still unbalanced from the pressures of wartime propaganda. Like the ma­ gician who could not free himself from the spirits he had called into action, the politicians became the slaves of forces they had once mobilized as masters. In the catas­ trophe just ended we have paid the price for this peace­ making in the spirit of warmaking. Again we stand at the crossroads and the strategies which have bred misfortune in the past are threatening to involve us in even greater disaster. Many fateful decisions have already been made, but the final and more decisive ones still lie ahead. There­ fore no time should be lost in making available to the public all information which may restore the balance of judgment disturbed by the pressures of war. It is late but perhaps not too late to prevent a repetition of the tragic time lag which made the young German Republic of 1918 the victim of unabated prejudice and Hitler the beneficiary of the belated correction of this previous bias. It is my hope that this book may contribute to a more thoughtful consideration of the complex German problem by making known a phase of German history which, though not belonging to the immediate present, is essen­ tially related to it and therefore important for its under­ standing. The research on which the information con­ tained here is based was started with no thought of pub­ lication. It was stimulated by the desire to answer for my­ self the vexing problem of the German people. Once a part of this people but now observing my native country from another continent, and naturally not uninfluenced by the views of my adopted country, I have been torn be­ vi Unknown Germany tween conflicting interpretations of the German national character which called for deeper analysis. But not only the contrast of national interpretations stimulated my asking. The sharp clash between opposite forces within Germany herself demanded an answer. I was grieved to observe the rise of a moral cynicism which I could not reconcile with the humane traditions of the Germany I had known. Unlike those who were able to consider this most recent phase of German history merely another proof of the innate depravity of the German people, I was stunned by this development. I kept asking myself whether my own acquaintance with a profoundly humane Germany was merely the result of fortunate but comparatively rare circumstances created by my family background and my education or whether my own expe­ rience could be regarded as indicative of more extensive trends. I tried to recall not only the views of my friends, which naturally were close to my own, but also those of more distant acquaintances of different backgrounds. Yet I could not but remember how many of these people were influenced by the basic concepts of German humanism— their individual views varying in Christian, Idealist, or Socialist emphasis. Even later when the wave of political and moral degeneracy began to sweep larger numbers of the German people in its current, I continued to meet many who clung fast to these humanistic traditions. Were all these people “exceptions”? Or were they representa­ tives of a shrinking yet still substantial group which was only temporarily eclipsed by a turbulent and ruthless political organization far less representative of German thought? These questions gained even greater insistence as they became related to the problems of postwar recon­ struction. Was there a Germany—in spite of all appear­ ances to the contrary—on which one could set one's hopes for the future? How could I find out? Where Introduction vii could I get information which was free from the bias of the moment? I directed my attention to the history of the first World War, choosing this period because it seemed both near and yet remote enough to make it a favorable vantage ground from which to attack the problem. As an expe­ rience of our own lifetime and charged with problems much like our own, it was close enough to be considered contemporary history—many of the survivors are still a part of present-day Germany. But at the same time it was distant enough for abundant source material to be available for research. It is impossible as yet to document any of the more recent phases of German history as well as can be done with that of the first World War. In contrast to many traditional studies of this period, I selected for special examination not the records of cabinets and parliaments or the exchanges of diplomatic notes but the autobiographical accounts of the event. And from this material I chose not the letters and memoirs of statesmen and generals, but the letters and diaries of per­ sons who did not write in any official capacity—in short the documents as far as they could be obtained of the “common man” about whom we talk so much and of whom we know so little, particularly if he is the common man of another people. This choice was dictated by two considerations, one being related to the purpose of my investigation, the other involving a question of method. In trying to analyze the German question with a view to the role which Ger­ many might be expected to play after World War II, it seemed more important to know something of the Ger­ man people than to know their leaders. Political leaders may be decisive in the prelude to war but it is the people for whom we have to make the peace. After a successful war it is comparatively easy to remove the political leaders viii Unknown Germany of the enemy; but even the winners of a decisive victory cannot wipe out a whole people. Peoples remain to be lived with and this requires knowing them, not only in terms of our own preconceived notions but in their terms based upon an analysis of their most immediate and most genuine self-expression. This explains the method of my approach. Where do we feel the heartbeat of a people more directly than in their letters? In ordinary times the average citizen does not express himself readily in written form. But in wartime, when millions of men are separated from their families, people write letters and keep diaries which are likely to be pre­ served for later reading. Proud and affectionate families frequently make them available for wider circulation by permitting them to be published. It is in the nature of things that the autobiographical documents of the fighting forces are preserved with greater care than those of the home front. It also stands to reason that of the two the letters from the front are the more significant documents. They are written in an atmosphere which is inimical to all sham. A soldier who writes to his wife a few hours before he goes into battle says what he thinks—he is free from the pressures of public opinion—he writes from the very core of his being. The subject matter of his letters too is more rele­ vant; removed from the petty cares of civilian life, his interest is turned to the profounder problems of existence: life and death, peace and war, man and God. Accordingly if we want to know a people, soldiers’ letters and diaries are a source of prime importance. A word of comment should be given about the col­ lections in which these documents have appeared. There are first the letters and diaries of individual authors, known and unknown, which appeared during the war. They were usually collected by relatives, frequently after the Introduction ix author had fallen in battle, and privately printed. These editions have a high degree of authenticity because they were usually compiled more or less at random by inex­ perienced editors who made little if any attempt to force the material into preconceived patterns of thought. Then there are other editions published under the spon­ sorship of individual groups and predominantly repre­ senting these groups. There are, for example, three vol­ umes of Catholic war letters edited by a church historian which represent the war experiences of a cross section of the Catholic population; and a similar edition of Jewish war letters published by a Jewish war veterans’ organiza­ tion. A famous collection of German Students' War Let­ ters was edited by a university professor. There is also an edition of soldiers’ letters published under the spon­ sorship of the National Socialist regime which probably represents chiefly the relatives of families who later joined the National Socialist party. Naturally each of these collections reflects to some extent the preferences of the editors. Besides the autobiographic records written under the immediate impact of the war, there are retrospective de­ scriptions. While these later sources lack the immediacy of the earlier ones, they show the war experience in bolder relief, highlighted by the selective processes of history. Best known among these postwar memoirs are Ernst Jlinger’s books. In a wider sense the war books of Remar­ que and Ludwig Renn also belong to this group. Al­ though written in fictional form, they represent genuine memoirs of the war. The unparalleled publishing success of All Quiet on the Western Front and of War gives them a privileged place among the autobiographical sources of the first World War. Millions of war veterans not only in Germany but the world over recognized their own experience in these books, which makes them in a x Unknown Germany peculiar sense what their authors meant them to be—the war books of the common man. The analysis of the German war experience of 1914-18 is not complete without relating it to the spiritual trends preceding the war. Decades before the event the ap­ proaching catastrophe was anticipated by German poets and thinkers who saw the war clouds gathering while their contemporaries were still lauding “the golden age of security.” However esoteric these prophets may seem as voices in the wilderness of a materialistic era, they nevertheless eventually gained a profound influence upon their country. They preformulated the categories with which the masses later interpreted the war. It is in this sense that the prophetic anticipation of the war is also a part of the German war experience.