Nazi Rebirth

Deutschland Uber Alles is a stirring tune used by many schools and universities as an alma mater. It was also the Nazi Party song, and one again enjoys great popularity in West Germany. In recalling the days of Germany's empire, it symbolizes a growing spirit of nationalism and a renascence of a German Nazism.

A recent U. S. sponsored poll asked West Germans what then attitude would be toward a new Nazi party. 20 percent decided that they would be against it, 13 percent came out definitely in favor of it. 23 percent just didn't care, 14 percent expressed no opinion, and 30 percent said that they were not particularly auxions to see black shirts reappear on Unter der Linden, but that they would do nothing to prevent it.

In another poll, 63 percent of the people questioned said that today's Germans should feel no guilt about the war, and share no responsibility to rectify the Nazi's wrongs. This self-absolution, coupled with a growing hate for the West, especially the United States, and anti-Semitism, recreates the situation that culminated in the Weimar Republic's overthrow and the rise of Nazism.

Before he ended his term as U. S. High Commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy said, "The danger from the extreme right is not of a critical nature and ... does not constitute an immediate threat to the Federal Republic, but there is a potential danger whose nature and importance warrant continued vigilance by all who value democratic principles."

The West cannot deal drastically with the nationalistic spirit that gives rise to Nazi radicalism, because it is set on a policy that calls for German military cooperation.

The Bonn Government essentially reflects the desires of the people, and the people want to charge heavily for their cooperation. More and more it appears that the price will include recognition of resurgent German nationalism, aping, if not following the Nazi line.

The organization of the neo-fascist movement began in 1949 with the formation of the Sozialistische Reichspartei in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. This section is mainly agricultural, and suffered comparatively little during the war. Furthermore, under Hitler it received many benefits such as army and slave labor. The citizens looked back on the days of Hitler, with the stirring military parades and the official praise of farmers as the backbone of Aryan Germany, with more regret for their passing than loathing of their horrors.

The founders of the SRP were Fritz Dorls--former Nazi Gauleiter--Gerhard Kruger, and Count Wolf Von Westorp, both fairly prominent Nazis. These men were the brains of the party, but the popular leader, the man often mistaken for the head of the party, was General Otto-Ernst Remer. Remer's claim to popularity was his part in crushing the July 20th, 1944 plot by high German officers to assassinate Hitler, take over the government, and seek peace. Remer, then in charge of the Berlin SS troops, refused to turn the city over to the plotters, and after speaking over the phone with Hitler, who have him absolute authority to deal with the situation, Remer arrested the plotters and restored order.

The SRP grew in strength, promising German supremacy and power. Shortly before the May, 1951 elections, they had become such a threat that Adenauer's government began to crack down. Bonn demanded the dissolution of the SPR Reichfront, a youth organization dissimilar to Hitler's youth groups and SS only in that it did not use the stiff arm salute--in public.

In the elections the SRP got 367,000, or 11 percent of the votes cast. This gave professed former Nazis 19 seats in the legislature. This is even more significant when we realize that over 50 percent of the SRP membership was under 35, and that many were not old enough to vote.

In the same month the party sent Dr. Frantz Richter as its delegate to an international Fascist meeting in Malo, Sweden. Richter was prominent in the SRP, and was one of the first elected to the national legislature under its aegis. Not until February, 1952, did the government discover that Richter, who had been posing as an expellee from the Sudetenland was really a former Nazi official named Fritz Roesler. Richter-Roesler then lost his legislative immunity and went to jail for forgery of identity papers. The time it took Bonn to catch Roesler is amazing since in 1949 he was fired from his position as a grammar school teacher when all his students began writing essays explaining that Germany lost the war only because traitors gave away secret weapons that soon would have meant an overwhelming victory for Hitler.

A little over a month before this November's elections, the SRP voluntarily dissolved. By doing so it just beat Adenauer's official ban on the grounds of blatant nazism. The SRP candidates mostly gravitated to the BHE, a fascist party originally organized as an official voice for refugees from East Germany, denazification courts, and lands in which they settled as Nazi colonists.

Among those elected to city council posts was Wilhelm Schepmann, who headed the Storm Troopers in 1945, and who campaigned on the strength of pictures of him self in full SS regalia.

With the general German sentiment against national, or even party guilt, even the Bonn government is falling into line with the nationalists. All parties in the recent elections stressed their own hyper-nationalist policies, and last spring the Munich radio revealed that 85 percent of the Bonn Foreign Office were undisputed ex-Nazis a higher percentage of party men than served under Hitler.

One of McCloy's reports said that Germany has the "formal framework of democracy," but Germany is a long war from being a firm admirer of democracy and a friend to the West. It is not difficult, therefore, to appreciate France's concern ever an armed Germany, nor McCloy's concern over a completely politically independent Germany.