Doublethink Rethought

"You Americans are so naive," said the Heidelberg professor as he snifted his glass of Niersteiner Domtal '53 and indeed we are. Professor Doktor H. G. Glaubich, director of the university's foreign program, was at his usual position of honor at the venerable oak table in the Schnitzelbank inn, drinking, wheezing and expounding. The small group of students clustered about the master were breathing in the new German philosophy as blandly as they downed the latest Rhine vintages. And the eagerest of these were the "Amis."

Unshaven faces, dirty tieless shirts under the gray flannel, threadbare socks in the white bucks--these attested to the intensity with which the latest American expatriates were trying to emulate the native students. But somehow, the Germans' long uncut hair, their coarse black sweaters and corduroy trousers, marked them alone as the true torchbearers of the new Enlightenment.

The Americans, Joseph Green and Paul Brodtkorp, both Yale '50, Peter G. Lenahan, Dartmouth '54, Lieutenant Dudley Hall (mercifully in civilian clothes), Boston U. '52 and James B. Adler '53, were doing their native best, however, and everyone realized it. So they were accepted, permitted to listen and learn with the unkempt elect.

A Fiendish Scheme

"It is no longer a matter for speculation that Roosevelt's childish trust of the Bolsheviks is the basic cause of Germany's current problems." No one speculated. "We are agreed that if the Americans had accepted Doenitz's brilliant offer to join them in May '45 and drive the Bolsheviks back to the Volga. . . ." A few gulps of wine obscured Glaubich's last few words but, plainly, nobody disagreed.

"What civilized person could ever imagine those nice Americans devising such a fiendish scheme as the Morgenthau plan . . ." Faces dimmed. ". . . to reduce Germany to an agrarian country? Such childish nonsensel! Ach ja, Hitler did lose the war for us, but did we not suffer enough? I am no Nazi . . ." Nodding heads in the group indicated that no one was, or indeed ever had been, a Nazi. ". . . but trying to force your Democracy on us like an insect spray, ja it was too silly."

Adler unwittingly scorned 700 years of German academic tradition as he tried to interrupt with a remark, but the wave obscured the rivulet.

"And then putting our honorable generals and admirals on trial in Nuremberg, hanging and imprisoning them for merely obeying orders like good soldiers, and calling it justice. Ach, terrible, inhuman. And what were you Americans doing while we fought to keep the Bolsheviks out of Europe? You were bombing our cities, killing our women and children." Glances of bitter experience mixed with the Germans' current attitude of mature forgiveness for our sins assured silence for Professor Glaubich's further dialectic.

The professor took a long, self-righteous swallow of wine as the students counted their pfennigs to see if they could afford another. The obese waitress--spellbound by Glaubich's erudition--beamed at him as she had at the young Wehrmacht and SS officers who were her wartime clientele. Glaubich shyly smiled back, lit another Gold Dollar cigarette, and bent over the table toward his disciples.

"Kultur" Must Guide America

"It is good that you American students come here to learn about our great Kultur and so about your own mistakes. Perhaps you can help mature the naive minds of your countrymen. Since you are the strong today, it is very important that the wisdom of Europe, of Germany restrain you from your naive and impulsive policies."

Herr Professor Doktor rose stiffly, shook everyone's hand, and left as the students watched the master's cigarette smoke become, at last, part of the clouded overall picture. They discussed Glaubich's ideas for a while, academically noting their structure and implications; no one sought to contradict him. When the students finally left for their poorly heated little rooms, the Amis were thinking that the U.S. surely must have been grossly naive to have acted so in contradiction to Glaubich's mature tenets. But they missed the nature of their naivete.