BOOKS OF THE WEEK
Profession of Arms
By HUGH CARLETON GREENE I 6. S there a new spirit abroad in Germany or is this merely ' where we came in ' in the repetitive history of the German Army in politics ? " With this question Mr. Wheeler-Bennett ends the epilogue to his magnificent history* of the German General Staff and the part it played in German politics from 1918 to 1945. When one reaches the last page of this appalling record of intrigue and corruption, political and personal cowardice and cynical careerism, one is more prepared for the sceptical spirit of the final question mark than for the assertion in the Introduction that it is 4.` imperative that we should pocket our scruples at the prospect of accepting the Germans as allies." Which Mr. Wheeler-Bennett is right—the pocketer of scruples or the disturbed and dubious questioner, who, earlier in this book, has remarked in passing that there is woefully little today to indicate any widespread change of heart in Germany ? - Eight and a half years have now passed since the end of the Second German War left Germany with her cities and her economy in ruins, her armies prisoners of war and her General Staff, already humiliated and half-destroyed by the purge which followed the attempt on Hitler's life, disbanded and, it seemed, finally expunged from history. For five of those years the victorious allies, not without success, preached the evils of German militarism. In 1950, under the pressure of the Russian menace, came the great change. A German army was no longer an evil thing but a necessary part of the western defence system. The " ohne mich " attitude of large sections of German youth, instead of being praiseworthy, was irresponsible. In 1951, General Eisenhower replaced the verdict of Nuremberg that the German General Staff and High Command had been " a disgrace to the honorable profession of arms " with a public pronouncement that German milit4ry honour was unsullied. (A lesson in cynicism for a Gernfan people already cynical enough.) Today, Germany, with her economy restored by a combination of her own great efforts and dollar aid, stands much readier than she was even in 1933 for rapid rearmament and the formation, in the first place, of an army of twelve divisions—as soon as the word is given.
The appearance of Mr. Wheeler-Bennett's book at this moment is, thus, extraordinarily timely. It provides those responsible for the policy of the Western allies with a last chance to study the record of the German army, its influence on domestic and foreign policy, its apparently unchanging characteristics, and to weigh the risks involved in the different courses of action still open before the final and irrevocable steps are taken and the field-grey uniforms and the General Staff trousers with their claret-coloured stripes are seen once more in Germany.
Fascinating though the detailed account of the conspiracy against Hitler is, it is the record of events from 1918 to the destruction of the Weimar republic by Von Papen and von Schleicher in 1932 which has the most relevance today. As Mr. Wheeler-Bennett points out, the Weimar Republic was in fact doomed at birth by the famous telephone conversation between General Groener and Chancellor Ebert on the night of November 9th, 1918. The army was called in to save the Republic and thereafter, until the surrender to Hitler, Chan- cellors might come and Chancellors might go, the army was the foundation of State authority, a State within the State. And everything—let us listen carefully to these echoes—was supposed to be so different. Noske, the Socialist Minister of National Defence, spoke of " the great ideal of a nation in arms which imposes democracy in military affairs." (Today in Bonn Herr Blank uses very similar words about the formation of a " demo- cratic army," and no doubt with equal sincerity.) Yet very soon General von Seeckt's army of 100,000 men had a bigger percentage of aristocratic officers than the pre-war Imperial Army and parliamentary supervision of army affairs was avoided with contemptuous ease. While fourteen Chancellors of different parties came and went in the fourteen years of the Weimar Republic, there were only four Ministers of Defence, two of them generals.
Whether the Left, the Centre or the Right was in the ascen- dant made no.difference. This book should destroy once and for all the illusion that a Socialist government in Germany provides stronger guarantees against a revival of militarism than a government further to the right. It was Ebert who, in December, 1918, welcomed back German divisions to Berlin with the words, " 1 salute you, who return unvanquished from the field of battle "—thus helping to lay the foundations for the " stab in the back " legend. It was Noske who purred with pleasure at a few words of praise for his " national spirit " dropped by contemptuous Field-Marshals and Generals. Braun and Severing, the Socialist rulers of Prussia for most of the Weimar period, knew all about the illegal army formations of the Black Reichswehr with their brutal murders of " traitors." It was the Socialist Hermann Mueller who, after fighting the pocket battleship " programme in opposition, pressed on with it, whether as dupe or accessory, as Chancellor, and accepted his Defence Minister's—General Groener's—memorandum on defence policy with its key phrase, " Germany will take part in armed hostilities only if she has a real chance of success." Finally, almost the last act of the Social Democratic Party before its dissolution in the summer of 1933 was to approve Hitler's attack on Versailles and /demand for equal rights in his famous " Peace Speech " of May 17th—even though, to its credit, it had been the only party two months before to vote against the enabling Act which provided the legal basis for the Nazi dictatorship. Is it any different today? One of Dr. Schumacher's favourite tenets was that a Socialist party in Germany can only hold its ground by showing itself more national than the nationalists, and in foreign affairs at any rate this view still seems to prevail.
In connection with the manoeuvres of the opposition. in Germany in the last months before the war Mr. Wheeler-
* The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918-1945. By John W. Wheeler-Bennett. (Macmillan. 50s.)
Bennett remarks : " The fundamental principles of German foreign policy remain whatever the regime in power." One of the fundamental principles of army policy in foreign affairs in the Weimar period was an understanding with Soviet Russia. Already in February, 1920, General von Seeckt envisaged the possibility of an alliance with Soviet Russia and the partition of Poland rather than accept the Allied Note on the surrender of war criminals. Seeckt, as Mr. Wheeler-Bennett remarks, was " unmoved by the menace of Bolshevism, seeing in Russia a powerful, if unscrupulous, ally." Lenin took exactly the same view of Germany, and even before the Rapallo Treaty of 1922, military co-operation had begun between Germany and Russia. Just as Hitler's policy of hostility to Russia, which brought what amounted to twelve years of military alliance to an end, was extremely unpopular with the heirs of the Seeckt tradition, so the Nazi-Soviet pact was welcomed—and the attack on Russia, in its turn, regarded as the beginning of the end. Even Claus von Stauffenberg, the noblest spirit among the conspirators against.Hitler, seems to have dreamt of a German-Russian collaboration which would dominate Europe. The generals, whether members of the conspiracy against Hitler or his collaborators to the bitter end, who are now preparing for the resurrection of the German army and will lead it once it is resurrected, are the inheritors of these traditions. They served as junidr officers under von Seeckt and started to make their mark as staff officers in the days when the German army was the arbiter of domestic and foreign policy. They would be superhuman if they did not cling, consciously or unconsciously, to the Seeckt tradition. It is to be hoped that Mr. Wheeler-Bennett's book will be read in Germany as well as in Great Britain, the United States and France. Whatever doubts the reader of this book feels, is bound to feel, about the wisdom of allowing a German army to exist again in any circumstances, the question today is not whether there shall be a German army but what sort of army it shall be and how far it shall have an independent existence.
The inclusion of German divisions in the European Defence Community—and the inclusion of Germany's heavy industry in the European Coal and Steel Community—provides some safe- guards, even if frail ones, against the emergence of an inde- pendent German General Staff and army domination of German policy. But finally it will lie with the German Government of the day, if it has learnt its lesson, to hold its own. And if, as a result of French hesitations, the European Defence Community should be unattainable? What emerges with complete clarity from this book is the danger for Western Europe of falling back on the admission of Germany to NATO and thus conniving at the creation of an independent German army able to 'play politics in the old way and to become, once more, a State within the State. It would be a tragic mistake to think that Russian policy has destroyed all Sympathy in Western Germany—whatever it may have done in Eastern Germany—for the old dreams of a German-Russian alliance. The unification of Germany and the recovery of the lost territories are aims with which all Germans sympathise, whatever their party. It would be more in accordance with traditional army policy to try to attain these aims in concert with Russia—through a new partition of Poland—than by force of arms. For Western Europe both courses are equally dangerous.
Among the many scruples and doubts which the reader of Mr. Wheeler-Bennett's book should not be lulled into pocket- ing is (to go still further back than 1918-45) the memory of Tauroggen. At Tauroggen on December 30th, 1812, Graf Hans Yorck von Wartenburg (whose descendant was among the conspirators against Hitler) and General von Clausewitz took over the Prussian Corps in Napoleon's Grand Army to the Russians. German. generals are traditionalists and history could repeat itself.
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