William Tyler
Germany in the Aftermath of War: Denazification and Division

William Tyler - Germany in the Aftermath of War: Denazification and Division

- Before I start the actual talk for today, which is on Denazification and Division, I want to pick up on a point that many people asked about last week, and we didn’t have time to cover, which was how did the Nazi regime finance itself and in particular, finance the war? Now, I don’t want to go into detail because I haven’t got the time, but very briefly, so that you have some sort of grasp of how they did it. First of all, of course, they did it through normal taxation. And normal taxation rose because in the second half of the 1930s, because of the economic growth, not only in Germany but across the world after the depression years, and so Germany was raking in more tax than it had been. Secondly, unemployment reduced, therefore luring expectations of the workers or the desire of the employers to pay them more money. There were plenty of workers around, but that also increased the tax take because more people were working in the late 30s than the early 30s. During the course of the war, Germany seized resources from occupied Europe. For example, it seized Romanian oil supplies. It was desperate, of course, for oil. It also seized other supplies, military supplies, for example, in the countries that it occupied. During the war years itself, Germany was placed on a war economy and it was able to use, force, or slave labour, thus reducing work costs to almost zero. I have some figures which I think are worth sharing. During the Second World War, the use of forced and slave labour was on an unprecedented scale. The forced and the slave labourers mainly came from Central Eastern Europe, many of them Jewish. The Germans abducted in all about 12 million people to come to Germany, forced or slave labour.

Many of these died as a result of the conditions and the treatment that they received. At its peak, they constituted 20% of the German workforce, and if you count in the deaths and the turnover, about 15 million men and women were forced labourers or slave labourers at one point in at some point during the war. So they were very reliant on that. And finally, as someone mentioned last week, it was the Swiss that helped them. And again, I got some figures. Between 1940 and 1945, the German National Bank sold 1.3 billion francs, Swiss francs, and that’s approximately 18 billion francs in today’s money. And they sold that in gold to the Swiss banks in exchange for Swiss francs because they need, sorry, because they sold the gold to the Swiss banks, it was calculated in Swiss francs. They got the Swiss francs back, which enabled them, with this foreign currency, which was the strongest currency in Europe during the war, to be able to buy the raw materials they needed from neutral countries, for example, Sweden. So all of that was beneficial. They placed hundreds of millions of Swiss francs worth of gold into the Swiss banks, through taking gold, literally gold from the central banks of occupied Europe. For example, the French Central Bank. They also took its estimated 581,000 Swiss francs worth of gold from victims of the Holocaust, from Jews. The whole thing was, I’ve always said the whole of the German economy was based upon a war economy, but in Germany’s case, it meant forced labour, it meant slave labour, and it also meant, simply looting. There’s no other word for it. Looting the countries and citizens of those countries that they occupy.

So I think that sort of gives you a clue to the answer of how on earth did they manage to finance it. Now, to the main topic for today, which is denazification and division. First, let me introduce the situation in Germany in 1945. This is what Robert Cole says in his short history of Germany. “At the war’s end, Germany was a non-functioning pile of rock, effectively in a state of anarchy. Starving and disoriented, people begged for food, stole food, and played up to the occupation forces in whatever way they could in order to survive. Prostitution, they mean. This was a Germany with which allied occupation forces had to deal beginning in 1945. And they did not, at the same time, have to deal as well with active resistance the occupation. Germany was too physically and morally decimated for that.” Churchill always said that one should be magnanimous in victory, and he said that because of the way that the allies had dealt with Germany at the conclusion of the First World War, which historians now have recognised as being a central cause of the Second World War. And so, the allies realised that. And so, there was a different sort of approach. But to begin the story of post 1945 and division, we must go back to the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945. Yalta, at the beginning of the year, and Potsdam, at the end of the summer after the surrender of Germany. I’m using a Charles Rivers edition book, East Germany, and I want to, I put all of these things on the internet, the book list, and I wanted to read this first of all. By the time of Yalta, that is to say the beginning of 1945, “Starling had thoroughly established Soviet authority in most of Eastern Europe.” The Red Army had pushed through Eastern Europe, throwing the Germans back. We know that. “And made it clear that he had no intention of giving up lands his soldiers had fought and died for.

The best he would offer Churchill and Roosevelt was the promise that he would allow free elections to be held.” Really? Free elections? “But at the same time, he made clear that the only acceptable outcome to any Polish election will be the one that supported communism.” We have to remember by Yalta, Roosevelt is a very sick man. Churchill is exhausted by the war. And Stalin… Stalin is clear in what he wants to do, and there is no way that Churchill, who has always seen through Stalin, is in a position to do anything on his own. And Roosevelt believes that they can do deals with Stalin. And so, there is a major problem at Yalta. Of course, it’s different at Potsdam because both Churchill and Roosevelt have gone, and we have Truman and we have Attlee. The two entirely different men than Roosevelt and Churchill. The real issue at the beginning of ‘45, that is to say at Yalta, was who was going win the race to reach Berlin first. And the answer is, as we all know, it was the Russians, the Red Army, and Stalin that reached Berlin first. Why? Well, because Stalin was determined that there would not be an armistice as in 1918, but that there will be an unconditional surrender. Now, remember in 1918, Russia has withdrawn from the war because Lenin and Trotsky has taken Bolshevik, Russia out of the war. And so, Russia isn’t involved in the decisions of what should happen in with Germany. And largely, it was Marshal Foch who felt that the loss of life could not be justified in pushing on to Berlin, and an armistice was established.

But here, it is absolutely clear that Stalin wanted not only Berlin, but he wanted Hitler. Well, he got the one because he reached Berlin first, but he didn’t get the second, because as we know, Hitler committed suicide rather than face the Russians. So why did the Allies, having perhaps learnt the lessons of 1918, not press forward towards Berlin? Not least, because as Churchill warned, the problem with Stalin, was that he isn’t going to give up easily anything that he takes. And it’s because the Allies were of different opinions, different opinions within the military, and different opinions within the politicians as well. And first of all, I want to read this little bit if I may, with the race toward Berlin in full throttle in early 1945, General Eisenhower’s Allied Armies were within 200 miles of the city, but his biggest battles now took place amongst his allies, as he now had to deal diplomatically with Churchill, Montgomery, and Agul. God, he really wouldn’t want to deal with those three. After crossing the Rhine River, Patton, General Patton advised Eisenhower to make haste for Berlin. He was supported by the British General Montgomery who was confident that they could reach Berlin before the Red Army. And Eisenhower replied, “I don’t think it’s worth the trouble.” Now, not everyone agreed with Eisenhower’s decision, especially Churchill. Churchill thought the decision to leave the taking of Berlin to the Red Army would leave lasting trouble on the European continent. And that, of course, was a more pressing concern to Britain than it was to United States. A geographical consideration, if you like. Churchill made his position clear to Roosevelt. Roosevelt, remember, Roosevelt is in a bad physical shape. Roosevelt had no stump for angering Stalin. Eisenhower was able to use that to say he refused to trespass into political arenas.

And so between them, Roosevelt and Eisenhower, ignoring the advice of the British, and Eisenhower ignoring the vice of General Patton, Eisenhower made the fatal choice not to move American forces towards Berlin, but to hold a line on the L instead. And so, Berlin was captured by Stalin’s Red Army, and Churchill was right. In one sense, this is going to feed into the post-war European situation and it’s not a good situation. I want to read this because this is quite interesting. I guess all the Americans know this. Eisenhower defended himself against criticism that he didn’t advance to Berlin when he returned to the States after the war. He pointed out that those who criticised his decision were not the ones who would’ve been forced to comfort the grieving mothers of soldiers killed in what he believed was an unnecessary fight for Berlin, exactly the same argument as Foch used in 1918 to establish the armistice. When Eisenhower stood for president in 1952, further criticism arose in the state and he emphasised his warnings about the danger of the Soviet threat to Europe, but refused to discuss, that in a sense that he was responsible for not advancing on Berlin. The American historian, to me, an outstanding historian, Stephen Ambrose. I’m a great fan of Stephen Ambrose’s writing. American historian Stephen Ambrose, saw what Eisenhower was doing as an attempt at self salvation and wishful thinking. There was no evidence, Ambrose found no evidence that Eisenhower ever warned against the Soviet threat to Europe until the presidential campaign of 1952. Ambrose writes, this is Ambrose’s writing.

This is not me. Stephen Ambrose writes, “The truth was that Eisenhower may have wished by 1952 that he had taken a hard time with Russians in 1945, but he had not.” That’s what Ambrose says, and he’s dead right about that. Now, the consequence, as Churchill feared, was a new war, and we call this new war, the Cold War. The USSI, in its satellites against the USA, and their European Allies later to develop into the Warsaw Pact on the east and NATO on the West, with the consequence that had the Americans wished to withdraw back into an isolationist position as regards Europe, they found themselves in a position where they could not do so. And in a position where they had to pay large sums of money to keep large numbers of American forces within Europe. You could say with some justification. And if you were doing a postgraduate degree, this might be an essay, I would get you to do. That this division between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, between the Warsaw Pact in the East and NATO in the West is still being played out in the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2023. It’s often said that the end of the First World War settled nothing. And we’re still living with the consequences of that. And we clearly are in the Middle East and arguably still in the boards. And it’s often said that that the same is not true of the Second World War. After all, what did the, Japanese-American historian Fukuyama said when the East collapsed, when communism collapsed from 1989 onwards, he said, “It is the end of history.” Well, he was very foolish to use that phrase.

I know he qualified it and so on and so forth. But it was a very stupid phrase in my view, because actually, we’re in what many commentators today, American and European call the New Cold War. And an example of that is Ukraine. It’s a cold war because NATO has refused to send forces into Ukraine. But on the other hand, and that falls largely on the states, large sums of money ammunitions are finding themselves in Ukraine from NATO. And Churchill was aware of this potentiality. When I talk about Churchill, one of the things that, and if you read about Churchill, one of the things extraordinary about Churchill is his foresight on what might come, his ability to look at the past and the present and make a darn good stack at the future. And you remember that he made his position clear, not in Britain, but he made it clear when speaking immediately after the war at Fulton in Missouri. And you remember what Churchill said in the States, he’s no longer Prime Minister, but he said in this really important lecture, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron Curtain,” it wasn’t his phrase originally, it was an American author called Campbell, but he used it. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, An iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line, like all the capitals of the ancient states of Central Europe and Eastern Europe, Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sophia, all these famous cities in the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.”

Now in the event, Austria got out of that, and that’s another story for another day, “Which I must call the Soviet sphere,” said Churchill, “And all a subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence, but to a very high, and in some cases, increasing milia of control from Moscow.” 1946 Fulton, Missouri speech. So, this war does not come to an easy conclusion. It’s not like the Napoleonic Wars with Waterloo in 1815, and Napoleon sent off to Saint Helena, and the old regime put back in charge. It’s not like that. It’s not even quite like the First World War where all the pieces of the jigsaw were thrown up in the air and they came down differently with lots of consequences. But here, we go into another global war, the Cold War. But in terms of Germany and Berlin, it meant that in 1945, the administration of occupied Germany was divided four ways between the USSR, the USA, Britain, and very grudgingly by America, France. No one could stand to go, but it was Churchill, perhaps his last throw of the dice, that France was acknowledged to be one of the four Allied powers. And Berlin, as Germany itself was spit into four parts. So was Berlin and a Russian part, an American part, a British part, and a French part. They were meant to operate together, and in the end, they were meant to hold free elections for a new government in Germany, which would be for the whole of Germany. But it became very clear early on that there was a big gulf between the USSR and the three Western Allies. A very large gulf.

Berlin was also divided by the four, in effect by the two. East Berlin under Russian control and West Berlin under the control initially, of course, of the USA, Britain, and France. Berlin itself, being in Prussia, or what had been Prussia, Prussia was abolished as a name and title of a lander in 1947, but in Berlin was entirely, the city was entirely within East Germany. The other division between East Germany and West Germany is, if you like, it’s not a straight line, but it’s a carve down the middle. So the east is Russian, Marxist East Germany. To the west is the American, British and French West Germany in the end, the Federal Republic of Germany. But Berlin was also divided into two. And in this new Cold War that is emerging from the chaos of the Second World War, the Brandenburg gate in the middle of Berlin, which many of you went to walk through and seen, becomes the first symbol of the division between east and west, replaced in 1961 by the Berlin War. And if you’re my age, then we never imagined that two part Europe, Marxist East, Liberal Democrat West, supported by the States, would ever change in our lifetimes. Well, of course, it did. And I shall cover that part of the story when I cover the story of East Germany. As I say, the avowed intention of both Yalta and at Potsdam was to allow Germans to vote in free elections for their new post-war government. But you remember what Stalin said about Poland. They could vote, but they would have to vote communist. There was no way that the Allies were ever going to agree in Germany. Something that Winston Churchill had always understood, and which Roosevelt hoped would not be the case. Roosevelt was the optimist. Churchill, the realist, comment, no less than 5,000 words. The West acted first by holding elections, and the Soviets acted second, both acted at the end part of 1949.

The three Western Allies in August, Russia in October. Out of that emerged West Germany, the FDR, the Federal Republic of Germany and East Germany, or the GDR, the German Democratic Republic. Wherever you see the word democratic republic, the last thing it’s going to be is democratic. The Federal Republic and the Democratic Republic of Germany are now about to come into place. It take a little longer for the west to finally withdraw from West Germany, although they don’t withdraw neutrally. In East Germany, the Russians never withdraw. So, we now have two Germanys, a West Democratic and an East Marxist. The division of Europe is aligned through the middle of Germany itself and also, aligned through Berlin itself. Berlin, wholly in the eastern part of Germany, but half of the city Western, therefore creating enormous problems of how the West keep West Berlin going. That’s the story for next week. And the incredible airlift, which the United States and its Allies carried out to keep West Berlin going. Next week, I shall talk about West Berlin and West Germany, and the following week, I shall talk about East Germany and I’ll talk about the stars and all of that. So, those two things are to come, but there’s one thing I want to say. I’m looking at the time. One thing I want to say before I leave this part of the talk, is that the West Germans, under the guidance of the three Allies, established what was called a basic law.

This was really a constitutional law, but they called it a basic law. A basic law because they hoped that one day, Germany would be reunited under a common constitution. Now, the basic law was particularly interesting because it defined the role of president of Germany, or I should say president of West Germany. Now, as we are having, as we’ve had unfortunately in Britain, the death of the Queen, and we are at the end of this week celebrating the coronation of the king. There has come out of the woodwork, as it were, large number of Republican voices. And the main argument of the Republicans in Britain is that we should, as a grown up mature people, elect our head of state, ie, a president, rather than simply have hereditary monarchy over which we have no say. Now, I’m not going to get involved in the British arc except to say, remind us that there are two in broad terms, two types of presidents. There’s a president as in Germany who is merely a figure and doesn’t really count. The person that counts is the Chancellor, or in British terms, the Prime Minister. So Germany has a president in the way that Holland has a king, and Germany has a chancellor in the way that Holland and Britain have a prime minister. Whereas in America, it’s quite different. The prime ministerial or chancellor’s role and president’s role are the same, meaning that the president is, can be absolutely controlled by Congress. It could be the different party that has power. Whereas here, in Britain, with a king or in Germany with a president, that’s not the case because the prime minister in Britain, the chancellor in Germany, have the command, the support of parliament, so that’s a big difference. I’m not arguing the case, one or the other. I’m saying, all I’m saying is that the president does not have to be an American style president.

And the British Republicans seem to be talking about a president like Germany. Now, why did Germany have a whole piece of its basic law about the president? Well, Hitler had been a appointed chancellor by President Hindenberg, but he then challenged Hindenberg for the presidency, if you remember, and won. And Hitler becomes both chancellor and president. He then was able to dispense with abundant style, with the parliament. And in effect, he ruled, as we know, in a dictatorial fashion. And so in a British context, that means you have to be very careful not to create a situation where that could happen. And in American terms, you have to be very careful that that situation doesn’t arise under your system. So one of the things that the Americans and the British attempted to do was to create a system for West Germany, which would work democratically. And it’s very interesting because the result they come up with is, of course, a republic, highly commendable to the Americans, but actually a structure which is a constitutional monarchy, highly recommended by the British. And it’s a strange thing that the West German, now the German constitution, is brought together by Britain and America, but never forget that Britain and America’s democracy comes from the same source. And that democracy played into the West German post 1945, not just in, might I say politics, but it also played into things like free trade unions and the development of schools and education. It’s all based upon coming together of British and American models. And so, in the world of today, actually Germany, is more in tune with Britain and America than France, although it doesn’t always appear to be so.

That’s other questions or other times which I will come to in my final lecture in three weeks time. Now, I’m going to leave the story that we’ve been talking about so far, and I’m going to move on to the, well, more difficult question, more difficult issue of denazification. Now, for a long time in Britain, and I think in America also, we denied any denazification was going on, but we had denazification unit. My predecessor is principal of the College of Education in Manchester, who was a Germanist and actually married a German lady after the end of the war, was involved in the denazification programme for the land of Hesse, of Hessen. And he was responsible for establishing free trade unions, for example there, an adult education there. And it’s a very interesting subject on how in the British zone, they developed ideas which never saw the light of day back in Britain and would’ve saved a lot of hassle had we imported the ideas. But, of course, the people doing this in Germany, but for the British were largely educators and were largely left wing in their views. And so, we had this extraordinary situation that the left wing in Britain who never achieved despite Atlee, never achieved in Britain what they were achieving in Germany is a very, very intriguing point. Now, if we’re talking about denazification, we immediately meet a problem. “Right, William,” you say, “What do you mean by that?” Well, it’s difficult to say. What it means is making the country, we’re talking about West Germany, making the country democratic.

We’re talking about East Germany, making the country communist. Therefore, we need to get rid of Nazis. “William, what do you mean by get rid of?” Well, shoot them. You simply can’t shoot them. There’s over 8 million jurors that were actually signed up members of the party. You can’t have firing squad that over 8 million Germans. When reunification came, a friend of mine who was in charge of adult education in Rhineland West area, was sent to East Germany to the University of Dresden. And his job was to find out who were the real communists that at we sat from the university’s education department. So I said to him, “Well, wasn’t that a very difficult job to do? After all, the British and the Americans found it extraordinarily difficult to do in Germany, in West Germany post 1945?” Oh, he said it was very easy. “I don’t understand because not all East Germans were members of the party. And even those who were members of the party, if they were academics, were often only members because it allowed them to travel to the west to conferences. So what did you do?” And he said, “Well, I sat them all.” And he had the power to do that. He sat the entire department. Now, we didn’t do that in the west. In West Germany, the British and the Americans really didn’t do that. But the one thing that all the Allies were agreed upon, that’s including Russia, all for the Allies, was that they must bring to account the leaders who sanctioned, oversaw and actioned the Nazi regime in such a ways to be charged with crimes against humanity, as well as other crimes.

They set up an international court at Nuremberg on which judges and lawyers from all four countries took part. Although the leading part with the greatest number of people at Nuremberg were the Americans. The Russians really couldn’t cope with the three Allies because the American-British systems were very compatible. The French was not quite so compatible, but easy enough to bring together and to say the same things. But the Russian was not, they found great difficulties. Moreover, they had find difficulties finding interpreters, let alone anything else. So it was largely an American led, and the international court defined, they focused on the crime of aggression, which they described as plotting and waging aggressive war. And they said, “This is the supreme international crime because it contains within itself, the accumulated evil of the whole.” An interesting use of the word evil. That’s not a word that lawyers or criminologists would ever use, but it was used, and I’m not saying that the word is not correct. I’m saying that it’s extraordinarily unusual for lawyers to use such a word and to put it in the document, which they did. Most of those brought to Nuremberg were tried for war, for crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg trials lasted from November, mid-November 1945, 20th November to the end of September, last day of September, 1946.

It was the first time such an international court had been summoned. You remember there was discussion at the end of the first war to bring the Kaiser to justice, but it came to nothing. The court was invented by the victors. The terms were invented by the victors. That again, is obvious and important that it was done. I’m not against saying that, but it has a slight je ne sais pas about it. It has a problem about it. And that problem continues today when you think about Putin. 21 people were brought to trial. One, in absentia, which was Bormann. The Bormann, they thought at the time had escaped to wherever, South America. In fact, he was dead, but it wasn’t confirmed that he was dead until they did DNA on his skull that was found earlier in 1998. 12 was sentenced to death, including, of course, Goring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Rosenberg, Streicher, Jodl, and Bormann, sentenced death in absentia. 10 were hanged. Plus Goring, the Goring who committed suicide, do you remember, the day before. Seven, including Hesse, who had flown to Britain in the middle of the war. Donitz, the admiral who’d taken over when Hitler had committed suicide as the fuhrer and Speer, were sent to out Spandau Prison to serve their sentences. There were three acquittals, including the former Vice Chancellor Papen, and they were freed because the four judges from the four Allied nations could come to a decision. Of course, many, like Hitler, had taken their own lives or others have fled.

Now that is, as it were, the tip of the iceberg. Why? Because there’s over 8 million members in the Nazi party. It’s the tip of the problem. Some questions. What are those industrialists who were compliant in producing the war material needed by the regime in the war? What of the signed up members of the Nazi party and what have individuals accused of crimes against humanity, such as the Dodds and places like Bergen-Belsen? What of ordinary German citizens who are simply complicit members of the armed forces or civilians complicit in the regime? We’ve touched on some of these questions before. Now, the further complication here is a division between East Germany, Russia, and West Germany. The three Allies. In her latest book, I’m a huge fan of this historian, Katja Hoyer, and she’s just produced her new book about East Germany called Beyond the Wall. It’s only just come out. And she writes, I’m going to read two short bits from it. First of all this, “Where West Germany had openly welcomed former Nazis back into the civil service, into teaching, into culture, and even the police.” So, the predominant theme in West Germany, sponsored by Britain and America’s, “Come back into the fold, be good boys and girls now, and we’ll close the book on the past.” In East Germany, they made anti-fascism, anti-nazism, the foundational dogma. In fact, it’s a dogma not being used correctly, but it’s the same dogma being used by Putin against Ukraine.

That they’re fascists. They’re Nazis. Well, they’re not, but it’s the same argument Stalin was using in East Germany. Let me read off, “While there are many important exceptions, particularly in the armed forces, in the insufficient detention given to the thorough investigation of the Holocaust, on the whole denazification, the East was deeper and had an impact on the economy.” Knowing not deep inquiries into the Holocaust. Why? Because Russians are anti-Semitic. We all know that. “Teachers, civil servants, politicians and even engineers and policemen were removed in the East from their positions and replaced with inexperience, but ideologically less problematic individuals.” Leading to the consequence that West Germany, not just because of capitalism and communism, but West Germany was able to recover splendidly in all sorts of ways. In the aftermath of 1945, west, east Germany, at best, stagnated or went backwards. Many people who could left East Germany for the West because they feared the Stalinist regime and the West were prepared to, one has to say it, forgive and forget. Katja Hoyer goes on to say this little piece. “The East German regime was frightened of its own people. The comparison to West Germany was always there. East German citizens had relatives in the West. They listened to the radio and saw what was going on. They had memories of high living standards before the war.

Their restlessness and demands made the regime nervous. Aubrick, who was the puppet put in charge by the Russians, Aubrick was astutely aware that he was a member of a small clique that formed a hard line mustered by island.” In East Germany, they’ve replaced Nazism with communism, and the communist regime has to rely, as did the Nazi regime, on a secret police. The Stasi. And we’ll talk about the Stasi next. Well, not next time, time after. When we talk about East Germany. It also, of course, is fear led to the building of the Berlin Wall. It’s extraordinary when you think about it today, it’s as though they thought by building such a wall that the ideas couldn’t get in, but it doesn’t work, does it? And if we’d only realised that, we would’ve realised far sooner that the Marxist regime, at least in East Germany, was doomed. It’s too close to the West. And as things begin to weaken in the East and people can illicitly listen to West German TV and so on, the difference in standards of living is marked. Now in West Germany, as I’ve said, American-Britain realise that they needed people who might have been touched by nazism, nevertheless, to run the new country. And however distasteful to many, we have to say, such a policy, there’s no denying it was successful. It worked so that Germany as a whole today is a democratic liberal country, not without its problems, from the far left and the far right, but it is a democratic part of the West. Let’s look at just a few examples. Firstly, the term of Krupp, The great arms per. On the 11th of April, 1945 in the early afternoon, the Americans arrived in Jeeps at the Villa Hugel, H-U-G-E-L, on the outskirts of the city of Hessen. This was a villa occupied by the Krupp family. That was their family home.

The head of the family was arrested, but he was 75, I don’t know, 75 seems young to me. He was 75 and considered too ill to stand trial. And they thought, the Americans had him. So the Americans thought that they would put his son, Alfred Krupp on trial in his place, but I don’t think their hearts were in it. And they couldn’t gather the evidence against the younger Krupp quickly enough or sufficiently enough to bring into trial at Nuremberg. And in fact, no industrialists were to trial at Nuremberg and the West German economy needed Krupp. And so, they simply closed their eyes. That Krupp had been so deeply involved and no charges were brought. The same, of course, happened in other occupied countries. For example, in France where charges were not brought against manufacturers. It was, they needed them. A Krupp had employed as other German, big German firms had, many of the forced and slave labourers… Is an example, a gross example of how it was dealt with. Now, you must morally make your own decision about whether that was the moral or immoral thing to do. But you must also put into that equation whether it was the Realpolitik situation or we should have abandoned Realpolitik. For what reason? And not, I hope, for revenge, because revenge is not a something, it’s not something that those of us believing in democracy should engage in.

After a point. And the point being that the leaders of Nazism had been brought to trial and the top ones executed and we were going to execute others who were involved in the death camps, that Bergen-Belsen had elsewhere, all going to, that’s different. We’re still prosecuting some of them even today. Very, very old men. So it isn’t that we gave up, but we softened our approach. You can take one view or the other, and I can’t say which is the right one, but nor can any of us say if we were placed in the position of making that decision, what we would do. For example, what about Russia? What if Russia collapses and the West is able to get in, is invited in even, and arrests Russians guilty of war. Where do we stop? Where do we stop? The 17 year old recruited from Siberia, who’s bought in all the propaganda issued by the Kremlin and kills civilians with a grenade. Do we follow him and or do we follow the officers responsible? And what about the massacres? How far down? These are difficult questions. And if you or I were there in Moscow and had to make those decisions, we should attempt at least to make Realpolitik decisions, I think, rather than revenge decisions. Now that does not mean to say we wouldn’t put on trial and execute Putin. Of course, we would. And hang those around him, the head of the group and so on. But, and my particular, Lavrov, if we do win, can you send me to get Lavrov? But seriously, you’ve got to answer the question, are you going to make things worse in the long run? Is there a moment at which you have to turn the page over at least those that are not as guilty as others? That’s the case.

For example, Reinhard Gehlen, G-E-H-L-E-N, he was a professional soldier all his life. He was a professional soldier under the Weimar. During World War II, he became military intelligence officer in the east against the Russians. He served Hitler as he’d served Weimar. After the war, he served the Western Allies in the immediate aftermath of the war. And then he went on to serve the West German governor. He was the head of army intelligence in Russia for Hitler in World War II. Now, don’t tell me he didn’t know what was going on. Of course, he knew what was going on. But in 1946, the Americans recruited him as their spy master for 10 years in West Germany, paid by the American government, paid by some of you who were taxpayers between '46 and '56. When West Germany stood up on its own feet as it were, he became the founding president of the West German Intelligence Service. And of course, that suits the Americans and British because they’ve got a man right at the top that they can, at any moment, bring up the past to. He was awarded the German Silver Cross in 1945 and under a quarter of a century later, was awarded the Order of Merit of West Germany. So he’s got a Nazi medal and he’s got a West German medal. He died peacefully and inverted corners honourably in 1979. This Hans Globke, G-L-O-B-K-E, Hans Globke, who was a lawyer, I’m ashamed to say. He worked in the Weimar Republic in the Ministry of the Interior.

And when the Nazis came to par, he continued to work as a lawyer in the Ministry of the Interior. When West Germany came into being, he was chief of staff, the German chancellor. Under Chancellor Adenauer, the senior civil servant. One historian has written. He is the most prominent example of the continuity of the administrative elites between Nazi Germany and West Germany. If you only hear that part of the story, you say, “Well, William, come on. He was a lawyer. He was just doing his job.” Well, doing his job is a difficult defence as we know from Nuremberg. But you could argue that except you can’t. In 1936, he was a man who wrote a legal annotation of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Race laws. He did not object in any way… To the Nuremberg Race laws. And his advice was used to argue by Nazi leaders out of '45 that they were acting legally. Worse, to me, he served as a chief legal advisor to the Office for Jewish Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, which was headed by Adolf Eichmann, thus he was responsible for part of the bureaucratic implementation of the Holocaust. What happened? Well, at the end of the war, he was a Catholic, believe it or not. At the end of the war, the Catholic church argued to the British that he had always been anti-Nazi and had made attempts to support anti-Hitler movements. The evidence is, shall we say, challengeable, but the British accepted him. Why? Because they felt that his experience could not be replicated. If you are seeding at this moment, it’s both sides of the Atlantic. The Americans and the British hands are not clean. If you think we should not have employed men like these, not only that, but the British and the Americans use Globke in the drafting of the basic law, that I refer to just now, of West Germany. Adenauer, Konrad Adenauer who numb nuts.

Konrad Adenauer was asked as in West Germany after the war. And much later on he was asked what he felt about Globke, given that he was involved with the drafting of the Nuremberg Race laws. Adenauer said, he was asked, “Why did you employ this man?” And Adenauer’s reply was, “You don’t throw away dirty water as long as you don’t have clean water.” Now, as an example of cynicism, that takes a biscuit. As an example of Realpolitik, it takes two biscuits. You don’t throw away dirty water as long as you don’t have clean water. That was the basis upon which the British and the Americans placed former members of the regime who were not just complicit, but more deeply involved than that. The intelligence officer recruited by the CIA. Globke, recruited by the British. No hands are clean. Then there were those people that you really couldn’t get your head around. And one of those was a Wilhelm Furtwangler. The conductor, said to me one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. He was not a member of the Nazi party. He refused to make the Nazi salute. And he was, in many mere specs, anti-Nazi. He said in 1932, the year before Hitler came to par, this hissing little street peddler will never get anywhere in Germany. During the war, the Nazis employed him to conduct orchestras in Berlin and Austria and other parts of Germany. He refused to go to occupied Europe. He said, “I will never play in a country such as France, which I’m so much attached to, considering myself a vanquisher. I will conduct there again, only when the country has been liberated.” And as regards, not being anti-Semitic, he wrote a public letter to Goebbels. Goebbels was the man employing him as the conductor. He wrote in 1933 to Goebbels, a public letter.

“Ultimately, there is only one dividing line I recognise, that between good and bad art. However, while the dividing line between Jews and non-Jews is being drawn with a downright merciless theoretical precision, that other dividing line, the one which in the long run is so important for our music life, yes, the decisive line between good and bad seems to have had too little significance attributed to it.” Well, you have to make up your own minds about those artists. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf is another one. You have to make up your own minds about how guilty they would be. Now in Britain, we were nearly conquered in 1940. How many of our artists would’ve gone working on under the Nazi regime? I suggest that many of them would’ve done. And had we been liberated by the Americans at some future date, what would the Americans have thought of some of our celebrity actors and actresses… And artists? Would they have just turned a blind eye or would they have put on trial and shot them? These are really difficult questions that is raised. No one is saying, I am not saying that we should have been more liberal. If anything, I think we should have been less liberal. But it’s a fundamental problem. And as I said earlier, we may face similar problems with the, at the end of the Russian Ukrainian war. Now I’ve got to stop. My excuse is I started three minutes late, so I should finish three minutes late. I’m going back to Churchill speech in America, Fulton, Missouri. Churchill called the speech, we always refer to as the iron curtain speech, but he actually called the speech the Sinews. S-I-N-E-W-S, The Sinews of Peace. A very strange phrase. And what did he mean by it? What he meant this, the message he was giving out at for Missouri is, “The United States and Great Britain need to confront an increasingly aggressive Soviet Union.

The United States and Great Britain need to confront an increasingly aggressive Soviet Union.” Now, in truth, who has led NATO over Ukraine and Russia? Who has faced Russia the most, America and Britain. So Churchill wasn’t far off the mark all that way back in 1946 in Fulton, all the talk of Britain leaving the EU, we have not left Brexit. All the talk about the difficulties between British and American politicians, all of that, we know all of that. But when push comes to sharp, the Anglo-American alliance still, despite Britain’s positive of resources, nevertheless, is an important ally for the United States within Europe. I know America plays the game of playing with France, but you trust the French even less than you should trust the British. And that is saying something. I’d better stop that. And thank you for listening. Next week, West Germany. The week after, East Germany and the final week, I’m looking at the reunification and the period since reunification. So I’ve got three talks to come and that brings me to the end of my German course. And I should be very sorry about that 'cause there’s so much more I would like to have talked about than I haven’t. But let me stop there. Thanks very much for listening. And I will see if I got some questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Yes, force labour. Yes, absolutely, Tim. It wasn’t exactly policy to work the slave labourers to death, but they didn’t particularly care. And as regards to Jewish slave labourers, they might have landed up anyhow in the gas chambers. They simply didn’t care a damn. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, and sorry, who is this? Rose? Yes, of course, the Swiss were not so neutral. That’s another very interesting question. It’s also true that the Americans use the Swiss, but that’s another story. Now, one of, sorry, Rose. I want to make a sensible point out of your sensible point. And that is that neutrality is a very difficult concept. Now, Putin has a point about NATO not being neutral. We aren’t. As regards Ukraine. Neutrality. Sweden was neutral in the second World War. But you ask any other Scandinavian, and they still feel bitter about how Sweden supported the Nazis in World War II. Neutrality is an odd concept. There’s even a war memorial on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva of… A commemoration of some Swiss that were killed in a border instant against the Germans.

No, Marion. Marion. You add another point to what Rose and I’ve been saying. “I am Swiss,” says Marion, “And Jewish, and nothing was ever mentioned when I went to school.” Well, exactly. Switzerland is a very strange country, not least because it has Italians, Germans, French, all sorts of people now. And Switzerland is in itself an odd concept. And Swiss history is a very, for a small country, it’s a very complex history. I have to say, of all the countries that I visited in Western Europe, the only country where during an election campaign, the only country which I felt really uneasy about was Switzerland. Where there lots of far right posters up. The only other place was in the city of Strasbourg, which is another problematic area being German as well as French. So, if we’re talking about Switzerland, Switzerland is a complex story and Rose is absolutely right. They weren’t so neutral. I’m saying that’s exactly true.

Marion is saying they never taught it at school. What countries don’t teach is far more interesting than what they do teach and tells you a lot. And I’m also saying that America was involved with Swiss money as well.

Philip, you are right. You are right. “Did looted German gold not go to the Bank of International Settlement in Bowle in which a British Central Bank has Montagu Norman, a member and a friend of Schacht, the German representative.” True, no one’s hands are clean over Switzerland. Hannah. Can I thank all of you, Philip and Marion and Rose, you’ve raised such wonderfully extra points that is really as important.

Hannah says, “A late old German friend of mine who fled Hamburg always told me the Swiss were even more antisemitic than the Germans.” Well, I think that is all. I’ve also read stuff which would go along with that. The Swiss are very, but then again, you’ve got to look at different bits of Switzerland. I say, oh God, because it’s horrible when it becomes real in this way.

He or she writes, “A cousin of mine was a slave labour in Dachau. He received money from the Germans after the war. He had to go to the embassy in Ottawa once a year to prove that he was still alive.” I can’t add anything to that. It’s horrendous.

Q: Stuart writes, “If the Russians reach Berlin, before the allies, how did the agreement for a four power government, Berlin and Vienna come about?”

A: Well, because that had been agreed before the war and the Russians accepted it. They thought that West Berlin would fall anyhow. And you remember that the airlift on Berlin only saved West Berlin by the skin of its teeth. I’ll tell that story next week and I’ll say more about that, Stuart, next week. But they didn’t expect the arrangement to go on.

“In 1951, I was living in Berlin,” says Sarah, “Which even then, I remember women in Berlin carrying bricks for reuse, had to get passes to move anywhere out of Berlin due to it being surrounded by Russian zones.” That was West Berlin. Yeah. “As a child, it was quite fun. But looking back, I realised how broken the country was.” The remarkable thing about Germany is how quickly West Germany recovered. The next question is how quickly is East Germany recovering since reunification? That is a different story.

Q: Robert says, “What do you know about the formation of German labour service battalions by the Allies in the early 1950s before they were permitted to form military forces until armistice were replaced by peace treaty in '53, '55. They constituted the German military until that time.”

A: Yeah, this, I will say something about that next time. It was part of the Western Allies view that the German should police and defend themselves. We were already looking to embrace them into the new post-war world of Western Europe. That’s what we were doing. Churchill had even gone further. Churchill, I mean, he was completely shot down by the Americans and rightly so, but Churchill wanted to move against Russia in 1945 and use parts of the German army to do that. As our views about the German were, I’ll talk about next week, but they were different.

Q: “When you said the First World War settled nothing, do you think the same is true with the second World war?”

A: Well, that was really, Tim, the question I was posing.

Q: When you say, actually when most historians say that the First World War created problems which exist today, and particularly with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, do I think the same is true the second World War?

A: I’m posing the question in the light of the Russian-Ukrainian war that that is a question to be answered. So I’m putting the question out there rather than being dogmatic about it. And I would have to think a lot. No one has written about that yet, but I think it’s an important issue because of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Q: Why did Russia allow West Berlin?

A: Because it couldn’t do anything about it. Why not? Because the Americans had the bomb. They couldn’t risk it.

Q: “To what extent did USA undermine democracy in Italy when it saw it growing support for socialist parties after 1945, both by CIA a involvement and the Marsh plan also interfered in France with undesirable election results. When it questioned what’s the most important, was it with clean hands?”

A: Oh, Lawrence. That raises an absolute storm. You stir the ants nest. You can add into that. Why did Stalin not intervene in the Greek civil war? Well, because he’d given an undertaking to Churchill that he wouldn’t. But then, Churchill had given an undertaking that the West wouldn’t intervene in what was Czechoslovakia? And it was interference that no one’s hands are ever clean. Lawrence. And if we talk about security, if we talk about intelligent forces like the CIA, there’s clearly British and I would be amazed if there are not British and American forces of some sort in Ukraine at this moment. But we say there aren’t, well, maybe not, but there will be. And so, you’re quite right. There are questions. The question in Italy was an extraordinary one. But if you go back to the referendum on the king, there were some very dodgy results. They would’ve voted the Italians for a kid. That’s a whole 'nother story, but you raise it. This is why I say I wish I wasn’t ending because there are so many stories to go. We haven’t done Italy. Have I? Have we? No, I don’t think we have. Well, we might do Italy sometime and someone likes to suggest we go.

Q: “Should Republicans vote for a, their leader as Germans voted for Hitler as their leader?”

A: I’m not getting, Barbara, involved in your American politics. If you are saying Trump is like Hitler, no, he isn’t. If you are saying Trump is dangerous, I think many people in the states and even more in Britain would say, yes, he is dangerous. Is he dangerous in a Hitler sort of way? Not directly, but it’s the indirect nature of these things that becomes difficult. No, I do not think there will be revolution in America, but there could be considerable civil unrest in America and who knows who might come out of that. It’s really quite difficult and it only needs somebody, like, it only needs somebody to change sides. Remember in American history, General Lee was offered the command of the federal army and accepted instead the command of the Confederate army. Had he not done so is another story.

Yes, Donald, you’re right. “The Russian caval casualties in the battle per Berlin at the end of April, May '45 were very high with one estimate being 360,000 killed and wounded.” Answer to that is Stalin doesn’t care. Stalin doesn’t care about people. Russian leaders don’t care about people. Putin.

Q: Which democracy, oh, Peter, I can’t answer that question. Oh, dear. Sometimes you’re all too far too clever for me. Which democracies have legislative and executive separation?

A: Like the states, in other words, Peter, you’re saying, which have legislative and executive separation. Not many is my answer, but I really can’t give you an answer to that. Most. It’s interesting. One of the questions and the trouble in France at the moment, in fact this very day, over the issue of raising the retirement age is that macro enforced it through by executive power. And the legislature didn’t even debate it. The French parliament didn’t debate it. He did it by executive separation. That is a problem that countries like even Britain faces. There was an issue that the Prime Minister could take us to war using the royal prerogative. Historically, the king took us to war. The king can’t take us to war. The royal prerogative is exercised by the Prime Minister and would take us to war. Blair took us into a Iraq by a vote in parliament. Many lawyers now think a prime minister could not take us to war. And unless there are enemy landing by parachute or something, a Prime Minister couldn’t take us to war without a vote in parliament because Blair, whether intentionally or not changed the law. So, these are very complicated questions, Peter, and you raise a really interesting one because executive and legislative are not quite, for example, America still has impeachment and the President can be impeached. In Britain, we haven’t used impeachment since the 18th century. The American law is the same as the British law. We simply haven’t used it. It seems unbelievable in our situation now in Britain that one could use impeachment against a prime minister. But technically, we could, but I don’t think we would. In America, of course, it’s possible. So you’ve got to look at the detail in each country and the detail changes from when the Constitution was written or in our case, unwritten and what it is today. It’s not, Peter, your question is so interesting and I’ve never thought about teaching that. A legislative and executive divisions, but it’s a thought, isn’t it? I mean, I’m sorry, my answer is insufficient, but I can’t do it off the top of my head as easily as that.

Q: “What is your opinion with the Potsdam conference given the new leadership in the US and UK?”

A: Oh, I don’t think Truman is. Truman is Roosevelt. That is to say, Roosevelt at his peak. And I don’t think Atlee is Churchill. And I think Stalin is always Stalin. I’m not going to say anymore.

Q: Yes, exactly, Shelley, that was the point I was making. Shelley write, “Isn’t Putin claiming Russia is going into Ukraine for denazification?”

A: Yes, exactly right. And that’s the point I was making.

Q: Why, if Russia controlled Berlin, did they agree that control half the city?

A: Because that was agreed before, but they thought, as I’ve said, just now in an answer to another question, they thought that they could deal with that, push him out. Mengele ever punished? That, you got me on the side. I’d have to check that. I’m sorry. The questions are so interesting tonight, so challenging for me. In the right way. So thank you for raising them and you’ve set sort lots of hairs running in my head and I hope I’ve set hairs running in your head. See you next week. West Germany next week and the week after, East Germany. See you then. Bye.