Dialog International

Rudi Dutschke Commemorated

Forty years ago this month the radical student leader Rudi Dutschke was  shot in the head by a crazed right-wing fanatic.  Many Germans applauded, but the students took to the streets and violent demonstrations erupted.  Today, after a four year campaign by the Tageszeitung, a street in Berlin has been named after Rudi Dutschke.  It happens to cross a street named after Dutschke's nemesis, the late newspaper publisher Axel Springer (Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse has the right-of-way). Many believed it was the hate-filled attacks on Dutschke in Springer's Bild-Zeitung that motivated his would-be assassin.

Rudi Dutschke was certainly a charismatic figure.  You can watch some great footage of him in this ZDF television documentary (1968 - Mythos und Wahrheit) on the student revolt of 1968. On the other hand, what specific ideas and proposals was he advocating?  Here it gets a bit fuzzy, and I have to agree with Lord Dahrendorf's assessment of Dutschke which he articulated in a recent interview in taz (Dahrendorf actually debated Dutschke at a demo in Freiburg in 1968):

Seien wir ehrlich: Er war ein konfuser Kopf, der keine bleibenden Gedanken hinterlassen hat. Worauf man heute zurückblickt, ist die Person: ein anständiger, ehrlicher und vertrauenswürdiger Mann. Aber ich wüsste niemand, der sagen würde: Das war Dutschkes Idee, die müssen wir jetzt verfolgen. Die Diskussion war schlimm damals, er brachte all diese Schlagworte, maoistische Versatzstücke, aber was er eigentlich denkt, war nicht leicht festzustellen. (Let's be honest: he was a very confused guy who didn't leave behind any lasting ideas. Looking back, I found him to be a forthright, honorable and honest person. But no one today says: "That was Dutschke's idea; we need to implement it. " The level of discussion was pretty bad back then. He tossed out all these slogans and Maoist fragments. But it was impossible to tell what he was really thinking.)

But love him or hate him - Dutschke embodied the spirit of 1968 like no other individual, so it is appropriate that a street in Berlin bears his name. 

Do we need a Rudi-Dutschke Street in America? Dutschke was Germany's most vocal critic of America's war in Vietnam. But he married an American, Gretchen Klotz, and had three children with her.  She lives today just outside Boston.

Ina Seidel and Gertrud Kolmar: a German "Friendship"

A few days ago I wrote about the the lyric poet Gertrud Kolmar (pictured on the right above) who was virtually unknown in her short life, and even today does not receive the recognition she deserves for her powerful poems. But she did have some influential fans early in her writing career.  One was the bestselling author Ina Seidel, who achieved celebrity status in Germany with the publication of her novel Das Wunschkind (The Wanted Child) in 1930.  Ina Seidel became acquainted with Gertrud in Berlin and wanted to use her considerable influence to promote her poetry.  Together with Elisabeth Langgässer she published an anthology of poetry by women - Herz zum Hafen. Frauengedichte der Gegenwart - which included four key poems by Gertrud Kolmar and brought her to the attention of the broad reading public.  Unfortunately Herz zum Hafen was released in 1933, just after the Nazi seizure of power in Berlin. Ina Seidel threw her lot in with Hitler, and broke off all contact with Kolmar (as well as with the half-Jewish Langgässer).  Gertrud Kolmar was devastated by the turn of events and the attitude of her erstwhile "friend".  She complained bitterly to her friend Karl Josef Keller, who recalled in his recollections of Gertrud Kolmar:

"G.K.beklagte sich auch bei mir über den plötzlichen Gesinnungswechsel ihrer 'arischen' Bekannten, die zuvor für ihre Arbeiten eingetreten waren. In diesem Zusammenhang nannte sie u.a. eine der bekanntesten deutschen Schriftstellerinnen, die m.E.in Berlin wohnhaft war."
(Gertrud Kolmar complained to me about the sudden change of heart of her "Aryan" friends who had championed her work.  In this connection she mentioned a very famous German woman author who was living in Berlin (Ina Seidel)).

Seidel became the most popular woman author in the Third Reich.  In her works she depicted the Nazi ideal of the feminine: the stoic mother of the German front soldier.  But she also wrote ecstatic poems and hymns to fuel the Nazi Führerkult .  Here is a piece she wrote for Hitler's birthday in 1939:

In Gold und Scharlach, feierlich mit Schweigen, 
ziehn die Standarten vor dem Führer auf. 
Wer will das Haupt nicht überwältigt neigen?
Wer hebt den Blick nicht voll Vertrauen auf?
Ist dieser Dom, erbaut aus klarem Feuer, 
nicht mehr als eine Burg aus Stahl und Stein,
und muß er nicht ein Heiligtum, uns teuer,
ewigen Deutschtums neues Sinnbild sein?

(In gold and scarlet, with a solemn silence,
they raise the flags before the Führer.
Who could not - overwhelmed - bow his head?
Who could refuse to lift his eyes, filled with trust?
  Is this cathedral, built from pure fire,
  Not more than a castle made of steel and stone,
  And is this not a sanctuary we hold dear -
  The new symbol of eternal German blood?)

A short time after this celebration, Ina Seidel's friend Gertrud Kolmar was sent to work as a slave laborer in a Nazi munitions plant.  Two years later she and the other Jewish workers were rounded up at the plant and sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered.  There is no record that Ina Seidel ever inquired about her friend or tried to intervene on her behalf.

After the war, Seidel's fame only grew.  Streets, Gymnasiums, elementary schools were named after her in West Germany.  Many bear her name  still today.  And, in recognition of the new postwar order, Ina Seidel reminisced often about her "Jewish friend, Gertrud Kolmar"  up until her death in 1974.

Iraq and Postwar Germany

Quite often apologists for the Iraq War point to American success in postwar Germany as a rationale for the the military occupation of Iraq.  Both Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice often draw parallels to postwar Germany as a reason to stay the course: Democracy  will eventually blossom in Iraq the same way it did in Germany thanks to the American occupation.  And recently Republican presidential candidate John McCain has held out the possibility of America "staying in Iraq for one hundred years" the same way we have had a military presence in Germany for more than half a century.

Now historian David Stafford continues this argument in a piece in the Washington Post: Iraq is a Mess. But Germany Was, Too. Stafford's reasoning, however, it muddled.  He does point out the significant differences between post-invasion Iraq and defeated Germany:

It would be harder to think of two more different societies than Germany in 1945 and contemporary Iraq. The former -- despite Hitler and the Third Reich -- had a long tradition of law, order, constitutional government and civic society to draw on in rebuilding democracy. Nor was it riven by deep-rooted ethnic and sectarian religious tensions that erupted to the surface once the dictator's iron fist was removed. And although Germany certainly had hostile neighbors -- especially to the communist East -- the threat they posed served to create, not crack, political cohesion.

But then he draws parallels between the de-Baathification efforts in Iraq and the American attempt to purge Nazi's from positions of power in Germany.

Critics of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq point to the decisions by L. Paul Bremer, Garner's replacement, to dismiss Baathists from public office and to dissolve the Iraqi army as critical and disastrous turning points that created a vast legion of the unemployed and disaffected. Yet in 1945, the Allies implemented a similarly draconian policy in Germany. They dissolved the Nazi Party, carried out a thorough purge of Nazis in public office and even abolished the ancient state of Prussia, which they believed was at the root of German militarism. Millions of Wehrmacht soldiers languished in prisoner-of-war camps while their families struggled to survive.

But the American occupation forces in Germany were far more pragmatic than the neocon ideologues in charge of Iraq: they quickly changed course and brought former Nazis into the governance structure and economic reconstruction programs.

Ultimately, Stafford concludes, the American occupation of Germany was pretty much a failure several years in, and it was only the economic assistance of the Marshall Plan that finally changed the game and brought some stability:

Even so, despite this willingness to rethink and adjust, occupation policy floundered. Two years after Allied victory, Germany was in desperate straits, facing an economic crisis that threatened to nip democracy in the bud. Only the Marshall Plan, with its massive program of financial aid, saved the country from disaster. Self-government did not come until 1949, and Allied troops remained in West Germany as occupiers until 1955, a full decade after the defeat of the Third Reich.

So, Stafford seems to think, a Marshall Plan for Iraq and a long-term military occupation might  bring stability to the ruined country.  Trouble is, the success of the Marshall Plan has never been duplicated.  President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress - a Marshall Plan for Latin America - was a bust. And the attempts in the 1980s to establish a Marshall Plan for the Third World failed miserably. 

Two key elements are missing in Iraq for a successful Marshall Plan effort.  The first is security.  Tony Judt points out in his great work of history Postwar that the Korean War was an enormous benefit to Europe, since the US invested significant security resources there to prevent a "second front" from opening in the west.  The other missing factor is ownership.  By 1949 Europe had functioning governments everywhere - including Germany - and took complete ownership of the Marshall Plan.  Iraq, on the other hand, has a corrupt, dysfunctional government which lacks legitimacy in the eyes of most Iraqi citizens.  Also, the Bush Administration has awarded reconstruction projects to American firms, often under no-bid contracts as a way of rewarding political allies.  I fear reconstruction in Iraq can never succeed as long as the country is occupied by American troops. I wish I could see the success of postwar Germany as a reason to celebrate a hundred-year occupation for Iraq, but I can't.  There are no parallels and Stafford is sadly mistaken.

Uncle Walt and Der Führer

Unfortunately I didn't make it out to the Bay Area in time to see John J. Power's avant-garde play Disney & Deutschland which imagines a meeting between Adolf Hitler and Walt Disney in 1935 with supporting roles of Leni Riefenstahl (as Hitler's lover!) as well as Josef and Magda Goebbels. The play had a short run and, judging from the reviews, is unlikely to open on Broadway anytime soon.  Still, the drama opens up some interesting ideas, such as the nature of the fascist aesthetic, and Albert Speer as the inspiration for Disneyland. (Anyone who has visited Disney World can attest to a creepy totalitarian aspect to the place at times.)

But what was the true relationship between Walt Disney and Nazi Germany?  It is interesting that the San Francisco Weekly writes of "historically documented 1935 meeting between Walt Disney and Adolf Hitler."  I don't have access to the Disney Archives - perhaps John J. Powers does - but there is no record of a meeting between Walt Disney and Hitler.  What has been documented is an automobile trip in 1935 by Walt Disney and his brother Roy through Germany which included a stop in Munich to meet with the German distributor of Disney's cartoons. But  Mario Dressler writes in a catalog to an exhibition of Disney cartoons in Potsdam (Im Reiche der Micky Maus: Walt Disney in Deutschland 1927-1945) that the Propaganda Ministry in Berlin was aware of the Disney brothers' visit in Munich and flew them to Berlin for meetings.  Whom they met with - if such a special visit even took place - is unfortunately not known.  In view of the detailed records kept by Hitler's Sekretariat, it is unlikely that they met with Der Führer in an undocumented meeting. 

However, after leaving Munich the DIsney brothers did drive on to Rome where they were greeted as cultural heroes by Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. 

What is indisputable is that Hitler was a huge fan of Disney. Goebbels gave him 12 Disney shorts as a Christmas present in 1937, and noted in his diary with satisifaction that  Der Führer "freut sich sehr darüber. Ist ganz glücklich über diesen Schatz." (He is very pleased and very happy about this treasure.") Hitler dreamed about creating a German version of Walt Disney and instructed Goebbels to establish the "Deutsche Zeichentrickfilm GmbH"  in 1942.  But the first production - Armer Hansi - about a canary that longs to be safe in its cage - was a great disappointment and did not come anywhere near to matching the Disney quality.

Did Hitler the artist try to improve the quality of these cartoons himself?  Recently, the director of the war museum in northern Norway claims that he acquired drawings of Disney characters signed A.Hitler at an auction in Germany.  The authenticity, however, cannot be confirmed. 
 

Nous sommes tous fascistes...

Godwin's Law holds that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." And not just online discussions. Yesterday Günter Grass, speaking at a camapaign event in Hamburg, accused Roland Koch, the minister-president of Hesse, of using neo-Nazi speech: "Bei einer Wahlkampfveranstaltung für die SPD in Hamburg warf der Literatur-Nobelpreisträger dem Hessischen Ministerpräsidenten vor, sich der Sprache der NPD zu bedienen."

Godwin's Law also applies to books. In a comment to a post below, Hattie mentioned Jonah Goldberg's new book Liberal Fascism, which describes the Democratic Party in the US as a fascist movement. I haven't read the book, and I refuse to buy it so as not to further enrich Jonah. I may borrow it from the university library if I am in need of comic relief. David Oshinsky neatly trashes the book in his New York Times review. I also note that many readers on Amazon.com have nominated Liberal Fascism as the worst book of all time, although it's hard to imagine that it could be worse than Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internmment, which celebrates the imprisonment of 150,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.

If there is an equivalent figure to Jonah Goldberg in Germany, it must be Götz Aly. In a long and depressing debate about the '68er generation' which for some reason Sign and Sight decided to translate into English and publish, the historian Götz Aly looks back on his time as a Maoist student in Berlin in 1968 and determines that the entire generation was fascist:

Aly:... The children of German mass murderers were running after another mass murderer. I myself carried a Mao placard. 1968 was a delayed offshoot of European totalitarianism – especially the German variety.

Far from being a progressive force in Germany, the '68er generation' was - in Aly's eyes -an anti-democratic, authoritarian force that blocked any positive change:

Kohl's generation turned its back on '68, because it realised that there had been something wild and totalitarian in it, that it had missed its big chance and had fallen back into totalitarianism, into the tracks of our fathers of 1933, who had also created a student movement that had operated with similar methods. The "bewegung" or movement – a hateful Nazi term – denounced serious reformers as "shitty liberals." That's why the student movement tended to slow down the liberalisation of the Federal Republic rather than accelerate it.

Godwins Gesetz rules on both sides of the Atlantic.

UPDATE: How could I forget Michael Savage. the king of right-wing hate radio who reaches over 10 million American listeners each week?  The other day he told his audience that the media watchdog Web site Media Matters "a homosexual, fascist website ... "Let me explain who Media Matters is. ... It's run by a bunch of fascist homosexuals. They're the brownshirts of our time."

Ernst Nolte and the Historikerstreit

More than 20 years have elapsed since the German historian Ernst Nolte ignited the Historikerstreit (Historians Dispute) in Germany.  The dispute was pretty much settled - at the expense of Professor Nolte. But now the right-wing extremist weekly Junge Freiheit - the repository of contemporary völkisch thought - wants to rekindle it with an article celebrating Professor Nolte's 85th birthday. For the editors of Junge Freiheit, Professor Nolte is not simply a historian, rather he is a prophet who was schamefully crucified by the left-oriented media and (Jewish?) Germany-bashers who refused to acknowledge the truth about Germany and German history:

Die Stunde der Propheten kommt eines Tages – und mit ihr Anerkennung, vielleicht sogar Dank. Von dem Geschichtsdenker Ernst Nolte und seinen kühnen Vorstößen ins Reich der historischen Genese wird noch gesprochen werden, wenn sich an die Namen seiner heute triumphierenden Gegner längst niemand mehr erinnert. (the hour of the prophets will come to pass some day  - and along with it recognition, perhaps even thanks.  The great historical thinker Ernst Nolte and his bold venture in the realm of historial orgins will be remembered long after his detractors - triumphant today - are long forgotten).

To understand exactly what Junge Freiheit is celebrating, one need only go back to the article that Nolte had published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1986 that started the whole controversy.  Fortunately, the article - Die Vergangenheit, die nie vergehen will (The past which will not end ) - has been preserved in an online archive ( Note to English readers, an English version of this as well as many other important documents of the Historikerstreit can be found in Forever in the Shadows of Hitler?).

Now there is much to admire about Professor Nolte as a historian.  As a student I studied his classic work Three Faces of Fascism , and surely he is correct in insisting that historical analysis of the Third Reich should be subject to the same academic rigor as any other historical epoch.  But in his FAZ article and elsewhere he goes way off track by interpreting the Nazi concentration camps as a logical response to Stalin's Gulags. And where Nolte lost me (as well as most historians) completely is when he presented a letter written by Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Jewish Agency in Palestine on September 3, 1939 to the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pledging the Jewish Agency's full and unconditional support to the British war effort. Nolte has called this "a Jewish declaration of war" against Germany; the Holocaust was Hitler's logical  - if overly extreme - reaction to this threat. Neither Nolte nor any other historian has produced evidence that Hitler was even aware of Weizmann's letter.

Of course, the deeper question arising out of the Historikerstreit is: what was Professor Nolte's motivation in relativizing the crimes of the Third Reich? And today we ask: what is Junge Freiheit's motivation in elevating Ernst Nolte to a prophet of his nation?

Paul Tibbets' Alter Ego

Brigadier General Paul Tibbets Jr., the commander and pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died this week at the age of 92. He was celebrated as a national hero, and he never publicly expressed regret for his role in killing an estimated 75,000 civilians. Indeed, he was fond of telling reporters that he "slept like a baby at night", convinced that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "saved millions of lives".  And that is the accepted narrative in the United States today: the killing of 150,000 Japanese non-combatants saved millions of lives and hastened the end of "The Good War".  It is interesting to note that not all of the main actors of the time agreed with that assessment: General Eisenhower, in his autobiography, recounted:

"I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.(the dropping of A-bomb on Hiroshima -DV)... The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During the recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression, and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment, I thought no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.'"

But Eisenhower's words are forgotten, as the nation celebrates the "heroism" of Paul Tibbets and the others who flew the atomic bomb missions over Japan.  Forgotten as well is a member of the team who - unlike Tibbets - could not "sleep like a baby" and was haunted by what he had done for the rest of his life.  Claude Eatherly flew the Straight Flush - the plane that flew in advance of the Enola Gay to check weather conditions and give the green light for dropping the bomb. Eatherly latter expressed his horror at what he had done, and tried to atone for his actions by speaking out for peace and sending his paychecks to the families of Hiroshima victims.  He fell into a deep depression and was confined for a time in a mental institution (after all, only an "insane" man would feel remorse for such an act of heroism).  It was then that Eatherly struck up a correspondence with the philospher and pacifist Günther Anders , remembered today as the first husband of Hannah Arendt, but he was an important thinker and the father of the anti-nuclear movement (a precursor to Randall Forsberg). Anders published his correspondence with Eatherly in a book - Hiroshima ist überall - (American version: Burning Conscience: The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot, Claude Eatherly, Told in his Letters to Gunther Anders with a Postscript to American Readers by Anders.) The American edition is out of print. Anders and Eatherly are forgotten, as are the tens of thousands of Japanese civilians who perished on those two horrible days. Tibbets is mourned as a national hero.   

The Nobel Peace Prize and its Detractors

Mark Pitzke at Der Spiegel has a good rundown of the conservative reaction to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore:

Steve Doocy has a question for his viewers. "What do Al Gore, Yassir Arafat and that crazy Jimmy Carter all have in common?" crows the morning host of the American cable channel Fox News. His co-hosts look at him eagerly, half-emptied coffee cups in reach. Doocy waits a beat before answering his own question with a smug yet nauseated smile. "The Nobel Peace Prize."

Leading the attacks on Gore is the conservative weekly National Review. The global warming denier Steven Hayward laments the damage done to this "once-prestigious award" by giving it to Al Gore.  Hayward predicts "Gore’s Peace Prize will take its place alongside Le Duc Tho’s 1973 award as a Nobel embarrassment." Ironically, 1972 was the last year that conservatives had something to cheer about in the Nobel Peace Prize award, for the committee also awarded it to the notorious war criminal Heny Kissinger. Of course, the National Review was especially vicious in its attacks on Jimmy Carter, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. And blogger Brad DeLong takes us down memory lane with a National Review essay that essentially accuses Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King of domestic terrorism:

the doings of such high-minded, self-righteous “children of light” as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates in the leadership of the “civil rights” movement. If you are looking for those ultimately responsible for the murder, arson, and looting in Los Angeles, look to them: they are the guilty ones, these apostles of “non-violence.”

But the National Review doesn't reserve its venom just for American Nobel Prize winners. Managing editor Jay Nordlinger went after Willy Brandt , the"West German naif (at best)" in a 2005 piece. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Willy Brandt in 1971 for his "Ostpolitik" earned him the derision of the reactionary press in Germany, especially from his nemesis, Bild-Zeitung editor Peter Boenisch (See Heinrich Böll's book Bild-Bonn-Boenisch).  Amazingly, the Bild-Zeitung again smeared Willy Brandt again in 2005 with a column by Hugo Müller-Vogg "So kam Willy Brandt an den Nobelpreis" and managed also to cast aspersions on the Nobel Peace Prize award in 1935 to Carl von Ossietzky (see account in the Netzeitung).  Ossietzky was a in a Nazi concentration camp when he was notified of the Prize; his captors refused to allow him to travel to Stockholm to receive the award. The official reaction of the Nazis was swift and predicatble:

"Die Verleihung des Nobelpreises an einen notorischen Landesverräter ist eine derart unverschämte Herausforderung und Beleidigung des neuen Deutschland, dass darauf eine entsprechend deutliche Antwort erfolgen wird" (The awarding of the Nobel Pize to a notorious traitor is such a provocation and an insult to the New Germany that a clear response is called for.)

The Nazis failed in their efforts to get Ossietzky to renounce the prize.  Instead, Ossietzky died in the camp, his commitment to peace intact.

Erich Fromm and Baader-Meinhof

This month marks the 30-year anniversary of the Deutscher Herbst ("The German Autumn"), those weeks when an entire nation was gripped by fear of a small band of terrorists. And still today the RAF - or Baader-Meinhof - continues to fascinate Germany. Even now new information continues to come out about the home-grown terror group: just today it was revealed that the RAF intended to blow up the Berlin offices of Pan-American Airlines, since they believed it to be a  cover operation for the CIA.  And today we also see an echo of that terrible period in the assault on civil liberties in Germany by the interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

Recently the journalist Jan Feddersen wrote about a fascinating historical footnote about the Baader-Meinhof era in Die Tageszeitung. After the core members of the group were captured and imprisoned - including Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader - in the maximum-security prison in Stammheim, their lawyers and sympathizers began to circulate rumors of torture and extreme isolation confinement. To gain legitimacy and international support for the RAF cause, the lawyers reached out to the leading intellectuals of the time, requesting they come and meet with the famous prisoners. Jean Paul Sartre played the useful clown here, and dutifully showed up to denounce the "inhuman conditions" of the imprisonment. Then the lawyers contacted the most influential German-American intellectual of the period: Erich Fromm. Fromm was certainly no fan of the American "system".  A committed socialist, Fromm viewed the USA - and, by extension, West Germany - as a "sick" society that celebrated mass consumerism devoid of human content. In Escape from Freedom Fromm analyzed the "automaton conformity" of mass American society, portraying a people willing to trade freedom for security. Fromm watched West Germany's reaction to the RAF terror threat with alarm. The nation, he felt, was abandoning democratic principles out of "Terrorhysterie". So perhaps the RAF lawyers thought Fromm would be open to meeting with Baader and exposing the "capitalistic terror" Baader and his cohorts were being subjected to.

Here is Fromm's response to the invitation from the RAF lawyers; to my knowledge it has never been translated into English (until now):

"Ich würdige Ihren Wunsch beziehungsweise den Wunsch der Angeklagten, dass ich mit Ihnen und Frau [] ins Gespräch kommen möge. Jedoch muss ich zugeben, dass ich einigermaßen erstaunt bin, dass die Angeklagten dieses Gespräch wollen, obwohl sie meine Schriften kennen. Ich hätte eher vermutet, dass meine politische Haltung ihnen so negativ erscheint, wie die ihrige es für mich ist. Um es deutlich zu sagen, bin ich radikal gegen ihre Strategie und ihre Taktik, die ich politisch und auch menschlich äußerst abstoßend finde."  ("I very much appreciate your wish - that is, the wish of the accused - to meet with you and Frau X. But I must confess that I am rather astonished that the accused want to have this meeting, since they must know my work. I would have thought that my political beliefs would be repellent to them, the same way theirs are to me. To put it bluntly, I am completely against your strategy and tactics, which I view as totally repulsive - both politically and humanly.")

A year earlier - writing specifically about Ulrike Meinhof - Fromm had observed:

„Man kann häufig feststellen, dass Menschen, die die Fähigkeit zu lieben verloren haben, ihre Unfähigkeit durch die Idee ersetzen, ihr Leben zu opfern,und dann diese Selbstaufopferung als Beweis nehmen, dass sie eben doch lieben können. Unter Umständen bleibt dann kein anderer Ausweg aus einer völlig verfahrenen und verzweifelten Situation als der Terror" ("It is often the case that people who have lost the capacity to love replace this inability with the thought of sacrificing their own life, and then take this self-sacrifice as some kind of proof that they can indeed love. In some cases terror is the only escape from a completely hopeless and desperate situation.")

With Ulrike Meinhof this hyper-narcissism indeed had the outcome that Erich Fromm expected: the world would not heed her call for total revolotuion, so the world could no longer have her. Ulrike Meinhof hung herself in her cell in Stammheim. Her cohorts followed her example during the German Autumn.

For Fromm, the vision of the RAF was completely negative - a vision of total destruction that was doomed to failure. For radicalism to succeed it had to contain the human element of hope: a vision of an alternative reality.

"Man kann andere Menschen für etwas gewinnen, indem man ihre Entrüstung, ihren Ehrgeiz oder sogar ihren Hass anspricht. Man kann aber mit diesen Gefühlen Menschen nie dazu bringen, konstruktive und wahrhaft revolutionäre Handlungen mitzutragen. Menschen können zu verändernden Handlungen nur motiviert werden, wenn sie Hoffnung haben. Und sie können nur Hoffnung haben, wenn es eine Vision gibt; und sie können nur dann eine Vision haben, wenn man

ihnen Alternativen zeigt. Solche Alternativen aber gibt es nur auf Grund enormer

Anstrengung von Denken und Vorstellungsvermögen und nicht, wenn sich alle

Energien auf Protest und Entrüstung konzentrieren +(You can win over people for something by appealing to their indignation, their ambition or even their hate. But by appealing to these feelings you can never motivate people to truly constructive and revolutionary activities. People can only be motivated to truly transformative actions when they have hope. And they can only have hope, whey there is a vision; and they can only have a vision when they are shown alternatives. But alternative visions can only be achieved through tremendous effort of thought and imagination, and not when all energies are consumed by protest and indignation.)

verloren haben, ihre Unfähigkeit durch die Idee ersetzen, ihr Leben zu opfern,

und dann diese Selbstaufopferung als Beweis nehmen, dass sie eben doch lie-

ben können. Unter Umständen bleibt dann kein anderer Ausweg aus einer völlig

verloren haben, ihre Unfähigkeit durch die Idee ersetzen, ihr Leben zu opfern,

und dann diese Selbstaufopferung als Beweis nehmen, dass sie eben doch lie-

ben können. Unter Umständen bleibt dann kein anderer Ausweg aus einer

verloren haben, ihre Unfähigkeit durch die Idee ersetzen, ihr Leben zu opfern,

und dann diese Selbstaufopferung als Beweis nehmen, dass sie eben doch lie-

ben können. Unter Umständen bleibt dann kein anderer Ausweg aus einer völlig

verfahrenen und verzweifelten Situation als der Terror.

verloren haben, ihre Unfähigkeit durch die Idee ersetzen, ihr Leben zu opfern,

und dann diese Selbstaufopferung als Beweis nehmen, dass sie eben doch lie-

ben können. Unter Umständen bleibt dann kein anderer Ausweg aus einer völlig

Tucholsky on Sacco and Vanzetti

Last week marked the 80th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The trial and subsequent execution of these two Italian immigrants remains controversial today, and back then sparked huge protests around the world.  It is estimated that more than 50 million people took part in protests both in the US and abroad.  The case was closely followed by writers and political activists in Germany. In April of 1927 Kurt Tucholsky sent a letter to the American ambassador.  I don't believe it has ever been translated into English, so I've taken the liberty of translating it  The German original can be found here.

Your Excellency:

It is my honor to present you with the following:

As is well-known in political circles, the Supreme Court in Boston has refused to take up the case of the workers Sacco and Vanzetti, so there is now nothing in the way of carrying out the death penalty. As the publisher of a weekly magazine that for years has stood for freedom and justice, I would like to make you aware that a large segment of intellectuals and members of the working class strongly protest the planned executions of these two men. In doing so, I in no way want to interfere in the domestic politics of the United States. But as a part of a nation that is very familiar with errors of justice and much worse I just ask you to consider how the reputation of a nation - including the United States - can be damaged by such events.  Even if Sacco and Venzetti did commit crimes that are punishable under American law - which judging by the quality of the witness testimonies and the commentary of the American press was not the case - my friends and I believe that they have suffered long enough under the fear of death and that should more than compensate for their actions. I would respectfully like your Excellency to be aware that the sympathies of all politically active and engaged Germans are completely on the side of the accused. This violation of the most basic human rights must be corrected; the very least that we expect of the American government is a pardon of both men. We protest in the strongest possible terms the intended execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

I would like to add that I will be reprinting this protest in the next issue of my magazine.

Respectfully, and with the highest regards to Your Excellency,

Tucholsky

Nick Brauns describes what happened in Germany when word came of the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti:

In den frühen Morgenstunden des 23. August protestierte die KPD mit Agitprop-Lastwagen gegen den Justizmord. Ruhrbergarbeiter hielten Belegschaftsversammlungen in Zechen ab, und die Arbeiter der Mannheimer Benz-Werke traten in einen 15minütigen Streik. In Halle galoppierten berittene Polizisten gegen die Demonstranten. In Leipzig und Hamburg schoß die Polizei in die Menge, es gab Tote und Verletzte. Eine mächtige Trauerkundgebung mit bis zu 150000 Teilnehmern im Berliner Lustgarten, zu der die KPD am 24. August aufgerufen hatte, gehörte zu den größten Massendemonstrationen der Weimarer Republik. (In the early morning hours of 23rd of August the KPD protested with agit-prop trucks against the executions and th travesty of justice. Coal miners in the Ruhr region held spontaneous meetings at the mines, and the workers in the Benz factories in Mannheim went on a 15 minute strike. Policemen on horseback rode into crowds of demonstrators in Halle. In Leipzig and Hamburg the police fired into the crowd, killing and injuring protestors. In Berlin the KPD organized a massive memorial rally of up to 150,000 people in the Lustgarten. It was one of the largest mass demonstrations of the Weimar Republic.)