German Nationalism
ByMARK ARNOLD-FORSTER
Hanover, February
IN Western Germany at any given time it is always difficult to estimate the real strength of nationalist, as opposed to patriotic, feeling. The origins and direction of nationalist forces can be defined much more easily than their actual power. In particular, the violence with which some German orators express their loyalty to the fatherland may only mean that they are seeking popularity but seeking it in vain. A great many Germans have learnt to mistrust them, and until the next election it will be impossible to tell precisely how many reasonably contented citizens in West Germany are likely to respond to the old Nazi treatment.
But the numbers of the discontented—those who are almost bound to pay attention to a really competent demagogue—are already known. At the moment they are in a minority, but it is a very large minority indeed. Nearly nine million refugees want to go home to the Sudetenland, to Silesia, to Pomerania or to East Prussia. Several million ex-Nazis are dissatisfied for personal and political reasons with the present regime, if not with the present constitu- tion. And a great many regular soldiers, sailors and airmen bitterly resent a society which has deprived them of their full pensions and their military titles and which even seems forgetful of their prowess. All these people exist, and most of them have votes. They consti- tute the one important element on the German electorate whose size and inclinations are predictable.
A fortnight ago two hundred of them invaded a Kassel hotel to spend what appeared to be an exhilarating afternoon consolidating the fusion of the Deutsche Rechtspartei of Lower Saxony with the Hessian National Democrats. Their new "Deutsche Reichspartei," proclaimed amid the beer-mugs at • 11 &clock at night, has 6,000 members and five deputies in the Bundestag ; its constituent parties polled 600,000 votes between them at the last elections. The total would have been slightly larger had the German Conservatives behaved as they were expected to behave. Having arrived, punctually and in good condition, they retired soon after lunch to a private room, where one of them was later understood to say that the " radical elements " putside were no longer worthy to be called National Democrats or members of the Deutsche Rechtspartei. The " radical elements " themselves were not particularly worried. " The difference between us and the Conservatives," said one young man from Brunswick, " is the difference between youth and age. We can easily do without them." By tea-time the radical elements were also ready to do without the services of Dr. Heinrich Leuchtgens, the National Democrats' founder and their parlia- mentary leader, whose experience of the inside of a Nazi concentra- tion camp had obviously not been shared by many of his colleagues.
It transpired, later on that those who have been in concentration camps cannot expect much sympathy from the new party's real leader, Dr. Franz Richter, formerly of the Deutsche Rechtspartei.
Asked what he thought about the " Lastenausgleich " (a scheme for helping those who suffered financial loss as a result of the war or of the Nazi regime), Dr. Richter said that Germans who fought throughout the war had a better right to compensation than those who had escaped it. And who, asked the reporters, did Dr Richter mean by people who had escaped the war ? Did he, by any chance, mean people who had been in exile or in concentration camps ? " Well," said Dr. Richter, " I didn't say so, did I ? " But next morning, at a public meeting, he was clearer and rather more emphatic. The Bonn Parliament, he said, consists largely of the " animated ghosts " of the Weimar Republic, many of whom, if they were British, would be accommodated in the Tower of London but not in the House of Commons.
Dr. Richter, a school-teacher from the Sudetenland, wants to see his native territory incorporated in that rejuvenated German Reich for which his party stands, " unless," as he puts it, " the Sudetengau can be treated as .a ' liberated country' like Austria." He insists, too, that the rejuvenated Reich needs a rejuvenates army " because you want an army to defend the life of a people." Dr. Richter's Wehrmacht would be under German command ; he would refuse to provide " a couple of lightly armed divisions " to defend the Rhine on another country's behalf. It must be strong enough, he said, to defend Germany's neutrality—rather like the SAiss army except that it must, of course, be rather bigger and its generals must, of course, be appointed, not elected. It would be a mistake, at the moment, to take Dr. Richter too seriously ; he has several rivals in his own and similar parties, and may never develop into the kind of orator who wins German elections. All the same no German politician can afford to ignore the things he and his rivals have been saying or the vast audience to which they are addressed.
Last summer, before the General Election, it was safe enough to assume that the refugees would not vote Communist, but it was impossible to predict which other party they would favour. As the campaign developed, most politicians assured the refugees, with increasing vehemence, that Germany's eastern frontiers must be restored. Some of them even told the Nazis that their treatment had been unjust and that their service to Germany would one day be recognised. Others went so far as to assure the soldiers that the German army had never been defeated, not even in 1945, and that they too would be rewarded.
Some of the smaller parties, like the Deutsche Rechtspart& and the followers of Dr. Loritz, had very little else to say. Confident of their exclusion from any conceivable Government, they gladly promised the refugees those portions of the earth of which no one, not even M. Stalin, can at present deprive the Czechs and the Poles. The larger parties were compelled to follow suit, some less reluc- tantly than others, until the public began to believe that all its troubles, without exception, were due to dismantling and the Oder- Neisse line. By encouraging this illusion certain orators connected with the Deutsche Partei and the Free Democratic Party often managed to beat the smaller parties at their own game.
They sometimes beat them even now. While Dr. Richter was at Kassel, the Federal Minister of Justice, Dr. Dehler, was telling the Hamburg Free Democrats that France was largely responsible for the outbreak of war in 1914. But in those days, before the elec- tions, the larger parties enjoyed two important advantages which they cannot now regain. They had not then accepted the responsibilities of government, and their smaller rivals, whose growth had been retarded by Allied licensing restrictions, were unknown, inexperi- enced, badly organised and prone to call each other names. By the time the present parliament has been dissolved, no Government party will be able even to pretend to be as radical as the devotees of Dr. Richter, Major General Remer or Dr. Doris in the north, or the followers of Dr. Loritz, Dr. Priester or Dr. Baumgartner in the south. And if, in the meanwhile, one of these gentlemen persuades most of the others (and one or two generals) to join him, then the next Federal parliament may begin to resemble the kind of Reichstag that Hitler was able to exploit.
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