THE BACKBONE OF GERMANY
Sm,—My article was not " a plea for the protection of the German bureaucracy," as Mr. Strauss suggests, but a statement of facts. After having credited me with the most sinister designs and confidently labelled me as a " reactionary," Mr. Strauss will be surprised to learn that I share entirely his view that we must " break the stranglehold of big business, generals and Junkers on the German people." But that does not mean orders and fulfil functions for which they are specially qualified, though that we must, or even can, create an entirely new administration. The or bad purposes. Its members do not shape policy, but they execute orders civil service is an efficient machine which may be used for good be
some leading civil servants in Germany are politicians, not xpens. Allied Reconstruction Commission cannot import a complete foreign service or recruit a new one from local amateurs whom they believe be trustworthy. It must of necessity, use the existing machine, not order to " protect the German bureaucrats," but in order to main an ordered life which, in a highly organised country like Germany, pends on the smooth functioning of the administrative machine.
The mistake of the German Socialists after 1918 was not that they not revolutionise the German administration (they could not do that lack of experts), but that they failed to impose their will on it. As I to show in my article, the Nazis too could not remodel it entirely. do not share Mr. Strauss's view that " the German bureaucrats ]ov and even enthusiastically," support the Nazi programme. Dr Frank once: " Adolf Hitler became the leader of the German people ag the whole bureaucratic apparatus which threatened to suffocate (erslic him and his ideology." The dualism of party and administration led and still leads to much friction. I suppose that Mr. Strauss acqu his " inside knowledge" of the German administration in his native A tria, while I based my statements largely on personal experience.
The German civil service will certainly need drastic reforms, bu have no illusions about the immediate possibilities. Surely, adminis tive reform cannot precede " a sound reconstruction of German society It is obviously not the task of sn Allied Commission. The only they can do is to eliminate those who dominated the administra machine and weed out the genuine Nazis who could easily be replaced civil servants who were dismissed in 1933.—Yours, &c., W. WESTPHA
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