THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN
Our German Correspondent writes : THEprodigal Dr. John has returned to Western Germany. No feast will be prepared for him, and he will have to suffer the due processes of German law. Doubtless there will be heavy competition among the Anglo-Saxon press for the exclusive rights for his memoirs; and, if ,he has a mind to it, he should be able to reap a rich harvest of libel damages for all the unsubstantiated allegations made about his private life in the weeks that followed his disappearance on July 20, 1954. But the Federal Government has named him a traitor, and the Federal Prosecutor is bound to carry his investigations to their logical conclusion. There is no provision in German law for a political renegade to secure immunity as a precondition to his return to the fold. Dr. John is the first double-crosser in the cold war. On this count alone it will be interesting to set how he himself explains his actions, first in going, second in coming back. First reports say that he has already told the Federal Prosecutor that he was drugged on the evening of July 20 by his friend Dr. Wohlgemuth and taken across the Berlin frontier against his will. That may be, but he made too many radio broadcasts and public statements, and poured his heart out to too many Western journalists in East Berlin, for anyone to believe that his continued sojourn in the East was not voluntary. Dr. John is. by all accounts of those who know him well, an intelligent person but of weak character, sentimental, easily overclouded by vast romantic notions, and prone to hasty, impulsive actions. His defection to the East seems to have been his one final gesture against the inevitable return of influential men of the Third Reich into the public life of the Second Republic, and his greatest gesture of defiance against the increasing reliance which Dr. Adenauer was placing on his rival in the spy business, General Gehlen. He was surely never a Com- munist before, and never became one in the East, but he wanted to show the West that Communism was a lesser danger to world peace than neo-Nazism.
He has apparently revised this view. General Gehlen and the many other targets of Dr. John's invective in the Chancery, the Defence Ministry, the Free Democratic Party and in industry will be grateful to him. He did untold damage to his country by his defection; it remains to be seen how much damage he will do by his return. Dr. Adenauer, as usual, has managed to keep his hands clean. He said at the time that he had met Dr. John only once, did not like him, and only appointed him Chief of his Secret Service because the Allies (by which he meant the British) vetoed every other nomination. He never associated himself with the first opinion of his Minister of the Interior, Dr. Schroeder, that Dr. John was the victim of an abduction, and consequently never had to retract anything later. Dr. Schroeder, on the other hand, ate his words for the second time by telling the Bundestag 'John Committee' on Monday, the evening of Dr. John's escape, that he had never considered Dr. John to be a traitor. Dr. Schroeder is going to have to do some pretty fast work in the next few weeks if he is to remain on the list of serious candidates for the Adenauer succession. The Social Democrats are taking the comfortable line of describing the whole business as a job for a psychiatrist rather than for a politician. Dr. John is indeed an unstable person, but surely the whole matter has a greater importance, since so many politicians and officials in Germany and Britain have made such fools of themselves over it. The most important political question of all is : Do double-crossers deserve penance. or do they merit absolution? Western Germany's treatment of Dr. John might easily have a bearing on the future plans of Messrs. Burgess and Maclean, and Professor Pontecorvo.
Previous page
