IDEOLOGIES: The Black Coats

Adolf Hitler called them the “Order of Good Blood,” and gave them for a symbol a grinning death’s-head. In ten dreadful years, they butchered millions, making good their master’s boast that men should “grow sick at the sight of [their] black coats.” At Niirnberg, before the court of world opinion, they were forever condemned for crimes against humanity. Yet last week the SS (full name: Schutzstaffel) marched again, jack boots ringing on the cobblestones of the garrison town of Verden in lower Saxony.

Steel Helmets. The occasion seemed harmless: since SS troops are not eligible for veterans’ pensions, two former generals of SS combat divisions had formed an SS old soldiers society; last week they held a rally in Verden’s soccer stadium. From all over Germany, even from South America, came more than 5,000 delegates. Welcomed by the Bur germeister, the SSmen made merry in Verden’s beer gardens.

Then came the rally. Hitler’s favorite paratrooper, General Bernhard (“Papa”) Ramcke, 63, was supposed to give a three-minute talk—for old times’ sake. Instead, he launched a savage attack on the “real war criminals”—the Western Allies. The criminals, Ramcke bellowed into a swelling torrent of applause, “are not the German front-line soldiers . . . They are those who made the Versailles Treaty . . . who shattered German cities . . . who dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki . . . who are producing new atomic bombs.”

Black Lists. Hastily the rally’s organizers passed along notes to the speaker, urging him first to moderate his language, then to sit down. But Ramcke ground on like a Tiger tank. I am proud, he roared, to have been on the “black lists” of the Allies. “One day they will become the lists of honor.” At that the SSmen leaped to their feet, jack boots stamping. “Eisenhower Schweinehund” they chanted.

Next day, the air waves from Bonn dripped embarrassed apologies. From the SS generals who organized the rally came a contrite disavowal of everything old Ramcke had said—but no explanation of the cheers Ramcke’s words had got. Konrad Adenauer’s government issued the understatement of the week: “[Ramcke] should realize that his remarks cannot bolster Germany’s reputation in the world.”