Foreign News: Sound Core

Allied officers, probing the putrescent wound of Buchenwald, unexpectedly discovered a sound human core which promised much for the future of Germany—2,000 German prisoners who had a plan for a liberal, anti-fascist Reich.

Would the future leaders of Germany come from the ranks of these forgotten men? They were of many persuasions: Communist, Catholic, Socialist, Jew, and some of no particular faith who had been imprisoned because they had listened to the British radio or because their wives were coveted by SS bullies. They had spent long nights of talk and long days of comradeship with persecuted men of other nations. They were united in hatred of fascism. They had organized a strong underground within Buchenwald, so strong that at one time it had liquidated 125 SS informers.

These men, headed by Berlin Communist Walter Bartel, had drafted a blueprint for Germany. They wanted: 1) a popular front of anti-fascist committees to provide the framework of an interim government; 2) re-establishment of a modified form of the Weimar Republic; 3) federalization of the new Reich to prevent domination by Prussia; 4) confiscation of all Nazi property; 5) close economic relations with Russia; 6) educational reform.

It was a law of history that power, even the power of evil, eventually produced the power which would supersede it. Perhaps from the concentration camps would come at least part of the power which would restore to civilization generations of German children, too young to know what such horrors were and too innocent amidst the environing evil to share its guilt, though they would suffer its consequences. Perhaps these prisoners, and these children, were the hope of Germany and the world, which could not hope to remain unpoisoned if Germany were to remain forever a septic pool of guilt, retributive justice, a sullen pariah among the nations.

At least one former Buchenwald prisoner was already engaged in governing post-Nazi Germany. By order of the military government, Herr Doktor X (anonymous under Allied rules) was taken from the concentration camp to become mayor of nearby Weimar. Mild, elderly Dr. X had been a Social Democrat, a secondary-school director, a “passive” anti-Nazi. His first job in Weimar was to purge minor Brown Shirts from minor municipal posts. On May Day he sought to fly the old black, gold and red flag of the Weimar Republic from his city hall. He ransacked the city, but he could find only Swastikas.