Foreign News: Battle for Germany

After victory, from words and actions so far on the record:> Britain and the U.S. seem to plan occupation of Germany until they can be sure of a Germany without Nazis, without a Wehrmacht, without a munitions industry.*

>Russia seems to want an armed, independent, Naziless Germany, unoccupied and perhaps uninfluenced by Britain and the U.S.

Peace without Calamity? From Moscow came news that four German generals and more than 100 other Wehrmacht officers, mostly captured at Stalingrad, had formed a German Officers’ Union; that General of Artillery Walther von Seidlitz had been elected its president. Just as the Soviet Union Government had indirectly sponsored the parent. National Free Germany Committee and its manifesto proposing a democratic, capitalistic postwar Germany (TIME, Aug. 30), so the Soviet Union Government last week sponsored the Officers’ Union and its declaration. That declaration, printed in Pravda and broadcast from Moscow, told Wehrmacht leaders, in effect, how they might ditch Hitler, set up a generals’ government, get peace with Russia:

“To the German Generals and Officers! To the People and the Army! . . . The grave military reverses which began at the beginning of this year, as well as the steady deterioration of the German economy compel us to recognize the hopelessness of Germany’s situation. . . . Every thinking German officer realizes that Germany has lost the war. . . . The war is continued solely in the interests of Hitler and his regime against the interest of the people and the Fatherland. . . .

“Act boldly and without delay. Do what is necessary—otherwise this will be done without you or even perhaps against you. . . . Declare war on this fatal regime and . . . demand the formation of a government backed by the people’s confidence. Only such a government would be capable of creating the conditions for our Fatherland’s honorable withdrawal from the war, and for insuring a peace which will not mean a calamity to Germany. . . .”

Earlier, official Soviet Union utterances had indicated that Stalinist, nationalistic Russia may well be uninterested in a Communist Germany, that cooperative Wehrmacht generals could indeed hope to keep a postwar army. Many a German officer must be pondering what Joseph Stalin said last Nov. 6: “We do not seek to destroy Germany. . . . We do not seek to destroy all organized military force in Germany, for every literate man understands it is … unwise from the point of view of the future.”

No Peace with Prussians? The U.S. and Great Britain were still talking general, unofficial terms about the kind of Germany they want after “unconditional surrender,” but they were clearly going on record for the things they do not want in Germany: > Said Winston Churchill last week (see p. 26): “The Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism are the two main elements in German life which must be absolutely . . . rooted out if Europe and the world are to be spared a third and still more frightful conflict. . . .”

>Said Franklin Roosevelt in his message to Congress Sept. 17: “When Hitler and the Nazis go out, the Prussian military clique must go with them.”

Last week OWI reminded the President of a powerful German war-class—the Junkers. Said OWI: “The tremendous influence wielded by the Junkers for many generations stems from their state of threefold privilege. They are the owners of large estates in eastern Germany, they are the backbone of the Army, and they have been at all times solidly entrenched in important Government positions. . . .”

*Or, as. one alternative, with a munitions industry restricted solely to the supply of the victors.