GERMANY: Out of the Desert

GERMANY Out of the Desert Lili Marlene’s oldest friends had a get-together last week.* Into the hilly Westphalian town of Iserlohn, through the city gate topped by a huge iron cross memorializing the Franco-Prussian War, trooped 2,500 Germans. They eagerly searched each other’s faces, occasionally stopping to shake hands amid exclamations like: “Aren’t you Schmidt of the 15th?”, “Wasn’t I with you at El Alamein?” It was the first reunion of Germany’s famed Afrika Korps. At ceremonies in the town cemetery they paid sober honor to their former leader, Field Marshal Rommel, and to their comrades dead in the African campaign. Frau Rommel, who was present, leaned weeping on the arm of her 22-year-old son Manfred. The veterans swore to support the democratic German state, shun party politics, uphold the military virtues of bravery and comradeship.

Technically such reunions are still forbidden by the Occupation Statute, but events have swamped technicalities. After Germany’s defeat, her soldiers became outcasts, found it hard to get jobs, received no pensions. But with General Eisenhower’s statement last January that he did “not believe the German soldier has lost his honor,” things began to change. By last week, nine veterans’ groups were federated into a national Association of German Soldiers (expected membership: 3,000,000). So far there is little sign that aggressive militarism is reawakening.

The Association of German Soldiers has defined its aim as a free and united Germany in a free and united Europe. But “veterans must and will clarify conditions under which they will again have to put their lives at stake . . . We are ready to extend a hand to all soldiers of the free world . . .”

*The greatest song hit of World War II, written in 1938 by two Germans, was broadcast by Germany to men of the Afrika Korps fighting in the 1941 desert campaigns. The British Eighth Army captured Lili from them and passed her on to soldiers the world over.