Suchergebnisse

Von März bis August 1945 wurde das besetzte Deutschland ohne eine Regierung von den Besatzungsmächten verwaltet. Der amerikanische Historiker Leonard Krieger beschreibt diese Zeit aus seiner eigenen Erfahrung als Besatzungsoffizier. Er vertritt die These, daß die Grundzüge der Teilung Deutschlands und der allierten Nachkriegspolitik bereits vor dem Potsdamer Abkommen vom 8. August 1945 festgelegt wurden. In der Zeit des Interregnums von März bis August wurden in den Besatzungszonen unterschiedliche und z. T. gegensätzliche Strukturen geschaffen, die die spätere Politik nicht mehr revidieren konnten. Der Autor beschreibt die deutsche Situation bei der Besetzung, die Unterschiede in der Besatzungspolitik, die wirtschaftlichen Schwierigkeiten und den institutionellen Neubeginn. Zur Zeit des Potsdamer Abkommens verliefen die wichtigsten Trennungslinien in der deutschen Gesellschaftsstruktur bereits zwischen West und Ost. (KA)

For those of us who were raised politically on the vicarious experience of National Socialism, its graduation into an apparently successful and overpowering regime was a cataclysm of unparalleled proportions. The movement seemed an enormous, overbearing force whose source was beyond time and the changes associated with time. It appeared not so much to grow and develop as to manifest in apparently different, but internally affinitive, ways the relentlessly consistent potentialities which had ever been in it. Nazi opportunism was well known to us, of course, but it did not so much define the movement as express it, generalizing National Socialism and equipping it to act characteristically on all kinds of objects in all kinds of situations. Nazism, in short, was a massive central reality, sui generis. We were uneasy about Italian fascism, saddened by the Spanish version, regretful at the east European varieties, and divided both within and among ourselves vis-à-vis the instrumental similarities of the Soviet dictatorship. But Nazism was in a class by itself, at once invincibly individual and supremely representative, an inimitable compound of Germanism, fascism, and regressive autocracy that was reducible to none of these ingredients and yet intensified each of them to its ultimate power. Thus Nazism was connected to the past and contemporary worlds sufficiently to make its impact universal, but in these connections it was ever Nazism that was the senior partner: it was not German history or fascism or absolutist tradition that made Nazism relevant to us but the other way around. Nazism abolished the limitations of time and space for us: the clutches of atavism and the tentacles of technology alike could now reach to any individual anytime anywhere. It was at once fact and symbol. It marked both the climax of German history and the point at which, as the ultimate authoritarianism, this German finality met the destiny of humanity.

One of the perquisites of the scholarly profession is the gradual leave-taking of our friends and colleagues which eases the pain of good-by. Despite the approximate conjunction of Hajo Holborn's death with the completion of his great History of Modern Germany, a conjunction which seemed to seal the finality of the abrupt stillness, he actually had in hand several lines of unfinished business which will keep his inimitable and indispensable historical spirit with us still during the coming months. These enterprises, which represented Hajo Holborn's integration of the variegated concerns in his wide-ranging career and his definitive settling of accounts with them, included two kinds of projects: on the one hand, collections and editions of his own writings and, on the other, interpretive essays prefacing new editions of other historians and of their historical works on themes with which he had long associated himself. He left these enterprises in various stages of execution, ranging from books ready for the printing to unrealized designs which can testify only to his mature intentions but which, at least, are being carried through to publication in his spirit by those who have been close to him.

As a European historian who has learned to believe that everything worthwhile was discovered by the Germans until it was rediscovered earlier by the Russians, I am somewhat annoyed at having to admit that Mr. Hartz has written something eminently satisfying to my kinfolk and me. He stimulates in us a measure of condescending sympathy with American historians, who must deal with this crazy American people, none of whom apparently knows who he really is—he really is his own grandpa—and each of whom, like the proverbial piano player in the sporting house, is completely ignorant of what goes on upstairs. And how lucky I feel to be working in the clear atmosphere of Europe, where our classes are clean-cut, our parties shrewd and perceptive of their own interests, our political philosophy real and earnest. It is true that according to this picture the socialism we have is not quite as real as the feudalism we used to have, but then, nothing in the historical world is quite perfect. Indeed, Mr. Hartz' view of European history is, if anything, too perfect. It is reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg mechanism in which a fat nobleman opens the door at one end of a corridor and sets off a chain reaction which explodes Nicolai Lenin out the door at the other end.

Address before the European seminar, European institute of Columbia university, Mar., 1951.