The Myriad Chronicles
                                  By
 Johannes Rammund De Balliel-Lawrora

         Mein Vater-land; Mein Mutter-Land; Mein Heimatland;
                      Amerika - Deutschland - Preussen
                          Das Land meiner Vorfahren!
















Part One
Chapter One

    The Trigger!

                          Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, 1914
                         Cited from "Assassination of an Archduke,"
                                            Eyewitness to History
                             www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (1998)

   Two bullets fired on a Sarajevo street on a sunny June morning in 1914 set in motion a series of events that
shaped the world we live in today.  World War One, World War Two, the Cold War and its conclusion, all trace
their origins to the gunshots that interrupted that summer day.
The victims, Archduke Franz Ferdinand-heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie,
were in the Bosnian city in conjunction with various troop exercises nearby.  The couple was returning from an
official visit to City Hall.  The assassin, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, burned with the fire of Slavic nationalism.  He
envisioned the death of the Archduke as the key that would unlock the shackles binding his people to the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  A third party, Serbia, figured prominently in the plot.  Independent Serbia provided the guns, ammunition and
training that made the assassination possible.
The Balkan Region of Europe entered the twentieth century much as she left it, a cauldren of seething political
intrigued needing only the slightest increase of heat to boil over into open conflict.  The shots that day in
Sarajevo pushed the caldron to the boiling point and beyond.

A ROYAL MURDER

   Seven conspirators joined the crowd lining the Archduke's route to City Hall. Each took a different position,
ready to attack the royal car if the opportunity presented itself.  The six-car procession approached one
conspirator, Gabrinovic (or Cabrinovic), who threw his bomb only to see it bounce off the Archduke's car and
exploded near the following car.

  Unhurt, the Archduke and his wife sped to the reception at City Hall.  The ceremonies finished, the Royal
procession amazingly retraced its steps, bringing the Archduke into the range of the leader of the conspiracy,
Gavrilo Princip.  More amazingly, the royal car stopped right in front of Princip, providing him the opportunity to
fire two shots.  Both bullets hit home.  Borijove Jevtic, one of the conspirators gave this eyewitness account:  
"When Francis Ferdinand and his retinue drove from the station they were allowed to pass the first two
conspirators.  The motor cars were driving too fast to make an attempt feasible and in the crowd were many
Serbians, throwing a grenade would have killed many innocent people.

  When the car passed Gabrinovic, the compositor, the threw his grenade.  It hit the side of the car, but Francis
Ferdinand with presence of mind threw himself back and was uninjured.  Several officers riding in his attendance
were injured.

  The cars sped to the Town Hall and the rest of the conspirators did not nterfere with them.  After the reception
in the Town Hall, Feneral Potiorek, the Austrian Commander, pleaded with Francis Ferdinand to leave the city,
as it was seething with rebellion.  The Archduke was persuaded to drive the shortest way out of the city and to
go quickly.

  The road to the maneuvers was shaped like the letter V, making a sharp turn at the Bridge over the River
Nilgacka [Miljsvka].  Ferdinand's car was able to go fast enough until it reached this spot.  Here he was forced to
slow down for the turn.  Princip then took his stand.

As the car came abreast he stepped forward from the curb, drew his automatic pistol from his coat and fired two
shots.  The first struck the wife of the Archduke, the Archduchess Sofia, in the abdomen.  She was an expectant
mother.  She died instantly

                                                                                                                                  

   The second bullet struck the Archduke close
to the heart.  He uttered only one word, 'Sofia' - a call to
his stricken wife.  Then his head fell back and he
collapsed.  He died almost instantly. The officers seized
Princip.  They beat him over the head with the flat of
their swords. They knocked him down, they kicked him,
scraped the skin from his neck with the edges of their
swords, tortured him, all but killed him."

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE:

   Count Franz von Harrach rode on the running boars of the royal car, serving as a bodyguard for the
Archduke.  His account begins immediately after Princip fires his two shots: "As the car quickly reversed, a thin
stream of blood spurted fro  His Highness's mouth onto my right cheek. As I was pulling out my handkerchief to
wipe the bloodaway from his mouth, the Duchess cried out to him, 'In heaven's name, what has happened to
you.'  At that she slid off the seat and lay on the floor of the car, with her face between his knees.

   had no idea that she was hit and thought she had simply fainted with fright.  Then I heard His Imperial
Highness say, 'Sopherl, Sopherl, don't die.  Stay alive for the children!'  At that, I seized the Archduke by the
collar of his uniform, to stop his head dropping forward and asked him if he was in great pain.  He  answered me
quite distinctly, 'It's  nothing!'  His face began to twist somewhat but he went on repeating, six or seven times,
ever more faintly as he gradually lost consciousness.

  'It's nothing!'  Then, after a short pause, there was a violent choking sound caused by bleeding."
Gavrilo Princip (age 19) was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.  He escaped the death penalty
because he was under the age of 21.

  Three other conspirators were tried including, Cabrinovic, the bomb-thrower.  He and another under-aged
conspirator received a sentence of 20 years hard labor.  The third conspirator, Danilo Ilic, was executed on
February 3, 1915.

References:

Brook-Shepard, Gordon, Archduke of Sarajevo (1984); Dedijer, Vladimir, the Road to Sarajevo (1966); Morton,
Frederick, Thunder at Twilight (1989).

                                                                                                                        

Chapter Two

THE FIRST WORLD WAR, 1914-1918

   Maybe the war that broke out in 1914 was more of a
break in world history than even the Second World War with
its unprecedented mass annihilations.  The First World War
marked the dramatic beginning of the end of European
predominance over the globe, which had lasted for five
centuries.  While the European nations remained locked in a
murderous struggle, nations in North and South America, Asia,
Africa, and the Australian continent started to make up for the
absence of European imports and lessened their dependence
upon European products and know-how.  New competitors for
business and power emerged overseas (for instance - Argentina,
Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada - in addition to the
already competitive United States and Japan), and Europe never
regained its world superiority.  For the first time the United
States mobilized its enormous industrial potential to fight
against Germany and her allies.  Toward the end of the war a
radical socialist group seized power in Russia and started to
transform society in totally new ways, leading to a long and
often painful process whose effects are still felt today.
The First World War was fought by armies whose size was
unprecedented in history.  At the same time, new weapons
appeared such as machine guns, tanks, poison gas, airplanes
and submarines.  The civilian population became a target of
war; while the British blockade tried to starve the Germans
and their allies into submission, German submarines tried to
cut Britain off from its supplies.   The new weapons created new horrors of war.  Eight million soldiers died on the
front lines or at sea with the trauma of war.  A single battle could claim hundreds of thousands of lives on both
sides.

  More than before, the war effort depended on the support and willingness of entire populations to sacrifice
their lives in the name of democracy or socialism.  Women and children often took over the jobs of men in
industry and agriculture.  In Germany and Austria food became so scarce that famines occurred from 1916 on.  
To support more than four years of industrialized warfare, national governments almost everywhere faced tasks
of unexpected nature and magnitude.  They had to ensure industrial production for the armed forces, while
millions of able-bodied men between the ages 18 and 55 served in the military; they had to organize the food
supply and keep up morale at home and in the front lines; new administrative offices were created, and the state
bureaucracy reached into new realms.  All this was only partially reversed after 1918.
In short, the war was a catastrophe for Europe.  That it had such a terrible impact was an effect of its sheer
duration.  Until 1918 both sides remained deadlocked.  Neither side could force a decisive victory, nor seem so
superior that the other would have been tempted to give up.   Moreover, to conclude a truce and return to the
status quo seemed intolerable to most people, as the war had demanded enormous sacrifices (human and
material).

  Given these momentous changes and the high blood toll, the question of war guilt assumed special emotional
and moral importance.  The victors of the war, the United States, Britain, France, and Italy, forced Germany and
its allies to accept responsibility for the outbreak of the war in the Treaty of Versailles.  The Germans, however,
reacted with indignation; up to the 1960s they considered the claim that Germany was the culprit of the war an
outrage.  Most Germans at the time claimed either that the war was a logical outcome of an aggressive
encirclement of Germany by the allies, supporting the opinion of Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary,
who had said:  "the nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war."  We therefore need to ask
how such a dramatic historical event occurred and who was responsible for it.

Germany in 1914...

   In foreign politics, Germany was effectively isolated together with its last faithful ally, Austria-Hungary.  In
domestic politics, governing had become more difficult for the Imperial Governments because the Social
Democrats had grown in strength and because Tirpitz's costly fleet-building program had eroded much of the
other parties' solidarity.  Although they always feared the possible revolutionary consequences of an
international conflict, German leaders had sometimes considered war as a panacea for foreign and domestic
problems; war should split the alliances against Germany and unite the people in a wave of nationalism or
even initiate some form of dictatorship based on the military.

  Although pacifism existed both as an independent movement and as an idea attached to the socialist
movement, most leaders and much of public opinion did not consider war necessarily an evil thing, particularly if
it meant to continue politics by other means.  (This was true for all European countries.)  However, nobody really
knew what kind of war they had to expect.  Since the Napoleonic period (one hundred  years ago) no war had
ever affected large areas of Europe.  The Franco-German war of 1870-71 had been the last violent conflict
between industrially advance nations in Europe.  It had been decided within a few weeks.  Fast mobilization,
massive gun power, fast communications (telegraph), and the support of railroads seemed to have made war
between industrialized nations a short affair.  The Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 confirmed this.

  Moreover, no nation in Europe seemed capable of surviving a long war.  Industrialization and the concomitant
reduction of agriculture had made national economies so dependent upon imports and international trade that a
long war -  to economies so dependent upon imports and international trade that a long war - to contemporaries
- could only end in chaos, likely to be followed by a socialist revolution.  Many people in Europe and in Germany,
in particular, thus thought that the war would be short, and that not all should be done to avert it.  War might as
well come as a violent but short event, a heavy thunderstorm, and clear the air from the year-long tensions and
problems.  It was not uncommon among European intellectuals to think that their peoples had become lazy and -
in a Darwinist sense - unfit, as they had enjoyed peace and material progress for so many decades.

  The German government, in particular, felt under increasing pressure from the generals and from right-wing
opinion to wage war at the next feasible opportunity.  Diplomatic means to counteract the encirclement of the
country had proven counterproductive and seemed exhaustive.  Russia, moreover, was industrializing rapidly.  
Her population grew at a pace that alarmed Germans, and their concern heightened when Russia, with French
money, began to build railways to the German border and alongside it.  Germans now feared that they could be
crushed within a few weeks if France and Russia decided to wage a two-front war against them.    

                                                                                                                                    
Chapter Three

Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points

We Entered this war because violations of rights had occurred which
Touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible.  It is
fes,, therefore, that the world be made fit and safe to live in, particularly that it
be made safe for every peace-lovin g nation, which, like our own, wishes to live
its own life, determine its own  institutions, and be assured of justice and fair
dealing by the other peoples of the world.  All the people of the world are in
effect parners.  We see very clearly that unless justice is provided to other, it will not be provided to us.

I.        Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international
understanding of any kind but diplomacy whall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II.        Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in War,
except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international
covenants.

III.        The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade
conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves flor its maintenance.

IV.        Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest poing
consistent with domestic safety.

V.        A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict
observance of the principle that in determining al such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations
concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose  title is to be determined.

VI.        The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will
secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and
unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national
policy and assure her a sincere welcome into the society of free nations uner institutions of her own choosing;
and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire.  The
treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of
their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish
sympathy.

VII.        Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the
sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations.  No other single act will serve as this will to
serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for
the government of their relations with one another.  Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of
international law is forever impaired.

VIII.        All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to
France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace Lorraine, which has  unsettled the peace of the world for
nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX.         A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of
nationality.

X.          The peoples of Austria-Hungary,  whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and
assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

XI.        Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia
accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another
determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international
guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states
should be entered into.

XII.        The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the
other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an
absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently
opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII.        An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by
indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose
political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV.        A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of
affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike ....

(From Woodrow Wilson, "Speech on the Fourteen Points,"
Congressional Record, 65th Congress 2nd Session, 1918, pp. 680-681

_______________________________________________________________________________________


This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.   The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain
and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.  Unless otherwise
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(c) Paul Halsall Aug. 1997 halsall@murraay,fordham.edu


      Chapter Four  

    The Treaty of Versailles







                                       "The Hall of Mirrors"
        The Palace of Versailles--- Where the Armistice was Signed

   The Treaty of Versailles is one of the most controversial international agreements.  Many observers ---
politicians and historians --- have tended to blame the rise of the Nazis on Versailles, following the dictum of an
eminent democratic German politician.  When asked about the ultimate reasons for the failure of the democratic
Weimar Republic, he replied:  "Versailles and Moscow."  By "Moscow" he meant that subversive communist
activity guided by the Russian Bolshevist government had undermined democracy in tandem with the Nazis.  By
mentioning "Versailles" he claimed that the peace treaty had had detrimental effects on the viability and
domestic authority of the German democracy.

  The French, on the other hand, felt disappointed by the treaty.  They had hoped to weaken Germany more,
maybe to dissolve it.  To them, the treaty did not seem harsh enough. In general, it has seemed that the treaty
was either too harsh or too mild.  It was too harsh to reconcile Germany with its former war enemies and to
integrate it into a lasting peaceful postwar order, and it was too mild to weaken Germany so as to make it
impossible for it to ever again become a great power.  The picture that emerges today points out that Versailles
remains a crucial part of German history.  The actual peace terms harshly disappointed the Germans, who felt
that they radically contradicted the promises Wilson had made to the prerevolutionary German governments.  
The Germans. right or wrong, felt betrayed by Wilson and the United States.

  If we compare German expectations and the terms of Versailles, we cannot overlook sharp discrepancies.  
Instead of a negotiated peace in which Germany would be a significant, if not equal, partner, the treaty gave
practically no room for German input and resembled more a dictate that a real peace settlement.  Instead of
admitting the new democratic Germany into the community of democratic nations, the Allies ostracized the
vanquished nation.    They even took pains to humiliate its national consciousness/  Germany was --- for the
time being --- not allowed to join the newly founded League of Nations and remained a pariah in the postwar
order.  Instead of a piece of reconciliation the Germans received a piece of submission and punishment.  The
principle of national self-determination, instead of being respected as a general rule, was always applied if it
weakened Germany and its former allies but never where it would have benefited them.
Wilsonian ideology seemed to have covered traditional ruthless power politics with a moralistic glaze.  How did
this momentous discrepancy come about?  Were the Germans really betrayed?  Should they ever have believed
in a milder peace settlement.

Wilson's Fourteen Points (Reviewed)    

   Let us now see how this misunderstanding came about.  On 8 January 1918 Wilson offered Congress an
outline for a moderate peace in Europe.  He was prompted to do so by the critical condition of the Entente after
the Russian defeat.  In France and Britain war-weariness became stronger, and it seemed irresponsible to many
political minds that war should be continued for aggressive French and British war aims.  Wilson thus hoped to
placate moderate opinion in the Entente and at the same time suggest to the Germans that they could expect a
peace settlement that would not destroy their state but give them a chance to survive as a major nation.
The principles Wilson articulated in his Fourteen Points were above all economic and political equality of all
nations (against satellite states, as in German-dominated Eastern Europe, and for the restoration of  Belgian
independence).  Wilson further demanded that Europe be reorganized along lines of nationality.  This idea
implied the German loss of Alsace-Lorraine and the creation of a truly independent Polish state would have to
receive access to the Baltic Sea at the expense of some German territory.  Concerning war reparations, Wilson
asked that they be limited to repairing the damage done by invading troops (Germany in Belgium and France).
Further, Wilson encouraged democratization.  He announced that the allies would speak seriously only to "true"
representatives of the German people.  (He sometimes doubted, however, that the German democrats would
really be the true representatives of the German people;  the Kaiser's generals seemed to be quite popular.)  
But Wilson made it clear that Germany would be allowed to gain a place in a new, liberal world order if it was
willing to respect his principles and to forego its own expansionist or hegemonies aims.  The restoration of
Belgium was a "must" on the American list;  Alsace-Lorraine and the Polish Corridor were merely conditions that
"should" be met.

  It was on the basis of these fourteen points that the German government had asked to open negotiations for a
truce in October 1918.  Wilson's answers had generally confirmed the fourteen points but put heavier emphasis
on Alsace-Lorraine and the Polish Corridor.  One factor the Germans tended to ignore, however, was the
persistence of French and British war aims.  Wilson was maybe the strongest member of the Entente, but the
French had more of a stake in Europe than the United States.  Georges Clemenceau, the French prime
minister, did not take Wilson's claims seriously.  He joked that the Good Lord had managed with Ten
Commandments, whereas Wilson needed fourteen points. Particularly in the light of French and British
expectations the German hopes for a mild peace were downright naive and betrayed a high degree of wishful
thinking born of the desperation typical for the end of the war.  A coalition war had ended;  this meant that many
different countries would voice their claims.  Wilson could not conclude peace all alone.  Moreover, the passions
aroused by a world war, particularly in France and Britain, could not easily be transferred.

The Peace Conference

   On 18 January 1919 the leading statesmen of the victorious nations met in Paris to decide about the future of the defeated
Central Powers.  The choice of the opening date was a deliberate humiliation to German, since it was the birthday of the
German Empire in 1871.  Negotiations were conducted mainly between the heads of state of the United States, France,
Britain, and Italy, the so-called "big four."  They had widely different goals.

  For Wilson, the most important goal was the establishment of a League of Nations that would mediate all future conflicts
between nations and make was as a means of politics unnecessary.  Wilson was prompted by fears of Bolshevism.  He
wanted to offer a pacifist vision to war-weary Europeans, mainly the workers and the leftists.  He envisioned a liberal uunion
of free, democratic nations, based on the principle of national self-determination, as a competing model to Lenin's call for a
brotherhood of socialist societies according to Marxist ideas.  Wilson wanted to weaken Germany's military potential for all
times, but he had nothing against a democratic Germany becoming a major economic power again and felt strongly about
leaving it unified.  He feared that an all too weak Germany might inspire France to strive for domination on the European
continent.

  To the French, security against a future German invasion mattered most.  France wanted to change the balance of power
by weakening Germany's economic and demographic potential to a point that would make it impossible for Germany to
overpower France.  In 1914 Germany had had about twenty-five million inhabitants more than France, and German
industrial production had been much more intensive than France's.  In order to reduce German superiority, to reconstruct
the destroyed areas, and to cover their own war debt, the French wanted high reparations.

  But reparations were not sufficient, since that could only temporarily bind the German economy.  The French hoped
further to control Germany's western industrial heartlands and --- maybe --- to dissolve the Reich altogether.  They wanted
to separate the Rhineland and the Ruhr from Germany and to create a semi-autonomous state leaning toward France.  
Without its density populated and highly industrialized West, Germany would find it impossible to threaten France again.  As
an additional safeguard against future German aggression, France hoped to build up an alliance network among the newly
independent nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland.  This alliance was supposed to threaten Germany with
a second front again, after France's main prewar ally in Eastern Europe, the Russian Empire, had broken down.  France
further wanted to secure a strong position in the Middle East in territories formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire.

  The British wanted above all to demilitarize Germany and to get hold of its battle fleet and merchant navy.  They claimed
their share in German reparations and demanded domination over most of Germany's African colonies (one African colony,
however, refused to cooperate with their new English governor, and a German speaking governor had to be installed, to
prevent an open rebellion by the natives).  In addition to that, their interests concentrated on the Middle East (at the expense
of the dissolved Ottoman Emopire).  Often British interests in this region contradicted ambitious French schemes.  In
general, the British aims were compatible with the American aims.  The British believed that Germany should after a while
recover as a major trade partner without ever again posing a military threat.  Like the United States, Britain was also unhappy
about the prospect of French predominance on the European Continent.

  Italy joined the conference tables at Versailles to claim the lands it had been promised as a price for supporting the
Engente, the South Tyrol (partly German-speaking Alpine Valley) and the Trentino (border area with Yugoslavia; today:
Slovenia).    Japan merely wanted its conquest of Germany's Chinese colony ratified.  In mostly secret negotiations over
four months the leading statesmen drafted a treaty that thet submitted to the German government in early May 1919.

The main conditions of the treaty included territorial, military, financial, and judicial elements.

1)        Territorial:  Germany had to cede Alsace-Lorraine to France and accept an allied occupaion of most of its western
provinces.  The Saar area was given to France for fifteen years.  Thereafter a plebiscite should decide its future.  The rich
coal mines in the Saar district, however would belong to France, and Germany would have to buy them back if the plebiscite
yielded a pro-German majority.   The Rhineland and some cities on the right bank of the Rhine were occupied by French,
English, American, and Belgian troops for five, ten, or fifteen years respectively.  A small border area was annexed by
Belgium.

  In the north a plebiscite was held to decide the fate of northern Schleswig, the province with a Danish minority.  The
result split the province into a pro-Danish and pro-German part.  In the east, Germany had to gove the provinces of Western
Prussia and Posen to Poland, thus offering the landlocked Polish state an outlet to the Baltic Sea.  Some of Upper Silesia also
went to Poland, but some areas were given the right to a plebiscite (the drawing of voting districts was arbitrary, however,
giving the Poles a majority whenever possible).

  The city of Danzig on the Baltic Sea became a so-called free city under the mandate of the League of Nations.  A small
area in Silesia was given to Czechoslovakia and another strip of land in the north of East Prussia was put under Allied
administration and was later seized by Lithuania.  The loss of the territories in the east filled most Germans with even  more
indignation than the loss of the western lands, since the changes in the east often contradicted the principle of national
self-determination:  Some of the new Polish territories were settled predominantly by Germans, and Danzig was a German
city.

  A union of German Austria with Germany, although the declared wish of both  peoples, was forbidden, and several million
Germans living in Bohemia (in the Sudetenland) came under Czech rule, which most of them resented.  (Oskar Schindler,
by the way, belonged to this German minority in Czechoslovakia.)

2)        Military:  Germany had to disarm almost completely and was only allowed an army of 100,000 men.  Germany had
to demilitarize a 50-kilometer zone on the right bank of the Rhine and was forbidden to own military airplanes, submarines,
tanks, heavy artillery, and poison gas.  The navy was limited to a few small ships.  The existing German battle fleet would
have to be given to Britain along with all merchant ships (the British got the merchant ships, but Tirpitz's "proud" battle fleet
scuttled itself in June 1919).  An Inter-Allied Military Control Commission (IMCC) was granted large powers to
supervise and control German disarmament.  Germany was to be disarmed and left only with minor armed forces that could
be used to repress domestic unrest but were inferior in combat even to the Polish army.  The Treaty of Versailles stated,
however, that German disarmament should precede disarmament all over the world.  But the victors of the world war, of
course, were in no hurry to disarm themselves.

3)        Financial:  The Entente, and the French, in particular, had always claimed that the Germans would have to pay not
only for the damage done in the occupied regions but also for most of the Entente's war expenses.  To justify such an
enormous  claim the Entente argued that Germany and its allies had started the war and were thus responsible for all of their
enemies' cost and damages.  The sum of reparations and the modes of payment were not specified initially since the Entente
powers could not agree on how much Germany could pay and on the way they wanted to divide reparations among
themselves.  Germany thus had to sign a blank check and expect an astronomic sum to be paid over many decades.

4)        Judicial:  The Entente claimed that the German leaders had conducted the war partly in a criminal way, mainly by
opting for submarine warfare.  The Kaiser, who was deemed responsible for this, and about two thousand German top
officers and officials including Tirpitz, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff were to be put on trial by the Entente.

  These were the conditions of the treaty.  The German government was not given a chance to change it substantially, and
the Entente threatened to advance further onto German territory if it refused.  The French actually hoped for a German
refusal because that would give their army the opportunity to dissolve Germany and to take more direct control than the
treaty allowed.  The Germans, government and people, were horrified when they were informed about the peace terms.  Not
even the worst pessimists had expected that the treaty would be so harsh.  A tremendous uproar occurred, but it seemed
impossible to resist.  Two German governments stepped down because they did not want to take responsibility for signing
the treaty, but finally there was no choice but to sign.

  The Germans were most infuriated at the claim that they had started the war and therefore should pay for everything.  
That the Entente had failed to define an absolute sum of reparations and that the criteria for what Germany should pay for
were very expansive deeply worried the Germans.  They had no guarantee that the other nations would disarm, too, and thus
it seemed as if the Germans would be held in eternal financial and military bondage.  Germans, moreover, were incensed
about the prospect that their war heroes should be put on trial.  The loss of territories with a large German population in the
east also incensed public opinion.  Many people, particularly on the right, advocated a desperate act of resistance even at the
price of complete foreign occupation, hoping that foreign occupation would --- just as under Napoleon I --- produce a united
German uprising.  The majority in the Reichstag, however, resisted this fanciful alternative.  But even if many Germans felt
that they had no alternative tom signing, there was almost universal consensus that the treaty was extremely unjust and
needed to be changed at the first opportunity.

Evaluation

   While the Germans were bitterly disappointed about what they saw as Wilson's "betrayal," the Treaty of Versailles was a
compromise between Wilsonian aims and French plans.  In the short run, the treaty significantly weakened Germany and
gave the victors economic benefits and much power mainly in the west of the country.  In the long run, however, no one
spoke against German recovery at least in economics.  The trade conditions favoring the victors would elapse after five
years, the occupation would have to be ended after fifteen years, and German disarmament, at least according to the letter of
the treaty, was ultimately conditional upon general, world-wide disarmament.

  The treaty weakened Germany more than Wilson had wanted, but the American president had been forced to negotiate in a
position of weakness and to make far-reaching concessions to his allies in order to secure a peace treaty at all.  He tried to
conceal this failure from the American public by condoning the peace treaty as a just punishment for a bad criminal.  To this
purpose he dropped the distinction between Germany's pre-revolutionary and republican governments.  Wilson first of all
wanted to make sure that Germany would not succumb to Bolshevism; in the long run, he wished for an integration of
republican Germany into a liberal community of nations.  Germany could become a major economic power again, but not a
military power.

  The fourteen points and Wilson's assurances in October 1918 had suggested a milder peace than Versailles, but the biggest
problem was that the Germans still refused tom acknowledge that they had lost a world war, a war that had unbound
unprecedented energies and emotions and affected societies as a whole, a war, for whose outbreak the German government
had to bare a large share of responsibility.   The traumatic character of the defeat gave rise to illusions.  Germans believed
that they had been tricked into disarming themselves by the alleged promise of a "just" peace by the American President.  As
if there had been no military defeat before!  It remained extremely difficult to Germany to understand how they could have
lost the war without losing a decisive battle and without letting the enemy conquer German territory.  That their war machine
had simply run out of men and material and that this was decisive in a modern war was hard to understand.

  It was difficult to understand how things had turned from seemingly imminent victory to disaster, making many Germans
susceptible to poisonous, distorting legends.  The worst of all was the stab-in-the-back legend, propagated by Hindenburg
and Ludendorff in November 1919.  The dismissed generals claimed that the defeat had come about as a result of
democratic and socialist strivings at home.  Politicians eager for reform or revolution had, according to the generals, stabbed
the undefeated German army in the back by launching a revolution at home.   Already before November 1918, they claimed,
the democrats had undermined the war effort by diverting popular attention from ultimate support for the war to concern
about domestic gains.  In other words:  the Socialists and Democrats, those who represented the new Weimar system, were
responsible for the German defeat.

  This was a perfidious lie, as the revolution was triggered by the defeat, not vice versa.  All of Germany's allies in South
Eastern Europe had broken down in October 1918, and the western front was about to crumble due to the vast superiority
of the Entente forces.  Even if the Germans had held out for a while in Belgium they would have been attacked in the
southeast, where after the Austro-Hungarian defeat Allied troops in Greece and Italy faced no enemy any more.  In any case,
the ultimate breakdown of the German army was only a matter of time, as Ludendorff himself had admitted before the
revolution.

  In the light of the German conditions imposed oon defeated Russia at Brest-Litovsk, moreover, the Treaty of Versailles did
not look extremely harsh.  But, as mentioned above, Versailles was a problematic result of a compromise.  Germany was not
weakened enough to make it impossible for it to ever rise again as a military threat.  Its structural potential for hegemony
(economy, population, education) was not destroyed.

  On the other side, the treaty was sure to make a significant section of the German public unforgiving and eager for a
revanchist.  In that sense it was not a "peace treaty" but, as the German writer Berthold Brecht once said, a truce in a
European thirty-year civil war.  The discourse over Versailles helped poison the political life of the Weimar Republic, as the
extremely difficult adjustment period following the war was blamed not primarily on the war itself (as it should have been)
but on Versailles and Weimar Germany's compliance with the peace treaty.  Given the high and expansive German
expectations of the war years, however, it is hard to think of a peace that would have pleased the Germans.

  The dilemma for the United States was that the milder the peace the greater the American role as a future interventionist
power in Europe:  Germany, fighting a world coalition while having only weak allies, had been overcome only through
American help.  A Germany left largely intact could again become a military threat, so that once again the United States
would have to intervene to decide a war in Europe for the Entente.  On the other side, an all too weak Germany could easily
become the prey of a France wanting to establish its own predominance over Europe.  France could attack Germany before
it recovered and impose its own peace on Germany.  American assistance would then be needed to save Germany from
France.  The problem was that the United States was not prepared to assume the new responsibilities it faced as a world
power.  As the main creditor of the Entente, it had an only a short-term interest in European stability and in French and
British wealth.

  Altogether, we have to consider that statesmen at Versailles had little latitude.  The global war had created circumstances
that even good will did not change.  Recent historiography has slightly rehabilitated Wilson.  He made sure that at least some
compromise between his ideological goals and the more aggressive aims of the French came about.  The Paris peace
conference had a multitude of problems to solve; Germany was only one part of them.  In the following months the Entente
concluded separate treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.  Versailles undoubtedly helped to compromise the
new German democracy, but the reasons for its failure were more complex than the Versailles trauma.  The compromise
character of the peace treaty left Germany some hope for revision and ultimate repudiation.  There was no need to accept a
total defeat as there would be in 1945.  Revision remained a distant but viable goal.  Germans were determined to work for it.


          Chapter Five

             The Weimar Republic

    Germany's First Democratic Constitution










                      The Beginning of the Weimar Republic

 The Weimar Republic, which was founded in the wake of the revolution of 1918, was Germany's first democracy.  
It broke down after only fourteen years.  This failure appears particularly dramatic because the regime that
followed committed some of the worst crimes of world history and unleashed another, much bloodier, world war.  
To explain the failure of the Weimar Republic to some extent has meant to explain the rise of the Nazis, a group
representing a violent and hate-inspired political program.

The structure and ultimate breakdown of the Weimar Republic therefore rank among the key issues of modern
European history.

A historian once remarked that democracy very often fails when it is introduced in a nation for the first time.  
This was the case in France, where a democratic constitution, drafted during the revolution of 1789-94, did not
syrvive.  Only the third attempt at establishing a French democracy succeeded.  Russia had its first democratic
experiment in 1917.  The problem with the second Russian democracy came with today's daily news.  Italy had
eveloped into a fairly democratic state around World War I, but the Fascist dictatorship destroyed democracy in
1922.  And there are similar failures of first democracies to be found in Spain, Greece, and many other nations.  
And yet, it would be too easy to resign and consider the failure of Germany's first democracy as inevitable.  There
were phases during which many voters and parties accepted the Weimar Republic even without loving it.  A modest
economic recovery and signs of international reconciliation from 1924-29 made the Republic look relatively stable.  
Why did it fail then?

Explanations have stressed either the beginning or the end of the Republic.  Some historians blame deficiencies of
the constitution for the Republic's failure.  Others have stressed the impact of the World War in general and of
Versailles in particular.  Still another group of historians claim that the revolution of 1918 was --- as in 1848 --- an
incomplete revolution.  It stopped half-way because the moderate revolutionaries (in this case the SPD) again
aligned with the old elites to stop the radicals (in 1918/19 the Independent Socialists and the communists).  The
price the moderate revolutionaries had to pay was to leave most of the old elites in the administration and the
military in place.  These historians argue that the Worker's Council movement was basically democratic and
should have become more powerful.  It would thus have helped to protect the Republic against its radical enemies
to the Left and, above all, to the Right.  The moderate Social Democrats, according to these historians, aligned
with the military to repress the council movement and therefore are responsible for the failure of a third
alternative between the capitalist Weimar democracy and Russian Bolshevism, an alternative that may have made
the Republic more stable.

Many historians have focused on the Republic's last years, claiming that the great depression of the early thirties
was so harsh in Germany that there could hardly have been a political system that would have been toppled by it.  
Marxist historians, in particular, have argued that the destruction of the Republic was a scheme of big industry,
which succeeded when a popular movement for dictatorship could be built up in 1930-33.  We have to keep all these
approaches in mind, as we reflect on the events unfolding after the revolutionary days of November 1918.

     The chaotic winter months 1918-1919                           

 But let us now consider what happened next:  After the abdication of the Kaiser a socialist government ruled
alone.  It was composed of three SPD members and three members of the more radical Independents (the USPD).  
For several weeks, Germany therefore had a socialist government that was loosely controlled by a council of
workers', soldiers', and farmers' councils, in which the SPD had a majority.  But the unity between the two
socialist parties represented in the government was fragile.  The Independents wanted institutionalized power for
the councils, whereas the SPD aimed at calling a National Assembly that would drzft a democratic constitution and
limit the power of the councils.

Despite its internal differences regarding Germany's future, the government agreed to schedule general elections
to a National Assembly on 19 January 1919.  But unrest prevailed in December, 1918.  It is hard to imagine the
chaos in Germany at that time:  As the British blockade remains effective until June 1919; shortages of food and
coal became more serious again as the winter approaches.  Many industries that have supplied the army needed to
close;  they sent thousands of unemployed workers out in the streets.  There the hungry and upset workers joined
masses of returning soldiers, who have no prospect of employment and often cannot imagine returning to  civilian
life.  They are traumatized by the war experience, and they are bitter and depressed.  Those workers who have
employment often go on strike.  Some take over their factories and try to run them themselves.

At the same time, Allied troops occupy the west of Germany, while the Polish army moves into some of the
eastern territories.  Bloody clashes between the Polish troops and remainders of the German army occur.  Further
east, other German units fraternize with the enemies of Bolshevism and fight the Red Army shoulder to shoulder
with counter-revolutionary armies.  Although the Allies ask that they be recalled, they help to secure the
independence of Finland and the Baltic states before degenerating into undisciplined marauding units.

In Bavaria and other South German states strong separatist strivings surface.  In the big cities and the industrial
areas shooting between restive workers and army units occur almost daily.  Right-wing paramilitary units gather
and attack workers.  The workers', soldiers', and farmers' councils often cannot preserve order.  Authority is
unclear.  Determined sailors or workers occupy government buildings and the Imperial castle in Berlin whenever
they want.  Politics assume a shrill and nervous pitch.  As if that is not enough, the Dadaist movement occupies
Berlin's main ball room and proclaims the Dadaist world revolution!  Such was the scenery of the winter 1918-1919!

In this situation the tensions between the more radical socialists and the SPD came to a head.  Many workers
mistrusted the SPD and found that the SPD leaders had compromised themselves by cooperating with the old
regime and the army.  They believed that the capatalists had unleashed and prolonged the war for selfish reasons,
and they wanted to make sure this would not happen again.  State control over the industry or socialization of
German enterprises was demands often voiced by the radical workers.

In the light of later events, it would have been important to keep the labor movement together.  Only a unified
Left together with a moderate political center would have been able to defend Germany's democratic achievements
in the long run.  But the conflicts between the socialist factions escalated soon.  Restive workers demanded more
revolutionary actions and guarantees for the lasting success of the revolution.  They often clashed with units of the
former army that had been commissioned by the SPD for the protection of the present government.  Many of these
units, the so-called Free Corps, were angry at the revolution and eager to shoot leftist rebels.  Since the SPD saw
no possibility of building up a moderate, democratic armed force that could protect order until a democratic
constitution had been implemented, it had concluded a secret agreement with the army leaders already on 10
November 1918 to repress radical socialists uprisings.  The SPD thus relied on Free Corps and other remainders of
the old army, most of which were anti-democratic.  Being attacked by right-wing armed units in the name of the
SPD ministers exacerbated the suspicions of the rebellious workers.  Around Christmas 1918 bloody clashes
between workers and army units induced the Independents to leave the government in protest against the SPD.

            The elections to the National Assembly

  While Germany seemed on the verge of a.second, more radical revolution, the non-socialist groups realigned and
prepared for the elections.  The former Progressives, the left-wing liberals of the Wilhelmina Empire, formed a
new party, called the GERMAN-DEMOCRATIC-PARTY (DDP).  They demanded a democratic constitution and a
return to order.   The Center Party was shocked by the abdication of the Kaiser and the following socialist turmoil
that often assumed threateningly anti-clerical notes.  The Bavarian section of the Center Party, resenting the
party's liberal course in the last months of the war, now broke away from the national party.  The rest was held
together only by the threat of a socialist revolution.  The Right formed two parties, the GERMAN PEOPLE'S
PARTY (DVP), a pro-industrialist party, and the GERMAN-NATIONALIST PEOPLE'S PARTY (DNVP), an
intransigent anti-democratic organization uniting the old conservatives and other right-wing organizations
including the remainders of anti-Semitic parties.

 On 19 January Germans held national elections.  For the first time women had the vote.  The result showed
strong support for those parties advocating democracy.  It was a disappointment to those socialists who had initially
hoped that the labor parties would win a majority, as the SPD and USPD together had less than 50%.  The SPD,
DDP, and the Center together secured a vast majority.  An analysis of the women's vote showed that the Center
Party and the DNVP benefitted most from the introduction of female suffrage (by the SPD/USPD government in
November 1918) although many men and women on the far right, in particular, had opposed it.

The National Assembly was called into session 6 February and (while maintaining Berlin as the capital) started
deliberations in WEIMAR, once the residence of the classical authors Goethe and Schiller.  Weimar was chosen
not only because Berlin was too restive a place, but also because the humanistic spirit of German classicism should
inspire the new state with the best sides of German culture and disassociates it from defeated Prussian
"militarism."  The National Assembly immediately made a provisional decision about the future structure of
government:  a President would have strong individual powers, as in the United States, but he would leave the
conduct of everyday political matters to a Reich chancellor, who proposed ministers to the President.  The
Reichstag would be recalled, but for the time being the National Assembly assumed its role.  It elected Ebert, the
leader of the SPD, President of the Republic and chose a new government directed by a Social Democrat.  A
coalition of the SPD, the DDP, and the center formed the first cabinet.

Germany now had a democratic government.  Similar events happened in all German single states.  Most of them
adopted equally democratic elections and elected democratic governments led by SPD members.  But order did not
return immediately.   In dthe industrialized regions, radical leftist workers continued to revolt and got involved in
a shooting war with the Free Corps for several months.

                              The Constitution

  Meanwhile the constitutional conferences continued.  Procedures were only interrupted for a while when the
conditions of the TREATY OF VERSAILLES  became public (May 1919).  Several drafts of the constitution were
discussed.  In July, the National Assembly voted for a definitive constitution, which became effective the following
month.  The structure of government stipulated by the constitution was the same as had already been in place
since February.

 The head of state was the president, who was to be elected by popular vote every seven years.  Multiple
reelections were possible.  The president appoinged and dismissed  the Reich government and could dissolve the
Reichstag.  Under ARTICLE 48 he could proclaim a national state of emergency to preserve order.  Article 48 gave
the president temporary dictatorial powers, which he could transmit to the defense minister or the chief of the
army.  The president had the right to interfere with the legislation of the Reichstag and submit single laws to a
plebiscite.

 The Reichstag was the main legislative body.  It controlled the government.  If it lost confidence in a chancellor,
the president was bound to dismiss him.  The president could also dissolve the Reichstag instead and try to secure
the Reichstag's approval to the chancellor after new elections.  The Reichstag was elected normally every fourth
year by universal, equal, and secret suffrage (including women and all people older than age 20).  The seats were
distributed roughly by percentage of the parties' vote.  So  a party receiving 40% of the vote also received about
40% of the seats.  Even tiny parties could win Reichstag seats.  The government was led by the Reich chancellor,
who proposed ministers to the president.  Usually the Weimar governments were supported by coalitions of several
parties, so that inter-party negotiations determined the government before the president could approve.

 The workers' councils were tolerated by the constitution, but they did not receive any institutional power.  Indeed
they soon faded away.

 In order to limit the power of the Reichstag, the National Assembly stipulated that the signatures of one tenth of
the electorate could force the government to submit a certain issue to a plebiscite.  Through the direct election of
the president and through the right to a popular vote the constitution thus incorporated some plebiscitarian
elements.

 Besides the Reichstag an assembly of the single states existed, a successor to the Federal Council.  But this
so-called REICH COUNCIL had mostly advisory functions; it did not have nearly as much power as the Federal  
Council under the Bismarckian Constitution.

 In general, the constitution shifted the balance of power from the single states to the Reich.  Taxation was
increased to benefit the Reich administration and to pay off the astronomic war debt and the reparations.  The
special rights of some South German states were revoked (postal service, railroads, embassies).  Prussia was still
the largest and most populous single state (even though it lost most of the territory separated from Germany in
the Treaty of Versailles) but lost its institutionalized predominance.   The chancellor was not automatically
Prussian minister president any more, and Prussia did not receive a dominant voice in the Reich Council.  The new
Reich therefore was a more Unitarian state than the still very federalist Bismarckian Empire.  This angered some
of the south German states, and separatism became a constant problem of the Weimar Republic during its severe
crises.

 Critics of the constitution have pointed out that it gave too much power to the president and almost created an
ersatz Kaiser.  They have further argued that the mathematical assignment of Reichstag seats and the generous
treatment of small parties gave rise to many splinter parties, which made it hard for a government to rule with
clear majorities.  But whatever the shortcomings of the constitution, it was a platform of compromise and it could
have been improved or corrected.  To blame the failure of Weimar democracy on the constitution is, in my view, a
little unfair.  With genuine will to make it work, the constitution could function well in different ways.  Without
democratic will, however, any constitution will have problems to survive.  Democratic will existed in 1919 but it
soon faded away outside the SPD.  A bad omen was that the radical Left and the Right did not approve the
constitution.  The USPD, the DVP, and the DNVP all voted against it.  In 1919 they still represented a small
minority.  But soon the parties who resented the democratic  constitution became a majority.

            The Republic Besieged, 1918-1923

The Spartacist uprising:

  On the far left of the USPD a radical revolutionary group had been waiting for increasing chaos in order to
provoke an allegedly "true" socialist revolution according to the Bolshevist model.  This was the SPARTACIST
LEAGUE, originally a part of the USDP, but calling itself COMMUNIST PARTY OF GERMANY (KPD) on 1 January
1919.  Its leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, had opposed the war and had spent several years in
prison for their pacifist activity.  Although they admired the success of Lenin's revolution in 1917, they had
reservations about the undemocratic style in which Lenin consolidated his power.

 Shortly before the elections to the National Assembly, on 5 January, the most radical workers in Berlin got out of
control and started an armed uprising.  Liebknecht and Luxemburg considered the moment too early for a
revolution but felt compelled to go along.  Out of a sense of loyalty, the leaders followed the masses into
catastrophe.  The radical workers occupied newspaper offices and public buildings and called for a socialist
revolution in Germany.  In some other cities similar uprisings occurred,  The government, now led exclusively by
the SPD, called Free Corps into Berlin to repress the rebession.  On 15 January the uprising broke down.  
Luxemburg and Liebknecht were brutally murdered by Free Corps officers.  Their corpses were thrown into the
central canal of Berlin.  Although the USPD and many of the workers who mistrusted the SPD had not supported
the Spartacist uprising, the bloody intervention by the Free Corps which were called and directed by an SPD
minister, did irreparable damage to working-class unity.  Even many moderate workers without sympathies for the
Spartacists' cause now deeply resented then SPD.

Revolution in Munich:

   As if there had not been enough trouble already, a turbulent and bloody episode seized Munich.  On 21 February
a rightist student shot the Bavarian Minister President, Kurt Eisner, a USPD member.  Eisner, whose party had
only received two percent of the vote at the Bavarian state elections, was on his way to the Bavarian parliament in
order to submit his resignation.  The senseless act of terror against him triggered more violence.  Shootings
occurred in the parliament building in Munich, and the USPD called a general strike in Bavaria.  For several
months Bavaria remained unstable.  On 7 April some Independents seized power in Munich and proclaimed a
soviet republic for all of Bavaria.  The regular government, led by an SPD member, fled to another city.  
Journalists and writers formed an insurrectionary Bavarian government (among them the author Ernst Toller).
After standing aloof for a while the Communists entered the revolutionary government and became the dominant
force, further radicalizing the government.  The Communists took and murdered several hostages.  In early May
1919 a Free Corps and regular army units repressed the Bavarian revolution with utmost and often blind brutality
incommensurate to the real danger.

Right-wing putschism:

   Free corps and a vast number of paramilitary units formed out of some remainders of the old army, partly
drawing younger people who had not been old enough to be drafted into the army during the war.  They were on
the one hand radically anti-democratic, on the other hand passionately nationalist and opposed to every clause of
the peace treaty.

  They secretly hoarded arms to fight Communists and participate in a war of liberation against France and
Poland.  Increasingly, they became a serious threat to the Republic.  In March 1920, some Free Corps attempted a
putsch.  They occupied Berlin (without encountering any resistance) and proclaimed the rightist Wolfgang Kapp
(formerly a close political associate of Tirpitz) new chancellor (KAPP PUTSCH).

  When Germany's rump army refused to fight the putschists and declared itself "neutral," the legitimate
government under SPD leadership fled to the south of Germany.  The state administration in Berlin, however, did
not cooperate with the putschists (because they doubted the success of the Kapp Putsch, not because they feared
the destruction of democracy).  The working-class parties, moreover, proclaimed a general strike.  This brought
down the Kapp government within a few days, even though the war hero Ludendorff joined it.  The putsch showed
dramatically how little the German army cared for the Weimar Republic; it was not adverse to fighting leftist
putschists with great brutality but "neutral" toward rightist putschists.  The same was true for the justice system,
as the mild punishments of the putschists revealed.  The success of the general strike, proclaimed by the KPD,
USPD, and the SPD strengthened worker confidence in socialist action, but the strike turned into communist
uprisings in many industrialized areas and thur brought further trouble and chaos to the Republic.

  In the aftermath of Kapp's failure radical rightists resorted to terrorism.  The murder of Kurt Eisner had set a
bloody precedent, and Matthias Erzberger (former Minister of Finance and Center Party leader) and Foreign
Minister Walther Rathenau were killed by rightist terrorists in 1921 and 1922


             Chapter Six

                     World War II

                                           Prologue

    World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind.  However, the half
century that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on our collective knowledge.  While World
War II continues to absorb the interest of military scholars and historians, as well as its veterans, a generation of
Americans has grown to maturity largely unaware of the political, social, and military implications of a war that,
more than any other united us as a people with a common purpose.

   Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach us, not only about the profession of arms, but also about
military preparedness, global strategy, and combined operations in the coalition war against fascism.  During the
next several years, the U.S. Army will participate in the nation's 50th anniversary commemoration of World War
II.  This commemoration will include the publication of various materials to help educate Americans about that
war.  The works produced will provide great opportunities to learn about and renew pride in an Army that fought so
magnificently in what has been called "the mighty endeavor."

    A Brief History of the U.S. Army in World War II highlights the major ground force campaign during the six years of
the war, offers suggestions for further reading, and provides Americans an opportunity to learn about the Army's role in
World War II.

                                                                                                     M.P.W. Stone, Secretary of the Army


                  The War in Europe

    World War I left unresolved the question of who would dominate Europe.  The tremendous dislocations caused
by the war laid the groundwork for the collapse of democratic institutions there and set the stage for a second
German attempt at conquest.  A worldwide depression that began in 1929 destroyed the fragile democratic regime
in Germany.  In 1933 Adolf Hitler led to power the National Socialist German Workers' Party, a mass movement
that was virulently nationalistic and, antidemocratic.  He ended parliamentary government, assumed dictatorial
powers, and proclaimed the Third Reich.  The government increased the strength of the German armed forces and
sought to overturn the Versailles Treaty, to recover German territory lost at the peace settlement, and to return
to the Fatherland, the German-speaking minorities within the borders of surrounding countries.

   The ultimate goal of Hitler's policy was to secure "living space" for the German "master race" in Eastern
Europe.  A gambler by instinct, Hitler relied on diplomatic bluff and military innovation to overcome Germany's
weaknesses.  He played skillfully on the divisions among the European powers to gain many of his aims without
war.  With the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (who incidentally was a communist, before becoming a
national socialist) he announced a Rome-Berlin alliance (the Axis) in 1935.   Meanwhile, in the Far East, the
Japanese---the only Asian industrial power---coveted the natural resources of China and Southeast Asia, but found
their expansion blocked by European colonial powers or by the United States.  Having seized Manchuria in 1931,
they began a war against China in 1937.  The League of Nations failed to effectively counter Japanese aggression
in Manchuria and an Italian invasion of Ethiopia.  Soon Germany, Italy, and Japan became allies, facing Western
democratic governments that wanted to avoid another war and the Soviet Union whose Communist government
was widely distrusted.

   The people of the United States, having rejected the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of
Nations after World War I, remained largely indifferent to most international concerns.  They firmly discounted
the likelihood of American involvement in another major war, except perhaps with Japan.  Isolationist strength in
Congress led to the passage of the Neutrality Act of 1937, making it unlawful for the United States to trade with
belligerents.  American policy aimed at continental defense and designated the Navy as the first line of such
defense.  The Army's role was to serve as the nucleus of a mass mobilization that would defeat any invaders who
managed to fight their way past the Navy and the nation's powerful coastal defense installations.  The National
Defense Act of 1920 allowed an Army of 280,000, the largest in peacetime history, but until 1939 Congress never
appropriated funds to pay for much more than half of that strength.  Most of the funds available for new
equipment went to the fledgling air corps.  Throughout most of the interwar period, the Army was tiny and insular,
filled with hard-bitten, long-serving volunteers scattered in small garrisons throughout the continental United
States, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Panama.

   Yet some innovative thinking and preparation for the future took place in the interwar Army.  Experiments
with armored vehicles and motorization, air-ground cooperation, and the aerial transport of troops came to nothing
for lack of resources and of consistent high-level support.  The Army did, however, develop an interest in
amphibious warfare and in related techniques that were then being pioneered by the U.S. Marine Corps.
By the outbreak of war the Signal Corps was a leader in improving radio communications, and American artillery
practiced the most sophisticated fire-direction and-control techniques in the world.  In addition, war plans for
various contingencies had been drawn up, as had industrial and manpower mobilization plans.  During the early
1930s Colonel George C. Marshall, assistant commandant of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, had
earmarked a number of younger officers for leadership positions.  Despite such preparations, the Army as a whole
was unready for the war that broke out in Europe in 1939.

        The Outbreak of World War II

    During March 1938 German troops had occupied Austria, incorporating it into the Reich.  In September Hitler
announced that the "oppression" of ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia was intolerable and that war was
near.  England and France met with Hitler (the Munich Pact) and compelled Czechoslovakia to cede its frontier
districts to Germany in order to secure "peace in our time."  Peace, however, was only an illusion.  During March
1939 Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia by force of arms and then turned his attention to Poland.  Although
Britain and France had guaranteed the integrity of Poland, Hitler and Josef Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union,
signed a secret, mutual nonaggression pact in August 1939.  With the pact Stalin bought time to build up his
strength at the expense of Britain and Fance, and Hitler gained a free hand to deal with Poland.  When Hitler's
army invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, World War II began.

   While German forces overran western Poland, Soviet troops entered from the east to claim their portion of that
country.  France and Britain declared war on Germany and mobilized their forces.  The subsequent period of
deceptive inactivity, lasting until spring, became known as the Phony War.  Nothing happened to indicate that
World War II would differ significantly in style or tempo from World War I.

   But the years since 1918 had brought important development in the use of tanks.  A number of students of
war---the British Sir Basil Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, the Frenchman Charles de Gaulle, the American
George S. Patton, and the Germans Oswald Lutz and Heinz Guderian---believed that armored vehicles held the key
to restoring decision to the battlefield.  But only the Germans conceived the idea of massing tanks in division-size
units, with infantry, artillery, engineers, and other supporting arms mechanized and all moving at the same pace.  
Moreover, only Lutz and Guderian received the enthusiastic support of their government.

   In the spring of 1940 their theories were put to the test as German forces struck against Norway and Denmark
in April; invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg in May; and late in the same month broke through a
hilly, wooded district in France.  Their columns sliced through to the English Channel, cutting off British and
French troops in northrn France and Belgium.  The French Army, plagued by low morale, divided command, and
primitive communications, fell apart.  The British evacuated their forces from Dunkirk with the loss of most of
their equipment.  The Germans entered Paris on 14 June, and the French government, defeatist and deeply divided
politically, sued for an armistice.  The success of the German Blitzkrieg forced the remaining combatants to
rethink their doctrine and restructure their armies.

   With his forces occupying northern France and with a puppet French government established in the south,
Hitler launched the Luftwaffe against the airfields and cities of England to pave the way for an invasion.  From
July to October 1940, while German landing barges and invasion forces waited on the Channel coasts, the Royal
Air Force, greatly outnumbered, drove the Luftwaffe from the daytime skies in the legendary Battle of Britain.  At
sea the British Navy, with increasing American cooperation, fought a desperate battle against German submarine
packs to keep the North Atlantic open.  British pugnacity finally forced Hitler to abandon all plans to invade
England.

   In February Hitler sent troops under Lt. General Erwin Rommel to aid the Italians who were fighting against
the British in North Africa.  German forces coming to the aid of the Italians in the Balkans routed a British
expedition in Greece, and German paratroopers seized the important island of Crete.  Then, in June 1944, Hitler
turned against his supposed ally, the Soviet Union, with the full might of the German armed forces.  (A double
agent of the Reich found out that Russia was massing troops at Germany's eastern borders, which were poised to
attack Germany in a sneak attack.  Germany swiftly amassed an army to attack the Russians without warning.  
The sneak attacks proposed by the Soviets were never revealed in any documents, only that Germany attacked the
Russian forces.  It was unclear and never confirmed why the Russians were intending to break their treaty with
Germany.  One reason develope with a secret pact with England, that if Russia supported them and if they won the
war against Germany and her allies, Russia would receive all the Eastern countries as a consolation prize).

   [While the German Army was pushing back the Russians, one of the German Divisions was marching through
Poland.   They came to a remote Polish Farm, and the Commander spoke to the farmer and asked for permission
to bed-down his troops for the night, and if the farmer could give his soldiers some food and water.  The next
morning the soldiers left the farm and continued their trek east.   Not one person on the farm was threatened or
molested.  This was relayed by a Polish charwoman working in New York City in the early 90's to the Author.]

   Armored spearheads thrust deep into Soviet territory, driving toward Leningrad, Moscow, and the Ukraine and
cutting off entire Soviet armies.  Despite tremendous losses, Russian military forces withdrew farther into the
country and continued to resist.  Germany's expectations of a quick victory evaporated, and the onset of winter
caught the Germans unprepared.  Thirty miles short of Moscow their advance ground to a halt, and the Soviets
launched massive counterattacks.

   The Germans withstood the counterattacks and resumed their offensive the following spring.  The Soviets, now
locked in a titanic death struggle, faced the bulk of the German land forces---over two hundred divisions.  The
front stretched for 2,000 miles, from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea.  Soon casualties ran into the millions.

   In the United States preparations for war moved slowly.  General George C. Marshall took over as Chief of Staff
in 1939, but the Army remained hard pressed simply to carry out its mission of defending the continental United
States.  Defending overseas possessions like the Philippines seemed a hopeless task.  In early 1939, prompted by
fears that a hostile power might be able to establish air bases in the Western Hemisphere, thus exposing the
Panama Canal or continental United States to aerial attack.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched a limited
preparedness campaign.  The power of the Army Air Corps increased; Army and Navy leaders drafted a new series
of war plans to deal with the threatening international situation.  The focus of military policy changed from
continental to hemisphere defense.

   After the outbreak of war in Europe the President proclaimed a limited emergency and authorized increases in  
the size of the Regular Army and the National Guard.  Congress amended the Neutrality Act to permit munitions
sales to the French and British, and large orders from them stimulated retooling and laid the basis for the
expansion of war production in the future.  The Army concentrated on equipping its regular forces as quickly as
possible and in 1940 held the first large-scale corps and army maneuvers in American history.

   The rapid defeat of France and the possible collapse of Britain dramatically accelerated defense preparations.  
Roosevelt directed the transfer of large stocks of World War I munitions to France and Britain in the spring of
1940 and went further in September when he agreed to transfer of fifty over-age destroyers to Britain exchange
for bases in the Atlantic anc Caribbean.

   In March 1941 Congress repealed some provisions of the Neutrality Act.  Passage of the Lend-Lease Act, which
gave the President authority to sell, transfer, or lease war goods to the government of any country whose defenses
he deemed vital to the defense of the United States, spelled the virtual end of neutrality.  The President proclaimed
that the United States would become the "arsenal of democracy."  In the spring of 1941 American and British
military representatives held their first combined staff conferences to discuss strategy in the event of active U.S.
participation in the war, which seemed increasinglym likely to include Japan as well as Germany.  The staffs
agreed that if the United States entered the war the Allies should concentrate on the defeat of Germany first.  The
President authorized active naval patrols in the western half of the Atlantic, and in July, American troops took the
place of British forces guarding Iceland.

   Meanwhile, General Marshall and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson made plans to expand the Army to 1.5
million men.  On August 27, 1940, Contress approved inducting the National Guard into federal service and calling
up the reserves.  A few weeks later the lawmakers passed the Selective Service and Training Act, the first
peacetime draft in American history.  By mid-1941 the Army had achieved its planned strength, with 27 infantry, 5
armored and 2 cavalry divisions; 35 air groups; and a host of support units.  But it remained far from ready to
deploy overseas against well-equipped, experienced, and determine foes.

   Japan, in a sneak attack, invaded Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.  Germany then declared war on
the United States.  Shortly thereafter, the United States of America entered World War II.


         Chapter Seven

  General Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke









                  General Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke

                  Introduction

    General Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke was born on January 24th, 1889 into a family of farmers.  He decided not
to follow in the family trade but instead joined the Navy.  Ramcke fought on the Western Front in World War I as
a Marine Infantryman.  In World War II he joined the Fallschirmtruppe (parachute unit) and was awarded the
parachute qualification badge at the age of 51.  After he fought in Crete and North-Africa his last mission was to
defend the fortress of Brest.  His men accorded him great respect and they called him "Papa" (daddy) or "Vater
Ramcke" (father Ramcke).

   General Ramcke described in his memoirs his experiences in the defense of the fortress of Brest in France, the
captivity and the treatment as alleged war criminal in British and French prisons.  From his memoirs I would like
to publish the translations of Ramckes' experiences in America.

                                                                                      The Translation was made by Martin Gallas


                     "Captivity"

    With a briefcase containing the most necessary utensils, the cane I always carried on the battlefield and
accompanied by my beautiful Irish setter, I started on the bitter path of  captivity.  The American brigadier
general's jeep brought my three officers and me to the command post of the American division commander,
Lieutenant General Goh.  He was located in well-camouflaged tents from the front.  Together with the officers of
his staff we had a simple dinner in the tent.  Only a few words were exchanged.  Right after eating the journey
continued via Chateaulin-Landerneau to Lesneven to Headquarters of General Middleton.  We arrived late at
night.   I was provided a small tent with a cot.  Guarded by 2 sentries with machine guns I soon fell into a deep
sleep.  The next morning a soldier brought me water for washing.  I was taken to breakfast by a lieutenant colonel,
who spoke fluent German.  I was received in a large, comfortably equipped trailer, by General Middleton, a man
about my age, tall with thick slightly graying hair and an erect posture.  He received me correctly and politely.  
The American lieutenant colonel served as interpreter.  General Middleton regretted having to meet me under
these circumstances and gave me his frank recognition of the brave conduct of the occupiers of the Fortress Brest,
especially for the incomparable bravery of the German paratroopers.  He thanked me for the excellent treatment
received by the American POW's by the Germans and for the good care given to the wounded.  Thereby he
stressed that the German occupiers of Brest had adhered exactly to the terms of The Hague and Geneva
Conventions.  In answer to his question about when I thought        the war would end, I said that the Allies still
had some heavy battles ahead.  Did I know the United States?  When I answered in the negative he said it would
not be pleasant to get acquainted with a country as a prisoner there.  If I ever visited the United States after the
war, he would be glad to have me as a guest on a hunt.  Could he fulfill any wish of mine?  I asked for good
treatment of my soldiers while they were POW's of the Americans and for permission to say farewell to my
soldiers in the camp.  He promised me both.  Then he suggested that we be photographed together as a souvenir of
this encounter.  This I could not refuse.

   With polite, mutual [best] wishes we parted.  I had the feeling that I had spoken with a chivalrous, upright and
brave man who consciously wanted to avoid humiliating me, the defeated one.  The very likeable American
lieutenant colonel of the 8th United States Army Corps took my three officers and me to the prison camp.  This lay
near St. Theogonnee about 60 kilometers east of Brest.  The lieutenant colonel, tall, slender and blond with an
intelligent, strong facial expression, about 30-35 years old, soon engaged me in an interesting conversation about
the political situation of the time.

Addressing my former Paratroopers:

     The German POW's were in a large pasture whose hedges were reinforced with barbed-wire fences.  There were
no tents or barracks.  For weeks the men lay in the open, in spite of the already cool nights.  Immediately
adjacent, only separated by a hedge, but specially blocked off by a high barbed-wire fence lay the officers.  There
occurred hectic handshakes, greetings and farewells all at once.  Major Mehler asked me for a photo with my
signature.  As I was handing it through the barbed-wire fence, with the permission of the lieutenant colonel, an
American slder who was an interpreter, tore the picture from me, supposedly to check on the greeting I had
written on it.  The lieutenant colonel repremanded him vigorously.

    Now I received permission to direct a few words of farewell to my soldiers.  There were 4-5,ooo who formed a
large half-circle in the open field.  The front rows laid themselves down; the next rows sat down or knelt down and
behind them they stood closely together, shoulder to shoulder.  While thinking first of our dead comrades, I said:  
"The battle for Brest was difficult.  Some of you will have questioned the reason for this long hopeless resistance.

    But every bomb dropped on us, every grenade launched at us and every burst of machine-gun fired on us, was
therefore not directed at our beloved homeland.  As soldiers we had to obey.  As you now begin the bitter journey
into captivity, you do so with your heads held high, knowing you have fulfilled your duty as soldiers.  Should you be
forced, against international law, to work against our German nation in making weapons, then you know what to
do; what you make with your hands, you knock down again with your backside.  Although our Fatherland must
face a bitter, hard future, you will see that there are limits to what the enemy can do to us.  In this hour we think
of our loved ones at home.  God protect our people and fatherland, which we greet with our last "Sieg Heil!"

    After the thundering call of "Heil" had faded, I again greeted my loyal battle companions.  There resounded
from a thousand throats a call that didn't want to cease:  "Father Ramcke, Father Ramcke, Father Ramcke"
which grew until I disappeared from sight in the jeep of the American officer.  After a period of respectful silence
my companion said:  "General, after seven weeks of impossibly difficult fighting under the most demanding
conditions, to receive such a  spontaneous ovation from your people borders on the miraculous.  Only now do I
understand that the occupiers of Brest, especially your brave paratroopers, put up such a stubborn resistance.  I
wished General Middleton could have experienced it.  I will report it to him."

This heartfelt farewell from my soldiers, given not with the flags and the sounding trumpets of a thunderous
ceremony, was the deeply finale of  my 44 years of being a soldier.  What the coming years would bring me to
anguish and bitterness lay behind the impenetrable veil of the future, which Almight God mercifully refuses to let
us see.

Morlaix Airfield

     After a speedy drive we reached the nearby airfield at Morlaix.  As I said goodbye to the American lieutenant
colonel I asked that he see to it that the German prisoners get better care in view of the primitive POW camp at
Theogonnee.  He told me that the movement [of German POW's] to America had already begun.  There the
prisoners would have it good.

    Before boarding the airplane we were thoroughly searched by the Military Police.  Pocketknives, nail scissors,
etc. were confiscated as "dangerous instruments of murder," never to be seen again.  In the airplane, I was
guarded by an officer and two Army policemen with drawn pistols.  The overdone guarding seemed strange to me.  
Later I discovered that several paratroopers and a German pilot, who happened to be familiar with one of the
planes at the Morlaix airfield, had found an opportune time to flee on such a plane in the direction of the
homeland.   Also, at another place a column of German paratroopers, who had been put to work building roads, had
commandeered an American military truck from some black soldiers and had sped off on an adventurues escape
through the still-open front back to Germany.

    The flight went over the Bay of St. Malo, over the Cotentin Peninsula to Cherbourg.  At a large POW camp
above Cherbourg, I was separated from my companion and brought to an isolation hospital.   There I met Admirals
Kaehler and Schirmer as well as Generals Rauch, v. d. Mosel, all in a small room, guarded by several sentries.

    Today I don't know the exact connection nor did they seem clear to me at the time, as to why on one day a
whole troop of 30 American MP's with machine guns at the ready and commanded by a heavily tattooed, brutal
looking MP captain, we were ordered to come along, the captain having orders to shoot us if we refused.  As far as
I remember, we had requested the delivery of our field packs because we only had toothbrushes and wash things
and also explained that we did not want to travel further without our field packs.  The MP captain, who did not
seem comfortable in his position, gave us the assurance that he would take care of our packs.  Then we were
driven to an airport near the harbor.  I was separated from my comrades and led to a barrack, which was guarded
by a half dozen sentries.  An officer with a drawn pistol guarded me in a room whose walls were covered by pictures
of the German Air Force.  For two day I was held in complete isolation.  At twilight on the second day, I was let to
a waiting airplane, next to which, to my surprise, my loyal Sergeant Engler and another NCO of my staff were
standing with my field pack.

    They reported that the American brigade commander on the Espanola Peninsula had ordered the retrieval of
my field suitcase.

    During the night flight we crossed the English Channel and landed at a large airfield from where we were
driven one hour to a small interrogation camp for higher officers.  Again my companion was separated from me.  
The next morning I found myself in a small garden house in whose upper rooms the German generals v.  Heyking,
Heim and Elster were quartered.  The house was flanked on two sides by high walls topped by barbed wire and
guarded.  Adjacent was a dilapidated tennis court around which we were allowed to take walks. Two administrative
buildings surrounded this space.  In the first floor of the gardener's house were two British soldiers who prepared
our meals there and which we ate in a small room.

    Already the next day I was taken for interrogation to the barracks.  The American interrogating officer was a
young, Swedish-looking and elegantly dressed lieutenant colonel.  Besides wanting to know my name, rank and
date of birth, he wanted detailed information about the organization and strength of the German paratroopers.
After not answering several of his questions I said to him:  "Lieutenant colonel, I know that the American
commandant of the Fortress Corregidor near Manila, General Wainwright has been captured by the Japanese.  
Would you as an American officer consider it proper for General Wainwright to give the Japanese information
about the strength and composition of the United  States Armed Forces?"  He remained silent, visibly
embarrassed.  "Please don't demand anything other than what you expect of your own generals and officers.  I will
take offense [if you do so]!"

    He steered the conversation to generally trivial things and released me directly.  In the evening he came to me
and General v. Heyking (the two other generals having been evacuated in the mean time).  After asking us to
spend time visiting with him, he unfolded the newest daily newspaper with the news that Hitler had awarded me
the Knight of the Iron Cross with "Brilliantine."  He congratulated me on this high honor and said this must be
celebrated.  In view of the complete collapse of our Fatherland I did not feel like celebrating.  The honor, which I
would otherwise have enjoyed beyond measure, not the bitter aftertaste of the terrible phrase "In vain, all in
vain!" just as I had experienced before, during our surrender in 1918.  But with kindly words the lieutenant colonel
pulled out bottles of cognac, which we three consumed while engaged in lively conversation.

    The parents of the well-educated, bright American officer were Swedes.  The father had immigrated to Canada
as a Protestant minister and later moved to the United States of America.  The son had gone to university there
and because of his good language ability he joined the United States Army Intelligence Service.  By his ancestry
and upbringing he was not at all convinced of the justification of United States involvement in European affairs.  
Repeatedly he steered the conversation of the threat of Bolshevism to the West.  He admitted freely that the
destruction of Germany would allow World Enemy Number 1 to be called into action with a strength that it had
never before had.

Trent Park

     Accompanied by a British captain I was brought to the Generals Camp at Trent Park north of London, where I
would stay for the next six months.

    At the entrance of the house I was received by the British camp commander, the very correct Major Topham.  
After a search of my baggage and turning in forbidden items, I was assigned to a room on the third floor.

    Trent Park, once owned by the Duke of Kent, now belonged to the rich Indian family named Sassoon, is an
estate about 700 hectares of gently rolling countryside.  The landscape makes an extremely beautiful impressions,
because of the wide, almost always green pastures and acreage divided by broad bushy hedges framed by wonderful
old wood filled with oak, beech, maple, linden, buckeye and spruce trees.  Ancient broad solitary oaks and beech
trees stand in the meadows spreading their mighty crowns.  A wide road,  bordered by a double row of old linden
trees runs in a straight line in the last stretch, cutting through a woods ending at the palace-like residence.  It is a
style-less rectangular, three storied box, made of gray granite or sandstone, with a flat roof.

    The molding cornices and windows are faced with red brickwork.  Wide lawns stretch out toward the west and
north from the building, shaded by solitary ancient oak trees.  It slopes gently toward a 4-hectare pond, whose
banks are covered by reeds.  The water from the pond, pools in a bush-edged area and runs out through winding
brooks toward the east.  On the side of the pond, the land gently rises and after 300 meters meets a thick forest.  
From the terrace on the north side of the house, one has a nice view of the meadows, water and forest.

    The farm buildings are in good condition and hidden from the palace by shrubs and trees.  The old manor house
with its high gabled room in the Lower Saxon style fits much better into the countryside than the showy tasteless
brick box, which calls itself a "palace."  The large courtyard on the south side of the palace is surrounded by high
double barbed wire fence and shelter trenches.  Another high double fence of barbed wire surrounded the west and
north sides forming a rectangular lawn of 120 x 70 meters.  During foggy weather the small courtyard was used by
the prisoners.   During clear weather the larger one could be used.   Several days a week, longer walks through the
woods and fields were allowed after the German generals have given their word of honor not to try to escape.

    The palace was occupied by 30 German generals, two colonels, and a number of German soldiers as support.  
The kitchen was run by the English and so the meals were simple but sufficient.  A guard company occupied the
farm buildings.  At 9 A.M., new guards were installed by the Officer of the Day.  The British soldiers were clean in
appearance and behaved well.  The officers were correct and polite, especially the commandant.

    The senior German generals each had a room, while the junior generals were two per room.  There was a
common lounge area, which even had a radio, and a commond dining room.  All the windows were covered  by bars.
 Daily life began at 6:30 A.M. and ended with the 8 P.M. rounds after an exact but tolerable routine.  For
amusement and edification there were games and a very good library from the former German Embassy in
London.   Two English officers gave language lessons.

    From our allotted military pay we could buy luxuries, necessities, clothes and books.  A Major Lord Elberfield,
who lost his leg at Dunkirk, took care of these purchases.  He had studied at a school in Kassel for many years and
spoke perfect German.  Doubtless he was in the service of the British Intelligence Service.  The treatment of
POW's in England during the war essentially conformed to international treaties such as the Geneva Convention
of July 1929.

    All the branches of the Wehrmacht were represented by the generals.  A portion of them had been in captivity
since 1942/43 when fighting ended in Africa.  Several times four to seven generals were evacuated to America,
including both generals and admirals from Brest in November 1944.  The most senior in the camp was General von
Thoma who appointed a younger major general of the Luftwaffe as camp spokesman.  As in all prison camps a
nervous irritability made itself evident because of the "Barbed Wire Psychosis."  Some were more affected than
others.  In such camps the wheat is separated from the chaff.  It showed who could maintain his inner composure
and who could not.

    Ond day, March 1945, soon after the Yalta Conference, Major Lord Elberfield entered my room to bring me
items from London.  With a beaming expression he said to me:  "Have you heard about the sucessful meeting of
our Prime Minister Churchill with Roosevelt and Stalin?  He patted Stalin on the shoulder and said:  We have
formed a good workers' council."

    I said:  "Lord Elberfield I fear that the spirits, which Mr. Churchill has called up, won't be so easy for your
country to get rid of.  As far as I know England is due for a Lower House election right after the war.  Thus Mr.
Churchill will get what's coming to him from a mighty leftwing landslide and at most, he will have been  your
Prime Minister."

    He said:  "What, you believe that?  Our great Prime Minister, to whom England owes so much?  He will remain
Prime Minister.  He is the one who will win the war!"

    I said:  "Lord Elberfield, you may as an Englishman know the peoples and states of the earth better than we
Germans.  But we know more about Russia and especially about Russia under Stalin.  I am afraid that in a few
years you will experience some very unpleasant surprise from your current Red Ally."

    Later while in the United States of America I read in the New York Times about the results of the election in
England where the conservatives suffered a devastating defeat, the worst in English history.
Remembering our conversation I wrote to Lord Elberfield about the election results but received no answer.

    One thing I remember clearly about my time at Trent Park:  the worried, even dismayed faces of the British
guards, especially the officers, after the start of the Rundstedt Offensive shortly before Christmas 1944,
and during the Battle of Arnhem where the elite of the British paratroopers were annihilated.


On the Move Again:

        On April 10, 1945 Generals Ullersperger, von Choltitz, Eberding, Duncken and I were taken to London and
from there by train to Glasgow in the company of a British officer.  There was lots of traffic at the large airport
when we arrived.  Giant four-engine long-range aircraft were constantly taking off and landing.  Near the airport
was a spread-out military camp for receiving American units.  We received a concept of the astonishing might of
the Allied war machine.

       After the British officer had handed us and our papers to the Americans, an interpreter accompanied us to a
large "Ocean Clipper."  A few minutes later we took off headed for Iceland.  Together with us in the roomy
fuselage of the big bird, there were about 20 officers from various branches of the American Armed Forces who
were either going on leave or returning to duty.  Everyone made themselves as comfortable as possible for the long
trip ahead, using jump seats, inflated rafts, mattresses, baggage and blankets.  It was a colorful, picturesque
image, similar to the crowded storage section of an old emigrant's ship.  Reading, talking and above all playing
poker the American officers passed the time of day.  The dexterity with which they shuffled the cards was amazing
and showed much practice.  At the usual mealtimes the flight steward would distribute practically packed and
efficiently constituted rations, which we supplemented by fruits and orange juice.

       We Germans were treated like fellow passengers.  We soon were engaged in lively discussions with our
accompanying officer serving as interpreter.  A major and several captains asked for my opinion of the war.  I
answered with a parable:  "Germany is a buffalo fit to fight, whose best pature had been taken.  One day this
buffalo becomes angry and as is his nature, in a blind rage next tosses his small opponents onto his horns.  Then
he fell, bleeding from a thousand wounds, at the end of his strength.  As soon as he lay on the ground, the fight
amongst the three great predators form this prize would begin; if not immediately, not so long after, especially
with the powerful Russian bear."

       My conversation partners thought that this was impossible.  As soon as the National Socialist-Buffalo was
finished off, the human race would enjoy a durable peace.  America's strength guaranteed that.  In answer to my
counter question as to what they in their circles thought about further developments after the war, since it had
been shown after the First World War that the elimination of one important trading partner adversely affected the
others, my conversation partner said "the focal point of world trade will no longer be Europe, but rather the Far
East, where half of mankind, over 1.2 billion people, are concentrated.  We will raise the standard of living of these
people in an unimagined way so that very soon every Chinese, Indian and Malayan will have their own car,
electricity  and refrigerator.  That will be the market for our industry.

       To my objection that Russia was also very interested in the Asian market and would not stand idly by, the
American interpreter, who had been an assistant professor of economics at Harvard said "We can do business with
Uncle Joe.  We will only have to slap him on his fingers if he reaches toward our 49th state."

       "Who then is your Uncle Joe?"

       Looking at me very nonplussed he said, "Uncle Joe is Joseph Stalin.  That's what we call him in the whole
United States of America."  He repeated his views to the interested attentive American officers, as he looked
around triumphantly.  Some, but not all, nodded in agreement.  The words of this man expressed the unholy ideas
of Roosevelt about the harmlessness of his friend "Uncle Joe."

       At a great height high abouve the clouds, the "Clipper" proceeded calmly on the course only occasionally
hitting a slight bump.  The deep blue of the North Atlantic could be seen through the clouds' windows.  After many
hours of flight we felt the familiar change of air pressure on our eadrums indicating that we were beginning our
descent, having arrived at the Island of Thule in the distant gray ocean.  Between the gray wisps of clouds we saw
snow-covered mountains and gray rocks surrounded by the surging of sea-spray.  Then we landed on a great gray
spot, the airport, where we rolled gently to a stop on the smooth tarmac just like an automobile.  While the
aircraft was refueling, our escorts went to a larger barracks for refreshments while we were allowed to go to a
bunker half buried in the ground.  There were many of them along the edge of the airfield.  They were so tall as
humans and consisted of granite, designed as protection against snowdrifts.  With an enormous amount of
work---giant steamrollers, rock crushers and cement mixers---they had constructed one of the largest refueling
airfields, to allow using the shorter northern route across the Atlantic.  The legendary island remote from normal
transport routes had become an important station that allowed for waging war across the oceans.  The constant
droning of motors from passenger and long-range bombers echoed above the lonely Icelandic farmsteads.

       A cold ind refreshed us as we stretched our legs after the long period of sitting in the aircraft.  Without any
problems or excitement the heavy machine headed toward the take-off after an hour on the ground.  In a few
minutes we were back in the air, as light as a feather.  At an altitude of 3000 meters, we flew over the Northwest
Atlantic in clear weather.  Because of its strong storms, its thick fog banks, and the drifting icebergs, these waters
were feared by seafarers of this region.  In many places, the sea was dotted by ice floes and icebergs.  From under
the rays of the sinking sun they slid by silver-gray, greeting us from among the blue waves.

       The flight from Iceland to Newfoundland took 10 hours.  From there, we continued via New York to
Washington, D.C.  We crossed wide forests, only occasionally interspersed by farmland, meadows, lades, streams,
villages and lonely small towns, on our way to the hemispheres largest city.  There was the silver ribbon of the
Hudson and the gigantic sea of houses of the world metropolis of New York, crowned by the high rise buildings of
Manhattan, which we skirted, arriving at the giant airfield at Washington, D.C. in an hour's time.

       No other airport we had seen could compare in terms of the constant take-off and landings and of all sizes and
types of aircraft.  The whole thing reminded me of the activity of a beehive, greatly magnified.

       At a fantastically practical quarantine station (it ran like an assembly line), we were cleansed of European
germs, measured, weighed, examined and then we were presentable for the United States of America.  Barely two
hours later we were turned over to an officer, accompanied by two guards, and driven by car to our new
destination, Fort Meade, Maryland, 40 kilometers from Washington, D.C.  The officer was kind enough to make a
detour through the city so that we could see the Capitol, the White House and the Pentagon, the seat of the War
Department.  All the flags were at half-staff because President Roosevelt had died the day of our arrival, April 12,
1945.

       After a two-hour drive, we stopped in the middle of a dense forest in front of a small wooden house.  It
seemed to have been a summer restaurant.  Along one side of the house was a narrow terrace, in front of it a
small open space.  On the ground floor was a large room with several field cots, next to it was a smaller room with
a larger table and several chairs, and behind were a sideboard and a kitchen.  Barely had we arrived, than the
house was encircled by sentries.  An automobile arrived with two older German POW's, who, on the orders of a
sergeant, unloaded many provisions and set up the kitchen.  An officer told us "You will remain here several days.
 Leaving the house is forbidden."  For four days we stayed in this golden cage withthe luxurious meals, which we
had only enjoyed in peacetime before.  The two German cooks came from a large POW camp nearby, which we
never saw.  They praised the good treatment and excellent food they received there.

       Guarded by an officer and 12 sentries, we began our journey south along the Ohio and Mississippi Valley in a
comfortable Pullman car.  We crossed gigantic flooded areas.  Countless deserted houses and farms were mired in
the yellow-clay waters.  The trees of the great forests rose from the muddy waters like the shoots of a rice plant.  
What fruitful soil for farming and stockbreeding and managed forestry!  480 million people could be fed and earn a
living in the United States, according to experts I once heard.

Camp Clinton, Mississippi, U.S.A.

        After a two-day ride we arrived in Jackson, capital of the State of Mississippi and a half hour later we were
standing in the reception barracks of the POW camps, Camp Clinton.  The Americans had built a camp for about
4000-5000 NCO's and enlisted men in a hilly, occasionally wooded area.  It was built on a large scale, as Americans
are prone to do, because of the richness of the land.  A branch railway line led from the camp to the
Jackson-Vicksburg line.  Spacious wooden barracks on concrete posts stood with their gables abutting the paved
streets on both sides.  Everything was cared for.  There were kitchen and mess hall barracks, barracks with
recreation rooms and a well-furnished chapel.  Later the prisoners built an athletic field, tennis courts and an
open-air theater.  Outside the camp, the accommodations for the guard company were located as well as a large
workshop complex for locksmithing, carpentry, blacksmithing, auto and machine repair.  The camp was
surrounded by a high double fence, with watchtowers and windows every 80 meters.  Around the outside of the wire
fence, a road of clag and cinders served the guard vehicles on patrol.  It was elliptical in shape 300 x 150 meters,
with a cinder road looping through general's camp, which contained a number of large and small barracks.  Some
of them lay in the shadow of a few individual oak trees; others were out in the burning sun of the 32nd parallel to
which we were not accustomed.

       As in the enlisted men's camp, we had a kitchen and mess hall and a canteen with a common recreation
room.  Two larger barracks housed officers and medical officers.  Two generals lived in each small barracks
building.  Each building had a  small practical stove stoked from the outside, a bath with a shower, and essentials,
because of the heat, a refrigerator.  About 30 generals and 12 officers occupied the camp.  The most senior was
General von Arnim.  A detachment of German soldiers from the main camp was assigned to the generals' camp for
support.  They arrived in the morning and returned to their camp in the evening.  For this they received a small
remuneration and the same food as we did, in our dining hall.  For breakfast and dinner, roll call was taken by an
American officer.  Otherwise we were left alone, completely, so that everyone could pursue their chosen activities.

       On the west side of the camp, a giant relief model covering 600 hectares was being planned to depict the
drainage area of the Missouri, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and their largest tributaries.  The regulation of these
mighty rivers was to be studied through this relief model.  Hydrological engineers supported by German engineers
and technicians worked on the plans, while thousands of German POW's carried out the practical work with
earth-moving machines.

Epilogue:

        Soon after capitulation, the entire American press initiated a more vigorous campaign against Germany.  
With information about the atrocities committed in the concentration camps, many newspapers attacked the War
Department for its good treatment of German POW's.  Reprisals were openly called for.  It didn't take long for the
demands of the press to be translated into action.  The food portions of the German POW's, was reduced to the
most minimal; meat and fish quality dropped.  The sale of luxury goods, such as tobacco, in the canteens, was
stopped.  Postal contackts with relatives were completely broken.  All privileges were withdrawn, such as walks.  
As a result of the completely insufficient and poor food, plus working in the great heat to which they were
unaccustomed, the enlisted POW's began falling like flies while doing excavation work.  Only after the energetic
intervention of the construction companies, who had paid the United States Government for the labor of the
German POW's, did the quality of food improve so that they could fulfill their workload.  During the summer
months, the average weight loss was 17-25 kilograms per person.  These reprisals lasted until February 1946.  
(Only shortly before Christmas was a small ration of tobacco allowed.)

       It seems that even though the POW Camp Administrators were adhering to the Geneval Convention; the
left-leaning press managed to convince the U.S. Government to ignore the various conventions dealing with the
treatment of POW's, and without one iota of truth, the press committed to their publishing yellow journalistic lies
and fabrications, wrote stories that absolutely were fakes and prefabricated garbage.

       About mid-June 1945, a large number of copies of an extra edition of an illustrated magazine, showing the
atrocities committed in the concentration camps, were delivered to us without explanation by the camp
administration.  Many pictures were sobviously fakes, and many photos were taken from the carnage  in Dresden,
after two days of bombings, and some of these pictures depicted what the Germans supposedly did to concentration
camp victims; except that there were two rfugee and one American POW camp in Dresden, and the bodies shown
were the aftermath of the allied bombing raids.

       General von Arnim as highest ranking German POW made a statement to the War Department  that those
German soldiers had nothing to do with these things in the concentration camps and that they had not even known
of them.

       Naturally there were those who under the pressure of hunger "had always been against it" and who at the
time hoped for an early release if they loudly committed themselves to democratic re-education so that they could
occupy some position in the new Germany.  They were even so naive as to believe an American captain fro the War
Departlment who painted a rosy picture of the likelihood that the occupation authorities would appoint them
immediately as district presidents, district administrators and mayors.  The American captain explained that the
German career officers were the only people in Germany with clean political records who could be chosen by the
occupation authorities to work as administrators.  These temptations naturally fell on some willing ears and they
busied themselves making clear their willingness to be re-educated in democracy.  This often began with such
absurd trivialities as casting off national emblems [military insignia].

       As previously noted, the American camp commandant had explained to us that even after the unconditional
surrender of Germany, we would still be treated as POW's, according to the articles of the Geneva Comvention.  In
no way did he keep this promise.

       We tried repeatedly to get the senior POW to protest, but he refused, saying it would be useless.  I was not
willing to allow this unjustified conduct against defenseless POW's to continue without protest.  Since the Allies
had set themselves up through constant public declaration as the saviors of freedom and human rights and
defenders of morality and human virtues and had appointed unto themselves the position of judge and jury, much
like the partisans in the expulsion of eastern European Germans, then one would rightly expect that they be
irreproachable in all their dealings, at least in all agreed upon, binding obligations as contained in the Hague Land
Warfare Convention and the Geneva Convention.

          However, the urgent news about events in Germany, as well as our health-impairing treatment, did not
convince us of this compliance [with the two conventions].

          It seemed clear to me that a complaint to the War Department would end up in the wastebasket even
before it reached the provost marshal.  I concluded I must turn to Byron Price and Senator James Eastland of
Mississippi.  The first was appointed by President Trumann as Advisory Commissioner for German Affairs.  
Senator Eastland had uttered harsh words in Congress against the 'sadistic Morgenthau Plan.  "I composed
identical memoranda to both gentlemen before Christmas 1945 and made myself the interpreter for the feelings of
all German POW's, presenting a detailed account of their situation and thoughts.

          I looked back at history and stated that never in history have the German people understood why there had
to be two wars between the German and the American nation.  The German POW's in the United States could
likewise not grasp why there had to be hateful feelings between two peoples who have had reasons for cooperation
and have them even now.  How then is such cooperation to develop when it is official American policy to take
one-sided measures against a defenseless people?  I cited the most essential examples of this type:

1.        The newspaper propaganda against the German people as a whole.
2.        Handing over of German POW's to England, France, Russia, Poland and the Balkan states.
3.        The almost complete cessation of postal service between POW's and the homeland.
4.        Punitive measures against German POW's violating international law, above all.

          a)        Reduction of food rations to intolerable levels from May 1945 on.
          b)        Complete deprivation of smoking materials and all other luxuries.
          c)        Prohibition of playing sports or games in the POW camps.

          To this list I added the question of what sense these measures had, other than serving to drive the German
people into nihilism, which would make democracy and its principles inaccessible to the POW's in the camps.  The
courses for democratic re-education didn't change anything, since it's very impressive audio-visual instruction
merely became a way to pass the time of  day.

          The memorandum closed with the request that the senseless, unjust, and therefore very dangerous
treatment of an entire people be ended in order to open the way for a true community of people in the sense of the
Christian message of the approaching Christmas holiday "Peace on earth and good will to men."

          The difficulty now was to get these letters out of the camp and into the hands  of the reciprients.  It was too
risky to leave this to an American worker.  A German POW who worked outside would still have to turn to an
American [for help].  The only way left was for me to deliver the letters to a post office outside the camp.  If one
were to connect [these letters] with an escape, it is possible that the recipients of the letters would have to turn
them over to the police for the purpose of investigation before evaluating them.  That meant leaving the camp
un-detected and returning un-detected.  The nearest post office was in Jackson 14 kilometers away.

          I only confided in my most trusted friends, Generals Ullersperger and von der Mosel, who were my barracks
comrades.

          Through exact observation of the routines of changing and posting the guards, I found the most favorable
place along the high double wire fence.  It was located in a small depression between two watchtowers on the north
side of the camp.  The depression ended at the fence in front of a drainage pipe blocked by thick iron bars and
half-filled with mud and too narrow to crawl through.  This pipe also was covered by a grate on the other side, clay
3/4 under the bottom of a 4-meter wide gangway between two wire fences and ended, also grated, in an open
drainage ditch, which after barely 5 meters opened in the underpass of the roadway.  The underpass under the
roadway was a concrete pipe 8 meters in diameter and it was only covered by several vertical iron bars on the camp
end.  The other side was open and ended in a deep ditch whose embankment was overgrown with bushes and high
grass.  Had one reached this embankment, then he could by crawling through the bushes 120 meters away, reach
the woods.  Then it was done.  The greatest difficulty was to cross the gangway between the fence and the open
road, which were in exact sight and shooting range of the guards, who could watch the area like it were a table top.

          Using several stormy, rainy nights, some with hail and snow which swallowed the harsh searchlight beam, I
cut two holes in the wire fence using a pair of wire cutters, which I had secretly "acquired."  In order to find it
easily again, I chose  a post on this side and that side where I cut the wire on bottom and sides so I could bend the
wire mesh upwards.  After slipping through I had to bend the mesh flap down again, fastening it in place which
specially made clamps.  Then even on close inspection, nothing was noticeable.

          To be on the safe side, I chose a particularly terrible, dark, rainy night, during which to saw through the
finger thick iron bar in front of the large concrete pipe under the road.  {Cutting} one bar sufficed to allow me to
slip into the pipe.  I sawed it through completely at the bottom and 3/4 through at the top in order to bend it open
and then back after [crawling through].  The splashing of the rainstorm covered every sound of the cutting saw.  
During this difficult, ice-cold and wet night-work, an American guard vehicle came driving along the road.  I lay
crouched down in the deep muddy water near the embankment and eluded their searchlights and sight.

          In the meantime, I acquired and altered the proper clothes.  I had sturdy black oxford shoes.  The pans and
coat of the Luftwaffe were converted to a civilian style.  An old U-Boat leather jacket, which I had received in
Brest in exchange for my field gray coat, which a Marine used in the trenches, served this purpose wonderfully.  A
peaked cap which would be the envy of any street-corner losfer, a large red scarf with yellow dots, a like-colored
handkerchief, orange leather gloves and dark sunglasses completed this robber's costume, which would do honor to
a colored Mississippi [River] pirate.  Arm and leg protection were sewn from doubled burlap for protection while
crawling through the dirt.  I stored the cap, scarf, glasses, toothbrush, washcloth, mirror, the letters and some
saved up toast in my old sturdy briefcase.  For buying stamps, I had a dollar, which an American officer had signed
and given to me as a souvenir.  I added a few slang expressions to my meager [English] vocabulary and practiced
busily my role as someone who was hard of hearing and stuttered.

          It was not possible to make my way to Jackson and buy stamps at night, between the evening and morning
roll call.  It had to be done during daytime.  In order to inconspicuously miss lunch and also not be seen elsewhere
outside the barracks, I pretended to be psychologically depressed and even skipped the Christmas festivities.  
During Christmas, I studied the behavior of the guards.  They came on duty unpunctually.  Many patrols did not
take place.  It would not be any different on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.  So I chose New Year's Day to
carry out my plan.  General von der Mosel was to report me as ill.

          Morning roll call occurred at first light.  If it was cancelled, I could leave immediately.  If it was not
cancelled, I had to wait to see whether the guard officer visited my barracks.  Then I would be found sick in bed.  
After that there was always time before full daylight to leave.  I had to be back by 1700 hours for roll call.  On New
Year's morning everything was ready.  I saw the headlights of the Guard Jeep stop at the kitchen barracks and
vanish a few minutes later.  Quickly I changed into the old clothes I had laid out.

          A light ground fog appeared as if ordered.  It lay in the dell like a heavy veil.  Carefully I crawled according
to plan through the openings in the wire fence, closing them after passing through, and crouched, out of breath in
the ditch.  Then I heard the sound of an approaching Jeep in the distance.  With one jerk, I bent the iron bar to
the side and slipped into the pipe.  Then the jeep roared past me overhead.  Bending the other bar back, I carefully
slipped out the other side [of the pipe] over the ditch and into the brush.  Here I could soon crawl on hands and
knees into the protection of the forest's edge.  After about 300 meters, I was in other woods and near a field path,
which ran in an arc to the road leading to Jackson.

          In a thicket under an oak, I spruced myself up.  A look in the mirror convinced me that everything was in
order, i.e. that my getup as a poor devil of a pedestrian fit.  Because who in the world walks along a lonely country
road.

          Hardly had I turned onto the main road than a Jeep and two trucks from the camp came roaring by.  It was
a troop of guards going on leave.  Otherwise there was little traffic in the early morning hours of New Year's Day.  
About four kilometers from the city, an elegant automobile suddenly stopped next to me.  The car's single
occupant asked me with a friendly smile "Jackson?"  Promptly I cupped my hand around my ear.  Again he asked
somewhat louder "Jackson?"  "O-O-O-K-K" I stuttereed and sat down next to him in the car.  Now he tried to
start a conversation with me.  When he asked me this question a third time I said "S-s-s-peak s-s-slowly an-and     
l-l-loud, h-h-hard o-of h-hearing!"  The good man looked at me sympathetically.  "Poor fellow" he mumbled.  Then
he asked me several questions about the New Years's Day celebration, the wind, the weather, which I answered
with a stuttering "Yes" and "OK."  Soon the car stopped at a railroad-crossing gate.  I used the opportunity to
leave, stuttering "Thank you and Happy New Year."  If only he had known whom his passenger had been.

  Jackson is a typical flourishing city of the South.  Modern high-rise buildings stand near leaning wooden
buildings.  Coloreds in all shades are represented.  The separation of coloreds and whites in all public buildings and
transportation is embarrassing.  The post office is located on the ground floor of a new 12 story high-rise.  All the
windows were closed.  "No stamps today?"  I asked an older man.  "No, holiday!"  "Where can I get stamps?"  "In
a drug store down the street and to the left!"  In drug stores, which are open alternating Sundays as the
apothecaries are in Germany, one can drink (except alcohol), eat and buy [almost] anything for the household,
including tobacco products.

          With a confident "ten to three" I bought 10 3-cent stamps, went back to the post office and put the letters
in the box.  As return address I noted on the envelope "H.B. Eckmar, Clinton-Camp-Raod 1626", that was my
barracks number.  So they are on their way!

          Back to the drugstore where at the counter I order ham and eggs, two thick wheat pancakes with golden
yellow syrup and two cups of aromatic strong coffee, for, believe it or not, 40 cents.  Then I bought two fat cigars
for 10 cents and went to the 10 story Grand Hotel Heidelberg on whose roof the radio tower of a local broadcaster is
located.  I made myself comfortable in a corner of the lobby behind a newspaper and a fat cigar, observing the New
Year's reception of the fashionable world of Jackson and environs, which drove up in countless elegant
automobiles.  "How do you" and "Happy New Year's" buzzed around the room.  It was an unfamiliar scene from
long ago.  There was no hint of war to be felt.  Happy, rich country!

          After an hour, I went leisurely to the train station and procured several railroad and bus schedules for my
long-planned escape plans, bought 3 thick sandwiches and a cup of coffee for 18 cents and began my return trip,
satisfied and satiated, with 2 cents in my pocket.  At 1600 hours I stood in the woods near the camp, crawled
carefull through the brush and grass to the ditch embankment, and as General Heini v. H, who was always the last
one, disappeared in the evening fog going toward the kitchen barracks, the searchlights not having been turned on.
I slithered like a snake through the wire fence and lay a few minutes; later, undressed, lay deathly ill on my bunk.

          










      

      































































I
WORLD WAR ONE
Special Thanks to Ms Barbara Bernstengel
& Mrs. Susun Bernstengel
for their invaluable assistance leading to the             
publication of this book with Xlibris Publishers,
Bloomington, Indiana...