Hans-Ulrich Rudel: Let’s Save the Substance! [Der Weg 1950-10]
An original translation of "Retten wir die Substanz! Zum Gedanken einer Wiederbewaffnung Deutschlands"
Source Documents: German Scan
Note(s): This article appears in “Der Weg”, a German-language magazine founded in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the years immediately following the destruction of the Third Reich. See the links above for more information on the magazine and its contents.
Selectively quoting Wikipedia:
Hans-Ulrich Rudel was a German ground-attack pilot during World War II and a post-war neo-Nazi activist.
The most decorated German pilot of the war and the only recipient of the Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, Rudel was credited with the destruction of 519 tanks, one battleship, one cruiser, 70 landing craft and 150 artillery emplacements. He claimed nine aerial victories and the destruction of more than 800 vehicles. He flew 2,530 ground-attack missions exclusively on the Eastern Front, usually flying the Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber.
Rudel surrendered to US forces in 1945 and immigrated to Argentina. An unrepentant Nazi, he helped fugitives escape to Latin America and the Middle East. He worked as an arms dealer to several right-wing regimes in South America, for which he was placed under observation by the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Title: Let’s Save the Substance! [de": Retten wir die Substanz! Zum Gedanken einer Wiederbewaffnung Deutschlands]
Author(s): Hans-Ulrich Rudel
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 4, Issue 10 (October 1950)
Page(s): 911-912
Referenced Documents:
[NO LINK] May 1950 Gallup Poll[NO LINK] September 1950 Gallup Poll[NO LINK] Quotes from (1) Josef Stalin (2) US Senator John J. McCloy, (3) Foreign French Minister Robert Schuman, (4) French Defense Minister Jules Moch
Let’s Save the Substance!
On the Idea of Rearming Germany
Hans-Ulrich Rudel
„Sieger wird sein, wer sich bis zum Schluß aus dem Krieg heraushält“
“The victor will be he who keeps himself out of the war until the very end.”
— Josef Stalin
Though we of the older generation were, from the first day of the war, wholly convinced of the righteousness of our actions—actions for which we were later punished and nearly annihilated—not one of us could have imagined in our wildest dreams that a world opinion, until recently so steeped in hatred, would, a mere five years after the war’s end, summon us once more to arms. And this time, to do the very same thing we did then, now with their explicit sanction—nay, at their express behest. The “surveys” conducted by the Gallup Institute among the American populace, which as late as May of this year revealed an overwhelming majority opposed to German rearmament, now suddenly show some 71% in favor. Truly, there’s nothing quite like the marvels of free and democratic opinion-making.
If, in a scant four months, deft propaganda can persuade Americans to embrace the opposite of what they once held as their conviction, then surely it must be possible to rekindle in Germans a fervor for the military and for war—after five years of being told that both were the fruits of a criminal nature. Even the fact that their military leaders, those not hanged, remain locked behind bars will, in time, fade from German memory—if only the reminders cease.
“If the German people so desire, they must be permitted to defend their homeland against external aggression,”
declared John J. McCloy on September 6. Yet those who, five years ago, seized that very freedom—when the German people still had the strength to defend themselves—were condemned, imprisoned, hanged. Yesterday’s “crime” has become today’s “sacred duty,” our ordained “task.” But the “criminals” of yesteryear linger still today, languishing for years in solitary confinement, awaiting either the execution of their death “sentence” or, at best, a pardon.
How, then, under these circumstances, can we believe today that rearmament is being granted for our own sake? We have no wish to deepen the divide between the French people and our own, for both nations must serve the greater European good. Yet we are entitled to expect understanding and genuine goodwill from the other side as well. Our ears prick up when French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, speaking in New York, asserts that resources are too scarce to arm both Germany and the Allies at once
—“naturally, then, the Western Allies must take precedence.”
And our vision sharpens when French Defense Minister Jules Moch, on September 6, proclaims,
“France will defend itself within the bulwark our shared victory has allowed us to occupy between the Rhine and the Elbe.”
Thus, the role assigned to us becomes starkly clear. Germany is to be a battlefield once more. The zeal with which Dean Acheson in New York urged his British and French counterparts to establish German divisions rests on a simple notion: that this is the most effective way to complete the hitherto unsatisfactory destruction of the German essence, as envisioned by the Morgenthau Plan. The remaining youth of our nation are to be ground down—West against East, UN divisions against the People’s Police. Ernest Bevin seems already to have grasped this idea, while Schuman deems it still too perilous.
From this vantage point, we scrutinize the suspect eagerness with which the Bonn government advances these rearmament plans, the recklessness with which it plunges into related negotiations. Already, in Chancellor Adenauer’s office, a “security advisor” post has been created and filled by former tank general Gerhard von Schwerin—without so much as a formal demand for the most obvious prerequisites: absolute sovereignty, the cessation of all “war criminal” trials, the release of all prisoners!
Unless these demands are met—unless the gates of Spandau and Landsberg swing open, unless French prisons set free the last German prisoner of war with fitting compensation, unless the kin of all those executed by the occupying powers receive full material and moral redress, unless the Western powers explicitly recognize the original eastern border of the German Reich as the sole legitimate one, and unless, above all, every verdict of the denazification courts—those travesties wrought by charlatans and felons—is declared null and void and undone in all its effects—any participation in German rearmament is dishonorable and tantamount to treason.
Of course, there will always be men like this Herr von Schwerin.1
From this we discern a pattern: the example of the “National Committee for a Free Germany” is gaining disciples.2 Paulus, Seydlitz, and Einsiedel3 have now found their belated successors in the West—men who know full well that Germany could never be defended with the divisions now proposed. We do not shy from linking this irresponsibility to the report by Hearst correspondent Karl von Wiegand, which spoke of the Bonn government’s preparations to flee—a report whose subsequent denial fails to convince us. Should hostilities erupt, it would not be the gentlemen in Bonn who bear the suffering, but once again the people—the whole people—and, above all, their soldiers anew. Yet what we once did willingly, out of conviction and idealism, we will not do a second time! For this time, every condition for such a stand is absent. How keenly the former “soldier” grasps this is shown by a small incident in Ansbach, where German civilian employees of a Labor Service Company were abruptly ordered to take up rifles: of 160, 130 refused, many even under threat of instant dismissal.
If our two hundred elite divisions in the last war could not hold the enemy at bay, anyone can picture the feeble impact of a hastily assembled European combat force now—especially when one considers that the Bolshevik state has grown far stronger, bolstered by East German resources and German scientific advances across every field. All my comrades from the Eastern Front, those who truly stood at the fore, can only affirm my view. Let us wait and see the grievous toll the Korean people will pay once that campaign concludes. Yet those losses pale beside what awaits us should we be lured into a fratricidal war. For the masses of materiel that would then collide in a far denser populous expanse would be many times greater, and the means of combat far more varied. Recall how much vital strength we have already lost through the Second World War and all its aftermath! Not just we Germans, but all Europeans, have ample cause to treat our last remnants of national essence with utmost care—and we refuse to sacrifice that essence to an American foreign policy that has, for instance, so blundered in its stance toward China.
Beyond this, history teaches that the bloodiest and most ruinous wars have ever been civil wars—and the deployment of West German troops would inevitably spiral into just such a conflict. The term “criminal” has, since the war, been flung about with gross inaccuracy; but German politicians who contrive to pit German against German will justly earn that title. Few soldiers will wish to abet such designs. The scant few willing are drawn by the uniform’s promise of a secure living and a superficial sort of personal redemption. This cohort—mere men in uniform—has no kinship with the ancient, hallowed ideal of honor that defines the German soldier. Any German general who dons the soldier’s garb again under these terms can be certain of public disgrace!
For us, the highest law today can only be the preservation, the salvation, of the German essence. To fight without hope of victory, in our present state, would be a crime against our people. We must shield them by other means! Not from fear, but for the sake of the future, we must do all in our power to endure. The young German man of today belongs not in a UN barracks, but with his own kin. With tireless ingenuity and the full measure of his strength, let him guard them, guiding them as unscathed as possible through the perils ahead. Close bonds with others of our kind—loyal, steadfast souls—and tight-knit family unity: these alone can counter the destructive will of both West and East. All organizations must be shunned in this. For every organization, sooner or later, becomes a tool of the enemy! Neither German divisions, in which the last of our manhood would bleed for foreign ends, nor parties and groups, equally yoked to alien control and interests, can save us!
Only the friend, the brother, the sister can yet offer aid! Let us therefore seek deep ties with our own! Let us no longer be torn from their midst to be “enlisted” and misused elsewhere, but live among them, carrying them forward into a future that is ours once more!
On 30 August 1942, Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel was captured by Russian ground forces and became a prisoner-of-war in the Soviet Union. He became a founding member, vice-president and commissary of propaganda of the National Committee for a Free Germany.
Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach was one of the generals who during the Battle of Stalingrad argued most forcefully in favor of a breakout or a surrender, against Hitler’s orders. Friedrich Paulus immediately relieved him of command and Seydlitz fled the German lines under fire from his own side with a group of other officers. In Soviet custody, he was a leader in the forming, under Soviet supervision, of an anti-Nazi organization, the League of German Officers, and was made a member of the National Committee for a Free Germany.
Friedrich Paulus surrendered to the Red Army on the morning of 31 January 1943. After the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944, he became a vocal critic of the Nazi regime, joining the Soviet-sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany.