We Assert! (October 1948)
[Der Weg 1948-10] An original translation of "Wir stellen fest!"
Title: We Assert! [de: Wir stellen fest!]
Author: Der Weg Editorial Staff
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 02, Issue 10 (October 1948)
Page(s): 741-742
Dan Rouse’s Note(s):
Der Weg - El Sendero is a German and Spanish language magazine published by Dürer-Verlag in Buenos-Aires, Argentina by Germans with connections to the defeated Third Reich.
Der Weg ran monthly issues from 1947 to 1957, with official sanction from Juan Perón’s Government until his overthrow in September 1955.
Source Document(s):
[LINK] Scans of 1948 Der Weg Issues (archive.org)
We Assert!
Frankfurt am Main.
Soon, all judges and judicial officials are set to receive a bump in their food rations. Apparently, it’s already happened that judges have keeled over mid-verdict. Sure, they say it’s happened far more often that the convicted collapsed during sentencing. But since handing down rulings under today’s military governments must be so utterly draining, this “hardship allowance” starts to make sense. Even for the military governments themselves, finding justifications for their verdicts must often feel like an uphill battle of epic proportions. On the flip side, some rulings from the denazification chambers are said to have had such a zesty kick that even Solomon—wisdom incarnate—would’ve spun in his grave.
Soest, Westphalia
“There’s no deep, fundamental gap between the Jewish star and the pigeonholing of the denazification courts—just a matter of degree,”
proclaimed the former Justice Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia at the Young Politicians’ Congress in Soest. Denazification, according to Sträter, has turned into a cesspool of corruption and snitching, and now we’ve got something
“even the Third Reich couldn’t pull off”:
German judges in those chambers can be bought. You can’t stamp out National Socialism with totalitarian tricks, he argued.
Hamburg
Trial underway for some wholesale crooks. A 21-strong burglar crew—soon to face a British military court—made off with about one and a half million American cigarettes, 150,000 chocolate bars, 1,200 bottles of schnapps, and roughly 1,000 pairs of nylon stockings. The haul got swiped from an English canteen warehouse (probably with a little English help on the side!). It’s worth around 21,000 English pounds. Lock up all the big-time thieves, though, and you’d better brace yourself—prisons across nations would burst at the seams, since the looting of German property doesn’t stop at smokes and booze but swallows up whole factory setups, directors, scientists, workers, and all.
A Strange British Ruling
In Bielefeld, two Germans who killed a German shepherd out of hunger and planned to eat it got slapped with six months in jail by a British military court for “animal cruelty.” Sadly, when it comes to the starvation plaguing Germans, that animal-protection logic hasn’t quite been applied yet.
Koblenz
According to the American Neue Zeitung, the French military government has banned a performance of Peter Dörfler’s play Im Hungerjahr (“In the Year of Hunger”), scheduled for the poet’s 70th birthday at the Municipal Theater in Mainz. No reasons were offered. But why bother with reasons? It’s just pure French humanity at work. Since the “show of the hunger year” plays out all year long—not just in Mainz but across the whole French zone—an extra staging feels a bit redundant.
Frankfurt
U.S. wire fences are vanishing. Back in 1946, the residential neighborhoods of American families in Germany were fenced off with wire to keep out “undesirable elements.” Lately, those “protective measures” have been scrapped. In Frankfurt, the last American restricted zone in the U.S. sector got the axe. After all, the “wire fences” boxing in the giant concentration camp called Germany are plenty tight and sturdy—special barricades aren’t needed anymore.
Frankfurt am Main
Butcher shops in the Anglo-American zone have been nearly bare for a while now. The German population’s down to a measly 100 grams of meat or sausage per person per month—the skimpiest rations since rationing kicked off at the war’s start. Well, since vegetarians reckon meat-eating stirs up bloodlust, the German populace might just turn into the tamest bunch on Earth.
Hannover
Hoffmann von Fallersleben came into the world 150 years ago in Fallersleben. A political poet and German scholar, his songs—like “All the Birds Are Already Here,” “A Little Man Stands in the Woods,” and “Tomorrow Comes Santa Claus”—still get plenty of airtime today. Which political vultures he might’ve had in mind with those lyrics wasn’t spelled out. As for that “Santa Claus” of ice and snow, it’s got to be Uncle Joseph—Stalin, that is. Or maybe Uncle Yankee, the U.S.? Who the “little man” could stand for politically stumps even the editors, since that category’s ballooned so much lately that picking out individuals is a lost cause.
Landsberg
Right now, 178 people sit in the camp prison by the Lech, all sentenced to death by American courts. Ninety-eight of those death sentences are already locked in. Comment? Pointless.