"Germany What Now?" by Basil Davidson. London, 1950. 12/6.

"Once Again?" by Basil Davidson. London, 1950. 1/3.

"Cold War in Germany" by Wilfred Burchett. Melbourne, 1950. 11/3.

Why is Germany divided? Why is Nazism not eradicated ? Why is Hitler's dismembered Reich still the focal point of international tension after six years of peace?

Two men have recently elaborated their answers to these questions in books that every student ought to read. Lt. Col. Basil Davidson was in British Intelligence during the war, and since then has worked as European correspondent of The Times and the New Statesman. Wilfred Burchett is an Australian, went through the Pacific war, fought and reported in Burma, and was the first non-Japanese to see devastated Hiroshima. Since 1945 he has been Times correspondent in Berlin.

Both these men give a carefully-documented account of Germany today, and the paths leading to it. Both come to the same conclusions—conclusions with startling possibilities for the future of world peace.

Hitler Lives

Meanwhile, in face of a weakened and divided occupation, the Nazi element got cheeky. Burchett describes the middle-class Frauleins whispering in the ears of their British officer bedmates, whipping up old hostilities with Nazi myths of "Jewish Bolshevism."

Yesterday the united strength of the United Nations defeated Nazism. Today Nazism has won a moral victory by the division of that strength into opposing blocs. And Nazism is taking full advantage of that split, to demand the remilitarisation of Germany under Nazi leaders.

"The possible rearmament of Western Germany—in spite of all the dangers of extreme nationalism and the lessons of the past—was soon to form one of the great questions raised by the Atlantic Pact," said Davidson. (p. 235).

In 1951 the question has gone further than possibility. In his pamphlet "Once Again?" Davidson describes individual instances of the resurgence of Nazism—from the desecration, of the Wermelskirchen memorial to the working-class victims of Nazism, to the inflammatory anti-Semitic speeches of the "Socialist Reich" Party.

Two Roads

And how fare the German people through all this?

Burchett draws an excellent contrast between the economics of Eastern and Western zones in his chapters on land reform.

In conversation with Baron Siegfried von Cramm in his schloss outside Hanover, Burchett asked about his people.

"Baron Siegfried went to the window and pointed out with his whip. What we have to teach these peasants,' he said with a sweep of his whip, 'is democracy. Real democracy. Cleanliness, discipline, hard work, Christianity and loyalty. Our villagers are good, loyal and hardworking, but even they are being infected by this loathsome poison which comes from the other side of the frontier. Demanding land for themselves! As if they would know how to work it even if they did get it! It would go to waste and ruin just as it does in the Soviet Zone." (p. 65.)

At Potsdam in 1915, the USSR and the Western Powers framed a joint policy for the peace of Europe. It has not worked out in practice, for, Davidson tells us, "The Western allies .... desired a different kind of Germany from the Germany foreseen at Yalta and Potsdam." (p. 45). Although "the Russians threw their energies into securing the unification of Germany on the lines of Potsdam." (p. 59). He lists the Nazis who have resumed high office in Western Germany. "Denazification rapidly degenerated into a farce and a scandal." (p. 188).

Business is Business

Nixon described to the Committee the connection between certain members of the U.S. occupation staff and American firms with German associations—Dillon Read and General Motors. But Nixon was a Roosevelt idealist—faced with stark facts about the American Way of Life, he was forced to resign.

The influence of American-German business connections began to disturb Britain. "What British exporters were now facing was no longer German competition pure and simple, but German-American competition. This partnership between German and American industrialists was to grow and strengthen as the months went by." (Davidson, pp. 223-224.)

But Burchett's impression of the Soviet zone was quite different. He describes the "Neusiedler" from the Polish border who have been rehabilitated happily on to the land. How few know that Barth, Brunner, Niemoller, Zweig and Mann have all gone east? "Waste and ruin"?

"They made poor raw material for the propaganda with which they were bombarded by the West German press, demanding that the lost lands be recovered and the 'expellees' returned to their old homes." (Burchett, p. 63.)

Who is trying to hoodwink whom ? Burchett describes how he saw the Allied Control Council deliberately broken up by the American delegation. He describes how, on an expedition to report on the functioning of the black market at the junction of East and West Berlin, he was arrested by the Russians on suspicion of being himself a black marketeer. When he returned home later, he found that the London dailies had him beaten up and near to death.

Here is the truth about Germany today, seen by objective and honest observers. Democracy or resurgent Hitlerism for the German people: that is the whole issue for Germany's present and future.

—Partisan.

Wit and Nitwit

Mr. aubrey menen was bound to write a book as cheerful, witty and cutting as "The Backward Bride" after "The Stumbling-Stone." The logical development of that charming, puzzling, and occasionally pugnacious Christian, Colley Burton, is Anisetta, beautiful, absolutely sure of herself, and capable of flattening, in turn, a distinguished freethinking English professor, an Existentialist French Marquis, a young American One-Worlder, and the president of the League for the Uplift of Women.

As in his previous two satires, Mr. Menen has a crack at to-day's philosophies, from existentialism to the latest thing in determinism; but here, for the fist time, he offers a positive solution, in the shapely form of Anisetta, whose sole, instinctive philosophy is the natural law and the Ten Commandments. Anisetta (not the name of a flower, but of a popular Sicilian drink, "on which she had got illicitly drunk at the age of four") on the European honeymoon which was arranged by Uncle Giorgio, Sicily's most famous brigand, and financed by Uncle Domenico, Sicily's famous forger, wipes the floor with her young husband and his advanced ideas on everything from birth-control to the Spirit of Progress. And she makes it look so easy.

If, however, you have a hankering for Bloomsbury, the French Maid, and Higher Thought, or free love and intellectual melancholy, you will still enjoy this "Sicilian Scherzo" as such, and a very funny story. Aubrey Menen's dig at English sentimentality (a wife can be kidnapped any time, but when it comes to kidnapping a dog, that kind of thing can't happen here) is neat, but his dig at American sentimentality is perfect: "And you said—I'll never forget it, Mom—'Well, Larry, your father ran away to sea when he was a boy. So I suppose it's in the blood. But wherever you are, Larry, you'll be my son. So wrap up warm now like I always told you, and God bless you." There is obviously no danger of "The Backward Bride" being filmed by Hollywood. (Chatto & Windus, 7/6).

John D. Sheridan's "The Magnificent MacDarney" had some excellent reviews: but if this is an example of the best modern Irish wit, we'll go back to Richard Brinsley himself.

The magnificent MacDarney is one of those "real characters"—the kind who drinks his family out of house and home, cadges from every one in the city, yet has such a colossal nerve and witty impudence that it's worth "lending" him a fiver, because you get double that amount in entertainment. We can see clearly enough what MacDarney is meant to be—an unmanageable and incorrigible peacock who is worth preserving because of his brilliant plumage. But unfortunately we aren't given a glimpse of these feathers—we only see the peacock making a nuisance of himself. If more of the action took place in the pubs and cafes haunted by MacDarney, where his wit was displayed in its full glory, and less in his homes, where the effect of MacDarney's magnificence is felt in poverty and humiliation, we might think that, in spite of everything, the man of the house pays his way in entertainment value. As it is, the peacock is more trouble than it is worth.

Mr. Sheridan set himself too large a task. It is very difficult to combine humour and pathos; one writer of genius who did was a fellow-countryman, Oliver Goldsmith, but he is the exception to most rules. The sorrows of MacDarney's wife and children became so real to his creator that he paints a sympathetic picture of them, and relegates the MacDarney's swaggering to a minor place, the mere cause of the main plot. If MacDarney is to be genuinely funny, the effect of his humour cannot be real, and justified, tears: if they were synthetic, and MacDamey's family were a set of spoilsports, he would be able to shine in his full glory.

Still, it is pleasant enough story, in the same vein of competent and slightly sentimental journalism as Sheridan's collection of essays, "My Hat Blew Off." (Dent, 9/6).

—P.B.