In Fear of Reaction: Restraining the Rise of a Far Right

Abstract

We could make no greater mistake in trying to judge the significance of the occupation of Germany than to overlook the immediate context of war from which it developed. The occupation formed more than the first stage of what we only later came to call the Cold War, and it was more than simply the beginning of the history of a new Germany. It was also the last act of the Second World War; the occupiers had no choice but to view it primarily as the culmination of battlefield conflict. Some statistics assuredly in the front of the minds of Germany’s conquerors can point to the importance of this proposition. In addition to much of its national honor, the war cost the French the lives of over 210 000 soldiers and of more than 400 000 civilians. Its industrial output in 1945 was only 29 percent of 1938’s levels, and 700 000 French citizens had done forced labor in German industries.⁴ Britain lost what remained of its pre-1914 dominance in world finance and trade, in addition to 264 000 battlefield and 92,000 civilian deaths. The United States spent the then unimaginable sum of over $300 000 000 000 to bring Nazi Germany and the Imperial Japanese to surrender, in addition to suffering 405 000 military deaths.⁵

The goal…is the creation of a unified large party of the right, in which all conservative, Christian and nationally-oriented Germans can find their political home.

(Self-proclaimed goal of the newly unified German Conservative Party-German Right Party, March 1946)¹

The intention is…to ban any man who held, in the past, “poisonous opinions,” e.g., was a propagator of anti Semitism, extreme nationalism or at any date helped the Nazis in their rise to power.

(British officials in Germany informing their superiors of their policy towards the German right, May 1946)²

It is recommended that this party be dissolved and that wide publicity be presented in the licensed press and on the radio in explanation, so that future attempts by undesirable reactionary elements to form political parties or to gain representation in established parties may be more difficult.

(American military government intelligence official, recommending the National Democratic Party be banned in the U.S. zone, February 1946)³