Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - The German Problem
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said, four`thousand men on a forty-eight hour week.
However, he could not get them. Until then, he had
only succeeded in recruiting a force of about two
thousand. Moreover, he had a certain number of men
who worked less that a forty-eight hour week. This
group worked a few days a week with the peasants
in the country. There, they were paid in kind. They
received food, the most valuable and desirable thing
in Germany today.
The conversation turned to political questions. My
informant explained to me that Naziism had no
future in Germany as everyone realized that this was
what had brought the country to ruin. On the other
hand, they could visualize another dictatorship, but
not a communist regime. I, for my part, replied that
any kind of dictatorship in Germany must result in
about the same conditions which had existed under
the Nazis.
He further told me that the German population
had been kept completely ignorant of what was
happening behind the scenes during the war. My
informant himself had never heard anything before
the capitulation about the concentration camp of
Neuengamme, though he had lived in Hamburg for
many years. When I looked surprised, he declared
on his word of honor that this was true. It was not
before the end of 1944, when he served as a Batallion
Commander in Poland, that he heard about the
cruelties against the Poles and especially against the
Polish Jews.
I left him with a strong feeling that we have no
reason to look too optimistically at internal
developments in Germany. What this man told me is, as far
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