PARTISAN REVIEW
or the revival of Europe require the existence of a Fourth Reich?
They assure France that Germany is no longer a menace.
Doubtle~
she isn't, under her old form; but some of us wonder
if the chief question regarding Germany is not: who will be the
first to reestablish the Wehrmacht? We might note,
in
passing, that
the progress Stalin has made through General von Paulus is noticeably
greater than that made by his adversaries through Schumacher. In
this field, I believe that many Frenchmen have some rather sensible
ideas, which should not be without interest for you .
Let me get down to essentials. Once before (around 1932),
various forces-capitalists, diplomats, and others-believed that in
the game against
Ru~ia,
it was preferable to bet on Germany rather
than on France. The result was Hitler.
Many Americans think that the plan for a federated western
Germany, so often advocated by General de Gaulle, implies a back–
ward step.
If
your policy, however, intends to make a sort of daub
Reich, of which the eastern part will have its capital at Berlin and
the western part at Frankfort, it is not hard to predict the result.
No matter what is done, your western Germany will succumb to
the attraction of eastern Germany. First, because all of Germany
which tends toward unity, tends to unite around
Pru~ia;
second,
because Berlin is Berlin; and third, because Stalin will have decidedly
less scruples about building all of Hitler's brass bands and festivals
around Von Paulus, or even around a united German Communist
party, than you would have in recreating them around Mr. Schu–
macher and your democracy at Frankfort.
Germany being what it is: believing once again that it never
really lost the war; persuaded almost unanimously of its innocence;
obsessed by the desire for a revenge
all
the more fascinating because
Germany has not forgotten its triumphs in this last war-how can
you imagine for a moment that German emotions would not throw
themselves with fanatic enthusiasm into the service of a Wehrmacht
created by Stalin. Federal states of western Germany might also, no
doubt, be drawn towards Berlin. But the danger of the attraction
would be even infinitely
le~,
because you would not impose upon
them a preliminary centralization which is only too easy to enlarge,
and because the western German states would find many more
obvious advantages in attaching themselves to a Western European
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