Synopses & Reviews
GERMAN REALITIES B Y GUSTAV STOLPER REYNAL HITCHCOCK New York To My Three Sons Who Served with the American Forces in Germany PREFACE THE IDEA of this book was conceived when, as a member of for mer President Herbert Hoovers mission, I revisited Germany in February of this year. The bulk of the manuscript was written in Switzerland during several summer months in close contact with German men and matters. And the finished book goes to press in the days immediately following the utter failure of the London Conference of the foreign ministers. So much was this failure anticipated that not one word had to be altered in the text on account oC this momentous event. This is not a book about a hard or a soft peace, about the good or the bad Germans, or whatever other irrelevancies have up to now dominated the debate on the German problem, though not the course of history. History goes its own inexorable way, which is not altogether determined by human folly and ignorance however powerful forces they arebut also by the weight of the underlying realities. Just what these realities are this book under takes to analyze. I am grateful for the proper occasion to pay my personal trib ute to Herbert Hoover. I do not know Mr. Hoovers views on most current political issues, nor has he ever inquired into mine. I guess we disagree on quite a few. Mr. Hoover has not seen any part of the manuscript of this book and is therefore free of any responsibility for its content. At the same time, I am proud to confess that its underlying philosophy is the same as that of the three reports which Mr. Hoover submitted to the President of the United States and to which I was privileged to contribute my little share.This philosophy I may presume to epitomize as passionate abhorrence of human misery and servitude. Peace must be built on tolerable living conditions, moral and ma terial, in a world of free men Above all, it must be built on truth. We have hardly made a beginning toward such a peace. It has been my good fortune to observe Herbert Hoover at vm PREFACE work. In a long, variegated career in several lands I have never met a leading statesman acting with greater wisdom, knowledge, dignity, tact and, most of all, human kindness. It is the Quaker who is shocked by the sight of human suffering, the Republican who cannot bear the revival of slavery in the Europe of the Twentieth Century. To have witnessed and helped, in however humble a capacity, the work of this great American I shall cher ish as happy memory. It inspired not a little the painful labor of this book. Among the many friends, American and German, who aided me with advice and criticism most must remain unnamed for obvious reasons of their position or residence. A few sources are referred to in the text. I wish, however, to mention here with special thanks one friend, Hans A. Kallmarm, Berlin, who spent many precious hours of day and night of his well-deserved summer vacation in Switzerland to write a current commentary as the manuscript grew. I accepted many of his suggestions and rejected others, but I was always stimulated by his friendship and his devotion to the work as a civil servant in the most difficult place for which the American Government is responsible in these days. As with my previous books, Miss Martha Anderson has per formed an invaluable editorial job. In particular, she tried to protect me against theInfatuation with Sound of Own Words Department of the New Yorker of whose watchful authority she as a most experienced editor is scared. I do not think she has been entirely successful. But if such words as chaos, col lapse, catastrophe occur more than once, I can assure the New Yorker that it has little to do with infatuation or carelessness. Even the immense wealth of the English language is not com mensurate with the inexpressible horrors of the German Re alities. Greenhaven-Ryc, N. Y. December 18, 1947 CONTENTS PREFACE vii PART ONE STOCK-TAKING I...