Forgotten Land (24 page)
Authors: Max Egremont
Defence worried Knox – this and his country’s moral decline. On 8 March 1939, he contrasted Britain unfavourably with Germany. ‘The motto there is “the interests of the State are more important than your private interests”, and they act up to that motto,’ he said. ‘Whatever one may think of their policy there is a general spirit of self-sacrifice among the youth of that nation. The Young Folk from 10 to 14 years of age carry out drills and undergo semi-military instruction. The Hitler Youth carry this training on from 14 to 18 years. In the twentieth year every man in Germany, whatever his rank or class or wealth, has to go to a labour camp for six months. There he gets good discipline and good healthy food, and it hardens him in mind and body. After that he goes for two years’ military service. How can we compete with that process?’
Later that month, however, Knox’s patriotism was roused. In contradiction of the spirit of Munich, he called for an economic
blockade of Germany, and once the war had started, demanded the arrest of communist as well as fascist sympathizers. In 1944 he watched with horror as Stalin began to take over Poland and the Red Army rampaged through central Europe. Couldn’t British military representatives be sent to the eastern front, Knox asked, to report the truth about this brutal campaign? Always he remained deeply suspicious of Soviet Russia.
blockade of Germany, and once the war had started, demanded the arrest of communist as well as fascist sympathizers. In 1944 he watched with horror as Stalin began to take over Poland and the Red Army rampaged through central Europe. Couldn’t British military representatives be sent to the eastern front, Knox asked, to report the truth about this brutal campaign? Always he remained deeply suspicious of Soviet Russia.
In fact the old firebrand had been much less enthusiastic about National Socialism than several other British members of parliament. The pre-war career of Sir Arnold Wilson – a figure also steeped in late-Victorian imperialism – shows a much deeper yearning to imitate the new Germany. Born in 1884, the son of a clergyman who was also a headmaster, Wilson grew up in the atmosphere of the Victorian public school – which owed much to the Prussian system – where character was thought to be as vital as intellectual grounding. A brilliant and brave man, he passed out top at Sandhurst and became an officer in the Indian Army, showing extraordinary skill in languages and great resourcefulness on dangerous missions in remote parts of Persia.
During the First World War, Wilson was decorated for courage. Britain was given the mandate to govern the former Ottoman territory of Mesopotamia at the peace conference and Wilson was again promoted, becoming responsible for this vast new land, to be called Iraq. But his forceful way of putting down an Iraqi rebellion was criticized and he resigned, briefly joining the Anglo-Persian Oil Company before returning to Britain.
Wilson settled in Hertfordshire and, in June 1933, was elected as the local constituency’s Conservative member of parliament. Among his preoccupations as a politician were – like many scientists and public figures of the time – eugenics (or controlled breeding to improve a population’s capability) and what he saw as a worrying decline in the birth rate of the ‘civilized’ nations. Here the British could, Wilson thought, learn from fascist Germany and Italy – even from Soviet Russia and its rapid increase in population. In May 1934, some sixteen months after Hitler
had come to power, he began a fact-finding journey through Europe, visiting Germany first. On similar trips round Britain, he had often been told that the country needed a Hitler or a Mussolini – which he’d always denied, saying that democracy, with all its faults, was best.
had come to power, he began a fact-finding journey through Europe, visiting Germany first. On similar trips round Britain, he had often been told that the country needed a Hitler or a Mussolini – which he’d always denied, saying that democracy, with all its faults, was best.
Wilson loathed what he had heard of the National Socialist policy towards the Jews and the churches (he was a devout Anglican). But he became fascinated by the vigour and popularity of the new regime. Hitler’s ability to win people’s passionate support, shown in the astonishing amount of work they did (sometimes voluntarily) for their revived country, seemed impressive compared to a torpid, peevish Britain. The bright early-summer days seemed to symbolize the decline in crime, the clean streets and the healthy young people in the work camps (the
Arbeitslager
) or in public places. In Berlin, Wilson met Hitler (who impressed him by his aura of quiet strength) and stayed with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Führer’s foreign-policy adviser. But he found the atmosphere of the prison at Dachau dark and repellent and challenged his hosts on their treatment of the Jews, the churches and political opposition. He was told that a gentler country would emerge when the crisis had passed, although the reassurances about the Jews were vague, often combined with an assertion that it was necessary to be hard.
Arbeitslager
) or in public places. In Berlin, Wilson met Hitler (who impressed him by his aura of quiet strength) and stayed with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Führer’s foreign-policy adviser. But he found the atmosphere of the prison at Dachau dark and repellent and challenged his hosts on their treatment of the Jews, the churches and political opposition. He was told that a gentler country would emerge when the crisis had passed, although the reassurances about the Jews were vague, often combined with an assertion that it was necessary to be hard.
Arnold Wilson believed that a powerful Germany, including what was left of Austria, was unavoidable; that its stability and the maintenance of order in the centre of Europe were vital for peace; that Hitler was strong and popular enough to bring about these conditions. But he found it difficult to tell if the new state’s leaders were responsible or just a collection of gangsters, especially when, during his visit, Hitler arranged the murder of his old colleague Ernst Röhm, the SA leader, and others in the Night of the Long Knives.
Königsberg was the last German city on his tour. To Wilson, East Prussia, cut off from the rest of the country since 1919 by the Polish Corridor, had the air of a German colony, although its
very isolation made the province a place for grand statements of national pride such as those given by Hindenburg, Hitler and, before 1914, the last Emperor. In Königsberg, Wilson spoke at the university, criticizing National Socialist anti-Jewish policies and the campaign against the churches while commending the patriotism and unselfish national unity among the young. He went round the sights – the museum, the cathedral, the Wallenrodt Library, the castle and the tomb of Kant. One student said that they had been taught from childhood that society had claims on them equal even to those of their families. Britain was too complex, too anarchic, too much moved by tradition, a place of ‘untidy minds, untidy cities, and untidy laws’. National Socialism was about simplification. Wilson was tackled by the Nazi Gauleiter Erich Koch and others about the new frontiers imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The most dramatic moment came on the beach at Cranz, when he was among a large crowd listening to the transmission of Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag about the murder of Röhm. For nearly an hour and a half, people stood, scarcely moving during the harangue, showing at the end that they enthusiastically accepted what their Führer said.
very isolation made the province a place for grand statements of national pride such as those given by Hindenburg, Hitler and, before 1914, the last Emperor. In Königsberg, Wilson spoke at the university, criticizing National Socialist anti-Jewish policies and the campaign against the churches while commending the patriotism and unselfish national unity among the young. He went round the sights – the museum, the cathedral, the Wallenrodt Library, the castle and the tomb of Kant. One student said that they had been taught from childhood that society had claims on them equal even to those of their families. Britain was too complex, too anarchic, too much moved by tradition, a place of ‘untidy minds, untidy cities, and untidy laws’. National Socialism was about simplification. Wilson was tackled by the Nazi Gauleiter Erich Koch and others about the new frontiers imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The most dramatic moment came on the beach at Cranz, when he was among a large crowd listening to the transmission of Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag about the murder of Röhm. For nearly an hour and a half, people stood, scarcely moving during the harangue, showing at the end that they enthusiastically accepted what their Führer said.
A year later, in May 1935, Wilson was again in Königsberg, speaking at the university about the Jubilee celebrations of King George V and Queen Mary; to his audience, it must have been an insight into something of almost unbelievable quaintness and serenity. At a lunch afterwards, General Walther von Brauchitsch, then the commander in East Prussia, and Gauleiter Koch argued that individualism had had its day, that nationality was a person’s most important attribute – ‘races, nations and peoples, when well-led, made history, not individuals’. The complex German soul needed a point of coalescence. Koch and Brauchitsch thought that Kant had understood this (a strange reading of his philosophy) yet not as well as Fichte; Goethe had not grasped it at all.
Back in London, sitting in the House of Commons library, Wilson read Kant’s essay on perpetual peace. He noted the philosopher’s strong disapproval of one state taking over another
by armed conquest or negotiation: and his belief that standing armies should eventually be abolished, that no war should be too brutal to prevent the quick restoration of a defeated state’s confidence, that wars of extermination were absolutely wrong. To bring perpetual peace, Kant recommended that each state should be a republic within a federation of free states; that the rights of men, as citizens of the world, should be reflected in universal hospitality. Man had, Kant thought, a natural predisposition towards harmony.
by armed conquest or negotiation: and his belief that standing armies should eventually be abolished, that no war should be too brutal to prevent the quick restoration of a defeated state’s confidence, that wars of extermination were absolutely wrong. To bring perpetual peace, Kant recommended that each state should be a republic within a federation of free states; that the rights of men, as citizens of the world, should be reflected in universal hospitality. Man had, Kant thought, a natural predisposition towards harmony.
The quest for morality in politics – glimpsed, he had hoped, in the new German idealism and pride – was typical of Wilson. He went on seeking some accord with fascism by supporting Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement and backing General Franco in Spain. But, like Knox, when war came in September 1939, his patriotism rose again. Aged fifty-five, he volunteered for the RAF, becoming a pilot and, later, a rear gunner. Arnold Wilson was killed in May 1940 when his bomber was shot down over northern France.
An earlier – and more ostensibly liberal – British visitor to Königsberg was Philip Conwell-Evans, who had worked as private secretary to a recent Labour minister and in 1932 published a book on British responsibility for the First World War. Perhaps because of this, he was asked to give lectures at Königsberg University in 1933 and 1934. Reporting on his time there, Conwell-Evans began, like Wilson, by condemning the National Socialist treatment of the Jews. He compared this to Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes that had victimized the French Protestants (and led to an exodus of many to Prussia), although ‘this is not to ignore the fact that Germany has a Jewish problem’. Regrettable also, Conwell-Evans thought, were the arbitrary detentions and the ‘third rate’ leaders who owed their position to loyalty to Hitler. Yet he believed that the street brawls and the thuggishness had been the work of ‘a very small minority of roughs’ – and that Britons should curb any righteous indignation. Britain’s blockade of Germany had, after all, gone on for four
months after the armistice, an act of cruelty that had caused much suffering.
months after the armistice, an act of cruelty that had caused much suffering.
Königsberg, Conwell-Evans said, was unique: a town of some three hundred thousand people, with the famous university where Kant had taught, founded in 1544 – and a town, since 1918, just over the frontier from the new Poland, the Baltic States and the Soviet Union. He found the atmosphere more liberal than in other parts of the German east, like Pomerania or Silesia – perhaps the legacy of Kant. Ninety-nine per cent of his students were members of the Nazi Party, but Conwell-Evans, who had a doctorate from Oxford, had never met such a courteous and grateful group. For example, on an outing to the country, during a five-mile walk, they didn’t sing the usual National Socialist songs because of the possibility of offending some Jews in the party. The burning of the books in one of the city squares was also thoughtfully done, with some copies of works by Marx and Engels and other socialist writers kept back for use in research. To Conwell-Evans the flames were an old German tradition, reaching back to Luther and supporters of Fichte. Would British students do this? he was asked. He believed not; they had too great a sense of humour.
The great causes of pain, Conwell-Evans thought, were the treatment of Germany as an international pariah, particularly the war ‘guilt’ clause in the Treaty of Versailles, followed by the terrifying inflation; the sense of defencelessness within a ring of armed states; the French invasion of the Ruhr; the taking of Upper Silesia by the Poles and Memel by the Lithuanians in defiance of the League of Nations; the occupation of the Rhineland by black French troops. National Socialism had staved off a communist revolution and brought stability out of the babble of parties in the Weimar Republic. Königsberg students, according to Conwell-Evans, respected the new Poland. At youth camps, young German Nazis joined young Poles from the nationalistic Piłsudski Youth, each singing each other’s national songs, and at the university, many were learning Polish. The students felt that East Prussia should be repopulated with people brought in from
western Germany. They denied any wish to assimilate other countries, except, of course, Austria.
western Germany. They denied any wish to assimilate other countries, except, of course, Austria.
Conwell-Evans emphasized the fear in East Prussia of Poland, where, he claimed, there was open talk of conquering the province. Was it surprising, Conwell-Evans said, that youth organizations equipped themselves for defence? British public-school cadet forces seemed far more aggressive. The SA and the SS had done much to stop crime and to give purpose to the young unemployed. These organizations were democratic; all classes joined and took part in the work camps. The constant processions and carrying of flags were merely a reflection of a German, particularly a south German, tradition. Germany was at the mercy of its neighbours: France, Poland, the Soviet Union. The way to win its ‘confidence and ready co-operation’ was to treat it as an equal.
Conwell-Evans, during the 1930s, became a secretive but determined advocate of closer relations with the new Germany, arranging for British officials and politicians to meet National Socialist leaders like Ribbentrop, to whom he was close. In 1938, however, he had a flash of perception and changed his view utterly. Henceforth Conwell-Evans used his links to warn the British Foreign Office about the terrifying regime that he had once admired.
You had to think of the coming and going across the land, a Polish friend tells me in Warsaw. How could you freeze natural movements that had lasted for centuries? The only way had been through unnatural cruelty.
The poet Johannes Bobrowski knew this. He looked back to Sarmatia, a partly mythical world that had stretched from the Vistula and the Danube to the Volga and the Caucasus until the Goths arrived at the start of the Christian era – a region where nomads and hunters had wandered across a vast landscape, worshipping its trees, forests and rivers. Born in Tilsit in 1917, the son of a German railway official, Bobrowski caught the last whisper of this mixed culture in the Jews, Lithuanians, Poles and Germans that he saw during his childhood visits to his grandparents’ farm just over the border from East Prussia, in Lithuania.
Already he could hear the distant ‘silver rattle of fear’. What shocked him into writing about it was his time as a German soldier on the eastern front in the summer and autumn of 1941. In Kaunas, the SS and the Lithuanians slaughtered Jews; in Novgorod the German invaders came with mechanical violence and contempt for centuries of culture and history. On the shores of Lake Ilmen, Bobrowski and his comrades found a landscape where after their departure ‘The wolf crossed the clearing. / Listens for the bells of winter. / Howls for the enormous / Cloud of snow’ in a reassertion of a huge natural world that seemed to absorb even this cruel destruction. To Bobrowski, 1941 seemed a repeat of the Teutonic Knights, whose victims he recalled in his ‘Pruzzian Elegy’:
People
Of smouldering groves,
Of burning huts, green corn
Trampled, blood-stained rivers –
People,
Sacrificed to the singeing
Lightning-stroke …
Of smouldering groves,
Of burning huts, green corn
Trampled, blood-stained rivers –
People,
Sacrificed to the singeing
Lightning-stroke …
You can trace the shifting cultural identities that Bobrowski cherished – through the names on old and new maps. Some towns and villages in the Kaliningrad district (or Oblast) have three possible names: Polessk, for instance, was once the German Labiau but also the Lithuanian Labguva; Sovetsk could be the Lithuanian Tilž
in addition to the old German Tilsit. To Lithuanians, Kaliningrad is Karaliau
ius as well as Königsberg. In the west, near the present Lithuanian border, there was Little Lithuania, on the edge of what was then Germany and Russia. Here you find the town of Chistye Prudy, once the German Tolminkehmen or the Lithuanian Tolminkiemis.
in addition to the old German Tilsit. To Lithuanians, Kaliningrad is Karaliauius as well as Königsberg. In the west, near the present Lithuanian border, there was Little Lithuania, on the edge of what was then Germany and Russia. Here you find the town of Chistye Prudy, once the German Tolminkehmen or the Lithuanian Tolminkiemis.How confusing all this is, the Russian writer Yuri Ivanov thought, wondering if he or anyone could unravel the region’s identity. Would it drive him mad? He was in a bus, heading out of Kaliningrad with a group of Russian and Lithuanian writers, scholars and artists who sang and joked as they went through the spring landscape. The gathering was partly to celebrate Kristijonas Donelaitis, the great eighteenth-century poet who had lived in Chistye Prudy as a pastor, preaching in German and Lithuanian. While under Prussian rule, Donelaitis had prompted Lithuania’s literary renaissance. His most famous poem evokes the abrupt changes of the Baltic seasons as a violent disruption of fantasy:
The sun came up further and woke the world
Mocked the work of the cold winter and threw it into ruin.
Melted the ice and the fantasy built by frost …
Mocked the work of the cold winter and threw it into ruin.
Melted the ice and the fantasy built by frost …
Prussia’s absorption into the new Germany, Ludendorff’s
Ober-Ost, Hitler and the Soviet empire changed the tolerance that had let Donelaitis preach in German and Lithuanian. In 1994, Lithuanian nationalists blew up the Vilnius-to-Kaliningrad railway line, and some in the new Lithuania wondered about absorbing the then-decaying Russian enclave, a dream as unreal as Marion Dönhoff’s idea of a joint ownership by the new Russia, Germany and Poland. Either of these schemes would have led to another influx and exodus of people, a further blurring of identity. This is a part of Europe where boundaries are vague, where names deceive. ‘My Lithuania!’ Adam Mickiewicz writes, at the start of the long poem that became a nineteenth-century battle cry of Polish nationalism.
Ober-Ost, Hitler and the Soviet empire changed the tolerance that had let Donelaitis preach in German and Lithuanian. In 1994, Lithuanian nationalists blew up the Vilnius-to-Kaliningrad railway line, and some in the new Lithuania wondered about absorbing the then-decaying Russian enclave, a dream as unreal as Marion Dönhoff’s idea of a joint ownership by the new Russia, Germany and Poland. Either of these schemes would have led to another influx and exodus of people, a further blurring of identity. This is a part of Europe where boundaries are vague, where names deceive. ‘My Lithuania!’ Adam Mickiewicz writes, at the start of the long poem that became a nineteenth-century battle cry of Polish nationalism.
Such confusion shows how history can scatter identity. North-east from Little Lithuania, on the coast, across the border from the Kaliningrad region of Russia, is the Lithuanian port of Klaip
da, once the German Memel. East Prussian, or German, until the end of the First World War – and featuring in the national anthem as the most eastern part of the Reich – Memel became an international city in the peace treaty of 1919. But in 1923, Memel was seized by the new Lithuania. The town’s German majority waited, not always patiently, for it to become German again.
da, once the German Memel. East Prussian, or German, until the end of the First World War – and featuring in the national anthem as the most eastern part of the Reich – Memel became an international city in the peace treaty of 1919. But in 1923, Memel was seized by the new Lithuania. The town’s German majority waited, not always patiently, for it to become German again.In September 1938, when war seemed imminent, an Englishman set out along the shores of the Baltic on his trusty bicycle, which he had named ‘George’. Bernard Newman was a writer who had worked in intelligence during the First World War and written fiction and fact about espionage. His other line was travel books, the sort where the English clumsy clod somehow gets where he wants to go and, as if by mistake, uncovers much about the place. Their titles give the flavour:
Albania Back-door
,
Ride to Russia
,
Pedalling Poland
.
Albania Back-door
,
Ride to Russia
,
Pedalling Poland
.
Newman found a Baltic German in a bar in a small town in the Lithuanian lake district: one who’d been a colonel in the imperial Russian army. This former landowner, who had lost his estates in the land reform after Lithuanian independence, said
that Germany was the natural dominant power in Europe – much more than the Russians. England was ‘shot to pieces’; no one could stand up to the invincible German nation represented by Hitler, who would take the port of Memel when he pleased, then give the Baltic Germans back what had been stolen from them. Lithuania was fit only to be a province, not a country. A part of the trouble in Europe was little states playing at being big countries. It was the Tsar of Russia and the King of England who had planned the First World War, because of their jealousy of the German Emperor. As the tirade collapsed into incoherence, Newman wondered if it was the last gasp of the Baltic barons or part of the opening salvo of another conflict.
that Germany was the natural dominant power in Europe – much more than the Russians. England was ‘shot to pieces’; no one could stand up to the invincible German nation represented by Hitler, who would take the port of Memel when he pleased, then give the Baltic Germans back what had been stolen from them. Lithuania was fit only to be a province, not a country. A part of the trouble in Europe was little states playing at being big countries. It was the Tsar of Russia and the King of England who had planned the First World War, because of their jealousy of the German Emperor. As the tirade collapsed into incoherence, Newman wondered if it was the last gasp of the Baltic barons or part of the opening salvo of another conflict.
Pedalling south, Newman reached the old pre-1918 frontier between Germany and Russia, in the region of Memelland, once East Prussian, now in Lithuania. He noticed a change as Prussian red-brick cottages replaced Lithuanian timber shacks. At the old Memel, since 1923 the Lithuanian Klaip
da, he found a clean, unexciting town – once a sleepy German timber port but now made into a place of immense significance by the Lithuanians, who had spent millions on it. The atmosphere in Klaip
da, Newman thought, was overwhelmingly German, with a large German majority. Demonstrations were forbidden, but he saw youths in plain clothes marching in a street and other Germans told him they would not rest until Memel was back in the Reich; the omniscient Führer would settle everything in good time. Newman saw the forbidden swastika inside several houses, like a symbol of some secretly worshipped God. Lithuania had no allies. Poland, her powerful neighbour, had become estranged over the question of Wilno (the present Vilnius), which had been taken by the Poles in the war against Bolshevik Russia in 1920.
da, he found a clean, unexciting town – once a sleepy German timber port but now made into a place of immense significance by the Lithuanians, who had spent millions on it. The atmosphere in Klaipda, Newman thought, was overwhelmingly German, with a large German majority. Demonstrations were forbidden, but he saw youths in plain clothes marching in a street and other Germans told him they would not rest until Memel was back in the Reich; the omniscient Führer would settle everything in good time. Newman saw the forbidden swastika inside several houses, like a symbol of some secretly worshipped God. Lithuania had no allies. Poland, her powerful neighbour, had become estranged over the question of Wilno (the present Vilnius), which had been taken by the Poles in the war against Bolshevik Russia in 1920.Newman caught the ferry to the Kurische Nehrung
,
the long spit that stretches between a lagoon and the Baltic
.
Fascinated by the great shifting dunes that had been steadied a hundred years ago by the planting of sand-growing grasses and pine trees, he saw coastal birds and an elk at peace and bathed in the mildly
salty seawater. Ninety per cent of the people in Klaip
da were German. In the fertile hinterland, east of the port, among prosperous farms, it was different; here the owners of land and large properties were mostly German but the poorer inhabitants were generally Lithuanians – in fact the numbers of the two peoples were almost equal. Newman pedalled on, crossing the Queen Luise Bridge over the Nieman into East Prussia, to find the town of Tilsit festooned with swastikas and echoing to Heil Hitlers in the anxious patriotism of a borderland.
,
the long spit that stretches between a lagoon and the Baltic
.
Fascinated by the great shifting dunes that had been steadied a hundred years ago by the planting of sand-growing grasses and pine trees, he saw coastal birds and an elk at peace and bathed in the mildly
salty seawater. Ninety per cent of the people in Klaip
da were German. In the fertile hinterland, east of the port, among prosperous farms, it was different; here the owners of land and large properties were mostly German but the poorer inhabitants were generally Lithuanians – in fact the numbers of the two peoples were almost equal. Newman pedalled on, crossing the Queen Luise Bridge over the Nieman into East Prussia, to find the town of Tilsit festooned with swastikas and echoing to Heil Hitlers in the anxious patriotism of a borderland.Other books
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