Misunderstanding

Nearly everybody hoped that the Yalta Conference had cut the fuse from that charge of political high explosive, the Free Germany Committee. But last week it was fizzing and sputtering again--this time in the Soviet press. Cried Moscow's War & the Working Class: the report that Russia intended to use the Free Germany Committee to create a pro-Russian German state was a "myth" based on "poisoned rumors." "From nothing has been erected a structure of lies. . . . The Soviet Union, much more than any other country . . . is anxious to obtain a solution . . . making . . . a revival of German aggression impossible. . . . Common . . . prejudice against the Soviet Union . . . is behind the readiness of . . . 'European experts' to imagine and spread all kinds of tales about Soviet policy, and the readiness of many editors to publish these tales without a twinge of conscience."

Indicted for spreading such septic falsehoods were: New York Timesmen George Axelsson, Harold Callender, Raymond Daniell, the Baltimore Sun's Paul W. Ward, Pundits Dorothy Thompson. Constantine Brown, William Phillips Simms, "the known pro-Fascist paper the New York World-Telegram."

Widespread Assumptions. These charges were almost as misleading as the widespread assumptions in the press that, at the Yalta Conference, Russia had promised to liquidate the Committee. At the root of the confusion was a general misconception about the nature of the Free Germans. The Free Germany Committee had existed since 1943, but very few people understood its peculiar dual organization.

The Free Germany Committee was not one committee but two. Committee No. 1 (and undoubtedly the more important for Russian purposes) was the National Committee of Free Germany. It consisted of German Communists and fellow travelers, most of whom were refugees from Hitler's Germany. Most important among them was the German Communist and ex-Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Pieck, who with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht had organized Germany's 1919 Spartacus revolution (TIME, Feb. 19).

Committee No. 2 was the League of German Officers. It consists of German officers and soldiers captured by the Russians at Stalingrad and elsewhere. Its most publicized leaders were Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus, who commanded the German armies at Stalingrad; General Walther von Seydlitz, commander of the German LI Army Corps at Stalingrad; Lieut. Count Heinrich von Einsiedel, great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck.

Tactical Purposes. Hitherto Russia had used these officers in a tactical way to issue statements and make broadcasts against Hitler in order to disrupt morale within the Reich, and especially in the German army. What Marshal Stalin promised at Yalta was that he would not reinstate these officers in their old jobs at the head of an unpurged Wehrmacht.

But if anything was agreed at Yalta about disbanding the National Committee of Free Germany, nothing was published about it. Yet it was this group in the Free Germany Committee that was the key to Russia's future intentions in Germany. It was Wilhelm Pieck, not Bismarck's great-grandson, or Field Marshal von Paulus, who might realize in reverse the Iron Chancellor's dream of a strong Russian-German alliance. Until Russia disavowed Pieck and his committee, it could be assumed that the Kremlin had a plan for them.

Familiar Voice. Meanwhile the New York Times, in an earnest editorial, answered War & the Working Class's outburst: "We suggest that the only reason the rumors [about the Free Germany Committee] ever got a hearing . . . was because the Soviet Government so long pursued a wholly independent policy in the matter of . . . the 'Free Germany Committee' and the 'Union of German Officers.' . . . [They] were Soviet inventions, pure & simple, and both were permitted for a time to go pretty far in making large statements over the radio to the German people. We are fully as glad as is War & the Working Class that, since Yalta, their voices have been silent."

Late that same day U.S. radio monitors picked up the familiar voice of the Free Germany Committee, broadcasting as usual from Moscow.

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