What Now?

"You know," said one of the students as the TIME correspondent took his place at the beer table, "for two years I fought Americans. Now it seems strange to sit down at a table in the university yard and drink schnapps with one." "Na, Hans," laughed the others, drinking their brandy out of fancy glasses etched with a swastika, "don't get excited. If you on the West had half the experiences with Russians that we did, there'd be reason for tension. Here is an American newspaperman who wants to know what the few young Germans left are thinking. Well, let's tell him.'

To many a German in occupied Berlin the only things worth thinking about were where to get tomorrow's food and next winter's fuel. But students are much of a piece the world over. Even at the Russian-controlled University of Berlin they had time to think and bull about more profound matters.

"If this is democracy," said one of them last week, "then I'd rather be a Nazi. When we enter the university, we have to pass a denazification board. They ask questions not about our scholastic ability, but what we think of Dr. Schumacher and his right-wing Social Democrats. Almost all of us were former members of Hitlerjugend or some such Nazi organization. Now they tell us the only way we can prove our anti-Naziism is by joining the S.E.D." (The Soviet-sponsored Socialist-Communist Fusion Party.)

Those who did not join, they explained, were not given food or a place to sleep. Anyone who criticized the Russians in any way was promptly expelled. "We don't know what democracy is," said a dark, fragile girl student, "and the S.E.D. is forcing us into the same pattern the Nazis did."

One student repeated the old Nazi line that war between Russia and the West was inevitable. "Na, ya" another said, "this doesn't get us anywhere. We have to get along somehow even with the Russians." His companions chorused: "Impossible. There are too many of them and they're too strong and the world doesn't recognize what they are. They take everything, our houses, our furniture, our property. If we object we will be done away with. In any case our children will be brought up Bolsheviks."

"We were brought up falsely. We were made into Nazis without recognizing it. We lost a war, but what do we have to do now?" asked one of the students earnestly. The others shook their heads. They had no answer. "Maybe," said the girl, "in a sense we are Nazis."

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