Boner at Bonn

The first news that U.S. occupation authorities had of their boner was an indignant telegram from a German official: "WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?" Quite by chance, the German had picked up a new history textbook sponsored and financed by the High Commissioner's Office for use in the schools. It had taken little more than a glance to see that the $47,600 Synchronoptische Weltgeschichte (translated Synchronoptic World History) was shot through with Communist propaganda.

Authors Arno and Anneliese Peters made no bones about it. Back in 446 B.C., they wrote proletarian heroes were denouncing private property and the democratic state; and by 476 A.D. a splendid fellow named Masdak was proclaiming to his native Persia that "private property is the root of hatred and strife between men . . . the cause of all evil and bad. Communism is applied religion ..." In 1492, of course, Columbus discovered America, but in the Peters book the founding of the Siberian town of Sibir rated as much space.

The Authors Peters also squeezed in some odd views on races and religions. They portrayed Judas as a "freedom fighter," who tried in vain to persuade Jesus to "join the revolution." As for Moses, he taught his people that they were "divinely chosen--a belief which later was to justify the claims of Jews and many other nations for world power."

Last week U.S. authorities at Bonn ruefully admitted that they had not checked into the Peterses' past before assigning them the book in 1950, that they did not realize that Arno Peters was a Communist Party member. To them, he was merely a former journalist who had come with "high endorsements from eminent German educators." John ,O. Riedl, then chief of the education branch, had seen no reason for not approving him. Meanwhile, 1,100 copies of the book had gone out to public reading rooms throughout West Germany, and Peters had run off a large printing of his own for sale in various towns. At week's end, the High Commissioner's Office was still wondering whether it would ever get all the books--or any of its $47,600--back.

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