NAZI REVIVAL?

Is Germany going Nazi once more? Sensational news stories have implied it. On the eve of the Moscow conference to consider a German peace, John Scott, TIME'S Berlin bureau chief, cabled this report:

A member of the Berlin Magistral recently stopping in for a Heissgetraenk (hot brew) at an ancient, smoke-blackened wine cellar saw a sight that made him rub his eyes. Around a table sat a group of middle-aged men, some bemonocled, some with pince-nez, all with wide silk bands of green, white and gold across their chests. Before them stood an elaborate, gold-fringed banner with the same colors, and beside it lay a wooden mallet covered with faded signatures. Meeting here amid Berlin's ruins was a chapter of Saxo-Borussia, one of the most important of the long-forbidden student corps which, long before Adolf Hitler, fostered Bismarck's "blood & iron" ideals of an imperialistic Greater Germany. These middle-aged men, huddled in threadbare coats, drinking a hot brew instead of the good old Moselle wine, might seem almost pitifully ridiculous. But their German dream had made Hitler and, given another chance, they might attain power once more.

The young Germans are perhaps the greatest danger. They are restless, hopeless, see themselves and their country without a future. Many follow single-mindedly the vision of a day when they will be called to arms again by either east or west. One put it thus: "I don't care which side it will be; I'll go with either one. I see myself again, running along beside our tanks, waving my men onward, marching, fighting, advancing --eastward or westward, I don't care, but fighting in a war which will make Germany great again."

All this simply means that the spirit of militarism and Naziism is not dead in Germany. The question is: how strong or how weak is its remaining life? At least one of the occupation powers (Russia) proclaimed that it was still very strong indeed. The Russian zone has for weeks been swept by a major denazification purge. The story behind it tells much of the real and fancied strength of Naziism today.

Middle & Bottom. The Russians' earlier denazification drives neglected smaller fry. They worked on the theory: "Kill man at top, utilize man at middle, convert man at bottom." During 1946, the Russians--straining every nerve to maintain German industrial production for reparations to Russia--had freely used millions of middle and bottom Nazis in shops and factories. According to the Russians' own figures, 27,994 office workers and 24,512 railroad officials employed last year were former Nazis. Half of Thuringia's high-school teachers were former members of the Nazi Party.

Last month, Marshal Vassily Sokolovsky finally cracked down in a draconic order calling for all-out denazification to be finished Feb. 20. Attacks against the U.S.'s and Britain's admittedly imperfect denazification were Communism's favorite propaganda device, and Molotov himself is undoubtedly planning to use it at the Moscow conference. But the line can be effective only if Russia's own denazification record is clean. As a consequence, "little" or "forced" Nazis are being thrown out of industry, business, government, schools by the tens of thousands each week.

The U.S. press has carried little news of this Russian purge. On the other hand, it has carried too much news about the alleged Nazi resurgence. These exaggerated reports tend to detract attention from the real issue, which today is not Naziism, but current ideological, economic and diplomatic competition between East and West.

For millions of Germans, the spirit of Naziism is buried in the ashes of their homes, with the broken bodies of their dead. There is no German resistance as such and no foreseeable likelihood that there will ever be an integrated, determined organization capable of making real trouble for any of the occupation powers. The much-publicized Nazi plot uncovered last week was, in the U.S. Army's own words, "a rather nebulous movement" (many of those arrested were long-known Nazis left at liberty as decoys).

Dreams of a Few. It is true that the words "under Hitler things were better" can be heard on every street in Germany, but that is no indication of Nazi-mindedness--it is a human and inevitable harking back to times when things were better (in a material sense). The future is an utter blank. To escape into the past is the only way out. Were the occupation forces to withdraw, a demagogue might find fruitful soil, as Adolf Hitler did 20 years ago. Given a leader, the Germans would again follow, as they have followed before. But today they have no leadership whatever and no goal. If they are given a goal, they may follow democracy. In any case, as long as the occupation forces remain and are alert, Naziism and militarism will remain what it is now: a dream of a few among millions who don't think at all.

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