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6.30.60

Dear Folks,

Yesterday I spoke for several hours with the mayor of Beutelsbach, Herr Plessing,
and his wife. Our discussion turned among other things to the war, and to current
political attitudes, and was in addition a chance for me to think out several impressions
that I have picked up as to American misconceptions about Germany. I'm going to
set these thoughts down in disjointed fashion, so that I may have a record of them,
and you may share in the insights of my experience here.

#1 - It is as many of us surely realize, simply impossible for Americans who
have not seen it to imagine the destructive power of a war. Even being here
and seeing what ruins remain (not very many!) we cannot visualize a city
90% bombed out. And even less could we understand the way this damage was
experienced by the people, how they lived during the war. Frau Plessing described
to me one very minor incident - the bombing of her small village just outside Stuttgart.
In a matter of minutes there fell on this village of 2000 people 980 firebombs and
190 explosive bombs! In her house 9 firebombs hit simultaneously - they were
very lucky though, and saved all but one bedroom. Many of the houses were built
of straw - of 89 of these, 2 remained standing! This in perhaps 15 minutes, mostly
with small fire bombs - I myself cannot imagine what it must have been in the
big cities where the effort was concentrated and repeated.

She also described living under air raid conditions - going 3 or 4 times in a
night - on the run, with a suitcase of the most important clothes - to the shelter,
there to stand perhaps for hours - silent (to conserve air) and motionless against the
wall. This perhaps until 4 AM then at 6 every day catch a train to Stuttgart
(which might also be stopped for an air raid alert), without having eaten, to
put in a long days work. Back again at night to have sleep broken again by
the sirens.

#2 A second thing many Americans have trouble understanding is - How coud
Hitler af become so powerful, and how could the people have permitted such
actions and ideas as he carried out. I surely don't claim to have the
answers to this, but some factors do loom out as important - in the
early 30's there were in Germany millions of unemployed (as in America) and such
a time is receptive to radical proposals (draw analogy to the necessary dramatic
proposals of Roosevelt in the early New Deal). Hitler took several strong actions
to mobilize resources - building autobahns, etc. took thousands into the army
to give them purpose and activity again, and money to send home to pump
into the sagging economy, and too Germans were often caught up in the appeal
of a "New Germany", a glorious fatherland, etc - a sort of nationalism which
has touched many countries in the last 100 years.

As time progressed however another factor came forth which we Americans
almost always forget, I think. Hitler's regime soon became an internal
dictatorshop - with supression of news, immediate police retaliation (away to
a work camp) for giving aid to a Jew or speaking against the govt., etc. It is on
this reign of fear that most of Hitler atrocities are built, and not on the
nationalism or enthusiasm of the people (though these made his power possible)!
Frau Plessing tells of having given food, clothes to Jews, as much to get them to
leave the shop as to help them. Fear was a very important reality and it effectively