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Ehrenburg Criticised

By G. ALEXANDROV o

- RASNAYA ZVEZDA on April 1, 1945, Sane an

Pe arcie by Ilya Ehrenburg,

“Saongh,” Ebrenbure in

@his article deals with the current situation in Germany and ,) with the reasons for the con- :

— 1elp

‘centration of the German army. lon the Soviet-German front

"when at the same time the Ger-

man armed forces in the West lare being weakened.

- Anybody who reads PEhren ‘ourg’s article carefully cannot noting that his main (theses are ill-considered and S.bviously mistaken. The reader eannot agree either with his leseription of Germany as “a piuge gane” or with his explan- _

ition of the withdrawal of Ger__

(aan-fascist troops from the ’Western Front and the con-

" entration of all forces of the

|7HRENBURG assures

/-serman army in the Mast.

@ his 4-readers that all Germans

re the same and they will all ‘© held responsible in equal

easure for the crimes of the’

litlerites. It is stated in the rticle “Hnough” that there is 2 huge gang which is seatter- 'ig-and fleeing now that the "me -has come to answer for Pteir deeds:” It is also~stat- | 1 that in Germany “they are »l on the run, all scurrying nd trampling on one another '1 their haste to get to the 'wiss border.’ |There is no difficulty in Fiowing that these assurances |: hrenbure do not corres- 'ond with the facts. Everyone mow convinced, and this is irticularly borne out by the perience of the past few

5 | onths that different Germans

oe oe > ° support fascism,

@ he

@ © German

owl in different wavs and be -ve differently-

Some of them with dolt- _sh obstinacy continue with /very ‘means in their power the fas- (ist party, the fascist state md the Hitler clique Other

) refer to refrain from active

| truggle on behalf of Hit- wisi, and temporize or sur- ender. Some Germans zea- ously support fascism and Hitler system, while thers, disillusioned with the yar and haying lost hope of | ictory, have turned cold to- -ard the “Fuehrer’s”. wild nd crazy plans.

: HIS may be said of the Ger-

man army as well as of the ae population. The corrod- = acid has eaten into the body Phe German-fascist army. It not surprising that while “me German officers may be chting for the cannibal sys-

‘mm, others throw bombs at Hit-

© and his clique, or are try- »2 to persuade the Germans to 'y down their arms. @ What is now happening in fe German army and among population was 1 aso foreseen by Stalin. As

3? back as May, 1942, Stalin

“ote: “The war has brought "ave disillusionments, the loss ' millions of lives, starvation

e poverty to the German peo-

' The end ofthe war is not Dens, but the reserves of e-'many’s manpower are giv & out, oil and raw material

“board in any storm.

stock are giving out. The real- ization that Germany’s defeat is Inevitable is growing on the German people. It is becom- ine inereasingly clear to the German people that the only way eut of the present situa- tion is to liberate Germany from the adventurist clique of Hitle: and Goering.”

The days of fascist intoxica- tion in: Germany are passing. The fools in Germany who are ready. to! Sacrifice their heads uncomplainingly for Hitler and his criminal aims are Prowine

fewer and fewer. German newspapers are compelled every day to report facts which are indicative of the

rapid disintegration | of the rear ot the German-fascist armies.

The other day, for example, the fascist newspaper Front und Heimat zoe that a large number of “oponents in prin- ciple” have arisen in Germany. And although ‘the. Gestapo has appealed to all “real Germans” to institute a “free hunt” against all such opponents in principle,” this is becoming less and less within the power of the ramified machinery of the Gestapo.

It is therefore clear that ac- tually there is no united Ger- many and that the Germans are not all behaving the same way.

As we know, the Hitlerites, trying to save their skins and their criminal system as long as possible, are importunately striving to show; in defiance of the facts, that the entire Ger- man people are solidly rallied around them. The purpose of this clumsy demagogy is quite clear. The fascist state in Germany today has exhausted every real opportunity of hold- ing its own in the World War

it unleashed. The Hitlerites are-

spasmodically clinging to eyery slightest chance of pro- longing the existence of the bloodthirsty and cannibal fas- cist system.

HEY are therefore untiring-

ly hammering at one point, namely, that Germany’s adver- Saries, the armies of the Unit- ed Nations, are determined to exterminate the German people and that therefore all of them must rise up and fight for the preservation of Germany. Goebbels, one of the chieftains of the piratical Hitler gang, re- cently wrote, “‘Participation in the war in one way or another is the obligation of all inhabi- tants of Germany without ex— ception. . .” :

Four days ago the German radio broadeast an article by the same Goebbels which was

‘printed in the fascist newspaper

Das Reich,! and im which he states, “We must stick out this battle in complete national

unity and we must rally our ranks and see it through. We must not throw ourselves over- ‘ That is the commandment of the hour.”

The central theme of the hul- labaloo raised by the fascist press and radio is an appeal to remain united in these critical times for fascist Germany.

The question arises, why in the sixth year of war do the Hitlerites shriek so frantically about the necessity for the Ger- man people remaining united in the face of the danger threat- ening the fascist state? The reason 18 very simple. The Hit- lerites are trying to tie up the fate of the fascist clique, and hope to draw upon certain addi-_ tional forces with which to con- tinue the criminal war. to delay the inevitable end, to win time for military, political and diplo- matie maneouvers. and to post- pone the hour of the freedom-

From Poland and from Rus- sia the world had heard of the brutal cruelties of the savage Nazis in their death camps, but

what the American armies found in the prison and conéen- tration camps they overran

first seemed to bring the full horror home to America. U.S. soldiers were starved in some camps, civilians killed in others. like this.

loving nations’ just trial of the bloodstained Nazi

However, as the facts elo-

guently show, the frantic ap- peals of the fascist press are of little help. The Hitler state is growing weaker from day to day, the ranks of the Nazi Par- ty are thinning, and of course there can be no question of any unity between the entire popu- lation of Germany and the rul- ing fascist clique. It is per- fectly obvious that the Hitler- ites would have had no need to appeal to Germany for unity and would not have worried about this unity if the fascist order were not violently burst- ing at the seams and if there were not so many individuals

eriminals.

in Germany anxious to “throw .

themselves overboard”: in other words, jump off the fascist wagon.

Such are the facts.

And from this it is char why Ehrenburge is mistaken when. im his article he represents the population of Germany as an integral whole.

Hhrenburg writes in his ar- ticles that there is no Germany, but only “a huge gang.” If we admitted that Ehrenbure is

NAY 19,

1945 — Page 11

right, then we should have to agree that the whole population

of Germany must share the fate

of the Hitler clique.

There is no need to say that Ehrenburge in this case dose not reflect Soviet pub- lic opinion. In fulfilling its great liberation mission, the Red Army is fighting for the destruction of Hitler’s army,

. Hitler’s state and Hitler’s government, but its purpose never was, nor is it now, to exterminate the German peo- ple. That would be stupid

" and senseless.

When the Hitlerites falsify the position of our troops and our state and ery that the Red Army is out to destroy all Ger- mans to a man, that is-under— standable. The .xuling fascist clique is trying to exploit this lying statement= ins ordér to rouse the whéle ‘German popu- lation to fight the Allied Ar- mies and the Red Army and thereby prolong the existence of the criminal and rotten fas- cist system. But when genu- ime anti-fascists, active partici- pants in the struggle against Hitler Germany, express such views, it is strange and incom- prehensible. The Soviet peo-

ple never did identify the Ger-

man population »with the erim- inal fascist clique: who are rul- ing Germany, Stalin said: it would be ridiculous to iden- tify Hitler’s elique with the

German people and the German |

state. History shows that Hitlers come and go, but the German people and the German state re- main.’

In complete harmony with this Soviet viewpoint are the deci- sions of the Crimea Conference, where it is stated: “It is not our purpose to destroy the people of Germany, but only when Nazism and militarism have been .extir- pated, will there be hope for a decent life for the German peo- ple, and a place for them in the community of nations.”

It is clear from this that the lives of Germans who take up the fight against Hitler or who behave loyally toward the Allied Armies are not threatened. Of course, those of them who are fighting and continue to fight the Red Army and the Armies of our Allies in order to preserve the fascist regime, will receive no mercy.

In his article “Hnough,? Eh- renburge truthfully and power- fully describes the bloody deeds of the Germans on our sacred soil, but unfortunately FEhren- burg drew wrong conclusions from the inecontrovertable facts. He says that the “insolent Gér- mans maintain an attitude to- ward the Americans as if* they were some neutral power.” and he attributes the fierce resist- ance of the Germans on the Soviet-German front to their fear of the coming reckoning for their crimes on Soviet territory.

There is no denying that the Germans guilty of crimes on our territory are afraid of the reck- oning all the more now that retribution is near. Nor can it be denied that this fact tends to stiffen the resistance of those who are guilty of crimes against Soviet citizens. ~ We know that nowhere else have the Hitlerites performed such butcheries, no-

fear

“But -

where else did they so display their cannibal nature as in the occupied regions of the USSR. Our people are bitter. Perhaps the world has never before -wit- nessed such hatred as the hatred of our Soviet people for the fas- eist enslavers. : .

OWEVER, it would be over

simplifying matters and naive to attribute the present distribution of German armed forces between the Western and Hastern Fronts only to the and panic of the Nazi eriminals. The reasons why the Germans have stripped their Western. Front and are con- tinuing to mass troops on the Soviet-German front lie deeper than the susceptibility of oe

'Hitlerites to fear.

Lenin at one time when an-— alyzine the policies of differ- ent states in’ time of war, as well as the character and causes of changes in such policy, had some very important remarks to make on this score. He said that “every war is inseparably bound up with the political sys- tem from which it springs.” And the political system of Hit- ler Germany determines the nature of the war waged by. the Hitler clique and its Dole icy during the war.

The experience of 12 years’ policy of the Hitlerites in Ger- many and outside Germany shows that intricue, demagory and political unscrupulousness have always been an essential substance of the policy of the Hitlerites, both in time of war and in time of peace. This, for example, is what Hitler wrote regarding’ the principal feature of his policy: “polities are a game in which every form of cunning is permissible and in which the rules vary with the skill of the players.” Hitler’s clique cannot be denied a cer- tain consistency, for over 10 years the peoples of all coun- tries haye witnessed one act of perfidy on the part of fascist Germany after another, one in- trvigue after another.

To judge by all signs, the Hitlerites have been hatching a new intrgue lately. Tieuten. ant General Krappe: Command- er of the German 10th Army Corps, who was taken prisoner, stated in February that the German command had a broad plan for transferring armed forces to the Soviet-German front. And indeed in the past two and one-half months the German command has trans- ferred forces to Soviet- German front; 44 divisions from the Western Front, the central re- gions of Germany, Norway and northern Italy. By transferring such large forces to the Soviet- German front the German army command left the Western Front without any effective defence.

What is the aim of the German command in distributine its forces between the West and East in this way? Gan it be at- tributed to the fear and terror of the German command of hav— ing to answer for the bloody erimes perpetrated by the Ger man armies on Soviet territory ?

It would be truer to say that at the present stage of the war

Continued on Page 13 See EHRENBURG