Exposing the Third Reich: Colonel Truman Smith in Hitler’s Germany

21. Retrospective and a Graceful Exit

313 21 retrospective and a graceful Exit Of the many officers I met before and during World War II, few impressed me as being more destined for challenging responsibilities and signal success than Truman Smith. —A. C. Wedemeyer, 1984 I would now be surprised if I ever saw Europe again. —Truman Smith, in letters to Hans Speidel and Rabe von Pappenheim two weeks before he died in 1970 Germany remained a magnet to Truman Smith to the end of his life. He returned with Kay to meet with old friends in September and October 1963, the best time of year to be in that part of the world, as he knew. Then-and-now comparisons were unavoidable as they toured the land they knew so well. Memories abounded: honeymoon on the Rhine; the loss of a child; the Germanies of Weimar and Hitler; close observation of Germany as an enemy during the war; and, in the 1950s, Truman’s liaison between American and German leadership as rearmament was contemplated and then carried out in a divided Germany. The 1963 visit would be the last time they saw Germany. His detailed account of his observations is found in three letters to his daughter, Katchen, in 1963. These are letters in name only. They are actually a comprehensive report in three parts dated 25 September (seven pages), 4 October (eight pages), and 19 October (eight pages), tightly written, carefully edited, single-spaced typescripts . They effectively comprise an estimate that might have been called, had it been official, An Appreciation of the State of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1963. Ferdinand Mayer, that fellow old Germany hand and confidant, upon reading them called the letters 314 EXPOSING THE THIRD REICH an unofficial “white paper.” In his letter to Smith dated 7 January 1964, Mayer wrote: “Words fail to tell you how much I appreciated your sending me a copy of the letter to Katchen, and I am at a loss to say how greatly interested I was in its reading.”1 In another letter Truman catches himself guiltily reverting to his strong suit, analysis. He notes that he went to Munich to enjoy the city and friends there. “I did not expect nor desire to return to my military-political past,” he writes. “Yet, that is exactly what happened.” He boldly concludes, “Germany is today sort of an American colony.” (In his letters Smith’s references to “Germany” are always to the Federal Republic, that is, West Germany, as though the German Democratic Republic, East Germany, did not exist.) In his first letter to Katchen, written from a hotel in Wiesbaden, Smith says he must be careful not to generalize too extensively, “in view of our limited travel. This first letter, therefore, contains mere impressions, not conclusions. The latter will come later, probably in a concluding letter from Munich.” But he does generalize on “a mixture of the eternal and a brand new Germany.” He is impressed by the dense automobile traffic and ubiquitous construction. He remarks on a variety of subjects: finance, agriculture, banking, Gastarbeiter (guest worker) presence, the free market, socialism, working women. The economic miracle that had taken place in West Germany since about 1955 unleashed the explosion of energy Smith noted in 1963. In his 4 October letter, written in Heidelberg, he focuses on West Germany’s economic recovery, concluding that “all my German friends agree that the German factory worker and farmer have never before possessed such a large share of the national wealth, and that this share tends to increase a bit each year.” Given his lifelong opposition to socialism, Smith’s impressions of the West German economy since the end of the war required him to square a circle. He declared that the central control of everything by the occupying powers in the desperate immediate postwar years was a necessity . However, he adds, from the financial stabilization of 1949–1950, “the new Germany has turned its back on Socialistic theories and embraced Erhard’s ‘Free Market’ economy.” (Ludwig Erhard was Konrad Adenauer’s economics minister from 1949 to 1961 and was himself federal chancellor from 1963 to 1966.) Smith credited co-determination (Mitbestimmung) by capital and labor with allowing industry to prosper as labor got what it retrospective and a graceful Exit 315 regarded as its fair share in wages and benefits. Regarding the Welfare State, he said, “in the dreadful half decade...