DEMOCRACY FACTORY:

Learning Freedom in Captivity: At the end of World War II, the United States taught German POWs how to transform a dictatorship into a democracy. They were lessons that changed lives (Lynn Ermann, January 18, 2004, Washington Post Magazine)

While the Geneva Convention forbade the indoctrination of prisoners, they could be provided with "intellectual diversion." In a top-secret compound in Rhode Island called "the Factory," a group of selected anti-Nazi prisoners of war, German refugees and Americans screened movies, created reading lists for POWs and translated books into German. The Factory even began producing a German-language newspaper called Der Ruf.

By mid-1944, new leadership had been installed at Concordia and many of the worst Nazis had been removed. Concordia's canteens and library were filled with books that had been banned by the Nazis. Treichl read and reread the American bestseller The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek, which detailed the flaws in socialism and contrasted it with democracy. Zander pored over Fortune and the New York Times and shared what he read with his friends. None of them were aware that they were now part of an official reeducation program.

Emboldened by the success of the Concordia school, Zander, Treichl and von Oppenfeld sent a memo to the camp commander, proposing that the United States compile lists of anti-Nazi POWs and train these men in American systems so they could help in the postwar reconstruction effort. Either because of their initiative or by sheer synchronicity, the Factory met in early 1945 to discuss the specifics of just such a plan. There would be an administrators school at Fort Getty in Rhode Island and a police school at nearby Fort Wetherill. American intelligence officers were dispersed across the country to screen potential candidates.

In March, Treichl was called out of the barracks and greeted by an American who presented him with their memo. "Did you sign this?" the American asked.

Treichl nodded.

"How many others like you are there who would sign a paper saying they are anti-Nazi?"

Treichl estimated 25. He and his friends gathered up the names and delivered them to the Americans.

The first week in May 1945 found everyone at Concordia, Germans and Americans alike, gathered around their radios. When Germany surrendered unconditionally, Zander breathed a sigh of relief. Then depression set in. What now?

Newspapers that were once a source of comfort and connection to the world for Zander and his friends now detailed atrocities. Though the war was over, they remained in U.S. custody and were forced by their captors to watch films about concentration camps -- images that filled them with shame and sadness. Following the liberation of U.S. prisoners in Germany and revelations about their treatment, rations were cut back drastically at Concordia. Many Americans wanted to punish Germany for its crimes. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau was advocating a plan -- ultimately rejected by President Harry Truman -- that would reduce Germany to an agrarian society.

It was during this dark time that the Americans came to Zander and asked if he wanted to be trained for Germany's reconstruction. Was this the democracy school they had proposed? Zander wasn't sure, but he bade goodbye to Treichl and von Oppenfeld, and traveled by train through the night to an unknown destination.

"The morning fog had prevented us from recognizing where we were, though we smelt the salt water of the sea," Zander recounted in a speech several months later. "At noontime after having had several roll calls, the sun pierced through the fog and lifted the veil around us. We found ourselves on a small island, a rock in the sea."

They were in Jamestown, R.I., at Fort Getty, where, over the next eight months, 455 POWs would be trained for jobs in the U.S. military occupation government. Initially, the depressed, defeated Germans slid into straight-back chairs with sighs. Zander fully expected to be lectured by stiff, impersonal military instructors. Instead they were introduced to academics from Harvard, Brown, Cornell and other top universities -- men not much older than their students who were as eager to learn from the Germans as to teach them. Zander and the other POWs attending Fort Getty's first 60-day session were stunned.

The most beloved faculty member was American history teacher T.V. Smith, a University of Chicago professor, author of best-selling books on American life and host of a popular radio show. In his morning lectures, Smith illuminated the method behind this still-mysterious country of so many different nationalities and so much wealth. He presented America as a beautiful experiment, a work in progress. Henry Ehrmann, a German Jewish refugee who'd become a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, taught German history with an eye toward the future. At a time when the rest of the world was talking about Germans as if all of them were irredeemably evil, Ehrmann (who is not related to the author of this story) traced the democratic thread in their history. Rather than attack the German character, he attacked German political passivity. For Zander, it was Ehrmann's unspoken lesson that impressed him most deeply. Here was a German Jewish refugee treating a class of Germans with the respect and humanity he had never been afforded himself. "He was such a kind man," says Zander, who wrote to him for years after the war.

Every afternoon at Fort Getty, students and professors gathered around tables and talked about the ideas that had been presented in the morning lectures. Smith would describe an American concept like the balance of government power, then ask: How would that concept translate in Germany?

A remarkable story and a bucket of cold water for those who think Germans were somehow prepared for democracy in a way that the Shi'ites are not.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 17, 2004 02:47 PM