Answers for Ilse

Forty red-cheeked German girls, bundled up in jackets, overcoats and boots, huddled in a chill classroom of Berlin's Louisa Henriette Schule for their regular lesson in Demokratische Weltanschauung (Democratic Outlook). The Magistrat, the Allied-approved municipal council, had ordered their professor, snowy-thatched Ernst Weber, to teach them about the Nuernberg trials. He began:

Weber: What do you consider Hermann Goering's worst traits?

Grete Wolfran (blonde, blue-eyed and 13): His love of power; his love of fighting ; his love of uniforms.

Weber: That is good. That sums up quite well Goering's worst characteristics, and the combination clearly reveals the dangerous type of man he was and accounts for his actions.

Ilse Schneiditz (solemn and 15): Professor Weber, what do you think of Frederick the Great?

Weber: He was a great German.

Ilse: Don't you think Frederick the Great had the same characteristics as Goering, and if so, what is the difference between them? Would we place Frederick the Great on trial as a war criminal if he lived now?

Weber: Well, if he waged aggressive war, I suppose we would.

Ilse: Did he wage aggressive war?

Weber: Yes, I suppose he did. Some questions I cannot answer because I do not know the answers.

Ilse: But why do you teach this, if you do not know the answers?

Weber: Well, I did not ask to teach this course. I was told to.

Variations on the same theme were taking place in hundreds of German classrooms. Brigadier General Edwin L. Sibert, assistant chief of staff of U.S. intelligence in Germany, wrote for the New York Times Magazine a remarkable analysis of how Germans rationalize their plight: "It has been said by someone that the German 'little man' has a suppressed desire to be killed some day by a hit-run driver on a pedestrian crossing while the lights are in his favor. . . . His sense of discipline would be satisfied (for didn't the green light order him to go?) and his suppressed love for the tragic, his eternal longing for Valhalla, would be satisfied too (for did he not die a martyr for all public traffic ordinances, laws and regulations he loves best? . . .)

"Today the 'little man' in Germany feels that he has fulfilled his fate. His betters told him 'to go ahead, cross the street; the green light is in your favor.' He obeyed and was run down. It didn't come as a surprise to him. Rather than surprise he feels almost a dumbfounded but quiet satisfaction."

Unless Germans could learn to think and feel differently, there could be no democracy in Germany--and Ilse would not get her answers.

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