A Borderline Bismarck

I JOINED THE RUSSIANS (306 pp.)--Count Heinrich von Einsledel--Yale University ($4).

"Name and rank?" For a moment the young German fighter pilot, shot down near Stalingrad, wondered if it was safe to admit to the Russian interrogator that he was Count Heinrich von Einsiedel, the great-grandson of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. But his hesitation lasted only a moment: von Einsiedel gave his name and famous pedigree.

"Bismarck? Bismarck?" The interrogator shouted with excitement, and rushed to a phone to tell his superiors what a fancy bird had dropped into their laps. From that moment von Einsiedel got the best of care--Russian style. In the next two days he was beaten up only once (with a gun butt), and once was stood before a firing squad (but that was just a joke: after firing over his head, the Russians roared with laughter).

On the third day his captors began an indoctrination in Communism. Von Einsiedel was not unwilling: he was only 21, had known nothing of politics but Hitlerism, and he was thoroughly disgusted with that. With very little urging, he agreed to write a letter telling his parents that he was all right and that he thought Hitler would lose the war. The Russians made it into a leaflet and dropped it over the German lines.

Between Two Fires. Von Einsiedel was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp near Moscow. There he found himself between two fires: the aimless cruelty of the Russians and the purposeful vindictiveness of some of his fellow Germans, who had heard about the leaflet and regarded von Einsiedel as a traitor. Wonderingly, not sure of his own motives, von Einsiedel felt himself pulled by the "magical attraction" of Communism's "well-knit, clear religion." He joined the small group of German officers, under Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus, in the Russian-sponsored Committee for Free Germany.

In the course of his work, von Einsiedel learned Russian, and traveled for thousands of miles in the Soviet Union. What he saw there, and at the "antifascist school" he attended for training as a revolutionary, slowly and painfully peeled the scales from his eyes.

At the anti-fascist school he was known as the "feudal bourgeois"--too emotional and soft--and was referred to Lenin's words on the subject of human feeling: "I know nothing which is greater than [Beethoven's] Appassionato; I would like to listen to it every day. It is marvelous, superhuman music. I always think with pride--perhaps it is naive of me--what marvelous things human beings can do! But I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid, nice things, and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell. And now you mustn't stroke anyone's head--you might get your hand bitten off. You have to hit them on the head, without any mercy, although our ideal is not to use force against anyone. H'm, h'm, our duty is infernally hard!"

Von Einsiedel tried hard to reconcile such teachings with his belief that Communism led to "inner perfection." Then came the case of Dr. Kroeger, a student at the school, who was discovered to have been an agent of the Nazi secret police. The Russians, far from clapping the man in irons, were delighted to have found a man so experienced in their principal business. Kroeger was promptly promoted from pupil to teacher at the school.

A little comic relief to the grim curriculum was provided sometimes by the "forced public confessions." In this process a man was made to stand in the presence of his fellow students, and answer in detail such questions as these: "Did you seduce working-class girls? Was your father socially active? Did your mother read the [middleclass] Gruene Post? Do you play cards?" And so on for hours & hours.

Four Months of Thinking. In April 1947, after five years in Russia, von Einsiedel was at last sent back to Germany. He could not bring himself to part with his new friends at once. He went to work as a staff writer for the East German Taegliche Rundschau, living on the uneasy borderline between East & West. But it was not long before he began to have bad dreams. He asked for a leave to visit the Western zone, and the Russians permitted him to go.

As soon as he entered the U.S. zone, von Einsiedel was arrested. Though he was not ill-treated, he complains that U.S. procedure against him was "far from correct." He spent more than four months in a military prison, and during that time thought through to a final break with Communism.

"In this world, which is out of joint and empty of faith," he concludes, "the desire to exorcise fear by a cult of power was the temptation to which [I] fell . . But when a whole people, all mankind in fact, is to submit to the regime of the penitentiary for the sake of apparent security and freedom from crises, then this renunciation becomes insanity . . . For this too, is dialectics: whoever wishes to banish unhappiness from the world must also banish happiness; whoever destroys evil also destroys good. Who kills the devil kills God as well."

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