dence now available concerning current Communist influences in America, and the Communists’ role in the Morgenthau plan and our other crimes and follies. But he does argue that the distorted view of Germany prevalent in the West was largely the result of the influence of émigrés, that most of the latter were Leftists, and that many of these Communists were “the most vocal, the most disciplined, and therefore the most clearly heard.” Accordingly, the West “lumped the German army, the Churches and the civil service together with Hitler as ‘the Right,’ and the Socialists and Communists as the virtuous ‘Left,’” while in point of fact the really active opposition to Hitler stemmed from the Conservatives.
Constantine FitzGibbon further comments that the Western Allies failed to understand that the Germans were “themselves an oppressed people who lived in an occupied country,” and that the opposition, in continuing its activity, was taking “tremendous risks.” And it cannot be overemphasized that we are making the same mistake about Soviet Russia today.
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