II. The Underlying Factors

One’s first impression of Germany is of an enormously prosperous, busy country. The bombed cities have been rebuilt, everyone seems to have a Mercedes, a Volkswagen or something in between, which he drives with utter disregard of his own or anyone else’s safety; the papers run pages of help-wanted ads and the shops display luxury goods of the most bewildering variety; the air in the industrial cities is heavy with pollution, the highways are crowded with cars and trucks, as is the Rhine with shipping.

But beneath all this activity and Wohlstand runs a strong current of unrest and uncertainty. The Free University of Berlin, for example, founded in protest to the Communist domination of the old Humboldt University, is now virtually paralyzed and largely controlled by Communist student groups; the other universities are also in a state of greater or less disorder. Besides the universities, a number of the teachertraining institutes have been infiltrated by the Communists, and the process has also begun in the courts.

HR

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Henry Regnery

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One’s first impression of Germany is of an enormously prosperous, busy country. The bombed cities have been rebuilt, everyone seems to have a Mercedes, a Volkswagen or something in between, which he drives with utter disregard of his own or anyone else’s safety; the papers run pages of help-wanted ads and the shops display luxury goods of the most bewildering variety; the air in the industrial cities is heavy with pollution, the highways are crowded with cars and trucks, as is the Rhine with shipping.

But beneath all this activity and Wohlstand runs a strong current of unrest and uncertainty. The Free University of Berlin, for example, founded in protest to the Communist domination of the old Humboldt University, is now virtually paralyzed and largely controlled by Communist student groups; the other universities are also in a state of greater or less disorder. Besides the universities, a number of the teachertraining institutes have been infiltrated by the Communists, and the process has also begun in the courts.