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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 20, 1984
PAGE 11
election.
Only once in German patliamentary history has a single
party won a majority in the Bundestag--a feat achieved by former
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the CDU in 1957 in the euphoria
after Bonn joined NATO.
Unfortunately for Kohl and his coali
tion, as FOP fortunes have faded, the Green Party has grown,
attracting 25% of the votes of West Germans under the age of 25.
All this is a threat to Kohl's leadership.
Because he governs
only with the backing of the FOP, his internal support within the
CDU depends on his ability to attract votes for both parties in
the coalition.
So if the� goes, he goes.
In the July 27 issue of NATIONAL REVIEW, columnist Erik v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn
discussed the ongoing struggle
in
Germany--both Germanies,
in fact--over
how to treat past German history, specifically how much of it to resurrect.
A significant change is taking place in the German Democratic Re
public. At first glance the change in the GOR (known to foreign
ers as East Germany, although many Germans refer to it as Central
Germany--East Germany being the areas ceded to Poland) might seem
relatively harmless•••• But to those familiar with the political,
historical, and ideological nature of the GDR, the evolution is
ominous.
A German proverb say
1
s that he who masters history � the
future, and the Commun1st�ers are trying to master the history
not only of their own territory but of all Germany.
Until the
early Fifties, the rulers of the GDR treated the German past as
something wholly evil.
Feudalism, monarchism, bourgeois demo
cracy, and National Socialism were all prehistory, recorded time
not beginning until the great victory of socialism
in
part of
Germany.
But in the early Fifties the attitude of
the
GDR'
s
rulers began to change....
In the 1960s, the GOR decided that the wars of liberation against
Napoleon were an acceptable part of Germany's past, and in 1964
the statues of outstanding Prussian generals from Bluecher to
Scharnhorst returned to Unter den Linden, Communist Berlin's
Fifth Avenue.
The crowning event� the recent restoration of
the monument of Frederick
l!·
Whatever remains of the real Prussia
(excluding what is now in
Poland) lies in the GDR. In 1945 it was the policy of the Western
Allies to eradicate and destroy Prussia once and forever.
Today,
the German Federal Republic
(West Germany) is, by and large, a
"deprussianized" Germany•••.
After 1945 this Germany was heavily subjected to American "re
education" of a liberal-left nature.
The traditional family,
patriarchal rule, classical education, respect for order, loy
alty, patriotism,
national feelings, military traditions--all
this was ridiculed and attacked. Then, suddenly, the policies of
the western occupying powers began to change.
West Germany, the
whipping boy, was asked to become the shield of menaced Europe.
It had to resist communism intellectually, ideologically, politi
cally, and last but not least, militarily.