It would require considerable political skill to reinstate the civil democracy, the republic with freely-elected representatives, which had been taken away during Hitler’s dozen years of tyranny. Happily, there were still individuals left who had been part of liberty of the pre-Nazi years, and who had not succumbed to the temptation to collaborate with Hitler’s National Socialist government.
Konrad Adenauer was such a man. He had been the mayor of Cologne - der Bürgermeister Kölns - during the last years of the Weimar Republic. Because of his courageous opposition to the National Socialists, he was removed from power, and lived out those twelve years under persecution, being questioned and jailed by the Gestapo.
At the war’s end, the Germans, finally free from their Nazi tormentors, began to rebuild their cities physically, and their liberty politically. Historian Terrence Prittie describes Konrad Adenauer at that point in time:
One should recall that the Adenauer of 1945 still looked, superficially, little qualified for the role which he was to play. Not only was he in his 70th year, but had next to no experience of party politics, he was utterly unknown outside his own country, and he had travelled little beyond its borders - although the picture of Adenauer, the stay-at-home hick-town boy, has been somewhat overdrawn. Brought back to Cologne as Mayor by the victorious Americans, he might well have stayed there for the rest of his working days - had the British, after taking over from the Americans, not dismissed him from office. Fortuitously and quite unintentionally, he was thrust into the party-political field. There, he made his way because of four characteristics. A previously iron will had been tempered by adversity into something more pliant, yet more subtly formidable. That Roman clarity and logic which had always been his enabled him to set himself attainable objectives, almost always the right ones. Suffering had given him, too, a more rounded character, and an elegance of manner which was highly persuasive. And his self-discipline enabled him to display a truly remarkable patience, and purposefulness.
The challenge to Germany, and to Adenauer, was to bring back the personal freedom which the country had enjoyed prior to the National Socialist dictatorship. Compounding that challenge was the fact that Germany was not a completely independent nation-state during the first postwar years.
Western Germany was occupied by the French, British, and American troops who’d liberated it from the Nazis at war’s end. Eastern Germany was brutalized by the Soviet Army which had invaded from the east.
Adenauer, as Chancellor of West Germany, was constrained by the Allied occupational authorities. He was frustrated by a lack of communication with other nations, and by communications from the Allies which were unclear or indirect.
These ambiguities left him in a position of trying to meet expectations of which he was only vaguely aware, or expectations that he respond to situations about which he had been only partially informed.
John McCloy was appointed U.S. High Commissioner for Germany in September 1949. He would work closely with Adenauer; the two were sometimes in harmony and sometimes in conflict. McCloy held the office until August 1952.
McCloy coordinated the treatment of some war criminals. McCloy reasoned that individuals who’d been involved in procurement of industrial supplies like steel and coal were different than the Nazis who’d been directly involved in the atrocities committed against civilians.
Sorting the truly evil from those who’d merely been exploited as part of the German economy, McCloy left the brutal war criminals to face their sentences, but among the those who’d faced tribunals merely because they were part of industry, he pardoned some, and commuted the sentences of others. He restored confiscated property to a few industries.
Adenauer, and public opinion in West Germany generally, encouraged McCloy to consider that the war crimes trials had gotten out of hand. The Nazis who’d committed atrocities and “crimes against humanity” had been tried, convicted, and sentenced. The trials, however, continued. Ordinary Germans were being hauled into court as defendants and charged with “war crimes” when in fact the definition of this phrase was being stretched well beyond its previously established usage.
Thus McCloy, as U.S. High Commissioner, pardoned, or commuted the sentences of, Germans who’d been wrongly convicted as war criminals. Adenauer had worked to inform McCloy about this situation.
The working relationship between Adenauer and McCloy also came into play when Germany joined the Council of Europe.
The Council of Europe was founded in 1949. It is separate from, different than, but similar in nature to, the European Council which is a branch of the European Union. The Council of Europe also predates the EU. Hans-Peter Schwarz writes:
Adenauer was constantly troubled by his ignorance of the hidden intentions of the Western Allies with regard to Germany. In April 1950 he complained bitterly about the situation during a confidential conversation with McCloy. He was expected to make a decision that was vital for his country - here was referring to entry to the Council of Europe - even though, without representation abroad, he could not know what was going on in the world.
Continuing his personal mission to help rebuild Germany, McCloy became a founding member of the American Council on Germany in 1952. His goal was to give West Germany true sovereignty and give Adenauer real governing authority.
Rebuilding and rearming Germany were central to a successful Cold War strategy. The Germans needed to know that the Allies would not randomly round up ordinary German civilians and convict them of imaged war crimes. The men whom McCloy had pardoned, or whose sentences he'd commuted, brought expertise to the rebuilding of Germany's industrial base. This base was needed as part of the defensive effort against the USSR's Cold War threat.
McCloy had reported to Truman that the Germans needed to feel they could help defend themselves against a possible Soviet invasion, and that the U.S. needed Germany as part of the defense of western Europe. The imminent Soviet invasion did not happen, in part because McCloy’s actions convinced the Germans of Allied good will.
