PAUWELS

JACQUES PAUWELS—Marx, a philosopher who famously urged fellow philosophers not just to interpret, but to change the world, was a frequent guest at Le Cygne. And it is quite possible that he wrote parts of The Communist Manifesto, in which he predicted the demise of capitalism, in this tavern, named after a bird associated with the god of the oracle of Delphi, Apollo and therefore with poetry, philosophy, and prophesy. On December 31, 1847, he is known to have celebrated New Year’s Eve here in the company of German comrades.

JACQUES PAUWELS—It cannot be denied that Dresden, like any other major German city, contained militarily important industrial installations, and that at least some of these installations were located in the inner city and were therefore wiped out in the raid, but this does not logically lead to the conclusion that the attack was planned for this purpose. Hospitals and churches were also destroyed, and numerous Allied POWs who happened to be in the city were killed, but nobody argues that the raid was organized to bring that about. Similarly, several Jews and members of Germany’s anti-Nazi resistance, awaiting deportation and/or execution, were able to escape from prison during the chaos caused by the bombing, but no one claims that this was the objective of the raid. There is no logical reason, then, to conclude that the destruction of an unknown number of industrial installations of greater or lesser military importance was the raison d’être of the raid. The destruction of Dresden’s industry – like the liberation of a handful of Jews – was nothing more than an unplanned “by-product” of the operation.

The Yalta Agreements, then, did not award the Soviet Union the monopoly of influence in Eastern Europe, that is, the kind of exclusive influence that the Americans and the British already enjoyed, with Stalin’s silent approval, in Western Europe, even though they assigned “controlling influence” in Eastern Europe to the USSR.

The Yalta Agreements thus represented a considerable success for the Western Allies. It has often been said of Churchill that he had grave misgivings about the “concessions” that Roosevelt allegedly had made in the Crimean resort. In reality, he was totally euphoric when the conference ended,[19] and with good reason, since the British and Americans had fared far better at Yalta than they would have dared to hope when it started.

JACQUES PAUWELS—There was no épuration sauvage before or during the Liberation, and the allegedly major purge that was to follow the Liberation itself turned out to be a charade. The elite of the French state as well as the private sector had profited handsomely from collaboration and had good reason to fear an advent to power of its enemies in the Resistance. But in the wake of the Liberation, the radicals of the Resistance did not come to power; the elite received little or no punishment for its collaborationist sins; its cherished capitalist social-economic order remained intact (in spite of some reforms); and the elite itself retained most of its power and privileges. For this undeserved blessing, they had to thank the Americans liberators of the once grande Nation, as well as Charles de Gaulle, the general who aspired to make France great again.

JACQUES PAUWELS—The fact that fraternizations were officially strictly prohibited, apparently made them even more fascinating and appealing to soldiers. It is probably thus that we can interpret a myth that enjoyed an inordinate amount of success among soldiers of both sides throughout the war. Countless soldiers were convinced that, somewhere in the no man’s land, in abandoned trenches and preferably deep under the ground, and thus beyond the reach of projectiles and of officers, beastlike deserters of all armies dwelled together in a kind of permanent state of fraternization. By night they would rob the dead and wounded, seek food, etc. They became such a threat to the troops that eventually the army brass ordered them to be exterminated with gas.