BY BARRY SHEPPARD
& CAROLINE LUND
We met Heinrich Fleischer by accident, at a retirement home in Minneapolis while visiting Caroline's father. Fleischer was born in Germany in 1912, where he studied to be an organist. His lifelong profession was as a performer on that instrument, as well as a teacher of it.
Under the Nazis, Fleischer became a socialist: "I was sympathetic to the Socialists and the Communists because Hitler was against them, and I was against Hitler... Then in 1937, when I was in a bookshop in Leipzig, the owner, who apparently thought I was trustworthy and would be interested, dug out a copy of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. This pamphlet was banned by the Hitler regime; possession of it could result in imprisonment or execution." By the end of World War II, Fleischer was a Marxist.
We asked him how he felt after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "I felt the same horror as I did during the December 1943 American fire-bombing of Leipzig during the war. I felt then like I imagine the people in the World Trade Center felt at the moment the planes hit the buildings. I was lying in bed in a fifth floor apartment when the window blew out at 2 am. The bombing was so intense that it looked like daylight outside. There were thousands of planes. I was paralysed with terror and fear. I could only think, 'Someone in a plane above me wants to kill me. Why?'.
"The next day I met a professor of theology, a neighbour. He said, 'We are very grateful to God. No one in my family died.' How could he not feel sad and horrified that 10,000 people were killed? His god is either good but powerless, or is evil, or is good but doesn't care about people. When I heard about September 11, that is what I remembered.
"Bush prays to his god very often. Those who attacked the Twin Towers prayed to their god. Israel's Sharon prays to his god. Which god is it?"
Speaking in February, a month before the US invasion of Iraq, Fleischer said to us: "Today seems very much like August 1939 in Germany. Everyone knew war was coming. The German people were skeptical about the need for war, as many in the US are today. Hitler claimed that tiny Poland threatened not only Germany but all of Europe, and Germany had to take action to defend itself and Europe. Bush claims that tiny Iraq threatens the United States — as ridiculous a claim as Hitler's regarding Poland — and its neighbours in the Middle East. Bush goes Hitler one better by claiming Iraq threatens the whole world.
"Hitler believed he had a special mission from 'Providence', like Mohammed, to lead the Aryan-Germanic race to dominate the world, an empire with Berlin as its centre. Bush's mission seems to be to impose US domination of the world, under the slogans of free markets and democracy, an empire with Washington or Wall Street as its centre. Both Hitler and Bush claimed God was on their side, and had anointed their respective nations as superior to any other, which justified their 'missions'.
"There are other similarities. Hitler's army was fully mobilised at the Polish border, as the US army is mobilised on Iraq's. The Reichstag [German parliament] had given Hitler unlimited extraordinary power in 1933, and the US Congress voted to give Bush extraordinary power, even if not on the same scale as Hitler got, with the adoption of the USAPATRIOT Act after September 11, 2001.
"Mussolini followed Hitler's lead and Blair follows Bush's, like the character Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni. Goering initially warned against an attack on Poland, as did Powell regarding Iraq, but both then gave in.
"Both Hitler's invasion and the coming attack on Iraq made Germany and now the United States hated around the world.
"The German people knew the war against Poland would be short, perhaps only three or four weeks, with the gigantic German war machine pitted against the greatly inferior Polish army. Victory was inevitable, though not particularly 'heroic'. But thinking Germans feared what would come after. And they were right. After the war against Poland, came the declaration of war by Britain and France, making the war into a European war.
"When Hitler, drunk with power and victory after the defeat of France, invaded Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Soviet Union and finally declared war on the United States, he made it a world war.
"The situation is different today, but where will the invasion and occupation of Iraq lead? The military might of the US will undoubtedly prevail over the weak and ill-equipped Iraqi army. But what happens next? Already the Bush administration has threatened Syria, Iran and North Korea. US bases have been established in former Soviet republics in central Asia as a result of the attack on Afghanistan.
"Former Warsaw Pact nations have joined NATO. Russia is becoming encircled, and the prospect is for a massive long-term US armed occupation force in Iraq on Russia's borders. How long can Russia remain passive in the face of such provocations?"
We asked Fleischer what future he saw for the children of today and tomorrow. "It could be very bad", he said. "Not only Russia, but China too is now more encircled with the US bases in central Asia. Both are atomic powers. There could be a nuclear war if America continues to behave like it is now. My feeling is that Washington thinks it can survive a nuclear war, and this is very dangerous."
After the war against Iraq started, Fleischer sent us a letter: 'Monday, March 17, 9 pm — I just heard and saw George W. Bush. It reminded me of Hitler's speech in the Reichstag on September 1, 1939.
"While not the speech referred to, the following proclamation Hitler issued to the army on September 1, 1939 was undoubtedly similar: 'The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I desired, and has appealed to arms. Germans in Poland are persecuted with bloody terror and driven from their houses. A series of violations of the frontier, intolerable to a great Power, prove that Poland is no longer willing to respect the frontier of the Reich. In order to put an end to this lunacy, I have no other choice than to meet force with force from now on. The German Army will fight the battle for the honour and the vital rights of reborn Germany with hard determination. I expect that every soldier, mindful of the great traditions of eternal German soldiery, will ever remain conscious that he is a representative of the National-Socialist Greater Germany. Long live our people and our Reich!'"
"Of course, there is a big difference between the situation in the US today and Germany in 1939", Fleischer told us in February. "Germany was a fascist dictatorship. The organisations of the working class, the Communist and Socialist parties and the trade unions, had been smashed. The Nazis crushed dissent in all areas of society.
"In the US, demonstrations against the war are still legal. I have been tremendously happy to see student activity, anti-war newspapers, and the massive antiwar actions in the United States and throughout the world. It's good that people all over the world can see that there is a difference between the American people and the government.
"This new worldwide anti-war movement, with its vanguard detachment in the belly of the beast, has become a force against Washington's imperial ambitions. If enough resistance is put up in the streets throughout the world and especially in the US, and by the Iraqi people and the people of other countries attacked by the US in the future in its unending war, Washington can be held in check. To join this fight is the moral imperative of our times."
After the second world war, Fleischer remained in Leipzig in the Soviet occupied zone, where he held an important position as an organist and instructor, until 1948, when he was able to secretly go to the West. He said that he felt "grateful that the USSR defeated Hitler's army and liberated us Germans from the barbaric, stupid and corrupt oppression of his gangsters. True, it had the help of England and later America, but basically the USSR won the war.
"I had no professional complaint against the Soviet administration during the three years of my work in Leipzig. It was always helpful and encouraging in our musical endeavours, and so was the German sub-administration in Leipzig. At that time and later, orchestras and opera companies were established in East Germany. We could play what we wanted, unlike under the Nazis where 'Jewish' composers like Mendelssohn and Mahler or avant-garde composers were forbidden.
"I supported the social changes introduced, such as the breaking up of the large estates of the Junkers [the landed aristocracy], the giving of the land to small farmers and the formation of collective farms, and the nationalisation of the factories. Also, there was a free medical system and free education.
"But I didn't like the dictatorship and oppression. You had to look over your shoulder when talking to anyone. The political police were everywhere. I wanted to read whatever newspapers from whatever country I wanted. I also wanted to travel, to see more of the world, and to practice my profession in other countries. Travel outside the Soviet zone, which later became the German Democratic Republic, was prohibited."
Fleischer managed to get to the US in 1949. In the subsequent decades, he taught in a number of colleges and universities, ending up at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He has performed on the organ in cities throughout the United States and Europe. He joined the Socialist Labor Party. More recently he became a supporter of a small split from the SLP, the New Union Party, based in Minneapolis.
From Green Left Weekly, June 11, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.