Frederician Revival

Wilhelm von HohenzoIIern, 21 years ago a beaten warlord and exiled Kaiser, today a grumpy old man on a cane, passed his 81st birthday last week quietly at Doom in The Netherlands. Nazi Germany took no official notice of the anniversary. Instead it turned back 228 years and celebrated the birth of Wilhelm II's great-great-granduncle, Frederick II. An intellectual, artistic youth whose stern father had to smack him around for years to make a man of him, Frederick II built up Prussia into a first-class European power. He became "the Great" by daring to take on, with backing only from England, the combined forces of Austria, France, Russia, Sweden and Saxony who wished to punish him for his rape of Silesia.

In the Seven Years War (1756-63), rushing his forces first to one front, then to another, by forced marches, repeatedly attacking when he was fearsomely outnumbered, following defeats with raids and sorties yet more daring, he beat back the enemies that ringed him, traded them death for death until 500,000 men had died on both sides and he had only 60,000 men left. Then Elisabeth of Russia died, and her son, Peter III, made peace, returning Pomerania to Prussia. That made the Swedes withdraw. France, bled white by England's attack on her colonies, retreated beyond the Rhine, and exhausted Austria left Frederick the master of Silesia.

Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels keynoted the Frederick II theme last week in a speech at Posen, in which he quoted the great ruler's retort to his generals when they refused to follow him: "Then I will continue the war alone." This savored of an ultimatum from the Nazi Party to those German generals who are known to have obstructed Adolf Hitler's plans for a westward Blitzkrieg last autumn. Promptly. Col. General Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the Armies, affirmed the military's allegiance in an article for the Voelkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party organ. Wrote he: "Whoever is National Socialist follows Frederician soldierdom."

"The great King seeks battle. He prefers to attack. In this, four elements predominate--speed of movement, surprise, concentration of forces at a decisive point, and thrust into flank and rear."

Some observers read this as a fresh prediction of offensive action soon by the German Army. Others, reading further, construed the Brauchitsch piece as warning of a long war, for he continued: "

Rightly we speak ever and again in our day of the Frederician spirit. It was this spirit which filled every officer, corporal and man, which made the Army follow the King for seven long years and which enabled it to make ever new exertions. It permitted a smaller number to triumph over a larger one. . . ."

"It is better not to lose many words over it. It must be lived in small and great things, in daily as well as extraordinary affairs, in peace as in war."

Further to publicize the Frederician revival, Germany was flooded with three-headed posters bracketing Frederick the Great, Bismarck and A. Hitler, who likes to be styled, as Frederick was, "First Soldier".

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