AS BARBIE ERODES FRANCE S COMPLACENCY, HE SPURS W. GERMANY S

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370088-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2010
• Sequence Number: 88
• Publication Date: February 25, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370088-6
ARTICLE P EAF
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON POST
25 FEBP UAP Y 1983
As Barbie .erodes France's
Complacency, He Spars
W,.Gertnany's
By William Drozdiak
W snington Post Foreign Service
BONN-An episode of the 13-
part series, "Europe Under the Swas-
tika." was drawing to a close as the
television screen filled with a collage
of grisly corpses who were victimized
by fellow Frenchmen in the days of
the Nazi occupation.
The multitude of informers and
deputy torturers who abetted the
Nazi rape of their own country, the
German narrator implied, had. been
forgiven or forgotten-"as is always
the case in France."
. After marking the 50th anniver-
sary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power
with agonizing self-appraisal, West
Germans are watching with a touch
of schadenfreude, or malignant de-
light, as the French cope with tales
of collaboration that have emerged
since the arrest and deportation to
France of Klaus Barbie, known as
the Nazi "Butcher of Lyons."
Last month France and West Ger-
many celebrated 20 years since sign-
ing a friendship treaty with an ex-
change of state visits by their two
leaders that hailed the countries'
intimate economic and political ties.
Yet, despite the remarkable' meta-
morphosis involved in shedding dec-
ades of enmity in favor of a close
alliance, old suspicions and resent-
ments from the Nazi years still per-
colate in both countries.
West Germans disdain France's
lingering self-righteousness toward
the war, particularly the reluctance
to debunk myths of French resis-
tance. And more than any of West
Germany's neighbors, France fears a
German nationalistic resurgence . in
the guise of a swing toward neutral-
ism, a notion that evokes exasper=
ation in West German political c r
Iles. r.?
When Barbie was escorted ;ahoard,
a -plane to France two iveeks.-dgo.
after decades .of exile in Bolivia,. the
French press worried'tha_t a-resur-'
rectictn of outrage :9ver _ : B rbie's
crime might spoil the warm-climate
of relations so recently toasted, in:
Paris and Bonn..
Rather than recoil in shame over
poignant tales`. of- ati`~ocities, many
West Germans' fastened'. on, accounts -l'
of those Frenchmen who facilitated
Barbie's notorious reign in Lyons.
"France, too, must now preoccupy
itself with its unconquered past,"
wrote Joseph Rovan in the political
weekly Die Zeit. "The dimensions of
collaboration should he totally un-
covered .... The police and the
gendarmes who gave away the .Jews,
and sometimes members of the re-
sistance, to the.Germans; all these
good, upright Frenchmen, without
whom a few hundred Nazi officials
in France would not have been able
to do as much. as they did." -
German television programs since
Barbie's arrest have.carried a? theme:
that France should start `to came to,.
terms with its si)rdid'~chapters of the,
war, just:as NV st- ermany has with
a spate of- programs and exhibits
analyzing the Nazi era thI year : in-.
contrast, to the tiriftu4 1ac'k ut in
the early postwar years
STAT
`..The absence of :breast=beating iii'
West Germany-over the Barbie case,
despite accounts that he worked for
German as well. as-U.S. intelligence
services while -iii ? exile and was- not
sought for extradition, by Bonn -until
last March, underscores the convic-
tion among younger West Germans
that they cannot be held responsible
for horrors perpetrated by the Nazis
that are beyond their imagination.
At the same time, many West
Germans resent the lectures re-
sounding from Paris about the dan-
gers of a drift toward neutralism or
away from the Atlantic Alliance in
the vain search for a reunification
with East Germany.
In a powerful speech before the
West German Bundestag last month,
French President Francois Mitter-
rand assailed "all those who would
bet on a decoupling" between Eu-
rope and the United States and
warned that such people risked cre-
?ating a military imbalance with the
East Bloc that would threaten peace.
.Mitterrand endorsed stationing
~~ . new. Pershing II and cruise missiles
in West Germany this year if U.S.-
Soviet arms control talks fail to
achieve agreement. He also ruled out
any consideration of France's nucle-
.:O "deterrent force in the Geneva
-Malts.
Differences over. those two key
issues have badly divided French
and West German Social Democrats,
who have been striving to encourage
compromises that would keep new
missiles out of West Germany.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100370088-6