§ 3.15 p.m.
§ LORD RUSSELL OF LIVERPOOL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government to state the reasons for their recent refusal Ito allow Otto John to enter this country for a short visit. The noble Lord said: I beg to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I chose the procedure of an Unstirred Question to enable me to have an opportunity of explaining to your Lordships why I have put this Question down for answer, and also in the hope that the noble Lord 75 who is to reply on behalf of Her Majesty's Government will be able to deal with some of the points I wish to raise quite shortly. If his Answer does nothing else, t hope it will at least explain to your Lordships why Otto John is now considered to be an undesirable alien, when it is not so long ago that he was considered a trusted and helpful friend.
§ It would appear necessary, having regard to the decision of Her Majesty's Government, that I should remind the Government of Otto John's work against Hitler during the war, and long before it, and of the co-operation which he gave to authorities in this country both during the last months of the war and for some time afterwards. He wasone of a group of young men, most of them lawyers who worked in the ministerial offices of Berlin. who joined up with the more senior opponents of Hitler at the time of the Fritsch-Blomberg crisis in order to obtain von Fritsch's acquittal and his reinstatement as Commander-in-Chief. It was from this small beginning that the anti-Hitler resistance movement had its birth.
§ Those who held up their heads above the crowd in Hitler's Germany, when it is considered that the Third Reich had something like 80 million inhabitants, were unbelievably few. Besides Otto John there were—and I make no apology to your Lordships for mentioning their names—Fabian Von Schlabrendorff; the brothers Bonhoeffer, Dietrich and Klaus, von Donhanyi, RÜdiger Schleicher, and Otto John's own brother Hans. Their names should be remembered with pride, for they never compromised in thought or in deed with Hitler or National Socialism. Not only did they never join the Party, and therefore showed that it was possible in Hitler's Germany to abstain from joining the Party, but they opposed Hitler and all his works from the earliest possible moment. All but two of them paid the inevitable price, after the failure of the July 20 plot against Hitler's life, with their lives. Are they remembered?—I do not mean in this country, but in Germany. I am afraid not very often; and frequently when they are remembered, it is as traitors and not as heroes. In this connection, is there not food for thought in the fact that the anti-Communist rising in East Germany in October, 1953, is 76 celebrated in Western Germany as a national day, whereas July 20, 1944, is not celebrated as a national day?
§ Otto John, as many of your Lordships, I know, are aware, escaped to Spain, and thence via Lisbon to this country. When he arrived on that occasion he was not refused admission, but was welcomed with open arms. From then onwards until some time after the war he co-operated greatly with the British authorities both here and in occupied Germany. In 1950, during the Allied Occupation, he was appointed, doubtless upon our recommendation, to a post in the office which was to have charge of the defence of the Federal Constitution of the West German Republic—something akin, I believe, to our M.I.5. That was never a popular appointment for many Germans, particularly Germans like General Gehlen and Dr. Globke, who held and still hold important offices in the Adenauer Government; and when John went into East Germany on the tenth anniversary of the July 20 plot against Hitler, it was General Reinhardt Gehlen who said of him: "Once a traitor, always a traitor.
§
Two and a half years later, after his return from East Germany, he was tried and convicted by the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe for what was described in the charge sheet as traitorous conspiracy, and was sentenced to four years imprisonment. There was, however, not a scintilla of evidence that John had intended to commit treason or that he was on that occasion a traitor. What is more, the senior member of the court which tried him, Dr. Geier, was at pains, in his summing-up. to say this about John—I will quote his words:
The accused never had any intention of serving Communism and he was not a criminal in the eyes of the law.
§ Many of the German newspapers criticised the trial at the time.
§ It is difficult to understand how a person who is pronounced by his judges not to be a criminal in the eyes of the law could possibly be sentenced to four years imprisonment by the Supreme Court of any country which had a real appreciation or regard for justice, more particularly when the prosecution itself had asked only for a sentence of not more than two years, which seems to me 77 to indicate that they did not regard the matter with any great seriousness.
§
I am going to ask your Lordships to bear with me while I read a short paragraph from a book which I wrote in 1956. I hope that I am in order in doing so, hut it expresses what I want to say in language better than I could do it again. It was a book called Though the Heavens Fall. It was in a chapter dealing with the offence of treason, particularly in regard to the famous cases of Colonel Lynch, Sir Roger Casement and "Lord Haw-Haw". I happened to deal with the case of Otto John because I wrote in between the time that John went to Germany and before he returned from East Germany. With your Lordships' permission I will read a short extract:
The crux of the offence of treason is the intention behind the overt acts, which must have been done ' traitorously ', and whether a person who has committed treason deserves the title of traitor or patriot is often a bone of contention. The question is being argued today in Germany with all vehemence. Were those who took part in the unsuccessful attempt on Hitler's life on 20th July 1944, and paid for it with their lives, martyred patriots or traitorous criminals? Those who take the former view have their President, Herr Huess, as their leader; but there are many others, not all of them pro-Nazi, who take the opposite view, and when Otto John, who had been one of the July conspirators, went over to the East, these were the first to point the finger of scorn and say, ' Once a traitor, always a traitor.' It may well he that anti-Hitler conspirators were guilty of Hochverrat, or High Treason, in attempting to overthrow their Government from within, but they were not traitors to the Fatherland. Hitler's Third Reich had long forfeited all right to loyalty, and to act against Hitler was to act for Germany.
I do not see how Her Majesty's Government could possibly take the view that John's visit to East Germany was treasonable, or even criminal, having regard to the wording of the judgment of the court which tried him in December, 1956. I sincerely hope that the Government do not share the view of the Germans that he was a traitor in 1944. Why, then, has he been declared an undesirable alien and refused entry to this country? He could not possibly have done any harm while he was here, and in any event steps could easily have been taken to see that he did not. I trust, in view of what I have said—and I must apologise to your Lordships again for having taken up so much of your time that Her Majesty's Government will now reverse a decision
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which was at once unreasonable, unnecessary, unjust and, above all, ungrateful.
§ 3.25 p.m.
§ Lord CHESHAMMy Lords, it was last year that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary decided that in view of Dr. John's record he was not a person to whom leave to land in this country should be given. I think it may he of assistance if I also remind your Lordships of Dr. John's recent history, which my right honourable friend took into consideration in coming to his conclusion.
He held, as we have heard, the office of President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Incidentally, he did not receive that appointment at any instigation of ours: he was appointed by the West German authorities. When holding that office on July20. 1954, he went to East Berlin accompanied by a physician. Dr. Wohlgemuth. Shortly after his disappearance he broadcast on the East German radio and appeared at a Press conference, sponsored by the Committee for German Unity, in which he explained the reasons which had led him to go over to the East: and thereafter he continued to engage actively in various fields of propaganda under the auspices of the East German Government. Seventeen months later he returned to West Germany and, as we have already heard, was shortly afterwards arrested. After a period of preliminary investigation, he was brought to trial by the Federal High Court in Karlsruhe on November 12, 1956. As we have heard, he was found guilty of treacherous conspiracy and was sentenced to four years penal servitude.
He was released on July 26, 1958, after he had been granted the customary remission of one-third of his sentence for good conduct, and also because the period that he had been detained in prison while awaiting trial had been taken into account. Shortly afterwards, a warning was conveyed to Dr. John that if he were to travel to the United Kingdom he would not be granted admission. This decision was still in operation when Dr. John decided to travel to this country on February 10.
I simply cannot entertain the noble Lord's suggestion that the verdict against Dr. John should or could be disregarded on the basis that the German Supreme Court came to the wrong conclusion, and 79 that justice was not done. It may well be that the criminal procedure of the German courts differs in a number of respects from our own, but the German Federal Republic is one of the countries of the free democratic world, and I cannot accept the suggestion that justice for Dr. John was not to be expected from those who held high office in the Judiciary there. I think, therefore, that your Lordships would certainly not expect me to enter into any discussion as to the merits or demerits of the trial of Dr. John. In conclusion, I might add that more recent legal proceedings against Dr. Wohlgemuth did not serve to cast a doubt on the justice of Dr. John's conviction.
§ 3.28 p.m.
§ VISCOUNT TEMPLEWOODMy Lords, perhaps I may say a word in support of the Government, for this reason. When I was Ambassador in Madrid Dr. John came to stay with me—or, rather, we put him up in the Embassy. He was then claiming to be in a position to negotiate a peace with the Allies. As Ambassador I could not go into a question of that kind, and what I did was to facilitate his journey to England. I then gathered that he was claiming all sorts of things to which he was not entitled. Anyhow, the fact remains that his approach to the British Government came to nothing.
I formed the view, although I did not actually talk to him myself, that he was one of the many people who were drifting into Madrid at that time claiming to be in a position to negotiate this or that settlement, and really, at the back of it all, being chiefly engaged in making themselves important. That being so I fully accepted the view of the Government in London that his mission was not really a serious one, and I was not in the least surprised when I heard afterwards that he had been coming and going between Western and Eastern Germany and that both sides had equally distrusted him. That being so, I feel that the British Government were fully justified, with knowledge probably much greater than my own in taking the action they did, particularly after the verdict of the German Courts, and in refusing to give him a visa for entry into the United Kingdom.