Referring to the photograph (October/November 1983) of the foreign officers who were classmates of mine at the German War College from 1936 to 1938, there were in each class at that military school approximately one hundred and fifty German officers of junior rank (captain and major), and they were organized into ten groups of fifteen officers with one or two foreigners assigned to each group. The group remained intact for the entire two years of the course of instruction, and obviously one became well acquainted with the Germans and the foreign officer who was assigned to a Hörsalle (“study group”). The Italian, Captain Fasano, was with nie, and after graduation I bade him good-bye with reluctance, for he had proved to be a very fine companion—a brilliant mind and a great admirer of our country, America. Captain Fasano was a colonel in World War II and was killed in combat. I know the nationality of each of the foreign officers appearing in your picture (pages 36-37), but I do not know the names of all of them. From left to right, they represent: Japan, Italy, Argentina, Turkey, Bulgaria, Germany, Argentina, China, Argentina, China, U.S.A., and Argentina. You will note that there are no French or British officers as guest students. There were four Argentines, as Hitler at that period was successfully playing up to that country.
Not only did the group of Germans and one or two foreign officers remain together during the entire two years, but also one carefully selected competent German officer remained with the group throughout the period. I was fortunate in having Maj. Ferdinand Jodl as my Hörsalle leiter (“group leader”). He was of Bavarian background and well trained as a tactician and strategist with broad knowledge of history and economics. His older brother was Alfred Jodl, the close personal friend and adviser to Adolf Hitler. A senior general of the Supreme Headquarters, he was hanged as one of the Nuremberg criminals.
A.C. Wedemeyer
General, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Boyds, Md.
Reconstruction
Eric Foner’s revision of the history of Reconstruction in the South in the October/November 1983 issue is not a new view but only a return to the position historians took for a number of years after the Civil War.
I cannot believe Reconstruction was anything but a mistake. It was understandable but still unfortunate. One must hate in order to kill, and therefore war causes hatred. A person’s emotions are not taken off at the conclusion of war like a football player takes off his uniform at the conclusion of the game.
I do not agree that Lincoln had no policy as to how he would handle Reconstruction. He expressed a policy that contemplated normal government, certainly not the creation of military districts with martial law lasting eleven years in some states. The bullet that killed Lincoln and put Thaddeus Stevens in charge was the most tragic fired in all American history.
I do not blame the blacks for anything that happened. They were manipulated by others. Some carpetbag officials returned to the North after Reconstruction very rich men. I have no quarrel with giving black people the vote immediately after the war even though, through no fault of their own, they were completely illiterate.
However, was it wise to disenfranchise all the educated people in the South at the same time the completely uneducated were given the vote?
Was it wise to divide the South into military districts and rule for many years under martial law?
Was it wise to seek to impeach the President for no greater crime than trying to test an unconstitutional law? That law was later held unconstitutional by a 7 to 2 decision of the Supreme Court. Success in that effort would have destroyed the power of the Presidency and completely altered our form of government.
Was it right to steal the election of 1876 and count Hayes in as President by fraud?
Johnson was trying to carry out Lincoln’s policy of reconciliation with the South. If Johnson was wrong, Lincoln was wrong. If Lincoln was right, Johnson was right.
No matter how well intended, those who directed Reconstruction did great harm to the very people they were trying to help. White primaries, poll taxes, et cetera, came about largely because of unfounded fears caused by the Reconstruction experience. Bad feelings between the sections took a hundred years to die out. I believe those feelings were caused not so much by the war as by what followed.
No nation’s history is without mistakes. The greatest mistake of our history was slavery. Probably the next greatest mistake was discrimination against our black citizens for a century after slavery was abolished. Reconstruction, in my opinion, caused a backlash that contributed to discrimination and ranks third among our tragic mistakes.
John S. Patton
Atlanta, Ga.
Eric Foner replies: I have no desire to repeat the argument of my essay on Reconstruction, but Mr. Patton’s letter does contain a number of historical errors that ought to be corrected. Military rule and martial law lasted for only a brief period during Reconstruction—in no state did they continue for “eleven years.” Thaddeus Stevens was never “in charge” of Reconstruction—more moderate Republicans determined policy throughout the period. “All the educated people in the South” were not disfranchised. The Fourteenth Amendment barred certain Confederates from holding office, and a few Southern states prohibited some “rebels” from voting, but these restrictions were soon lifted and never extended to a large proportion of white Southerners. And there is no question that had a fair election been held in 1876 (that is, had blacks not been subject to violent intimidation to prevent them from voting), Hayes would have won comfortably.
Implicit in the letter, however, is an even more fundamental misconception. It is that Reconstruction poisoned the harmonious relations that otherwise would have existed between Southern whites and blacks, and led to the imposition of “white primaries, poll taxes, et cetera.” The fact is that in 1865 and 1866, when Andrew Johnson restored Southern whites to unchallenged political power, a vast array of discriminatory legislation was enacted, designed to exclude blacks from political and civil rights and place them, economically, in a situation not all that different from slavery. These “Black Codes” were adopted well before the advent of Radical Reconstruction; they can hardly be attributed to a backlash against it.
Hollywood Witness
Congratulations on your December issue! For obvious reasons, I was particularly interested in the section “A Hollywood Retrospective.” Kevin Brownlow’s report on the very early days was extremely good and, so far as I can tell, from 1916 onward, absolutely correct in all details.
However, the article relating to Warner Brothers, although excellent, does leave an impression that most of the films made during the early 1930s were of the hard-hitting, tough, gangster type.
This, however, is only partially true. I was under contract to them at the time. Certainly the tough (or “frontpage”) type of film was a Warner Brothers specialty, but it must be remembered that the company also produced more conventional comedies and dramas, all the John Barrymore, George Arliss, Richard Barthelmess, Bette Davis, Kay Francis pictures and so on.
Although, for example, I myself was in Little Caesar (a film you rightly mention as starting off the gangster fad), I was also in six light comedy-romances with Loretta Young, another with Bette Davis, one each with Joan Blondell and Billie Dove. I did three or four melodramas but also an adaptation of a Somerset Maugham novel.
Then, too, Leslie Howard and I were in the very serious adaptation of the dramatic play Outward Bound. I was pleased to be in the first, and certainly one of the best, of the World War I pictures, Dawn Patrol, starring Richard Barthelmess.
In other words, to give the old devils, the Warner brothers, their due, it should be noted that they tried to do other types of movies along with their gangster ones.
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
New York, N.Y.
One Day’s Difference
In “The Time Machine” in your December issue, you indicate that George Washington said farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern on “Friday, the fourth” of December 1783. This must have required some doing, since up here in Connecticut December 4, 1783, was a Thursday.
Albert E. Waugh
Storrs, Conn.
One Day’s Difference
It turns out it was Thursday in New York, too, though Douglas Southall Freeman’s biography of Washington, which was our source, said Friday.
—The Editors
Correction
In our February/March 1984 issue, the portfolio “The Flowering of American Flower Painting” is excerpted from a book, Reflections of Nature: Flowers in American Art, by Ella Foshay. We incorrectly stated the name of the publisher. The book was actually published by Alfred A. Knopf and serves as a catalog for an exhibit of the same name at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
