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592 Robert G. Moeller a reformed army could no longer be structured around models of ‘patriarchal subordination’ and ‘the power of fathers’. In the new German army ‘partners with the same worth as citizens are on the same level.’ 72 For Adenauer, entry into NATO, rearmament, and the suspension of the Allied occupation statute were essential to achieving West German’s equal rights (Gleichberechtigung) in the international arena. ‘We want to be sovereign in our own country, no longer an object, but a subject of world politics,’ 73 the chancellor explained. The relations of equality evoked by Baudissin and Adenauer were also on display in KMG, where ‘the power of fathers’ was out of place and where mothers—subordinated to no patriarchs—confronted the fathers in military command as equals. Giehse, whose formidable Mutter Bergmann won her praise from critics as a ‘genuine Mother Courage’, 74 faced the general, Ewald Balser, whose reputation was as ‘the father figure of the theatre.’ 75 The relations of equality in difference captured in the film echoed throughout parliamentary debates over the reform of the Civil Code, which featured a model of companionate marriage and the partnership of husband and wife, characterized by no ‘patriarchal subordination.’ The mutual respect required by the new German army could emerge from a dialogue between fathers and mothers, equal partners in determining what was best for West Germany’s youth. In a series of interviews with former officers, published in 1951, Adelbert Weinstein presented the case for an Armee ohne Pathos that would scrupulously avoid excessive zeal and ‘excessive ardour’ (Überschwung). The ‘innere Führung’—which has been translated as ‘inner leadership’, ‘moral leadership’ and ‘moral education’—of the new military forces described at length by Baudissin should be based on reason, self-control, and a moral order that filled the individual before the individual filled the uniform. It was essential to reconstruct the ‘right traditional attitude and live it the way that suits our times.’ 76 KMG suggested that there was no shortage of positive traditions on which reformers could draw. Good men had borne the uniform of the Wehrmacht, but in a democratic Germany, even the best men needed some help. Mothers—at the core of German families—were the ones who could provide it. Among the lessons that mothers had to offer was a keen sense of when it was rational to violate orders. The men they confront complain that they are 72 Schubert, Wolf Graf von Baudissin, pp. 215 16. 73 Richard Tüngel, ‘Wir sind keine Phäaken mehr’, Die Zeit (7 Oct. 1954), quoted in Ehlert, ‘Innenpolitische Auseinandersetzungen’, p. 270. 74 Dirk Henning, ‘Eine Mutter mit Courage’, Schwäbische Landeszeitung (9 July 1955). 75 ‘Vaterfigur des Theaters: Zum Tode des Schauspielers Ewald Balser’, Frankfurter Neue Press (18 April 1978). 76 Count Wolf Baudissin, ‘The New German Army’, Foreign Affairs, 34, 1 (1955), pp. 1 13, quotation p. 9, translated as ‘Die neue deutsche Bundeswehr’, in Schubert, Wolf Graf von Baudissin; see also Large, Germans to the Front, p. 177.
What Did You Do in the War, Mutti ? 593 helpless, unable to alter circumstances beyond their control. For the women to expect them to challenge these conditions is crazy. Just as irrational is the very presence of women at the front, and again and again, men in uniform tell Mutter Bergmann and her band that they have completely lost their senses. But the women quickly prove that they are not crazy. Rather, the situation in which they find themselves is insane, and they confront men with a female rationality that demonstrates even to commanding officers how to exercise better judgement. In many areas, mothers know best. In the first variant of the film’s conclusion, unavailable for domestic consumption, the mothers, left behind, sigh ‘they have forgotten us, they will always forget us.’ The discourse of West German military reform in the early 1950s made it clear that mothers would not be forgotten. Distinctive female characteristics defined the basis for women’s claims to an equality grounded in difference, and it was precisely these characteristics that established their authority to assist in shaping the men who would defend the nation. Early in the film, the exasperated general sputters to his subordinate that ‘no general in the world can be thinking about [mothers]’ while giving the order to attack, and when he meets Bergmann and the others, Dornberg fumes, ‘I have other things to do than worry about women.’ But by the end of the film, military men are listening to what women have to say—just as military reformers were acknowledging the part that the home would play in shaping the ‘citizen in uniform.’ In debates over rearmament, Adenauer insisted that ‘German militarism is dead’, and Soviet claims that an armed Germany ‘would once more set the world in flames’ were completely unfounded. 77 The mothers of KMG were there to ensure that the military did not become militaristic and that boys with matches did not get into trouble. *** War films from the mid-1950s told viewers what they already knew. 78 KMG did not create completely new frameworks for understanding the Second World War; rather, it expressed meanings that had evolved since the war’s end. An analysis of KMG also suggests how reflections on the war became a medium through which West Germans could better understand their present. When West Germans told stories about the shooting war that ended in May 1945 ‘ten years after’, they were also telling stories about the Cold War that followed. The men who appeared in Wehrmacht uniforms in the films of the mid-1950s became participants in political debates over whether West Germans should put on the uniform of the Bundeswehr and become active members in a Cold War western military alliance. The addition of women to the story complicated the mix. The maternalism they displayed was 77 VDB, 2. Deutscher Bundestag, 61. Sitzung (15 Dec. 1954), p. 3134. 78 Linda Schulte-Sasse makes the same point about films during the years of Nazi rule. See Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema (Durham, N.C., 1996), p. 31.
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