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The Dartmouth
July 12, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

In Defense of Schroeder

To the Editor:

Probably we should all be grateful to Daniel Knecht '05 for writing about Germany in his Sept. 26 column in The Dartmouth, "Something's Rotten in the State of Germany," without ever mentioning skinheads and only once implying that the country might soon be ripe for a Nazi takeover. That's better than what we're used to from the New York Times. But still his column was -- well, sophomoric.

Knecht takes on so many issues with such dudgeon, it's hard to know just where to begin. Ostensibly he is attacking only the "rotten," "selfish" and "inept" Gerhard Schroeder for being "a liar" and "a backstabber," but then he seems to extend his critique to much of the rest of the country. At first Edmund Stoiber appears an exception, but he turns out to be guilty of "harping on" issues and producing "garbled verbiage."

What was Schroeder's crime? He dared "to criticize Bush's scheme to attack Iraq" and "declared that he would not let the American military use German bases to launch attacks upon Saddam's evil empire." According to Knecht, this "chest-pounding" increased when Schroeder "enlisted his ministers to step up the barrage of verbal trash against America." His only example of the latter is the case of Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, who claimed that President Bush is raising the issue of Iraq to divert attention away from his domestic problems. This idea is hardly new or shocking. Many Americans have advanced it, including members of the Senate and commentators like James Pinkerton. Daeubler-Gmelin -- probably falsely -- denies the other statement attributed to her, that Hitler employed the same tactic in 1933, but just the accusation of making this comparison was enough to force her resignation.

Knecht is correct in saying that Schroeder used the war issue to win the election. Stoiber, his opponent, also objected to Bush's plans, but not as strongly, and so the SPD and the Greens were able to attract pacifist voters to their side. It is also true that Schroeder had been in trouble over the issue of unemployment. But Knecht's picture of that situation is misleading. He may be right that the unemployment rate is an "astronomical" 14 percent in Berlin (which he calls "Schroeder's lair" -- as Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up). In fact, in all of the former East Germany, it's 17.7 percent, in contrast to the more populous West's 7.8 percent. Altogether, according to the Bundesanstalt fr Arbeit, Germany has 9.6 percent unemployment -- still too high, but not astronomical. More important, it is not, as Knecht claims, higher than when Kohl left office. It's just that Schroeder, like his predecessor, couldn't find a way to lower it much (By the way, the unemployment rate was not "teetering at 17 percent" when Hitler took power; it was around 33 percent).

Some other points require comment. Knecht states that the three hijackers who lived in Hamburg collected "unemployment checks from the profligate German social welfare system." In fact, they were registered students. Or is he referring to those "thousands of [other] terrorists [who] are currently inhabiting the German countryside"? Thousands? Knecht also maintains that "the German Justice Department withheld vital evidence about Zacarias Moussaoui regarding the World Trade Center attack to prevent his execution." I am unable to find any source for this claim.

But most disturbing is Knecht's assumption that disagreeing with Bush's "war plans" constitutes an "affront" to America or even back-stabbing. On both sides of the Atlantic there are many thoughtful people who are well disposed toward the United States but object to Bush's approach.