The National Committee of "Free Germany"

FAIN: FT-10844-70

Kai Schoenhals
Kenyon College (Gambier, OH 43022-5020)

Study of the "National Committee 'Free German'" (NKFD), an anti-fascist organization set up in July, 1943 by a group of German soldiers, officers, writers, and former Reichstag deputies who were then Russian prisoners. By the time the KNFD was dissolved in November, 1945, it included tens of thousands of German soldiers and officers and had established chapters in many European nations as well as the U.S. and Mexico. The NKFD never achieved its chief goal, the overthrow of Hitler and the withdrawal of all German troops from occupied Europe, but it did shorten the war by persuading thousands of German troops to surrender rather than fight to the end. No books and few articles on the NKFD have appeared in English; the many books in German are often quite slanted--East German historians tend to magnify its accomplishments and minimize the fact that many soldiers joined to obtain better living conditions in Russian POW camps; West German historians, on the other hand, tend to dismiss the NKFD as a collection traitors and dupes.