THE RUDOLF REPORT

GERMAR RUDOLF · THE RUDOLF REPORTarguing for the census and for the stationing of U.S. nuclear weaponsto deter the Soviets.However, my involvement was abruptly curbed when CSU chairmanStrauß engineered a one billion Deutschmark loan to communistEast Germany, a deal that contradicted everything Strauß stood for, inparticular, the principle that one should never do business with the totalitarianpowers of the East, unless some reciprocal benefit was forthcoming.The reciprocal benefit here, however, was only imaginary inthat East Germany’s communist government promised to remove the‘robot’ machine guns on the inner-German border, which automaticallykilled or maimed every German trying to pass from totalitarianEast Germany to ‘Golden’ West Germany. Subsequently, these atrociousweapons were indeed removed, but this was accompanied by theconstruction of a second border fence further inland. As a result, theinner-German border became even more impenetrable. Hence, Strauß’deal did not lead to any humane relief for the East Germans, but insteadstabilized East Germany’s economy, thus delaying its—as weknow today—unavoidable final collapse for a few more years. Fromtoday’s perspective, my criticism at the time was entirely justified. Butat that time, it was the opinion of a separate minority only, a minoritysubject to ridicule—it was a ‘peculiar view’.First jail experienceIn October 1983, I had joined a Catholic student fraternity,founded in Königsberg (East Prussia) in the late 1800s, but relocated toBonn after WWII. At the end of WWII, almost the entire Germanpopulation of East Prussia either fled or was murdered and expelled bythe invading Soviets who divided this old German province in twoparts, annexed the northern part and gave the southern part to Poland.In 1984, a ‘brother’ of this fraternity persuaded me to accompany himon a trip to Czechoslovakia in February of that same year. This fraternitybrother was a student of Catholic theology and had adopted thecause of the suppressed Catholic Church in the then still StalinistCzechoslovakia. Also, he had acquaintances there, and his parentswere from the Sudetenland, a once purely German border region ofCzechia, from where most Sudeten-Germans had been expelled ormurdered after WWII by the Czechs. This fraternity brother of minebelieved and fought for the rights both of the small Sudeten-German298