, Fritz Fischer, in
1961 published a book about Germany s policies during the First World War, Griff nach der Weltmacht. The title translates as Grab for World Power, although "Griff" has a slightly less negative color than  grab.  An abridged version was published by the New York publisher W. W. Norton under the calm
title Germany s Aims in the First World War. In the book Fischer showed how
the Kaiser s serious, polite, formalistic Germany was in its policies painfully elose to Nazi Germany in the next war. Naturally, the book caused an outcry in West Germany, but its scholarship and the mass of documentation it presented left little room for factual criticism.
Fischer documented that Germany s
war aim, almost until the bitter end, was the creation of a German Mitteleuropa that would include Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, and, of course, Poland. In 1918 the Ukraine was added. (Analogous to it would be Mittelafrika, a Ger-
It'an colony stretching across Africa from ocean to ocean.) Wartime German state documents said nonetheless that Germany was fighting for the  liberty of the continent of Europe and its peoples , France, weakened  forever  by a Ger- tan demand for 40 billion gold francs   reParations, would be forced to join the war against England.
A report to the Imperial Chancellery showed a map of the frontier strip isolating a rump Poland (perhaps to be ceded to Austria-Hungary), which was to be settled by Germans from the  Old Reich  after being  cleared  by deporting part of its Polish population and all its Jews. A memorandum drawn up at the instruction of Chancellor Beth-mann Hollweg declared,  The German people, the greatest colonising people of the world,... must be given wider frontiers within which it can live a full life.  If the word Lebensraum isn t there yet, the concept certainly is.
I realize that it is not politically correct to generalize about an entire nation; still, centuries of a common history may put a stamp on a society which makes it hard for other societies to understand. I hope I am not venturing into an area of pseudoscience when I suggest that German aggressiveness was based not only on an overconfidence that the country presumably no longer feels about itself but also, paradoxically, on a lack of confidence it does feel. What is one to make otherwise of a report by Gustav Krupp, the arms manufacturer, written for the government in the fall of 1914? (The great industrialists of Germany played a large role in defining war policies.) Krupp wrote that German domination should continue in Belgium and extend to the north coast of France. He explained.
Here we should be lying at the very marrow of England s world power, a position perhaps the only one  which could bring us England s lasting friendship [italics mine]. For only if we are able to hurt England badly at any moment will she really leave us unmolested, perhaps even become our  friend , in so far as England is capable of friendship at all.
The truth about nations is endlessly complicated, and political predictions based on generalization may go awry: the recent past provides plenty of examples. I find reason for some optimism in this. An experience I had toward the end of my visit may illustrate what I mean. One of my conversations about the German irredenta was with an academician whose real feelings about the matter didn t become quite clear to me. He seemed to
feel that Germany s reunification had indeed created a  new legal context.  He then started talking about himself.
I was often told that Kohl promotes a united Europe because he does not trust his country to be left on its own.
This man would have been born in Konigsberg, in East Prussia, he told me, if his parents had not fled to the west from the approaching battles, in the winter of 1944-1945. He was bom in West Germany just after the war ended.
Konigsberg is now Kaliningrad, a town in Russia. As a naval base on the Baltic Sea, it was for many years closed to foreigners but no longer. Two years ago the academician traveled there. He wandered through what he still considered to be his home town, accompanied by a Russian student guide who spoke German. Coming to the street where his parents had lived, he found that their house was still standing. He looked at it for a while and then hastened on. But his guide suggested that they go back and ring the bell and ask for a look inside. The man balked at first, but then his curiosity got the better of him and he agreed.
They were asked in. Three families now lived in the house. When the man explained the reason for his visit, the Russians made him sit down and brought out tea and cakes, and eventually (of course) vodka. They were clearly poor people, but they searched high and low for something to give him as a present. If he warned them in advance, they told him, the next time they would receive him in style.
The academician paused here, lost in thought. Then, to my astonishment, he ended,  And I now think that that was the best day in my entire life. 
233
Article 45
Size, Scope Of Hutu Crisis Hotly Debated
Refugees Caught In E. Zaire Chaos
Lynne Duke
Washington Post Foreign Service
NYABIBWE, Zaire, Nov. 23 High in the eastern Zaire mountains where the clouds hug the earth, gunfire crackled on the lush green slopes where a mass of Rwandan refugees was hidden. Believed to number between 150,000 and 400,000, they were driven here like cattle by the armed former Rwandan soldiers among them who have used the helpless as human shields for their pillaging of towns and villages.
Down below, this tiny hamlet of 8,000 people looked as if an apocalyptic prophecy had been realized. Several small wooden houses were burned and torn apart. The wreckage of 30 charred, twisted cars and tankers blocked the main dirt road, also littered with shrapnel as well as unexploded grenades and mortars. Men dug graves for those killed when the town was overrun Wednesday by the armed Rwandans, Who destroyed what they could not take, followed by Zairian rebels, who arrived to restore order.
With Nyabibwe still smoldering Friday, John Demescene Baragondoza and 70 other refugees, including about 20 small children, made their escape. They left the maelstrom of refugees behind them and began the long trek back to Bukavu, 65 miles to the south. Dusty but dignified in a double-breasted blazer, the former Rwandan postal worker stepped forward to issue a simple appeal to a group of journalists he encountered on the road:  Can you tell people that we need help? We need something to eat. We are very tired. 
For the hapless Rwandan refugees remaining in eastern Zaire, weeks if not months of continued wandering and hard
ship appear to be in store. They are caught in the nexus of political, ethnic and military conflicts in Zaire, in Rwanda and in global capitals, were politicians continue to debate the refugees  numbers and whether they are significant enough to warrant help.
Traveling through the hinterlands of eastern Zaire, it becomes clear that many people the numbers are uncertain remain in desperate circumstances that will deepen without help and could sow the seeds for future instability in Central Africa s Great Lakes region.
These refugees are the remainder of what the United Nations says were 1.1 million Rwandan Hutu refugees who had been living in eastern Zaire camps since 1994 when they fled Rwanda after extremists among them perpetrated a genocide against Rwanda s minority Tutsis. Some 500,000 refugees have returned to Rwanda in recent days in a mammoth repatriation through the border station at Goma, Zaire. If 1.1 million were here to start with, then hundreds of thousands of refugees remain.
But the Goma exodus inspired a sense of diminished urgency among the world s political powers. A planned multinational peacekeeping force is on hold pending further deliberation. The United States believes that the bulk of the refugees have gone home and that about 200,000 remain. The United Nations contends that 700,000 refugees remain in Zaire more than have been repatriated.
The rebel movement that controls eastern Zaire claims there are no more refugees in its territory a claim clearly refuted by the Nyabibwe story and that rebels will fight to stop a multinational force from bringing humanitarian assis-
tance. Rwanda s Tutsi-dominat ment, which has trained and the Zairian rebels, also is e force.
 We are opposed to the m force because we believe tl nocent people who were not the massacres in Rwanda I home,  said Jonas Sebatum man for the rebel alliance.  Tl assassins. 
Instead of bringing humar sistance, the Zairian Tutsi-led Democratic Forces for the Lil Congo-Zaire, known genera Banyamulenge, wants an in force to come in to disarm th litias and former soldiers a refugees and bring them to ji
The refugee groups are lar the control of Hutu soldiers of Armed Forces of Rwanda and hamwe militia, both of which v the old Hutu regime in Rwanc believed responsible for the 19&
Human rights advocates ao former soldiers of using the Zt gee camps as launching pads cleansing  against Tutsis in ea as well as for military attacl Rwanda s Tutsi-dominated gc Tutsis in eastern Zaire are group amid several other ethi eluding Zairian Hutus.
The eastern Zairian insta rise to the Banyamulenge Ti merit. With Rwandan governmi and support, the movement all-out war against Zairian g* forces at the end of October t a swath of territory along Za bound border. When the Zai fled in defeat, former Armed F diers and Interahamwe a
234
From The Washington Post, November 24, 1996
PP At, A34.   1996 by The Washington Post. Reprinted by permission.
among the refugees took up the slack and battled the rebels themselves. Low-^1 conflict between these two forces continues. Refugees report severe repression from former members of the Jmed Forces and Interahamwe and that people who resist instructions are killed.
There are many bodies in the mountains,  said Baragondoza, who fled the Interahamwe, as he and his group rested on the road before gathering their belongings for the monthlong trek back to the border and, they hope, back home.
The fighting that broke out a month ago scattered refugees from a string of 40 U.N. camps. They surged toward the largest of the camps, called Mugunga, near Goma, Zaire, where Interahamwe forces held them under tight control until nine days ago, when the massive exodus began.
Since then, debate has raged about how many refugees remain and where they are. The Hutu refugees who last week were reported moving on Ny-abibwe and points northwest are one of several groups still on the move. Another, smaller group is believed to be headed west from Bukavu, beyond rebel-held territory, toward the no man s land of the jungle. Already, the westwardmoving refugees, believed to number 30,000, have encountered stiff resistance and fighting from villagers fearful of plundering by refugees. Residents of the region say some communities have destroyed small bridges to limit refugee access.
In the town of Walungu, about 30 miles west of Bukavu, a hospital director reported that Interahamwe fighters battled among themselves over provisions and medicine before pressing further west.
45.	Size, Scope of Hutu Crisis
Humanitarian relief workers fear that a combination of battle, malnutrition and inaccessibility could seal the refugees  fate if they are not helped soon. But several factors are preventing aid workers, from finding or gaining access to the refugees.
The Zairian rebels holding eastern Zaire were, until recently, loath to allow aid workers into their area. And even when aid workers are able to circulate freely here, there are unknown numbers of refugees who have been pushed so far west that they may be beyond reach.
Still, the refugees keep marching. They are faceless masses to much of the world, which spots them on satellite photographs or hears of their numbers. With little to e