Portrait of a German communist

              CONFIDENTIAL
HEADQUARTERS TWELFTH ARMY GROUP 
PUBLICITY & PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE 
APO     655
ANNEX B    19 February 1945
PORTRAIT OF A GERMAN COMMUNIST
1. When we inquired in mine-infested WUERSELEN how many civilians had been killed by mines, MG referred us to the "Grave Digger," a German who daily risks his life digging out victims and making mines innocuous. We were told that the "Grave Digger" does his dangerous work voluntarily and without compensation. His name is JOSEPH MOHREN. That day and the next we spent many hours with MOHREN. He took us through the town, which he knew intimately. He guided us through the RAVENSBURG battlefield, where scores of German soldiers still lay where they had fallen. He led us through bunkers where American soldiers had died and through mine fields, which he had not yet de-mined.
2. MOHREN's story is not only that of a strong personality; it may also be indicative of the state of mind of other Germans like him — of men who profess allegiance to a political party that was once HITLER'S most aggressive enemy. MOHREN, 30, is a miner, the son of a miner who was a communist. When he was 14 he left home and wandered through Germany. In BERLIN, at the age of 15, he fought on the barricades on "Bloody Sunday", (May 1929), when the Social Democratic chief of police fired on the radical workers. MOHREN still remembers that with some bitterness. Next to class violence, he was most shocked by the slums (ELENDSGEBIETE) and poverty around BERLIN. In WUERSELEN, MOHREN, at the age of 16, organized about 60 youths into the Young Communist League. The Nazis dissolved the group in 1933 and threw MOHREN into a concentration camp. His father and an aunt were likewise imprisoned. Because of his youth, he was released after 4 months. He continued his anti-Fascist activities, this time underground. Of the 60 youths in his group, he said, the Nazis succeeded in winning over only about half a dozen.
3. In 1934, he helped organize the KAMPFBUND GEGEN DEM FASCHISMUS (Combat Union Against Fascism) in AACHEN, whither he went nightly. The KAMPFBUND listened to the MOSCOW and the BASEL radios and distributed miniature editions of the ROTE FAHNE which was printed in Belgium. Within a few months the Gestapo ferreted out the KAMPFBUND and destroyed it by incarcerating its leaders. Despite the increasingly efficient Gestapo terror, MOHREN pursued his anti-Nazi activities in WUERSELEN. Any formal organization was out of the question. Anti-Fascist workers, especially those who were friends, met in small social groups, listened to the foreign radio and discussed politics. MOHREN's favorite radio was not MOSCOW, but LONDON. He still remembers with pleasure the broadcasts which THOMAS MANN made over the BBC. "MANN is the kind of person lacking Germany today — an honest man." MOHREN does, indeed, show an intimate knowledge of large world political events of the last 5 years, a knowledge he gleaned from the Allied radio. He can quote at length from ROOSEVELT, CHURCHILL, and STALIN. He knows about the MOSCOW CONFERENCE, about TEHERAN, about the ATLANTIC CHARTER, about the FOUR FREEDOMS.
4. Throughout the Nazi era, MOHREN's group collected money for political causes. Collections were made for ROT SPANIEN (Red Spain) and for the families of Nazi victims. When a Christian Socialist named BOCK was sent to a concentration camp, MOHREN's friends
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CONFIDENTIAL