Introduction to Soul Vienna, Story #2

Old Vienna was a small club in Heidelberg, Germany. Heidelberg is a famous university town for the Germans, and US Army Headquarters for the Americans. That is the reason Max went there after he was kidnapped and expelled from France in June 1969. There was much anti-army activity going on at that period of the Vietnam War, and active duty black soldiers were the center of it. For me, Old Vienna was Soul Vienna, as long as it lasted. In Heidelberg the political black soldiers formed a strong group called The Unsatisfied Black Soldiers, the UBS, and put out a newspaper, About Face, expressing their grievances as U.S. soldiers. In Stuttgart there was a similar group, BAG, the Black Action Group, and in Berlin (West Berlin at that time), Forward, a civilian support group, German civilians and American ex-GI's for the most part, that focused on getting civilian lawyers for active duty GI's with legal problems. The group also put out a newspapers with articles by GI’s and civilians, also called Forward.

The center of resistance inside the army or RITA was in West Germany where the soldiers were not under as much surveillance as in West Berlin. I made periodic trips from Paris to see Max in Heidelberg. One night he took me to Old Vienna where he had friends among the black soldiers. The black soldiers were the most effective group going, so much so that they had established a beachhead in Old Vienna where they were available, to their friends, to the press, and to any new soldiers who did not like the army either.

The US Army Intelligence Services did not mess with the soldiers there. If MI had sent a black agent in to spy, pretending to be an anti-Vietnam soldier, he would have been recognized by some members of the UBS. Familiarity is one advantage of living in a small community like Heidelberg. The military broke up anti-army groups preferably by transferring their members to various different bases around Germany. Alternatives were re-scheduling a soldier for a Vietnam tour, sometimes sending him back to finish his Estimated Service Time in the United States. Many of the resisting soldiers, particularly the blacks, had made rank, were good at their jobs,and were too smart to be caught in illegal anti-army activity; putting out a newspaper was perfectly legal as long as they did not distribute it themselves. They were often the type of soldier the army wanted to keep, if they could only be weaned from their "subversive ideas." Some of them had re-upped, and only "become political" on their second tour inside Vietnam itself. So sending unsatisfied soldiers there was not a preferred option. But transfer stateside was not too good an alternative. Anti-Vietnam political activity was greater on the home front than abroad. Almost every base across the States had a GI coffeehouse nearby, where anti-Vietnam newspapers, people, and news of other anti-war groups were available.

So keeping the rebellious soldier in Germany and transferring him to another base was the usual way to break up a group. The Black Action Group in Stuttgart had been neutralized that way. Some of its members had been transferred to Heidelberg and joined the UBS. But those who landed in Goeppingen or Grafenwoehr were isolated. Germany was small though, compared to the States, and soldiers in far flung bases could usually get to Heidelberg on weekends. They kept in touch. On the Fourth of July weekend, for example, the UBS organized buses to take soldiers from all over Germany into the University of Heidelberg where the rector, anti-Vietnam and not afraid to go up against German government policy, had turned the largest University lecture hall over to the black soldiers to celebrate the famous American holiday.

We, the anti-war civilians, were surprised that there was so much anti-Vietnam activity here, specifically targeting the resistance inside the military. Paris had always been against the US war in Vietnam, ever since Eisenhower had refused to send the US Airforce to help the French win their on-going war to keep Indochina as a French colony.  The anti-Vietnam War groups in Paris in the 60’s had taken their time before daring to take up the cause of American deserters in Paris.  Max had been instrumental in pushing them in this direction (see Max's anti-Vietnam Network ), probably the main reason for his expulsion from the country. 

Now in 1970, the German peaceniks were all for the anti-Vietnam soldiers. Support movements have a tendency to spread—from the USA to France and now to Germany. German and American civilians, together or separately, helped groups like the UBS find printers for their paper, students to distribute it, access to friendly journalists, and, when needed, lawyers. In Heidelberg there was the LMDC (Lawyers Military Defense Committee), a team of American civilian lawyers, working out of a German law office, authorized to defend soldiers in front of a military court. So even the familiar military bludgeon of a Dishonorable Discharge, with or without court martial, was an option the soldiers had the means to fight.   Max was at his best in getting publicity: a free lance journalist with the German Press Agency, good friends with the LMDC, and contacts with the American press in France and Germany.

Soul or Old Vienna is a quick view of this short epoch in anecdotal political history.  The French expression is “the little history,” when American soldiers were able to exercise their democratic rights, both inside the army and in Europe and in the United States itself, much more freely than they seem to be able to do today, in the first quarter of the 21^st century.