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Slowly he rebuilt socialist trust in himself. He became an editor of the party organ Vorwärts, and a student of city management. He served as Berlin assemblyman and transport official, earning respect for solid work in improving the capital's trolley, bus and subway systems. He still calls himself a "town-planner at heart—I like to dream about the ideal city." Magdeburg recruited him as mayor in 1931. Two years later the Nazis, who had him on their blacklist too, hustled him off to concentration camp.
Flight & Return. British friends, including Labor members of the London County Council, helped obtain his release after a few months. But as he left prison camp, the Brownshirt commandant warned him, "Next time, I'll finish you off." Magdeburg welcomed him back so festively that he was soon arrested again. Once more, British intervention rescued him. He moved to Hannover to avoid the onus of another Magdeburg ovation. When a tip reached him that the Gestapo would pick him a third time, he slipped across the Dutch border, then took refuge among his friends in Britain, where he began to learn his fluent and colorful English.
In late 1935, the Turkish government invited him to Ankara to advise the Ministry of Economics and to teach city administration. He stayed in Turkey through the long years of the Nazi rise & fall. He mastered the language, had to scrape for a living when the war broke out and suspicion of all Germans sharpened. Somehow he eked along in a teaching job and as consultant to a shipping firm.
Rape & Resistance. It was not until late 1946 that Reuter could get Allied clearance for his return to Berlin. The Socialists elected him mayor and the Russians promptly vetoed the choice. They called Reuter antiCommunist, which was true, and also pro-Nazi, which was false; in the interests of Allied "unity," U.S. General Lucius Clay went along for a while with the Russian blackball. Though still a city councilor, Reuter did not assume the mayor's office.
The elements of resistance to Communism had already emerged in battered Berlin. It was as much abhorrence as resistance—an abhorrence created by the Red troops in their rape of the city in May 1945. This event was not reported at the time. No one was in a mood to hear a German's complaint against a Russian. But when the facts were laid down, it became clear that in Berlin the Red army had gotten out of hand.
Loot-laden Red soldiers had prowled Berlin's streets, drunk on alcohol and their first contact with a great city of the West. They had raped women in view of husbands and children; and they had slit the throats of those who did not yield at once.
The mark and memory of Ivan's bestiality had set Berliners apart from their fellow Germans in the West. Not having undergone the ordeal, West Germany could not find an anti-Communist passion equal to that of Berlin. But Reuter understood Berlin's feelings and put himself at the van of resistance. His leadership was popular among Berliners, but less appealing, at first, to the occupation Allies. A friend advised him: "The only possible way to be a politician in Berlin is to be on a good footing with all four powers." Since that meant kowtowing to Communism, Reuter would have none of it.