GERMANY: Nazification

German workmen woke from the heady excitement of their first Nazi May Day last week (TIME, May 8) to find their trade unions snatched from under them. Catholic unions announced complete allegiance and subservience to the Hitlerites and were accepted as good converts. Socialist unions with a total membership of over 4,000,000 men were not given the chance. Though the Socialist union published a formal statement several days earlier offering full co-operation with the Government, important young Storm Troopers raided their headquarters throughout the Reich and marched 50 union leaders off to jail. Up popped Dr. Robert Ley, former chemist of the German dye trust and new Nazi chairman of the Committee of Action for the Protection of German Labor. “We are not to be fooled by Socialist foxy tricks,” said he. “With the disappearance of the Socialist unions, the Social Democratic party will be permanently deprived of the soil in which it lived. . . . I alone will have the full direction of the labor front, which is to be newly constructed.” Again carefully following the Mussolini model, Nazification did not stop with the seizure of the unions. At the other end of the economic scale it was announced that the powerful Federation of German Industries had been Nazified too. It was not necessary to send Storm Troopers to call on the tycoons. After a brief conference in the Chancellery it was announced that none less than Dr. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, head of the great Krupp works, had been given power-of-attorney to reform the Federation, bring it into line with the Government and cut out wasteful competition among its members. By his shrewdness in backing Handsome Adolf against the field several years ago Krupp von Bohlen last week restored his firm to the dominant political position in German industry that it occupied under the Empire with his wife, the great Bertha. The banks were next. Dr. Georg Solmssen last week resigned as president of the Central Association of German Banks and Bankers; Dr. Otto Christian Fischer succeeded him. Werner Dietz was appointed to membership as Nazi “liaison official.” He talked turkey to his fellow members at his first board meeting: “The banking system is inflated and interest must come down. If you do not want the State to interfere, cut the interest rate yourselves.” Schlageter. Control of unions, employers, banks—that was enough work for a week, it was time to prepare for another festival. Nazi authorities announced plans last week for a gigantic mass meeting at Diisseldorf in honor of Albert Leo Schlageter. A Nazi martyr was Albert Leo Schlageter. Claimed as one of the original Brownshirts, he was shot by the French during the occupation of the Ruhr for damaging bridges and railways over which they were exporting German coal as part of the Reparations payment. On the field where he faced a firing squad a gigantic cross has been erected. There, to the rage of French authorities, tens of thousands of Storm Troopers will assemble next week to spend a night bivouacked round the cross, listening to speeches, roaring patriotic songs.