GERMANY: Realmleader’s Week

¶ The German people received last week this smashing postulatefrom their Realmleader: “People are never happy when they are ruled by a majority but only when they are ruled by a minority. Our minority is not alien to the majority but represents the cream of the German folk.”

¶ Hopeful that a binding knot of sentiment was tied between the Reichswehr and himself recently when every officer and soldier was made to swear personal loyalty to him, Realmleader Hitler sought to tug this knot tighter last week by announcing that he will exercise his powers of pardon exclusively in favor of members of the Reichswehr.

Other Germans who merit executive clemency, the Realmleader decreed, will be pardoned by General Hermann Wilhelm Goring, Premier of Prussia, Air Minister and Grand Master of the Chase, who conducted the Nazi blood purge in Berlin while Herr Hitler was purging Munich (TIME, July 9). Since Nazi Goring, a War ace grown beefy, designs a new uniform for himself every time he adds to his string of offices, Berlin buzzed with scurrilous rumors that “Hermann has sent to Oberammergau for the costume of the Saviour in which he will sign pardons.”

¶ Sixty members of the Berlin diplomatic corps went to the first reception at the Presidential Palace since Adolf Hitler assumed his newtop-dog role of Realmleader after the death of President von Hindenburg (TIME, Aug. 13).

What may happen at a Nazi reception can never be predicted in advance. Last summer General Goring gave a garden party at which diplomats and their ladies were asked to watch the mating of a bull and several cows while Host Goring dwelt on “the importance of pure blood in breeding German animals.”

No distraction of this sort was offered last week. The Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignor Cesare Orsenigo, as Dean of the Corps, conveyed its formal greetings in French, though he can speak German. The Realmleader, who speaks only German, stoutly replied, “Our relations with other nations shall be determined by the spirit of equality.”

To most guests the reception was chiefly important because it revealed that Dr. Otto Meissner is still firmly entrenched as “the Sphinx of the Wilhelmstrasse.” This amazing German has been personal State Secretary to every head of the Fatherland since the abdication of Wilhelm II. He was a “Socialist” with President Ebert, a Nationalist with President von Hindenburg and today he seems to be a Nazi with Realmleader Hitler. When stories of German intrigue are spun one of the chief characters is always Meissner. He is supposed to have “made” half the post-War chancellors of the Reich. When Nazis broke into the House of Socialist President Ebert’s widow with intent to carry off her son to a concentration camp, she managed to get through to Meissner on the telephone and he managed to get Hindenburg to tell Hitler to let the Socialist family of Ebert alone (TIME, March 27). That was the only time that Dr. Meissner faced a dilemma in which his past, present and future chief might be said to be simultaneously involved. Last week, buttoned tightly into his impeccable cutaway, he moved about the diplomatic reception with stiff-necked majesty. He alone had ridden every storm of the last eleven years and he is still riding high. Awkward in the formal clothes he had to wear for the diplomats, Hitler sweated and was visibly ill at ease. Deftly Dr. Meissner shunted his new Chief out on a balcony for fresh air and a few shouts of “Heil Hitler.”

¶ To the efforts of many a German to explain his magnetic power over great audiences Orator Hitler contributed last week this disarming bit of candor:

“My critics make a mistake in trying to analyze my speeches, attempting to find out that here my style was pure, or there a word was misplaced. What did it matter?

“Throughout my years of campaigning I have always asked myself, ‘How can I say what I have to say in such a manner that the humblest man of the people will understand me? How can I establish contact between myself and my hearers?’

“I was aware that often I was saying something that to the intellectual seemed a platitude, and I can understand why intellectuals wondered why in addition to pronouncing self-evident facts I even dwelt upon them and illustrated them. Yet I always said to myself, ‘There is this or that humble man in my audience who does not yet quite comprehend what I am driving at, so I must make it clear to him by the humblest illustration from daily life.’ “