GERMANY: Nazis at Numb erg

Nazis at Nürnberg

The greatest show and heartiest picnic on earth is now Germany’s annual get-together of roughly a million Nazis at what is called the “Party Congress” in Nürnberg. Around this city of 416.000 souls last week again sprang up the spreading tent towns in which Nazi boys & girls, youths and maidens, fathers and mothers, bachelors and spinsters, grandfathers and grandmothers sleep on straw couches. This year above their& canvas rose a dramatic “Tent of Light”—150 searchlights placed in a circle in such a way that their four-million-watt shafts of light met above it in the sky at a single focal point or imaginary tent pole.

On a high platform in the centre of the huge tent kitchens sat Supreme Culinary Chief Berchert giving orders into a microphone to thousands of German potato peelers, cooks and garbage workers. Each of seven enormous trucks held 34 big cooking pots or cauldrons heated by Diesel burners. Like cement from a cement mixer seething soups and stews flowed from these to be rushed on 400 light trucks to some 800,000 robust and hungry Germans, the rest being fed in Nürnberg homes and hotels. In the modest little Hotel Deutscher Hof, where one Adolf Hitler used to stay when he was the nervous leader of a minuscule party, a room was made ready last week for the Realmleader.

Four Nazi Years. As usual the Party Congress was not opened by Leader Hitler who sat in the audience, but by his apple-cheeked deputy leader Rudolf Hess. As usual the Jew-baiting Nürnberg Nazi Boss, brutal Julius Streicher, Governor of Franconia, glad-handed the delegates. And as usual the annual Proclamation—in effect a State of the Nation speech—written by Adolf Hitler was delivered by Adolf Wagner, Munich Nazi Leader, a true Teuton orator whose rasping pugnacious voice sounds almost exactly like Der Führer’s.

The Proclamation recalled that four years ago when Hitler came to power he told Germans: “You may nail me to the cross if I have not brought you better conditions in four years!”

”How our opponents would have laughed,” said the highly personal Proclamation, “if I had declared on Jan. 30, 1933 that in four years Germany would have reduced its unemployment from 6,000,000 to 1,000,000*. . . .

“That the income of the German agrarian economy would be higher than in any preceding year in our peace time†. . . .

“That the German middle class and the German trades would experience a new period of prosperity**. . . .

“That in 1936 ships totaling 640,000 tons would be under construction at German wharves*. . . .

“That the Krupp works would again hear the rumble of machines working for Germany’s regeneration. . . .

“That our production of automobiles of all sorts would increase from 45,000 in 1932 to almost 250,000†. . . .

“That in four years the deficits of our cities and provinces would disappear**.

“That Germany would experience a great intellectual awakening without a single Jew having a hand in it. . . .

“That the German press would work only in the interests of Germany!”

Hitler v. Hoare. On & on rumbled the two-hour Proclamation, with that Hitler verbosity which Germans love and scarcely any other people can endure. Only twice, however, did the whole Congress leap to its 2,000,000 feet with delirious roars and hochs: 1) when the Jews were told off; and 2) when Der Führer made a bold bid for the return to Germany of colonies seized from her by the Allies after the War.

It was at Sir Samuel Hoare, who at no distant time may be British Prime Minister, that Chancellor Hitler took a crack in these words of the Proclamation:

“If, therefore, an English politician declares that Germany does not need colonies because it is free to buy raw materials, then the declaration of this gentleman is about as intelligent as the question of the well-known Bourbon princess who at the sight of the revolutionary mob roaring for bread remarked in surprise, why, if the people did not have bread, did they not eat cake!”

Sir Samuel was British Foreign Secretary when he made his experimental plea to Germany that she be satisfied by a guarantee from the Great Powers that they would in all circumstances let her have access to raw materials (TIME, Sept. 23, 1935).This sop the present British Foreign Secretary, Captain Anthony Eden, still keeps talking about from time to time. Meanwhile Sam Hoare has become First Lord to make the British Admiralty so strong that London will no longer have to soft-soap Berlin. Last week the distinctly pro soft-soap Times of London almost lost patience on reading the Nürnberg Proclamation, grumbled: “Germany, after all, appealed to the sword in 1914, and as a consequence lost her colonies.”

Messiah’s Message. Suspense having been nicely built up in Nürnberg he arose to speak at last—Der Führer. This year the haupttribüne or grandstand for distinguished Germans privileged to sit behind the Realmleader was 1,000 feet wide and the pedestal from which he speaks had become a lofty pinnacle. With blaring bands, solemn chanting, clockwork goose-stepping and dramatic searchlight and spotlight work, Adolf Hitler was made to appear more than ever what in fact he is—the Teuton Messiah. He had a Message this year bolder than ever before. In the final build-up of tense emotion, 400 new German heavy bombers and fighting aircraft of all sorts literally darkened the sky above Nürnberg, made windows rattle with the bellow of their motors and brought gulps to German throats. Then, with every radio station in the Fatherland broadcasting his words, with every German who had a radio set instructed to be listening in, and with loudspeakers blaring in the streets and squares of every German city, town and village, Adolf Hitler spoke with his breath-taking simplicity: “If I had the Ural Mountains, if we possessed Siberia, if we had the Ukraine, then Nazi Germany would be swimming in Prosperity! I am not in the fortunate position of the Soviet Jews. Nevertheless, the problems of Germany must be solved! There is no such thing as saying it cannot be done. It can be done—because it must be done! . . . Let [Russia] carry her Soviet star, we will conquer in the sign of the swastika. If the hour ever comes when our old adversary makes an attempt upon us, you will be standing beside, behind and before me, and will help me fight.”

To the world these words sounded as if Germany under Hitler was last week cocked and aimed at Russia. There were many more words in which Hitler spoke of Russia attacking Germany rather than of his Nazis going after the Bolsheviks. But undeniably the Realmleader had made his most predatory speech since Germans elected him to lead the Fatherland.

In London there was sweet relief. After the scare about colonies which Hitler had adroitly thrown into the British with his Proclamation, they were delighted that he should be thinking not so much about taking back from them what they took from Germany after the War, as about taking from the Bolsheviks the enormously rich iron, coal and salt of the Urals, the timber and furs of Siberia and the golden grain of the Ukraine. Even to dream of such a conquest was fantastic, but as Adolf Hitler often says, “With trancelike serenity I go my way, certain of my Goal.” In four years of such dreamy statesmanship Messiah Hitler has led his racial disciples further than anyone else ever thought he would. Added he last week: “Success has come not only because I was your leader but because you were my following. . . . Not all of you see me. Neither do I see all of you. But I feel you. . . . I am self-assured in the knowledge of Your Followership! . . . The wonder of this age is that you have found me —an unknown man among millions.”

Anti-Bolshevism Train. At Nürnberg all week stood a brand new twelve-car auto train. It is soon to visit every town in Germany. Even peasants who watch it streaking over the countryside will be able to read the slogan repeatedly painted in tall letters along its sides: “BOLSHEVISM, WORLD ENEMY NO. 1!” Last week half-a-mark admission was charged to enter the train and Nazis crowded to pay. On walking through the twelve cars they received a lurid course in the evils of Bolshevism comparable only to the Soviet “propaganda museums” through which Russians march to learn the horrors of Capitalism.

Exactly copying the Communist technique, which is to plaster up pictures of the Pope, President Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan and God in the most unflattering manner possible, the Nazis last week showed a rogues’ gallery of Karl Marx, Lenin & Trotsky, Stalin and the Antichrist. Under every member of the Stalin regime who is a Jew appeared in capitals the exclamation “JEW!”

At the Nürnberg Congress meanwhile Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels mentioned Soviet Foreign Commissioner Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff by name to call him a “liar.” He described the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as “the dictatorship of the least worthy!” Shouted Goebbels: “What is going on in Russia, Spain and other European countries concerns the whole world. . . . Every so-called ‘Popular Front’ pact which the middle-class world concludes with radical Bolshevism will culminate in a Bolshevist victory. . . . The Bolshevist question is the question of Europe’s future existence.”

Referring to Stalin’s recent execution in Russia of Zinoviev (né Apfelbaum) and Kamenev (né Rosenfeld) as abettors of Stalin’s enemy Trotsky (né Bronstein), Dr. Goebbels snorted: “Every inner Bolshevist struggle is a family fight among Jews!* . . . We can discuss this question frankly only in Germany because elsewhere in the world it is a dangerous matter to mention Jews. . . . May the world act before it is too late!”

Next day official Moscow papers lashed Dr. Goebbels by calling him “a bowlegged dwarf with an enormous, ridiculous hook nose,” and described his words as “malodorous filth.” Shocked chancelleries all over Europe could not recall when two Great Powers had last traded such gutter talk officially. But if Stalin and Hitler were really sore at each other, the Soviet Ambassador to Germany, Comrade Jacques Suritz, a Jew who is permitted to keep Aryan housemaids in his Embassy only by special permission of the Realmleader, might lose that privilege and even be sent packing back to Moscow. Packing back to Berlin with the fervent curses of the Bolsheviks in his ears would then be sent Ambassador Graf Friedrich von der Schulenburg, an exasperatingly bland German. No matter what insults Soviet newsorgans hurl at Hitler week after week, Schulenburg is never instructed to protest, turns up smiling at Bolshevik receptions, refuses to let Communists get his goat.

Annual Interview. Each year during the Party Congress, correspondents are invited by Adolf Hitler to lunch in the lofty castle which frowns down on Nürnberg and afterward censorship is suspended by Der Führer’s order to permit them to cable whatever they like about the Annual Interview.

This year Hitler arrived physically exhausted from having returned Nazi salutes all morning. Nevertheless the Realmleader’s weariness snapped off, his magnetism on when one of the correspondents mentioned “Marxism.” Grey eyes blazing and harsh voice hammering out the words in a violent staccato, Adolf Hitler roared: “When I think that the metropolis which is trying to dominate Europe is Moscow—Moscow, Ha! Ha! Moscow of all cities—what a shame! How grotesque! The last city with a right to hegemony over cultivated nations is Moscow. If it were a Capital with traditions in a civilized country! But Moscow—that goes beyond all limits. . . .

“I have only one fear,” observed the Realmleader more calmly, “one fear— and I say it quite openly—that the countries around us into which the poison of Communism is slowly eating its way will gradually succumb to bolshevism. . . . Of course we could say of Spain: ‘Let them slaughter their officers and murder their priests and intellectuals—it is none of our business.’ I would have the mentality of a child if I should take that attitude. We do not live on the moon. What happens in Europe does concern us. I believe that we ‘wild nationalists’ are, after all. the best Europeans. . . . And now gentlemen, you must have good appetites, come to luncheon!”

*In a recent report the Commercial Counselor to the British Embassy at Berlin told His Majesty’s Government that between January 1933 and August 1935 the unemployed in Germany were reduced from over 6,000,000 to less than 1,750,000 by: 1) the industrial boom arising from Rearmament; 2) re-introduction of German compulsory military service; 3) enrollment of youths in the Labor Service Corps; 4) return of women factory workers to domestic employment: 5) return of peasants who held jobs in factories to the land; and 6) new public works. Britain’s Counselor estimated that in decreasing the number of the wholly unemployed the German Government spread work so thin that the per capita earning of the average employed worker has fallen. Simultaneously the cost of living has risen but the number of Germans who actually support themselves and neither require nor get State aid today has certainly increased.

†Due to protective tariffs and heartier eating by German workers in the industrial boom which has raised farm prices.

**Small tradesmen especially swear by Hitler for the reason that, although he has not yet abolished chain stores in Germany as he promised to do he has blocked existing chains from expanding the number of their branches and provided that if a branch is discontinued it cannot be re-opened or relocated.

*Some foreign creditors of Germany who can get their money in no other way are now taking payment in ships which they can sail away from the Fatherland.

†Der Führer is the only ruler on the Continent to lift the crushing taxes other European countries impose on motoring. The Fatherland is pushing sales of cars by every means to Germans who know they will be confiscated in wartime and used to speed troops over the strategic highways Herr Hitler is building instead of strategic railways. His reason: cars can detour around a bombed section of road while trains cannot.

**These have been assumed by the Berlin regime to the immense relief of municipalities who in effect have pooled their insolvencies with Reichsbank Governor Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, today the representative of such SUPERINSOLVENCY that creditors of Germany throughout the world dare not for the sake of their own bluffs call his bluff and in effect Germany gets along as if she were solvent.

*No Jew is Stalin.