GERMANY: War is Over!

Germany’s large -scale mobilization which began August 15—dubbed “maneuvers” by the Third Reich’s General Staff —was officially called off last week. In garrisons at Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Mainz, Fürth and Königsberg at least 450,000 youthful reservists, happy that their Führer Adolf Hitler had got all he wanted of Czechoslovakia without losing a man, were in high spirits as they made ready to return to civilian life November 1.

Many requisitioned busses bringing flower-bedecked soldiers back to Berlin from Sudetenland were inscribed: “The War is Over!” Also released to civilian life were the Labor Service youths, detained an extra month to work on Germany’s counter-Maginot line facing France. These fortifications, heretofore called by U. S. correspondents the Siegfried Line, were last week officially christened Limes* by the Führer himself.

For German Jews there was little rejoicing. They were being examined last week preparatory to the name-changing on January 1. All Jews born after that date must be labeled with an unmistakably Jewish first name, specified in a published Nazi list. Jewish men whose present names differ from those on the list must now add Israel, Jewish women must tag on Sarah. Reported by many correspondents as also planned for the New Year by Germany’s rampant anti-Semitic rulers was a more-drastic-than-ever decree forbidding Jews to work for Aryans, to own or work in factories, banks, wholesale houses. For the Third Reich’s 500,000 Jews, half on relief, the new decree will mean certain pauperdom.

*Latin word pronounced lee-mace, meaning crossroad, limit, boundary, passage. Limes Germanicus, built in the First Century A.D. from the Rhine to the Danube, was a series of forts to keep the Teuton barbarians out of the Roman Empire.