INTERNATIONAL: Strong Peace

In Berlin acrid yellowish smoke billowed last week around the Hindenburg Palace in which visiting Benito Mussolini was to be a guest. Bombing planes chased by pursuit ships streaked across the sky, anti-aircraft guns chattered, the entire Wilhelmstrasse quarter of government buildings disappeared in the thick smoke of fake bombs, and subject to severe fines was any citizen of Berlin who did not dive like a rabbit into the bombproof shelter nearest him. Black streamers were plastered about liberally to indicate “DESTRUCTION” and afternoon papers spoke of the bombing fleet as “RED.” Thus last week German minds were prepared to appreciate a visit by Benito Mussolini to Adolf Hitler, both loud in proclaiming on every occasion that their Fascist-Nazi mission is to save Europe from Communism.

Mrs. Mussolini took her small son Romano and baby daughter Anna Maria down by car from the Mussolini family farm at Forli to say good-by to papa at Bologna. There his special train from Rome paused for family kisses and heartily the Dictator bussed young Mrs. Vittorio Mussolini whose husband was en route to Hollywood (see p. 21). Later at Trento, where in his youth Mussolini was imprisoned, crowds roared “Viva II Duce!” and he shouted back “Viva Trento!” The train chuffed on, stopped for several hours in the mountains during the night to give the Dictator a better chance for sound sleep, finally entered Austria where the Cabinet of doughty Chancellor Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg was almost frantic at the outside chance of assassination. Some 4,300 Austrian soldiers stood along the 100 miles of railway line, backs to the Mussolini special, eyes roving as they gripped their rifles, under orders to ”’shoot to kill without question anyone suspected of bombing, shooting at or stoning the train.”

Mussolini was about to tread German soil for the first time in his official life.* It was his first trip outside Italy or her possessions since he went to Switzerland to sign the Locarno Pact (TIME, Oct. 26 1925).

In the World War the Dictators who were going to meet last week each fought with the rank of corporal on opposing sides. Their first and only previous meeting was when Der Führer flew to Venice (TIME, June 25, 1934). Sixteen days after that Adolf Hitler staged his Nazi “Blood Purge” in which many Germans were killed. Twenty-five days later Nazi agents in Vienna assassinated Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and II Duce, believing Der Führer was about to seize Austria, mobilized the Italian Army on the Austrian frontier, rang up Adolf Hitler by long distance phone and warned him in German: “Hands off Austria!”

“Matter of the Heart!” Thus Hitler and Mussolini were enemies three short years ago. Since then the British attitude on Ethiopia, the French attitude on Spain, have thrown them into each other’s arms. “My visit to Germany,” read the Italian Dictator’s official advance announcement last week, “is wholly a matter of the heart. . . . The two peoples will clasp hands . . . and will march side by side in the future, for this future belongs to us. . . . My visit is a demonstration for a common policy of STRONG PEACE.”

Adolf Hitler arrived at the Munich railway station last week boiling mad about some detail of the arrangements which had gone awry, berated a beet-red perspiring Schutzstaffel officer in explosive gutturals, and astonished the easy-going Bavarian populace by his harsh, tense mien. Next minute Der Führer, having saluted II Duce inside the station in the presence of privileged bigwigs, emerged beaming with his guest, while heavy German guns crashed 21 times in salute. Unlike Stalin, who always drives fast in a closed Hispano (see p. 22), Hitler and Mussolini sat side by side in a slowly moving open Mercedes, but each side of the street was double lined with Schutzstaffel, shoulder to shoulder.

Since Art is a Munich specialty, since Adolf Hitler used to paint and is distinctly “arty,” the program followed by II Duce—apart from a quick round of laying wreaths on Nazi shrines in Munich “The Capital of the Nazi Party and of Nazidom”—was loaded heavily with Kunst (Art). Under this head came 400 of Germany’s prettiest stage and cinema actresses. At tea in the Museum of German Art, the Dictators kissed cinewomen’s hands while they gushed, but Boxer Max Schmeling was also a guest and the German actresses seemed to prefer Schmeling.

“You must come and see Rome,” Conversationalist Mussolini was heard to tell Der Führer in German. “I am quite ready,” replied Conversationalist Hitler in German. “It will be an occasion for wearing my new uniform.”

War Games, Krupp Surprise. Leaving Munich in separate trains, Mussolini first, the Dictators traveled across Germany and around Berlin to watch war games in the Baltic Province of Mecklenburg, dashed about in snorting open cars, cheered loudly by downy-lipped German soldiers, boys of the 1935 class, the first called up by Hitler after he restored conscription. Having now done their two years’ service, the class of 1935 was whooping with elation last week, just about to be sent home. They fought the sort of open, spectacular game cinema producers think is war. Cordial was Der Führer to another distinguished guest, the Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Cyril John Deverell, pointedly snubbed by II Duce.

Enough of German Art and enough of fake war was what Benito Mussolini had had by this time. He wanted to inspect one of the most closely guarded set of secrets in Germany: the mighty Krupp munitions works at Essen. Only trouble with this was that, instead of speeding a few miles to Berlin as planned, the Dictators would have to travel clear across Germany again to Essen in the west, then cross it once more to Berlin. But what Mussolini wants Mussolini wants. To a microphone leaped German Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels, broadcast to astonished citizens of Essen that they were to deck their city with green branches and flags at once. To see that they did, Dr. Goebbels himself rushed ahead to Essen, and when the Dictators’ trains came rumbling in next day, Krupps and workers had done themselves proud. Correspondents, shoved completely out of the picture, cooled their heels while II Duce and Der Führer tramped through the hush-hush realms of Munitioneer Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.

Significance. Adolf Hitler, whose consuming passions are music, antiSemitism, Art, Architecture and Germany has never liked the gingerbread architecture of Berlin, this week concealed as much of it as possible with 40,000 square yd. of bunting tied with more than seven miles of gold ribbon. Not only were those buildings in the German capital most likely to be seen by II Duce wrapped up like Christmas packages, but Unter den Linden, the main thoroughfare, sprouted on each side colossal white pylons four rows deep and as high as the buildings behind them, each pylon topped with a glaring gold eagle. Aryan-owned buildings had the “honor” of sprouting both German and Italian flags, Jewish premises could only fly the tricolor of Italy. To greet the Dictators when they arrived at 5:30 p. m., Berlin’s whole teeming proletariat had turned out for a holiday “with pay,” proceeded to obey exhortations from Dr. Goebbels to cheer themselves hoarse. Through Berlin streets rode the Dictators, and II Duce was installed as, reportedly, “the first occupant” of the President’s rooms in the Hindenburg Palace since “the old gentleman’s” death.

Although Mussolini’s visit was to close this week with a pair of full-length broadcasts to the world by himself and Hitler, significance of the big show was well charted in advance. The mere fact that II Duce and Der Führer were laying their heads together had cooled off the recent hot British and French determination to browbeat Italy on the Mediterranean “piracy” issue (TIME, Sept. 27). Masked by the eruption of news from Berlin last week, there met in Paris quietly a conference of Italian, French and British naval experts—with Russia pointedly excluded. According to Paris dispatches, Britain and France were now ready to concede to Italy that she should police the central Mediterranean straits through which Soviet ships plying to Leftist Spain must pass—whereas previously the decision of the Nyon Conference was that Italy should keep “pirates” out of only the narrow sea adjacent to herself.

Indications were that neither Mussolini nor Hitler wanted to sign anything like a military alliance between Italy and Germany, but that both were eager to revive the Four-Power Pact of Britain, Italy, France and Germany (TIME, June 19, 1933 et ante) and revamp it into a Five-Power Pact by adding Poland. In this scheme for organizing a unity of states in Europe proper without the Soviet Union, the Dictators were reputed in London to have last week the goodwill of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, could count on brilliant Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinoff to make plenty more of the trouble for them he started hatching at Nyon.

* As an obscure newspaper editor, Mussolini visited Berlin in the days of the Weimar Republic before his March on Rome.