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<text> <title> (1930s) Hitler & The Nazis </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights </history> <link 08099> <link 08101> <link 08102> <link 08103> <link 00042><link 00050><link 00059><link 00060><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Hitler & the Nazis </hdr> <body> [Adolf Hitler, who had been imprisoned for his role in the 1923 Munich beerhall putsch, in the 1930s was taking a different road to power, creating a mass party with himself at its head. At first, it was easy enough to laugh or jeer at "Handsome Adolf" and his salutes, his "brown-shirts," his demagoguery, even after his party went from twelve Reichstag (parliament) seats to 107, the second largest political bloc.] (August 25, 1930) At Nuremberg, Communists and Fascists (National Socialist Workers party) met for a debate which terminated in a free-for- all. Spectators amused themselves by pitching beer mugs and stones into the throng, injuring 70 contestants, among them three Fascist aldermen. Police charged and dispersed the rioters with truncheons and fire hose. Thus violent already, the electioneering campaigns are expected to be increasingly vigorous as general election day (Sept. 14) draws nearer. Divided against themselves, German votes are now being sought by seven major parties, none of which can hope for a landslide in its direction. The parties: Social Democrats, Nationalists, Catholic Centrists, Communists, German People's Party, the new Staatspartei, and the up-and-coming National Socialist Workers party. Seeking the element which precipitated last week's turbulence, observers unanimously pointed to the Fascists and their demagog--oratorical, Jew-baiting, terrorist Adolf Hitler. (October 6, 1930) "Hitler Kommt!" cried 2,000 excited Saxons massed inside and outside the Leipzig supreme courthouse. Many were women--for thrifty German housewives particularly dislike paying reparations, have swallowed eagerly the brash Fascist promises to repudiate the Young Plan. As Herr Hitler's motorcar swirled up the women pelted him with flowers. As this medium sized man with a small blond mustache but hard, blue, twinkling eyes stepped out, soprano voices cried "Ach, der schone Adolf!" (Ah, handsome Adolf!). Asked if he were planning revolution, Herr Hitler answered composedly: "Nein, we are merely preparing an intellectual eruption of the German people by peaceful means." When this drew from a gallery a roar of "Germany Awake!" (Fascist slogan), Judge Baumgarten glared at the assemblage, rumbled, "Silence, this is not a theatre!" but soon Herr Hitler in smashing demagog style was carrying all before him. "We propose to make the third Reich one of healthy and glorious nationalism--a state for the people, and shall put an end to the process of national disintegration. "We National Socialist (Fascists) refuse to recognize the treaties concluded over the heads of the German people as of permanent duration and also propose to fight the War guilt lie! We shall seek to abrogate or revise these by diplomatic negotiations, and I solemnly assert if these fail we shall proceed to ignore or circumvent them, with legal means if possible; failing that, with illegal means. The world may call that illegal, but I am answerable solely to the German people for my actions!" [In the endless rounds of elections, sometimes three a year, that characterized German politics of that period, the Nazis soon became the largest party, but could not command an actual majority in the Reichstag. Finally, aged President Paul Von Hindenburg was persuaded, despite his strenuous distaste for the man he called "that corporal," to ask Hitler to form a government.] (February 6, 1933) Except for beer, which few Germans consider alcoholic, Adolf Hitler touches no alcoholic tipple. Neither does he smoke. Hot water he calls "effeminate." Last week on the biggest morning of his life, this pudgy, stoop-shouldered, toothbrush-mustached but magnetic little man bounded out of bed after four hours sleep, soaped his soft flesh with cold water, shaved with cold water, put on his always neat but never smart clothes and braced himself for the third of his historic encounters with Paul von Beneckendorf und von Hindenburg. Der Reichsprasident. At their first meeting last August, upstart Herr Hitler was not so much as invited to sit down, despite the fact that he represented 230 Reichstag Deputies, by far the largest party in the Fatherland. "With what power, Herr Hitler," growled Old Paul, "do you seek to be made Chancellor?" "Precisely the same power that Mussolini exercised after his March on Rome!" chirped cheeky Adolf. (One scowling bust of Il Duce, two portraits of Frederick the Great adorn Herr Hitler's office.) "So! bristled Der Reichsprasident with the air of a Prussian school-master about to squelch an urchin. "Let me tell you, Herr Hitler, if you don't behave, I'll rap your fingers!" Thus a complete break last August--at which time Adolf Hitler had been called in only to be asked by the President whether he would enter and support the "Cabinet of Monocles" headed by Lieut. Colonel Franz von Papen. With dejected, hangdog mien Der Osaf left Der Reichsprasident. In November things were different. On the one hand losses in Germany's general election shrank the Hitler Party, still largest from 230 to 195 Reichstag seats. On the other hand, popular hatred and unrest at the reactionary policies of the "Cabinet of Monocles" forced Chancellor von Papen to resign. When Der Osaf was summoned a second time to the Presidential Palace he was bidden to sit down by Der Reichsprasident for what Germans call a "conference of four eyes"--i.e. not even a secretary was present. Called in for a moment, State Secretary Dr. Otto Meissner emerged to gasp, "Extraordinary cordiality!" All the same, Herr Hitler was not given carte blanche to form a Cabinet. The President attached seven complex and, as events proved, impossible conditions. After 14 days of Cabinet crisis there emerged as Chancellor, out of a welter of intrigue. "His Field Grey Eminence," suave, sly Defense Minister General Kurt von Schleicher. First sign that the von Schleicher Cabinet might be cracked by the same sort of intrigue that made it, came when Hitler and von Papen, both smarting in eclipse, met at Cologne for a night conference. Only President von Hindenburg could oust General von Schleicher as Chancellor and to do so he had only to refuse to sign a decree giving von Schleicher power to dissolve the Reichstag. Such power the President had given to all his Chancellors since enough Hitler Deputies began to be elected to make it impossible for a Cabinet opposed by Der Osaf to get a vote of confidence. Last week General von Schleicher, knowing that the Reichstag was about to meet this week, called on President von Hindenburg to ask for what had become "the usual powers of dissolution." They were refused. The interview was as short as that of Hindenburg and Hitler last August. In effect Old Paul kicked out General von Schleicher & Cabinet, accepted their resignations? Why? By last week Comrade von Papen had convinced Comrade von Hindenburg that the best interests of the Fatherland demanded appointment of the leader of the largest party to be Chancellor. Proposing himself as Vice-Chancellor and Reich Commissioner for Prussia, Comrade von Papen argued that with this "safeguard" (himself) in the Cabinet it would be safe to appoint Hitler Chancellor. Devious but cogent, this proposition won 85-year-old Comrade von Hindenburg's "Ja!" When sober, cold-water-shaven Adolf Hitler turned up for the third historic time at the President's Palace last week, he found Old Paul all smiles and spruce Colonel von Papen ready to pop the question: "Will you, Herr Reichsprasident, entrust Herr Hitler with a mandate to form a Cabinet? "Yes, Yes," said President von Hindenburg. "Yes, indeed." Outside the Palace thousands of Hitlerites roared guttural victory cheers. "Heil Hitler! Deutschland erwache! Juda verrecke!" they bellowed as he emerged waving his black felt hat. "Hail Hitler! Germany awake! Perish Jews!" [There were only three Nazis in the ensuing cabinet, but they were the all-important ones; besides Hitler, there were Wilhelm Frick as national interior minister and Hermann Goring as interior minister of Prussia, which comprised most of Germany; the latter job included control of the police. Hitler promptly dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections. In late February a highly symbolic event occurred, and after that no one would ever laugh at the Nazis again.] (March 6, 1933) With Chancellor Adolf Hitler seeking control of the Reichstag by campaign of unparalleled violence and bitterness leading up to the General Election, Sunday, March 5, suddenly this week the Reichstag Building caught fire. Starting in four places at once, flames soon swept up to the great square gilded cupola of the Reichstag, as famous through Germany as is the dome of the Capitol in Washington among U.S. citizens. Soon the cupola was a glowing hodge-podge of incandescent girders. Every fire engine in Berlin was called out before the blaze was under control. Whatever the national election result this Sunday, it will be a long time before the Reichstag Deputies have a proper place to sit. (March 13, 1933) The Government parties won a clear majority in both Diet and Reichstag. Moreover, if the Communist votes are nullified by Government decree, Chancellor Hitler's Nazis by themselves will be absolute majorities, can tell Dr. Hugenberg and Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen to go to the devil. "Exulted Chancellor Hitler: "The National revolution is on its way and will continue!" Before the German Democracy could thus be downed this week, the Hitler Cabinet had to launch last week a juggernaut of super-suppressive measures & decrees for which they needed an excuse. What excuse could be better than the colossal act of arson which had just sent a $1,500,000 fire roaring through the Reichstag Building gutting completely the brown oak Reichstag Chamber and ruining its great dome of gilded copper and glass? The Reichstag fire was set by Communists, police promptly charged. Over a nationwide radio hookup the Minister of Interior for Prussia, blustering Nazi Captain Hermann Wilhelm Goring, cried: "The Reichstag fire was to have been the signal for the outbreak of open civil war!...The Communists had in readiness `terror squads' of 200 each...These were to commit their dastardly acts disguised as units of our own Nazi Storm Troops and the Stahlhelm...The women and children of high Government officials were to have been kidnapped as hostages and used in the civil war as `living shields'!... "From all these horrors we have saved the Fatherland! We want to state clearly that the measures taken are not a mere defense against Communism. Ours is a fight to the finish until Communism has been absolutely uprooted in Germany!" With the Reichstag fire as his excuse, weary old President Paul von Hindenburg signed a decree giving Chancellor Hitler and Cabinet a tyrant's powers. Totally suspended by this decree are seven articles of the German Constitution guaranteeing the rights of freedom of the person, home, correspondence, written word, assembly, association and property. After cutting from under every German these vital parts of his Constitution, the President fixed Death as the penalty for attempting to secure or disclosing important military secrets. Imprisonment for ten years was provided for transmitting to foreign governments "news, even if false, which should be kept secret in the interest of the Reich." (March 27, 1933) To say that most German statesmen & politicians outside the Government's charmed circle were scared to death last week, would be understatement. Panic made cowards of the bravest of brave German Socialists and Communists. Even Catholics trembled. It was accurately said that in less than two weeks Chancellor Hitler has reduced his opponents to a lower level of groveling fear than did Premier Mussolini in the two years after the March on Rome, Oct. 30, 1922. In Germany last week--not two years but two weeks after the Republic "died" and before the new Reichstag met--nearly all Communist Deputies and many Socialist Deputies were in jail. The Hitler Government announced that no Communist Deputies (even should they break jail) would be admitted to the Reichstag. Most Socialist Deputies were expected to stay away, lest they be harmed. The bravest Socialist (by reputation), Dr. Otto Braun, Premier of Prussia, once famed as "The Lion of Social Democracy," fled to Switzerland where he was still so terrified that he telegraphed to Berlin his resignation from the Prussian Diet and from the Socialist party. (April 3, 1933) Before Berlin's Kroll Opera House swarmed a crowd of young Nazis last week. "Give us the Enabling Act!" they chanted, "give us the Enabling Act or there will be another fire!" The Reichstag was meeting in the Opera House because the central hall of the Reichstag building had been gutted by incendiary fire, a fire that despite popular murmurings the Nazis have persistently blamed on Communists. Because of the fire every Communist deputy was in jail. So the young Nazis' cry was easily answered: The Reichstag passed the Enabling Act 441-94, Adolf Hitler became Dictator of Germany for four years to come. Socialists did not let the bill go through without one word of protest. Cried Deputy Otto Wels; "Take our liberty, take our lives, but leave us our honor! If you really want social reconstruction you would need no such law as this." In full Nazi uniform Chancellor Hitler popped from his seat, his little mustache twitching with excitement. "You're too late!" he roared. "We don't need you any longer in molding the fate of the nation!" "America, which of all other lands has taken it upon itself to set up a movement against our methods of self-defense, has the least excuse for such action. The American people were the first to draw practical and political conclusions from differences among races and from the different value of different races. "Through its immigration laws it has prevented the entry of those races which seemed unwelcome to the American people. And America today is by no means ready to open its doors to so-called refugee Jews from Germany, whereby we must emphasize that in reality not a hair of any Jewish head has been touched." So last week spoke Adolf Hitler before a meeting of the German Medical Federation. Under his hand Germany proceeded openly to reduce her Jewish inhabitants to the social and political position occupied by Negroes in the southern U.S. and Orientals in the West. The drive to drive Jews from the professions spread to medicine, education, the arts. The rectors of the Universities of Frankfurt and Brunswick were arrested last week. Officials of the Berlin municipal insurance system announced that they would pay the bills of no Jewish physicians rendered after April 1. Because they signed an official protest against persecution of Jewish musicians in Germany, German radio stations were ordered to bar all records of composition by Arturo Toscanini, Walter Damrosch, Sergei Koussevitzky, Artur Bodansky, Harold Bauer, Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Kosher killing of meat, banned by several German States fortnight ago, was forbidden through the entire Reich last week. From Nazi headquarters came strong hints that any German official married to a Jewess had better get a divorce if he wished to keep his job. (May 15, 1933) German workmen woke from the heady excitement of their first Nazi May Day last week to find their trade unions snatched from under them. Catholic unions announced a 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. (May 22, 1933) Undampered by a chilly drizzle, some 40,000 Germans jammed the square between Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm University and the Opera House looking at a black mass of criss-crossed logs, insulated from the pavement by sand. A thumping band blared out old military marches. Toward midnight a procession entered the square, headed by officers of the University's student dueling corps in their dress uniforms; blue tunics, white breeches, plush tam o'shanters and spurred patent leather jack boots. Behind them came other students and a line of motor trucks piled high with books. More students clung to the trucks, waving flaring torches that they hurled through the air at the log pile. Blue flames of gasoline shot up, the pyre blazed. One squad of students formed a chain from the pyre to the trucks. Then came the books, passed from hand to hand while a leather-lunged student roared out the names of the authors: "Erich Maria Remarque (wild cheering)--for degrading the German language and the highest patriotic ideal!" "Emil Ludwig--burned for literary rascality and high treason against Germany." "Sigmund Freud--for falsifying our history and degrading its great figures..." On he went, calling out the names of practically every modern German author with whom the outside world is familiar: Karl Marx, Jakob Wasserman, Albert Einstein, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Arnold and Stefan Zweig, Walther Rathenau. While the flames flared highest, up to a little flag-draped rostrum stumped club-footed, wild-eyed little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment in the Nazi Cabinet, organizer of the great midnight bibliocaust. "Jewish intellectualism is dead!" cried he, "National Socialism has hewn the way. The German folk soul can again express itself!" (January 1, 1934) A New Year's present for Mother Nature was packaged last week by Bachelor Adolf Hitler who has said that "Nature is unable to cope with modern life." German surgeons will do the coping. Under decrees issued last week and effective Jan. 1, the Nazi State, according to Chancellor Hitler's spokesman, will set out to deprive 400,000 "defective" German men & women of their reproductive powers in the next two years. The new decree makes it the duty of every German doctor to denounce to the State any German who seems to be "defective." The suspect will then be brought before a "eugenic court" of which 1,700 are set up throughout Germany by the decree. Each court consists of two doctors and a judge. If they decide for sterilization the prisoner can: (1) submit; 2) prove that he has sufficient funds to spend the rest of his life in a sanatorium and proceed to do so; 3) appeal to one of 27 "Supreme Eugenic Courts." From a decision by any of these Supreme Courts there will be no appeal. Germans were warned that reluctant "defectives" will be sterilized by force. Millions of Germans scanned anxiously the State's list of grounds for sterilization: 1)hereditary deafness; 2) hereditary alcoholism; 3) hereditary blindness; 4) St. Vitus' dance; 5) epilepsy; 6) manic-depressive insanity; 7) congenital idiocy; 8) schizophrenia (split personality) and 9) severe physical deformity. [With his political opposition crushed, Hitler then moved against the biggest potential threat to his power within his own movement by a "blood purge" of the 2,500,000-strong Brownshirts, or S.A., led by Ernst Roehm. Hitler also compromised the German army, hitherto aloof from Nazism, by forcing its leaders to acquiesce in the murder of two generals, former Chancellor Kurt Von Schleicher and an associate.] (July 9, 1934) One had only to scan the greedy, sensual, plug-ugly face of Storm Troop Chief of Staff Ernst Roehm; one had only to reflect that all Germany knew of his bull-like philandering with effeminate young men, to decide that since Chancellor Hitler stomached Captain Roehm there was probably no comrade he would not stomach. Historically last week Adolf Hitler retched at last and in his retching there was blood. Taking off in the dead of night, Chancellor Hitler flew from Bonn to Munich where he arrived at 4 a.m. He accused Storm Troop leaders of treacherously plotting a coup against himself, brandished General Goring's proofs under their noses, flew into a passion and tore the Nazi insignia off their brown uniforms. S.S. troops with machine guns meanwhile bottled up the S.A. leaders in Chancellor Hitler's trap. Then leaping into a car the Chancellor dashed for queer Captain Roehm's luxurious snuggery. According to official communique there was no one in bed with Captain Roehm when Chancellor Hitler burst in, but in the adjoining bedroom Nazi Police Chief Edmund Heines of Breslau was nabbed with a young storm trooper between the sheets. "Certain sights were disclosed in the seizing of the rebels" read the communique "so pitiful that all feelings of compassion must end...Chief of Staff Ernst Roehm's well known unhappy malady was gradually becoming unbearable, driving him into severest conflicts with his own conscience...Der Fuhrer has ordered this plague ruthlessly stamped out." In the stamping out which followed scores of Storm Troop leaders, brown-shirt potentates whose word has been law in their bailiwicks, were either shot by firing squads or were left alone in prison with a revolver which they used to commit suicide. The chancellor tried his hardest to make Col. Roehm shoot himself, twice sent him a pistol which came back with the defy, "If I am shot Hitler will have to do it himself." "Why should I honor a traitor by shooting him!" fumed the Dictator. After long hours of bickering delay Prisoner Roehm was shot in the back the next day by a firing squad. [The pressure on Germany's Jews was relentless, culminating, for this period at least, in the infamous Nurnberg laws, which Hitler called "the final settlement on the position of the Jews."] (September 23, 1935) In menacing tones General Goring then read out three decree laws. The first ended the clumsy arrangement under which the German tricolor and the Nazi swastika have been flown together as national flags. Henceforth German's sole flag is the swastika. "It is the anti-Jewish symbol of the world!" thundered General Goring amid deafening cheers. "A soldier from the front lines, Adolf Hitler, pulled us out of the dirt and brought us back to honor...The swastika has become for us a holy symbol!" The second decree read out by General Goring is the National Citizenship Law. This divides Germans into "citizens" (with such rights as suffrage) and "members" (rights not defined.) Jews under this law are automatically "members," and German "citizens" will be degraded to that status if they are found to be Communists or otherwise "unworthy." The final decree last week is the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. This permits Jews to fly a racial flag of their own; prohibits them from flying the German flag; bars Jews from marrying outside their race in Germany; bars them, whether married or not, from having sexual relations across the race line; and, as a final deterrent, forbids a Jew to employ a German female servant less than 45 years old. The implication of this proviso struck the German Reichstag so forcibly that Deputies clutched their quaking midriffs and the whole chamber roared with Homeric laughter until tears of mirth glistened on many a cheek. Banging down his gavel President Goring boomed: "No Jew can insult Germany!" (November 25, 1935) The sexual and political but not the economic status of Jews in the Fatherland was settled by Adolf Hitler last week to the best of his ability with decrees applying in detail the broad "Nurnberg Laws." Extra-marital relations are made punishable if one party is a 50% Jew or more and the other is of German or "similar blood." Not only entitled but compelled to marry pure Germans are 25% Jews who are rated as Germans. Scathingly London's Times commented that these laws make Germany a "paradise for blackmailers." Politically the new decrees place Jews and Jewesses in the same category, lumping them with German criminals and imbeciles beyond the pale of citizenship, franchise and eligibility for State office. [Germany had long since resigned from the League of nations, that feeble child of the World War I peace conference at Versailles, because members objected to the Nazi's swift rearmament. Hitler's next moves, though long foreseen by Germany's neighbors, produced shock and dismay.] (March 25, 1935) Joy filled German hearts to bursting last week when beloved Realmleader Hitler took the most popular plunge of his career. Only crabbiest correspondents sneered when elfin little Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels, sparkling-eyed and jumping for joy on his club foot, announced that Germans were rejoicing before he released the news at which they would rejoice. Sure enough, enthusiasm did prevail as soon as German presses printed the great news of how Germany's whole Cabinet including staid, stuffy Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath and 275-lb. Air Minister Hermann Wilhelm Goring "bounded from their chairs" last week and gave a triple cheer of "Heil! Heil! Heil!" when Adolf Hitler finished telling them in his harshest, most gutturally thrilling German that the page of the Treaty of Versailles on which German signatures are inked is just another scrap of paper. Specifically Messiah Hitler decreed that Germany will now violate the Treaty of Versailles' Part V by raising as rapidly as possible a conscript peacetime army of half a million men--bigger than the continental peace-time army of France. Three hours later Berlin was bedlam. Boulevards were pack-jammed with people shouting and sobbing. Several correspondents, defeated by the job of trying to describe a nation made with joy, cabled that Germany's transports of exultation were "INDESCRIBABLE." (March 16, 1936) German dwellers in the Rhineland, ever proud of their flower-scented golden wines and their square-headed, hobnailed soldiers, have been chafing for 17 long years under Prohibition--of German soldiers. At first they had plenty of U.S., British and French soldiers. Definitely the apple-cheeked wenches of the Rhineland are open-armed to soldiers. One day last week they could be seen giggling from thousands of windows in such great cities as Cologne, Aachen, Frankfort and Dusseldorf as wild, electric rumors sped that Prohibition of German soldiers was almost over. Bursting with excitement, Herr Doktor Oberburgermeister ("Lord Mayor") Gunter Reisen of Cologne buttoned himself into his sausage-tight Nazi Storm Troop uniform and took his stance shortly after noon, facing the Square. To Rhinelanders in whose bones is bred Die Wacht am Rhein with its ringing tingling question: "The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine! Who guards tonight our Stream Divine?" This was the most blissful moment in 17 years. Adam's apples gulped as on three bicycles the very first real GERMAN SOLDIERS, trim lads in grim steel helmets, swerved into the Square. Then, with the stamping, straight-legged step of geese, came the first of 19 thrilling INFANTRY BATTALIONS and 13 ARTILLERY BATTALIONS who were soon to star the Rhineland with nine GLORIOUS GARRISONS. In Cologne ecstasy was indescribable as soldiers, Soldiers, SOLDIERS with red carnations peeping from their belts came goose-stepping smartly into the Cathedral Square and were reviewed by a real GERMAN GENERAL in full uniform with twinkling medals, Lieut. General Gunther von Kluge. As a climax a tiny Rhineland girl toddled up to von Kluge, gave the general his own big bouquet of red carnations. </body> </article> </text>