GERMANY WITHIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 261, 4 November 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

GERMANY WITHIN.

HOW HITLERISM AROSE. NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR. (By GORDON BOLITHO.) Three years ago when I first came to Germany the country was at the lowest ebb. I have watched the Hitler movement rise to a great height and then drop with a thud, to rise again with accumulated power and strength. When I came to Heidelberg to live among and learn to understand these people who, only a few years previously, had been the enemies of my country, I was still greatly biased by the propaganda on which I had been educated, in New Zealand duriug the long years of 1914-191 S. After six years in England, where the smallest political sensation caused an upheaval, it was a difficult thing for me to understand a country where over 30 different parties were fighting against each other, endeavouring to gain the upper hand. At practically every meeting in the Reichstag these overheated politicians threw chairs and ink stands at each other and Government officials and members of Parliament were being arrested daily. Hardly a newspaper was issued which did not tell of some bloody battle between the Nazis and Communists, and the thousands of unemployed used to walk through the streets, dangerous in their threats and demands for work and bread. It was then forbidden for Nazis to wear the brown shirts of their party, and one evening several of these young men caused a stir when they •were ordered to take off their shirts in a biergarten. They did so, and then walked through the streets with naked chests and arms; it was late December and the snow was heavy on the ground, but even this did not dull the edge of their fanatical political feelings.

.Why Hitler Was Supported. Shortly before the last election I spoke to many Germans about their voting intentions. Some of my friends are the sons of old conservative families, who, after the' war and in consequence of the shameful inflation, had withdrawn to their impoverished estates in the country, endeavouring to manage their farms, and, in the enthusiasm of their new employment, forget the magnificence of their extravagant, pre-war military life; those days as officers attached to the brilliant regiments stationed at Berlin and Darmstadt, Breslau and Dresden.

Unlike their politically boisterous offsprings, these older, quieter people were not so much in favour of Hitler, but, as many of them explained to me, it was impossible for the German National party to gain a complete majority, and they found it safer to put their votes in the hands of National Socialists for whom they had little or no respect, rather than risk a complete overthrow by the Communists ■whom they dreaded. This would' have meant the end of everything in Germany—the total damnation of their "geliebtes Vaterland" and the destruction of every ideal which the true German holds dear. To continue - under the unsuccessful

regime -of _ the Social Democrats .was impossible. Thus the brilliant success of the Hitlerites in the last election was brought about, not so much by the nation's desire. to have the Nazis in power as by the necessity to stamp out the Communism which.had risen to such dangerous strength.

Shortly before the March elections I left Heidelberg to visit friends in Leipsig. When their house was built 300 years ago it was surrounded by fields and woods, but to-day, from the garden, one looks out over a forest of factory chimneys; a dismal view in comparison to the original landscape, but the sadness accentuated by the hollow desolation of 75 of these factories "standing still," their windows broken and the iron gates rusted and bent. They made a grim picture against the background of snow. This locality Is called Grosszschocher, the "reddest" part of Lpipsig. Practically every day unemployed Communists made some attack on the house of my friends, and one morning my host half suggested that, on account of the danger, and his not being able to accept any responsibility for foreigners,""it would be better perhaps if I joined his wife and daughters at an hotel"in the city. He was even a little reluctant in granting my request to stay on in the old house with him and his sons. Nazi troops were billeted on the ground floor, and from the quietness of the garden I used to watch the brown-shirtcd enthusiasts rushing here and there with orders. Sometimes they would tear out of the,park gates on their noisy motor cycles, and one cold morning we sent the cars to collect ammunition from a neighbouring depot in readiness for an attack which we heard had been planned by the Communists that evening. Sometimes I used to sit in the cellars of the house, late into the night, talking to the Nasis, and they would tell me of their families and of their poverty, of their youth and of their ambitions.

The Jewish Boycott. Contrary to the expectations of my host, nothing really very dangerous happened to me during the election, and I saw none of the slaughterings of Jews which were so exaggerated in the foreign Press. There was one tragic morning when three of the Nazis were shot by the Communists. They were lads of eighteen, keen and intelligent. Two of them died that night,in the make-shift hospital which we arranged in the dining room. There were several attacks made by the Communists, but they were soon stopped, and the" "Bed," angry people were chased back to the dirty tenements whence they had come.

i Several. weeks later came the Jewish boycott. It was not so much that the Jews were to be boycotted because they were Jews, but because it had been proved that they were financing the Communists. Had the Nazi leaders given a little more thought and consideration to their programme they would have made this clear and boycotted the Communists, taking with them the thousands of Jews who had caused all this tragedy. In this way Germany would have commanded the respect of Europe, instead of, as. she has done, arousing the anger of foreigners who have no idea what conditions were like in Germany. It was all part of the revolution and, unfortunately for themselves, the Germans are not diplomatic, enough to avoid such blundering methods and their inevitable results. .

About this...time-I-was invited by Nazi friends to go with them, when they commandeered the "Volkshaus," the Communist headquarters in Leipsig. We met in a bleak, squalid street at eight o'clock one morning. • There was no opposition as we entered the house. Several officers were quickly arrested and taken away. Then we started on our journey of discovery. On the ground floor we walked through one room after another —just badly-furnished offices.with nothing imposing in their appointments. But on the first floor! In the first room we found 840 magnums of champagne and thousands of bottles of red and white wines. In another smaller room, behind the beautifully-furnished meeting hall, were dozens of cases of tinned food) asparagus, tongue, sausages, and, in one box bearing Russian labels, caviare. So this was German Communism. I looked at my friends. Their faces were grim with determination. I smiled my "well, what about it" smile. We returned to the first room, collected several magnums and then went into the meeting hall. Here I sat in one.of the deep leather chairs and allowed my friends to reward my having taken the risk of a Communist bullet.

It took 23 Nazis four and a half hours to collect the Russian Soviet and Communist literature into bundles, pile it into wagons and send it off to its flaming destination. The upper storeys of the building were a series of magnificentlyfurnished apartments, from several of which we found corridors leading into the neighbouring Jewish business premises. The owners were Polish fur traders, but they were nowhere to be found, and their shops were devoid of papers and stocks.

On the clay of the boycott—it lasted only two hours on Saturday morning— I walked through the streets, and. although I knew that many of the businesses were ■ in. Jewish hands, I was astonished to find that there were hardly 1 any shops, consulting rooms and offices which were not plastered with the yellow labels which told the world that' they were Jewish concerns. Lawyers and doctors, jewellers and clothiers, chemists and electrical shops, all came under the same hammer. Many of them had pure German names over their premises, and in several cases not a single Jew was to be seen among the employees. England, Sr.-eden and America rose up in anger at this clumsy step on the part of the new German Government, but the Nazis, having set the ball rolling, decided to .see the thing through; this they have done.

Jews Return. Five months have gone by since all this happened. To-day the hotels are filling with Jews again, and thousands who had escaped to Switzerland, France and Holland are gradually returning to Germany to run their businesses as they did before. Of the twenty-three cases of Jews having been turned out of their positions which have come to my knowledge, I cannot regard one as being unfair. I have looked into them all.

It may take a long time, but the day will eventually come when Europe will offer the hand" of gratitude to Germany for having done so much in the stamping oat of Communism, a Communism, bloody and terrible, devastating and alldestroying, which would have crushed Germany, and eventually the whole of Europe- under its heel.