VISIT TO NAZI GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21510, 27 June 1935, Page 11

VISIT TO NAZI GERMANY

Defence of Liberty J TRAGEDY OF THE JEWS} ' . j IBy AUBREY L. WILLIAMS] VIII. LONDON, May 13. ' Having handed themselves over body and soul to the National Socialists, many Germans are now wondering where the process of depriving them of their liberties will end. Externally, Hitler's Germany presents an appearance of freedom. Within, as only to® many Germans are aware, it has som« of the characteristic of a prison. My friend was right when he described the regime as "grim." This is the more apparent now that the "ballyhoo"—the tumult and the shouting—which marked the early stages of the revolution has died away. It is revived on special occasions, such as the great May Day parade at the Templehof Field in Berlin, and, alas that rosy rapture should fade so soon, attendance thereat is now compulsory for the workers.

Indeed, before the delivery of Herr Hitler's dramatic blows at the hated Treaty of Versailles, a deep apathy, so I was informed, had come to possess the people. They may be disunited upon matters of internal concern, but they are as one man in their desire for the reassertion of Germany's prestige in foreign eyes, no less than for their own satisfaciion. The Reichstag still exists, but it is merely a rubber stamp for the occasional endorsement of the decrees of the junta whicfo really governs Germany. All opposition elements have long been excluded. "Gleichschaltung" (unification) in the Totalitarian State, that is the objective. "People, party, and state must become identified in the Third Reich," so Dr. Goebbels declared a year ago. There is only one party, the National Socialist party, only one press, the Nazi press. Everything must serve the National Socialist state, and that only. Communist Cohesion The opposition has been shattered or driven underground. It is rather difficult to gauge the attitude of the workers to the new regime. They are very closely shepherded by Herr Himniler's secret police, and they dread to find an agent provocateur in the apparently disinterested enquirer. The Socialist parties no longer exist, but, somehow, the Communists retain their cohesion, in spite of the absence of a Communist press. All manifestations of the intellect are rigidly controlled. The German intelligentsia has either been silenced or has been driven into exile. It is a bad advertisement for National Socialism that Einstein and the brothers Mann, writers of eminence, should be driven from Germany. German films are puerile these days; intelligent people, I was infocmed, never see them. Music, Herr Hitler's sole cultural interest, is also in chains. Herr Furtwangler, the great conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, boldly protested against the repression of the modernist music of Hindsmith and the application of the Aryan clause to musicians. He resigned his offices, but he has since made his peace with the Leader, upon terms as yet undisclosed.

The German press is a shadow of its former greatness. All surviving newspapers have been nazified. The "Berliner Tageblatt" is a scrry affair i these days. The party press is as puerile as the party .films, an insult to the intelligence. Alone, the "Frankfurter Zeitung" retains some of its prestige. It is used, I understand, by the Foreign Office to reach foreign opinion. While I was in Berlin a series of decrees was promulgated by the Propaganda Ministry of Dr. Goebbels, which can only have the effect of utterly destroying any semblance of liberty the German press might still have enjoyed, and which will bind it still more closely to the party-state. _ By these decrees; whose avowed object, surely ironical, is "to safeguard the liberty of the press," newspaper proprietors and beneficiaries must prove their Aryan descent back to 1800. Their effect is to give Nazi supervisory organs unlimited powers of control in all that concerns ownership of a newspaper or members of the journalistic profession, and to disallow, any newspaper which caters for a limited confessional. professional, or other special class of public. Further, no new newspapers may be published for two years. Many Prisoners There are still about 2000 persons detained in concentration camps. Abuses have been suppressed, so it is stated, but there is an impression abroad that some prisoners still receive rough handling by the, guards. The drive against the Jews Is continued with unabated energy. They have now been debarred from citizenship, and they may not hoist the Reich co'curs —tije swastika banner in particular —above a private or business house. It is an aggravation of their tragedy 'that the Nazi press is specially privileged to vilify their race. A friend of Herr Hitler's, a certain Herr Julius Streicher, who holds party ticket No. 7, publishes "Der Sturmer," a "German weekly paper to uphold the truth," which is a disgrace to Germany and to the press. I purchased a copy of this precious journal. Its front page asserts in large letters that "Jewish doctors are betrayers of women and murderers," and that "the Jews are our misfortune." An article tells the reader "Why the Jew wants to change his name," while another describes a ritual murder which allegedly took place in Endingen, in the Upper Rhineland, in 1462. There are numerous references to "Jewish raviers" and "Jewish brutes." The anti-Jewish drive is mainly against' Jews in the professions—the law, medicine, university professors, etc. Jews in business have not been molested to any great extent. Measures proposed against department stores, largely Jewish owned, were stayed when their probable effect upon unemployment was realised. The heads of the Jews still remaining- in Berlin may, figuratively, be bloody, but they are unbowed, although, naturally, those Jews observe a wise restraint. The Jew's tragedy is great, but in justice to the Nazis it should be stated that because international jewry is financially strong and controls or influences many vehicles of opinion, the extent of the horrors of the purge has been exaggerated. As evidence of this exaggeration it suffices to remark that more than 10.000 Jews who fled abroad at the outbreak of the oppression have since returned to Germany.