HITLER OVER EUROPE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1938, Page 28

HITLER OVER EUROPE

Centre of Events, He is Still a Mystery

HITLER is different. Even in the Wilhelmstrasse he remains a

stranger, oddly aloof from the conventional ruling mind of the past, still the smooth-working instrument of government, and also from the Nazi cliques superimposing a fantastic medley of ideas and hunches, his and theirs, on the old administrative machine, writes Anne O'Hare. McCormick in the "New York Times." But so long as the author and producer of •'Mem Kampf" performed within Germany he could be interpreted in German terms. When he went to Italy he projected himself beyond his own frontiers. What he means, what he aims at above all, what depth of intelligence lies under the.... messianic nimbus he wears at home became of greater moment to the outside world. It is hard to explain why the-spec-tacle, of Hitler riding in triumph down the Imperial Way in Rome was. more suggestive than his appearance in the Rjngstrasse as the conqueror of Vienna. Perhaps it was because the Roman holiday., was his" first glorification .outside the Teutonic frame. Perhaps the Golden Milestone he passed on the Aippian Way .marked more clearly the ldng road lie-has travelled from the scrubbed tablein the Munich beerhbuse. To himself, at any rate, it was a^kind of apotheosis to find himself on aipedestal- in the city that is ttietradi- ; tiohal: "Caput. Mundi" to his Alpine niirid,. swayed between; Nordic myths and. heavy classicism. : . f ;T!AR MORE FOaiVUDABLE. ; The: new Hitler is more assured and far :more formidable than the-man ■v^hose greatest gamble up to 1936 was to march into the Rhinelarid • with askeleton, army. It was there that he tested -the temper of France and England.' 'There he confounded, the protesting generals so completely that he gained the authority he exei-cised this yfear- in remoulding the army into ah instrument to do his will. There-he prepared -himself to invade Austria and. become .'the voice of 75,000,000 people in the heart of Europe. ; He : is-more formidable but. hot less enigmatic. ._lThe mystery of the man and his personality only grows as his power extends and his purposes ;becbme clearer. He believes he is the ordained leader of the German race. Ijijsliis own eyes he is a saviour, 'the prophet of the new national religion which will unify all Germans and make them prevail. So he has long been saying; but: not until he took possession of Austria, not until he blindly informed Mussolini that he ■was simply carrying'-out an old pro-

ject and a historic process, forecast in "Mem Kampf," did the world fully awake to the fact that the so-called mystic is coldly practical. The realm of his own in which he is said to live has a well-defined geography, charted long ago and methodically being turned into reality. TWO CLUES FOUND. It is increasingly important, therefore, to penetrate the mystery. Two clues to which sufficient weight has not been given are his Austrian heritage and his passion for building. From the first he has been obsessed by Austria. When' the writer first saw him,- shortly after he came to power, he spoke with a queer, fierce emotion of his native land, an Austro-German who would never rest until the merger in himself was reproduced in a union between the two countries. Three years ago, when he cleared away block after block in Munich to build a great headquarters for his party, it was already his dream to build the capital of' the National Socialist empire in the south, near Austria and away from Berlin, where he has never been at home. . The passion for building is bound up with his fixed idea of reconstructing the German world, which is the only world he cares about. Planning is his iayourite occupation; Even while he is co-ordinating Austria, even while he was reorganising the German army and Government to ensure that the military command, the Foreign Office, and the Economics Ministry should conform to National Socialist ideas, most of his time has been spent over a drafting board at Berchtesgaden working out to the last detail the sweeping transformations that will change the face of Berlin and Munich; Hamburg and Cologne.. HE MADE THE PLANS. The rough sketches for this gigantic rebuilding programme, already reducing to dust and debris great sections in the centre of the capital, were made by Hitler himself. He it was who designed the 400ft-wide triumphal road which cuts straight through the heart of Berlin, knocking down palaces, embassies, monuments, modern buildings, and changing the Tiergarten into a parkway. He it was who drew to scale the severe splendour of the facades of the new Government buildings rising to replace the Voss Strasse. He planned the University City" near the Olympic Stadium and the Aviation City at, the Tempelhof Aerodrome, which is being, turned into the world's biggest central* city airfield. When the blueprints for the new Germany*are completed by his architects, he revises them point by point. For the opera house to overshadow Wagner's at Bayreuth, he conceived a magnificent promenade vsurrounding the auditorium. The architect placed in this colonnade the refreshment stands usual in the foyers and lounges of Continental theatres, but Hitler impatient-,

ly ordered these excrescences out of sight. The picture of people eating and drinking in the stately vestibule of his, temple of music offended his artistic sense. AKIN TO THE MAD KING. Hitler yearns to project into reality the world of his own mind. This world he already lived in as a "peculiar" boy in the Upper Austrian village where he was born. He gave it outline in the neat little architectural drawings he produced in his vagabond youth. He communicated it to others in the first fervid speeches he made in the beer halls of Munich. In "Mem Kampf," the credo of a defeated and abandoned revolutionary, he reduced it to a formula and a map. Now he has power to execute those plans, to turn visions into eye-filling actualities, thwarted desires into decrees. Hitler is essentially the frustrated artist revelling at last in limitless opportunity; Think what the power to tear down and rebuild great cities must mean to a would-be architect who never had the chance to build so much as a traffic shelter or a bandstand! Hitler is in many respects akin to Ludwig 11, the mad king who built his beautiful fantasies into palaces, theatres and gardens in the curiously mythological setting of Bavaria, the only place except the equally romantic landscape of the Rheingold where the creator of the new German mythology feels at home. Ludwig's realm was a province and his building, was restricted to lordly pleasure houses. The world of Hitler's imagination is a modern empire, and he clsfcns the right not only to reconstruct roads, cities, the structure of government, but the way of life and the thought of nearly 80,000,000 Germans. Central Europe is the "living room" df this mighty people, and that must be reconstructed, too. BUILDING AND FORTIFYING. :, It all fits into the general plan. The Nazification of the Government, the adIvance on Austria, the extension of the "protectorate" to Germans on the frontiers, the stubborn struggle with the churches, the suppression of the Jews, the drive in the Balkans, the RomeBerlin axis, the anti-Communist campaign—all dovetail into a grandiose project to build, landscape, ornament, enrich, and fortify the German world that lives in Hitler's, mind. All Hitler's projects and policies, in short, reflect the narrow experience, express the likes and dislikes, realise the dreams, magnify the ideas, impose the tastes of an uneducated man who failed in everything he undertook until he became the absolute ruler of one of the greatest countries in the world. Germany today is a projection of the mind of Hitler. It is taking the shape of his dream. He is giving it a new I racial basis, a new economic system, a new political structure, a new aspect, and a new religion. [ And this he does without knowledge

of history, science, economics, art, theology; without practical tarining in any field.

I How? Why? This is a mystery as "unfathomable as the enigma of Hitler himself. Obviously his achievement is not the accomplishment of a simple dreamer, inspired by faith in himself and his mission. When the world first read "Mem Kampf" it seemed just an-J other autobiography of a crank. Few \ took- seriously either its vaporous philosophy or its crude programme of action. Up to the day he came to power the best observers in Berlin refused; to take Hitler seriously. Even more than Mussolini before him, the Austrian corporal was belittled as a phenomenon as transient and insignificant as Dr. Townsend or Huey Long. BEHIND THE FACADE. It didn't occur to anybody that a clear brain functioned behind the little moustache, the lank forelock, the primitive taboos, the torrents of harsh oratory in which he lashed millions of embittered and defeated Germans into revolt against the world. Even now, after five years of astonishing success as dictator, there seems no rational explanation of that success. I Other revolutionary leaders have pushjed through the undertow of tradition, inertia, and popular desperation to ride the crest of a wave, but the rise o^f any of these —Lenin, Gandhi, Mussolini, Ataturk —is easier to accpsnt for than Hitler's. To a greater or legs degree their leadership was a triumph of mind over masses. His is the triumph of a mass-mind, of which he is the medium. Although apparently Hitler possesses little of the intellectual equipment of his fellow-dictators, in much less time and against greater odds he has reached a point where he dominates his own country and has become the dominant figure in Europe. In the domain of foreign policy his achievements surpass those of experienced statesmen. Step by step he has carried out his plans without interference even when they challenge the interests and safety of other countries. Without firing a gun he has torn up a war treaty imposed by the strongest nations on earth. By remilitarising the Rhineland he altered the strategic map of Europe as drastically as if he had won a major battle. By re-armament, backed by autarchy, he changed the policy and upset the economic balance of nearly every other State. Now he has made the first decisive move beyond his own borders. Simultaneously with the summary conquest of Austria, he announced a protectorate over all citizens of German blood [living in neighbouring countries. This policy, being tested against Czechoslovakia, is by far the most significant j and far-reachmg of his claims, as anyone can see and feel who breathes the atmospher-e of fear and suspense hanging over Central and South-eastern Europe as a result. ; ; ■

.The time is past when all this can be interpreted as an upsurge of emotion,'the achievement of a little demagogue equipped with a loudspeaker. You can't dismiss "Mem Kampf" as the vapoUrings of a visionary as you watch its programme realised with cold and systematic precision. The most ■ incredulous are now forced to take this self-inspired prophet seriously. Whatever the explanation of the plot or process that has made Germany as formidable as it is today, even though the dizzy edifice is founded on sand and constructed of "ersatz," it implies either a directing intelligence of a high order or the complete triumph of unreason in the conduct of the world. If there1 is intelligence, and if it is not Hitler's, whose is it? The key men of the regime are far more active. The genius of Goebbels as showman, impresario, and supersalesman is undoubtedly more responsible than anything else for the apotheosis of Hitler, GoerTng, under his flamboyance and his uniform, conceals a driving energy and a capacity to get things done. Ley, head of the Labour Front, has organised a smooth-ly-working industrial machine. Himmler, chief of the secret police, is more than a strong-arm man; he is credited with more ability and less pose than any of the Nazi oligarchs. With Hess, deputy leader and Hitler's former secretary, believed by many to be coauthor of "Mem Kampf," and Frick, Minister of the Interior and the best administrator in the ruling group, Himmler woi"ks in the background, but after Goering he is counted the most powerful of the "second men," and perhaps, if the regime outlasts Hitler, the likely to be first. NOT A HARD WORKER. Hitler directs an orchestra composed of players like yon Ribbentrop and Rosenberg, yon Schirach and Darre, Streicher, and Wagner, each harping on some private cult or prejudice, and harping so persistently that all the leader's personal antipathies, and a few more besides, are constantly hymned and underscored. This makes him seem a more energetic anti-Com-munist, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, antimodernist in art, than he really is. He is not energetic. He can talk for hours without a sign of fatigue, stand for hours at a review while his lieutenants wilt; storm and rage when he is opposed. But the daily executive grind is not for him. He seldom interferes in the all-powerful departments of the vast governmental octopus his; party has created. Probably no contemporary ruler has fewer Cabinet meetings or spends less time in his capital'or in the actual work of government. ,

Nevertheless, the key ■' decisions are his. It was he who saw that the armywas becoming an independent power and acted immediately to curb this tendency before it grew dangerous. It was he, disregarding military advice, who risked everything on the march

into the'Rhineland. It was he, against the protest of Schacht and every business interest, .who; decreed national self-sufficiqricy and. initiated the Fouryear Plan. Acting alone, he made the pact with Poland, left the League of Nations, signed the naval; agreement with Great Britain, proclaimed conscription, fathered the Anti-Comintern Pact. Without consulting 'either his own Foreign Office or Italy, although the Rome-Berlin axis turned on Austria, he summoned Schuschnigg to Berchtesgaden and confronted him: with an ultimatums Overnight, following his own impulse, he swooped down on Austria and upset the balance of Europe. ; ••'■ '■•■ ■- ■'':•■, •.-'■ > •"-■■: ■ - , . . INSTRUMENT OF FORCES. Say he acts on instinct. Say that his peculiar itemperameht, the almost rhythmic alternation, between long periods of passivity and short spurts of intense activity, determines and explains the timing of his moves, so that he is not run. by an inner clock, but is a kind of clock himself, knowing how-to, wait and when to strike. That is in keeping with his. mediumistic quality, the impression he gives of being an instrument of forces he does riot understand rather than a source of force, of being hypnotised than hypnotist! v ■ f Or attribute his unbroken -series of successful strokes in foreign policy to the hesitations, the scruples, the divided mind of democratic Governments, and not to any uncanny cleverness of his own. Throughout his career he has profited by accidents, strange freaks of luck. In Germany he rose to power on the weaknesses and mistakes of his opponents. In dealing with the outside world he has invariably exploited times of stress and employed the strategy of surprise, acting suddenly at bad moments, when nobody was prepared for counter-action. But it is no commonplace mind, moved by sheer instinct and emotion, that calculates so surely on these preoccupations or capitalises so shrewdly on the confusion and divisions of hydraheaded Governments! And it is no rapt visionary who feels his way so carefully, going just a little further each time on the path he charted when no one but himself would have bet a paper mark on his chances of getting anywhere beyond the Munich Hofbrau. Nobody knows Herr Hitler and nothing - satisfactorily explains him. The writer has talked with him, watched him in action, listened to his speeches, questioned many of his intimates, without being able to fathom the tfjcret of his power or discover how his mind works. | The story isn't ye^ told. The answer to .the riddle is to be revealed by his-1 tory. Meantime the best brains of the world are not getting very far ; in an-' ticipating oil stopping the march- of today's v Little Corporal. Either • that untrained and nebulous intellect works well or else we see in ;Hitler the true figure of the crazy time in which, we live. ■ •■'■ .- "■'■;. .*;>■-.;■;- ■.':'' '■'/ ■; ■■■;.': ■■' ■'■■<. ;-.