THE REAL HITLER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 163, 11 June 1936, Page 6

THE REAL HITLER.

The British tourist who crosses the German frontier moves at once into an entirely strange world. But he does not know it. Everything appears the same as when Uindenburg was Bresident, but under this superstructure of international respectability lives a nation whose economy, morality and religion have been completely transformed. When he returns to England, he feels himself in a dream world, a world of law and order, where one can speak without fear of spies, where truth is attainable, and gradually realises that Nazi Germany is a nightmare. Dr Rudolf Olden has written a new biography of Hitler, in which lie points out the necessity of taking the Nazi leader’s statements literally, however wild they may appear.

Dr Olden has added very few facts to the data already gathered by others. Apart from some details about Hitler’s family, and some recollections of his Vienna days, furnished by one of his friends, there is little new material in- the book. Dr Olden’s commentary makes one fact incontestably clear —the consistency of the Leader’s policy. “Mein Kampf” was published ten years ago. Hitler has never swerved from the principles there enunciated. In it he laid all his cards upon the table —his olfiective, the destruction of the weak, the triumph of the strong; liis methods of propaganda, the repetition of simple slogans until they are believed; his tactics, to side with the influential people and to use every means to power available ; his panacea for social evils, the anniliilation of the Jews; liis political programme, to maintain capitalism, to increase armaments.

From the day of the Munich Putsch Hitler decided to keep on the safe side of the law and of the army, lie maintained his intention, at whatever cost, of exterminating the Jews. He has been completely open and outspoken, but friend and foe alike have heard only what they wished to hear. Will he have the same miraculous success in foreign affairs ? Hereto “Mein Kainpf” is unequivocal. Nothing has contributed more to his success than the belief that when it comes to a pinch Hitler would behave in the normal way. What is it that makes him the prodigy that he is r 1 Dr Ulden points to the fact that his complete philosophy of life was conditioned by his vagrant years in pre-war Vienna. His pan-Germanism, anti-Semit-ism, anti-Socialism, anti-Liberal-ism, are all resultants of that dreary period, when he slept in doss-houses and tinted picture post cards for a living. There lias been no development since then, only adaptation to circumstance. For close on 25 years he has had no intellectual cares; in an epoch of doubt and uncertainty his adolescent fixation has suffered no change. Rejecting the fundamental principle of democratic civilisation, lie has longed to restore the pristine glory of a Germany where the strong ruled and the weak were subject.