HITLER’S SLAVE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 209, 2 August 1940, Page 4

HITLER’S SLAVE

GOEBBELS’S TECHNIQUE. PERSONAL MALIGNITY. When I consider Joseph Goebbels and the work of his hands and the venom that drips from his mouth.l am tempted to regret that his Westphalian parents did not “expose” their misshapen babe at birth, writes J. B. Firth in the London Daily Telegraph. That old Greek custom, bad it been followed, would have spared tlie world an evil growth. I would not dwell on any man’s physical deformity except when it explains the distressing phenomenon of high intelligence wholly possessed by tlie spirit of malignity and bate. These personal disabilities account, on Freudian principles, for tortured nerves and the psychosis of unappeasable resentment.

For ever in the company of soldiers, but himself debarred from active service, Goebbels shouts his gospel of violence, yet himself can do no more than spit. Like Drances, he is lingua melior sed frigida hello Dextera, (readier with his tongue than with his sword arm), and his only weapon is the “mike.” Remember the impotent spluttcrings, Of rage in the dull brain of the poor monster Caliban when he envied the more perfected shapes of the gallants thrown upon his enchanted isle. Then imagine the fury of Goebbels —his ambitions thwarted by a leaden foot, a dwarfish frame, and an ugly head. BOND-SLAVE OF HITLER.

The first place in the State is obviously beyond lii6 present reach. Hie second he has seen assigned to his dearest foe, Goering; the third to Hess, while he remains unplaced. If the fires of Hecla burn hot within him, where can ho find solace but in bate ? So Goebbels sucks in hate from the common air and dedicates to the evillest of human passions all the resources of a tireless patience, a. most ingenious mind and an eloquent tongue. The bond-slave of his master and of tho regime he has helped to build, Goebbels knows that he would be “swatted” like a noxious insect if his protector fell. Homer showed his knowledge of human nature when he drew in verse the Goebbels of his day— Thersites, a edib-tongued captain in the Achaean host, who challenged the orders of Headquarters and spread the spirit of disaffection among soldiers tired of their long exile on a barren shore. Homer gave Thersites a twisted frame. Odysseus, exasperated beyond endurance, “socked” Thersites in the jaw-. Schacht has let it be known that he has often itched to strike Goebbels -when stung by bis sarcasms, but refrained because he would not hit a cripple. If Hitler passes out, Goebbels, too, will disappear at once into the darkness—lucky if the darkness covers him in time. Nevertheless, ho will have had his crowded hour, with a mansion in Berlin, a large country house on the AVannsee, and another and still larger at AValdliof an Bogensee, all crowded with treasures and trophies stolen from the “swindling” and “swinish” Jews. THE, “TWENTY-SEVEN LADIES.” He lias lived fiercely laborious days, and never still lor a moment. “J upbin” —Berlin slang for “little Joe” lias flitted in his social hours from mistress to mistress. When his longsuffering wife was suing her _Joseph for divorce, no fewer than 27 ladies were “named” in the case, “an exotic mixture of youthful secretaries, smart social leaders, and glamorous cinema stars.” The master hater lias been, in his fashion, a master amorist, liis one prime virtue in the moral sphere being that lie lias just been a sexualist *and nothing more or—according to the older morality—nothing worse. Nazism strictly censors speech and thought, but not morals. Be loyal to the Fuehrer and your morals are your own concern in a community where, as Tacitus said— “Corrumpere et corrunipi vooant saeculuni” (the fashion of tlie hour is to corrupt and to be corrupted). Why should one spare the real character of this Goebbels who scoffs at morals, at religion, at faith and honour as vieux jeux uml of no account, when every foul lie with which England and "the English are traduced is traceable directly or indirectly to Goebbels and his organisation ?He lias no compunctions, no delicacies of taste, no sense of reticence, no shame at exposure. In his own Department of Propaganda it is universally acknowledged—ff Truth, Decency and Fair Play be omitted from the reckoning—that Goebbels is supreme. He is the Master Propagandist of the day. There is none like him and please Heaven lie may never have his fellow. When lie goes let the mould be broken. He has poisoned the ether to the very approaches of the stratosphere. TWISTING THE TRUTH. Those who would study his methods and his style will do well to consult a book published by an American journalist, Mr Vernon McKenzie, which bears’the engaging title “Here lies Goebbels” (Michael Joseph, 10s 6d). it gives a clear and penetrating synopsis of tlie ramifications of the Goebbels organisation and copious illustrations of tho stuff it propagates. Goebbels had a flying start when the war broke out, for lie had spent six busy years in rendering it inevitable, except at a price only a beaten bully would pay. Yet Mr McKenzie docs not doubt that in the end British and Allied propaganda will produce superior results. Do you ask why?- Because the Gormans arc execrable psychologists, the most incredible blunderers in their commerce with other nations and incapable of crediting with the most rudimentary intelligence those whom they seek to browbeat. Goebbels in tin’s respect is pure Nordic, pure Aryan, pure German. A bullet-headed arrogance is a* constant ingredient in the brain of the Herron folk. Since Germans took up Propaganda in earnest they have made the name stink in the nostrils of decent people. Straight news, rooked or doctored news, sheer inventions and blatant lies —those are the three categories into which pronasandist wireless messages may be divided. Goebbcls’s contributions to the third category greatly predominate, but, to give him his due, lie is also an adept in presenting the story which has just enough fact in its content not to bo wholly false, and which only a person reasonably conversant with tlie truth would distrust, at the first hearing—which is generally the last. OVER BOTH HEMISPHERES.

Ho assumes that listeners will be at no trouble to sift the true from the false, that no story to the detriment of an enemy is too gross to be believed, apd that if a handful of mud is thrown some at least will stick. It is not a case of trying to make the worse argument appear the better; that used to be the common definition of sophistry. The German propagandist of to-day sets out to corrupt his hearer’s mind by a much larger suggestion of the false than suppression of the true, and he dopes his German victims into stupefied acquiescence by denying all access by wireless or newspaper to the case for the other side. Is there a region in either hemis-

plicre which Goebbels has neglected in his ceaseless endeavour to advance tlie Nazi cause? The beaver is not more industrious; tho mole is not a more patient burrower; and the civet Ts not more prodigal of his scent. There is not a country where Nazi influence is not at work, teaching Germans how to spy, how to collect useful information, hoiv to lie and how to cheat for the greater glory of the Fuehrer and the Fatherland. Goebbels did not invent the system. It was started before the Great War. The Bolsheviks adopted it and planted their cancer cells wherever they saw a promising seed-bed of revolutionary discontent. The Nazis bettered their instructors and sharpened their peacetime propagandist weapons till they became indistinguishable from weapons of war. ‘Has' not Goebbels, therefore, richly earned the love of a disciplined people who believe themselves the heirs of the ages and the predestined saviours of mankind, on Hitler’s plan of salvation? If “Jupkin” is bent on having as many lilies in his garden as King Solomon, why grudge this “mischievous monkey,” as Hindenburg called him, the amusement of his leisure hours ?

Hitler’s views on propaganda are generally 7 familiar to English . readers from the passages in “Mein Kampf,” in which he expressed an almost fulsome admiration for the efficiency of British propaganda in the Great War. Since then his faith in tho psychological weapon has grown and deepened. He once assured liis confidant, Dr Ilausc;hning, that Nazi propaganda would cause “astounding breakdowns” in the enemy ranks in the event of war, and “enable liim to force his will in the midst of battle.” First, lio would “split and paralyse his enemy’s will,” and then put him at loggerheads with himself and throw him into utter confusion. “FOUNDING A NEW POWER.” That was tlie method he applied to von Scliuschnigg when lie drew him alone into his deadly trap at Berclitesgaden, and the stoat mesmerised and paralysed- the poor rabbit. Hitler was no less sure that he had brought off the same mesmerising coup at Munich when he persuaded the British and French Prime Ministers that they were dealing with a man of honour, only 7 to find alter they had got home that they had been tricked by a liar. Any sort of dodge, any sort of trick, any form of terrorism is, according to Hitler, entirely justified so long as you succeed in imposing your will on a weaker opponent. “Dominion,” he told Dr. Rausclining in an expansive moment, “is never founded on humanity but, regarded from the narrow civilian angle, on crime. Terrorism is absolutely indispensable in every ease of founding a new power.” That is the credo of this modern Machiavelli, and he is entirely correct in claiming that the radio lias placed a wonderful new weapon in his hands for the easier domination of mankind in the mass. Here he has found in Goebbels ail agent exactly suited to liis purpose. But Hitler also attaches immense importance to another form of propaganda, of which hitherto we have heard little. This has not got to do with tlie masses but with prominent individuals and personages whom he hopes to draw into the Nazi net or at least to disarm from active opposition. “I am building up,” lie said one day to Dr. Rausclining. “a great organisation of my own. It costs a lot of money, but it gets things moving for me. I am having a comprehensive card index compiled of every influential person in tlie world. The cards contain every detail of importance. Will be take money? Can he be bought in anv other way? Is he vain? Is lie sexual? Tn wlmt wav? Is lie homosexual? That is of the utmost value, because it provides close associations that can never be escaped from. Has lie anything in his past to conceal? Can he be subjected to pressure? It is on the strength of these renorts that I choose my men. That reallv is polities.”

- BLACKMAIL INQUISITION. AYas ever a more revealing and revolting admission made by the supreme head of a State? The managing director of the lowest blackmailing agenc-y could not put his cards on the table with more unblushing candour. Such a questionnaire could only have been conceived by a man with a scoundrelly conception not only of politics but of human nature both in the individual and in the mass. It could only have emanated from an environment where everything is as crooked as Hitler’s party emblem. Lutum non est lutulentius, to quote a line from an ancient comedy, or in plain English, “Aluck is not muckier than lie.”