NAZI SHOWMANSHIP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23647, 3 November 1938, Page 14

NAZI SHOWMANSHIP

The belief in Hitler's superhuman qualities appears to be widespread; certainly it is encouraged by the vast displays in Nuremberg, says Miss Virginia Cowles in writing her impressions of the Nazi Congess in the Sunday Times. Everything that is done here is done on a gigantic scale. The power of the spectacles lies not so much in their ingeniousness as in their immensity. The keynote is always repetition and uniformity. Instead of a few gilt eagles there are hundreds; instead of hundreds of flags there are thousands; instead of thousands of performers there are hundreds of thousands. At night the mystic quality of the ritual is exaggerated by great burning urns at the top of the stadium with orange flame shooting toward the blackness, while the floodlighting effects of hundreds of powerful searchlights play eerily against the sky. The music is of an almost religious solemnity, timed by the steady beat of drums that sound like the distant throb of tom-toms. When the great stage is set Hitler appears. The music and the dramatic quality of these spectacles appeal strongly to the Teutonic character. More important, however, is the fact that the people feel that Hitler has given them a "cause." The struggle of Germany, he tells them, is not the struggle to advance merely for the sake of advancement; it is the struggle to preserve civilisation against the Communists and the Jews. This is continuously emphasised in the party exhibition halls in Nuremberg. Here you see gigantic maps of ' Europe, with Czechoslovakia painted the same dangerous red as Soviet Russia and France dwindling into a vivid pink.