ADOLF HITLER

Taranaki Daily News, 16 April 1932, Page 13 (Supplement)

ADOLF HITLER

THE MAN AND HIS NAZIS

(By

J.F.M.)

In spite of splendid cable services and the space devoted by newspapers for the presentation of overseas news, the thousands of miles which separate New Zealand from European countries have the effect of reducing happenings of momentous importance to millions of people in the Old World to merely faint reverberations—and often, by reason of the impossibility of recounting complex causes, little understood reverberations —by the time they reach this country. So it is with Adolf Hitler, the founder and leader of the Nazi or Nationalsocialist movement, who was this week second to Marshal Hindenburg in the Presidential election in Germany. A movement that can gain the support of 14,000,000 people after having been inaugurated only a few years is worthy of intelligent attention and perhaps a little study.

The racial and economic reasons behind the emergence of Adolf Hitler at the head of the Nationalsocialist movement in Germany have been lucidly outlined by Wyndham Lewis in his book “Hitler” published last year. The problems and philosophy of the movement as well as the interpretation of its importance from a world viewpoint, are all elucidated by Mr. Lewis and, at the best, this can be but a brief summary of the salient features he mentions. Writers on the Nazis and their doctrine have repeatedly found it necessary to refer back to Hitler himself, and the reason for this is obvious when it is realised that the whole conception is a personal one promulgated by that man. A house-painter by trade and an Austrian by birth, Hitler is 42 years of age and is said to be as typical of the German “everyman” as Mussolini is of the Italians. He is eccentric neither in appearance nor in manner/ and his typicalness of the Teutonic character is a real source of satisfaction to the man himself. According to Mr. Lewis he is the German version of the Arab Mahomet, the Italian Mussolini and the Russian Lenin; and Mr. Lewis comes forward, not as the critic or advocate of this great national upheaval, but merely as its exponent. The movement is neither a reactionary nor a pseudo-fascist one; it is a movement of the Young Germany of whom we have read in our cable news. The Youth Movement of 1929, which sent thousands of young German men and women in pursuit of physical perfection, merged with the Hitler movement and at least half of that country’s academic youth are Nazis as well as a large percentage of young workmen.

Nationalsocialism as understood by Hitler and his supporters aims at the development of love and understanding between the blood-brothers of the Aryan, or white-European, race. As can be seen this Aryan race exceeds the political frontiers of any given nationality, and there are long differences, linguistic and national, that would appear to block effectually any progress beyond a certain point. It would be hard to make an Irishman believe he was the bloodbrother of a Breton, although it. is S cn ~ erally known that the two are dispersed units of the same family.

Between blood-brothers there would be no question of the extraction of\ war debts and the first move of the .Nazis was obviously to work for their repudiation. It was the knowledge of. this aim that brought the Nationalsocialist movement its first sweeping successes in Germany. Further than that it attracted the attention of the whole world and, in a few days, Hitler had gained as much publicity abroad as the Nationalists of the old school in as many years. The attitude of the Hitlerites towards the Jews receives no sympathy from the Anglo-Saxons, but then there are many more of their views and attitudes on economic policy matters that are incomprehensible to people out of Europe. It must be understood from the start that Nationalsocialism is not Communism, although the two doctrines are in considerable agreement in some respects. They could never fuse because they are fundamentally opposed. Communism is a fanatically dehumanizing doctrine;, it denies the worth of creative personality and substitutes for the idea of quality the lifeless idea of quantity. The Nazis hold with equal fervour that it is quality and “blood” that count. Hitler’s doctrine has been said to comprise a set of rather primitive.laws promulgated in the interest of the Teuton stock or type “in order to satisfy its especial requirements and ambitions, and to ensure its vigorous survival, intact, and true to its racial traditions.” The movement is the “militancy of an armed peasant, not the aristocratic militancy of a dispossessed aristocratic class, or that of a Royalist intellectual of aristocratic disposition.” Mr. Lewis is emphatic that Adolf Hitler is not ‘‘a straightforward, simple, fire-eating, true-blue, sabre-rattling, moustachioed puppet,” and he does not think that he would bring fire and sword across otherwise peaceful frontiers.

The opinion is alst> expressed that Hitler is a man of peace: in view of some of the cables over the past year this is hard to believe until the author further states that Hitler is an armed prophet only in that he has “100,000 fists—knuckles, not knuckle dusters—banded together as storm troops.” < He has no armed private militia and “Nur Legal” (only by legal means) was the Nazi watchword. “Such a movement as Hitler’s enlists muscle and is trained to attack and defend,” states Mr. Lewis. “If it were to rely upon police protection for the safety of its platform it would be laid flat in a week.” It must be remembered that regimes such as the Spanish, Italian and Russian repose ultimately upon the armed threat of a picked force of police. The German Schupo holds down Reds and Nazis just as the Ogpu police hold down Russia. At the same time, by the express order of the leader, any Nazi found with weapons other than a •stick, is dispelled from the party. Until recently the police were content to let Communist exterminate Nazi and vice versa. Faction fights were common, and the fervour with which the smaller Communist party prosecuted its war with the Nazis was more or less smiled upon by the party in power. Strife in the streets of Berlin was as common as in Chicago, but it was carried out without the hope for monetary gain but for ■a political ideal.

“One feels that sho.uld Hitler fall tomorrow, the movement is such that it could still proceed without him. He is a truly Socialist prophet —an armed socialist prophet—and his originality lies in that. It would be a. mistake to regard him as just another dictator. He is a gj ! ea.t and genuine personality.”