Evolution After Revolution

GERMANY

Evolution After Revolution

For the first time since Jan. 30, the date on which Adolf Hitler sprang alarmingly to power, Germany's leading bankers and industrialists chomped their five meals a day last week with perfect peace of mind. It seemed that Chancellor Hitler's Nazi ("National Socialist") regime was turning away as fast as its leaders dared from Socialistic schemes which formed at first one of their great electioneering points. Fortnight ago Herr Hitler began the turn by declaring, "We must not depose a businessman if he is efficient just because he is not yet a Nazi. . . . Our program . . . does not oblige us to upset everything like fools!" Last week came action to set top side up the hundreds of German businesses which have been upset by forcing into their executive offices Nazi busybodies, called "commissars," with unspecified authority.

Some commissars have actually called in brown-shirted Storm Troops to oust business leaders who too strongly resisted Nazi dictation. Last week such interference was classed legally as "kidnapping" in a drastic decree issued by Prussian Minister of Justice Dr. Hans Kerrl who promised to punish offenders without mercy. "Force or threats" against business executives were expressly barred by Dr. Kerrl and he branded many Nazi commissioners as "saboteurs and provocateurs" who will be brought before special courts and face "not only imprisonment but even the death penalty."

All this proved the exceeding wisdom of Germany's great iron & steel mongering House of Krupp, now headed by Bertha Krupp's husband, Dr. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. In his own vast organization Dr. Krupp von Bohlen is a high-collared martinet, but in dealing with raw statesmen of the new regime he has proved an ingratiating fellow. Less than three months ago he, as president of the Federation of German Industries, beat a strategic retreat by putting it under Nazi auspices. Last week he fairly bubbled optimism as members of the Federation received official notice canceling previous orders that they must prepare to pool their plants in a Hitler "corporate state." Another victory for Dr. Krupp von Bohlen was the ousting from the ministries of economics and industry last week of two Nazis supposed to be rabidly Socialistic, Otto Wagner and Alfred Muller. Finally all talk of a "Second Revolution" among Nazi radicals was vigorously spiked by Minister of Interior Dr. Wilhelm Frick in a circular letter to the Statthalters (Hitler-appointed "Viceroys" of all the German states).

"The victorious German revolution has entered upon a stage of evolution," wrote Dr. Frick. "That means normal, legal, constructive work. This task must be seriously endangered if there is a continuance of revolution or talk of a second revolution. Whosoever talks of such must understand he is thereby revolting against his leader and will be dealt with accordingly. . . . From now on power rests with the Government and with the Government alone!" Sure, perhaps prematurely, that German business is really going to be largely let alone by the Nazi State, Dr. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen lent eager aid to a Nazi press campaign which sought to pretend last week that such interference had never existed. Speaking at Hamburg he recalled that one of his great grandfathers. Brigadier General Henry Bohlen of Philadelphia, died during the Civil War near Kelly's Ford on the Rappahannock. "I appeal," cried Gustav Krupp von Bohlen, "for American understanding--sympathetic understanding--of Germany!" Soon afterward Chancellor Hitler placed the Fatherland's great industrialists on his right hand last week. He created and attached to his Cabinet an advisory Economic Council on which Munitions Tycoon Krupp von Bohlen will rub elbows with Electric Tycoon Carl Friedrich von Siemens and Steel Tycoon Fritz Thyssen. This was all very well for German business with a big "B" but in politics the Cabinet proceeded to carry on with arbitrary violence. Thirty laws were decreed at a single Cabinet sitting between 11 a. m. and midnight. Mainly these were aimed at "hostile and disloyal" Germans, particularly those who have fled the country, mostly Jews, Communists and Socialists. By a stroke of the Chancellor's pen the Cabinet seized power to deprive all such persons of German citizenship and confiscate their property. "What we shall take from the Jews," grinned an indiscreet Treasury official, "will be a big help in balancing the budget." Even before the Cabinet decrees passed, uniformed Prussian police pounced last week on five relatives of pouchy-eyed old Philipp Scheidemann, the Socialist who proclaimed the German Republic in 1918, served as its first Chancellor and recently fled to Czechoslovakia. On no charge whatever the five relatives were locked up in a Nazi prison camp. Refusing to reveal their names, police said their sex was "predominantly male." They will be held, it was explained, because Herr Scheidemann recently wrote an article for the New York Times in which he asked: "Will the world tolerate in the centre of Europe the domination of political adventurers and criminals who trample under foot law. right, art and science, and play with incendiary torches around a powder keg? No! A thousand times no! It must be the task of the entire civilized world to paralyze these adventurers. That this may not exclude a bloody war is self evident!" This last sentence the Nazi Press called a treasonable incitement to other nations to make war on Germany. In Prague broken old Philipp Scheidemann declared that he had never written treason. He blamed his translator. He appealed to high heaven but he failed to get his five completely innocent relatives out of their barbed-wire prison camp.

In Berlin sword-handy Ludwig Diels, Chief of the Prussia Police who now have 12,000 Germans behind barbed wire, said last week that he has accepted from prominent prisoners eleven challenges to rapier duels, six to sabre duels and one to a pistol duel "unto death." The pistol challenger is Prisoner Max von Prittwitz, a relative of Germany's onetime Ambassador to the U. S. Baron Friedrich von Prittwitz und Gaffron. "I think it is amusing for a police chief to accept challenges from men he is forced to arrest." chuckled Chief Diels. "I love to fight. There's no grander feeling than beating your man in a fair fight. I shall fight them all! As to the pistol duel 'unto death' -- well, that's fate!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.