"Where is Hitler?"

Where last week was Adolf Hitler? With his Nazis staging a bloody Jew-hunt in the heart of Berlin (see col. 2), many a German ached to know.

"Where is Hitler? Mein Gott, I must know!" stormed Minister of Labor Franz Seldte, founder of Germany's war veterans' legion, the Stahlhelm, which boasted 1,000,000 members until most of them were dragooned into the Storm Troops or dropped out in disgust, leaving 115,000 still enrolled last week. Distracted Herr Seldte wanted to find Herr Hitler because messages were pouring in to the effect that Stahlhelm posts were being forcibly disbanded in various parts of the Reich last week. By whose orders?

The Catholics of Germany, from the Cardinals down to the last priest, wished they knew where Der Fuehrer was last week. Was it with or without his approval that the No. 2 Nazi, Prussian Premier Hermann Wilhelm Goering, had ordered his secret police to eavesdrop at every church and report for later punishment clerics who "falsely employ the authority of their spiritual position for political purposes"--i. e. criticize the Nazi State. "The Church dare not," declared General Goering in his passionate and somewhat incoherent decree, "call upon God against the State--an atrocity that we experience openly or camouflaged every Sunday."

Was it Adolf Hitler who abruptly bestowed arbitrary power to settle all German church issues upon Vice President of the Reichstag Hans Kerrl, a young and virile Jew-baiter? Herr Karrl's appointment came apparently from the Ministry of Interior. No confirmation could be had that the Realmleader approved this or Minister of Interior Dr. Wilhelm Frick's other drastic move last week in appointing as Berlin's Chief of Police ruthless, Jew-baiting Count Wolf von Helldorf who was once the intimate friend of the late Storm Troop Leader Ernst Roehm. Did Hitler, Germans wanted to know, approve a fresh drive for "sterilization of the unfit" launched by the Party last week with the news that German Science has produced "a harmless means of sterilizing an already pregnant mother?" Adolf Hitler, according to the Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment, was "away in the country." No responsible German would say where. In excited Berlin unconfirmed rumor had the Realmleader cruising among Norwegian fjords, but he escaped the notice of Norwegians. One official was supposed to have visited him in Munich. With his usual intuition Adolf Hitler had quietly effaced himself while the more hard-boiled and intractable of his subordinates eased their pent-up inhibitions last week. After they are uninhibited, the Realmleader always finds them as a group much easier to lead, punishes ruthlessly a few who went too far, emerges blameless in many eyes because, during the excesses, he was absent.

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