"Let's Be Friends!"

If Adolf Hitler had what psychologists call a split personality he could scarcely present himself more differently than he actually does to Germans on the one hand and to foreigners on the other. When addressing his own people on domestic issues Orator Hitler is alternately brawling and sentimental, repetitious, diffuse, coarse and ever more amazingly repetitious. His anxious care is to "talk down" to the stupidest German lout who can possibly be listening. With the "Little Man" ever in mind, Realmleader Hitler, the "Apotheosis of the Little Man," hammers away coarsely, repeating his points over & over again for hours at a stretch until his more cultivated radio listeners are ready to scream.

Emotional and intuitive Little Adolf can also "talk up" to logical, cerebral Latins and to Britons whom he humbly delights to consider superior persons. Broadcasts by Orator Hitler on foreign policy are so comparatively smooth, so well-turned and of such reasonable length as to amaze many Germans and lead to rumors that some be-monocled old-school diplomat of the Wilhelmstrasse must write them. But Adolf Hitler confronted face to face by a foreigner is also different from Adolf Hitler overpowering a dazzled German. To Berlin last week, hastily summoned from Paris, hurried Paris-Midi's correspondent de luxe, M. Bertrand de Jouvenel, son of the late, great French Senator & Ambassador Henri de Jouvenel. In Paris the Chamber had just voted to ratify a Franco-Soviet military alliance (see p. 18). Herr Hitler did not want it to pass the French Senate and become binding as a possible check on Germany.

"Isn't It Logical?" As recorded by M. de Jouvenel and syndicated in the U. S. by Universal Service the interview opened thus :

"I know what you are thinking, Chancellor Adolf Hitler said, advancing, with a fresh smile on his face, across his huge office in the Wilhelmstrasse. You're saying to yourself: 'Hitler is going to make pacific declarations to me. But are they in good faith? Is he sincere?'

"Now, isn't that a childish interrogation? Instead of working out psychological puzzles, would not you be wiser to use the celebrated French logic and think it out? Isn't it obviously wiser for our two countries to get along together? Wouldn't it be ruinous for both to crash against each other on new battlefields? Isn't it logical that I would wish what is most advantageous for my country? And that which is most advantageous, isn't it obviously peace?

"I told the Chancellor we French had his own words of hostility toward France in his book, Mein Kampj, which the Germans regard as a sort of bible, and that he had never made the slightest rectification. Hitler pondered a moment, then placed his hand on my arm. He said: You wish me to correct my book, like an author preparing a new edition. I am not an author, but a political man. I am rectifying those statements daily in my foreign policy, which extends amicability towards France. If I succeed in achieving a Franco-German rapprochement, that would be a rectification worthy of being written in the great book of history."

Pacifist Charlatan? Continued the reporter de luxe: "I told him we French wanted assurance of his sincerity. He said: France will do well to reflect on my offers of understanding. Never has the head of Germany made such offers or so often repeated them. And from whom come these offers? From a pacifist charlatan who made a specialty of international relations? By no means. But from the greatest nationalist Germany ever had at its head!

"For I can bring you what no other could ever have brought you: an entente which will be approved by 90% of the German nation, the nine-tenths who follow me. I pray you note this: There are in the life of peoples decisive occasions. France can today, if it wishes, put an end forever to the 'German Peril' which your children from generation to generation have learned to fear. You can remove this formidable mortgage which weighs on the history of France. This chance is now given to you. If you don't seize it, think of your responsibilities before your children. You have before you a Germany, nine-tenths of which has complete confidence in its chief, and its chief says to you, 'Let's be friends.'"

Significance & Suppression. Thus Adolf Hitler in the same breath declared that he does not retract one word of his domestic incitements to Germans to crush and conquer France and yet spoke as though he had made specific offers to France looking toward eternal amity. If any such offers have been made, the French Foreign Office and the Berlin Embassy of France have never disclosed what they are and neither has Adolf Hitler. The half-amazed, half-angry reaction of the Paris Cabinet last week was to inform the world press that Ambassador Andre Franc,ois-Poncet will be ordered to call upon Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath at the earliest possible moment and ask what the German Government does propose.

Meanwhile in France where the Press normally enjoys a freedom approximating liberty to libel and tempered only by the readiness of its editors to shut up if offered adequate bribes, the Government leaned over backward in solicitude for the feelings of Adolf Hitler. The Sarraut Cabinet drew a storm of French abuse upon itself by ordering gendarmes to raid the offices of Paris' potent Le Journal and seize all copies of its Sunday feature-smash entitled ''Hitler's Secret Loves'" as well as the German research material upon which this was based.

Instantly upon the neck of Premier Sarraut jumped the vast majority of French newsorgans represented by the National Newspaper Federation. He and his Cabinet were accused of ''taking orders from the German Embassy." This raised the issue of freedom of the Press in France to its maximum power. Very tamely indeed Le Journal's revelations coupled Adolf Hitler's name with Jenny Hang, his chauffeur's sister; Erna Hanfstaengl, sister of his friend "Putzy"; Frau Winifred Wagner, widowed daughter-in-law of the composer; Margaret Slezak, daughter of a Viennese tenor; the Realmleader's late niece Greta Granbald; and the German cinema's lithe-limbed Leni Riefenstahl, who was quoted as having said with utmost respect of Adolf Hitler, "The Realmleader could not love except platonically." (TIME, Feb. 17.)

Though with "Hitler's Secret Loves" Le Journal definitely failed to deliver the goods, it did scrape Adolf Hitler deeply on the raw. On a table in his bedroom, in a silver frame with fresh roses nodding over it is a picture of Greta Granbald.

"His dearly beloved niece! She died in an automobile accident." strapping Nazi friends of Bachelor Hitler will murmur-- uneasily. Greta is mystery. Le Journal implied that Uncle Adolf fell in love with his niece in 1929 in Munich and that she was made to appear to have shot and killed herself accidentally by "purists" of the Party. Says Le Journal: "Hitler, not yet the absolute master of German justice, bowed to the accidental version. For a long time he was shaken. He finally got hold of himself, but he never forgave. On June 30, 1934. the purists suspected of having 'suicided' the young girl fell at the side of Roehm and Heines. But vengeance, while it soothes the rest of the dead, doesn't calm the grief of the living. The image of sweet Greta has never deserted the closed heart of Reichsfuehrer Hitler."

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