"May God Help Us!"

There were brave men in Germany last week who risked their lives for an ideal. The shrewdest brains of the Nazi secret police were trying to find out who they were. Meanwhile in the midst of the greatest exhibition of organized mob hysteria Germany has ever seen, small slips of paper, some printed, some mimeographed, some typed, continued to be circulated surreptitiously from hand to hand. All had the same theme: "Comrades, write NO on your ballots! Every vote of NO is a vote against war, against misery, against famine, concentration camps and murders."

In 1932 some 6,000,000 Germans voted for bullet-headed Ernst Thaelmann for Chancellor. Communist Thalmann was still alive last week in a Nazi jail because Nazi strategists dared neither bring him to trial nor chop off his head. Despite all the exiles, all the concentration camps, all the executions, there were still enough undercover followers of Ernst Thalmann left at large in Germany last week to spread a thin layer of anti-Nazi leaflets from Switzerland to the Baltic.

A forced election on ballots on which voters could mark only Ja might seem a farce to democracies, but to Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, it was a chance to stage the greatest mass demonstration of national solidarity the world has ever seen.

Only a little more explicit than the warnings issued to German voters everywhere was the manifesto by the Nazi leader of the Berlin suburb of Klein-Machnow:

"Voting begins at 9 in the morning and ends at 6 in the evening. No German Comrade dare be absent, and I urge all voters most strongly to vote during the morning hours. By 1 o'clock in the afternoon the election must be over. During the afternoon I will have all laggards dragged to the ballot box. None shall escape us. Klein-Machnow is surrounded and shut off. . . ."

The Show. For weeks a mounting wave of election propaganda filled the German Press. It spread like a rash to billboards, walls, streamers in the streets. Daily there were parades and speeches. Overworked Realmleader Hitler tried to limit his own campaigning to one speech every two days, leaving the rest of his time to tackling the intricate foreign situation. Stagemanager Goebbels peremptorily told him that it was not enough. Obediently, der Fuehrer wired his embassy in London that all diplomacy would have to be postponed until after election day.

Flag Day. Shrewd Stagemanager Goebbels arranged his campaign week to lead up to two great climaxes centring around Adolf Hitler's last two speeches, the first in the Krupp Steel Works at Essen, the second in the exhibition hall at Cologne. Every German had his stage directions. At 3:45 o'clock on the afternoon of the Essen speech radios all over Germany echoed the shrill yip of Minister Goebbels: "RAISE FLAGS!" On that instant from every flagstaff in Germany and from the windows of thousands of little cottages unrolled the swastika banner. Then followed the voice of Dr. Goebbels, solemn as a priest: "Adolf Hitler is Germany!"

Fifteen minutes later, in Essen, Germany in the person of Adolf Hitler entered the largest single factory room in Europe, the sooty locomotive assembly plant at the Krupp works. At that instant every whistle in Germany blasted, for a full minute. Then came a full minute of silence. Not an automobile, not a pedestrian budged. In Berlin the Rev. Stewart Winfield Herman, acting pastor of the American Church, was slapped smartly in the face for not raising his hand in the Nazi salute during this period of ecstasy.

The Speech-- By the time ardent Nazis dared breathe again Adolf Hitler was standing on a platform on top of a half-finished locomotive while blinding searchlights from traveling cranes high in the dusty rafters picked out his tiny figure. For an hour and a half he talked, saying nothing that no German had not heard a hundred times before.

"Germany wants peace!" he hoarsely 'cried. "But there can be no real world peace without equality between partners. There can no longer be honored and dishonored !"

For the benefit of the workers around him he added: "I am dependent on no one. I possess neither bonds nor shares nor even a bank account."

For hours after he had stopped talking Germans tramped through the streets of Essen, singing in the pouring rain.

Dankgebet. Next day's ceremonies in Cologne were even more impressive. In an extraordinary exhibition of railroad efficiency German trains had brought an estimated 2,000,000 people to the Rhine city. No sooner had they left the station than they were handed lapel buttons marked "The Rhineland is Free." On every street corner Brownshirts were handing out paper flags by the dozen. From noon on all traffic was halted in the centre of the city. The square before Cologne's lace-spired cathedral was black with Germans, tears in their eyes, singing.

In the exhibition hall der Fuehrer spoke soberly, tactfully. Once he blurted out: "I know I have hurt millions of persons, but I have had to do it in order to create national unity." This was expunged from most reports of his speech. He ended on a fine emotional note:

"Who can find in the history of the German people a basis for the charge that it has not been loyal to its treaties? This nation stands true to every treaty that it signed voluntarily and as an equal. . . . I feel that God's grace is once again upon us, and in this hour we sink on our knees and ask the Almighty to give us His blessings and give us strength to stand firm in the struggle for freedom. ... So may God help us!"

Once again Stagemanager Goebbels pushed the button and the obedient German people in every village in the land opened their mouths and sang the old Dutch thanksgiving hymn. Dankgebet, which begins ''God make us free." Written by Adrian Valerius in 1597, the most popular German translation is that of Josef Weyl. Forty million Nazi voices boomed out the words: "Wir treten zum Beten vor Gott dem Gerechten" ("We step up before God the Just to Pray").

The Election. Sunday's German election was ordered by Realmleader Hitler officially to choose a new Reichstag. Actually it was designed to be a demonstration before the world of Germany's approval of three vastly important steps der Fuehrer has taken since his people last voted:

1) Inflation of the German Army to nearly 550,000 men, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles (TIME, June 3).

2) Germany's private naval agreement with Britain (TIME, June 24).

3) Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland.

There was nothing free about the election. Voters could not even choose names from the long list of hand-picked Nazi candidates for the Reichstag posted inconspicuously in the polling places. They could only write Ja or put an X in a circle, voting full confidence in Adolf Hitler. To be sure they did this bright & early, brass bands were tooting in the streets and Nazi children banging on dishpans at daybreak.

With Sunday's sunset came the results: 44,952,937 votes had been cast. Out of every 100 eligible Germans 99 had voted for Hitler, a world's record in national unity. To reach this figure, pollwatchers had counted not only the ballots marked Ja or X, but almost all the ballots that weaselers had left blank. Foreign correspondents were more interested in the 543,026 Germans so opposed to Adolf Hitler that they risked their necks by definitely defacing their ballots.

French politicians were more impressed by an obvious fact. Discounting all questionable ballots, more thoroughly honest votes for Adolf Hitler had been cast in Germany last week than there are men, women & children in all France.

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