Happy Birthday

Adolf Hitler turned 47 last week. On ordinary days the Realmleader has come to maintain a worshipful wall around himself against even the biggest of the Nazi bigwigs. On his birthday, however, he welcomed them all at the Berlin Chancellery, glowed under their congratulations, revived Kaiser Wilhelm's practice of birthday honors.

Honors. To War Minister General Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg the Fuehrer last week presented a field marshal's baton, first ever given in Germany in peacetime.* He made Air Minister Hermann Goring and Army Chief of Staff Werner von Fritsch colonel-generals and Fleet Commander Erich Raeder an admiral-general (something new). Colonel-general and admiral-general were also promoted to full Cabinet rank. To the smiling group in the Chancellery, suffused with pink German sentiment, the Fuehrer readily launched into oratory: "On this day I look back with pride and joy upon the years that lie behind us. ... Our miraculous resurrection fills me with deep gratitude toward all those who, by their faithful cooperation, have made possible my successful leadership of the nation. ... By reason of this revitalization of our national strength I feel we shall better be able to preserve for our people and possibly also for others that peace upon which so much happiness and prosperity depend."

Parade. Then they all went out to review a sample parade of the new German Army, Adolf Hitler's gift to the German people. While the band played Deutschland ueber Alles and mounted kettledrummers performed traditional feats of skill, 350 light whippet tanks camouflaged ready for action rolled down Unter den Linden and the Charlottenburger Chaussee. Behind came yellow and green armored cars filled with riflemen; armored motorcycles; machine-gun companies; anti-aircraft batteries with searchlights and direction finders; motorized heavy artillery and, to show that the Army is also ready for the swamps of Eastern Europe, an equal number of horse-drawn heavy artillery. Finally came the dull field-grey tide of marching men, one division (12,000) of infantry, their buttons not polished, as for a parade, but lampblacked, as for action.

Berlin Nazis sang an unofficial little tune :

Today we own Germany And tomorrow the whole world.

Speaking next day at the new aviation school in suburban Gatow, General Goering made a bad break by referring to Adolf Hitler as "Supreme Wrar Lord." Since such a title still has a sinister, Kaiserish smell in international noses, Minister of Propaganda Goebbels promptly scotched it.

Last_week Adolf Hitler went on to take strategic advantage of other men's anniversaries.

Hero Genera. Against the fact that Major General Hans von Seeckt created Germany's superb little "expert army' under the Treaty of Versailles stood, until last week, the facts that lie smashed Adolf Hitler's "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich in 1923, that he has a "non-Aryan"' wife. Lately, however, Adolf Hitler has decided that his 1923 failure was a good idea. Last week General von Seeckt turned 70 and Adolf Hitler named him honorary commander of the 67th Infantry Regiment, to be called henceforth the General von Seeckt Regiment.

Hero Prince. Reich War Minister von Blomberg last week stole Austria's greatest war hero. In all German garrison towns was read a proclamation setting forth, on the 200th anniversary of the death of great Prince Eugene of Savoy, that Eugene was a Pan-German hero who had saved Germany from the "predatory greed" and "plundering, burning and murdering armies" of France's Louis XIV.

To Austrians, proudly celebrating the same anniversary in Vienna last week, this was a cruel cut. Eugene of Savoy, neither German nor Austrian, was born in France and raised in Louis XIV's court. Louis despised Eugene's big-nostriled face, crooked little frame, cold, dogged stare.' refused him a French commission. Eugene at 20 helped the Austrians turn back one of the last Turkish offensives in Europe and remained to become, at 34, Austrian Imperial Field Marshal. Allied with Britain's Marlborough and with the Germans, Eugene thoroughly spanked the armies of his onetime sovereign on such famed fields as Oudenarde and Malplaquet. Thus his career can be counted, according to necessity, for France, against France, against the Turks, for the Austrians or for the Germans.

*When Hitler offered one to General Erich Friedrich Wilhelm von Ludendorff, that eccentric old soldier refused it on the ground that such an honor was possible only in wartime and from the hand of a Sovereign. Germany's only other surviving field marshals are General August von Mackensen, Duke Albrecht of Wuerttemberg and Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.

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