Bremen Battle

RADICALS

Well aware are U. S. Communists that they may shout themselves hoarse in Manhattan's Union Square without getting a word of encouragement through the Nazi Press censorship to their comrades underground in Germany. To create an international incident which the German Press could scarcely overlook and thus to assure German Communists that U. S. Communists were still with them, a party of Manhattan Marxists last year raided the German Liner Bremen at the price of a half-dozen cracked pates, tore the Swastika off its forepeak, tossed it into the Hudson River (TIME. Aug. 5. 1935). Last week, at the same price, the same technique was used to let the Reich's Reds know how U. S. Reds felt about the German attitude toward the Spanish Revolution (see p. 18). Hour and a half before sailing time, there was a sudden burst of firecrackers outside the Bremen's pier. In unison 150 men & women, attired in evening dress and stationed about the decks, stripped off their coats, displayed white sweat shirts on which was splotched in red paint: END NAZI WAR MOVEMENTS DOWN WITH NAZI INTERVENTION IN SPAIN. Anti-Nazi pamphlets were handed out to astonished passengers.

Swinging deck chairs, clubs, anything they could lay their hands to, the Bremen's stout Nazi crew went to work. As the fight spread, some of the women pulled out handcuffs, fastened themselves to the railing, screamed imprecations against Realmleader Hitler. Reported Editor Thomas Davin of Robert M. McBride & Co., publishers: "As we crossed over the deck, we saw a woman handcuffed to the rail. . . . The officer was striking her with what appeared to be a blackjack. ... As he hit her she ducked around. Then another fellow caught her. He held her head still with one hand over her mouth and the other at the base of her skull, while the officer hit her several times over the head. She slumped down. She shut up."

Wrote the New York World-Telegram's Sportswriter Walker Stewart, on hand to interview Fisticutter Max Schmeling: "There was a little man with starved cheeks who was being booted down the deck. . . . Four sailors were driving the little man. . . . One of them had twisted his left arm until it cracked in the socket."

After a half-hour melee twelve disheveled prisoners were herded to police station, held over night, paroled the next morning. An uninterested spectator was Fisticutter Schmeling who watched the brawling for a minute, shrugged his shoulders, departed for his cabin.

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