"A.H."

Good enough for German Chancellors before Adolf Hitler was the modest, graceful little Chancellery with its tree-shaded entrance on Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse. As the office and official residence of the head of the Third Reich, however, the little building has long been considered inadequate. Some time ago the Fuehrer commissioned his favorite architect, 33-year-old Albert Speer, designer of many Nazi Party buildings at Nuernberg and co-planner, with Architect Hitler, of the ambitious Nazi project to rebuild Berlin,* to draw up plans for a Chancellery which would serve as a monument to its Nazi builders.

Year ago workmen began to raze an entire block of buildings on Vosstrasse, running from Wilhelmstrasse to Hermann Goeringstrasse, near the old Chancellery. Some 6,000 laborers went to work in night & day shifts to erect the building in record time. At Christmas the Fuehrer called them together, presented each with a prized package of sausage, bacon, lard and coffee and spurred them to complete the structure in time for his annual reception of the diplomatic corps. They did.

As diplomats from 52 nations arrived last week they saw a block-long (1,400 ft.), three-story structure, covered with yellow-tinted stucco, trimmed with grey stone. It consists of three main parts: two huge wings, housing some 400 administrative offices of the vast Nazi bureaucracy, and a central section which contains the Fuehrer's office and the vast "Long Hall." Elsewhere in the building are his private quarters, official reception galleries, a huge library and a room filled with models of buildings planned for the beautification of Berlin. The German press acclaimed the architectural style as "severely classic." Foreign observers were less kind. They described its appearance as "militant," a "barracks."

Inside, the diplomats found the building more imposing. The room they were most eager to see was the Fuehrer's private office. Its door, surmounted by a heavy bronze shield bearing the monogram "A. H.," was guarded by two armed, black-shirted Elite Guards. When the door swung open the diplomats discovered what is undoubtedly the largest dictator's den in the world. An obvious result of Adolf Hitler's two visits to Rome, his new office is patterned after Il Duce's princely diggings in the Palazzo Venezia, measures 88 by 47 ft. to Mussolini's 60 by 40.

Like II Duce's, the Fuehrer's workshop is floored with highly polished marble, a red-brown stone taken from veins discovered while blasting for a new German highway. Like Il Duce's, Hitler's desk stands at the far end of the hall. On it last week were nine colored pencils, a case for the Fuehrer's recent acquisition, eyeglasses, a large magnifying glass, presumably for reading maps and blueprints, and several books: his own bestseller, Mein Kampf, Hans Franck's book of German law, directories of the Reichstag, Government offices and youth hostelries and--topmost--a volume on British and German battle lines during the World War.

In another corner of the hall are a table, chairs and a sofa and, above them, a portrait of Bismarck. Elsewhere stands a bust of the late President Hindenburg, the man who admitted Hitler to the Chancellorship. Five tall windows look out on a wide garden at the rear of the Chancellery.

In the old Chancellery, it was the Fuehrer's habit to leave his office every evening around 11 o'clock and walk in the rear garden for some time with his hands clasped behind his head. Then he would return, say to the guards on duty outside his door, "Goodnight, boys. Go to bed," and continue working until about three. What he is working on has not been officially revealed but last week correspondents heard it was a sequel to Mein Kampf, the Nazi Bible.

The new work, as yet untitled, is expected to bear a relationship to the older book similar to that of the New Testament to the Old. In it Hitler reportedly will detail the fulfillment of many of the major prophecies of the old political testament, particularly the establishment of a Greater Germany through the Nazification of Austria and the Sudetenland. Germans will be informed that Germany's traditional hostility toward France has changed, not, however, because Germany has changed but because French policy toward Germany has been altered due to the fact that the French Government is now in the hands of war-scarred veterans who understand Germany better.

* The German press announced last week that another new building, an enlarged Reichstag big enough to accommodate the deputies of an enlarged Germany, will soon be built on the site of the old legislative hall which was gutted by the famous fire in 1933. German deputies, when they get together to shout approval of Adolf Hitler's desires, have been meeting since the fire in Berlin's Kroll Opera House.

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