Co-ordination

"America, which of all other lands has taken it upon itself to set up a movement against our methods of self-defense, has the least excuse for such action. The American people were the first to draw practical and political conclusions from differences among races and from the different value of different races.

"Through its immigration laws it has prevented the entry of those races which seemed unwelcome to the American people. And America today is by no means ready to open its doors to so-called refugee jews from Germany, whereby we must

He, for Moses.

emphasize that in reality not a hair of any Jewish head has been touched."

So last week spoke Adolf Hitler before a meeting of the German Medical Federation. Under his hand Germany proceeded openly to reduce her Jewish inhabitants to the social and political position occupied by Negroes in the southern U. S. and Orientals in the West.

Open boycotting and outbursts of physical violence dwindled, but of the 2,000 Jewish lawyers in Berlin. Prussia gave only 35 license to practice. The drive to drive Jews from the professions spread to medicine, education, the arts. The rectors of the Universities of Frankfort and Brunswick were arrested last week. Officials of the Berlin municipal insurance system announced that they would pay the bills of no Jewish physicians rendered after April 1. Because they signed an official protest against persecution of Jewish musicians in Germany, German radio stations were ordered to bar all records or compositions by Arturo Toscanini, Walter Damrosch, Sergei Koussevitzky, Artur Bodanzky, Harold Bauer, Ossip Gabrilowitsch.

Kosher killing of meat, banned by several German States fortnight ago, was forbidden through the entire Reich last week. From Nazi headquarters came strong hints that any German official married to a Jewess had better get a divorce if he wished to keep his job.

Once more last week police patrols and armed bands of Nazis raided a Jewish quarter in Berlin. Streets were closed, pedestrians stopped, houses searched.

Finally with a glimmer of moderation Hitler issued a new decree laying down the nation-wide rules for Jewish lawyers. Like the law covering Government employes, it gave full rights to pre-War Jewish lawyers who had fought in the War, were not Communists and whose fathers or sons died in the War. All others were subject to disbarment. Annulling all State laws, it stepped up the total of practising Berlin lawyers from 35 to 1,000. One Jewish grandparent makes a Jew in Germany.

Hanussen. The bullet-riddled body of Erik Jan Hanussen (born Steinschneider) was found in a wood near Bayreuth last week. Herr Hanussen was one of Europe's best known fortunetellers; he predicted the rise of Adolf Hitler several years ago. Three weeks ago he suddenly quit a vaudeville engagement in Berlin "because of an impending nervous breakdown."

Rotter. The Rotter Brothers, Jewish theatre owners and musicomedy producers, once most prosperous, now bankrupt, fled Berlin in January. In the Principality of Liechtenstein last week they were ambushed by six young Germans, apparently Nazis. Alfred Rotter and his wife jumped over a cliff to death to avoid kidnapping. Franz Rotter, handcuffed, sprang from the kidnappers' car, broke his shoulder.

Bell. Cold on a morgue slab in Durchholzen, Austria last week lay the body of Dr. George Bell. In the early days of Nazism, Dr. Bell was, with the notorious Count de Moulin Eckhardt, one of the intimates of the perverted Storm Troop Leader Capt. Ernst Roehm (TIME, March 20). While still in Nazi good graces he went to London" called according to rumor by Sir Henri Deterding who was currying favor with Adolf Hitler in the hope of winning oil contracts for Royal Dutch-Shell. Later came a break with Capt. Roehm. Dr. Bell was accused of being a traitor to the party, of printing Nazi secrets in a Munich Catholic paper,

The Straight Road. He fled to Austria.

Three weeks ago he telegraphed from Salzburg in terror, begging Capt. Roehm's forgiveness. There was no answer. Early last week two motor cars full of young Nazis found the village of Durchholzen where Dr. Bell was hiding. Servants at the inn heard a violent argument in his bedroom. Two Nazis came downstairs, went outside to confer with their friends. Suddenly the telephone line was cut. One huge young man with a pale face and staring eyes went back upstairs alone. There were shots in Dr. Bell's bedroom. A porter, rushing up in his green apron, was shot through the hip. Dr. Bell was dead, his roommate Major Hell severely wounded. The Nazis sped away.

Bears. Minister of Agriculture von Rohr sent an order to all German State Governments last week to forbid the entrance or performance of dancing bears in Germany. "These animals are often introduced by wandering gypsies," read the message, "and the tortures to which they are continually subjected offend German susceptibilities."

Mensuren. The desire to revive all the pomps and practices of pre-War Germany took a notable step forward last week when the Hitler Cabinet announced the restoration of all German orders, decorations and titles of nobility. New Nazi decorations are about to be established but they can only be bestowed by the President. Prussia will once more have a House of Peers. New Peers will be created by the Premier on behalf of the Chancellor--in other words Handsome Adolf, like Napoleon, will found his own aristocracy. The Governments of Prussia, Baden, Bavaria rescinded all Republican laws against mensuren, the bloody, rapier duels of German student corps. Wrote the Volkischer Beobachter:

"These measures will restore the sound, healthy idea that a man should take a weapon in his hand to avenge an insult instead of going before a judge and having his honor measured by legal paragraphs, as under the Republic."

Even under Kaiser Wilhelm's regime, grudge duelling, as distinct from the formalized slashing bouts of the corps students, was against the law and seriously punished.

Statthalters. One relic of the old Empire was definitely ended: the individual rights of German States. A four-pointed bill turned Germany last week from a loose confederation under Prussian domination to one of the most highly centralized governments in the world. It provided :

1) Abolition of parliamentary government in the States.

2) Creation of statthalters or viceroys to rule the States by appointment of Chancellor Hitler and responsible directly to Wilhelmstrasse.

3) The statthalters will appoint State Premiers who are to pick their own cabinets.

4) The State Cabinets are responsible to the Hitlerite Government alone, and may not be removed by State Legislatures.

This decree not only tied all power to Berlin but it cut short the hope of Bavarian and Saxon royalists to re-establish their own dynasties by electing the Princes statthalters.

Business. "Coordination" was the word most frequently on Nazi tongues last week. Having "coordinated" the civil service, government, education and the arts, the Hitler Government next turned to German industry. For the past 14 years the most influential organization in Germany has been the Federation of German Industries, which in its time has made and upset Chancellors and governments. Last week the entire directorate resigned to be replaced by Nazi sympathizers. President of the North German Lloyd, 73-year-old Philip Heineken, resigned too. The cinema industry, from which Nazi leaders expect a great deal in the way of propaganda, shut down completely while government leaders prepared rules to forbid Jewish actors, executives, salesmen.

Religion. Over the Alps to Italy went Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen last week. He had just lost a month-long backstage battle for the last important German post not controlled by Nazis, the Premiership of Prussia. Adolf Hitler, making himself statthalter for Prussia, was about to confer the Premiership on his most active assistant, Capt. Hermann Goring, and that same Capt. Goring was about to set out for Italy to join Col. von Papen, whose job there was twofold: 1) to prepare the way for a later visit to Italy from Handsome Adolf himself; 2) as a good Catholic and Cameriere Segreto di Spada e Cappa (Private Chamberlain, Cape & Sword) to the Papal Court, to persuade the Vatican that Hitlerism promised no harm to Christianity or to the Catholic Church. What was happening behind him was no help. Having "coordinated" almost everything in sight, the enthusiastic Nazis turned next to the Evangelical Church.

A mass meeting of "German Christians" was called in the old Prussian Diet House to hear the outline of the new Nazi religion. A Pastor Hossenfelder led off with an announcement:

". . . Luther said a plowman can be more pious at his plowing than a nun at her prayers. We say a Storm Trooper in his fighting is more in God's will than a Church that does not jubilantly join in the call for the Third Reich."

A Dr. Wieneke-Soldin added:

"The Swastika cross and the Christian cross belong together. ... If Christ were to rise again today he would be the leader in our struggle against Marxism and internationalism."

Most startling ideas of the new religion were: the Old Testament, being a Hebrew Book, is to be forbidden in German Sunday Schools. German Christians will substitute for it 100% German mythology--Wotan for Moses, Siegfried for Saul. Saints of the new religion will be such War heroes as that potent air fighter, the late Captain Baron Manfred von Richthofen.

Enlarging on this theme, Alfred Rosenberg, chief of the Nazi Foreign Politics

Division, declaimed: "The new mythology cannot be downed! The personifications of this mythology are the World War heroes, and the new German movement shows that uncounted millions are beginning to understand our 2,000,000 martyrs as a new living mythology and as a new religion."

The meeting adopted principles:

"God has created me a German. Germanism is a gift from God. God wants me to fight for my Germanism.

"Service in war is not a violation of Christian conscience but is obedience to God. . . ."

Nazi Christianity produced the first open criticism of Hitlerism in the German Press in months. Dr. Friedrich Dibelius. General Superintendent of the Evangelical Church, protested openly and was charged with "high treason" by Nazi newspapers.

"What does this mean?" wrote the Monarchist Kreuz Zeitung. "Is it that only Dr. Dibelius is to be dismissed, or the Pope also?"

In Rome, Vice Chancellor von Papen tried earnestly to explain.

On foreign exchange the German mark fell 37 points last week. From Paris, Lorraine steel mills announced happily that Soviet anger at Hitlerism had just won them an 18,000-ton steel order formerly given to Germany, allowed them to reopen two blast furnaces closed for months.

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