"Honorable" Peasants

The dream of every farmer--that the State should grant him immunity from ever being dispossessed for debt--suddenly came true for thousands of broad-faced German rustics last week as Chancellor Hitler promoted them by decree to the status of a new, exclusive and highly privileged class.

Only members of this class, the Chancellor decreed, may hereafter be called "peasants," which title shall become throughout the Fatherland a badge of honor. To qualify as a "peasant" a German must: 1) prove that none of his family since Jan. 1, 1800 A.D. have been Jews or Negroes; 2) possess a homestead large enough to support a family but not larger than 300 acres.

To decide who is to be a privileged "peasant" and who a mere "farmer," the new decree sets up a vast Nazi bureau topped by an imposing Agrarian Supreme Court. Members of the new peasantry cannot be dispossessed for debt. Neither can their crops or goods of any sort be seized by private creditors. In the words of Chancellor Hitler's decree, "the peasantry are lifted out of the capitalist system."

Perfectly logical from the Nazi standpoint, this "lifting" springs from Adolf Hitler's firm belief that his State must strive to create a "pure German race" and that the race today is purest among rustic homesteaders unpolluted by the "Jewish Marxism" to be found in German towns. By setting apart and pampering the peasants Leader Hitler hopes to rear an "aristocracy of blood."

In last week's decree there was only one catch. Every peasant, in order to retain his status, must be "honorable"-- the requisite degree of honor being defined as ''honorable enough to pay his debts if he is able to do so after proper administration of his land." Peasants who flagrantly cheat their creditors will suffer a peculiar penalty: the cheater's estate will pass while he is yet living to his heir. If the heir turns out to be a cheat, his heir gets the estate, and so on until an "honorable peasant" is found to hold the homestead.

Resolved to make his uplifted peasant class an "eternal aristocracy" Chancellor Hitler wound up his epochal decree by providing that no peasant may sell or divide his homestead and must bequeath it at death to one sole heir. Jews, being considered ipso facto without honor, were barred from ever inheriting either a peasant homestead or any German farm land whatsoever.

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