Chains Broken!

Joy filled German hearts to bursting last week when beloved Realmleader Hitler took the most popular plunge of his career. Only crabbiest correspondents sneered when elfin little Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels, sparkling-eyed and jumping for joy on his club foot, announced that Germans were rejoicing before he released the news at which they would rejoice. At hastily summoned newshawks. Dr. Goebbels thrust this historic handout: "Enthusiasm prevails among the German people. Simultaneously with this expression of joy and supreme happiness over the defense of German security through the rearmament now resolved upon, the German people knows itself to be at one with the Fuehrer in his clear and unmistakable profession for peace."

Storm Troops to Oberammergau. Sure enough, enthusiasm did prevail as soon as German presses printed the great news of how Germany's whole Cabinet, including staid, stuffy Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath and 275-lb. Air Minister Hermann Wilhelm Goering, "bounded from their chairs" last week and gave a triple cheer of "Heil! Heil! Heil!" when Adolf Hitler finished telling them in his harshest, most gutturally thrilling German that the page of the Treaty of Versailles on which German signatures are inked is just another scrap of paper. Specifically Messiah Hitler decreed that Germany will now violate the Treaty of Versailles' Part V by raising as rapidly as possible a conscript peacetime army of half a million men--bigger than the continental peacetime army of France.

The Cabinet, beside itself with excitement, then chanted in chorus to the Realmleader the oath of blind obedience to Adolf Hitler, now taken by every German in the State's employ and by millions of others.

Three hours later Berlin was bedlam. Boulevards were pack-jammed with people shouting and sobbing. Several correspondents, defeated by the job of trying to describe a nation mad with joy, cabled that Germany's transports of exultation were "INDESCRIBABLE."

Sourest of Germans on Joy Day were group leaders of the ordinary S. A. Storm Troops, long since fallen from the Fuehrer's favor. They now seem destined to brownshirt oblivion as a new Nazi Army bursts out into field grey under Reichswehr officers of War renown (see p. 23). Last week smart Adolf Hitler, when he decided to make the Great News, first ordered S. A. Storm Troop leaders to hurry from all parts of the Fatherland to the town in which he knew they could make least trouble. Oberammergau. There, after the news broke, passion ran high. Snarled a Storm Troop leader more outspoken than the rest: "Next year there should be no difficulty in finding the right man to play Judas Iscariot."

"Rare in History." Messiah of rearmament though he is, Adolf Hitler speaks with the tongue of Peace. Even while calling half a million Germans to arms last week he stressed his inspired conception of the World War, proclaimed that when Germans grounded their arms in 1918 "they believed they had rendered a service not only to tormented humanity but also to a great idea!" Zealous to make Germany of further service to mankind, Realmleader Hitler added: "What the German Government, as the guardian of the honor and interests of the German nation, desires is to make sure that Germany possesses sufficient instruments of power not only to maintain the integrity of the German Reich but also to command international respect and value as co-guarantor of general peace."

German forbearance in asking no territory from France today the Realmleader called "rare in history." He described the German people in 1918 and for years afterward as imbued with "a spirit that corresponds exactly with the pacifistic-democratic ideals of the League of Nations." Passing over the fact that his Nazi Party was founded to exterminate these ideals in Germany and can be said to have succeeded, the Realmleader finally lashed out in indignation against Premier Pierre Etienne Flandin for last week increasing the French term of military service from twelve to 18 & 24 months. Messiah Hitler seized upon this as his excuse for breaking the Treaty of Versailles: "Far be it from the German Government to raise complaint against any other State. It must point out, however, today that by France's introduction of a two-year service period as now decided, the idea upon which the creation of armies with short enlistment had been tested has been abandoned.

"Under these circumstances the German Government considers it impossible still longer to refrain from taking the necessary measures for the security of the Reich or even to hide the knowledge thereof from the other nations."

Cuckold's "Good Gracious!" On the rest of Europe the shock produced by this was merely that felt by a husband who has known his wife was deceiving him when she finally not only admits all but earnestly explains how pure, how inevitable her acts have been. Into the cuckold class last week went Premier Flandin, Prime Minister MacDonald. Premier Mussolini and even President Roosevelt for, while the U. S. is not a party to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany pledged and plighted her word not to rearm above the Versailles limits when she freely signed with the U. S. her Treaty of separate peace.

In the White House, after conferring with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, President Roosevelt appeared ready to wait and see what the other cuckolds were going to do, though strongly urged to take to the radio. In Paris and in Rome official comment was withheld by Foreign Minister Laval and Il Duce as they burned up Europe's long distance wires conferring with their allies. Jean Frenchman, unable to find anything to his taste in official bulletins, snatched up and read with gesticulations of approval sheets like Paris' Petit Bleu which shrieked, "More than ever the Germans are the mad dogs of Europe!"

Since Britain has been slated to play the role of honest broker between Germany, France and Russia in the proposed Eastern Locarno Peace effort (TIME, Feb. 18), His Majesty's Government found this week that they must take whatever initiative had to be taken in retort to Adolf Hitler. Visibly perturbed, Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon rushed to London from a holiday in South Wales.

Ways exist of playing successfully against Adolf Hitler according to his lack of rules,* but they are not the ways of His Majesty's Government. Sir John had expected to go to Berlin next Sunday and offer Adolf Hitler some easement from the Treaty of Versailles as part of a bargain. In exchange for the easement Germany was to agree to rearm without exceeding certain strict limitations, return to the League of Nations, sign the Eastern Locarno Pact and adhere to a general European pledge to resist "unprovoked air aggression" (TIME, Feb. 11). Instead of which Hitler had torn up the diplomatic pack of cards and reached for the jack pot. The game was over, or was it?

Lawyerish Sir John Simon perhaps cannot believe that anyone would tear up a deck of cards. His nature is to assume that the game must go on and, being a game, must go on according to the rules. To their Embassy in Berlin the imperturbable British sent instructions to ask the German Government whether Adolf Hitler's invitation to Sir John Simon still stood; whether, assuming that it stood, the German Government remained anxious to obtain by bargain what they had purported to seize; whether, in effect, the Nazis are mad dogs or gentlemanly players of a gentleman's game?

These bland British inquiries, as made by Ambassador Sir Eric Phipps at the Wilhelmstrasse, opened with a stiff "protest against" Realmleader Hitler's "unilateral action" in "putting forward, as a decision already arrived at, strengths for military effectives greatly exceeding any before suggested--strengths, moreover, which, if maintained unaltered, must make more difficult if not impossible the agreement of other powers vitally concerned."

Off the record a scar-cheeked Wilhelmstrasse official scoffed that lawyerish word traps will never catch Adolf Hitler. Among close friends of the Realmleader he was said to be preparing "another surprise, another master stroke."

Quick, however, was the Wilhelmstrasse's public reply that it did indeed expect Sir John Simon to make his visit. In London Sir John announced he would go. At this the French felt decidedly let down, since they had concluded from recent conversations that they would be consulted in such situations--and at the first important one had not. Paris learned of the British note and Sir John's decision only after the fact. But, most important to both onetime allies, Herr Hitler had neatly cut the ground from under their feet. All that Britain's Foreign Minister had to offer this week, Der Reichsfuehrer had already boldly taken.

Death's Heads & Ludendorff. Meanwhile from the Baltic to the Rhine every German radio station was linked day and night in an unending broadcast of guttural triumph. "The chains have fallen!" blared the Nazi Party official broadcast. "Like a phalanx, in unshaken unity and solidarity, stand the people and the Fuehrer!"

Amid dazzling sunshine before the Imperial Palace, troops goose-stepped past Adolf Hitler garbed as a simple Storm Trooper and Germany's former Crown Prince accoutred as a Death's Head Hussar. Members of the Nazi cabinet were observed to salute His Imperial and Royal Highness. Nobody expected Herr Hitler to enthrone a Hohenzollern on the spot, but war nostalgia was pushed to the point of frenzy.

"We bow our heads before Ludendorff!" cried Germany's present Defense Minister General Werner von Blomberg, careless of the fact that Ludendorff has for years been considered mentally irresponsible and last week was not present. "Ja, Ludendorff! We bow before Ludendorff who, by his might, bore the entire world, like an Atlas, upon his shoulders. There was and there is for our people no guilt! Into the War we were led with a spotless shield and out of it we came with our honor untarnished."

Few hours later Adolf Hitler sat nibbling sandwiches and apples above the clouds in his silver-&-black steel monoplane Immelmann with a correspondent of Naziphile Viscount Rothermere's Daily Mail. "Had you asked a single man or woman of those huge crowds," said Hitler between nibbles, "whether they thought the step I have just taken in restoring universal military service might lead to war, they would have stared at you in amazement."

The Rotherman stared at Hitler while the Immelmann flew on to Munich.

"Any Minute." Only action of any consequence to result at once from scrap-of-papering Versailles: The British War Office asked the House of Commons for $20,000,000 additional "for coastal and anti-aircraft defense required because of the gravity of the news from Germany."

No actual head of any State dared comment, but, with Dictator Joseph Stalin's approval, puppet Soviet President Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin said, "Now war may come at any minute."

More likely, according to Germans close to Hitler, is a sensational "demarche of peace," with the Fatherland marching spotless back into the League of Nations while armorers perfect the fighting gear of half a million fine young Germans.

Following up his first announcement, Propaganda Minister Goebbels whipped up enthusiasm at home and thumbed his nose abroad by saying: "Germany already possesses a powerful, well-equipped Army with excellent artillery and huge reserves of trained men. German arms factories are working virtually on a war footing, material is being supplied from them in an ever-increasing volume."

While the Fatherland reveled in triumph, Adolf Hitler, who has been waiting his chance to crack down on the German Protestant Church, sent secret police to pounce on some 500 pastors known to believe that Naziism is a form of "pagan idolatry" definitely antiChristian.

* Nazi hooligans having been sent from Germany to foment opposition to II Duce in Italy's German-speaking Tirol and to beat up Fascist sympathizers, the Dictator quietly moved up several Italian battalions which arrived in the night, doffed uniforms, put on civilian clothes and next day gave the German hooligans the beating of their lives while Italian police pretended to marvel at the frequency of brawls and fist fights. As the Nazis fled to Nazidom, the regiment resumed uniforms, the Tirol resumed its calm and in Rome spokesmen for II Duce scoffed politely at "those fantastic rumors from the Alto Adige" (Italy's name for Southern Tirol).

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