Goebbels' Mules

German newsorgans which have died of Nazi censorship since Hitler came to power include famed Der Tag and the Vossische Zeitung.

Last week the Realmleader's own news-organ Volkischer Beobachter, which Germans have been buying on the theory that if all they could get was Nazi propaganda they might as well get it from the source, was withering too, had dropped to second place in Berlin circulation behind the Jewish-founded Morgenpost of Ullstein.

If even Adolf Hitler could not make his paper boom, German journalism was close to the rocks. Chiefly to blame, Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels, who censors and blights the Fatherland's news, last week berated German editors because "the published word no longer has its former effect. The reader has become a mule. . . . There has now reappeared the old 'vocal newspaper,' the passing of news from mouth to mouth. The reader is not responsible: the newspapers are responsible! They are losing ground because they satisfy only 40% of the readers' curiosity instead of 80%."

Simultaneously in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia (once Austria-Hungary's Carlsbad), one Dr. Joerg Willenbacher published last week a monumental anthology of German Whispered Jokes.

Examples:

P:A family of Jews in Germany wrote to relatives, "We have a wonderful life. Not a hair on the head of any Jew has been touched and Hitler is bringing us toward a better future. Uncle Moritz, who expressed the opposite opinion, is being buried tomorrow."

P:A German released from a Nazi prison camp tells his friends what a fine time he had there--plenty to eat, games all day long and a wonderful library. "But how did you get your nose broken and your ear torn off?" neighbors ask.

"Hush!" he replies. "Such questions are foreign lies and cruelty propaganda against the Leader."

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