Two Against One

HITLER--Konrad Heiden--Knopf ($3). HITLER--Rudolf Olden--Covici, Friede ($3 ).

Dictators not only make history but hurry it: they must become a living legend or their power will vanish. Hitler has turned the trick as far as Germany is concerned. Without a Jena or an Austerlitz, without even an Aduwa, he has become to Nazi Germany what Napoleon was to France, what Mussolini is to Italy. Of all the world's verbal and printed criticism of Hitler and his works, little percolates beyond the Rhine. Certainly neither the Realmleader nor any other inhabitant of Germany is likely to see either of the biographies U. S. readers were popping their eyes over last week.

Neither Author Heiden nor Author Olden had much to say that was complimentary. What they did say was very similar. Author Olden foamed a little more, at times threatened to run over; both agreed on the main facts of their "hero's" career. They took a lingering look at the delicious possibility that anti-Semitic Hitler might have Jewish blood in him, regretfully dismissed it. But Author Olden contended that Hitler might as justly have called himself Schicklgruber--which he points out would not have sounded so well with "Heil!" Both agree that Hitler is evasive and untrustworthy about the facts of his early life.

Author Heiden divulges the secret that Hitler once wore a pointed beard, gives a contemporary instance of his platform wit. One of a hostile audience shouted: "Take your hands out of your pockets!" To this Hitler shouted back: "Gentlemen, I am not one of those who talk with their hands!" According to Heiden, Hitler in his salad days practiced making an impression on people by always arriving late, saying nothing at first, suddenly launching into an oration, then taking an unceremonious leave. Heiden makes what he can (which is not much) of Hitler's devotion to his niece and her unexplained suicide. Neither satisfactorily solves the secret of Hitler's bachelorhood. Both biographers, without concealing their dislike, try to give the devil his due. Heiden: "Everything that Hitler says in his book about propaganda is masterly. . . . For a few hour? [at a time] he is really a remarkable schoolbook hero: cynical as Frederick the Great, brutal as Napoleon, kindly as the Emperor Joseph." Olden: "If greatness can exist . . . in demagogy, then Hitler is a great man. . . . Hitler's way of speaking is an elemental phenomenon, one of Nature's marvels."

But on the whole they disapprove of him. Heiden: "Only the ruin of all made him ruler over all." Olden: "He is a man who has remained in the child-stage, in the barbaric state of the nursery."

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