Biggest Biggest

The biggest man in the German Government, 225-lb. Air Minister Hermann Wilhelm Goering, won an apparently decisive victory last week over his strongest and most bitter foe, 125-lb. Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, club-footed Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.

Emotional, intuitive Adolf Hitler prefers to move in a mysterious way, but the net result of what Der Fuehrer did last week was to put all German domestic affairs in the ham-fists of Hermann Wilhelm Goering who, in effect, became Vice Chancellor under Chancellor Hitler. This was accomplished when Der Fuehrer signed a decree which recalled his promise to the Nurnberg Nazi Party Congress (TIME, Sept. 21) that by 1940 the Fatherland will have been made economically independent of all other countries. Last week the Realmleader vested in General Goering all powers necessary to carry out this vague and sweeping Four-Year Plan.

Hitherto Goering has been mentioned in official documents as "Prussian Minister-President," since one of his offices is Premier of the State of Prussia. In last week's decree he was called simply "Minister-President" and to Germans this implied that he has become Premier of all Germany rather than of Prussia only. To him Chancellor Hitler gave authority "to issue decrees and general administrative instructions" to "all administrative organs, including the highest Reich administration, all offices of the Party and its subordinate organizations or associated institutions." This was delegating so much power to Goering that his enormous bulk seemed almost to loom over small Hitler, but the mystic Fuehrer has long toyed with notions of betaking himself upward to a status in which his title of Leader would be as Olympian and detached from responsibility for details as that of Emperor.

In case Germany is headed for that economic disaster which, by the wily stratagems of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the Fatherland has barely avoided so many times, it will be just as well for the blame to burst not upon Herr Hitler but upon Herr Goering, who has been a morphine addict, drinks Gargantuanly and is popular in a bluff, hearty fashion-the sort of man to whom Germans forgive mistakes. Minister-President Goering received last week the following send-off from Der Volkischer Beobachter, the personally-owned newsorgan of Chancellor Adolf Hitler to which all Nazi Party members are obliged to subscribe: "By summoning Goering Der Fuehrer placed behind the four-year plan the man with the strongest will and the greatest energy in the National Socialist movement. Party Comrade Goering has received power to do everything that is necessary to carry through the four-year plan. There will be no struggle between departments, no question of juris diction. There will be only one ultimate authority in all economic questions Party Comrade Goering." Significance. No immediate change in German economic policy was foreshadowed by this spectacular upping of Goering, but it served to emphasize the gradual drift of Der Fuehrer away from the Party's economic radicals: Dr. Goebbels, Dr. Richard-Walther Darre, Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Robert Ley. Leader of the German Labor Front and Herr Wilhelm Keppler, an engineer who has had for three years the peculiar title of "Personal Economic Adviser to Adolf Hitler." These Tugwells of the Nazi regime have long been slipping and 36 hours after Goering took over last week Engineer Keppler was dismissed by Der Fuehrer.

Actually there is no real Four-Year Plan, for the Nazis have evolved nothing so specific as the Five-Year Plans of the Bolsheviks. Everything pointed this week to continued German economic tightrope dancing of a vaguely conservative and vaguely orthodox character under the Great Extemporizer, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics. Last April, when the Nazi radicals had been working up for several months within the Party a campaign to force dismissal of Dr. Schacht, General Goering abruptly took Germany's fiscal wizard under his hulking personal protection, and last week Adolf Hitler erected this state of affairs into a German institution with imposing trappings. Another reason for Goering's appointment to rule the economy of Germany was that as a soldier he will be deaf to any policy of economy in the Army, Navy or Air Force. The Fatherland, under Goering & Schacht, is headed more than ever for "war-preparation-prosperity." Nephew Herbert Goering, hitherto obscure, now sits at Dr. Schacht's right hand, an important Reichsbank official. As a sop to Nazi radicals, Agriculture Minister Darre was given a seat on a Cabinet committee of six appointed by the Minister-President to carry out Der Vier Jahresplan.

None the less, Minister-President Goering has now been given powers to tamper with almost everything in Germany, powers so sweeping that this fact is of radical significance and a blow to laissez-faire Capitalism. Another blow was an intimation from the Minister-President that he will fix by decree on Nov. 9 the retail price in Germany of meat and meat products, including beef, pork, tallow, lard, bacon, ham and sausages.

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