Birthdays

Forty-seven years ago last week at Revel, Russia (now Tallinn, Estonia), a boy was born who was destined to make his mark in European politics. As a youth he soap-boxed for anti-Semitism and studied architecture. As a nominal subject of the Tsar he fought (so his enemies later said) with the Russian Imperial Armies. As a descendant of an old German Baltic family, he became a Pan-German and returned, after World War I, to his "spiritual homeland."

In Germany he fell in with a young politician on the make, Adolf Hitler by name, and began to supply him with most of the ideas that later became Nazi gospel. He advocated a return to the pagan worship of Thor and Wotan. He wrote a long volume of gibberish called Mythology in the 20th Century, which few Nazis could decipher and fewer non-Nazis wanted to. As the editor of the Nazi newsorgan Voelkischer Beobachter he predicted that when Hitler came to power "Jewish bodies will hang from every telegraph pole between Munich and Berlin." Above all, he incessantly repeated that Bolsheviks were "Jewish criminals" and that the German path of conquest lay logically to the East, towards Soviet Russia.

The Fuehrer made him supervisor of the "intellectual and philosophic" schooling of the Hitler Youth and the Nazi storm troopers. Although critics called him a "mad teacher of Teutonic superiority," Nazis considered him their official "philosopher." Only because his name was Alfred Rosenberg was he never able to silence completely the suspicion that he was part Jewish.

On the same day of the same year as Dr. Rosenberg's birth, another German boy, who was to become even more famous, was born in Rosenheim, Bavaria. In World War I he became a daring aviator, bagged 20 Allied planes. Later he too joined Adolf Hitler. After years of exile and struggle, he came to hold, among other titles, that of President of the Reichstag, Reichsminister for Prussia, Air Minister. Hermann Goering's power rose to second that of the Fuehrer.

Last week, as both men celebrated their birthdays, Field Marshal Goering, heir-designate of the Fuehrer, was publicly congratulated by Army, Government and Nazi Party officials. The Fuehrer honored him with a personal call at Karin Hall, the sumptuous manor house which the Field Marshal built on Berlin's outskirts.

But no such attention came Dr. Rosenberg's way. Since last August, when overnight the Germans and Russians became friends, the Nazis have found it convenient to forget their embarrassing anti-Bolshevist philosopher. Last week, his birthday was not noticed publicly, he was left to philosophize alone and silently on theory v. practice in international politics.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.