War Dance

In most countries the start of a war is the signal for inhibitions to slip gently down over the shoulders. Strong-through-joy Nazi Germany, however, frowns on undisciplined enjoyment, and for the last 18 months gaiety has been regulated almost out of existence. But last week came a sign that even the Germans must relax to shake off the jitters of war as reports arrived of ten days of hoopla in the Bavarian Alps.

Occasion was the annual wintersports meet at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, site of the 1936 winter Olympics. No records were made by the skaters in the Olympic Stadium, none by the skiers on the glittering slopes of the Eckenberg. The big show was the crowd itself, which came in well-heeled thousands, filled the villages' hotels, overflowed the sleeping cars parked on sidings, backed up all the way to Munich, two hours away by train. Some skied and skated, more took chocolate on the sunny terraces, all drank and danced until after dawn in bars and casinos and behind the shuttered windows of private chalets.

In peacetime winters Garmisch is almost as cosmopolitan as St. Moritz or Antibes, and though visitors this year, except for newspaper men, were almost 100% Aryan German, the effect remained. The expensive ladies of Germany's first families were blanketed in furs that looked as if they came from Paris, the men in tweeds that certainly came from England. Youngsters in the Alpenhof bar sang Night and Day and St. Louis Blues in English.

Enjoying the heady half-mile-high air were young sprigs on leave from Panzer and other divisions, industrialist families glad to get out of their much-bombed home towns, few Nazi bigwigs. Official Germany had too much on its mind to go skiing.

Always eager to put Germany's best foot forward, shrewd Paul Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry invited all the foreign press to the party, gave them a hotel to themselves. Decorative squads of soldiers hiked bravely through the streets, singing happily every hour on the hour. The world could thus know that, even in wartime, Germans are: 1) healthy, 2) happy, 3) sport-loving, 4) musical.

Not on this eupeptic program were the mutilated soldiers taking the mountain air outside their hospital. Nor had the Propaganda Ministry expected the party to reach the strident high tension it attained. Best expression of Germany's war spirit was the favorite dance, a nameless, aimless jitterbug caper. Said one German girl: "I guess you could call it a war dance."

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