Gauntlet of Hate

Two parades, 1,550 miles apart, reflected the mortal shift in Nazi fortunes last week:

Down Gorky Street. Almost three years behind blitz schedule, the Wehrmacht at last saw Moscow. Some 57,000 German prisoners from the Polish campaign shuffled through the Russian capital on their way to internment. They were shabby, unshaven, a few of them still defiant. But most looked like beaten men.

A million Muscovites thronged Gorky Street, jampacked balconies and bus tops to watch the procession. Hundreds of Russian militiamen struggled to keep back the curious crowds. Pravda had warned: "No hooting." Most Muscovites watched in silence; only a few muttered: "Bandits! Murderers! Killers!" Once a woman screamed: "Give me back my daughter! Give me back my daughter!" The crowd hushed her. For the most part, the gauntlet the Germans ran was a silent one. But it was a gauntlet: the hatred in the air was almost a solid.

Down the Champs Elysees. From the Normandy front the Germans shipped 2,000 U.S. and British prisoners to Paris, marched them through the city for Paris to see. Last week the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung and other big German newspapers published two photographs. One showed a buxom Parisienne spitting in a British prisoner's face. Said the caption: "This Parisian lady could not be prevented from showing her disgust by spitting in the Englishman's face." The other picture showed a G.I. ducking a blow at his face delivered by a bespectacled bystander. Said the caption: "The population was so aroused against criminal terrorists that German soldiers were not always able to hold back the irate crowd."

What the German pictures did not show, nor the papers tell, was that the "irate crowd" had been especially picked and hired for the occasion. Parisian trulls, pimps and petty criminals had been let out of jail if they promised to demonstrate against the Allied prisoners.

But when these gutter-dwellers began to boo, with grim efficiency other Frenchmen, women & children singled out the hooters, drove them with surreptitious cuffs and curses from the Avenue. The prisoners grinned and marched on, chins up. Lest the parade arouse a real demonstration, the Germans sneaked the prisoners into a side street.

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