Down with Cake!

This time Goebbels meant business. Orders went out for a sharp reduction in the amount of printed propaganda. Consumption of newsprint must be screwed down to 7% of prewar normal; well-known papers must merge or be suppressed. The Berliner Boersen Zeitung and the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (onetime mouthpieces for business and the old guard) must merge; the Berliner Volkszeitung must die. Henceforth, the Berliner Illustrierte (with editions in Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart) would be the only picture weekly in the Reich.

First hot news to crowd the cramped remaining papers was a report that the common people had contributed "many helpful suggestions" to Goebbels' new total mobilization campaign (TIME, Aug. 7). There were new ideas for harnessing womanpower. Someone was sure that six Wehrmacht divisions could be whipped together from the ranks of superfluous clerks, bookkeepers and secretaries. That these superfluous Herrenvolk might also be superannuated made no difference; the hard-pressed total mobilizer drafted them anyway (see cut). Other helpful persons allegedly asked the little Doktor to cut out charge accounts, close restaurants, send the people to communal canteens, close tobacco stores, send smokers to the grocer's, abolish cake.

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