In the Book and Literary World

Restless Days. The Autobiography of a German Girl. By Lilo Linke. 432 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $3.00.

Anyone who has dipped into the flood of anti-Nazi books knows that they all have the same tragic story to tell. The horrors of the return to barbarism in Germany have been all too well fixed in our minds, so that there is no need to subject ourselves to repetitions of the painful details. And yet there is no book that I know about which describes how a decent, intelligent, sensitive young “Aryan” of that new German Youth to which Hitler drones his appeals reacted to the warping of his ideals to Nazism. In other words, we have had the story of the Youth Movement from the outside; now, in Lilo Linke’s autobiography, we find it told from the inside. Here at last is an informed and deeply perceptive explanation of how a great and wholesome spiritual resurgance was corrupted into the vilest of historical phenomena.

Lilo Linke was a child during the war; to her it signified at first only parades and glittering uniforms, and then, later, cold and hunger and hours of waiting on the breadline. Her parents were cartographer, and the mother a violent reactionary who believed that the war was lost only because of the treasonable revolution.

Lilo grew up with little political awareness; she was shocked, however, when workmen she knew were shot down by policemen for no apparent cause. During the inflation she left school and went to work in a bookshop. Germany at this time was suffering from a frightful mass psychosis; the inflation had taught the people to grasp at the pleasures of the moment, even though starvation might loom next day.

This hedonistic attitude quickly succeeded in destroying the moral fibre of the nation; its nervous system was unbalanced, and the indulgence of vice and perversion became the rule rather than the exception. There was something in the very air which caused a girl like Lilo to conduct herself like a courtesan, and even to sink to stealing merchandise from her employer.

She welcomed the formation of a youth group in her Trade Union like a breath of clean, fresh air. She plunged into the activities of the group — hikes, song-fests, dramatics, and mutual aid schemes —and soon became group leader, and then member of the council of youth groups for all of Berlin.

Every organization at the time was forming youth groups, manifestly to bridge the gap between the old and the young, for the middle generation had been extinguished by the war. But actually the movement was successful because it drew youth of the miasma of despair which beset post-war Germany. Each group had sworn to ban all political activity. Lilo did her utmost to uphold this oath, but one by one she saw her fellow leaders fall victim to influence, circumstance, or their own enthusiasm.

The tragic error of the Youth Movement was its failure to take into account the ease with which the emotions of the young are swayed. It is plain now that the healthy cult of the body, the Spartan codes of physical training, and the military organization of the groups carried implications of direct physical action—and eventually of Fascist violence and terror.

I have been trying to convey the background out of which Lilo’s story arises. I have been therefore dealing with abstractions. But in her case the issue was met in a stirringly dramatic fashion. Remember that she was an enthusiast in her group work. But remember also that she had a rich and sensitive personality which would not be satisfied with existing according to a formula; she required not only physical training and song-fests, but companionship, knowledge, adventure and love.

She is one of those few people one encounters who have a genius for living, a blitheness in the face of any experience, and at the same time the resources of high seriousness. It was inevitable that she should feel the need of bursting through the limits prescribed by the Youth Movement. When the council laid clumsy hands on her love for Thomas, a young artist, a crisis arose and Lilo resigned from the Movement.

There must be thousands of other young Germans who went through the same experience, but who did not have the conviction or the courage to break away. They today form the passively acquiescent element among the Nazis. And without their acquiescence, Hitler could not exist. “Restles Days” is an important contribution to the fight against Fascism, because it suggests the point at which Hitlerism may some day be breached and smashed.

The remainder of Lilo’s story relates how she turned her organizational talents to the service of the Democratic Party, and later, to the Social Democrats; how she waged a long, painful fight against the ominously rising tide of Hitlerism; and how she stuck to her post until the last moment, and then fled to England. She lives there now, and she writes in English—a magnificent English that is rarely equalled among writers born to the tongue. Her experiences, her personality and her style in fine combination make “Restless Days” a passionate, eloquent and exciting proof of the grandeur of the human spirit. One emerges from it treasuring one’s acquaintance, albeit only through the written word, with Lilo Linke.