The Nazi movement has lived its allotted span in Germany. It will never again secure the hold on the imagination and emotions of the German people It had in the first flush of its rise to power. Adolf Hitler may continue for some time to come as Chancellor of the German Reich, but his tenure of office will depend not on the might of his storm troop army but on the toleration of the conservatives as expressed through President Paul von Hindenburg.
This is the general belief in circles here which have been in the best position to survey the German scene away from the mass of rumors and fantastic inventions which are now sweeping over Germany and beclouding the true state of affairs.
STORM TROOP MENACE SEEN
In the first place, it is felt, the storm troop army of two million men is no longer a Hitler fighting force, but constitutes the greatest single menace to Hitler. Dissolution of the army will remove the sole income of a vast number of men and will intensify the unemployment situation. Hundreds of thousands of storm troopers will revert to their original radical affiliations. More will be ready to follow desperate leaders fearing the execution squads which mowed down their formerly respected and trusted commanders.
In the second place the Nazi regime is split into warring factions. Prussian Premier Goering has obtained for himself as much power as any Nazi leader, including Hitler. In him the Chancellor has an enemy as dangerous as any man in non-Nazi ranks.
Much credence is placed here in Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports from Prague that Otto Strasser, leader of the “Black Front,” had revealed negotiations between Hitler and Gregor Strasser, one-time intimate aide of Hitler but latterly a virtual outcast, leading to Strasser’s return to his old position of second in command.
According to Strasser, Goering, through his secret police, had been made aware of these developments and had had Gregor Strasser slain to prevent their consummation. Strasser was one of the first to fall before the Hitler execution squads.
OBSERVERS DIFFER
While all observers and commentators differ on every issue raised with the coming of the German situation to a boil, they agree on the one point that the Nazi movement has destroyed itself far beyond the power of the Flensburg congress of Nazi leaders to repair.
By the massacres and the subsequent revelations by the government itself of the clay feet the Nazi heroes possess, it is felt that they have once and for all lost their fantastic hold on the German people. A definite feeling of uneasiness—in some regions, fear —prevails throughout Germany.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
