The Nazis and their apologists will tell you that Germany is in the throes of a revolution. In a revolution, they point out, anything can and does happen; Germany must not, therefore, be judged by the standards of other nations.
This is the staple rejoinder to criticism, not only of methods which have profoundly shocked the civilized world, but also of the singular sterility of the intellectual life of the nation under the present regime.
Nolens volens, the German people is today subject to a Spartan rule which definitely subordinates the cultivation of the arts to the work of national recovery. The country is at war, the inquiring foreigner is told, with the forces of disintegration and disaster—there is no leisure for cultivating the works of peace.
The almost complete paralysis of activity in the field of literature, art and the theatre affords perhaps the most striking contrast between the Germany I knew before the war and after, and the Germany of today.
OFF ARTISTIC MAP
From this standpoint Germany is no longer on the map, and the lack of contact between her intellectual life and that of other countries induces in the visitor from abroad a sense of intolerable isolation.
The measures enforced against Germany’s Jewish citizens, driving into exile writers like Stefan Zweig, Leon Feuchtwanger or Emil Ludwig, producers like Max Reinhardt and actresses like Elizabeth Bergner, have dealt a mortal blow at Germany’s contribution to the arts of the world.
More than this, creative genius is stifled under the iron hand of Government control. Christian writers who have retained their independence of mind, in so far as they are not behind the bars, are silent or have voluntarily expatriated themselves.
Take the bookshops. In justice to the Nazis let it be said that they have made a clean sweep of the pornographic literature which was formerly so widely displayed throughout the country, in the same way as they have closed such disgusting haunts of vice as the Eldorado Bar in Berlin. But what the bookshops offer today is the most monotonous collection of reading material imaginable—a vast hotchpotch of books and brochures about the Nazi movement, from Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (said to have sold some 3,000,000 copies) to stodgy treatises on the new German Christianity or Jewish machinations in world history, German war reminiscences, works on military history, economics and finance, and pamphlets on the art of war.
The vitality which has departed from the arts reappears in the glorification of martial pursuits. Throughout the country the outfitters’ windows are stacked with military gear of all kinds, belts, field-boots, binoculars, compasses and protractors, map cases, uniforms, together with a wide range of cheap manuals covering every branch of modern warfare, from infantry training to “Tarn” or camouflage—one might be in the Strand again in London during the war.
This display is, of course, for the benefit of the Brown Shirts, who have to buy their own equipment, and in whose curriculum military exercises form the most important part.
LESS EVIDENT IN SOUTH
Though the Nazi movement had its cradle in Munich, signs of the iron hand are much less evident in South Germany than in Prussia—I mean as far as the purely civilian element of the population is concerned.
But then the South Germans always took life less seriously than their brethren in the North. In the South, for example, the “Heil, Hitler!” salute has among civilians in most instances degenerated into the most casual of handflops; in Prussia it is still a matter of arm stiffly shot out, heels clicked together, and the greeting sharply barked or fervently murmured.
I lived in Berlin for five years before the war. It was a prosperous, bustling capital, vital and gay if in a somewhat garish way. With pride old Berliners would refer to the contrast between the rather shabby provincial city of the ‘eighties and the glittering Weltstadt of the Imperial era.
Today Berlin has receded a long step backward into the past. It is like a clockwork from which the mainspring has been removed. Hard times are in part responsible; in part the virtual disappearance of the Jews.
Without its broad stratum of middle-class Jewish people, Berlin is scarcely recognizable. Hustling, rather blatant, cheerful, moderately prosperous, they were once the backbone of the theatres, the cafes, and those enormous restaurants like Kempinski or the Rheingold, where the surroundings are luxurious, the food and wine good and cheap. Such places know them no more.
Not that they have gone away—only the wealthy can afford to do that. They have simply withdrawn themselves from circulation. Many of them, however, I am assured, are carrying on their avocations at home, in many cases retaining their Christian business connections.
Meanwhile, the Christian shareholders of erstwhile Jewish-owned newspapers, theatres and department stores, confronted by steadily dwindling dividends, are becoming increasingly restive. There are already indications that the first heat of the anti-Semitic campaign is abating, and if I know anything of human nature, it is only a matter of time before the measures excluding Germany’s Jewish citizens from great businesses they built up and directed will have to be relaxed.
With the economic and financial state of the country as bad as it can be, and with the Nazis getting the worst of it in the religious conflicts they have provoked, the first enthusiasm which greeted Adolf Hitler’s accession to power has undoubtedly flagged.
The small Berlin tradespeople, for instance, Socialists to a man, are not afraid to gamble openly at falling business and rising taxes. “Make a clean sweep of the Brown Shirts,” the more daring of them mutter, “and we shall be prosperous again, as we were in the Kaiser’s day.”
The truth, of course, is that there is a limit to the extent and duration of popular enthusiasm, and that the German people as a whole are beginning to crave quietude, a respite from the heroics and hysteria of the present order. It wants more bread and less circuses.
Hitler’s personal hold on the imagination of the masses, though weakened by recent events, is still his party’s strongest asset—save among their immediate followers, the prestige of the country at large of ### associates is negligible. It would spell disaster for the Nazis were the Fuehrer’s position to be further sapped by mistakes of his own or of his subordinates.
Yet, if his influence be waning, how shall he discover it? Under the old system of personal government the ex-Kaiser, so often the dupe of his ministers, was lamentably ill-informed as to the trend of public opinion; under a regime a hundred times more autocratic, how shall the Dictator fare better? There is General Goering’s secret police, of course, but secret police reports are notoriously untrustworthy, and even such a reliable barometer to the real temper of the people as the Imperial government possessed in a free press is lacking.
The collapse of the Nazi government at this juncture would have unpredictable consequences. There is one factor in the country which is strong enough to prevent or at least control it.
This is the Reichswehr, the regular army, Mr. Lloyd George’s ingenuous gift to a humiliated and revengeful nation of a long-service force is ideally suited to serve as cadres and training-ground for millions of young Germans.
At the present time, of its size, it is the best army in the world. One sees and hears very little of the Reichswehr in Germany today; but it is known to be in full process of reorganization, while in numbers of strength is already far above the figure of 100,000 men laid down in the Versailles Treaty. Until this reorganization is completed, violent cataclysms at home or abroad would be wholly against the policy of the astute and virtually anonymous officers in charge of the work.
At least insofar as the Reichswehr did not oppose the advent of the Nazis to power, it is responsible for putting Adolf Hitler where he is. The indications are that it will continue to support him—but only so long as he uses his influence for peace.
The World War was decreed by the German Great General Staff alarmed by the advance of democracy in Germany. It is a curious historical paradox that today the regular military authority in Germany should be the most decisive factor in favor of peace. But for how long?
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.
