Commissars Ousted

Sure that it knew best how to manage German business, one of the first steps of the Hitler Government was to poke into hundreds of the Fatherland's leading industries a Nazi busybody called a "commissar."

The cocksure commissars dismissed Jews, created jobs for Nazis, tinkered production while cowed factory managers swore, wept and tore their hair. Results have met their worst fears. German business has slumped, not soared (TIME. July 10). Last week even Adolf Hitler could see that Nazi commissars had become too much of a luxury. They were all dismissed and German businessmen were heartened by a statement from Herr Gottfried Feder, famed "Ideologist" of the Nazi Party, who was appointed fortnight ago to a dominant post in the Ministry of Economics. Cried Herr Feder:

"The first thing German business needs is peace and quiet. It must have a feeling of absolute legal security. It must know that work and its returns are guaranteed. The interferences in business which occurred at first, perhaps as a result of too much zeal, have become intolerable and have now been abolished!"

Three days later Chancellor Hitler, who frankly admits to borrowing many of his notions from Ideologist Feder, orated passionately against Nazi interference in business to a slightly bewildered meeting of the Statthalters ("viceroys") he has appointed to rule the various states of the Reich.

"We must not depose a business man if he is efficient just because he is not yet a Nazi," shouted the Chancellor, "especially if the Nazi to be put in his place knows nothing about business."

Warming to this good idea, the Chancellor thundered: "We have absolute power! . . . Our program was not formed to make pretty gestures but to give life to the German people. It does not oblige us to upset everything like fools! It requires us to be clever and cautious. . . ."

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