"K

All over the Fatherland solemn little groups of school children paced the streets importantly one day last week, chanting at grown ups "Ja, ja ja! Vote Ja! Ja, ja, ja! Vote Ja!"

Blind men ran their fingers over a Nazi hump-&-bump manifesto in Braille which keynoted "Vote Ja!"

Gaudy prostitutes from Berlin's West End hotels and night clubs, who are rarely seen on the streets by daylight, piled out of bed and trudged sleepily to the polls, minced home again wearing little buttons with the legend "Ja."

Nazi war veterans in wheel chairs displayed the challenging placard: "German, hast thou voted Ja? If not, our sacrifice was in vain!"

In remote seaports Germans piled aboard steamers to register with the captains their "Ja."

In Berlin nearly every kiosk blossomed with a poster of Der Marschall und der Gefreite. Onetime Gefreite (lance-corporal) Adolf Hitler was shown in Nazi uniform, Feldmarschall von Hindenburg in the sack suit of a President. Together they appealed to all Germany in giant capitals to KAMPFEN MIT UNS FUR FRIEDEN UND GLEICHBERECHTIGUNG! ("Battle with us for peace and equality!"). The great plebiscite decreed by Chancellor Hitler to vindicate his withdrawal of Germany from the Disarmament Conference and resignation from the League of Nations (TIME, Oct. 23 et seq.) was on. Adolf Hitler, born an Austrian, was about to make good his audacious boast when summoned before the German Supreme Court three years ago (TIME, Oct. 6, 1930). Asked by the Court, "Are you plotting a revolution?", he snarled, "Nein!" we are merely planning an intellectual eruption of the German people by peaceful means. . . . Within three years 35,000,000 of the 40,000,000 German voters will support us. . . . Heads will roll in the sand!"

Last spring in the last election more than 20,000,000 Germans voted against Hitlerism, though Adolf Hitler was then Chancellor and had put on a terrific campaign (TIME, March 13). To make sure of a real "intellectual eruption" last week --an utter blasting of Nazidom's foes--the Chancellor and his chief henchmen have been shouting themselves hoarse for weeks, roaring up and down Germany in Herr Hitler's big private plane, often piloted by the bullnecked, hot-eyed No. 2 Nazi, General Hermann Wilhelm Goring, Premier of Prussia and a War ace (see cut). To ensure victory other steps were also taken--or at least a great many Germans seemed to think so.*

Nazi wrath knew no bounds when His Eminence Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, exhorted German Catholics last week to vote "according to your conscience." Nazis stormed that the Cardinal should have said "Vote Ja!" In a speech of passionate denunciation General Goring spoke of "black moles" (priests) as little better than "Red rats" (Socialists)--despite the fact that Chancellor Hitler is nominally a Catholic.

The Chancellor's last speech of the campaign was shouted from atop a dynamo in Berlin's vast Siemens & Halske electric works. To hear him by radio all German factory workers stopped work for one hour. This time-out the workers had to make up later by working an hour overtime without extra pay. "German workmen!" shouted Orator Hitler. "International conflicts are fomented by a small group of international gypsies!"

Getting the idea, Siemens & Halske workmen guffawed and shouted, "Jews! Jews!"

"Either we shall have equal rights," continued the Chancellor, "or the world will never see us again at a conference! . . . We will never go [back to the Disarmament Conference] as bootblacks or inferiors!"

As his final trump Chancellor Hitler played a gruff, five minute radio speech to the Fatherland by President von Hindenburg. "It is a lie, it is a vilification," rumbled der Feldmarschall, "if the outside world imputes warlike intentions to us [but] true peace can be achieved only on the basis of equality. Let your votes be a profession with me and with the Chancellor for the principle of equality and for peace with honor!"

After that it was all over but the voting and the buttons. After voting every German had an opportunity to buy for five pfennigs (2-c-) a button stamped "Ja, 1933!" Few failed to buy. Scowling Nazi strong-arm men warned, "to vote Nein and wear a Ja button is to wear a lie!"

Returns came in very slowly, due to the fact that every polling place was staffed by inexperienced new clerks, Nazi clerks. Their figures showed that 40,601,577 Germans voted Ja, 2,100,765 voted Nein.

Also voted on was the question of electing a new Reichstag all members of which had been picked by Chancellor Hitler and lumped together on the ballot under a single circle in which the voter could write "Ja." If he wrote anything else or nothing his paper was thrown out as "spoiled." Official score for the new Reichstag: 39,626,647 Jas and 3,348,362 spoiled ballots.

Grimly French statesmen waited to see what, if anything, Chancellor Hitler would write on the blank check thus signed over to him last week by German voters. In his "Heads will roll in the sand" declaration he promised that when he came to power his government would "seek to abrogate or revise the Treaty [of Versailles] by diplomatic negotiations. I solemnly assert that if these fail we shall proceed to ignore or circumvent the Treaty, with legal means if possible; failing that with illegal means. The world may call that 'illegal' but I am answerable solely to the German people for my actions!"

A post-election sensation was the taking into "protective custody" (often the prelude to a Nazi prison camp) of H. R. H. Duke Albrecht, head of the former Royal House of Wurtemberg, because he refused to vote. Jailors of prison camps proudly reported that the Communists, Socialists, Jews and other anti-Hitlerites in their custody had voted "Ja" in nearly all cases. Thus at the dread prison camp in Brandenburg only 1.2% of the prisoners plucked up courage to vote "Nein."

*Emerging from Germany just before the vote, Correspondent Leland Stowe of Manhattan's Herald Tribune cabled from Paris: "Repeatedly, in recent weeks, German citizens asked this correspondent to discover what the 'trick' in the elections was and how the Nazis would tabulate the names of all who voted 'No.' Scores of similar requests were made to all foreign correspondents.

"German ballot boxes are so shaped that each ballot falls flatly into place. Therefore, the Nazi checkers who will dominate all the voting bureaus and who will require each voter to give his name and address before he is allowed to cast a ballot, need merely number each name on the voting list as the ballots are cast. The ballots, it is said, can be extracted and opened in the same order and the names of those who voted 'No' checked on a list."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.