Hitler's Inning

Sessions of the German Reichstag have been few and far between since the Nazis came to power. In the last six years obedient Nazi deputies have been called together only ten times and on each occasion for only one purpose: to act as a sounding board while Fuehrer Adolf Hitler solemnly explains some high Nazi policy to his nation and the world.

Four times the Fuehrer has delivered before the Reichstag, generally on January 30, the anniversary of the Nazis' coming to power, a long, serious "state-of-the-nation" speech. Six extraordinary sessions have been called. On one of those occasions in July 1934, the Fuehrer assembled his legislative yes-men to hear him tell why he had found it necessary to kill off several hundred Nazi Party men the month before. Two years later he thought it mete to explain publicly why he had ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland.

Last week the Reichstag was again called to meet in extraordinary session in Berlin's Kroll Opera House,* but it was far from a solemn occasion. The deputies were scheduled to hear Herr Hitler's reply to President Roosevelt's recent proposal of ten years of peace (see p. 11), but even before the session began the word got around that the Fuehrer's answer would be cute. Herr Hitler himself set a tone of gaiety for the meeting when, two nights before, instead of dictating his speech to a dictaphone and two harried stenographers, he dressed up in a little-worn dinner jacket and went (along with five carloads of detectives) to the Metropole Theatre where he saw, for the second time, a 19-year-old U. S. girl named Miriam Verne dance in a musical comedy called Melody of the Night. After that, he went to Berlin's Artists' Club and saw a cinema Berlin 100 Years Ago. Next night he saw another cinema at the Chancellery.

Gags.

At the Reichstag next day it was 2 hrs., 17 min. mostly of fun with patches of wrath, scorn, warnings, threats, insults, sandwiched in between the gags. With a pantomime that he seldom uses, the Fuehrer, when he rose to speak, eyed his manuscript suspiciously and comically before he began to read. The deputies roared at that ; Dr. Goebbels' Berlin newspaper Der Angriff next day explained: "It was a small gesture, but one heavily packed with meaning."

"The President of the United States has addressed a telegram to me, the curious contents of which you are already familiar with," began Dictator Hitler amid much tittering. The Fuehrer then chopped up Mr. Roosevelt's telegram into 21 parts, prefacing his replies (see p. 11) to each of the parts with the word Antwort ("answer"). Each time he changed his inflection of Antwort; each time he got guffaws from the gallery and deputies. Big moment in hilarity came when the Fuehrer got to Question No. 18 and read down the list of the 31 nations to which President Roosevelt had asked Herr Hitler to give assurances of nonaggression. The mention of Palestine wowed the Jew-baiting Nazis; they laughed so hard that Herr Hitler had to stop for a moment.

"The fact has obviously escaped Mr. Roosevelt's notice that Palestine at present is occupied not by German troops but by the English," said the Fuehrer in his best ironic tone.

Threats.

Non-Germans did not think Herr Hitler's speech very funny, however. In it they discovered that Herr Hitler was not just repeating the by now tiresome tirade against the Treaty of Versailles and explaining anew his championing of "self-determination," but obliquely announcing new principles of German foreign policy and international conduct.

The Fuehrer announced formally that he considered at an end two treaties: 1) the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935, whereby Germany agreed to limit her navy to 35% of Britain's; 2) the ten-year German-Polish non-aggression treaty signed in 1934. The Fuehrer's reason: Great Britain was "encircling" Germany with alliances (including one with Poland).

No one in the British Admiralty is likely to grow grey-haired over the immediate possibility of Adolf Hitler's small Navy overtaking the over-sized British Navy. The denunciation of the Polish Treaty, however, was far more serious. Herr Hitler disclosed that he had "proposed" to Poland that the Free City of Danzig, now under the League of Nations and the Polish customs union, be returned as a free state to the Reich and that Poland cede Germany a road and a railway right-of-way through the Polish Corridor. In return, Germany promised to recognize Polish economic rights in Danzig, assure Poland a free harbor in Danzig, conclude a new non-aggression treaty to last 25 years--which, Herr Hitler assured his deputies, would "extend far beyond the duration of my own life." Poland's answer was to reject the proposals, mobilize her Army, renew her old alliance with France, make a new one with Britain. By likening Poland to the Czecho-Slovakia of a year ago (a hotbed of anti-German oppressions, he said) Herr Hitler gave clear warning that he may try to deal with the recalcitrant Poles as he dealt with the Czechs.

History.

Smart Speaker Hitler twisted history to suit his argument:

> "The present Greater German Reich contains no territory which was not, from the earliest times, a part of this Reich, which was not bound up with it or subject to its sovereignty."

> "I have given binding declarations to a large number of States. None of these States can complain that even a trace of a demand contrary thereto has ever been made to them by Germany."

>"My own attitude toward the Czech people was never anything else than that of guardian of the unilateral national and Reich interest, combined with respect for the Czech people."

God & Hitler. The messianic dictator laid a strong claim to divine chaperonage:

> "Providence caused me to find the way to free our people from its deepest misery without any shedding of blood, and to lead it upward once more."

> "I should have sinned against my call by Providence had I failed in my endeavor to lead my native country and my German people of the Ostmark (Austria) back to the Reich."

Reactions. The Nazi press naturally declared that Herr Hitler's speech was a master work. Exulted the Fuhrer's own Volkischer Beobachter: "The entire world was earwitness to the crushing rebuff of Roosevelt. . . . After this political execution of Roosevelt by the Fuehrer, one is inclined to ask, 'Who would dare speak today about Roosevelt's message?' One thing is clear: Roosevelt's role as Europe's guardian angel is over."

To Virginio Gayda, journalistic mouthpiece of Dictator Benito Mussolini, Herr Hitler's words were the answer not only to the President but to the "French-British policy of encirclement." Worldwide opinion, however, remained about the same as it was before either message or speech: that Adolf Hitler would not be curbed by words. But if he was strictly truthful for once in a public utterance, the world had been given a pretty good idea of where the next trouble spot was situated (see p. 18).

* Used as the Reichstag meeting place since 1933 when the Reichstag Building was burned (Nazis said by Communist incendiaries, others said by Nazi incendiaries). The Opera House is about to be razed to make way for an "Avenue of Splendor"; the Reichstag Building is now almost rebuilt.

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