GERMANY: Feast of Labor

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Eight months ago while the Hitlerites scrabbled for power, their chief news- paper, Der Angriff, published a juicy scoop: Lieut. Col. Theodore Düsterberg, Imperial General Staff veteran, drillmaster and second-in-command of the Stahlhelm, veterans' organization, had a Jewish grandfather (TIME, Sept. 19). It was expected that this news alone would be sufficient to force Col. Düsterberg's resignation. Not so; the Stahlhelm rallied round their leader with a proud announcement from their Berlin commander. Major Franz von Stephani: "The Stahlhelm does not judge men by their ancestors but by their deeds." The opinion of Major von Stephani was not the only thing to change in Germany in eight months. Last week Major von Stephani called at Stahlhelm headquarters and bluntly told Col. Düsterberg that he was fired—not only from his post as second-in-command, but from the Stahlhelm itself. It was a move of vast import. Think of the American Legion in politics openly instead of covertly; think of it still drilling as a secret reserve of the U. S. Army. Such a body is the Stahlhelm. Founded by Franz Seldte, a retired soda-water manufacturer, the Stahlhelm's policies have always been a much diluted version of Naziism. Among its leaders only Jew-tainted Col. Düsterberg has held out persistently for a separate organization. Day after Col. Düsterberg's dismissal. Founder Seldte stepped up to a German micro- phone and proudly & publicly announced his own admission to the Nazi ranks and committed his entire organization to the tender mercies of Adolf Hitler. There are at least 1,000,000 Stahlhelm members in Germany. The move gave Handsome Adolf command of more than 1,600,000 trained men, including his own Storm Troops in Germany and Austria. Only the lack of arms and equipment prevented it from being the biggest, most powerful army in the world. Discipline. Next Nazi move last week was announcement that an official secret police, paralleling Russia's G. P. U., would be set up in Prussia, under command of the ever useful Hermann Göring, and that, as before the War, German soldiers and Nazis would no longer be responsible to the civil courts for their misdeeds but would be tried by special military courts from which reporters would be barred. This seemed like reaction with a ven- geance. A few observers had another explanation: There is little more power for Adolf Hitler to seize. As it was in Italy and in Russia, the time has come for Dictator Hitler to purge the hotheads from his party and build a stable government. At the same time that the secret police was established, Nazi troopers were denied the right to make arrests on their own authority. Public trial of the outrages of Nazi hotheads might be a terrible black eye for the Government, hence the revival of the old military courts.

May Day. Next move was to steal a little Communist thunder and make the old Marxist fête day, May 1, surprisingly quiet the world over, a Nazi Day. First gesture of the loudly proclaimed ''Feast of National Labor" was to release thousands of the less important Socialist and Communist political prisoners from the heavily guarded Nazi detention camps throughout Germany.