GERMANY: Traitor Hitler!

(2 of 2)

This view was doubly significant because Councilor Goerke was speaking not only of the insurrection in Berlin but also of a simultaneous Fascist setback in Thuringia. The reason why Leader Hitler was at Weimar last week, instead of at Munich, his usual headquarters, was a Socialist-Fascist tug of war in the Thuringian Diet.

The tug ended in a Socialist victory forcing out of office Dr. Wilhelm Frick, notorious for his outrageous Fascistizing of the Ministry of Interior of Thuringia. Not content with expelling Socialists from the police force and replacing them by Fascists, Dr. Frick flew to such extremes as his decree forcing Thuringian school children to pray every morning for abolition of the Young Plan and the Treaty of Versailles—two Fascist platform planks. That Dr. Frick was forced out last week marked a Hitler defeat, but a defeat which should remove from public notice a Fascist so rabid and reckless as to be the worst advertisement his party has had.

The "new game" of Adolf Hitler, as some German correspondents reported last week, is to tone down his Gang, moderate his policies and try to get one or more Fascists into the next German Cabinet. There is danger, indeed great likelihood, that many disgruntled Fascist gangsters—toughs who like direct action—will hire out to the Communist gangs. Such men see no sense in the only action Leader Hitler took last week against President Hindenburg's gag decree: he hired lawyers, had them get ready to bring suit on the ground that the gag is unconstitutional.