National Affairs: Promised Land

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Poppa Loeffler pined for the old country. For years his neighbors had heard him talk about going back. There were no jobs for his two strapping boys in Watertown, Wis., and Herr Hitler's own agent in Milwaukee had told him about the glorious opportunities in the new Nazi Fatherland. One fine day last spring, with 150 other Wisconsin families, the Loefflers picked up and went. The Fatherland paid all the passage money, every pfennig.

In the steel mill at Brandenburg, Poppa Loeffler made good money—52 Reichsmarks a week. The boys, blue-eyed Eric, 20, and Erwin, 19, made 31 Reichsmarks ($12.50) each.

But Eric and Erwin did not much like the Nazi doctrines preached at them by an uncle: they sounded somehow different from what they had heard in Wisconsin. Then one day the order came to report for the labor corps on October 1.

The Loeffler boys said nothing to anybody, but on August 28 they skipped out of Brandenburg, got aboard the President Harding at Hamburg. Three days later Germany went to war.

Last week Eric and Erwin were back in Watertown and glad to be there. Poppa Loeffler, a veteran of the last war and still young enough to be called again, was still in Germany. So was Momma Loeffler. So were the other 150 Wisconsin families.