Books: A Journalist in Naziland

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Not So Funny Nazis. Much of Editor Schoenberner's book reads like the life story of a character invented by Ludwig Bemelmans. But its humor and gaiety paradoxically give place to sadness when Schoenberner describes his career with Germany's most humorous weekly. Simplicissimus had once numbered Thomas Mann among its staff and George Grosz among its cartoonists; it had published the maiden work of Heinrich Mann and Poet Rainer Maria Rilke, as well as stories by De Maupassant, Chekhov, Strindberg and Hamsun. Under the Kaiser, its Cartoonist-Editor Heine had been imprisoned in a fortress for the sin of reflecting too faithfully "the physiognomy of the reigning class, [of] too ostentatious Government officials . . . officers . . . Junkers [and] the subservient spirit of the small bourgeoisie." In this tradition, Simplicissimus also faithfully recorded each new step in Adolf Hitler's rise to power—a rise which Simpl found too ludicrous to be believable.

But as the years passed and the menace of Hitler became unmistakable, Editor Schoenberner experienced the pain of watching most of Simpl's staff succumb slowly but surely to the enemy. Strange palsies seized the hands of cartoonists when they were asked to depict Hitler; a poet who had made Germany laugh with his verses "On Hitler's Mustache" took to wearing a brown shirt. When Hitler's minions broke into the offices to tear them apart, they found a magazine that was already dead by its own hand.