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The Southern Israelite Page 7 Fighting Lioute mid Jerusalem An Analysis of the Broader Aspects of the Hitlerite Victory in Germany— By EMIL LUDWIG 7 ne new Reichstag in Germany opened to the ac companiment of violent anti-Jewish demonstrations, smash ing of "Jewish" windows and cries of “down with the Jews.” In the; way the Hitlerites celebrated their recent victory at the polls. Despite its outer anti-Semitic manifestations, it would he a mistake to regard the Hitlerites as a purely anti-Jewish party. Their political ascendancy in Germany has a signifi cance far beyond that of immediatee concern to the Jews, although Jews are almost always the inevitable sufferers. In the following article the noted German Jewish historian and biographer, Emil Ludwig, analyzes the broader aspects of the present political situation in Germany and speculates on the likely success of the Hitlerites to gain control of the govern ment.—The Editor. The bullet which killed Rathenau it years was historic. His death t severe blow to those enlightened I'cnple who. in Germany, as everywhere else. tin<l themselves in the minority laii'c they are in advance of the tasses in recognizing the necessities ’• the times. They had recognized that it was a moral obligation as well a practical necessity to carry out as tar as possible the peace treaty which bermany had signed. Shortly before is death Rathenau said to me: “We tmi't pay not because we were respon sible tor the war, but because we lost Stresemann for years had fought tthenan and his policy of fulfillment, hat what did he do when he became Kathenau s successor? He continued ithenau s policy. The responsibility 1 power forced him to reconsider and change his course, and steadily, year .'ear, he sloughed off his former until he brought Germany int •he League and, by his personal in got the Rhineland evacuate ' before the treaty date. H • much a European in out "ok that members of his own part; attacked him and hastened, i .7 (,| d not cause, his death. ••sent crisis in German politic nse comparable to this earlie I’olicio cense p Were ^ ec< .in l!; g Ol]r he bettr Went , : unde they h battle t •°r a ’ found come will b. change The he iou of the 1 once thoroughly unpopular r ’f Stresemann began to in- :r t of the nation. For things g badly, and, as usual, people that beer and tobacco were dearer because we were pay- debts, and therefore it would •tot to pay. The enfranchise- TO-year-olds that the newly "public conceded only because just limped home from the ' has now worked against it, ’e part of the extremists are tong youths, but when they power, sooner or later, there thing for them to do but ir policies as Stresemann did. gin of the Hitler party is to :j rst in the forced restriction tonal army; second, in imita tion of Mussolini; third, in a certain dusky mysticism which is linked with old German sagas. I do not desire to malign Wagner, but Nietzsce speaks of Wagnerians as we do of the Hitler followers in so far as they arc genuine idealists. The same General von Secck, who now is the protagonist of the new German Army, spoke jokingly several years ago of the “laughable imitation of the liberation of 1813,” to which young Germans who have learned no history, like to allude. In 1819 Prussia was one of a dozen States which had been conquered by a single power, and it was only natural that they should unite for revenge. But today Germany is one of the few’ defenseless countries in the world, and nothing would be less natural than to count upon forcible liberation. Two weeks ago 11,000,000 of the 36,000.0(H) German electors voted for the extreme Right and Left parties which are opposed to the present form of the State. But on the other hand 25,000,000 approved the republic though they would change certain clauses of the Constitution. The first total is important but not alarming. In the second group are many millions who, six years ago, opposed the republic and wanted to call back the Princes. Today no party feels disposed even to declare in its program for a return of the former rulers. Both groups of extremists long to resort to force—the Communists in order to bring a Russian revolution to Germany, the others in order to free the country from its debts and win back the lost provinces. The rumor that Hitler wants to join hands with the Russians can be believed only by people who do not know the character of the Germans. Outstanding among the characteris tics of the Germans is their love of order. They are the least revolution ary people in Europe, if not in the world. It was 400 years ago that they carried out their last revolution, and even then they modestly called it “Reformation.” What happened in November, 1918, was not that the People rose against the Princes; rather that the Princes ran away from the people. Since the Germans value order above all else, they have submitted for centuries to a kind of political guard ianship because the State protected their property and promised security and order for their children. Political ly, they themselves were treated as children, and so the best members of the middle class devoted themselves to scholarship and to the arts. I do not know whether the great intellectual conquests which the Ger mans—indeed, almost exclusively Ger mans of the bourgeoisie—have made, whether discovery and science, poetry and music, would have flourished so well if these same great minds had been able to embark upon responsible political careers. Of course, the taste for art and learning is native to the Germans, but the brilliant tradition they have developed would have been more difficult to attain if they had been a politically active people. T hey are the most musical people of the world, but they have paid a price for that distinction. The Germans’ love of order made possible the dictatorship of their princes and kings, under which the Emil Ludwig citizen was fairly content—like the housewife who does not worry about where the money for bills is coming from: she is not independent, but free from responsibility; yet if her husband dies or goes bankrupt, she falls into a faint. From just such a fit of uncon sciousness did the Germans awake on November 10, 1918, to find themselves obliged against their will to govern themselves. Thus did they reluctantly venture into democracy. The democratic idea is not yet strong enough to enable them to believe in men who come from the people. Had it not been for his gentle birth, even von Hindenburg would never have risen to his present authority. Ebert was never taken seriously, because he had been a saddler, and all the jokes made at the expense of the leaders of the last decade have played upon their undistinguished ancestry and re called that they were sons of artisans or farmers, if not themselves former gardeners, locksmiths, or clerks. Here is one reason why wc shall never have a prolonged bourgeois dic tatorship like that of Mussolini. A prince whose lineage extends back to God, since he derives from “the grace of God", bears that mystical quality which the Germans require in order to believe and obey. Credo quia absurdum. But a Hitler who formerly was a painter, or a Mussolini who was a mason, or a MacDonald of working- class origin, could not attain the chief authority in Germany through inher ent genius. But faced with the dilemma arising from the fact that the princes made themselves impossible and yet that no commoners can step into their shoes, nothing was left for the Ger mans but to swallow the bitter pill of democracy. Nothing would be more to be desired than that Hitler’s followers should be forced to govern. Then would Ger many and the rest of the world realize that though they could make rousing phrases about "chains of slavery” and "bondage to Jews”, they could not long hold the leadership at the tribune of the Reichstag or in a Ministerial Cabi net. One need only look at their faces, hear their voices, to see that the best of them are idealists without ideas. Denunciation of the Young plan, mili tary preparation and attack—it is like a rising of schoolboys against the teacher. It is regrettable that the Aus trian Hitler has been forbidden to be come a German, for now he cannot make himself ridiculous in the Reich stag, and he excites sympathy because at the crucial moment he must wait outside the circus, like Carmen in the fourth act. Since he preaches the renaissance of the German spirit and directs a pro gram against both Rome and Zion, apparently one-third of all of the Ger mans—that is, the Catholics—would have to be routed out, to say nothing of the Jews who have remained calm under such threats for eighty years. The German spirit is “purely Protest ant”, but all this is not based upon an ideology such as a clergyman or a phi losopher might have established. I hese are merely the phrases of ignorant men who know neither Schiller nor Hum boldt, neither Beethoven nor Goethe. But the program contains another point—they want to socialize the banks and the mines, though it was from “heavy industry” that they received the money which made their campaign possible. How soon will these 107 (Continued on page 18)