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The Reality of Hitlerism
A System That Elevates Jew-Baiting
To a Political Creed
By Pierre Van Paassen
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T HE process which the inflation period in
Germany initiated and which the subsequent
deflation only served to accelerate has been
brought to conclusion by Adolf Hitler in one
breath-taking, ruthless blow; today the pauperiza
tion of German Jewry is an accomplished fact.
Realizing long before he reached power that he
could not possibly keep his promise of prosperity
and well-being to the seventeen million desperate
middle-class voters who were eventually to con
solidate his might on March 5th, and he knew
that a sign was expected from him, Herr Hitler
threw his followers the sop of the deliberate ruin
ation of the Jewish middle classes, their competi
tors.
This, in simple economic terms, is the meaning
of what has recently taken place in Germany. It
was a purely economic motive that impelled Hitler
to launch his campaign against the Jews. All his
bombastic wordiness about racial purity and Jewish
malice was a mere mask, a mere pretext, as the
religious issue w’as a mere pretext once to Ferdi
nand and Isabella of Spain when they expelled the
Jews from their domains. What those sovereigns
did was to eliminate the established competitors of
the rising, native Spanish bourgeoisie. What Hitler
did was to ruin the Jewish middle-class community
in order to afford, if possible, a breathing space to
these hard-pressed “Aryan” middle classes in the
Reich who expected and w r ho still expect and who
will go on expecting the miracle of economic sal
vation from the hands of their “god-given Fueh
rer.” Hut whereas Spain expelled the Jews, Hitler
will not even allow them to depart. And so we
find that with the enforcement and the constant
accentuation of anti-Jewish measures, superimposed
on the generally disastrous economic situation in
Germany, the now totally ruined Jews are de
prived even of the hope to rehabilitate themselves.
Hitler is following that fatal road which has
no turning. He is the prisoner of forces and of a
situation in which no man has anything to decree.
Hitler may supply the torchlight parades and the
Horst Wessell hymns, the ballyhoo of a flaming
Reichstag and other fancy fireworks; economic
factors and their evolution are going to decide
the fate of Germany and of German Jewry. To
those in America who are hoping against hope
that Hitler may relent one of these days and that
there will be an abatement in the wave of Jewish
persecution, we must say that the tendency for the
moment is still in an opposite direction. At all
costs Hitler will, because he must, prevent the
Jews from extricating themselves from the eco
nomic plight in which he had plunged them. This
means that the Jewish middle classes, having been
rendered destitute and being prevented from re
constituting themselves economically, inevitably to
join the ranks of the proletariat. 'This also means
that in the end, with the non-Jewish elements of
the ruined middle classes, they will become a revo
lutionary factor. This is not so because I say so,
or because 1 would like it so—this is the inexorable
march of history. It is merely a question of the
time required for all those ruined people, Jew’s
and non-Jew's alike, to become conscious of their
true social position. When that consciousness
finally develops Hitlerism will topple over and
[8]
Pierre Part Paassen, one of America's best-known for
eign correspondents writing exclusively for The South
ern Israelite, the Seven Arts Feature Syndicate, has
just concluded a visit to Germany, during which he
barely escaped from the clutches of Hitter's Storm
Troops in Munich.—THE EDITOR.
follow Russian Czarism into the abyss of history.
When, in the course of a lecture tour in America
last year, I predicted the disaster which has now
crashed over German Jewry as an unavoidable
consequence and accompaniment of the critical evo
lution of the German political situation, my prog
nosis was ridiculed as “far too gloomy.” It w’as
deemed “rather fantastic” and “unduly pessimistic”
by, among others, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, in the
presence of the entire student body of the Insti
tute of Religion in New* York. 'Today 1 can only
wish that my diagnosis of the German situation
PIERRE VAN PAASSEN
"Jews and non-Jews alike, to become conscious of
their true social position . . . then Hitlerism
will topple over.”
might have only been a tenth part as “fantastic”
as it actually is. I truly wish 1 might stand dis
credited as a false prophet. For if that w*ere so,
only I would be humiliated, but then the Jew’s
of Germany w r ould have been spared the unimag
inably cruel predicament in which l have just seen
them from the Rhine to the Oder, and from the
Baltic shores to the frontiers of Switzerland.
When, through a fortuitous error on their part,
I escaped from the clutches of Herr Hitler’s
“Schutz Staffeln” in Munich, who had arrested
me and treated me to the usual punishment for
aiding several Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals
to escape from the Reich, the first thing I saw in
the newspapers of Zurich upon my arrival in that
city was a report of the first huge meeting of pro
test held in the Madison Square Garden in New
York. How’ noble, how* impressive, how* lofty and
inspiring must have sounded all those grandiose ap
peals to the good will of Hitler and Hindenburg,
to the outraged sense of justice of mankind, to the
brotherhood of man and to the sanctity of minority
rights. But how* utterly meaningless and hollow
all that palaver became when those prominent fol
lowed each other w ith touching singleness >t mm* ‘
and purpose in declaring that they were not p: J
testing against the form of government w hich the I
German people had elected to adopt, bur sold, I
against the persecution of Jews. As if (Jenim
Fascism could indeed suddenly detach itself tr«»i
anti-Semitism! As if the German people had ir
deed freely elected Hitler! As if his accession to
power was not the direct outcome of Hindenburg,
betrayal, and as if the consolidation of that power
on March 5th was not the outcome of a colo-v
falsification in the results of the election, which
moreover was held under the nozzles of machine
guns, under the intimidation of the Nazis, ‘‘langr
Messer” and in the faked atmosphere of a comm;
Communist coup.
Just a protest against anti-Jewish excess, and
no more?
How utterly out of place were those old >hib!
boleths of liberalism in Madison Square (iardre
at a moment w r hen it had just become evident that
the ruling class of a great country was forced to
discard the last semblance of bourgeois legalin
and was compelled, in order to save itself, to re
sort to a ruthless dictatorship. 'Those speakers in
Madison Square Garden showed so little under
standing of the true significance of events in the
Reich that they framed their appeals in the name
of sentiments and creeds which were at that very
moment being swept into the ash-can in Germany.
In other words, they w*ere talking into the air.
It should not be imagined that Papen, Hinden-
burg and Hugenberg, the real dei ex machina be
hind the Nazi “revolution,” gave carte blanche t<
Hitler and his murderous bands of Nazis just tor
the sake of Herr Adolf’s beautiful eyes, as the
French w'ould say. 'They allowed Hitler to de
stroy democratic institutions because they were
themselves in danger of being swept away by the
progressive radicalization of those democratic insti
tutions. Democratic institutions were tolerated anc
utilized by the ruling class of Germany just »
long as they helped to give the illusion to the
masses that they participated, that they had at least
some share in the running of the State. \N h*
the masses came to take democratic institution*
seriously and were on the point of using them
against the ruling class, the Papens, Hugenberp
and Hindenburgs w’ere compelled to unmask. 1 he
simply discarded democracy and therewith cor
firmed once again the fact that democratic legality
is a myth in a society of classes.
It is quite natural that not a word was spokf®
in Madison Square Garden on the real implication*
of the events in Germany.
After all, some of those prominent speakers i®
New York are socially and spiritually in the saint
boat W’ith Papen and his ilk. They would net
lift a finger if democracy went under the bin >■
America, if workers’ organizations w’ere to be dis
banded and their leaders bounded and tortured *
now happens in Germany. If Hitler stops hi- a nn '
Jewish boycott tomorrow, as well be migl t ^
cause it has virtually accomplished its purpos<. y°'
terday’s wordy defenders of German Jewry,
perennial champions of democracy, will sit do"" 11
as one man and join the claque of admirers * f
strong man Hitler at (Please turn to pag^ 1®
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