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* The Reality of Hitlerism A System That Elevates Jew-Baiting To a Political Creed By Pierre Van Paassen * * 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® » THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE