Newspaper Page Text
Will Civilization
Be Restored ?
By Heinrich Mann
Goering Trembles, Perspires
C ^OERING trembles anil perspires"—this
» line stood in a French Catholic paper, in
" one of the most extraordinary interviews
j, ,er« irried by any journal. Goering, a National-
'.niali't. Minister of the Interior, also head of
l *he Prussian Cabinet, and in addition President
,1 the Reichstag—this great chief had once more
Lpokm for the foreign press; that, indeed, consti-
Ljtes these gentlemen’s chief occupation. This
•mie he took some of the journalists into his pri-
U itr apartment, to give them special treatment.
<)t course all the participants were Nordics, gcn-
. nr Scandinavians. No one seems to know how
’he Frenchman got there. Perhaps he donned a
ng blond beard and played the Viking bold.
First of all Goering assured his listeners that
his health was unimpeachable. Evidently he con
sidered this the most important point, and devoted
• r major part of the interview to it. It was true
that the Swedish press had reported that some
\rars ago Goering had suffered a sudden attack
,t insanity on the streets of Stockholm. It had
rn necessary to take him to a hospital, where his
. ’ions were such that he had to be removed to
,n insane asylum. No doubt his condition was
due to the fact that he had been deprived of mor
phine. If one is accustomed to using it one must
have it. And National-Socialist ministers surely
Live a right to be morphine addicts. They have
taken over so many other rights that the self-ad-
ininistration of morphine becomes a minor matter,
fo kill and expropriate Jews, to confine Socialists
in concentration camps and to kill them while "in
flight”; to subject world-famous intellectuals to
the torment of prison if they failed to leave the
mtn in time; to reduce part of the nation to a
rate of terror while another part is unleashed
like a pack of wild beasts—to accomplish all this
properly one does need morphine.
According to Goering the Social Democratic
pros of Sweden libeled him after the Stockholm
police had been so inexcusably tactless as to make
public the records dealing with him. True, the
reproduction of official records in a newspaper
unnot constitute libel. Hut Goering failed to
-ear the objections and questions of the Nordic
uurnalists; carried away by his subject, he talked
on and on. His bulky body trembled, the per
oration flowed from his massive forehead; in-
'■"ad of talking he yelled, until he choked and
' •uld yell no more. Surely perfectly healthy peo-
P‘ f "irh no Swedish experience look like that
ner y day in the week.
I he French Catholic newspaperman mentions
symptoms only incidentally and, no doubt,
"athout malice aforethought; but that makes them
• the more significant. This adherent of law
^'l order who w’rites for a pious journal may,
n the contrary, be rather sympathetically inclined
'•war-i the cause represented by that many-titled
gnit iry t if not toward his person. When Goer-
’d finally exhausted the theme of "I and
* N w , edf*n” he declared his intention of eradicating
unism: a sentiment that finds favor W’ith
man . v w ho would have nothing to do w’ith a Goer-
:n tf o’ or wise.
igners traveling in Germany sometimes
home: "The new' government must be cred-
. hh restoring order and purging the country
k nrnunists.” They have been told this, and
n Cl ^deration of it tend to forgive and forget
This article was written by Heinrich Mann,
outstanding German man of letters, exclu
sively for The Southern Israelite. Herr
.Mann, a non-Jew and a brother of the Nobel
Trite winner Thomas Mann, is himself one
of Europe’s most distinguished novelists and
essayists. He is now living in France, hav
ing been exiled from Germany by the Hitler
gm>ernment.
and Talks
*
viction of its mission, and hence was neither pre
pared nor powerful.
W hat had the party achieved? A hundred dep
uties; and the large following this implies derived
from the same sources as that of the Nazis—the
wretchedness and spiritual con-
(Reproduced by kind permission of (be Proprietor• of •'Punch" of tendon, England.) fusion of the ma.SSCS. We know
that the same clan of people
went now wfith the one, now
with the other of the two ex
treme parties. They were the
unemployed, the despondent, ig
norant young people who had
no aim—atl impelled solely by
hatred of the existing order and
by the desire for a catastrophe
which would at last permit
them to relieve their feelings.
In the end the Nazis gained
most of them. Why? Because
there was money in the Nazi
camp. Because arms were there.
Because Nazis ran about in uni
forms and openly threatened the
state. The Republic allowed
this. The police, the political
parties were full of weaklings
and traitors, so that for years
there was no hindrance to the
organization of an armed host
of enemies of the state, to the
spreading of insecurity, to the
instigation and commission of
murder. It was permitted to
threaten the Republic and all
Republicans with a dire fate.
But only to the Nazis, never to
the Communists, was all this
permitted.
The "Red Front” was dis
solved not by Goering but by
the Republic. The Nazi storm
troops never were dissolved. A
brief and feeble attempt w'as
made to prohibit the wearing
of their uniforms, but the pror
scription w'as recalled almost
immediately. Did the Com
munists offer any resistance when they were de
prived of their military organization? No; they
submitted. When their arms were confiscated the
most they did was to hide away a few’ guns. From
time to time the Republican police would uncover
a hidden store of weapons; almost invariably, this
w’ould be a Communist cache, practically never a
National-Socialist one. The Nazis received pro
tection to a degree that filled even adherents of
the Republic with contempt for a state thus sur
rendering. Nazis were permitted the wildest rav
ings in their press; they were allowed to mention
any one of us by name in their lists and to recom
mend us-for murder. But if a Communist news
paper spoke even slightly out of turn the very
linotypers and the women who sold the papers
were jailed by the courts. (Please turn to page 14)
PRECEPT AND PRACTICE
Hkkk Hitlbk. "THE WORLD PERSECUTES U8. WE WANT PEACE. . . .
YOU WILL NEVER ERADICATE THE DEMAND FOR EQUAL RIGHTS IN OUR
PEOPLE. . . . WE WANT TO STRIVE TO WORK. TO LIVE IN BROTHERHOOD"
(Extract from the German Chancellor'» May-day tpeech)
everything else. For the Western world docs not
like Communists.
Against this let me state vigorously and clearly
that the German Republic never needed to be
saved from Communism. It did need to be saved
from National-Socialism; but that, unfortunately,
was neglected.
To begin with, the German Communists were
not true Communists. Fundamentally that doc
trine is as alien to the Germans as to all Western
peoples. Communism would never have triumphed,
not even temporarily and under catastrophic con
ditions, as National-Socialism succeeded in doing.
The German Communist party never wholly
adapted itself to its role, never acted independent
ly; it only obeyed the orders of Moscow—and
that it did badly. For it had no deep inner con-
r HE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
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