I

THE STRANGE CASE

OF

HERR HITLER

This copy of "THE STRANGE CASE OF HERR HITLER" is sent you with the compliments of THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWS & CHRISTIANS. The Conference suggests that our members distribute extra copies among clergymen, Sunday School teachers, libraries and public school leaders in each city. Orders will be received (25 cents per copy) at this office.

The National Conference of Jews and Christians 289 FOURTH AVENUE NEW. YORK CITY

(over) EVERETT R. CLINCHY

THE STRANGE CASE OF HERR HITLER

THE JOHN DAY COMPANY New York COPYRIGHT, 1933, I1Y EVERETT R. CLINCHY

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

FOR THE JOHN DAY COMPANY, INC.,

BY THE STRATFORD PRESS, INC. NE night nine years ago in a Munich beer garden a companion nudged a young man named Hanfstaengl and pointed to a table across the res­ taurant. "See that man over there with a narrow, black moustache? He is the man of the future in Germany. If you want to go a long way forward hitch your wagon to him." The "man of the future" was Adolph Hitler. Herr Hanfstaengl, a German who rowed on the '09 Harvard 'Varsity crew, figuratively climbed into Hitler's boat and grasped the stroke oar that night 'in Munich. The American college graduate became Public Relations Counsel for the future chancellor of Germany. Hanfstaengl, who once wrote music for Hasty Pudding shows in Boston, now composes marches for Nazi brass bands. Through college friendship with Theodore Roosevelt's sons Hanf­ staengl became a devoted admirer of the Rough Rider, and the German youth who studied that American's ways with the "big stick" sees the qualities of Theo­ dore Roosevelt magnified in Hitler. Striking as Colonel Roosevelt was in an American era of Bull Moose nationalism, the personality of Lance Corporal Hitler has proved infinitely more stirring in Germany. Hitler's organizing abilities galvanized a party from a Hofbrauhaus discussion group in 1919 to a move- 5 ment of 17,000,000 voters in 1933. His oratory ex­ cited the emotions of the masses and his propaganda hypnotized their wills. His ability as a money-raiser has financed what have probably been the most costly political campaigns in Germany. Humanly compan­ ionable in one delightful evening's conversation on art, politics and history, Hitler may the next night, for political reasons, vilely abuse fellow creatures in an adolescent exhibition on the basest level of "man's inhumanity to man." This essay attempts to examine some aspects of the Austrian who moved into a Munich circle of beer-cellar politicians and became German Chancellor by the greatest parliamentary victory in Reich history-the strange case of Herr Hitler.

II

For one thing Hitlerism is not explained in Hitler. The man is riding skilfully like an Hawaiian surf­ board expert on the crest of a wave of nationalism. The Wave supplies the power. Germany, defeated in the war, humiliated by the Versailles treaty and dis­ heartened by economic suffering, is asserting a will­ to-live. The N a ~i movement has its roots in Versailles. Germans repudiate the war guilt libel fastened on their nation by Versailles; they rebel against the charge that Germany is not fit to govern colonies. The Polish Corridor and the internationalization of German rivers chafe the people. The postwar occu- 6 pation of German territory and the draining repara­ tion payments may be expiring fires now but they still smoulder in German minds. Clearly, the Ver­ sailles Treaty is a chief source of Hitler's political strength, and as time passes the conditions of the treaty have increasing, not abating, influence on the nationalistic psychology. Moreover, disarmed Ger­ many is exasperated by the apparent hypocrisy of other nations with regard to limiting armaments: Germany, restricted to 100,000 men, a police force in effect, has watched bitterly the armament ex­ penditures among its neighbors rising steadily since the war' from a total figure of $3,000,000,000 to over $4,000,000,000. From the German point of view Versailles constitutes an attack upon German life. Thoughtful statesmen, as well as social scientists, know that the reaction to a threat to trample on a culture is as inexorable as the law of gravity in physics. A threatened culture will inevitably rise and assert itself. Germany is illustrating this principle of group behavior. She is resisting death. Nor is an up-thrust of Germanism altogether re­ grettable. The heart of the Nazi movement is that kind of a will-to-live which a physician arouses in a sick patient or a psychiatrist encourages in a dis­ couraged soul. Psychologically and emotionally the German' people are due for a surge of courageous nationalism. "Deutschland, erwache!" cries Adolf Hitler. "Ger­ many, awake!" He is rallying the spirit of the people. Taken by 7 and large there is a considerable measure of splendid idealism and fine German loyalty in many of the Nazi followers. Dr. Arnold W olfers, of the Berlin School of Politics, attributes the basic pull of Hitlerism to the fact that millions of people, frightened by na­ tional disintegration on the one hand, or the possible alternative of Communism on the other, are scram­ bling to their feet at the count of nine for an heroic effort against collapse. Thus Hitler, the Nazi fascist, is the leader of a popular movement because he has .the technique to put into words the nation's current self-expression. Hitler dramatizes patriotism. He has the imagina­ tion necessary to supply the symbolism for each Ger­ man's devotion to his country, even as Cyrano de Bergerac gave to Christian words to tell Roxanne of his love. Germany's pride was shattered, and Hitler's uniformed Storm Troops provide the instrument for the psychological reaction of the nationalists to reassert themselves. ,Germany's good faith in trying its best to keep a gentleman's agreement, first with extravagant .Versailles reparation bills, then the Dawesand Young Plans, brought no voluntary, fine and generous response from the Allies, and so Ger­ many has gone nationalistic. As one Nazi put it: . '''W e have been too good. Now we don't give a damn for the· rest of the world. We mu~t think only of Germany."

s III When proselytes are converted to a new culture they sometimes overstress their new affection. For fourteen years after the war Hitler was refused citi­ zenship in Germany. Now this Austrian-born is com­ pensating for his own non-German up-bringing by extravagant protestations of racial identity. Indeed, this Nazi absorption in clan consciousness enters the borderland of the pathological. The racial emphasis in this nationalistic move­ ment is a reversion to blood ties. It expresses itself in anti-intellectualism. It is an emotional, sentimental, romantic experience. Differences in tribalisms are magnified and have now become important. In some degree it is an escape to old safeties. The new nation­ alism thus expresses itself, first of all, as a desire to restore the good old days. Fatigued by indecision and conflicts in their marriage to democracy, many Ger­ mans, like some recent brides, are homesick for the old relationships. In this case it is Potsdam and all that Potsdam means. They are feeling vaguely for an aristocracy of standards and values which, thus far, under the constitution of Weimar they have missed. Among university students this German idealism reaches its peak. They talk of awaking the Deutsches Yolk with a mystical ideal. With an intensely burning devotion the youth seek to restore the Germany of their fathers. Hitler, a master as ~ political agitator, is opening a channel for this emotion. He calls them "9'- to a fraternity purely Germanic. Hitler organizes them into crusading bands with sentiment pitched high. According to Dr. Adolf Deissmann, Vice-Chan­ cellor of the University of Berlin, Hitler's message comes to the mass of academic unemployed like an apocalyptic vision. Hitler is their "hope." Hitler promises an immediate kingdom of heaven on earth. Adolph Hitler has successfully convinced a large fraction of these students that his movement is their sole asylum from too cruel realities. This youth section in Hitler's party, university students now, are the youngsters who as babies suf­ fered from malnutrition during the war. Perhaps the simple fact that they never had enough milk, added to the nerve tension which conditioned them emotionally during the postwar inflation period so frightful for German family life, accounts, to some extent, for their abnormal tension and fret and worry. The un­ employment outlook, alone, is serious enough to keep them earnest in their high-strung, self-conscious, po­ litical fervor. But the point is that they have become supersensitive about their own security. In this period of tribal phobia (it should be re­ garded as a temporary mood) the Deutsches Volk becomes a mystical ideal. Hitler is a leader in an aura of mysticism. Therefore, he need not be logical, nor even rational. Those who are rational irritate: this explains, in part, the excoriation of Jews, Christian pacifists, Catholic moderates and Marxists. Hitler demands submissive self-sacrifice to the leader. He summons the individual to lay down his life uncriti- 10 cally, and consecrate his heart to this mystical ideal. Here Hitler appeals effectively to the heroic in youth. The vice of super-consciousness about blood ties is chauvinism. There is a scale of possible positions with regard to group loyalty ranging from enerva­ tion and disintegration at one extreme, to the oppo­ site pole of arrogant chauvinism. Both extremes are bad. Somewhere between is the golden mean for group solidarity. Take, for example, the commendable principle of the integrity of German culture. Hitler is perfectly sound in his insistence that Germany is for the Ger­ mans. That is a reasonable emphasis on the ensemble of German culture with all its values, aspirations, folkways, arts and civilized tools. Hitler rightly re­ fuses to see this culture enervate of itself, or be washed out by non-Germans. Many Nazis, however, go to the other extreme and fanatically talk about "pure racial stock" somewhat as the Ku-Klux Klan in the United States argued excitedly for the Nordic myth. In this mood of irrational racial arrogance these less-poised Nazis plead that Germany be kept for "pure" Germans. Purity of German stock is sheer nonsense. Eastern Germany is said to be 60 % Slavic population, now Germanized. Southern Germany is 40% Celtic. Actually, the Nazi drive is in the perilous region of racial megalomania. Surely Nazis must very well know that there are no pure national stocks in the Western World. France, for example, has been estimated as 10% Latin, 30% German, .5% Jewish, and 60% Celtic. The Austrians, who are emotionally 11 100% German, are a hybrid of Germans, Magyars, Celts, Czechs, Serbs and Croatians, with a dash of Latin blood. As a matter of fact one might say of "pure" Nor­ dic Germans what Professor George A. Coe of Cali­ 'fornia said' about the notions concerning "pure" Nordic Americans: "The Nordic race is -sca r cely identifiable anywhere, and a Nordic individual, once found, is almost always a very ordinary creature!"

IV

Hitler features himself as a "drummer boy." As he looked over the political scene the spirit of Ger­ man awakening was expressing itself in a number of competing political parties. The obvious opportunity for a savior was to drum up a mass unity. The diffi­ culty presenting itself was heterogeneity. How could a man unite in action socialistic workless workers, monarchistic barons, nationalistic university stu­ dents, old army officers and democratic bourgeoisie? Hitler decided that he would unite them emotionally, in hatred. He singled out the Jews as outsiders on whom a contagious; all-absorbing, exciting hate might be focused. ."For our liberation," Hitler is quoted campaign­ ing, "we need: .. spite, hatred, hatred, and once more hatred." . Anti-Semitism is an old tune used by German lead­ ers' in 'former generations to strike up the band for a parade of nationalism. It worked III the '7,0's and 12 I '80's during the crash following Germany's victory in the war with France. Anti-Semitism flourished again in 1905 and 1906. Each time the Jews were blamed for all the German troubles. The masses united against Jews as in a war. To be sure, when the public calmed down and realized that they were fooling themselves anti-Semitism evaporated. But the point convincing Hitler was that as political finesse anti­ Semitism had been exploited successfully in hysterical, fanatical tribe-consciousness. It could be artificially sustained for at least two years. And so Hitler set about inflaming and focusing hate on the part of 99% of the population against the Jewish 1 % of the population. He did it thoroughly, too. "Hitler's anti-Semitic agitation," writes a Ger­ man Christian pastor, "surpasses by far all past anti-Semitic propaganda and the immorality of the methods has increased in the same measure. By bait­ ing, lying, slandering, forging, insinuating, in word and print, Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Ar­ beiterpartei (the Nazi party) overshadows all pre­ vious achievements at mass suggestion. The level of taste has sunk far below any human dignity." Hitler chose anti-Semitism with design similar to the factors a magician takes into account when he chooses the box for his tricks with the -audience in mind. Jew baiting became the official "sentimental fundament of the movement." More than that, Hitler went so extremely far as to insist that anti-Semitism is the "bed-rock" of his political economy. One might suspect that he gave his case away in such an insub- . 13 stantial pronouncement ot a remedy for Germany's complicated economic problems. What consolation is it to the 6,500,000 of German unemployed to be told that the mere 100,000 employed German Jews who are "bankers and bakers and candlestick makers" will be suppressed? Anti-Semitism is no solution at all, but Hitler made it serve a pplitical purpose in three ways: First-Anti-Semitism appeals subtly to the sub­ human, selfish drive in people, and it satisfies the mass­ individual's inferiority complex. Second-The emotional effect of anti-Semitism is like .that of one large and vigorous cocktail. Hatred releases the normal restraints. The strength of this hatred can be realized only in seeing the empty bottles from which Hitler has shaken his concoction: anti­ Semitism in pamphlet after pamphlet, song after song, speech after speech, poster after poster, and finally, anti-Semitic newspapers piled five years high. The spite and prejudice is cumulative. Reason van­ ishes. Under the stress of high emotion there is always a partial paralysis of rational control. Critical­ mindedness is abandoned and romantic enthusiasms "make" the party. "The Hitler program," writes George Shuster in The Germans, "has blended those dislikes ... guaranteed to give a crowd of Germans a genuine thrill." Third-Anti-Semitism has been, and is, an element in the German Volksseele. Hitler plays upon subcon­ scious prejudices against Jews. Jews.have been settled for 1600 years in the territory which now is known 14 as Germany. During the Middle Ages, after 600 years of satisfactory social relationships, ultrazealous offi­ cers of the Christian churches set going forces of animosity against Jews. The ignorant and supersti­ tious were especially susceptible to hatred of "unbe­ lievers." The Jews of Germany were deprived of their equal status and were restricted in their occupations to trade, commerce and money-lending. After the tenth century, Holy Week became more and more a season of persecution of the Jews. The agitation car­ ried on at theLime of the Crusades led to numerous anti-Jewish outbreaks. Entire communities were slain. It is said that upward of 12,000 Jews perished in the Rhenish cities alone, between May and July in the year 1096. Besides the appeal to religious bigotry, agitators incited the populace by making charges against the Jews, such as the desecration of the Host, poisoning of wells, and later, ritual murder, all of them malicious fabrications of excited imagination. Popular misconceptions persisted for centuries. In the fifteenth century during the war upon Hussite heretics, Jews again fell victims to mass-attack and the Jewish inhabitants of many cities were massacred. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the unending religious controversies which divided the Empire and finally led to the Thirty Years War, further embittered the lives of the Jews of Germany. Jews were expelled from many places and were har­ ried and persecuted almost everywhere. Doctrines preached by Rousseau and his followers in the decades before the French Revolution ushered 15 in a spirit of liberalism. Under the Chancellorship of Bismarck, the Jews of the North German Confedera­ tion were completely emancipated. Hitler's anti-Sem­ itism, then, is really a throwback to policies of the State before Bismarck. Bismarck was not an anti­ Semite. He watched with approbation the break-up of Ghettos. A petition carrying ~50,OOO signatures asking the Government to disenfranchise the Jews was pigeonholed by Chancellor Bismarck. At this time it was another Adolf, Court Chaplain Stoecker, who provoked anti-Semitism, in order to unite a party. Public meetings, at which Stoecker and his aides harangued large audiences, denouncing the Jews as a danger to the German nation, were of fre­ quent occurrence. Associations of women were formed with the object of boycotting all Jewish merchants. A strong agitation was carried on among students. The futile attempts of the conservatives to fight radi­ calism with anti-Semitism drew this observation from Bismarck, "You got hold of the wrong insect powder." The anti-Semitic movement died down. The Jews increasingly identified themselves with the German civilization and culture, and expressed their aspira­ tions as Germans. Jews became active in every walk of life, and made distinguished contributions in gov­ ernment and politics, philosophy, chemistry, music, the graphic arts, literature, religion, and the stage. No less than eight of the thirty German winners of the Nobel prize have been Jews. Jewish Germans gave to their homeland unstinted co-operation dur­ ing the World War. It has been established that 16 every able-bodied Jew of combative age served in the armed forces, and that 12,000 made the supreme sacrifice for that nation. But the post-war sufferings of the German people and the spirit of desperation which followed upon their disillusionment, created a fertile soil for the recrudescence of the anti-Semitic movement. Conflict between Christians and Jews has been gaining momen­ tum in serious proportions ever since 1928. The spirit of reprisals set in. By making anti-Semitism one of the cardinal principles of its platform, the N a­ tional Socialists artificially forced virtually all the Jews of Germany into the opposing camps, whereas if the anti-Jewish appeal had not been part of the strategy of the National Socialists, there is.no doubt that some of. the Jews would have supported the pa­ triotic assertiveness of the party. The fact that the very existence of the J~ws of Germany is threatened by the .National Socialist program, quite naturally provokes combative efforts on the part of Jews. A vicious circle of conflict appears when Nazi ridicule of Jews draws from Jewish journalists satire of Nazis in verse and cartoon which in turn causes Nazis to boil over even more violently. One subtle aspect of this temporary anti-Semitic mood is the p sychological harm it is doing to the German nation. Over half a million Germans who are Jews are being made abnormally self-conscious. Agi­ tation is heightening the sense of J ewishness in Jews at the same time that it influences anti-Semitism amorig non-Jews. So, too, the fanatical Christian be- 17 comes mentally sick in his persecution of these people. This situation is not good for the Jews, and certainly it is bad for Germany. Hitler expresses the view that Jews are not Ger­ mans, no matter how long they may have resided-in Germany, and that, therefore, they should not be permitted citizenship. In his autobiography, "Mein Kampf," he gives a reason for this attitude. He ex­ plains that his interest in anti-Semitism began when as a young man, in Vienna. There, he says, "As I once walked through the inner city I came suddenly on an appearance wearing a long caftan and black locks. " 'Is this a Jew?' was my first thought ... 'Is this also a German?' " Hitler's objection to the inclusion of novel cultural practices by the nation he loves is the reaction of the average patriot. When the last word is said, indi- : viduals, groups, races and nations that prefer to be different have to take the consequences. Jews must face this fact. The Mennonite in Pennsylvania who allows his hair to grow long enough to hang down. his back has every conceivability of right in his favor, but no degree of tolerance or police supervision will prevent small boys from tagging after him and grown people from shrugging their shoulders when he passes; And the misfortune of this is that the rest of the world does not have time to ask why he lets his hair grow that way. Clearly, those Jews who elect to be "different" must expect to experience resistance'from the majority who set up norms. The quality of their suffering and the use which is made of their outness 18 depends entirely upon circumstances over which, in the pressure of adverse conditions, nobody has any control. In the United States at this time all of the obvious out-groups are being discriminated against economically, and are being subjected to injustices and exclusions which have no rational basis whatever but are merely extensions of the feeling against people who are different into fields where the difference is unimportant. Occasionally one finds German Jews exercising similar prejudice against Eastern Euro­ pean Jews, and vice versa. Moreover, Roman Catho­ lics, Quakers, Methodists and Mormons are among the many groups in history which have suffered be­ cause of cultural peculiarities upon which they have insisted. Conflict between Jews and non-Jews in Ger­ many will continue, but the conflict need not be de­ structive, need not be hurtful-it can be sublimated and made to serve in two ways: first, as a reasonable check, one group on the other; second, as an interact­ ing stimulant for the enrichment of both cultures. Another argument in the Hitlerite exclusion of Jews involves the problem of dual loyalty to which pro-Palestine ties give rise. Since the Jew does pre­ serve and value his place in a world community with­ out any consciousness of its being at variance with his complete national loyalty, he presents to Hitler, whose national allegiance is on the sentimental, emo­ tional level of thought, a mystifying picture. The Chancellor looks at certain Zionist Jews and says to himself: "I have an undivided loyalty to my country; they have two loyalties-one to Israel and one to 19 Germany; which is stronger I have no means of knowing, but Germany's situation at the p~esent mo­ ment is such that she needs .the undivided fealty of all her citizens. Being unable to understand how two loyalties can be reconciled, I prefer to preserve Ger­ many's future by entrusting it to people, who, like me, have but a single loyalty." * Karl Marx having been a Jew; and many Germans erroneously believing that Lenin was a Jew, add to the confusion about "Jewish internationalism." A minority of Jews are Socialists today, and it is from these few, not from the preponderance of conserva­ tive Jewish capitalists, that Nazis have generalized about "Jewish Marxists." With a great deal of wishful thinking and ration­ alization Hitler makes the Jews scapegoats for all German troubles. Jews are to blame, the Nazis say, for all the weaknesses in Germany's character, for all the shame in her history. Have selfish capitalists acted

* It seems to the writer that thoughtful Jews answer this question about national loyalty in two ways. A numerically small group of Zionist nationalists accepts German anti-Semi­ tism as an argument for a Jewish State in Palestine. The second ' group, by far the larger, points to a record of Jewish devotion to the Vaterland coursirig back hundreds of years. These Ger­ man Jews argue their case as Hon, Alfred E. Smith in 1928 defined his Roman Catholic loyalty as altogether consistent with his Americanism (an explanation which was rejected by millions of non-Catholics) and as, more recently, Prof. Douglas Clyde Macintosh of Yale University held his Protestant pacifism to be consistent with loyal American citizenship (a position which was unacceptable to the Supreme Court of the United States)'. 20 badly? They are the Jewish capitalists! Do radical Communists threaten the economic structure? They are the Jewish Marxists! The bill for all Germany's graft, crime and vice is charged to theJews. What­ ever the damaging influences of all current literature, press, stage, cinema and art, the Jews are accused. In short, Hitler blames the Jews for everything which he dislikes in-the esthetic, social, political and eco­ nomic life of Germany. There are 65,000,000 Germans, including 600,000 Jews (less than 1 %). No doubt there are some unde­ sirable Jews in Germany. Some have forsaken the finer ideals. Some have had exceedingly low ethical standards. Of course, the great majority of German . Jews dislike "bad" Jews just as much as Hitler de­ tests their influence. It is irrational and unscientific, however, to condemn all Jews for the faults of a few. There are many thousand immoral Gentile Germans; dishonest, vulgar, grasping members of Germanic tribes, and there are many very unattractive "Chris­ tian" Germans, just as the United States has all traits in all groups in America, too. The unfairness of mass generalizations about Jews is parallel to the untrue generalizations about Germans which popular opinion in 'the United States created during the World War. In 1917 and 1918, James Truslow Adams notes, the United States opened "the floodgates of propa­ ganda addressed to emotionalism and sentimental­ ism." All Germans were categorized as aliens tociv­ ilized humanity. Americans stereotyped a Ger~an label of "Hun, Beast, Vandal." Americans desired to 21 annihilate Germans from the face of the earth. But that was hysteria. Americans now regard such gen­ eralizations as stupid, unfounded prejudice. The main forces in America are resulting in a favorable, friendly, co-operative public opinion toward the Ger­ mans. Truth will co~rect anti-Semitism under ordi­ nary circumstances, but the complicating fact is that Hitler asserts anti-Semitismto be an immutable point in his State platform. Seven of the twenty-five points of Hitler's pro­ fessedly changeless "program for the ages" are di­ rectly levelled against the liberty and equality of the Jews as citizens of Germany. Hitler's fourth point declares that Jews are not Volksgenossen, that is, members of the German people, and cannot there­ fore be citizens; Point Five states that noncitizens may live in Germany only as guests to be governed by laws regulating foreigners; Point Six declares that only citizens may hold public office. Point Seven de­ clares that if it is not possible to feed the entire population of the State, noncitizens must be expelled from the Reich; Point Eight states that all non­ Germans who immigrated since August 2, 1914, shall be forced to leave the country; Point Twenty-three demands that only citizens be permitted to partici­ pate in the production of newspapers, either edi­ torially or financially; Point Twenty-four states that the party "fights the spirit of Jewish materialism in us." Commentaries by leaders of the party point out­ that as logical corollaries of the program all Jewish 22 officials, such as teachers, judges, government em­ ployes, etc., should be immediately dismissed from the services; no Jew should be allowed to serve as a witness or juror in a law court; they should be sub­ jected to a special tax and to special domiciliary reg­ ulations; no Jew should be an attorney; no Jewish physician should be allowed to attend non-Jewish patients; the slaughter of animals according to the Jewish ritual should be forbidden; all subventions to Jewish institutions and official recognition of Jewish community organizations should cease; all Jews who have become naturalized citizens since 1914 should lose their citizenship and revert to the status of aliens; a special investigating committee should be appointed to scrutinize all business undertakings of Jews, especially department stores, banks, wholesale establishments, as well as factories, and all those found to be "dangerous to the people" should be confiscated and made the property of the people. Moreover, special steps should be taken against Jewish influence in cultural activities. Jewish proprie­ tors of theatres should be deprived of their licenses, and no Jewsshould be permitted to have any connec­ tion with the press; all publications with which Jews have any connection should be compelled to state this plainly; and a special law should subject all Jewish writers and journalists who "interfere" in German matters to prosecution. Actual past experience wherever National Social­ ists obtained control of municipal or provincial Gov­ ernments has shown the determination to carry out 23 the anti-Jewish policies' outlined III their program. When National Socialists were, for a time, in control of the Government of Thuringia, the Jewish method of slaughtering animals was forbidden, and the Na­ tional Socialist Minister of the Interior, Frick, now a member of the Cabinet of the Reich, introduced in the public schools of the province the recitation of prayers in which appeals were addressed to the Al­ mighty to rid the country of the "enemies of Ger­ many." In other places, National Socialists dismissed Jewish actors, opera singers, university professors and public officials. National Socialists in the Prus­ sian Diet introduced a statute providing for the con­ fiscation of the property of East European Jews who entered the country after August 1, 1914. This is the ideology of medieval Spain. The seriousness of this Hitler frame of mind is not the material loss to Jews, so much as the resultant degradation of the human spirit which plans such action. One cannot realize his best self by debasing other people. Chancellor Hitler vigorously opened a rule of anti­ Semitism in the early weeks of his Reich regime. Agitation, boycott and vocational discrimination played their part. Also, the years of anti-Semite talk and rough horse-play, artfully stewed over in mass meetings night after night by orators who combined the technique of Aimee MacPherson with that of the Ku-Klux Klan, had its result in victorious free-lance hooliganism. How far the Chancellor's anti-Semitism was trailed 24

, , as a red-herring, to turn attention from pressmg economic problems, is a fair question. Hitler's anti-Semitism is emerging a century too late. The peoples of the world are interdependent now. It was all very well to have an enthusiastic feud in the Kentucky mountains in the nineteenth century, but a first-class feud in a modern town is another matter altogether. The m~dern community is inter­ dependent: our water supply, our power plants, our transportation, our communications, our industry and our common need of raw materials bind all our people together. Moreover, we have discovered that a race riot on a back street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, spreads emotionally, and even in overt violence, like a dry "field on fire. So, too, with an hysterical con­ vulsive intergroup clash in Germany: the world can­ not afford to let it mount lest hatreds break out in widespread violence as sparks fly from nation to nation. Anti-Semitism is no longer a local matter: it is now an international concern.

" William Graham Sumner pictured group behavior in terms of the "ins" and the "outs." Hitlerism can be considered as in-group and out-group psychology. Primitive people develop within the tribe an unques­ tioning loyalty through heightening the sense of we-ness. In the normal course of events, in-group psy­ chology leads all of us to praise and honor and credit :25 and enjoy association with members of our native circle. Adolf Hitler is marvelously adept in nurturing the we-feeling in his followers. His concept of his people is a catalogue of virtues, "true, brave, pious, industrious." "The German people is the chosen people." Hitler, as an intuitive tribal organizer, realizes the corollary of clan psychology. There is a tendency in primitive society to form a blanket stereotyped image of what these people outside the tribe are like. Ordi­ narily the attitude of self-centered nationalists to­ ward outsiders is one of suspicious jealousy. This psychology of opposition is fortified by emotional and mental patterns. It should be remembered, too, that the psychology of a people toward outsiders is con­ ditioned by controllable factors. American specialists in modern propaganda methods know very well that, with favorable conditions, any wanted stereotype about an out-group can be produced in the public mind. The press, the public platform, radio, films, stage and schools, if controlled, can be used to manu­ facture any desired large-scale collective hating, to order. Judging from Hitler's campaigning and his publicity control as Chancellor, there is no one his superior in conditioning the attitudes of his people for good or for evil. Adding these observations together becomes an interesting case study in human relations: 1. We have a nationalistic leader who ranges to­ ward arrogant group chauvinism, at a moment when ~he tide of national feeling is rising steadily higher. 26 2. We have a party in power asserting that Jews are an out-group, and anti-Semitism is the basis of its social and economic philosophy. . 3. This combination emerges at a time when the mechanical factors for the conditioning of inter­ group attitudes are infinitely more potent than ever before in human history, and also more manageable. 4. It so happens that the man whose will has be­ come the State is the most clever manipulator of propaganda, and he now has virtually absolute power

a) to determine the temperature of the emotions of the in-group; b) to determine the behavior patterns and atti­ tudes toward every out-group.

The potential possibilities for wretchedness within Germany, and havoc for the world," are staggeringly alarming.

VI

It seems clear that there is need for .social inven­ tiveness if mankind is going to learn how to live together, now that technological advances have made the whole world into a single neighborhood. The time has come when social groups are required to discover new ways of adjusting themselves to con­ trasting cultural groups. Numerous illustrations of this summons for sociological invention are emerging. An example comes from Tokyo. Sadao Araki, War 27 Minister"of japan, recently"stated bluntly one way of solving inter-group relations: J apanism. "The ' spirit of the Japanese nation," Araki announced, "is, by its nature, a thing that must be propagated over the seven seas and extended over the five continents. Anything that may hinder it must be abolished, even by force." .Araki's way is the traditional manner of. culture groups. But it belongs to the nineteenth century. It will not work any longer. That is why mankind must invent customs and graces which will permit all cul­ tures to abide together in mutual confidence and respect, with satisfactory expression for all parties. Take the case Mr. Hitler has on his hands. He feels the way Mr. Araki does. In a sense we all do. Every growing culture considers its values, its stand­ ards, its aspirations and its fashion of behaving to be superior to those of all other cultures. If a group does not feel that way it is sick. Mr. Hitler, how­ ever, believes that his people have been unduly wronged by the Versailles treaty and subsequent in­ cidents. There Mr. Hitler is right. The first step the world society should take in reckoning with Mr. Hitle~'s case is to rectify the Versailles arrangements. When that is accomplished Mr. Hitler and his people will be in a different frame of mind toward every other culture. He may even slough off his anti-Semitism, automatically. .But let us examine Mr. Hitler's anti-Semitic scheme. If Mr. Hitler imitates Mr. Araki's policy, Mr. Hitler will abolish Jews (as Mr. Araki naively 28 contemplates abolishing every culture save the Volks­ genossen-Hitler's term for "We, the people"-of Japan). Well, now, that is an emotional approach to the problem, but not in the least intellectual. Moreover, that way has been tried repeatedly and failed time after time. There was a day in Germany ~hen Protestants thought they could not live in the same community with Catholics. Oppression, discrim­ ination, spite, hatred, violence, all failed to solve the problem. Historically, too, this emotional approach has proved futile in the case of Christians and Jews -worse than futile, for when any human being is mistreated and denied full rights as a man, that per­ son becomes a biological aberration-· -undergoes a psychological distortion. Recent findings of psychol­ ogy help us to understand how the Jews have suffered from repression. "A nation gets the Jews it deserves." Again the psychologists reveal that a person gets his opinion of himself from other people. Ninety-nine out of a hundred will express themselves according to the standards which the other people really expect of them. That holds true for Jews, Nazis, Daughters of the American Revolution and members of the British House of Lords. Modern society is discovering that civilization means the increasing provision for minorities. The intelligent, scientific approach to the inter­ cultural problem of relationships among Germans, English, Americans or Poles, is to establish full, equalYights for all. In a republic or empire of free 29 people, channels of communication between the vari­ ous cultures can be opened, so that Protestants, Catholics and Jews, as fellow citizens, can share mu­ tually the common ideals of the nation, and all work together, not for the domination of one group, but for the realization of all. It is by contagion, through such normal, human contacts, that the higher aspira­ tions of the commonwealth are caught. The anthro­ pologists properly point out that ideas and mores radiate from culture to culture when neighborliness sets in. Given the necessary community organization, and given a wholesome national Zeitgeist, capable leadership can bring to fruition distinctly fine human qualities to all groups in the body politic.

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