Hitler's Hitlers

A happy, happy man was Adolf Hitler last week. German newsreels pictured him in a French garden, receiving word of the French capitulation. The Fuehrer snapped his fingers, kicked his heels, chortled and goose-stepped off to his office to contemplate the fact that Hitler-Europe had become an actuality.

Throughout the Reich other Nazi bigwigs celebrated. Prophet Alfred Rosenberg heralded the dawn of the "new social age." And Party Organizing Director Dr. Robert Ley was already turning out little Fuehrers -- that long-dreamed-of elite which Adolf Hitler expects to run (and enjoy the first fruits of) the Government and commerce of his part of the world, if and when the Nazis are able to change their war economy into just plain economy.

"There will be a ruling caste," Hitler had explained to Hermann Rauschning, "a historical class tempered by battle and welded from the most varied elements. There will be the great hierarchy of the Party. . . . And there will be the great mass of the anonymous, the serving collective, the eternally disfranchised, no matter whether they were members of the old bourgeoisie, the big land-owning class, the working class, or the artisans. . . . Beneath them there will still be the class of the subject alien races; we need not hesitate to call them the modern slave class."

Rulers in Training. Hitler's idea long before he came to power was that Europe needed a trained, homogeneous elite, not the haphazard ruling classes that other governments in history had thrown up. In 1934 an elaborate system of training for leadership was inaugurated when the first of 32 schools, each to enroll 4,000 prospective little Fuhrers, was opened. Since 1937 all these schools have been named after Adolf Hitler, including one first named for the late youth-loving Ernst Roehm. There are also three Ordensburgen (Citadels of the Nazi Order) where, surrounded by Germanic mysticism and medieval trappings, the higher education proceeds. Finally there is the postgraduate Fuehrerschule.

Fuehrers-to-be, selected at the age of 12 from the entire population, spend six years at the Adolf Hitler School where they lead a strict, secluded life, wear brown uniforms and receive a thorough fundamental education with emphasis on languages, history and the development of leadership qualities. There are no examinations, character being the basis of all judgment. Following graduation, incipient Fuehrers are released for seven years of "practical life study," during which they serve in the labor and military services and learn a trade or profession, continuing at the same time their practical political work within the numerous Party organizations. At the end of this period, one fourth of each class is picked for further training at the Ordensburgen located at Croessensee in Pomerania, Burg Vogelsang in the Rhineland, Sonthofen in Bavaria. Specializing in ideology and the theory of leadership, they spend one year at each castle. Then the final selection is made and those found to possess supreme qualities of leadership go to the Fuehrerschule in Bavaria, where at the feet of Prophet Rosenberg they imbibe the spiritual understanding and enlightenment necessary for proclaiming to future generations the word of Adolf Hitler, the word which they hope will guide the world for 1,000 years.

A crop of new Fuehrers, selected from the ranks of Party members rushed through from the Ordensburgen, graduated last year, awaited assignments last week.

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