The Inheritors

The first book fully to report the effect of the Russian war on the German home front was published last week. Earnest young (27) Correspondent Howard K. Smith (U.P., CBS) got the jump on his interned colleagues by walking through the drab, green station doors of Basle, Switzerland on the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Last Train From Berlin (Cresset Press; London) is mostly the story of what happened in Germany between June 22 and Dec. 6 last year.

Until the Wehrmacht attacked Russia "war wasn't so bad. It was not a struggle of life & death. It was becoming the national sport, like cricket in England and baseball in America. Hitler was the All-American coach. . . ."

Russia changed the whole picture. There was an immediate economic decline, and a decline in morale came soon thereafter. By autumn both declines had gathered speed. "This, together with the decay of capital equipment, caused a leveling off of war production for the first time in Nazi history, then a steep decline in production." For instance, the production of locomotives in all German Europe dropped to 1,400 yearly; and the Wehrmacht was losing 29 locomotives a day in Russia (i.e., three years' production in the Russian campaign's first six months).

Two phenomena of inestimable importance shook the home front: 1) the carefully nurtured faith of the German people in their propaganda and leaders was shattered; 2) the middle-class revolution was finally snuffed out completely.

Great Day. "One date," says Smith, "stands out over all other possible candidates for designation as the great watershed--that point in time before which all was rising and after which all fell in the history of Hitler and National Socialism. It is Thursday, October 9, 1941."

On Oct. 2, the Nazi press had announced an all-out offensive on Moscow. On Oct. 9 Hitler sent his personal press stooge, Dr. Otto Dietrich, from the front to Berlin to announce to newspapermen that the very last remnants of the Red Army were "locked in two steel German pockets before Moscow and were undergoing swift, merciless annihilation." Dietrich wound up: "And on that, gentlemen, I stake my whole journalistic reputation." Nazi headlines shouted: DIETRICH: CAMPAIGN IN EAST DECIDED. Said the official Voelkischer Beobachter: "The strategic decision has already been gained."

Voelkischer Beobachter headlines in the days following:

Oct. 11: EASTERN BREAKTHROUGH DEEPENS.

Oct. 12: ANNIHILATION OF SOVIET ARMIES ALMOST CONCLUDED.

Oct. 13: BATTLEFIELDS OF VYAZMA BRYANSK FAR BEHIND FRONT.

Oct. 14: OPERATIONS IN EAST PROCEED ACCORDING TO PLAN.

Oct. 15: SPEEDBOATS SINK BRITISH FREIGHTERS FROM CONVOY.

When the Eastern war proceeded more bitterly than ever, many Germans stopped buying Nazi papers and began listening to London and Moscow broadcasts. Smith says that on Oct. 9 "German propaganda destroyed itself as an effective means of molding opinion, spirit and morale, and a callousness to military victories set in, which nothing less than a real tangible decision in this war can remove."

Lost Revolution. The only thing revolutionary about the Nazi revolution, says Smith, was the attempt of the middle class to take power away from big industrialists and organized workers. But Smith says that the only ones who really got power and profit under Naziism were the industrialists and the new Nazi elite--for instance, Goering, the new Steel King. "The figures for total net profits for major industries show falling profits and share values from 1929 until 1933, when Hitler came to power, and from then on an unbroken rise. A member of the American Embassy once worked out a schedule for me to show conclusively that American capitalists pay more taxes per unit of income than German capitalists who are supposed to be fighting plutocracy."

Meanwhile working-class and middle-class living standards declined. Not only little shopkeepers, but little businesses, were being forced out. "According to Nazi statistics, by 1939 . . . there were only half as many joint stock companies in Germany as there had been in 1933, when many had already been weeded out by depression." War speeded up the proletarianization of the middle class.

Smith acknowledges that membership in the middle class is psychological as well as economic. "In view of this, it is perhaps even more symptomatic of how far the social mutation inside Germany has gone that middle-class people are ceasing to behave according to their old stand ards." When Smith left Germany the atmosphere was one of decay "and that atmosphere seems thickest among the Kleinbuergertum [petite bourgeoisie]." They were drinking simply "to get soused completely and unmitigatedly [and] sexual license of people once proud of their respectability has virtually run the prostitutes out of business."

In the late summer of 1941 the middle classes lost their one remaining means of ever influencing the Nazi German State. For every practical purpose the middle-class army--the SA Brown Shirts--was disbanded. It was forbidden to meet or drill. Smith says the SA was disbanded because "it was an organization. An organization is the kernel of political action," and political action by the deceived and squeezed-out middle class might have been against those in power.

The ultimate political power-holder in Germany today, Smith believes, is the militarized SS. Smith's three possible elements of revolt against it, "in ascending importance: the Communists, the Church and its followers, the conservative Prussian military caste."

Smith is sure that Hitler, "the phenomenal Cinderella-boy from Braunau, has had a swell time." But, because of the failure in Russia, the Home Front's decline, and the growing disunity in the nation, "it would appear to be getting on toward midnight. Even with his expertness at it, it is highly unlikely that he can turn this particular clock back."

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