HORSE WESSEL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 119, 22 May 1942, Page 3

HORSE WESSEL

NAZI PATTERN HERO

UNDERWORLD GANGSTER

LONDON. A revealing light was shed, in a recent 8.8.C. broadcast, upon the stuff of which Nazi heroes are made. "Horst Wessel" was the title of a feature programme broadcast by the German section of the European department. Horst Wessel was, of course, the writer of the Nazi's marching song, which has since become the National Anthem of the Third Reich.

It was well to show the world the kind of men the Nazis choose as trusted "leaders." Goebbels needed killers to silence the party's opponents in Berlin; he wanted thugs who would be prepared to risk penal servitude or death—provided their price was paid. The Chief of the Stormtroops in Berlin— Daluege—said he had just the right leader for a new shock-troop. His name was Horst Wessel.

Wessel belonged to Berlin's shadiest underworld. There had long been a feud between him and a competitor in nefarious white slave exploits, one Ali Hohler, a member of a notorious criminal organisation called the King Society. Soon the Horst Wessel Stormtroop was on' the march, equipped with rubber truncheons and loaded revolvers. The decadent bully who led it became the terror of Berlin. Suddenly, in February, 1932. he was shot dead by his "trade" rival. Immediately he was enshrined as a hero by the Nazis. He has "died for Germany." They did not specify "gangster Germany."