THE FUHRER.

Evening Star, Issue 23368, 11 September 1939, Page 6

THE FUHRER.

A German private soldier, writing from the Somme in the last war, had this remark to make; “As we were passing through Cambrai we saw Hindcnburg and greeted him with exultant cheers. The sight of him ran through our limbs like fire and filled us with boundless courage. We were going to feel the need of him, too.” It is to be wondered how many Germans have been thrilled and heartened in the last few days by Herr Hitler’s announcement that he was taking the field in person as supreme commander of their armies. Ho has since been moving about fairly rapidly behind the lines, recalling Mr Dooley’s description of “eighty miles behind the front, and willing to be further.” Technically, of course, the Fulmer is commander-in-chief of his country’s forces, but so is President Roosevelt, the phrase meaning no more in one case t)ian in the other. General Brauschitsch, however, the real German generalissimo, plays up loyally to his leader’s pronouncement when ho tells his soldiers: “Before you stands as a model the personal courage and stout determination of our Fulmer.” No one will question the determination of Herr Hitler. He has spoken of that quality in himself as the persistence of a sleep-walker—the abnormal sort of person who goes straight forward, aud most naturally goes over a balcony.

The personal courage of Herr Hitler, however, has been in some doubt till now. The doubts may have been unjust to him, but it is remarkable how long they have continued. A writer in the ‘ New Statesman,’ of July 29, 1933, gave his recollections of the stories that were told to him shortly after the last war by a German named Franz Xavier Huber, who was wounded at Verdun, of “ a curious fellow who had been in his regiment at the front.” To quote tho memory

Tho thing that struck him most about ‘‘ Herr* Hitler” his grandiloquence. He was neither popular nor the reverse with his fellows; they just smiled at him and his vague rambling speeches on everything in tho world and out of it. He very swiftly the reputation of being what in the British Army is called ‘ an old soldier.” That is, he showed distinct talent in avoiding disagreeable tasks, but he knew on which side his bread was buttered. He interested himself particularly m the important question of seeing the office re’ washing done or doing it himself. This secured for him the good graces of the colonel, who removed him from the more constant dangers of the trenches and appointed him runner between regimental headquarters and the front line.

Mr John Gunther, in his ‘lnside Europe,’ traces the suspicions to a later date “ His physical courage is doubtful.” ho says of Hitler. “ When his men were fired on in tho Munich ‘ putsch ’ of 1923 ho flung himself to the street with such violence that his shoulder was broken. Nazi explanations of this are two: (1) Linked arm in arm with a man on his right who was shot and killed, he was jerked unwittingly to the pavement; (2) he behaved with the reflex action of the veteran front-line soldier—that is, sensibly fell flat when tho bullets came.” There seems to bo no doubt, to quote tho same authority, that Hitler entered political life as a spy. “ The fact is unpleasant. The story is fully told by Heiden. Hitler was a non-comniissioned officer in the German army, which had just become the Roiciiswelir, and ho was detailed early in 1919 as a sort of intelligence officer to attend Labour meetings, mingle with workers’ groups, and report to his superiors the state of popular opinion.”

The 1 New Statesman ’ writer before mentioned touches on the subject of the Fuhrer’s Iron Cross: “Though he got the Iron Cross of the second class, no one in the regiment ever looked upon Herr Hitler as any sort of a hero; indeed, they rather admired him for the skill with which he avoided hot Corners. The regimental records contain not a line concerning an award of the Iron Cross of the first class to Hitler, though in later years he has taken to wearing it prominently on his self-con-structed uniform.” If the Fuhrer would walk for ten minutes without a guard in tho Untor den Linden his courage might be more effectively demonstrated than by any acts he performs at the front, but that he is unlikely to do. Kven Herr Hitler’s “ black magic,” his capacity for mesmerising a people which chiefly explains his ascendancy, becomes difficult to understand when we read of bis oratory: “The strange thing is that Hitler is a bad speaker. H© screeches; his mannerisms are awkward; his voice breaks at every peroration; he never knows when to stop. Goebbels is a far more subtle and accomplished orator.” The courage of King Chaka of the Zulus, on whose military and other ideas Nazi Germany might appear to have been modelled, was never questioned.