Adolph Hitler-The German Fuhrer

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 359, 13 February 1937, Page 3

Adolph Hitler-The German Fuhrer

Leaders Of World Affairs

Possibly Hitler takes pride of place among modern world figures by reason of his untold possibilities’ for good or evil. The man himself is nothing much —except in one particular. He is a mob orator of exceptional force, and the magnetism of hit l personality grips his people with astonishing power. Let us not imagine that Germany to-day is as solid as she lookt. Under the apparent unity and solidity of the nation there are forces making for disintegration, and it hat been frequently remarked that, were Hitler to be displaced from power, the nation could easily fall into opposing factions that Would not hesitate to plunge the country into civil strife. Who is this l ex-bricklayer, this corporal of the Great War, who is worshipped by the great German nation to the point almost of fanaticism? © ® ® Hitler is really an Austrian, and like a number of other great figures in. hittory, he has come to the highest places in a country that is his by adaption only. For most of his life he suffered grinding poverty, and today, when all that he wants is ffiu for the’ asking, he is comply ely disinterested in money and in all that wealth can buy. He is particularly abstemious. He never drinks- or smokes and his food is purely vegetarian. Given to insomnia and an emotionalism that rivals Billy Sunday, Aimee Macphereon and the most blatant soap-box orators of all time, Adolph Hitler is at once irrational, contradictory and unpredictable. It has been suggested that he is capable of “going off the deep end at any moment; but to the careful observer, it seems that the responsibilities of office, as so often happens, are tempering his judgment, and that he is not the menace to peace that fo many newspaper writers would make him out. But there is alvUys the dreadful possibility that, now that Hitler has built a virile fighting until out of what was, a few years ago, a depressed and dispirited nation, he may be displaced by fair means or foul, and that the generals and the military party may again get control. <

(Written for the ‘Central Press’

by

W.J.H.)

General Goering, who is Hitler's righthand man .and is supposed to be hie nominated successor, is a man greatly to be feared. An airman of intrepid courage and great skill in the Great War, Goering has never been able to forget the destruction of his beloved war planes after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, and his whole life is- believed o be actuated by an intense love for his nev.-ly created air fleet—and by revenge! The succession of Goering to Hitler’s mantle ie indeed a terrible possibility. By most of the German nation Hitler is deeply beloved. To many honest Germans he is indeed sublime, inspiring them with a. sort of Nationalist ecstasy.' However, it has- to be admitted that to others, who are able to see through his oratorical tricks- and perfervid -ranting, he is just a charlatan and cheap-jack politician who snatched the reins of pov.'er when the time was ripe. © ® ® Although Hitler spends a lot of time listening to music (he it especially fond of Wagner) and in looking at pictures, his imagination is purely political. There is one burden to his message—that the German people is a great people with a grand destiny; that Germans are as good as (it not better than) the rest of the peoples; that Germany must be strong, united, and wellarmed. Hitler has no real friends, and he is surrounded by supporters, who are often at loggerheads -with each other. Goering and Goebells, for instance, are bitter enemies- and rivals. Much of the Fuhrer’s political astuteness is displayed in keeping his leading henchmen in their places and this he does largely through the interplay of personal jealousies and

antagonisms. As a politician the Fuhrer is ex-

ceedingly popular. His coups have invariably been carried out at the psychological moment and with con. summate skill. The re-occupation of the Rhineland, the adoption of conscription, his withdrawal from the League of Nations —these and a host of other steps were all taken with considerable political astuteness.

Many newspapermen and others v’lio interview him personally, seem to be impressed with his awkwardness and lack of ease. Of the art ot conversation he knows nothing-. Hp does not converse. He talks at his interviewers and listeners as if they were a public meeting and ae if they wore there for the sole purpose of being converted to his own ideas. Fie rants. He bursts into a shorter of emotionalism at the least provocation, and not infrequently his own demagogy draw's tears to his eyes. It has been said that the Fuhrer has no friends'. There are two men who can see him without a previous appointment—they are Ribbentrop, his personal adviser in foreign affairs and now the German Ambassador in England, and Bruckner, the chief of his personal bodyguard and, as befits his position, one of the huskiest men in the country. ® It was once boasted that Hitler was always faithful to those who served him well. Since the purge of May 30, 1934, this has. l never been rpeated, for on that occasion somewhere about one hundred men who had assisted in the building of the Nazi party were ruthlessly '“killed without trial because they appeared to threaten the Dictator’s power. This is the darkest episode in Hitler’s career. What of the future of Nazism and of Adolph Hitler? Old Moore, if I remember rightly, predicts ominous things for Hitler and the present regime this year. He suggests some sort of civil strife and the possible restoration of the monarchy under one of the Kaiser’s younger sons. One thing appears very probable to the student of history. Hitler’s rise has been meteoric, and part of his career, at least, has been built over a bloody trail. It seems that the end of his power will be just as sudden as his rise and possibly just as bloody.