which lay before them. All these golden, glowing words —and all the power of press and radio to
carry the message to every corner of the Fatherland. Also, of course, the power of the police and
the private Nazi armies to terrify and crush anyone who might try to voice any other idea.
"Oh, Lanny, you should come to see it!" wrote Heinrich Jung, ecstatically. "It will be
something the like of which has not been seen in the world before. All our youth forces will
assemble in the Lustgarten in the morning and President Hindenburg himself will address us.
In the afternoon there will be costume parades of every craft and trade, even every great
factory in Germany. All will gather in the Tempelhof Airfield, and the decorations will exceed
anything you could imagine. The rich are paying for them by buying tickets so as to sit near
the Führer. Of course He will speak, and afterwards there will be fireworks like a battle—three
hundred meters of silver rain! I beg you and your wife to come as my guests—you will always
be glad that you witnessed these historic scenes. . . . P.S. I am sending you some literature
about our wonderful new labor program. You cannot have any doubts after this."
Lanny wrote, acknowledging the letter and expressing his regrets. It cost nothing to keep in
touch with this ardent young official, and the literature he sent might some day be useful to Rick.
Lanny was quite sure that he wouldn't care to enter Germany so long as Adolf Hitler remained
its Chancellor.
III
The celebration came off, with all the splendor which Heinrich had promised. Everything was
the biggest and most elaborate ever known, and even the hardboiled foreign correspondents
were awestricken; they sent out word that something new was being born into the world. On
the enormous airfield three hundred thousand persons had assembled by noon, to sit on the
ground and await ceremonies which did not begin until eight in the evening. By that time
there were a million or a million and a half in the crowd, believed to be the greatest number
ever gathered in one place. Hitler and Hindenburg drove side by side, the first time that had
happened. They passed along Friedrichstrasse, packed to the curb with shouting masses, and
hung with streamers reading: "For German Socialism," and "Honor the Worker." In front of
the speaker's platform stood the new Chancellor, looking over a vast sea of faces. He stood under
the spotlight, giving the Nazi salute over and over, and when at last he spoke, the amplifiers
carried his voice to every part of the airfield, and wireless and cables carried it over the world.
The new Chancellor's message was that "the German people must learn to know one another
again." The divisions within Germany had been invented "by human madness," and could be
remedied "by human wisdom." Hitler ordained that from now on the First of May should be a
day of universal giving of hands, and that its motto was to be: "Honor work and have respect
for the worker." He told the Germans what they wanted most of all to hear: "You are not a
second-rate nation, but are strong if you wish to be strong." He became devout, and prayed:
"O Lord, help Thou our fight for liberty!"
Nothing could have been more eloquent, nothing nobler. Did Adi wink to his journalist and
say: "Well, Juppchen, we got away with it," or some German equivalent for that slang? At any
rate, on the following morning the labor unions of Germany, representing four million workers
and having annual incomes of nearly two hundred million marks, were wiped out at one single
stroke. The agents of the job were so-called "action committees" of the Shop-Cell
Organization, the Nazi group which had carried on their propaganda in the unions. Armed
gangs appeared at the headquarters of all the unions, arrested officials and threw them into
concentration camps. Their funds were confiscated, their newspapers suppressed, their editors
jailed, their banks closed; and there was no resistance. The Socialists had insisted upon
waiting until the Nazis did something "illegal"; and here it was.
"What can we do?" wrote Freddi to Lanny, in an unsigned letter written on a typewriter—
for such a letter might well have cost him his life. "Our friends hold little meetings in their
homes, but they have no arms, and the rank and file are demoralized by the cowardice of their
leaders. The rumor is that the co-operatives are to be confiscated also. There is to be a new
organization called the 'German Labor Front,' to be directed by Robert Ley, the drunken
braggart who ordered these raids. I suppose the papers in Paris will have published his
manifesto, in which he says: 'No, workers, your institutions are sacred and inviolable to us
National Socialists.' Can anyone imagine such hypocrisy? Have words lost all meaning?
"Do not answer this letter and write us nothing but harmless things, for our mail is pretty
certain to be watched. We have to ask our relatives abroad not to attend any political meetings
for the present. The reason for this is clear."
