(2 of 3)
After polling began. Saarlanders who had voted were rushed into Germany to broadcast back to the Saar that they had voted Nazi. Mistakes made by stupid early voters invalidating their ballots were explained in words of one syllable to prospective stupid late voters. German church bells were broadcast as "ringing in celebration of our plebiscite victory" before voting got well under way.
To complete the impression that the Saar was in his bag, Realmleader Hitler meanwhile appointed one of his oldest friends, Herr Josef Bürckel, a qualified German elementary schoolteacher, to be Governor of the Saar from the instant of victory. Accustomed to making himself clear to tiny tots, prospective Governor Bürckel repeated over & over before the microphone that the Saar will be different from the rest of Germany in that it will have no Nazi prison camps. Saar Jews, listening intently, could not quite make out whether Broadcaster Bürckel was promising them immunity, or merely that some of them would be sent to prison camps in Germany.
In Saarbrücken hard-jawed Hermann Röchling, Nazi industrialist, and reputed slush fund paymaster, snorted "Germany will not interfere with Saar Jews, Socialists and Communists! I suppose they will leave the Saar." After sleeping on this the Saar steel magnate said next day, according to a correspondent of London's Sunday Express, "A certain number of Communists will be sent to camps, unless they are converted into honest people. The 40,000 Saar unemployed will be mustered into the German Labor Front and set to building public works. A few foolish clergymen will be removed—by their Bishops, not by us! All members of the United Front will be isolated. We have promised not to do them any harm, but we have not promised to do them any good."
Thus the League Council is accurately informed what will happen should they give the Saar now to Germany. To withhold it, many Geneva statesmen feared, would touch off a Nazi invasion to seize the Saar. Even the supremely legal mind of Sir John Simon was not attracted, as it normally would have been, by the Treaty of Versailles' proviso that the Saar may be split or diced up into as many parts as the Council pleases, each part being given a different status, corresponding to the local vote. From a legal standpoint the League seemed duty-bound to give each part of the Saar what each part of the Saar wanted; but the League urge to make some sort of a clean sweep decision on the whole Saar was almost irresistible. So absorbed in plebiscitiana was Radcliffe College's famed Miss Sarah Wambaugh, super-active U. S. member of the Plebiscite Commission, that she announced, "The most important result is clear—not whether the territory will go to one country or the other country—but the successful co-operative effort of an impartial and scientific experiment! It proves that in the League of Nations we have adequate mechanism at our disposal for solving the intricate problems of our modern world."