GERMANY
Evolution After Revolution
For the first time since Jan. 30, the date on which Adolf Hitler sprang alarmingly to power, Germany's leading bankers and industrialists chomped their five meals a day last week with perfect peace of mind. It seemed that Chancellor Hitler's Nazi ("National Socialist") regime was turning away as fast as its leaders dared from Socialistic schemes which formed at first one of their great electioneering points. Fortnight ago Herr Hitler began the turn by declaring, "We must not depose a businessman if he is efficient just because he is not yet a Nazi. . . . Our program . . . does not oblige us to upset everything like fools!" Last week came action to set top side up the hundreds of German businesses which have been upset by forcing into their executive offices Nazi busybodies, called "commissars," with unspecified authority.
Some commissars have actually called in brown-shirted Storm Troops to oust business leaders who too strongly resisted Nazi dictation. Last week such interference was classed legally as "kidnapping" in a drastic decree issued by Prussian Minister of Justice Dr. Hans Kerrl who promised to punish offenders without mercy. "Force or threats" against business executives were expressly barred by Dr. Kerrl and he branded many Nazi commissioners as "saboteurs and provocateurs" who will be brought before special courts and face "not only imprisonment but even the death penalty."
All this proved the exceeding wisdom of Germany's great iron & steel mongering House of Krupp, now headed by Bertha Krupp's husband, Dr. Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. In his own vast organization Dr. Krupp von Bohlen is a high-collared martinet, but in dealing with raw statesmen of the new regime he has proved an ingratiating fellow. Less than three months ago he, as president of the Federation of German Industries, beat a strategic retreat by putting it under Nazi auspices. Last week he fairly bubbled optimism as members of the Federation received official notice canceling previous orders that they must prepare to pool their plants in a Hitler "corporate state." Another victory for Dr. Krupp von Bohlen was the ousting from the ministries of economics and industry last week of two Nazis supposed to be rabidly Socialistic, Otto Wagner and Alfred Muller. Finally all talk of a "Second Revolution" among Nazi radicals was vigorously spiked by Minister of Interior Dr. Wilhelm Frick in a circular letter to the Statthalters (Hitler-appointed "Viceroys" of all the German states).