No Nazi is closer to psychic, intuitive Chancellor Adolf Hitler than tall, brooding Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl whose eyebrows are two great black beetles. Often at night Ernst distracts Adolf, weary from cares of state, by playing soulfully on the piano. Ernst, scion of Munich's famed art-print publishing House of Hanfstaengl, is a Harvard man, once kept a smart Manhattan art shop. Because Hitler and Hanfstaengl are inseparable, constantly flying about the Fatherland together in the Chancellor's private plane, all Germany was flabbergasted last autumn when the Party's first super-film, Horst Wessel "with music by Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl" was abruptly withdrawn on the day of its scheduled premiere. Nazi critics present at previews had hailed it as "the German screen's greatest masterpiece," and "a glorious tribute to our Nazi Martyr Horst Wessel." Last week Dr. Hanfstaengl emerged triumphant when the Horst Wessel film, renamed Hans Westmar, One of Many and extensively retaken, but still "with music by Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl" was released before a Berlin audience which included former Crown Prince Wilhelm.
Jews in Berlin's ghetto were forced to act in Horst Wessel last August by Storm Troopers who gave them "stones" (made of cork), ordered them to stone Nazi heroes. Overzealous, the Storm Troops pressed into service an especially hook-nosed rabbi. He turned out to be a citizen of Poland, thus creating a diplomatic incident. In a night club scene, according to the Horst Wessel script, "proud Jews behave overbearingly." A greedy Jew was made to wolf a fat goose in a restaurant scene, while at the next table a lean Nazi couple divided a herring. These features of the original film caused cool heads in the Nazi hierarchy to fear that, if released throughout Germany, it would incite a nation-wide pogrom. Besides, who was young Horst Wessel anyway?