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Said a German banker: "We are making large profits in our heavy industries, in our armament works, but we can draw out only 6%. The rest goes into Government bonds besides all the taxes we have to pay-taxes which are always growing bigger. These paper profits are of no value to industry or to ourselves."
Germany's future, as seen by a businessman: bankruptcy within a year; inflation; more unemployment and starvation; a Germany of "marvelous buildings, wonderful roads, a great army and—nothing to eat"; the collapse of the Nazi regime; an Army dictatorship; the return of the Hohenzollerns.
The Nazis are not even one of the two biggest groups in Germany, according to Spivak. These are the pro-Hohenzollerns and the Communists. The underground Communists (about 50,000) are superbly organized. From Paris Spivak made an appointment to meet a high Communist in a Hamburg night club. The man showed up in his uniform as a Nazi official. Said he: ''The Reichswehr is far more shrewd than the Nazi Party. The General Staff is composed of scholars who know not only the military situation but the political and economic as well. . . . Before Hitler is through he will have helped considerably to wreck the already weak capitalist system here."
This Communist in disguise estimated that German prisons now hold some 200,000, concentration camps another 100,000. Communists, once decimated by "our own carelessness," now organize in cells of three, are rarely caught. Suspected Communists are usually murdered in the parks by Nazis, infrequently tried and executed. The German Communists predict the next war will last less than a year, after which a civil revolt will smash the Army and the Nazi regime.
Poland's tyrants, according to Spivak, are amiable, intelligent playboys, its people hopeless serfs. Asked what he most wanted, a Polish peasant subsisting on potatoes replied: "If I could have a little salt for my potatoes." Pressed for a serious answer, he stammered, "Well, if I could have a little sugar I could have sugar in my tea on Sundays." Told by Spivak that these were trifles, he replied with dignity, "Salt in potatoes is no trifle."
Polish Communists seemed more passionate, more vengeful, less efficient than German Communists. They specialized in foreign affairs. Said one: "Poland and Germany are at present trying to draw France away from its pact with the Soviet Union because France and the Soviet Union are well-nigh invincible. Polish enmity against Czechoslovakia and Rumania is based upon its efforts to keep them away from a Russian bloc. The next war is being planned against the Soviet Union."
Members of Poland's small ruling class admit the people's poverty, the sorry state of Polish capitalism, deplore their inability to do anything about it.
Austria, under a foreign-supported and schismatic dictatorship (see p. 20), is the only nation to produce underground rebels with a sense of humor. Their best joke: to distribute an official-looking notice on counterfeit police stationery warning the populace to defend itself against ordinary criminals because all the energies of the police were required to catch political criminals.