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Along with these big little names, there are a hundred littler writers who hew much closer to the Nazi Party Line and whose books and pamphlets, simply written and well printed, are creating a National Socialist popular literature. Nazi poets write in fervid, ABC language. Sample verse:
Not! . . . Not! . . . Not! . . .
Hunger, und kein Brot,
Herd, und kein Brand,
Und kein Vaterland!-
For adult Germans, war literature (biographies of military heroes, Frederick the Great, old German warriors) has almost replaced the detective story; for young people, the exploits of aviators and submarine commanders have almost ousted the oldtime thriller.
The Nazis early realized that direct control over writers was troublesome and unwise, preferred to make non-Nazi editors and publishers responsible for what they print. Seldom is an attempt made to tell writers what to write or not to write. But worried publishers are quick to submit any doubtful work to the local party official. This gives the Nazis all the control they need. Book News (published in Berlin) now prints a green flimsy supplement headed "Expert Opinion." In one section are listed books to push, and in the other books to soft-pedal.
Hitler, Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg (Naziland's cultural Fuhrer) have long looked for a literary renaissance in Germany. They shout their complete confidence that one is on the way. Nazi Cultural Pundit Wilfred Bade declares: "The new Germany must have authors; but we need not be afraid that they will not appear."
Nazis of lesser faith find it a long wait. Dr. Hellmuth Langenbucher, Director in Chief of Literature, in Nazi Book News of April 1939 grumbled: "a plethora of translations," "a flood of historical novels, more than 100 in 1938, many of them 1) bad, 2) unnecessary, 3) irrelevant, 4) mediocre, 5) 'more or less average." He found too "an extraordinary number of books" in which non-German personalities were stressed, Roman Generals, Russian composers, French painters. Other shortcomings : "No new peasant novels, soldier novels, glorification-of-the-Führer novels, sport novels, strength-through-joy novels, no conquest-of-unemployment novels, no good race, blood and soil novels, no go jd poetry." Long ago, Hitler told Germans to "think with their blood," but so far "blood-thinking" has produced almost no good books. Hitler himself is the best seller (Mem Kampf with a total sale of over 4,000,000 copies is still tops), yet, despite the 25,000 books a year, the Nazis are continuing to bottle-feed an undersized body of literature that should long ago have outgrown official diapers.
* Need! Need! Need!
Hunger, and no bread,
A hearth and no fire,
And no fatherland.