THEY WANTED WAR—Ctto D. To-lischus—Reynal & Hitchcock ($3).
For seven years (since early 1933), readers who wanted to know what was really happening in the Third Reich, and why, turned to dispatches in the New York Times under the strangely un-American name of Otto D. (for David) Toli-schus (rhymes with delicious). Typical Tolischus dispatches were careful, rather staid, rarely sensational. Their author never predicted that the Nazi regime was about to be overthrown by "underground" groups. Though the U. S. press was filled with stories of German disaffection, Timesman Tolischus stated baldly that the basis of Hitler's strength was the former Social ist and Communist masses. While wishful think-pieces were constantly proving that Nazi economy was about to cave in, Toli schus doggedly analyzed how & why weird Nazi economy (he called it "the black art") worked. Some readers complained that Tolischus' dispatches were too thickly statistical. Few denied that they were able, readable, sometimes brilliant.
Readers might or might not know that Otto Tolischus was born a Memelander (at Russ, in 1890), became a U. S. citizen when his father was naturalized in 1907, did newspaper work in Europe and the U. S. in the 19203, returned to Germany when the Nazis took power. They could scarcely fail to notice that, after his stories about the Nazis in Poland, the Times's Berlin correspondent was no longer report ing from the Reich. At the request of the Nazi authorities, he had left Germany.
Last week Otto D. Tolischus, now New York Times correspondent in Stockholm, reported the Reich again, this time in a book named after the lead sentence of Adolf Hitler's 1940 New Year's proclamation—They Wanted War. It contained:
> Boiled down, distilled and crystal clear, more solid, basic, detailed facts about totalitarian economics than any U. S. writer had yet got between the covers of a book.
> An eyewitness history of the last seven years in Germany.
> Firsthand accounts of life in Germany during World War II.
> Tolischus' vivid reporting of the Polish campaign as told in his original dispatches.
> Brilliant chapters on the economics of rearmament, the economics of war.
> A close-up study of Hitler and his habits, with a curious, plausible theory that to understand National Socialism it is first necessary to understand the art of Richard Wagner.
In great detail the book discussed the fate of the church, the press, education in the Third Reich; the organization of fifth columns; Nazi-Soviet collaboration. Seldom did Timesman Tolischus make the mistake, fatal in war, of underestimating the enemy's resourcefulness, successes, objectives. From his experience and mass of fact & figure he drew the following conclusions :
> The Nazi advance is not a war in the old-fashioned sense, but "the World Revolution."
> It is a "life-and-death struggle between two cultures."
> After France and England it is the turn of the U. S. next. All the Nazi political attacks on France and England "apply with redoubled force" to the U. S.
> The day England is defeated, the U. S. will become a second-rate power, its foreign trade completely under Nazi control.