(See Cover)
To the anxious question of "Will there be war in Europe?" the right answer early this week could be given only by those who knew what was in the mind of Adolf Hitler. Among the few Nazi higher-ups who should have known the Führer's mind (who as usual kept all he knew discreetly to himself) was a man named Heinrich Himmler. Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, State Councillor of Prussia, deputy of the Reichstag, Herr Himmler is better known for two other far more important titles: Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (the famed, black-uniformed 55 Guards), and Inspector of the dread, notorious Gestapo (State Secret Police). From the founder and ruler of the Third Reich's State Secret Police there can be few State secrets.
Inordinately ambitious, a weaver of grandiose political dreams, Herr Himmler might find war, if it comes, not to his taste. War might mean the rise once more to power of the old Prussian Army machine and a policeman's lot might not be so important in war as in peace. But war or no war, anything that might happen to eclipse or remove Herr Himmler's aging boss can be expected to be the signal for a dogfight for power between Herren Göring, Goebbels and Himmler. Herr Himmler, the youngest of the lot, does not intend to be the least.
Birthday. Meanwhile, if nothing intervenes, Greater Germany will vociferously acclaim the soth birthday of its creator and Führer this week. On the same day—April 20—Herr Himmler will quietly, without public fanfare, celebrate the fifth anniversary of his appointment as Inspector of the Gestapo. Troops will march down Berlin's Unter den Linden and through the crowded Tiergarten as the 50-year-old Führer receives the frenzied homage of an adoring nation. Clustered around Herr Hitler on a reviewing stand are to be the familiar, conspicuous figures of the Nazi hierarchy—fat, strapping Field Marshal Hermann Wilhelm Göring, mousy little Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, coarse, Jew-baiting Julius Streicher, Nazi Deputy Leader Rudolf Hess, Labor Front Leader Dr. Robert Ley. Inspector Himmler will be there too, but the weak, fleshy-chinned, owlish Gestapo chief, looking more like an Austrian Gymnasium teacher than a leader of men, will be the least conspicuous of them all.
No orator, scarcely a figure calculated to arouse much personal enthusiasm. Herr Himmler's primary function in Naziland has so far been to be neither seen nor heard but to be felt. The housewife who puts quilted covers over her telephone for fear the Gestapo can listen in on household conversations even when the receiver catch is down has felt Herr Himmler's not-too-remote presence. The German who uses prearranged codes in letters to his relatives in or out of the country decidedly feels Policeman Himmler's existence. The discontented merchant, the dissident Party member, the persecuted Jew, the defiant churchman, the too-independent Army officer have with good reason dreaded his heavy hand—and often landed in one of Herr Himmler's concentration camps. Moreover, little neighboring countries have particular reason to fear him; the presence of 55 Führer Himmler's young men in Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Lithuania, has invariably meant that the Nazi Reich was about to expand its borders.