Also there was a Political Organization, or rather two, P.O. 1 and P.O. 2—they had two of
everything, except of the Führer. It made you dizzy merely to hear about all these obligations and
responsibilities: the Foreign Division, Economic Policy Division, Race and Culture Division,
Internal Political Division, Legal Division, Engineering-Technical Division, Labor Service
Division; the Reich Propaganda Leaders Number 1 and Number 2, the Leaders of the Reich
Inspection 1 and 2; the Investigation and Adjustment Committee—what a whopper of a title had
been assigned to them: Untersuchungs und Schlichtungsausschuss, or USCHLA! But don't smile
over it, for Heinrich Jung explains that the party is preparing to take over the destinies of the
Fatherland, to say nothing of many decadent nations of Europe and elsewhere, and all this
machinery and even more will be needed; the Gymnastics and Sports Committee, the Bureau
Leader for the Press, the Zentralparteiverlag, the Persomlamt, and much more. Heinrich was
responsible for the affairs of one department of the Hitler Youth, with twenty-one geographic
sections throughout Germany. They maintained a school for future Nazi leaders, and published
three monthlies and a semi-monthly. There were divisions dealing with press, culture, propaganda,
defense-sport—they were learning not merely to fight the Young Communists, but to make a
sport of it! Also there were the junior organizations, the Deutsches Jungvolk and the Bund
Deutscher Mädel, and a Studentenbund, and a Women's League, and so on apparently
without end. The polite Lanny Budd was glad in his heart that it was election time and that so
many subordinates were waiting to receive orders from this overzealous expounder.
VIII
One thing a young party official would not fail to do for an old friend: to take him to the
mighty Versammlung in the Sport-palast which was to climax the Nazi campaign. Here the
Führer himself would make his final appeal to the German voters; and it would be like nothing
ever seen in the world before. For several months this marvelous man had been rushing" all
over the land making speeches, many hundreds of them; traveling by airplane, or in his fast
Mercedes car, wearing the tan raincoat in which Lanny had seen him in the old days; possibly
not the same coat, but the same simple, devoted, inspired, and inspiring leader whose mission it
was to revive Germany and then the whole world. Heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen
die ganze Welt!
Heinrich explained that seats would be difficult to obtain; there would be a line of people
waiting at the doors of the Sportpalast from early morning to be sure of getting good places.
There would of course be reserved seats for important persons, and Lanny accepted four
tickets. He knew that none of the Robins would attend a Nazi meeting—it really wouldn't be safe,
for someone might spit in their faces, or beat them if they failed to give the Nazi salute and shout
"Heil Hitler.1" Bess loathed the movement and its creed, and her curiosity had been fully
satisfied by watching the Stormtroopers on the march and by occasional glances at their
newspapers.
Well in advance of eight o'clock Lanny and his wife and Beauty and her husband were in
their seats. Bands playing, literature-sellers busy, and armed squads keeping watch all over
the enormous arena —Communists keep out! A display of banners and streamers with all the
familiar slogans: "Down with Versailles!" "Freedom and Bread!" "Germany, Awake!" "An End to
Reparations!" "Common Wealth before Private Wealth!" "Break the Bonds of Interest
Slavery!" These last were the "radical" slogans, carried down from the old days; Robbie had
said they were practically the same as those of the "money cranks" in the United States, the
old-time Populists and Greenbackers; they appealed to the debtor classes, the small farmers, the
little business men who felt themselves being squeezed by the big trusts. This Hitler movement
was a revolt of the lower middle classes, whose savings had been wiped out by the inflation and
who saw themselves being reduced to the status of proletarians.
To Irma they seemed much nicer-looking people than those she had seen at the other two
meetings. The blасk-and-silver uniforms of the Schutzstaffel, who acted as ushers and guards,
were new and quite elegant; these young men showed alertness and efficiency. Twenty or thirty
thousand people singing with fervor were impressive, and Irma didn't know that the songs
were full of hatred for Frenchmen and Poles. She knew that the Nazis hated the Jews, and this
she deplored. She had learned to be very fond of one Jewish family, but she feared there must
be something wrong with the others—so many people said it. In any case, the Germans had to
decide about their own country.
Singing and speech-making went on for an hour or so; then came a roll of drums and a blast
of trumpets in the main entrance, and all the men and women in the huge place leaped to their
feet. Der Führer kommt! A regiment of Stormtroopers in solemn march, carrying flags with
spearpoints or bayonets at the tips of the poles. The bands playing the magnificent open
chords to which the gods march across the rainbow bridge into Valhalla at the close of Das
Rheingold. Then the party leaders, military and magnificent, marching in the form of a hollow
square, protecting their one and only leader. Someone with a sense of drama has planned all
this; someone who has learned from Wagner how to combine music, scenery, and action so as
to symbolize the fundamental aspirations of the human soul, to make real to the common man
his own inmost longing.
Who was that genius? Everyone in the hall, with the possible exception of a few Lanny Budds,
believed that it was the little man who marched in the center of that guard of honor; the
simple man with the old tan raincoat, the one whom honors could not spoil, the one
consecrated to the service of the Fatherland; one born of the common people, son of an
obscure Austrian customs official; a corporal of the World War wounded and gassed; an
obscure workingman, a dreamer of a mighty dream, of Germany freed and restored to her
place among the nations, or perhaps above them.
He wore no hat, and his dark hair, long and brushed to one side, fell now and then across his
pale forehead and had to be swept away. No fashion here, a plain man, just like you and me;
one whose hand you can shake, who smiles in a friendly way at those who greet him. A storm of
cheering arises, the Heils become like raindrops falling in a cloudburst—so many that you
cannot hear the individual ones, the sounds become a union like the National Socialist
German Workingmen's Party.
Lanny has never attended an old-fashioned American revival meeting, but his friend Jerry
Pendleton from Kansas has told him about one, and here is another. Has someone from the
American South or Middle West come over and taught these arts of stirring the souls of
primitive people, of letting them take part in what is being done to them? Or is it something
that rises out of the primitive soul in every part of the world? The speakers on this platform
ask questions, and twenty thousand throats shout the answers. Only they do not shout:
"Glory Hallelujah!" and "Bless the Lord!"; theirs are secular cries: "Down with Versailles!"
"Juda verrecke!" and "Deutschland erwache!"
IX
Seven years since Lanny watched Charlie Chaplin come out upon the stage of a great beerhall
in Munich; and here he is again, the same foolish little dark mustache, the same shy manner,
humble, deprecating. But now he is stouter, he gets better food. Now, also, there are a score of
spotlights centered upon him, telling everybody that appearances are deceptive, and that this
is a special One. Banners and symbols, slogans and rituals, hopes and resolves, all have come
out of his soul; he is the Messiah, the One appointed and sent to save the Fatherland in its
hour of greatest trial.
He begins to speak, and Lanny knows every tone. Quiet at first, and the vast hall as still as the
universe must have been before God created it. But soon the man of visions begins to warm up
to his theme. The slogans which he has taught to all Germany work upon himself as upon
others; they dominate his entire being; they are sparks from a white-hot flame which burns
day and night within him. The flame of "Adi's" hatred of his miserable and thwarted life! Hatred
of his father, the dumb petty bureaucrat who wanted to make his son like himself and
wouldn't let him become an artist; hatred of the critics and dealers who wouldn't recognize his
pitiful attempts at painting; hatred of the bums and wastrels in the flophouses who wouldn't
listen to his inspired ravings; hatred of the Russians and the French and the British and the
Americans who wouldn't let an obscure corporal win his war; hatred of Marxists who betrayed
Germany by a stab in the back; hatred of the Jews who made money out of her misery; hatred
of all who now stood in the way of her destiny, who opposed Adi's party which was to save her
from humiliation. All these hatreds had flamed forth from one thwarted soul and had set fire
to the tinder-box which Germany had become—and here it was, blazing, blazing!
The Führer possessed no gleam of humor, no trace of charm. He was an uneducated man,
and spoke with an Austrian country accent, not always grammatically. His voice was hoarse
from a thousand speeches, but he forced it without mercy. He raved and shrieked; he waved
his arms, he shook his clenched fists in the face of Germany's enemies. Perspiration poured
from his pasty and rather lumpy countenance; his heavy hair fell down over his eyes and had
to be flung back.
Lanny knew every gesture, every word. Adi hadn't learned a thing, hadn't changed a thing in
seven years; he had merely said the same things a million times. His two-part book which
Lanny had read with mingled dismay and laughter had become the bible of a new religion.
Millions of copies had been sold, and extracts from it and reiterations of it had been printed in
who could guess how many pamphlets, leaflets, and newspapers? Certainly well up in the billions;
for some of the Nazi newspapers had circulations of hundreds of thousands every day, and in
the course of years that mounts up. Heinrich told Lanny that they had held nearly thirty-five
thousand meetings in Germany during the present campaign and quantities of literature had
been sold at every one of them. Lanny, listening and watching the frenzied throng,
remembered some lines from his poetry anthology, lines which had sounded melodious and
exciting, but which he hadn't understood when he had read them as a boy:
One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down.
X
There had been an election to the Reichstag less than two and a half years before, and at
that election the Social-Democrats had polled more than nine million votes, the Communists
more than three million, and the Nazis less than one million. The two last-named parties had
been active since then, and everyone agreed that conditions favored the extremists. The business
collapse in America had made farm products unsalable there, and this had caused an immediate
reaction in Germany; the peasants had their year's harvest to sell at a heavy loss. As for the
workers, there were four million unemployed, and fear in the hearts of all the rest. These
groups were sure to vote for a change—but of what sort?
Impossible to spend a week in a nation so wrought up and not come to share the excitement.
It became a sort of sporting proposition; you chose sides and made bets to back yourself. After
the fashion of humans, you believed what you hoped. Lanny became sure that the cautious,
phlegmatic German people would prefer the carefully thought-out program of the Socialists
and give them an actual majority so that they could put it into effect. But Johannes Robin, who
thrived on pessimism, expected the worst—by which he meant that the Communists would
come out on top. Red Berlin would become scarlet, or crimson, or whatever is the most glaring
of shades.
The results astounded them all—save possibly Hejnrich Jung and his party comrades. The
Social-Democrats lost more than half a million votes; the Communists gained more than a
million and a quarter; while the Nazis increased their vote from eight hundred thousand to
nearly six and a half million: a gain of seven hundred per cent in twenty-eight months! The
score in millions stood roughly, Social-Democrats eight and a half, Nazis six and a half, and
Communists four and a half.
The news hit the rest of the world like a high-explosive shell. The statesmen of the one-time
Allied lands who were so certain that they had Germany bound in chains; the international
bankers who had lent her five billion dollars; the negotiators who, early in this year of 1930,
had secured her signature to the Young Plan, whereby she bound herself to pay reparations over
a period of fifty-eight years—all these now suddenly discovered that they had driven six and a half
million of their victims crazy! War gains were to be confiscated, trusts nationalized, department
stores communalized, speculation in land prevented, and usurers and profiteers to suffer the
death penalty! Such was the Nazi program for theinside of Germany; while for the outside, the
Versailles treaty was to be denounced, the Young Plan abrogated, and Germany was to go to war,
if need be, in order to set her free from the "Jewish-dominated plutocracies" of France,
Britain, and America!
Lanny's host was unpleasantly surprised by these returns, but, after thinking matters over, he
decided not to worry too much. He said that no soup is ever eaten as hot as it is cooked. He said
