Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Hitler's Purges, 1934-1944 PERIODIC "purge*," i.e. massacre* of persons suspected of disloyalty or disaffection, are an indispenssblc element in...
...and here is one of the principal secrets of the unmistakable strength and vitality of totalitarian regimes...
...But now this last condition is realized, so far as Germany is concerned...
...It would be simply impossible for eny mass organisation with a large membership to escape detection at the hands of a Gestapo...
...The ruler of such a atate, if he chooses his time with reasonable forethought, can kill off the most distinguished of his earlier associates without incurring much danger of popular outbreaks, without sapping the strength of his regime...
...I wss in Bsrlin st the time of the 1934 proscription...
...The man next to him lesns over snd ssys anxiously snd solicitously: "Many of us feel just as you do, and we have all the sympathy in the world with you...
...Ernst Roehm, Chief of Staff of the SA, had been shot, slong with a number of Gauleiters, or formerly all-powerful provincial chieftains, whose word only a few days earlier would have sent almost anyone under their jurisdiction to death or a concentration camp...
...The tone of this station is militarist and eos> servstive, but bitterly critical of Hitler's "intuitions" and of the Nasi Party fanctionsne* G|vea the fsrflaag answers of the Gestapo, the minute regimentation of the people, the almost campaleery integrstion of the youth into Nasi ana semi-Naat organisations, the seaae of • gating ts avert national destruction, esse caa scarcely hope that the fleet stage*) of the Nasi crack-up will take the form of a broad pepalar movement...
...Whereas Hitler took th* initiative in the 1934 blow, the fiist bomb seems to hsve been hurled by his enemies in 1944...
...It is difficult to say with certainty how many people lost their lives during the June 30 purge...
...But the main blow wss simed, in this esse, sgsinst the leadership of the SA, with its revolutionary phraseology and egalitarian tendencies...
...but the slaughter was so carefully prepared thst it took by surprise slmost everyone who wss not in the higher councils of the Nasi Party...
...But the political net result of the executions wss to strengthen Hitler'* position...
...Here, of course, the element of defeat in war, of a political and military situstion that waa becoming more hopeless every dsy was the decisive fsctor...
...General rumor reckoned the number of victims at three or four hundred, with some estimates running above one thousand...
...Whenever tension becomes acute, therefore, bloodletting is the only means of solving the problem...
...It is indeed much safef to stand up and join in the applause...
...I have heard a story told of Hitler in Germany, and of Stalin in the Soviet Union, which illustrates how ths wheels go around...
...With the invariable tendency of a terrorist regime to create sn amalgam of victims, so as to inspire doubt and confusion as to the purpose of the move, the well-known Reichswehr GenersI von Schleicher snd seversl well-known Cstholics snd moderstes hsd also been put to death...
...But it would be much safer for you to stand up and join in the applause...
...Obviously something out of the ordinsry wss under way...
...Not being engsged in any journalistic work at thst time, I was not following public events very closely...
...A black military outlook tends to bring into the open the hatreds, jealousies and suspicions that are always festering behind the monolithic facade of a totalitarian state...
...According to this story, which is, of course, imaginary, the dictator feels a need for relaxation, gem to a moving-picture theatre incognito and sits down in the back row without being noticed...
...Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Hitler's Purges, 1934-1944 PERIODIC "purge*," i.e...
...Hitler can scarcely feel so light-heartedly confident about the consequence* of a purge undertaken when the enemy is battering at the door* of hi* "European fortress" from three directions as he could feel about the ruthles* "liquidation" of the still vague and formless discontent among the SA in 1934...
...Yet a totalitarian regime can be overthrown, as th* example of Italian fascism shows...
...The existeaee of aa anti-Nasi trend in military circles has long been reflected in the secret radio emissions of a station that calls itself Gustav Siegfried Kins...
...When despsir has gone far enough the controls that tend to work almost automatically in normal tim^s may become jammed...
...accompanied as It wss by a fairly widespread military plot, should not he under estimated it i» beyond the power of the United Nntions to determine the forms of the Germaa revolt...
...massacre* of persons suspected of disloyalty or disaffection, are an indispenssblc element in the governing methods of the totalitarian state...
...This is why Hitler's purge of 1844 is a much more serious portent for the internal stsbility of his regime then the purge of 1934...
...By definition such a state recognizes neither the popular will, as reflected in free snd honest elections, nor s rule of law, embodied in independent courts...
...Hitler admitted seventy-seven killings...
...Anyone who reports huge numbers of participants in underground movements in totalitarian countries must be listened to with reserve and skepticism...
...What would have seemed fantastically reckless adventure becomes possible...
...One amazing "German Christian" recclesiastic went so far as to declare that June 30 made clear to everyone what had always been clear to him, "the unique greatness of the Fuehrer...
...The leadership of the SA, ths brownshirt militia which constituted the more plebeian sector of the Nasi organization, had been decimated...
...HoWEVKR unpleasant it may seem to those who would like to cling to more civilised standards, the conclusion seems irresistible that there i* scarcely any crime too enormous for a totalitarian regime to perpetrate with impunity so long s* its security is not threatened by superior foreign military force...
...Soon his own picture is thrown on the screen...
...The dictator modestly remains seated...
...Bat they rsn speed ap the movement by simultaneously nrese-ing the military offensive sad offering to a responsible German democratic government a peace based oa the Atlantic Charter...
...But it wss only the next morning thst I, slong with the vest majority of Germans, learned the grim details of June 80...
...1 had been spending the warm afternoon of June 30 in the Grunewald, Berlin's large park...
...What occurred in Italy can happen, almost certainly will happen, in Germany, when the ssme stsge of despsir has penetrated the ruling class...
...But the effect of evoa the flrst bomb that is thrown et Hit-ler...
...The entire sudience stsnds up and applauds enthusiastically...
...There is, however, s difference in the significance of purges...
...In normal times the cards are heavily stacked against rebels and heretics in the totalitarian state...
...In the nature of things there can be no widespread organised opposition under a totalitarian regime...
...Coming home I picked up an evening newspaper which announced in large'-.headlines "sharpest action against Roehm and reaction...
Vol. 27 • July 1944 • No. 31
