LUDWIG GOES TO WAR
Mayer, Milton
Ludwig Goes To War By MILTON MAYER IDO NOT KNOW whether Hitler is crazy, wounded, or dead, but I think it is time for a medical verdict on his fellow-German, Emil Ludwig. In fact I think it is...
...Heaton I. Treadway of that city...
...The dreamers assured us that a slave state could not fight a modern war, since modern war required the greatest ingenuity and initiative in the individual soldier...
...Hitler is merely mad...
...Emil's Kind Of Pitching It is not Hitler that Emil hates...
...Some People Like Us...
...It is obvious, then, that these shrewd, clever, mad Nazis, being Germans, must be stupid lumpen, who would never revolt, not to speak of starting a world revolution...
...The last few years, operating from his modest foxhole in Santa Monica, Calif., Emil has been conducting a war to the death against the German people...
...Having revealed that the Nazis are madmen who have great moments of strength because they are so weak, Emil then asserts that Hitler may have retired to a quiet cellar, to rise again when the Nazis are ready for "their hoped-for third world war...
...This kind of schtuss resembles the beautiful dream of the pre-war years that was dreamed up about the German Army in the war to come...
...the possibility that though the German soldiers were-in fact slaves, they might not know it...
...He begins by assuring the clowns, if any there be in St...
...Emil's picture on the front page of the Independent shows him in what looks like a swoon...
...if he hies him to New York, he will find persons who will tell him that all Jews are goniffs...
...And anyone who has attended a street riot in Bremen or a municipal Christmas frolic in Frankfort knows that everything with the Germans must be dignity, honor, and occasion...
...Look about you...
...What the dreamers overlooked was...
...The history of the war has shattered that dream...
...And the reason I would hate to believe it is that there are people in this, and in every, country, including Germany, who go around tearing up the social fabric by wrapping up Jews and Negroes and Catholics in tight little bundles...
...As I am not a lecture-goer, I have only heresay as to what Emil says when he stands fearless, four-square, rock-ribbed, and copper-sheathed before the Kiwanis Club and lets loose his lightning at the Germans far away...
...He has never yet been known to decline to answer, authoritatively and until long after the reporters have drifted out of hearing, any question on any subject whatever...
...He may have just heard that Mr...
...Everything with them must be dignity, honor, and occasion...
...The Nazis," says Emil, by way of a clincher, "are shrewd and clever...
...In fact I think it is time, if not actually high time, that that somebody gave Emil the business, and I am not averse to trying my hand at it in the public interest...
...Petersburg Independent sent me by a Mr...
...Roosevelt has rejected Ernest Hemingway's recommendation to sterilize all Germans...
...Emil is a very hack biographer, and he will biograph anybody or anything, from Napoleon to the Nile...
...But the interview, or build-up, in the Independent gives me, and will give you, a fair idea of Emil's pitching...
...Now keep firmly in mind that these shrewd, clever, mad, momentarily strong, and essentially weak Nazis are German people while you read Emil on the subject of German people: "The Germans will never revolt...
...So we have madmen who are shrewd and clever...
...The German soldiers/' the dreamers went on, "will go into action with machine-guns pointed at their backs...
...This would be impossible with the Germans...
...Emil is prolific of hand and glib of face...
...His books, none of which has ever been accused of having any literary or scholarly merit, have been best-sellers for years...
...Somewhere in Germany there may actually be a few of a fourth kind: people, people no better than we are when we write a Declaration of Independence and no worse than we are when we go on a lynching bee or advertise "Gentiles Only...
...The Nazis, says Emil, are shrewd and clever...
...No, it is Germans, the whole verdammte inferior race of Germans...
...American men are meeting together, laughing, telling jokes, singing...
...Always remember that...
...If he hangs around Florida a while, he will, I believe, find persons, not, however, enlightened Kiwanians, who will tell him that "nigras" are unfit to vote because "nigras," all "nigras," are stupid...
...Of course anyone who has ever attended an all-night brawl at the Loewenbrau Munchener knows that Germans do not laugh, joke, and sing...
...Petersburg, that Hitler has always been mad "and is surrounded by neurasthenics, all of whom have moments of great strength because they are essentially so weak...
...Emil Ludwig of Breslau...
...Petersburg, Fla., if I can rely upon a clipping from the St...
...Emil is white, but I believe he is Jewish...
...In his effort to tell us what all Germans are like, Emil has, either unconsciously or unscrupulously, given us at least two kinds—the rindvieh', or cattle, and the incalculably shrewd and clever...
...and when he gets back to his foxhole in Santa Monica he may hear, from the worst people on the Pacific Coast, that all Japs are treacherous...
...The materials with which I will go to work on Emil are slight, but it is easy enough to fill in the gaps...
...Germany, has also given us a third kind—the kidder of Kiwanians...
...When Emil gets done exterminating Germans from the' lecture platform there is not a German left alive in the house, except the one on the platform...
...The German people will accept anything if it is presented with power and with enough pomp and seriousness...
...Nor is it the Nazis...
...I have been to club meetings all over your country and have heard them...
...madmen who have moments of great strength and, at the same time, have such durable characteristics as shrewdness and_ cleverness, and have them to so durable a degree as to be planning, in the most devious and diabolical ways, a third war against the world while they are still losing the second...
...Argument Of Contradictions That the most terrific and strategic war in history was conducted, and conducted with astounding and methodical success until the whole world closed in on them, by a little group of cuckoos is music to our ears, since the cuckoos are our enemies, and where Marshall and Eisenhower would never talk about Nazi madmen, sweet singers like Ludwig have no scruples, or maybe it is sense, when it comes to making us Kiwanians feel simply wonderful...
...His sorties have taken him as far as the Kiwanis Club of St...
...I would hate to believe that Emil knows what he is doing when he wraps up "Germans" in a tight little bundle and delivers them to the Kiwanis clubs...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 49
