Evening star., 1940-03-24
Misfits Among Nazi
Pioneers Clash Over
Killers Buffers
Neurotic Followers
React Partly With
Anger at AIoofness
BY w. L. WHITE.

COPENHAGEN (By MaiD What
does the rank and file of the Nation
al Socialist Party think of the Rus
sian treaty? A partial answer to
that was given by the Munich At
tentat last November, when an at
tempt was made to blow Hitler up
In the Munich beer hall.
First you must look back at the
early beginnings of the Nazi move
ment in Germany. 1t gained most of
its recruits during the troubled early
years Of the last decade, when Ger
many was wallowing heavily in de-
preston and unemployment. Its
strident program and its promises to
everybody attracted to its ranks
many temporarily bewildered people,
but many more permanently incom-
petent neurotic misfits-as every rev.
olutionary movement does-who are
constitutionally incapable of getting
along under any regime but prefer
to think that their failure is due to
the particular one then in power.
These misfits formed the bulwark
of the Brown Shirt street fighters.
OF course the NaZi movement also
attracted a number of bright and
unscrupulous young men who
watched it carefully, saw that, as
conditions were then in Germany,
it was getting places and might be
doing things, and so, shrewdly, got
IN on the ground floor.
Fighting Well Done.
But most of the actual street
fighting and punch trading with
Communists and liberals was done
by the neurotic misfits, and, from
the professional standpoint, it was
we'll done.
But after the Nazi were in power,
there was no place for them. I'm
portant elements in business. in
dustry and the army were now max
ing their peace with the new regime,
thereby adding to its strength and
ensurlng their own safety.
OF course, a great many jobs were
faund for Brown Shirts. The
patronage rewards were staggering,
and any reasonably competent party
member was paid off with some kind
OF position far better than anything
he could have hoped to get in fair
competition.
But there remained in the ranks
of the Brown Shirts a number who
proved too incompetent to be in
trusted with anything. I should
give the Nazis credit for trying hard
to take care Of them. But in too
many cases it was obviously impos-
slble. Their previous assets to the
movement had been their ability to
Slug in the streets, and their blind
loyalty to Hitler and the slogans.
Old Order Changeth.
But this was now being taken care
OF through orderly administrative
channels. The slugging was syste-
matized in concentration camps,
and the loyalty was governed by |
Herr Goebbels' propaganda machine, |
plus Herr Himmler's carefully ad-
ministered spy system.
There was nothing to do with the
neurotic misfits. The smooth boys
had taken over, as smooth boys al
ways do. For time the old Brown |
Shirts thronged the ante-rooms of
the chancellery, demanding to get in
to see Adolf to tell him their trou-
bles, insisting to the bored faces of
the new secretaries that if good old
Adolf only knew that Heinrich.
gauleiter of old Munich days, was |
waiting outside Adolf would surely
come bursting out of his private
office and lead good old Heinrich
back in by the arm.
But the new secretaries had to be
firm. Hitler now had a great state
to administrators were field mar
shals and diplomats and financial
experts clamoring for every minute
of his day, and, in fairness to him, I
think it should be said that he had
not the time, If he had the inclina-
ton, to listen to the personal woes
and wrongs of his old misfit buddies.
So many went away confused, a
few went away angry, and the Rus
sian pact, as I hope to show you,
touched off the Munich explosion.