Evening star., 1940-03-25
BY w. L. WHITE.

BY w. l.. WHITE.
COPENHAGEN CBy MaiD The
day I arrived in Berlin I had my
first glimpse of the Brown Shirts.
I did not know then that it would
also be my last really good look at
them. It was the climax of the
winter Help" campaign, national
tag day through which the Nazis
raise some money which goes to
help the poor through the cold sea-
son and also builds good will for the
movement by advertising the "hu-
manitarian aims of the party
It was Sunday and the Brown
Shirts had built a swastika- -draped
platform in the middle of Unter den
Linden. They had speakers and a
sound truck. and aforementioned
storm troopers thronged the side
walks jingling big cups under the
noses of the passersby to shake them
down for the fund.
Their Day to Howl.
It was obviously their day to
howl; I did not then realize that
during the entire year they now have
only one other-the Munich Beer
Hall reunion. I studied the faces
of the brown-shirted troopers care
fully. They were obviously tough
eggs. But in addition they were
very simple men-the natural raw
material for sincere slogan-shouting
Their uniforms were shabby, and be-
cause of their color they reminded
me of the last bedraggled rag-tag
and bobtail of an American bonus
army.
But because these men are tough
as we'll as simple, you can't change
slogans on them too rapidly. which
is what their party had to do.
When you give them clubs and
slogans and send them out into the
streets to use them both on the
Communists, they can do a work.
manlike job. But if you presently
take away the clubs and change the
old sologans (both having outlived
their usefulness). you are going to
have trouble, particularly if you can't
deliver to these simple skull-crackers
enough jobs for all. Particularly if
they know that, sitting in the best
tables of the Adlon and Bristol
Hotels are all the parties, smoothies
and big shots, lunching with
paunchy industriaIsts and visiting
firemen and lunching very we'll in
deed, even if it is all legal.
Because at these hotels you can
get ample supplies of very good fish
and game which are so rare that
nobody has bothered to ration them,
and so expensive that the average
German cannot dream of having
them. So no one who has money
need holler about being limited to
500 grams of meat a week if he
can eat his fill of delicious filet of
sole, or roast goose, or broiled
chicken or lobster Cat a price of
IS gold for a tiny one a New York
restaurant might serve for IS cents)
So the party smoothies eat very
well, thank you, washing their goose
liver (unrationed) down with the
best Rhine wines, and even though
It is all legal you can't expect the
old misfit Brown Shirts to like it.
But the final straw to them was
the Russian alliance.
Mocked Their Pride.
That made a mockery of the only
thing they had left-pride in their
heroism when they traded punches
with the Communists in defense of
Adolf Hitler in the very early days
OF the movement, when everybody
was tough: before the smoothies got
aboard.
So when, last November, that ex-
plosion occurred in the Munich
beer hall just 20 minutes after Adolf
Hitler had left, following his talk to
his old street-fghting comrades.
1t produced more theories among
American correspondents than there
were fragments to the bomb.
But despite later arrests and even
alleged confessions, the theory that
cannot be proved, that certainly
will never be printed inside Germany,
and the one that is hardest to
laugh off, is the one that makes
the most sense:
Revolt within the party itself on
the part of some of the old comrades,
the old Brown Shirt street fighters
whose chief virtue had been an
ability to knock the block off Com
munists, real or fancied, in a gang
brawl; the old street fighters who
were suddenly confronted with a
treaty making allies out of these
Communists.