The Nazis – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

Nazi Terror at Plotzensee Prison
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

A first-hand account as to the daily goings-on at Plötzensee Prison in Nazi Germany.

Written by Jan Valtin (alias of Richard Julius Hermann Krebs: 1905 – 1951), one of the few inmates to make his way out of that highly inclusive address and tell the tale. Valtin was a communist in the German resistance movement who later escaped to New York and published his memoir about his experiences in Nazi Germany Out of the Night (1941).

…the purpose of punishment is the infliction of suffering. In the tiny, dark cells of this Nazi prison that is the Law. It breaks some men, but it tempers others to a harder steel as the underground fight against Hitler goes on…

Food Shortages in the Third Reich
(Literary Digest, 1937)

Guns instead of butter! was the slogan General Hermann Goering, Commissar, sounded for the Four Year Plan destined to control production and slash imports as an aid to the Reich’s fantastic rearmament program.

For the great mass of Germans, however, the most serious food shortage since the war cast a pall over Christmas. Housewives got orders to specify their favorite dairy store, and to patronize it exclusively. By prohibiting any shopping around, officials found it possible to limit the distribution of butter and other fats. A census of of the size of families has already been taken, and, beginning January 1, every housewife must limit fat purchases to at least 80 per cent of her October buying.

The Fascist Mojo in Germany
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Shortly after that infamous day when Hitler was sworn into power in the offices of Paul Von Hindenburg, this article hit the newsstands in North America about the new mood that was creeping across Germany:

At no time since the war – not even during the occupation of the Ruhr – it is said, has there been so much militarist and nationalist propaganda in Germany as there is now.

Anti-militarist newspapers, it appears, are afraid, in Berlin at least, to raise their voice in protest because of the continual and ruinous suspensions by the authorities…

During the summer of 1938 the Nazis allowed one of their photo journalists out of the Fatherland to wander the American roads; This is what he saw…

The Merger of Austria With Germany
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

Here is an article about Austria’s Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg (1897 – 1977) and how the merger of Austria and Nazi Germany came about in 1838:

Behind the scenes that hard day at Berchtesgaden, revealing what Hitler said to Kurt Schuschnigg and what the Austrian public never knew about the German plot to stage in Vienna a counterpart of the Reichstag fire, as a pretext for invasion. Schuschnigg spoiled that pretext, only to furnish another one himself. Uncovering the plot in the hope of averting invasion he merely brought it on.

Gregor Strasser: the Nazi Rebel
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Attached is a profile of Hitler’s director of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), and their political differences that led to his resignation.

Hitler was hard hit when Gregor Strasser
(1892 – 1934), one of his ablest and oldest supporters, broke away from him. It happened in one of the fights between rival factions in the Hitlerite movement which followed losses sustained in the November Reichstag elections.

Profound gratitude is due Strasser from Hitler because when Hitler was released from jail, there was at least a nucleus of his party left, so that its reconstruction did not have to begin in a void. Gratitude was expressed on Hitler’s part for he made Strasser chief of his propaganda work.

He was murdered in his prison cell during the Night of Long Knives (June 30, 1934).

Read about the German POWs who were schooled in virtues of democracy.

The Murder of SA Stormtrooper Herbert Hentsch
(Literary Digest, 1933)

The Nazis were very adept at eating their young; here is but one of many stories from assorted German and Austrian newspapers that illustrated that point:

The Hitlerites, it alleges, have their own Army, police, and courts functioning independently of the constituted authorities, even defying those authorities, and passing death sentences by secret tribunals.

In Dresden dwelt a ‘shock-troop division’ man named Herbert Hentsch whose body was found not so long ago.

Various circumstances suggest that comrades of the dead young man within the Nazi ranks put him out of the way…

CLICK HERE to read about the beautiful Blonde Battalions who spied for the Nazis…

Atrocity Denials
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Shortly after Hitler had assumed power came the eyewitness accounts concerning all the assorted government sanctioned murders, public beatings, and confiscations that characterized the Third Reich.

This article appeared on the newsstands just three months after Hitler’s coronation and is offers numerous repudiations, abnegation and disavowals all composed by the polished pros of the regime; such as Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, Reichsbank Chairman Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, newspaper editor Fritz Klein of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, and the editor from the Nazi organ in Munich, the Voelkischer Beobachter, who opined

We hereby nail this shameless lie. The accusations remain unexampled in the history of any cultured nation.

Click here to read about the contempt that the Nazis had for Modern Art.

Click here to read about the similarities and differences between communism and fascism.

Dr. Walter Gross and the Office of Racial Policy
(Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

Although he may not be very well known outside Germany, few men rank higher in the Nazi regime than Doctor Walter Gross (1904 – 1945). As head of the Office of Racial Policy, he is Adolf Hitler’s expert on breeding, riding herd on the biological urge, and even deciding what children may be brought into the world.

Written by George Creel (1876 – 1953), this single page article outlines how this quack doctor was responsible for the enslavement of women sex slaves who were pressed into submission from all the conquered nations of Europe.

Gross killed himself at the end of the war.

Click here to read about the origins of Fascist thought…

Nazi Art Criticism
(Art Digest, 1936)

A few vile words concerning modernism and Jewish artists by a forgotten Nazi art critic named L.A. Schutze:

The only one who has created an art entirely born out of the Talmudistic spirit is Picasso, heir of Arabian decorative artists or the Jewish cabalists of Spain.

Click here to read about the contempt that the Nazis had for Modern Art.

The Nazi Hollywood
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

Written by a fellow who in later years would write a good deal about propaganda films, this article is amusing for the way it reported the total lack of humor and curiosity that Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (1897 – 1945) brought to the subject of film production; how they totally killed the existing German film industry and made film criticism illegal.

Read an article about the banning of all foreign artists in Hitler’s Germany…

Jokes in Germany
(Coronet Magazine, 1939)

Many of the jokes that are at present circulating the land of Hitleria cannot be told quite openly. They are whispered among friends. The traffic is great and much whispering going on. Many people want to laugh. It seems a necessary release…

– so observed one journalist fresh from his whirlwind journey through Hitler’s Germany. He could not help but notice how painfully neurotic the Reich leadership was of being the object of Teutonic derision. This article is about the underground society of whispered jokes that the Nazis created; the journalist was good enough to write-up a few so that the free-world could take place in the chuckle-fest (some were lost in translation).

The Nazis Liked to Flatter Themselves
(Pic Magazine, 1943)

The Nazis had so many wonderful things to say – about themselves…

Yes, we are barbarians! We want to be barbarians. It is an honorable title. We shall rejuvenate the world.

Gloom in Germany
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

But today there is no laughter in Germany. There are only smiles of disdain, contempt, conceit and strain. There is no humility, no pity, not much mercy. There is an odd sort of honor, an amazing egotism. But there is no will power nor need there be in a nation that knows but one man’s will.

CLICK HERE to read an article from 1923 about the abitious Adolf Hitler.

Horst Wessel: Nazi Martyr
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

This 1939 article from Ken Magazine lays out the real story of the life and death of Nazi storm trooper Horst Wessel (1907 – 1930) – not the one believed by the fascists he left behind:

In Germany, 1930, a pimp killed another pimp for cutting in on his girl’s territory. The slain pimp was a Nazi named Horst Wessel. Then Hitler came into power, and propagandist Goebbels, in need of a ‘Hell-rouser’, dreamed up the Wessel legend, made him an official Nazi martyr-saint.’

A German Dissident Recalls His Incarceration
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

Locked-up for having run an underground newspaper in the Third Reich, this is the harrowing story one dissident’s experiences in the Nazi concentration camps:

What a relief it would be to take that uniformed scoundrel by the throat, throw him on the floor, pay him back for his beating, yell ‘You dog! You swine!’

•Read about the American reporter who became a Nazi…•