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The man whom the Nazis were finally to convict of the crime was a feeble-minded Dutchman

who had been expelled from the Communist party of that country and had been a tramp all

over Europe. The police maintained that at his original examination he had told a detailed

story of setting fire to the curtains of the restaurant with matches and fire-lighters. But the

restaurant wasn't the only room that burned; there had been a heavy explosion in the session

chamber, and that vast place had become a mass of flames and explosive gases. The head of

the Berlin fire department had observed trains of gasoline on the floors of the building.

Immediately after the fire he announced that the police had carted away a truck-load of

unburned incendiary materials from the scene of the fire; and immediately after making this

announcement he was dismissed from his post.

Such were the details which the young radicals abroad put together and published in their

papers. But the papers which might have spread such news in Germany had all been

suppressed; their editors were in prison and many were being subjected to cruel tortures. A

sickening thing to know that your comrades, idealists whom you had trusted and followed,

were being pounded with rubber hose, danced upon with spiked boots, having their kidneys

kicked loose and their testicles crushed. Still more terrible to know that civil rights were being

murdered in one of the world's most highly developed nations; that the homeland of Goethe

and Bach was in the hands of men who were capable of planning and perpetrating such

atrocities.

XIII

The fire had the intended effect of throwing all Germany into a panic of fear. Not merely the

Nazis, but Papen and Hugenberg were denouncing the Red conspirators over the radio. All

the new techniques of propaganda were set at work to convince the voters that the Fatherland

stood in deadly peril of a Communist revolution. Friday was proclaimed the "Day of the

Awakening Nation." The Nazis marched with torchlights, and on the mountain-tops and on

high towers in the cities great bonfires burned—fires of liberation, they were called. "O Lord,

make us free!" prayed Hitler over the radio, and loud-speakers spread his words in every

market-square in every town.

On Sunday the people voted, and the Nazi vote increased from nearly twelve million to more

than seventeen million. But the Communists lost only about a million, and the Socialists

practically none. The Catholics actually gained, in spite of all the suppressions; so it appeared

that the German people were not so easy to stampede after all. The Nazis still didn't have a

majority of the Reichstag deputies, so they couldn't form a government without the support

and approval of the aristocrats. What was going to come out of that?

The answer was that Adi Hitler was going to have his way. He was going right on, day after

day, pushing to his goal, and nobody was going to stop him. Objections would be raised in the

Cabinet, and he would do what he had done in party conferences—argue, storm, plead,

denounce, and threaten. He would make it impossible for anyone else to be heard, raise such a

disturbance as could not be withstood, prove that he could outlast any opposition, that his

frenzy was uncontrollable, his will irrepressible. But behind this seeming madness would be a

watchful eye and a shrewd, calculating brain. Adi would know exactly what he was doing and

how far he could go; if the opposition became too strong, he would give way, he would make

promises—and then next day it would be discovered that his followers were going right ahead

doing what he wanted done, and he would be saying that he couldn't control them. If it was

something serious, like the Reichstag fire, he would know nothing about it, he would be

completely taken aback, astounded, horrified; but it would be too late—the building would be

burned, the victim would be dead, the die would be cast.

For more than a decade he had been training his followers to these tactics. They must be a

band of desperadoes, stopping at nothing to get their way. Nothing on earth or in heaven was

sacred except their cause; nothing was wrong that helped their cause and nothing was right

that delayed it for a single hour. Individually and collectively they must be the most energetic

and capable of criminals, also the most shameless and determined liars. They must be able to

say anything, with the most bland and innocent expression, and if they were caught they

must admit nothing, but turn the charge against the other fellow; he was the liar, he was the

crook, he alone was capable of every wrongdoing. Adolf Hitler had never admitted anything to

anybody; he had never told a lie in his life, had never committed any improper action; he was

a consecrated soul, who lived and was ready to die for one single cause, the triumph of

National Socialism and the liberation of the German Volk.

For ten years he had been organizing two private armies of young men, several hundred

thousand fanatics imbued with that spirit: the Sturm Abteilung, or Storm Division, and the

Schutz Staffel, or Defense Formation. They were the men who were going to carry out his will,

and by now they knew it so well that they could act while he was eating, resting, sleeping—even

while he was telling the world that he didn't want them to do what they were doing. Even if he

told them to stop they would go right ahead to crush the last foe of National Socialism inside

the Fatherland, and make the streets free to the brown battalions—the promise of that Horst

Wessel Lied which Hitler had taught them to sing.

XIV

A dreadful series of events to watch; and the fact that you were physically safe from them

wasn't enough for persons with any sensitiveness of soul. Hansi and Bess couldn't eat, they

couldn't sleep, they couldn't think about anything except what was happening to their friends

and associates at home. The Stormtroopers came when they pleased and did what they

pleased; the police had orders to co-operate with them. They came to people's homes at night

and took them away, and nothing more was heard of them. But gradually, through secret

channels, word began to leak out concerning the dreadful happenings in the cellars of the Nazi

headquarters in the Hedemannstrasse, in the Columbus-Haus, and in the old military prison

in the General-Papen-Strasse.

Papa wrote brief notes, carefully guarded; he said: "Don't worry about us, we have friends."

But Hansi and Bess knew a hundred people to worry about, and they read all the papers they

could get and tried to put this item of news together with that and guess about the fate of

their "monolithic party." They wrote anxious letters and then worried because no replies came.

What had become of this leader and of that? Surely some must have escaped, and it didn't take

long to get from Berlin to Paris.

Very difficult to practice music under such circumstances. What did the turn of a phrase

matter, when madmen were loose in one's homeland, when a great civilization was being

strangled. But the young couple had made engagements and had to keep them. They had to let

Lanny and Irma drive them to Juan, dress themselves properly, and go to Emily's villa and

play a program, not too mournful. When an encore was called for, Hansi played one of his

favorites, Achron's Jewish Prayer, and he put two thousand years of weeping and wailing into

it; it was quite wonderful, and the fashionable audience was deeply moved. The tears ran down