WHO GOES NAZI?

BY DOROTHY THOMPSbN

r IS an interesting and somewhat ma-cabre parlor game to play at a largegathering of one's acquaintances: tospeculate who in a showdown would goNazi. By now, I think I know. I havegone through the experience many times-in Germany, in Austria, and in France.I have come to know the types: the bornNazis, the Nazis whom democracy itselfhas created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those whonever, under any conceivable circum-stances, would become Nazis.

It is preposterous to think that theyare divided by any racial characteristics.Germans may be more susceptible toNazism than most people, but I doubtit. Jews are barred out, but it is anarbitrary ruling. I know lots of Jewswho ,are born Nazis and many otherswho would heil Hitler to-morrow morn-ing if given a chance. There are Jewswho have repudiated their own ancestorsin order to become "Honorary Aryansand Nazis"; there are fuH-blooded Jewswho have enthusiastically entered Hitler'ssecret, service. Nazism has nothing todo with race and nationality. It appealsto a certain type of mind.

It is also, to an immense extent, thedisease of a generation-the generationwhich was either young or unborn atthe end of the last war. This is as trueof Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Ameri-cans as of Germans. It is the disease ofthe so-called "lost generation."Sometimes I think there are direct

biological factors at work-a type of edu-cation, feeding, and physical training

which has produced a new kind ofhuman being with an imbalance in hisnature. He has been fed vitamins andfilled with energies that are beyond thecapacity of his intellect to discipline.Be has been treated to forms of educa-tion which have released him from in-hibitions. His body is vigorous. Hismind is childish. His soul has beenalmost completely neglected.At any rate, let us look round the room.The gentleman standing beside the

fireplace with an almost untouched glassof whiskey beside him on the mantel-piece is Mr. A, a descendant of one ofthe great American families. There hasnever been an American Blue Book with-out several persons of his surname in it.He is poor and earns his living as aneditor. He has had a classical educa-tion, has a sound and cultivated taste inliterature, painting, and music; has nota touch of snobbery in him; is full ofhumor, courtesy, and wit. He was alieutenant in the World War, is a Re-publican in politics, but voted twice forRoosevelt, last time for Willkie. He ismodest, not particularly brilliant, astaunch friend, and a man who greatlyenjoys the company of pretty and wittywomen. His wife, whom he adored, isdead, and he will never remarry.He has never attracted any attention

because of outstanding bravery. But Iwill put my hand in the fire that nothingon earth could ever make hiin a Nazi.He would greatly dislike fighting them,but they could never convert him. . . .Why not?

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Beside him stands Mr. B, a man of hisown class, graduate of the same prepara-tory school and university, rich, a sports-man, owner of a famous racing stable,vice-president of a bank, married to awell-known society belle. He is a goodfellow and extremely popular. But ifAmerica were going Nazi he wouldcertainly join up, and early.

Why? . . . Why the one and not theother?

Mr. A has a life that is established ac-cording to a certain form of personal be-havior. Although he has no money,his unostentatious distinction and educa-tion have always assured him a position.He has never been engaged in sharp com-petition. He is a free man. I doubtwhether ever in his life he has done any-thing he did not want to do or anythingthat was against his code. Nazismwouldn't fit in with his standards and hehas never become accustomed to makingconcessions.

Mr. B has risen beyond his real abili-ties by virtue of health, good looks, andbeing a good mixer. He married formoney and he has done lots of otherthings for money. His code is not hisown; it is that of his class-no worse, nobetter, He fits easily into whatever pat-tern is successful. That is his sole meas-ure of value-success. Nazism as aminority movement would not attracthim. As a movement likely to attainpower, it would.The saturnine man over there talking

with a lovely French emigree is alreadya Nazi. Mr. C is a brilliant and em-bittered intellectual. He was a poorwhite-trash Southern boy, a scholarshipstudent at two universities where he tookall the scholastic honors but was neverinvited to join a fraternity. His brilliantgifts won for him successivelygovernmentpositions, partnership in a prominentlaw firm, and eventually a highly paidjob as a Wall Street adviser. He hasalways moved among important peopleand always been socially on the periph-ery. His colleagues have admired hisbrains and exploited them, but they have

seldom invited him-or his wife-todinner.

He is a snob, loathing his own snob-bery. He despises the men about him-he despises, for instance, Mr. B-becausehe knows that what he has had to achieveby relentless work men like B have wonby knowing the right people. But hiscontempt is inextricably mingled withenvy. Even more than he hates theclass into which he has insecurely risen,does he hate the people from whom hecame. He hates his mother and hisfather for being his parents. He loatheseverything that reminds him of hisorigins and his humiliations. He is bit-terly anti-Semitic because tlle social in-security of the Jews reminds him of hisown psychological insecurity.

Pity he has utterly erased from hisnature, and joy he has never known. Hehas an ambition, bitter and burning.It is to rise to such an eminence that noone can ever again humiliate him. Notto rule but to be the secret ruler, pullingthe strings of puppets created by hisbrains. Already some of them are talk-ing his language-though they havenever met him.There he sits: he talks awkwardly

rather than glibly; he is courteous. Hecommands a distant and cold respect.But he is a very dangerous man. Werehe primitive and brutal he would be acriminal-a murderer. But he is subtleand cruel. He would rise high in aNazi regime. It would need men justlike him-intellectual and ruthless.

But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He isthe product of a democracy hypocriti-cally preaching social equality and prac-ticing a carelessly brutal snobbery. Heis a sensitive, gifted man who has beenhumiliated into nihilism. He wouldlaugh to see heads roll.

I think young D over there is the onlyborn Nazi in the room. Young D is thespoiled only son of a doting mother.He has never been crossed in his life.He spends his time at the game of seeingwhat he can get away with. He is con-stantly arrested for: speeding and his

WHO GOES NAZI?

mother pays the fines. He has beenruthless toward two wives and his motherpays the alimony. His life ~ ~ insensation-seeking and theatricality. Heis utterly inconsiderate of everybody.He is very good-looking, in a vacuous,cavalier way, and inordinately vain. Hewould certainly fancy himself in a uni-form that gave him a chance to swaggerand lord it over others.

Mrs. E would go Nazi as sure as youare born. That statement surprises you?Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, socowed. She is. She is a masochist.She is married to a man who neverceases to humiliate her, to lord it overher, to treat her with less considerationthan he does his dogs. He is a promi-nent scientist, and Mrs. E, who marriedhim very young, has persuaded herselfthat he is a genius, and that there issomething of superior womanliness inher utter lack of pride, in her doglikedevotion. She speaks disapprovingly ofother "masculine" or insufficiently de-voted wives. Her husband, however, isbored to death with her. He neglectsher completely and she is looking forsomeone else before whom to pour herecstatic self-abasement. She will titil-late with pleased excitement to the firstpopular hero who proclaims the basicsubordination of women.

On the other hand, Mrs. F wouldnever go Nazi. She is the most popularwoman in the room, handsome, gay,witty, and full of the warmest emotion.She was a popular actress ten years ago;married very happily; promptly had fourchildren in a row; has a charming house,is not rich but has no money cares, hasnever cut herself off from her own happy-go-lucky profession, and is full of soundhealth and sound common sense. Allmen try to make love to her; she laughsat them all, and her husband is amused.She has stood on her own feet since shewas a child, she has enormously helpedher husband's career (he is a lawyer),she would ornament any drawing-roomin any capital, and she is as Americanas ice cream and cake.

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~~. I ~ut the butler who is passingthe drinks? I look atJames with amusedeyes. James is safe. James has beenbutler to the 'ighest aristocracy, con-siders all Nazis parvenus and com-munists, and has a very good sense for"people of quality." He serves the quiet

. editor with that friendly air of equalitywhich good servants always show towardthose they consider good enough to serve,and he serves the horsy gent stifHy andcoldly.

Bill, the grandson of the chauffeur, ishelping serve to-night. He is a productof a Bronx public school and high school,and works at night like this to help him-self through City College, where he isstudying engineering. He is a "prole-tarian," though you'd never guess it ifyou saw him without that white coat.He plays a crack game of tennis-hasbeen a tennis tutor in summer resorts-swims superbly, gets straight A's in hisclasses, and thinks America is okay anddon't let anybody say it isn't. He had a.brief period of Youth Congress com-munism, but it was like the measles. Hewas not taken in the draft because hiseyes are not good enough, but he wantsto design airplanes, "like Sikorsky." Hethinks Lindbergh is "just another pilotwith a build-up and a rich wife" and thathe is "always talking down America,like how we couldn't lick Hitler if wewanted to." At this point Bill snorts.

Mr. G is a very intellectual young manwho was an infant prodigy. He hasbeen concerned with general ideas sincethe age of ten and has one of thoseminds that can scintillatingly rationalizeeverything. I have known him for tenyears and in that time have heardhim enthusiastically explain Marx, socialcredit, technocracy, Keynesian econom-ics, Chestertonian distributism, and every-thing else one can imagine, Mr. G willnever be a Nazi, because he will neverbe anything. His brain operates quiteapart from the rest of his apparatus.He will certainly be able, however, fully

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to explain and apologize for Nazism ifit ever comes along. But Mr. G is al-ways a "deviationist." When he playedwith communism he was a Trotskyist;when he talked of Keynes it was tosuggest improvement; Chesterton's eco-nomic ideas were all right but he was toobound to Catholic philosophy. So wemay be sure that Mr. G would be aNazi with purse-lipped qualifications.He would certainly be purged.H is an historian and biographer.

He is American of Dutch ancestry bornand reared in the Middle West. He hasbeen in love with America all his life.He can recite whole chapters of Thoreauand volumes of American poetry, fromEmerson to Steve Benet. He knowsJefferson's letters, Hamilton's papers,Lincoln's speeches. He is a collector ofearly American furniture, lives in NewEngland, runs a farm for a hobby anddoesn't lose much money on it, andloathes parties like this one. He has aribald and manly sense of humor, is un-conventional and lost a college professor-ship because of a love affair. Afterwardhe married the lady and has lived happilyever afterward as the wages of sin.

H has never doubted his own authenticAmericanism for one instant. This ishis country, and he knows it from Acadiato Zenith. His ancestors fought in theRevolutionary War and in all the warssince. He is certainly an intellectual,but an intellectual smelling slightly ofcow barns and damp tweeds. He is themost good-natured and genial man alive,but if anyone ever tries to make thiscountry over into an imitation of Hitler's,Mussolini's, or Petain's systems H willgrab a gun and fight. Though H'sliberalism will not permit him to say it,it is his secret conviction that nobodywhose ancestors have not been in thiscountry since before the Civil War reallyunderstands America or would reallyfight for it against Nazism or any otherforeign ism in a showdown.But H is wrong. There is one other

person in the room who would fightalongside H and he is not even an Amer-

.,f,:,,.

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MAGAZINE

ican citizen. He is a young Germanemigre, whom I brought along to theparty. The people in the room look athim rather askance because he is soGermanic, so very blond-haired, so veryblue-eyed, so tanned that somehow youexpect him to be wearing shorts. Helooks like the model of a Nazi. -HisEnglish is flawed-he learned it only fiveyears ago. He comes from an old EastPrussian family; he was a member of thepost-war Youth Movement and after-ward of the Republican "Reichsbanner."All his German friends went Nazi-with-out exception. He hiked to Switzerlandpenniless, there pursued his studies inNew Testament Greek, sat under thegreat Protestant theologian, Karl Barth,came to America through the assistanceof an American friend whom he had metin a university, got a job teaching theclassics in a fashionable private school;quit, and is working now in an airplanefactory-working on the night shift tomake planes to send to Britain to defeatGermany. He has devoured volumes ofAmerican history, knows Whitman byheart, wonders whyso fewAmericans haveever really read the Federalist papers, be-lieves in the United States of Europe, theUnion of the English-speaking world, andthe coming democratic revolution all overthe earth. He believes that America isthe country of Creative Evolution onceit shakes off its middle-class complacency,its bureaucratized industry, its tentacle-like and spreading government, and setsitself innerly free.

The people in the room think he is notan American, but he is more Americanthan almost any of them. He has dis-covered America and his spirit is thespirit of the pioneers. He is furious withAmerica because it does not realize itsstrength and beauty and power. Hetalks about the workmen in the factorywhere he is employed. . . . He tookthe job "in order to understand the realAmerica." He thinks the men are won-derful. "Why don't you American in-tellectuals ever get to them; talk tothem?"

WHO GOES NAZI?

I grin bitterly to myself, thinking thatif we ever got into war with the Nazishe would probably be interned, whileMr. B and Mr. G and Mrs. E would bespreading defeatism at all such partiesas' this one. "Of course I don't likeHitler but . . ."

Mr. J over there is a Jew. Mr. J is avery important man. He is immenselyrich-he has made a fortune through adozen directorates in various companies,through a fabulous marriage, through aspeculative flair, and through a nativegift for money and a native love of power.He is intelligent and arrogant. Heseldom associates with Jews. He de-plores any mention of the "Jewish ques-tion." He believes that Hitler "shouldnot be judged from the standpoint ofanti-Semitism." He thinks that "theJews should be reserved on all politicalquestions." He considers Roosevelt "anenemy of business." He thinks "It wasa serious blow to the Jews that Frank-furter should have been appointed to theSupreme Court."The saturnine Mr. C-the real Nazi

in the room--engages him in a flatter-ingly attentive conversation. Mr. Jagrees with Mr. C wholly. Mr. J is defi-nitely attracted by Mr. C. He goesout of his way to ask his name-theyhave never met before. "A very intel-ligent man."

Mr. K contemplates the scene with asad humor in his expressive eyes. Mr.K is also a Jew. Mr. K is a Jew fromthe South. He speaks with a Southerndrawl. He tells inimitable stories. Tenyears ago he owned a very successfulbusiness that he had built up fromscratch. He sold it for a handsomeprice, settled his indigent relatives inbusiness, and now enjoys an income forhimself of about fifty dollars a week. Atforty he began to write articles aboutodd and out-of-the-way places in Amer-ican life. A bachelor, and a sad manwho makes everybody laugh, he travelscontinually, knows America from athousand different facets, and loves it ina quiet, deep, unostentatious way. He

is a great friend of H, the biographer.Like H, his ancestors have been in thiscountry since long before the Civil War.He is attracted to the young German.By and by they are together in thedrawing-room. The impeccable gentle-man of New England, the country-man-intellectual of the Middle West, the happywoman whom the gods love, the youngGerman, the quiet, poised Jew from theSouth. And over on the other side arethe others.

Mr. L has just come in. Mr. L is alion these days. My hostess was all of adither when she told me on the telephone," . . . and L is coming. You know it'sdreadjully hard to get him." L is a verypowerful labor leader. "M y dear, he is aman of the people, but really j ascinating ."

L is a man of the people and justexactly as fascinating as my horsy, bankvice-president, on-the-make acquaint-ance over there, and for the same reasonsand in the same way. L makes speechesabout the "third of the nation," and Lhas made a darned good thing for him-self out of championing the oppressed.He has the best car of anyone in thisroom; salary means nothing to him be-cause he lives on an expense account.He agrees with the very largest and mostpowerful industrialists in the countrythat it is the business of the strong toboss the weak, and he has made collec-tive bargaining into a legal compulsionto appoint him or his henchmen as"labor's" agents, with the power to taxpay envelopes and do what they pleasewith the money. L is the strongestnatural-born Nazi in this room. Mr.B regards him with contempt temperedby hatred. Mr. B will use him. L isalready parroting B's speeches. He hasthe brains of Neanderthal man, but hehas an infallible instinct for power. Inprivate conversation he denounces theJews as "parasites." No one has everasked him what are the creative func-.tions of a highly paid agent, who takes apercentage off the labor of millions ofmen, and distributes it where and as itmay add to his own political power.

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242 HARPER'S MAGAZINE

III scared speculator, the spoiled son, thelabor tyrant, the fellow who has achievedsuccess by smelling out the wind of suc-cess-they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don't go Nazi.Their race, color, creed, or social condi-tion is not the criterion. It is somethingin them.

Those who haven't anything in themto tell them what they like and what theydon't-whether it is breeding, or happi-ness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.

It's an amusing game. Try it at thenext big party you go to.

It's fun-a macabre sort of fun-thisparlor game of "Who Goes Nazi?"And it simplifies things-asking ,the.

question in regard to specific person-alities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, se-cure people never go Nazi. They maybe the gentle philosopher whose name isin the Blue Book, or Bill from City Col-lege to whom democracy gave a chanceto design airplanes-you'll never makeNazis out of them. But the frustratedand humiliated intellectual, the rich and

FLUSHING SUMMER

BY J. P. CHAMBERLAIN

BENEA TH slaphappy buildings we spent an unreal summerAt a never-neverconstructed by large corporations.Inside the Perisphere we were skeptical of bliss to-morrow.On the Futurama we waited for war.

A parachute tower carried us up, up, up;We saw the neonedFair spread belowLike an MGM dream of fairyland:Suddenly our stomachs went outfrom under as we fell.

We laughed at barkers, eyed the show girls' breasts,Drankforeign liquors and examined Wonders of Science;Were respectful before masterpiecesand the importance of art.Every day there were headlines in the papers.

Quick acquaintances we made, quick girls kissed in the eveningsAs a loudspeaker distributed canned moodsfrom the Dream Center.We witnessed the fall of people of importance,But did not forget ourfuture.

No, Norman Geddes could not distract us longOr siren Kaltenborn deceivewith words of honey:We did not need exhibits to tell to-morrow by.

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