ADOLF HITLER, TIME MAGAZINE'S 1938 MAN OF THE YEAR

[Guest guest]

Adolf Hitler, Time Magazines's 1938 Man of the Year

 

On January 2, 1939, Time Magazine published its annual Man of the

Year issue. For the year 1938, Time had chosen Adolf Hitler as the

man who " for better or worse " (as Time founder Henry Luce expressed

it) had most influenced events of the preceding year. The cover

picture featured Hitler playing " his hymn of hate in a desecrated

cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the

Nazi hierarchy looks on. " This picture was drawn by Baron Rudolph

Charles von Ripper, a German Catholic who had fled Hitler's Germany.

 

The Man of the Year cover had been a Time tradition since 1927 when

Charles Lindbergh became the first Man of the Year. Ironically,

Lindbergh was an admirer of Hitler and Nazi Germany; he became active

in the America First organization which opposed America entering

World War II in the fight against Adolf Hitler.

 

 

 

 

The article about the 1938 Man of the Year in the January 2, 1939

issue of Time is quoted below:

 

 

 

January 2, 1939

 

----

--

 

Adolf Hitler

 

Greatest single news event of 1938 took place on September 29, when

four statesmen met at the Führerhaus, in Munich, to redraw the map of

Europe. The three visiting statesmen at that historic conference were

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain, Premier Edouard

Daladier of France, and Dictator Benito Mussolini of Italy. But by

all odds the dominating figure at Munich was the German host, Adolf

Hitler.

 

Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army,

Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped

on that day at Munich the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless

foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years. He had torn

the Treaty of Versailles to shreds. He had rearmed Germany to the

teeth--or as close to the tooth as he was able. He had stolen Austria

before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world.

 

All these events were shocking to nations which had defeated Germany

on the battlefield only 20 years before, but nothing so terrified the

world as the ruthless, methodical, Nazi-directed events which during

late summer and early autumn threatened a world war over

Czechoslovakia. When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia

to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe's

defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern

Europe by getting a " hands-off " promise from powerful Britain (and

later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938's Man of the

Year.

 

Most other world figures of 1938 faded in importance as the year drew

to a close. Prime Minister Chamberlain's " peace with honor " seemed

more than ever to have achieved neither. An increasing number of

Britons ridiculed his appease-the-dictators policy, believed that

nothing save abject surrender could satisfy the dictators' ambitions.

 

Among many Frenchmen there rose a feeling that Premier Daladier, by a

few strokes of the pen at Munich, had turned France into a second-

rate power. Aping Mussolini in his gestures and copying triumphant

Hitler's shouting complex, the once liberal Daladier at year's end

was reduced to using parliamentary tricks to keep his job.

 

During 1938 Dictator Mussolini was only a decidedly junior partner in

the firm of Hitler & Mussolini, Inc. His noisy agitation to get

Corsica and Tunis from France was rated as a weak bluff whose

immediate objectives were no more than cheaper tolls for Italian

ships in the Suez Canal and control of the Djibouti-Addis Ababa

railroad.

 

Gone from the international scene was Eduard Benes, for 20 years

Europe's " Smartest Little Statesman. " Last President of free

Czechoslovakia, he was now a sick exile from the country he helped

found. Pious Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Man of 1937, was

forced to retreat to a " New " West China, where he faced the

possibility of becoming only a respectable figurehead in an

enveloping Communist movement. If Francisco Franco had won the

Spanish Civil War after his great spring drive, he might well have

been Man-of-the-Year timber. But victory still eluded the

Generalissimo and war weariness and disaffection on the Rightist side

made his future precarious.

 

On the American scene, 1938 was no one man's year. Certainly it was

not Franklin Roosevelt's; his Purge was beaten and his party lost

much of its bulge in the Congress. Secretary Hull will remember Good

Neighborly 1938 as the year he crowned his trade treaty efforts with

the British agreement, but history will not specially identify Mr.

Hull with 1938. At year's end in Lima, his plan of Continental

Solidarity for the two Americas had a few of its teeth pulled.

 

But the figure of Adolf Hitler strode over a cringing Europe with all

the swagger of a conqueror. Not the mere fact that the Führer brought

10,500,000 more people (7,000,000 Austrians, 3,500,000 Sudetens)

under his absolute rule made him the Man of 1938. Japan during the

same time added tens of millions of Chinese to her empire. More

significant was the fact Hitler became in 1938 the greatest

threatening force that the democratic, freedom-loving world faces

today.

 

His shadow fell far beyond Germany's frontier. Small, neighboring

States (Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, The Balkans,

Luxembourg, The Netherlands) feared to offend him. In France Nazi

pressure was in part responsible for some of the post-Munich anti-

democratic decrees. Fascism had intervened openly in Spain, had

fostered a revolt in Brazil, was covertly aiding revolutionary

movements in Rumania, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania. In Finland a

foreign minister had to resign under Nazi pressure. Throughout

eastern Europe after Munich the trend was toward less freedom, more

dictatorship. In the U.S. alone did democracy feel itself strong

enough at year's end to give Hitler his come-uppance.

 

The Fascintern, with Hitler in the driver's seat, with Mussolini,

Franco and the Japanese military cabal riding behind, emerged in 1938

as an international, revolutionary movement. Rant as he might against

the machinations of international Communism and international Jewry,

or rave as he would that he was just a Pan-German trying to get all

the Germans back in one nation, Führer Hitler had himself become the

world's No. 1 International Revolutionist--so much so that if the oft-

predicted struggle between Fascism and Communism now takes place it

will be only because two revolutionist dictators, Hitler and Stalin,

are too big to let each other live in the same world.

 

But Führer Hitler does not regard himself as a revolutionary; he has

become so only by force of circumstances. Fascism has discovered that

freedom--of press, speech, assembly--is a potential danger to its own

security. In Fascist phraseology democracy is often coupled with

Communism. The Fascist battle against freedom is often carried

forward under the false slogan of " Down with Communism! " One of the

chief German complaints against democratic Czechoslovakia last summer

was that it was an " outpost of Communism. "

 

A generation ago western civilization had apparently outgrown the

major evils of barbarism except for war between nations. The Russian

Communist Revolution promoted the evil of class war. Hitler topped it

by another, race war Fascism and Communism both resurrected religious

war. These multiple forms of barbarism gave shape in 1938 to an issue

over which men may again, perhaps soon, shed blood: the issue of

civilized liberty v. barbaric authoritarianism.

 

Lesser men of the year seemed small indeed beside the Führer.

Undoubted Crook of the Year was the late Frank Donald Coster (ne

Musica), with Richard Whitney, now in Sing Sing Prison, as runner-up.

Sportsman of the Year was Tennist Donald Budge, champion of the U.S.,

England, France, Australia. Aviator of the Year was 33-year-old

Howard Robard Hughes, diffident millionaire, who flew a sober,

precise, foolproof course 14,716 miles round the top of the world in

three days, 19 hours, eight minutes.

 

Radio's Man of the Year was youthful Orson Welles who, in his famous

The War of the Worlds broadcast, scared fewer people than Hitler, but

more than had ever been frightened by radio before, demonstrating

that radio can be a tremendous force in whipping up mass emotion.

Playwright of the Year was Thornton Wilder, previously a precious

litterateur, whose first play on Broadway, Our Town, was not only

ingenious and moving, but a big hit. To Gabriel Pascal, producer of

Pygmalion, first full-length picture based on the wordy dramas of

George Bernard Shaw, went the title of Cineman of the Year for having

discovered a rich mine of dramatic material when other famed

producers had given up all hope of ever tapping it. Men of the Year,

outstanding in comprehensive science were three medical researchers

who discovered that nicotinic acid was a cure for human pellagra:

Drs. Tom Douglas Spies of Cincinnati General Hospital, Marion Arthur

Blankenhorn of the University of Cincinnati, Clark Niel Cooper of

Waterloo, Iowa.

 

In religion, the two outstanding figures of 1938 were in sharp

contrast save for their opposition to Adolf Hitler. One of them, Pope

Pius XI, 81, spoke with " bitter sadness " of Italy's anti-Semitic

laws, the harrying of Italian Catholic Action groups, the reception

Mussolini gave Hitler last May, declared sadly: " We have offered our

now old life for the peace and prosperity of peoples. We offer it

anew. " By spending most of the year in a concentration camp,

Protestant Pastor Martin Niemöller gave courageous witness to his

faith.

 

It was noteworthy that few of these other men of the year would have

been free to achieve their accomplishments in Nazi Germany. The

genius of free wills has been so stifled by the oppression of

dictatorship that Germany's output of poetry, prose, music,

philosophy,art has been meagre indeed.

 

The man most responsible for this world tragedy is a moody, brooding,

unprepossessing, 49-year-old Austrian-born ascetic with a Charlie

Chaplin mustache. The son of an Austrian petty customs official,

Adolf Hitler was raised as a spoiled child by a doting mother.

Consistently failing to pass even the most elementary studies, he

grew up a half-educated young man, untrained for any trade or

profession, seemingly doomed to failure. Brilliant, charming,

cosmopolitan Vienna he learned to loathe for what he called its

Semitism; more to his liking was homogeneous Munich, his real home

after 1912. To this man of no trade and few interests the Great War

was a welcome event which gave him some purpose in life. Hitler took

part in 48 engagements, won the German Iron Cross (first class), was

wounded once and gassed once, was in a hospital when the Armistice of

November 11, 1918 was declared.

 

His political career began in 1919 when he became Member No. 7 of the

midget German Labor Party. Discovering his powers of oratory, Hitler

soon became the party's leader, changed its name to the National

Socialist German Labor Party, wrote its anti- Semitic, anti-

democratic, authoritarian program. The party's first mass meeting

took place in Munich in February 1920. The leader intended to

participate in a monarchist attempt to seize power a month later; but

for this abortive Putsch Führer Hitler arrived too late. An even less

successful National Socialist attempt--the famed Munich Beer Hall

Putsch of 1923--provided the party with dead martyrs, landed Herr

Hitler in jail. His incarceration at Landsberg Fortress gave him time

to write the first volume of Mein Kampf, now a " must " on every German

bookshelf. (Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess helped write it. Imprisonment

also gave Hitler time to perfect his tactics. Even before that time

he got from his Communist opponents the idea of gangster-like party

storm troopers; after this the principle of the small cell groups of

devoted party workers.)

 

Outlawed in many German districts, the National Socialist Party

nevertheless climbed steadily in membership. Time-honored Tammany

Hall methods of handing out many small favors were combined with

rowdy terrorism and lurid, patriotic propaganda. The picture of a

mystic, abstemious, charismatic Führer was assiduously cultivated.

 

Not until 1929 did National Socialism win its first absolute majority

in a city election (at Coburg) and make its first significant showing

in a provincial election (in Thuringia). But from 1928 on, the party

almost continually gained in electoral strength. In the Reichstag

elections of 1928 it polled 809,000 votes. Two years later 6,401,016

Germans voted for National Socialist deputies while in 1932 the vote

was 13,732,779. While still short of a majority, the vote was

nevertheless impressive proof of the power of the man and his

movement.

 

The situation which gave rise to this demagogic, ignorant, desperate

movement was inherent in the German Republic's birth and in the

craving of large sections of the politically immature German people

for strong, masterful leadership. Democracy in Germany was conceived

in the womb of military defeat. It was the Republic which put its

signature (unwillingly) to the humiliating Versailles Treaty, a brand

of shame which it never lived down in German minds.

 

That the German people love uniforms, parades, military formations,

and submit easily to authority is no secret. Führer Hitler's own hero

is Frederick the Great. That admiration stems undoubtedly from

Frederick's military prowess and autocratic rule rather than from

Frederick's love of French culture and his hatred of Prussian

boorishness. But unlike the polished Frederick, Führer Hitler, whose

reading has always been very limited, invites few great minds to

visit him, nor would Führer Hitler agree with Frederick's contention

that he was " tired of ruling over slaves. " (Bismarck, the Iron

Chancellor, also complained of the submissiveness of German

character.)

 

In bad straits even in fair weather, the German Republic collapsed

under the weight of the 1929-34 depression in which German

unemployment soared to 7,000,000 above a nationwide wind drift of

bankruptcies and failures. Called to power as Chancellor of the Third

Reich on January 30, 1933 by aged, senile President Paul von

Hindenburg, Chancellor Hitler began to turn the Reich inside out.

Unemployment was solved by: 1) a far-reaching program of public

works; 2) an intense re-armament program, including a huge standing

army; 3) enforced labor in the service of the State (the German Labor

Corps); 4) putting political enemies and Jewish, Communist and

Socialist jobholders in concentration camps.

 

What Adolf Hitler & Co. did to Germany in less than six years was

applauded wildly and ecstatically by most Germans. He lifted the

nation from post-War defeatism. Under the swastika Germany was

unified. His was no ordinary dictatorship, but rather one of great

energy and magnificent planning. The " socialist " part of National

Socialism might be scoffed at by hard- & -fast Marxists, but the Nazi

movement nevertheless had a mass basis. The 1,500 miles of

magnificent highways built, schemes for cheap cars and simple

workers' benefits, grandiose plans for rebuilding German cities made

Germans burst with pride. Germans might eat many substitute foods or

wear ersatz clothes but they did eat.

 

What Adolf Hitler & Co. did to the German people in that time left

civilized men and women aghast. Civil rights and liberties have

disappeared. Opposition to the Nazi regime has become tantamount to

suicide or worse. Free speech and free assembly are anachronisms. The

reputations of the once-vaunted German centres of learning have

vanished. Education has been reduced to a National Socialist

catechism.

 

Pace Quickened. Germany's 700,000 Jews have been tortured physically,

robbed of homes and properties, denied a chance to earn a living,

chased off the streets. Now they are being held for " ransom, " a

gangster trick through the ages. But not only Jews have suffered. Out

of Germany has come a steady, ever- swelling stream of refugees, Jews

and Gentiles, liberals and conservatives, Catholics as well as

Protestants, who could stand Naziism no longer. TIME's cover, showing

Organist Adolf Hitler playing his hymn of hate in a desecrated

cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the

Nazi hierarchy looks on, was drawn by Baron Rudolph Charles von

Ripper, a Catholic who found Germany intolerable.

 

Meanwhile, Germany has become a nation of uniforms, goose- stepping

to Hitler's tune, where boys of ten are taught to throw hand

grenades, where women are regarded as breeding machines. Most cruel

joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German

capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism

as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from

radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state

also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated

outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied.

Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing

Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced

from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial

orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-

pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken

over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a

procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism.

 

When Germany took over Austria she took upon herself the care and

feeding of 7,000,000 poor relations. When 3,500,000 Sudetens were

absorbed, there were that many more mouths to feed. As 1938 drew to a

close many were the signs that the Nazi economy of exchange control,

barter trade, lowered standard of living, " self-sufficiency, " was

cracking. Nor were signs lacking that many Germans disliked the

cruelties of their Government, but were afraid to protest them.

Having a hard time to provide enough bread to go round, Führer Hitler

was being driven to give the German people another diverting circus.

The Nazi controlled press, jumping the rope at the count of

Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels, shrieked insults at real

and imagined enemies. And the pace of the German dictatorship

quickened as more & more guns rolled from factories and little more

butter was produced.

 

In five years under the Man of 1938, regimented Germany had made

itself one of the great military powers of the world today. The

British Navy remains supreme on the seas. Most military men regard

the French Army as incomparable. Biggest question mark is air

strength, which changes from day to day, but most observers believe

Germany superior in warplanes. Despite a shortage of trained officers

and a lack of materials, the German Army has become a formidable

machine which could probably be beaten only by a combination of

opposing armies. As testimony to his nation's puissance, Führer

Hitler could look back over the year and remember that besides

receiving countless large-bore statesmen (Mr. Chamberlain three

times, for instance), he paid his personal respects to three kings

(Sweden's Gustaf, Denmark's Christian, Italy's Vittorio Emanuele) and

was visited by two (Bulgaria's Boris, Rumania's Carol--not counting

Hungary's Regent, Horthy).

 

Meanwhile an estimated 1,133 streets and squares, notably Rathaus

Platz in Vienna, acquired the name of Adolf Hitler. He delivered 96

public speeches, attended eleven opera performances (way below par),

vanquished two rivals (Benes and Kurt von Schuschnigg, Austria's last

Chancellor), sold 900,000 new copies of Mein Kampf in Germany besides

selling it widely in Italy and Insurgent Spain. His only loss was in

eyesight: he had to begin wearing spectacles for work. Last week Herr

Hitler entertained at a Christmas party 7,000 workmen now building

Berlin's new mammoth Chancellery, told them: " The next decade will

show those countries with their patent democracy where true culture

is to be found. "

 

But other nations have emphatically joined the armaments race and

among military men the poser is: " Will Hitler fight when it becomes

definitely certain that he is losing that race? " The dynamics of

dictatorship are such that few who have studied Fascism and its

leaders can envision sexless, restless, instinctive Adolf Hitler

rounding out a mellow middle age in his mountain chalet at

Berchtesgaden while a satisfied German people drink beer and sing

folk songs. There is no guarantee that the have-not nations will go

to sleep when they have taken what they now want from the haves. To

those who watched the closing events of the year it seemed more than

probable that the Man of 1938 may make 1939 a year to be remembered.

 

End of Article