History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust

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Headline: Hitler's Threat

Publication Date: Thursday, March 23, 1933
Historical Event: Albert Einstein Quits Germany, Renounces Citizenship
This database includes 1,047 articles about this event
Tags: Gannett full page downloadable; Refugees and Immigration; Early Acts of Persecution
Article Type: Editorial or Opinion Piece
Newspaper: The Hutchinson News
Location: Hutchinson, Kansas
Page Section and Number: 4
Author/Byline: Editorial staff
Article Text: There can be little doubt but what Chancellor Adolf Hitler is a threat to the peace and well-being of Europe. Any way the situation is regarded, he is a menace. If not as an actual war threat, then to the true spirit of culture as exemplified in that highly cultured country, Germany.

Reports which come from outstanding educational and scientific leaders in Germany are filled with alarming accounts. Einstein will not return, for Hitler is persecuting the Jews. There are others, including Lion Feuchtwanger. There are reports of the censoring of news sent by American newspaper correspondents, and of persecution of those correspondents.

Herr Feuchtwanger reports that a Hitler leader recently said that German school children should be taught that a German streetwalker is better than a British or an American inventor. Hitler is quoted as saying that the Jews, having conquered Europe and America, are now starting to conquer Japan.

The sabers are being rattled. Hatred is being preached not only to adults but to children. No one opposes patriotism, but the doctrine of hatred is not calculated to stimulate patriotism only in the breasts of Germans. It is one of the surest ways to war, this excessive nationalism. It often gets out of hand. Many countries were guilty of fostering It during the war. Few before the war, except in central Europe, where such a condition always seems to exist.

We preached sensational nationalism and hatred of our enemies during the war, but the flood of propaganda before we entered came from countries already engaged. All that was bad enough.

Perhaps Herr Hitter's militaristic attitude and doctrines of hate will help to destroy what surely must be the fast vestiges of the illusions cherished by the idealists that we fought a war to end wars.

Germany, under Hitler is turning its back on education, culture, and peace and heading towards that state of mind which is so inflammable that it cannot help but catch fire, even if it is spontaneous combustion.

One of the chief hopes is that Herr Hitler, who, according to a great majority of American interviewers and observers, is pretty much of a demagogue and visionary political evangelist, won't last long. Certainly Germany does not appear safe in his hands.

It is to be hoped that the country of Beethoven, Einstein, and other Nobel prize winners, of much that is highest in culture does not turn its back on the spirit of these men and listen only to the saber-rattling militarists and haters.
History Unfolded Contributor: Jennifer R.
Location of Research: Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)