Wolf by Herbert J. Stern

Author:Herbert J. Stern [Stern, Herbert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510751101
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2020-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

Upon my return from Munich, my relationship with Lilian was as icy as the day I left. I tried flowers, her favorite candy, even a piece of fine jewelry—but nothing helped. Our relationship would have plummeted further but for calamitous events that overwhelmed the issues between us.

On October 24, 1929, universally known as Black Thursday, the New York stock market suffered huge losses. The markets steadied the next day only to collapse the following Monday and Tuesday. The losses that became known as Black Monday and Black Tuesday cost the New York stock market forty percent of its value. World markets lost more.

The impact on Germany was devastating. Unemployment doubled and then soon tripled to thirty percent of the work force. Twenty million were forced to feed their families from breadlines. As economic night fell over Germany, the sun rose on the NSDAP. The political and economic seesaw that led people away from us in prosperity tipped the other way, driving the desperate Germans to us.

During the next two months, our party made significant gains in local elections in two states: Lübeck and Thuringia. Goebbels won a seat on the Berlin city council. By the end of 1929 we had 178,000 dues-paying members. No longer a fringe party of unsuccessful putschists, we were now a political force.

*

While the difficulties of the world minimized the differences between us, politics remained a hot potato when we read the morning papers.

“I see that your boys have finally made the grade.” Lilian pointed to a headline. “Thuringia, of all places. Of course, it wasn’t in a main state like Prussia or Bavaria. Just the same, your friend Wolf must be delighted to have his first Nazi elected to a cabinet position anywhere in Germany.”

“It was a dozen years in the making,” I answered. “With one foot in the door in Thuringia, we were invited to join the majority.”

“What price did your party extract to form that coalition?”

“I see you are no longer the political neophyte. That was a savvy observation.”

“And the answer?”

“We head the ministries of the Interior and Education. As a matter of fact, Wilhelm Frick was appointed minister of both. Remember him?”

“He gave me a creepy feeling when I walked in on the two of you here. And I will always blame him for calling you back to Munich for every crisis. Him aside, why would Hitler have one man heading both ministries?”

“Frick is a party man. He is hellbent to cleanse the government of undesirables. This ensures that Nazi policies would be implemented.”

Frick wasted no time. He soon instituted prayer in the schools but was thwarted when the court ruled it unconstitutional. Thankfully, Lilian missed reading about that. Then Frick established himself as the chair of Race Questions and Race Science—Rassenfragen und Rassenkunde—at the university. Next he promulgated a racist decree: Wider die Negerkultur für deutsches Volkstum. This law was meant to protect the German blood and culture from being tainted by Negroes.

When Lilian did read about these efforts, she hit the ceiling.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.