Into The Darkness : Nazi Germany Today by Theodore Lothrop Stoddard

Author:Theodore Lothrop Stoddard [Stoddard, Theodore Lothrop]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
Publisher: http://inclibuql666c5c4.onion
Published: 1940-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

XIV. BEHIND THE WINTER-HELP

As the damp chill of the north European autumn deepens into dark, cold winter, there appear increasingly the manifold activities of the “Winterhilfe”—in plain English, the Winter-Help. Once a fortnight, every city, town, and village in the Reich seethes with brown-shirted Storm Troopers carrying red-painted cannisters. These are the Winter-Help collection-boxes. The Brown-Shirts go everywhere. You cannot sit in a restaurant or beer-hall but what, sooner or later, a pair of them will work through the place, rattling their cannisters ostentatiously in the faces of customers. And I never saw a German formally refuse to drop in his mite, even though the contribution might have been less than the equivalent of one American cent.

During these periodic money-raising campaigns, all sorts of dodges are employed. On busy street-corners comedians, singers, musicians, sailors, gather a crowd by some amusing skit, at the close of which the Brown-Shirts collect. People buy tiny badges to show they have contributed—badges good only for that particular campaign. One time they may be an artificial flower; next time a miniature dagger, and so forth. The Winter-Help campaign series reaches its climax shortly before Christmas in the so-called Day of National Solidarity. On that notable occasion the Big Guns of the Nazi Party sally forth with their collection-boxes to do their bit. I am told that it is considered quite an honor to drop an offering into the cannister wielded by so redoubtable a personage as, say, Hermann Goering.

These collection-box campaigns have been going on every winter since the Nazis came to power. So has another picturesque feature— the Winter-Help Lottery.

The sale of these lottery tickets is not restricted to certain periods; it goes on continuously through the entire autumn and winter season. They are sold by men in rather attractive uniforms with red-banded caps and dove-gray capes. Like the Brown-Shirts, these lottery-vendors cover every public place, even the best hotels.

The tickets are enclosed in tightly sealed orange envelopes stacked in rows on a little tray. The vendor approaches you, salutes politely, and offers his wares. Should you wish to buy, you pick an envelope at random and pay him fifty pfennigs—half a Reichsmark, which is worth somewhat over ten cents. Unlike his Brown-Shirt colleagues, the vendor is not insistent and the public does not feel constrained to buy.

There’s a good feature about this Winter-Help Lottery—you know right away if you “haven’t” won. So purchasers promptly tear open the envelope and take out their folded ticket. Nearly always they are confronted with a large blue “Nicht”, which means “No” and shows they haven’t a chance. Needless to say, that’s what I drew when I tried my luck. But plenty of persons seem to play the lottery often. In gay restaurants it’s quite a game for a whole group of diners to buy envelopes and greet each loser with peals of laughter—the vendor standing by and enjoying the fun.

However, buyers aren’t always losers. In the first place, out of the 6,000,000 tickets which form a series there are nearly 350,000 which carry small prizes called “premiums” ranging from I to 100 Marks.

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