Guten Morgen. I’m Marte Bruger and this is … Diese Woche. In the wake of last April’s election and Adolf Hitler’s surprise second place finish to Paul von Hindenburg, I decided to find out what the country was thinking in putting Adolf Hitler so close to the presidency. We began our journey in Hoisdorf, a small manufacturing town, about 30 kilometers from Hamburg, to find out why almost 13 million Germans — 13,418,517 to be exact — so alienated from the German political center, so disenfranchised, that they supported this Austrian firebrand? We stood outside the gates of a large plant that makes seals and gaskets for automobiles and asked those during shift change to share their thoughts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are disgusted with the whole political system. They’re all terrible, so why not give Mr. Hitler a chance. He says the things other politicians won’t say. I don’t agree with everything he writes, but the country sure needs some shaking up. Look at the mess we’re in. France, England laugh at us. I want Germany to be groß and to do the laughing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If I own a strudel shop, why should the government tell me I must serve Jews? It is my choice. Do they wake up early, before the sun, to make the strudel? Nein! I do. I don’t go into their restaurants and order pork, do I, and ask them to serve me milk with my schnitzel. But if I did, nobody would make them make it for me. It’s Jewish correctness.
BRUGER: Maybe you can see. A man just drove by and gave us the Nazi salute.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (saluting to car) Yeah, exactly! I don’t have a problem with all the Jews, but we don’t have the best zionists. Plus, they do control the banks and I have been really hurting lately. It would seem normal that I would blame them. My father helped build this country, and his children and have been forgotten.
BRUGER: Claus Rook, a foreman at the plant, believes Jews would go elsewhere.
ROOK: They need to go back where they came from.
BRUGER: Where would that be?
ROOK: Well, from what I hear, New York, there are lots of them and lots of trash, too. [He laughs]. And Palestine. There are a lot of them there, too.
BRUGER: The passions of Hitler supporters were no less apparent as we headed to the south and to Giesing, outside of Munich. Kent Horst, a history teacher, who voted for Ernst Thälmann but was coming around to Hitler, was upset with the country’s standing in the world.
HORST: Democracy, so called, failed us, and I’m not anti-semitic — not at all. But ich bin sauer when people say I am or don’t like foreigners. I just like Germans first.
BRUGER: An unidentified male just stopped by.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hindenburg had his chance, so maybe Hitler should be given a chance. I am so tired of the left saying I don’t know nichts. I know Jews are in all the universities and have the nicest apartments. And there are Jewish gangs, which nobody talks about.
BRUGER: We went to Berlin and to a man named Martin OLLIE, a tailor.
OLLIE: Business is good.
BRUGER: You’ve seen an improvement?
OLLIE: Yes, yes. People spend more money. A man bought two suits the other day. Before Hitler, I doubt the man would have bought one.
BRUGER: Ollie’s girlfriend, Siggi, who refused to give her last name, loves that Hitler speaks his mind.
SIGGI: I love it that he’s not controlled by any one party — he is a very different personality and it makes him uniquely suited for the job, and he doesn’t give a crap what anyone thinks.
BRUGER: I see a man spitting outside Temple Beth El, waving his fist in the air, screaming, “Juden, Juden!” Sir, may I talk to you?
UNIDENTIFIED: Ja.
BRUGER: If, and nobody can conceive of it actually happening, there was proof that Hitler and the Nazis were planning on rounding up Jews and sending them to concentration camps, would you believe it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nein.
BRUGER: Why not?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just have that much faith in Adolf Hitler, right or wrong. He will take care of the problem but he will not go that far. Maybe some of the bad ones will go, maybe 100, but that’s all.
BRUGER: There is a lot of anger right now — left and right, socialist and communist, Jew and non Jew, so it’s clear to me, that what we must learn to listen and reason with people with whom we disagree … for the sake of Germany. Up next, Runder Tisch weighs in on the political divide. Along with our regular panel, joining us will be an American contingent: Industrialist Henry Ford, Father Charles Coughlin from New York City, and international pilot Charles Lindbergh.
Barry Friedman is a comedian in Tulsa, Okla., and blogs at FriedmanOfThePlains.com.
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2018
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652