10 January 2025

This story was publish on July 2, 1934. In this story, William Philip Simms is predicting Hitler's days to be numbered and that the German people would turn against Hitler in sufficient numbers to topple him. That obviously didn't play out that way, but there was a lot of wishful thinking the American press that the Hitler problem would solve itself internally by the German people.

Nazi Terror Reign Only Stopgap, Says Simms

WASHINGTON, July 2 - His back to the wall and feeling the dear life to hold on to his power, the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, has called his aid the dictator's last resort: A reign of terror.

That this will do no more than postpone the ultimate showdown is widely believed. So desperate is Germany's political, economic and financial plight, close observers agree, that only statesmanship of the highest order can save her from disaster.

Hitler may surmount the present flare-up. For the moment he holds the whip hand. The arms of the country apparently are momentarily at his command. But no one takes seriously the statement of Minister of Aviation Von Goering that "the second Nazi revolution is over, with Hitler more firmly in the saddle than ever."

Foreign observers are convinced the revolution has only begun. Already Hitler has been obliged to call on the reichswehr, or regular army, and the police for support against his own Brown Shirts.

This, it is observed, a a Mussolini might do and get away with it, because Mussolini is one of the world's great statesmen. But Hitler is not, and the German reichswehr, at heart unsympathetic, is not expected to carry him much longer than he is shown to be dead timber.

Germany's troubles are not superficial. They can not be cured by such remedies as Hitler applied Saturday. I spent some time in Germany last spring and cabled this newspaper that, "far from sitting on top of the world, Hitler is precariously perched upon a powder keg and that power keg is Germany's 65,000,000 people."

I reported that despite the then relatively calm surface there was going on ceaseless intrigue between individual Nazi leaders, between Nazi factions and between groups of Nazis and other powerful and patriotic groups which are not Nazis, but which, for the moment, were being forced to toe the line.

This intrigue still is going on. The shootings and suicides of Saturday, at best, will only tend to drive it back under cover. The reason is that untold numbers of German citizens are bitterly hostile to Hitler and his whole scheme of things and are only biding their time to free themselves from it.

On top of all this, Germans are beginning to realize, in spite of one of the world's tightest censorships, that financial and economic collapse threatens them at home and hostile encirclement abroad, and that all this, in large measure, is due to Hitlerism.

Bit business, which at first backed Hitler, is turning against him. His policies have forced them to take on specific numbers of unemployed, which they say they could not afford, on the one hand, and lost them their foreign markets, due to boycott, on the other.

There is growing dissatisfaction among white collar workers, farmers, and petty bourgeoisie. The spread between what the farmer gets for his products and what the city consumer must pay for them is greater than ever.

Real wages are falling. Prices are rising. Greater unemployment, dwindling exports and inflation are in prospect.

The miracle worker who was going to scrap the treaty of Versailles, restore the colonies, give Germany her place in the sun, remake the race, and bring back good times, more and more Germans are beginning to feel, has failed to perform. The new day he promised has turned out to be a false dawn, and unless he soon makes good, not even the reichswehr can prop him in power.

Should Hitler fall, a military dictatorship backed by the standing army regarded as the likeliest bet, with a monarchy take over later on.