“Whoever has the youth has the future,” said the cunning master of Germany many years ago, when he was still an obscure Austrian ex-corporal. This book damningly shows how far he has gone toward warping pliable young minds into the monstrous Nazi pattern. Here is a saddening record of infamy that has never been told before and that bodes ill for generations to come: family life poisoned and destroyed; a once proud school system debased; babes in arms pressed into a sinister system of regimentation that allows no child to draw a breath save by leave of The State.
We see a mother sigh in relief because the sun does not shine — today her child will not ask to play outside with his fellows, a joy enjoined from on high because his father was Jewish. We see hooliganism glorified, disreputable characters proclaimed as heroes. We see even arithmetic and drawing freighted with a hateful cargo of death. We see frail young frames crushed beneath the burden of heavy packs on forced marches. We see vile anatomy demonstrations with haunted Jewish children as models.
As incident piles on ghastly incident — substantiated for the most part by official documents — the reader loses any remaining feeling of security engendered by the broad reaches of the Atlantic, any wishful thinking about the passing character of Nazism. Here is a blueprint of barbarism being reared to endure. And somehow the crazy structure stands — for there is no restraint, no effective opposition.
Miss Erika Mann is peculiarly qualified to draw this picture of anguish with bold and unsparing strokes. Herself a member of the war generation of German youth, she knows at first hand the life of young people under the Empire, the Republic, and now the Third Reich. The daughter of the famous Nobel Prize winner, Thomas Mann, author of The Magic Mountain and the Joseph series, Erika Mann has accomplished what few children of famous parents achieve. She has become a distinctive, creative personality entirely in her own right. She went on the stage when very young, became a pupil of Max Reinhardt, and scored a resounding success with her political cabaret, Peppermill, which she wrote and directed herself, and which ran for more than a thousand performances in six countries. Since coming to the United States, she has lectured widely on Nazi Germany. The most heartening note in her new book is her faith in American democracy and the most touching section deals with the almost magic effect which residence in a free country exercises on two little refugee boys. It works both ways — this “Who has the youth has the future.”