CHAPTER ONE: BEFORE THE WAR

Cecil and Edith met at the Institute for Foreigners of the University of Berlin in November 1929. They came to Germany from very different backgrounds.

From Seminary Student to Industrial Worker
Cecil had grown up in Kansas, the son of an impoverished farmer. After college, determined to escape small-town life, he enrolled in the Union Theological Seminary in New York, planning to become a preacher. Cecil wrote:

When I decided to go to theological seminary, being very liberal and hearing that Union was tops in academic standing and low in dogma and evangelical fervor, I chose Union. Henry Ward, author of a text critical of our civilization and leaning toward radical reforms, –– just the opposite of the Republican Party at the time –– was a professor of Christian Ethics at Union, and that seemed just right for me. . . .
The second semester of my first year at Union [1926-27] was the beginning of a downhill slide in my life, a drifting away from the church, disappointment over the job in Harry Ward's office, the slow erosion of interest in the Seminary curriculum, contacts with student who were leaving the ministry in droves, going secular. . . .
Jerome Davis, professor of sociology or somesuch at the Yale Divinity School or at Yale University, a reformer after the mold of Norman Thomas and one of the men we had speak at Union, was organizing a student-in-industry project. Volunteers were to go to Detroit to work in the automobile industry. I put in my name, hitch-hiked and rode the night train to Detroit, was given a job at the Packard factory as punch-press operator.

In Detroit, Cecil met Kurt Bartusch,
. . . the organizer of German technicians who had jobs in American industry –– and our trade unions insisted that a comparable number of Americans get jobs in Germany, whether technicians or not. No technicians could be found, so the Germans recruited social science –– adventures between peoples –– students to take plain working jobs in Germany. I signed up, to leave in June [1928].

On Sundays, I was active in a liberal Lutheran church where Reinhold Niebuhr was the young pastor. He gave one sermon in German, one in English. . . . He had a dynamic style, could impress young people with his clever formulations of English syntax. Youth was all for him….
At that time Reinhold Niebuhr, who always thought of himself as a sort of advanced theologian –– his books are full of phrases, but his theology is misty –– wanted to come to Union and use the Seminary as a base of operations. He asked me to say a word for him to Henry Sloan Coffin, our president. I did. I went back to Union and sang the praises of Reinhold Niebuhr!…


In 1928, Niebuhr, a well-known pacifist and pro-labor radical thinker, was appointed professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary. It is not clear how much Jerome Davis, Kurt Bartusch, and Reinhold Niebuhr influenced Cecil's decision to go to Germany as a student-in-industry.
In 1928, Cecil dropped out of the seminary for lack of faith. In April of that year, he wrote to his mother and his sister Lucy:

I shall have enough resources to get to Germany, but I may later need some to travel around for a month or so. But that won't be until next summer.

A few days later, he wrote:

Word came Saturday that a job awaits me on a German boat in June. So I am all set to travel – perhaps a la freight!
Next year – during the months of August and September at least, I shall be free to travel around Europe on a bicycle or in the third-class coaches of a train. That is, if I don't come home at the end of the school year.

That June, he embarked on a ship to Germany.

The ship on which I had a job, in connection with my work in Germany as a Werkstudent, was the Bismarck. I had to wait around in N.Y. for two weeks till it was time to sail. My job was to help peel potatoes.

To finance his stay, he obtained a position as a Werkstudent or work-student under a German government program to invite foreigners to work in Germany. His first job was working in a coal mine in Silesia (now part of Poland).

I went to the village of Grube Marga, named after the enormous brown coal mine of that name. . . By the third week, since I was only part of a gang of eight or ten men who moved the tracks over, always nearer to the "wall" made by the steam shovels ("cups" on chains) as they ate into the sand and earth, filled the cars, I arranged to work only four or five days a week, and was going to spend the free day learning German. . . . Both Grube Marga village and Hörlitz have disappeared; the brown coal under them was worth a lot more than the villages! The seam of coal was about 90 feet thick, and the layer of sand and earth above the coal was about 60 feet thick. Talk about the environment! We made a veritable desert out of that part of the Niederlausitz, as the district was called.

Before the brown coal was pressed into briquettes, it had to be dehydrated to a great extent. To that end, a great furnace was kept burning (brown coal), and to remove the gases there was a high smoke-stack, about 90 meters high. . . .

After about two months with the track gang, I was assigned to work underground. Tunnels were dug through the brown coal at the bottom of the seam to drain as much water as possible out of the coal. We who worked down there wore company-provided boots, but not rubber boots! . . . Our job was to load coal onto little hand-pushed cars that ran on little tracks we laid. We would come up for sunlight and air––and Willi Kaiser would point over to the briquette factory to show director Klitzing using binoculars to watch the men in the gigantic pit––and us! He didn't care. . . .

I had little contact with the Big Boss, Direktor Klitzing, who used to ride around the rim of the pit on a horse and use a telescope to observe the men and machines at work. He was very wealthy, people said. At the other end of the social scale, however, I got well acquainted with a certain Willi in whose home I ate once. It was bare, and I mean bare. And Willi had to be content with a beer a week. His bread and butter sandwich that he brought to work was bread and lard, pure hog lard with a bit of salt. He ate big slices of rye bread. Their coffee was made of toasted rye grain. Willi did not have a bicycle; not many of the men could afford bikes, and there was only one motorcycle among the 250 men in the pit. The officials of the company had cars, about three or four of them.

Even though 1928 was still a "good year," the workers had to skimp to get by on their wages. I recall hearing and seeing men smoke one pack of cigarettes in a week, drink one beer a day, and few of them had a bicycle. I recall only one workers with a motorcycle, a motorbike, out of 200 or so at Grube Marga. One worker was a friend of mine. . . . The worker was Willi Kaiser, a fine man. He lived near the mine and I visited him in his home. The place was quite bare. The table was of wood and had no cloth. But the household was very clean. These are the "clean poor" such as those one can find also in the back country in the Appalachian mountains.

At Grube Marga, Cecil learned about the politics of German workers:

One day we had a holiday, or it was Sunday, and the two trade unions, the old standard Socialist union and the new militant Communist union, put on parades. I had to choose which union to join. Although I was anti-capitalist and radical, I knew instinctly that I did not belong to the Communists; so I walked with others. To me, that seemed to be the right place, as far as organizations go. . . . It is quite possible that in sitting back and waiting for the combatting elements in society to fight it out, I would be spiritually (mentally) ready to hang out the red flag at the right hour. Certainly I would not go to a meeting or give money or demonstrate to preserve the old order of bickering political parties and private ownership of property.

I went with the Social Democrats; they outnumbered the Communists about two to one. It was late summer 1928 . . . at that time the economy was improving, and there were few signs of social or political strain. Hitler's Brown Shirts had not grown in size and were unknown in the Lausitz, as far as I saw.

In December 1928, The Work Student organization transferred Cecil to the Köln-Deutz Motoren Fabrik across the Rhine River from the Cologne cathedral, where he worked until April 1929. My job was to ride and drive an electric platform cart with which to deliver parts used in the construction of diesel motors: cylinders, pistons, valves, etc. I picked them up at various stations in the factory and dropped them off at others. There was nothing complicated about the operation of the electric cart, but I noticed that I could not concentrate upon the pedal to move and the brake well all the time. I think I was rebelling somewhat about the monotony of the work!!

I drove a circulating delivery truck from one department of the factory (we made diesel motors for trucks and small boats) to the other, around and around. I would say "aufladen" [load up] when I meant "abladen" [unload] at the different delivery points and vice versa. The Cologne workers were much more eager to make fun at anyone's expense and to joke and laugh than the more sober, quieter, plain-talking Lausitzers. For instance, they would say "das" when I asked which article a word was, when in actuality it was "der" . . . .

One young man who spoke English was to sort of look after me. Through him I tried to get rid of my delivery job and get into the office to help them think out some ways of improving the efficiency of the plant! For instance, I wanted them to put asphalt on the rough cobblestones on the streets and passages in the factory! Not a chance! Nor should there have been; I would not have had enough plant-engineering knowledge or experience to have been of any use whatsoever!

Cecil also learned about cultural differences between Americans and Germans: There were and still are differences between my way of doing things and that of many middle-class Germans. For instance, one of the German exchange work students, back from the US, invited me to take a hike with him one Sunday. OK, I went. He had a couple of oranges. One he gave me, and I bit into the peel with my teeth, pulled off the peel in chunks (it was a Sun-Kist, California, orange) –– and the job was done. My acquaintance took out a pen knife, cut four or six times into the peel from top to bottom, started removing the pieces of peeling, each unbroken, and used his knife to pick off the last bit of white left on the naked orange!


From Worker to Student
Just as Cecil was becoming disgruntled as an industrial worker, another opportunity opened up:

In March 1929 I was suddenly offered a job in the central office of the Werkstudenten organization in Berlin –– where Klaus Mehnert and Bredemann were devoting some of their time looking after Americans and sending Germans. The head man of the whole Austauschstudentendienst (exchange student service, including academic students) was a certain Dr. Morsbach, a powerful personality, a big man, a great speaker. He was so strong and independent, I heard, that the Nazis disposed of him in their brutal way in 1933 or so. . . .

I was eager to run away from the proposed job. I had no desire to take up full-time responsibilities as a bureaucrat in an organization. Instead, since I had planned to do so, I said I wanted to see Europe, that I was going to ride a bicycle through much of Europe –– to fill the time before the fall semester, when I would enter a German university as a full- time academic student. . . .

That summer he rode his bicycle from Germany to Holland, Belgium, France, northern Italy, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland into the USSR. In Smolensk, he sold his bicycle and took a train to Vladivostok, then a ship to Japan. From there he returned to Germany. It was an epic voyage, which I have described elsewhere.

Upon his return, Cecil was awarded a fellowship from the German-American Student Exchange program to study in Berlin for the academic year 1929-30. Once there, he met and befriended Klaus Mehnert, the head of the student exchange program. (More on him later.) He rented a room in the house of Erich Koch-Weser, an important politician in the Weimar Republic who had been Interior Minister in 1919-21 and Minister of Justice in 1928-29. Cecil remembered:

In my day he was "ausser Dienst," [out of office] and was chairman of the Staatspartei, a liberal, bourgeois, middle party, an off-shoot of the Democratic Party, I think. There were 20 or more parties in the Weimar Republic. Proportional representation was, I think, the chief cause of the downfall of the Weimar Republic. It was possible to get 13 parties against every proposal, with eight in favor, which ever way you turned!

In addition to studying German, Cecil later recalled:

At the university I enrolled in the courses of the most famous professors; their lectures were well attended in large lecture halls –– maybe 300 seats, maybe more! The ones I recall best were Werner Sombart, the economist, and [Hermann] Oncken, the famous historian. The students were especially interested in his interpretation of the causes for and incidents relating to the outbreak of WWI. From all I have learned, the Austrian and French general staffs were most to blame for the war. Germany and Britain were "dragged in" –– rather fast, though!

At the University of Berlin, he met a woman he had known in New York:

At the university I ran with a crowd of nice people. My contact was Beatrice Hyman whose father was a lawyer for AMTORG, the Soviet trading agency and sort of consulate in New York; the US had no diplomatic relations with the USSR at the time but we did business with them just the same. I had known Beatrice when she was a student at Barnard College while I was at nearby Union. We had gone on a trip or two to a prison together with another Barnard student. With the latter I went home once, to Scarsdale, to a big house owned by a wealthy man. He had praised Mussolini for making the trains run on time and for bringing social peace to Italy. I was shocked beyond measure! Here was an open defense of fascism and an argument that went counter to my beliefs –– largely because of the castor oil methods of the fascists in torturing dissidents and labor leaders and writers of every kind but the most servile.


Edith in Germany
Edith came to Berlin by a very different route. Her father was a tailor who had moved from Russia to Constantinople, then to Paris, then to New York in 1919 with his wife and four daughters. Having grown up mostly in Paris, Edith considered herself French. Even after she became an American citizen in 1927, her letters to her mother and sisters were written in French.

Soon after reaching the United States, she quickly mastered English and stenography. Starting in October 1920, she was hired as French stenographer-translator for the United States Department of State at international conferences: the International Conference on Electrical Communications in Washington in 1920-21; the International Conference on the Limitation of Armaments (also known as the Washington Naval Conference) in 1921-22; the French Debt Commission in Washington and the 69th Congress of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva in 1925; the Conference of American States on Arbitration and Conciliation in Washington in 1928-29; the International Conference on the Safety of Life at Sea and the International Conference on the Red Cross and the Treatment of Prisoners of War in Geneva in 1928. In between international conferences, she worked for the Bogue-Laberge Concert Management Bureau in New York, where she met Arthur Honegger, Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud, and other famous musicians.

Years later, she wrote:
When my work in Geneva ended, I resolved to use the money I had saved to go to Germany, for I wanted to learn German. I spent a full year at Berlin – a year of intensive study. Besides attending courses at the University, I registered at the Institute for Foreigners, a department of the University of Berlin open exclusively to foreign students. People from all four corners of the globe assembled there: Brazilians and Koreans, Finns and South Africans. They were mostly people of adult years, professional people or artists. An atmosphere of real and sincere international amity pervaded the Institute. Foreign evenings of every sort were organized: Japanese evenings, Spanish evenings, etc., with native music and dances and costumes, inducing everyone to bring forth that which was best in the culture of his native country. The course of instruction was excellent; mornings devoted to language study, afternoons to illustrated lectures on German art, geography, history, literature, in one word "Deutsche Kultur". On Sundays long hikes were organized to the suburbs of Berlin, all woods and lakes, and on holidays longer trips to the South, or to the Baltic Coast, or the Rhine.

During the Christmas vacation I took a long trip through South Germany. Nuremberg with its medieval houses covered with snow on a dusky December afternoon left in my mind an indelible image. How can I describe the beauty of Vienna, that jewel among European cities, and Budapest and Prague?

Again, during the spring vacation of two months between semesters, I made another tour of Germany – to the southeast this time: Rothenburg and Dinkelsbühl, – left almost miraculously intact since the Middle Ages – Munich, Stuttgart, and Heidelberg buried under apple blossoms. When the new term began, I threw myself with renewed energy into my studies and at the end of the school year obtained the Institute's certificate of graduation, the diploma of teacher of German.

In Berlin, she took advantage of her student status to attend lectures by famous people, the most eminent of whom was Albert Einstein, invited by the International Students' Association in January 1930.

Years later, Cecil recalled:
Since Edith knew French so well and English, she wanted to add German to her list, and she wanted to rest up from the heavy pressure of work. When she worked, she worked! . . .

So she came to Berlin. Although when we were going together she told me her parents spoke French and not Jiddish, I found out later that Jiddish was the lingua franca of the household when no outsiders were present. So Edith had only –– and that was a big chore –– to convert her Jiddish over into High German. In a way, that was easy, in a way, hard, because she was self-conscious of the danger of mixing her Jiddish in with her German at just the wrong moment!

Cecil and Edith
It was at the University of Berlin that Cecil met Edith:

I think it was on 1 November 1929 that I stood in the corridor of the university in Berlin and talked with Beatrice when Edith Finkelstein came by. She was a very pretty girl, looked to be about 25 years of age, maybe younger. Her black eyes and winsome smile caught my eye. She hardly got my name and the fact that it was my birthday (I was 25 that day) when off she ran. Later she told me that she did not want to run interference with Beatrice. Now it happened that Beatrice had a very large nose, later reduced in size, was from a rich family, was not in the marriage market, was not highly sexed, was interested in communism. In a word, there were no electric sparks flying between me and Beatrice. Perhaps we were "old friends" and there was no mystery of newness. But with Edith it was a different story! . . . .

Here I was with an old student acquaintance, Beatrice, when a charming, semi- shy, beautiful girl came by. She too was on the lookout for close human contacts. She had been working very hard for the State Department at conferences in Washington, Geneva, and London –– and had accumulated enough money to take nine months or a year off from work to study and meet people. It was inconceivable that the two of us would not find time to sit together and talk. I was a Gentile but at the time Edith was fed up with "butter and egg" men, meaning Jewish businessmen, and she liked the idea of getting away from the money game and getting over into idealism, academic interests, learning, and radical ideas. I was the type! As for me, Edith was ideal: here was a successful professional woman who could relieve me of economic insecurity!! So we dated. We went to restaurants and I read to her from my long report of my trip to Japan and the USSR. She was quite interested in the USSR and had applied for a visa to go to Moscow but had been turned down, presumably because she was a single woman with no direct connections in Russia. And Beatrice had increased her interest in the communist system.

Berlin in the Late 1920s
Berlin in the 1920s was one of great cultural centers of Europe. As historian Eric D. Weitz writes:

Foreign observers were also attracted to the rapid pace and cultural vibrancy of Berlin, and fell in love with it. . . . Berlin modern was a kaleidoscope of diversity and excitement. . . . there was something particularly intense about Weimar Berlin. . . . In the 1920s Berlin finally came into its own as a great cultural center as well, one that easily rivaled Paris, London, and New York . . . The crush of people in a major urban setting coupled with bucolic havens around its many lakes and woods––all that gave Berlin the particular energy and creativity in the 1920s that every observer, foreign and domestic, noted (Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 78-79).

Cecil and Edith were aware of the political tensions in Germany:

Once Edith, Beatrice and I went to a political meeting of the Deutsche National party. There we heard how much territory Germany had lost in the Treaty of Versailles. The speakers were complaining bitterly. I could not resist –– at least I did not resist –– the temptation to refer in the discussion to the claims Germany had made in 1917 in the treaty with the Russians –– or was it in the spring of 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which Germany laid claim to a great deal of territory in the East. Nobody replied; the crowd looked at us as if we were outsiders, which we were! The next day, when Minister Koch-Weser heard of my outburst, he immediately called all of his acquaintances at the headquarters of the Deutsche National party to apologize and to disclaim any connection with such remarks by a student in his house!! Ho! Ho! I got the general idea, of course, that I should not get embroiled in German politics.

Berlin was also a hotbed of antisemitism, with gangs of Socialist and Communist youths fighting gangs of Nazi SA [Sturmabteilung] youths or Brown Shirts in the streets. In his memoirs written in 1975, Cecil described an incident:

Once Beatrice Hyman and Edith and I planned to go to a meeting. We watched the Brown Shirts (Hitler gangs) march. Jewish women, even old women, were being jeered at on the street. The girls talked about anti-Semitism – slurs against the Jews. I told Beatrice that Edith and I would take care of her, whereupon Edith said: "I'm Jewish too." Beatrice had a "Jewish nose" but Edith did not "look" Jewish – if there was such a thing, which there was not. I took Edith's remark in stride; it seemed to me that being Jewish was Ok, Ok, by me. When Lucy and Mother heard that I was going with a Jewish girl, they took the same position, had the same idea. In some senses, however, Edith was not "wholly Jewish." For instance, from much traveling and working with non-Jews, she had completely given up adherence to kosher eating, nor did she go to Jewish services, except Seder at home, which was always fully observed, and well.

Once, when we were on the street together, a dear old Jewish woman was insulted by some rowdy young men and epithets (nasty remarks) were yelled at her. She responded vigorously, shouted back. In her own way she fought back as best she could. I suggested that it would have been simpler to have ignored the boys and to have gone on her way. Edith disagreed; she thought the old woman did the right thing. Now that the world has seen anti-Semitism in the gas chambers (wholesale mass murder of the most systematic and cold-blooded kind), the question has come up: go along peaceably like sheep or fight with whatever you can find to the death. On a big scale, this was the choice of the Jews in Palestine in 66-70 A.D. At that time the choice was to fight to the death. Nowadays, the majority of Israelis are making the same choice under the slogan: Never again!" –– with reference to the docile attitudes of most Jews in Europe between 1933 and 1945.

He went on to list several incidents of antisemitism:

1. Vereinigung's [the student association's] trip to Italy: Exclusion of several Jewish American students.

2. Printed Announcements of students of political meetings with footnote "No Jews allowed."

3. Balls where Jews are excluded.

4. Last Nov. reprisal of students at the University because of some order issued by the Rector. Shouts against the Jews, J. students forced to jump out the window.

5. In Wittemberg Platz, before office of Lokal Anzeiger one evening last Nov. night of the elections walked with Cecil and I saw a mob insulting & pursuing old & poorly dressed Jewish woman. Reason: probably did she say something in regard to the elections?

6. Shep Stone [a friend of Cecil] told me that when he was in Nuremberg Xmas Day he went to a church to watch the services. Stayed in the back of the church. Was insulted and thrown out, because he did not kneel.

Edith's Family in Poland

While she was on a visit to Frankfurt, Edith received a letter from her relatives in Lodz, Poland, inviting her to join her father's family––Uncle Pesser Finkelberg, Aunt Rosa, Yitta, Hermann, Willy (19) & Maria (14)––for Passover.

She arrived on Friday April 11 at 6:30 am. Here is how she described the town: All the houses, like the whole town, grey dull, dirty, depressive. Not a bit of green. streets hardly paved, even to the main thoroughfare, the Pietrkowska.

Went to Café Esplanade & Grand Café on Pietrkowska. very nice, very elegant public.

Women as expensively & elegantly dressed in Lodz as in New York, an astounding contrast with their surroundings.

On Saturday, she went to visit her family:

Found Aunt Hilda [Hecht] in midst of prayer. She greeted me only after she had finished. . . No one expected me. Hurried breakfast (it had to over before 9) when bread should no longer be eaten. Met Uncle who came from Synagogue. . . . Evening visited Familie Finkelberg: Uncle Pesser, Aunt Rosa, Yitta, Hermann, Willy & Maria (14). Returned to Hecht for the Seder. They – especially Aunt – were pleased that I was au courant with ceremony.

For the first two nights she stayed in a hotel, but then she was invited to live with them. She described their home:

They all sleep in large room separated in 2 by thin wall. In one part the parents & Maria on a sofa at foot of beds; in the other, in one bed the boys in the other, the older girl. Windows shut. WC downstairs just as nauseating. Of course no water in house. Also in court to be pumped. Staircase, house, repulsive looking. Home inside, tho, nice. Aunt & Uncle very charming. Very kind to me, Uncle especially. Second Seder at their house. During course of week met other members of family. . . .

She learned of the discriminatory measures imposed on Jews by the Polish government: Taxes 5% on selling price of goods, not profits. Jews no right to own land, to go to University. 75% of them merchants. 90% textile factories in hands Jews, therefore high taxes by Govmt.

When she left Lodz, 20 people assembled at Finkelberg to bid her goodbye.

To New York

In the summer of 1930, Cecil and Edith returned to the United States and got married the following January. Cecil found a job teaching at the Manumit School, a progressive Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, N.Y. In December 1933, thinking back on his year in Germany, he wrote to his family:

That, I suppose, was the most tremendous year of my life – I struggled to learn to speak German, struggled to get a scholarship, struggled to live – I lived, saw, felt, and came out acquainted with people who teach sociology at N.Y.U. and who made an opening for me. Soon after returning to the United States, Cecil became a graduate student in sociology at Columbia University. In September 1933 he was hired as an adjunct professor and student advisor at the Washington Square College of New York University.

Until 1937, Edith continued to work as a stenographer-translator at the Sixth International Road Congress in Washington in 1930; the International Chamber of Commerce Conference inWashington in 1931; and the International Court of Arbitration in Vienna in 1931. She also worked for French newspapers––Le Matin and Le Petit Parisien––and for the French Line and the Franco-American Committee for the 1937 Paris World's Fair.

All the while, Cecil and Edith spoke to each other in German; as he later wrote: Edith and I spoke German to each other, to keep up with German usage and as a mental exercise . . . Speaking German kept us on even terms. Edith's English was much inferior to mine in usage and working, spoken vocabulary, and my French was not anything at all, so we spoke German.

After Cedric was born in 1937 and I was born four years later, Cecil spoke to us in German and Edith in French. Cedric and I learned English only after we moved to Germany in 1946.

Europe in the 1930s

Cecil and Edith retained their interest in German politics after their return to the United States.

As Cecil wrote in his memoirs,

When Hitler took power in the German gov't and the Reichstag building was set afire and the socialists and communists were refused entrance to the proceedings of the Reichstag, I was asked to make a major speech in the Labor Temple on 14th St. The audience was made up of radical-minded people, tense and worried. I too was deeply distressed and in private I once cried a bit –– to think that German civilization should be put under the totalitarian yoke, the trade unions destroyed, and parliamentary democracy crushed. I had seen it coming, however, with Brown Shirts marching in the streets, the economy in the worst of shapes, the parties, a curse of proportional representation under which any semi-unified group –– say vegetarians –– could muster enough votes (5%) in the country to get representation in the Reichstag. There were 20 or more parties. If eight were for a program, 12 would be against because their particular program was not included!

While they were in the United States, Europe was heading toward war (For a dramatic, day-by-day account of those years, see William L. Shirer, Berlin Diaries: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1941)).


Edith's sister
Thérèse had married Egon Steinberg (later Hill), an immigrant from Austria. Adolf Hitler, who had become chancellor of Germany in 1933, introduced conscription in March 1935 as part of his plan to prepare for war. In April of that year, after visiting Egon's family in Vienna and were preparing to travel to the United States, Egon wrote to Edith and to her parents and sisters.

Herewith an excerpt from his letter:

The political picture in Europe has been changing from day to day lately. Nevertheless, the danger of war is seen as imminent. The Saar vote brought many new supporters to the Nazis in Austria, but things have changed fundamentally since the introduction of compulsory military service in Germany. This report seemed like a bombshell here. Less among the intelligentsia, as something like this could have been foreseen, but mainly among the simple workers who still believed Germany's assurances of peace and who are suddenly faced with a harsh reality. Because the workers know that they will be the first victims. There is a lot of official talk about the introduction of general compulsory military service in Austria and this event is unlikely to be very far away. Since the introduction of general compulsory military service in Germany the Nazis lost many supporters among the workers. I have personally seen how workers who are Nazis suddenly walk around with trembling knees because they know that the war is not far away and that they will be the first victims. On the other hand, Moscow has suddenly become all the rage. Propaganda-minded articles appear in the newspapers, a Russian film is shown in Vienna again after many years (Chelyuskin) and the Red Army is patted on the back from all sides and with much recognition and is celebrated as the only angel of peace in Europe that will suddenly save the entire civilized world from the evil Nazis. There was even a talk on the radio recently that discussed Russia, the Red Army, and their message of peace with approval and that had special praise for Mr. Max Finkelstein, better known as Maxim Litvinov (Maxim Litvinov was the Foreign Minister of the USSR at the time).