Word: gestapo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Amid the brilliant sunshine which Germans call "Hitler weather"-they used to call it "Kaiser weather"-the Führer rumbled off to Danzig in a six-wheeled juggernaut staff car, followed by two Gestapo cars in which guards sat fingering new-style German repeater rifles. They did not shoot when the sidewalk lines of brown-shirted storm troops holding people back in Danzig were repeatedly broken as crowds surged forward cheering. One break was made by a brawny group of Red Cross nurses. Whooping with excitement, young Danzig students risked their lives in dashes right to the juggernaut...
...thinkers turned to a fresh hope that might bring about war's end: the internal collapse of Germany. Outside the Reich, newspapers carried dispatch after dispatch pointing toward such a possibility. From Zurich came reports of rioting in Essen, Cologne and Dusseldorf; from Amsterdam a report that 500 Gestapo agents had been sent to put down strikes in the Krupp works at Essen. In Austria, Tyroleans were reported to have distributed 1,000,000 leaflets saying: "Hitler leads us to catastrophe-we want peace." The slogan, "Down with Hitler! Down with War!" was reported chalked on walls...
...Germany single issues were frequently banned from the newsstands. Last May Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler signed an order banning all future issues of TIME from Germany (TIME, May 29). The week before, TIME had carried Herr Himmler's picture on its cover, had chronicled his career. Newsstand circulation of the magazine amounted to about 75 copies...
Since the Axis treaty, Italians refer to Adolf Hitler as La Voce del Padrone ("The Master's Voice"), the Victor phonograph trademark whose secondary meaning is understood by everyone. Too many Gestapo men are around to mention the word "Hitler or "Adolf," but when Italians say "We were better off under our own padrone," the inference is that they believe Il Duce to have lost his hold on Italy and that the Führer is really the boss...
Whether he is describing the sick terror in a Berlin Jewish apartment, twilight in the New Forest, or a Gestapo going-over ("Mr. Emmanuel was not a very satisfactory subject, for he fainted almost at once, and twice again during the proceedings. But on each occasion a jug of cold water revived him, and they got to work again"), Novelist Golding works for the reader's sympathy with practiced skill. He has that sympathy in full measure long before his battered but indomitable hero gets safely home again...