The Nazis at Danzig The final figures in the election
for the Danzig Diet give the_Nazis 43 seats, not 44 as at first seemed likely, • as against their previous 38, leaving them five short of -the figure needed to give them a two-thirds majority and so enable them to carry amendments to the con- stitution. But for ordinary purposes they of course control the Diet, whose total membership is 72, and there .is disturbing evidence of the campaign of repression they are relentlessly waging. The opposition Press is muzzled, Nazi propaganda is carried- on assiduously and all other propaganda banned; and teaching in the schools has a definitely Nazi bias. All these characteristics of National :Secialism are familiar enough in Germany, but Danzig, though German, is not Germany. It is a -Free City for which the League of Nations has some responsibility, and nothing could be more repugnant to -all the ideals. for which the League stands than the party dictatorship established for the first time. by the Nazis iii Danzig.' The League Council's pciwer to intervene in the internal administration of the Free City is severely limited, but the impression is inevitably created that the .Danzig Nazis can defy Geneva with impunity. Actually they are only demonstrating their unfitness to wield power. .And the Nazi attacks on Poles in Danzig are producing 'retaliation in the shape of attacks by Poles on Germans in the Polish Corridor.'
Previous page
