JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2804

The first six months of 1933 were extraordinary, and the progress and decline of civilization could be followed very closely by reading the January-June volume of the great political and arts magazine, The Nation. The magazine’s home quarters was at 20 Vesey Street—right across the very narrow street from the long and skinny graveyard of Trinity Church—and is generally considered one of finest Liberal/Left publication of the first half of the 20^th century.

These six months were furious—just as FDR was inaugurated March 4 and began the spectacular 100 Days (rising from his inscrutable state in the months between the election and inauguration to a man of spectacular action and vision), the Japanese ran amok in Manchuria, and of course Hitler and the Nazis were very busy establishing the apparatus for the ending of the German Republic and beginning the practice for killing and exterminating millions. (Hitler was appointed Chancellor January 30; the “Protection of the German People” act of February 4 which enabled Nazi censorship; then the Reichstag Fire Decree in which Hindenburg suspended the constitution on February 28; followed by the opening of Dachau on March 15, the Aryan Law on April 7, the vast Book Burning on May 10, and deeper into the abyss.)

The Nation reports on almost all of that—and quickly, as well. For example the political cartoon of the naked and puckering Nazis attending their book burning appeared in the May 17 issue, the first available after May 10 event. As a matter of fact, the coverage of Hitler and the Nazis was pervasive–as it should have been–throughout the volume, as a look at the table of contents will tell:

In this great coverage there’s the following interesting piece by Oscar Jaszi (May 17, as with the book burning cartoon below) in which he facetiously inspects the possibilities of the near-future of the Nazis, including a bit on the removal of three-quarters of all of the concentration camps in 1937–this last part is interesting because Dachau was the first KZ opened just weeks before this article appeared; no doubt the author was expecting more, and he was of course mega-tragically correct: