Officially — when you say hello to your superiors in school or in a group — the words are accompanied by the act of throwing the right arm high; but an unofficial greeting among equals requires only a comparatively lax lifting of the forearm, with the fingers closed and pointing forward. This Hitler greeting, this “German” greeting, repeated countless times from morning to bedtime, stamps the whole day.
“Heil” really means salvation, and used to be applied to relations between man and his God; one would speak of ewiges Heil (eternal salvation), and the adjective “holy” derives from the noun. But now there is the new usage.
German children say their “Heil Hitler!” as carelessly as they greeted each other in the War days with “God scourge England!” They will swallow half the consonants sometimes, making a strange new word. Or they will make a crack out of the “German” greeting, and say “Drei Liter” (three liters) instead of “Heil Hitler.” That’s fun, and no one can hold it against them. But always, formally and outwardly, and inwardly besides, the German child lives in the echo of “Heil Hitler!”
You leave the house in the morning, “Heil Hitler” on your lips; and on the stairs of your apartment house you meet the Blockwart. A person of great importance and some danger, the Blockwart has been installed by the government as a Nazi guardian. He controls the block, reporting on it regularly, checking up on the behavior of its residents. It’s worth it to face right about, military style, and to give him the “big” Hitler salute, with the right arm as high as it will go. All the way down the street, the flags are waving, every window colored with red banners, and the black swastika in the middle of each. You don’t stop to ask why; it’s bound to be some national event. Not a week passes without an occasion on which families are given one reason or another to hang out the swastika. Only the Jews are excepted under the strict regulation. Jews are not Germans: they do not belong to the “Nation,” they can have no “national events.”
You meet the uniforms on the way to school: the black S.S. men, the men of the Volunteer Labor Service, and the Reichswehr soldiers. And if some of the streets are closed, you know that an official is driving through town. Nobody has ever told you that the high officials of other countries pass without the precautions of closed streets.
And here, where a building is going up, the workmen are gone — probably because of the “national event.” But the sign is on the scaffolding: “We have our Führer to thank that we are working here today. Heil Hitler!” The familiar sign, seen everywhere with men at work, on roads, barracks, sport fields. What does it mean to you? Do you think of a world outside, with workers who need not thank a Führer for their jobs? Certainly not — what you have, imprinted on your mind, is the sentence, deep and accepted as an old melody.
There are more placards as you continue past hotels, restaurants, indoor swimming pools, to school. They read “No Jews allowed” — “Jews not desired here” — “Not for Jews.” And what do you feel? Agreement? Pleasure? Disgust? Opposition? You don’t feel any of these. You don’t feel anything, you’ve seen these placards for almost five years. This is a habit, it is all perfectly natural, of course Jews aren’t allowed here. Five years in the life of a child of nine — that’s his life, after four years of infancy, his whole personal, conscious existence.
* * *
Through the Nazi streets walks the Nazi child. There is nothing to disturb him, nothing to attract his attention or criticism. The stands sell Nazi papers almost exclusively; all German papers are Nazi; foreign papers are forbidden, if they do not please the men at the top. The child won’t be surprised at their huge headlines: “UNHEARD-OF ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST GERMANY IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA!” “JEWISH GANGSTERS RULE AMERICA!” “THE COMMUNIST TERROR IN SPAIN SUPPORTED BY THE POPE!” “150 MORE PRIESTS UNMASKED AS SEXUAL CRIMINALS!”
“That’s how it is in the world,” the child thinks. “What luck we’re in, to have a Führer! He’ll tell the whole bunch — Czechs, Jews, Americans, Communists and priests — where to get off!”