Rotary Club Hears Hitler Denounced

Camden Courier-Post – February 10, 1938

Dictator Accused of Making War ‘Be-All and End-All of Human Evolution’

Adolph Hitler and his “brown barbarians” were accused of aiming to make war the “be-all and end-all of human evolution” in an address by Walter Schoenstedt, native-born German, world traveler and author, before the Camden Rotary Club in Hotel Walt Whitman,

Introduced by Leon H. Rose, Camden lawyer, Schoenstedt told the club members at their weekly luncheon he would not speak against Germany, but would “point out the evils of a dictatorship under Hitler, who is not Germany.”

After the meeting, Schoenstedt explained he came to this country a year ago to aid in preserving German culture and to warn this nation against Hitler, whom he described as a “destroyer of the ideals of great philosophers and teachers.”

Since coming to the United States, he has aided in the organization of German-American Leagues for Culture, he said. There is such an organization in New York, another In Philadelphia, and he plans one in Camden.

Goethe, Heine Banished

“The aim of the great. German philosophers,” said Schoenstedt, “was the happiness, of humanity, Today the foremost aim of the dictator is to make war the be-all and end-all of human evolution. Goethe and Heine have vanished from German school readers and the words of the new exponents of German culture have taken their place.

“The fight of the German rulers against thought and reason, against literature and science is not an accident. This hatred which we find in every speech concerning literature is expressed in the work of one of the leaders in the official German world of letters:

“When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver:

“In Germany they tell the young people there is no life without war. When young people in the grade schools or in high schools gather for their graduations, they see as they come into the auditorium huge posters on the walls bearing the slogan that is the spirit of German education today:

“We are born to die for Germany.”