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Topaz

3/2/2011 9:59:00 PM

Here is excerpt from his memoirs General Leon Degrelle, former
leader of the Belgian contingent of the Waffen-SS:

"One of the first labor reforms to benefit the German workers
was the establishment of annual paid vacation. The Socialist French
Popular Front, in 1936, would make a show of having invented the
concept of paid vacation, and stingily at that, only one week per
year. But Adolf Hitler originated the idea, and two or three times as
generously, from the first month of his coming to power in 1933.

Every factory employee from then on would have the legal right
to a paid vacation. Until then, in Germany paid holidays where they
applied at all did not exceed four or five days, and nearly half the
younger workers had no leave entitlement at all. Hitler, on the other
hand, favored the younger workers. Vacations were not handed out
blindly, and the youngest workers were granted time off more
generously. It was a humane action; a young person has more need of
rest and fresh air for the development of his strength and vigor just
coming into maturity. Basic vacation time was twelve
days, and then from age 25 on it went up to 18 days. After ten years
with the company, workers got 21 days, three times what the French
socialists would grant the workers of their country in 1936.

These figures may have been surpassed in the more than half a
century since then, but in 1933 they far exceeded European norms. As
for overtime hours, they no longer were paid, as they were everywhere
else in Europe at that time, at just the regular hourly rate. The
work day itself had been reduced to a tolerable norm of eight hours,
since the forty-hour week as well, in Europe, was first initiated by
Hitler. And beyond that legal limit, each additional hour had to be
paid at a considerably increased rate...

Dismissal of an employee was no longer left as before the
sole discretion of the employer. In that era, workers' rights to job
security were non-existent. Hitler saw to it that those rights were
strictly spelled out. The employer had to announce any dismissal four
weeks in advance. The employee then had a period of up to two months
in which to lodge a protest. The dismissal could also be annulled by
the Honor of Work Tribunal. What was the Honor of Work Tribunal? Also
called the Tribunal of Social Honor, it was the third of the three
great elements or layers of protection and defense that were to the
benefit of every German worker. The first was the Council
of Trust. The second was the Labor Commission.

The Council of Trust was charged with attending to the
establishment and the development of a real community spirit between
management and labor. In any business enterprise, the Reich law
stated, the employer and head of the enterprise, the employees and
workers, personnel of the enterprise, shall work jointly towards the
goal of the enterprise and the common good of
the nation...

Thus from 1933 on, the German worker had a system of justice
at his disposal that was created especially for him and would
adjudicate all grave infractions of the social duties based on the
idea of the Aryan enterprise community. Examples of these violations
of social honor are cases where the employer, abusing his power,
displayed ill will towards his staff or impugned the honor of his
subordinates, cases where staff members threatened work harmony by
spiteful agitation; the publication by members of the Council of
confidential information regarding the enterprise which they
became cognizant of in the course of discharging their duties.
Thirteen Tribunes of Social Honor were established, corresponding
with the thirteen commissions...

From then on the worker knew that exploitation of his physical
strength in bad faith or offending his honor would no longer be
allowed. He had to fulfill certain obligations to the community, but
they were obligations that applied to all members of the enterprise,
from the chief executive down to the messenger boy. Germany's workers
at last had clearly established social rights that were arbitrated by
a Labor Commission and enforced by a Tribunal of Honor. Although
effected in an atmosphere of justice and moderation, it was a
revolution.

This was only the end of 1933, and already the first effects
could be felt. The factories and shops large and small were reformed
or transformed in conformity with the strictest standards of
cleanliness and hygiene; the interior areas, so often dilapidated,
opened to light; playing fields constructed; rest areas made
available where one could converse at one's ease and relax during
rest periods; employee cafeterias; proper dressing rooms.

With time, that is to say in three years, those achievements
would take on dimensions never before imagined; more than 2,000
factories refitted and beautified; 23,000 work premises modernized;
800 buildings designed exclusively for meetings; 1,200 playing
fields;
13,000 sanitary facilities with running water; 17,000 cafeterias.
Eight hundred departmental inspectors and 17,300 local inspectors
would foster and closely and continuously supervise these renovations
and installations.

The large industrial establishments moreover had been given
the obligation of preparing areas not only suitable for sports
activities of all kinds, but provided with swimming pools as well.
Germany had come a long way from the sinks for washing one's face and
the dead tired workers, grown old before their time, crammed into
squalid courtyards during work breaks.

In order to ensure the natural development of the working
class, physical education courses were instituted for the younger
workers; 8,000 such were organized. Technical training would be
equally emphasized, with the creation of hundreds of work schools,
technical courses and examinations of professional competence, and
competitive examinations for the best workers for which large prizes
were awarded.

To rejuvenate young and old alike, Hitler ordered that a
gigantic vacation organization for workers be set up. Hundreds of
thousands of workers would be able every summer to relax on the
sea. Magnificent cruise ships would be built. Special trains would
carry vacationers to the mountains and to the seashore. The
locomotives that hauled the innumerable worker-tourists in
just a few years of travel in Germany would log a distance equivalent
to fifty-four times around the world!

The cost of these popular excursions was nearly insignificant,
thanks to greatly reduced rates authorized by the Reichsbank.

Didn't these reforms lack something? Were some of them flawed
by errors and blunders? It is possible. But what did a blunder amount
to alongside the immense gains?

That this transformation of the working class smacked of
authoritarianism? That's exactly right. But the German people were
sick and tired of socialism and anarchy. To feel commanded didn't
bother them a bit. In fact, people have always liked having a strong
man guide them. One thing for certain is that the turn of mind of the
working class, which was still almost two-thirds non-Nazi in 1933,
had completely changed.

The Belgian author Marcel Laloire would note: "When you make
your way through the cities of Germany and go into the working-class
districts, go through the factories, the construction yards, you are
astonished to find so many workers on the job sporting the Hitler
insignia, to see so many flags with the Swastika, black on a bright
red background, in the most populous districts." The Labor Front that
Hitler imposed on all of the workers and employers of the Reich was
for the most part received with favor.

And already the steel spades of the sturdy young lads of the
National Labor Service could be seen gleaming along the highways. The
National Labor Service had been created by Hitler out of thin air to
bring together for a few months in absolute equality, and in the same
uniform, both the sons of millionaires and the sons of the poorest
families. All had to perform the same work and were subject to the
same discipline, even the same pleasures and the same physical and
moral development. On the same construction sites and in the same
living quarters, they had become conscious of their commonality, had
come to understand one another, and had swept away their
old prejudices of class and caste. After this hitch in the National
Labor Service they all began to live as comrades, the workers knowing
that the rich man's son was not a monster, and the young lad from the
wealthy family knowing that the worker's son had honor just
like any other young fellow who had been more generously
favored by birth. Social hatred was disappearing, and a socially
united people was being born.

Hitler could already go into factories, something no man of the
so-called Right before him would have risked doing, and hold forth to
the mob of workers, tens of thousands of them at a time, as in the
Siemens works. In contrast to the von Papens and other country
gentlemen, he might tell them, "In my youth I was a worker like you.
And in my heart of hearts, I have remained what I was then." In the
course of his twelve years in power, no incident ever occurred at any
factory Adolf Hitler ever visited. When Hitler was among the people,
he was at home, and he was received like the member of
the family who had been most successful."




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