No Babykrieg in Germany

Girls Ignore Demands for More Children

There is no ersatz for babies --- And the German baby crop, unlike cabbages, can't be increased at command of Fuehrer Hitler. Announcement in Berlin that the Reich expects every German woman to bear a child -- latest development of a plan started six years ago to increase the German birth rate -- now is met by revelation that the Nazi baby market is down, not up. Despite the Fuehrer's orders the German birth rate is falling and now is 11 per cent below the level needed to maintain a positive population balance. The figures are revealed in a new book, "Heil Hunger," published by Alliance Book Corp., New York. The book, written by Dr. Martin Gumpert, a practicing New York physician and a former head of a Berlin clinic, is based on scientific information which slipped through German censorship. "IN 1937, UNDER HITLER, FECUNDITY OF THE GERMAN WOMAN SANK TO ITS LOWEST LEVEL, 77.1 PER THOUSAND."

March 1940: This is what passed for a photo illustration before Photoshop was invented. And, according to latest compilations of the statistics department of the Reich, the number of mothers with four or more children, declined between the middle of 1933 and the beginning of 1939 by 160,000." Fall in the German birth rate follows the decline of the marriage rate. From the high level of 1934 (12.2 per thousand) marriages receded to 8.9 per thousand in 1937, according to Dr. Gumpert. Heinrich Himmler, head of all Nazi police, recently urged women to have children, either in or out of wedlock. While the birth rate is falling notwithstanding such pleas, says Dr. Gumpert, the mortality rate is rising. At least 80,000 more person now die annually in Germany than before the Nazi regime. In 1937 the death rate for infants under one year was 6.4 per cent. In New York it was 4.5 per cent. Declining German national health is reflected in other striking figures which the former Berlin clinic head has gathered. "They prove," he says, "that the German people, living for the last six years under the frightful pressure of war conditions, has reached the limit of its physical and psychic working capacity, and that if no relief comes it faces the prospect of a collapse much more dreadful than that of 1918."