Letters

In 1929, it was the rush on banks to liquidate assets; in 2020, it’s a rush on toilet paper. Different era, different priorities.

When I turn on the faucet, water runs out. The lights are still on. The stores are well stocked with all one needs, including toilet paper.

My home is not a pile of rubble, my family is asleep in their beds while I type this letter to the editor, ever so grateful for all that is working.

These days, the many hyperbolic comparisons to World War II brought to mind Germany at the end of the war, late April and early May 1945. The shortages and deprivations were very different then. To say that there was a shortage of everything is not true — there was nothing to be had.

Still, one shortage was easily solved: toilet paper. Hitler’s magnum opus, “Mein Kampf,” was now in wider circulation than ever before. Its gold-edged pages, gingerly handled, wiped many an arse while the sitter found relief perusing this seminal work, in installments, probably for the first time.

However, you had to be careful to not rush “Mein Kampf” precipitously into its last, best use. There were cases that ended badly. Better to wait until every last Nazi had changed into civilian clothes and escaped to South America, or become a valued colleague working with the United States atomic energy or missile development programs.

From 1933 to the bitter end, officials were required to hand out “Mein Kampf” on occasions of baptism, Confirmation, Communion, promotion, weddings, funerals, etc. “No German household should be without it,” Hitler let it be known as he collected royalties, having put a law on the books that the income, equivalent to $130 million, would be his tax free — until the day he committed suicide.

H.M. Löfken

Southampton