MEMORANDUM ON STRENGTH THROUGH JOY REPORT Summary: This report describes the activities of the German organiz tion, Strength through Joy. This is the recreational branch of the Labor Front, Nazi substitute for independent labor unions, and includes twenty million workers. This orginization operates in six major fields: 1. The promotion of cheap excursions varying from day trips to ocean cruises, including the construction and operation of ocean liners and excursion boats. 2. The promotion of better working conditions and recreational facilities in private industrial plants through the voluntary cooperation of plant owners. 3. The promotion of sports including the con- struction of facilities, the orginization of com- petitions, and instruction. 4. The furnishing of inexpensive tickets to theaters, concerts, festivals etc., the actual conduct of such activities, and the promotion of leisure time participation in the arts by workers. 5. Promotion of popular educational waok for workers in all fields including Nazi indocrination. 6. The development of a low price automobile. Comment: The activities described in this report are, for the most part, in themselves desirable and many of them are a part of our own leisure time program as carried on through federal, local and private agencies and more particularly through the WPA recreational projects in this country. It is the motivation, method, and goal that is different. Here are a few of the more obvious differences: Motivation: Their leisure time activities are intended to compensate workers for low wages and divert them from any effort to increase them. Ours are intended to assist workers to realize their own potentialities and so become aware of their conditions and of their own capacity as citizens and workers in a democracy to improve them. Control: Their program is imposed from above on an authoritarian basis with no par- |