Purge Speech

Eight Deputies of the German Reichstag, or slightly more than 1% of its membership, are known to have been shot during Chancellor Hitler's blood purge (TIME, July 9). Thanking their stars last week, the other 99% turned out to cheer him. They were under no compulsion except that Reichstag Speaker Hermann Wilhelm Goering, whose secret police did much of the shooting, announced that any Deputy who did not appear would have to produce a doctor's certificate of illness.

No sluggard, Herr Hitler had written his great Purge Speech, as Germans called it, entirely alone last week, shutting himself off from friends and advisers. He moved his office from the exposed front of the Chancellory to the back. "Every German must hear this speech!", commanded the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. In their eagerness to obey, German radio dealers rigged up loud speakers in almost every public square throughout the Fatherland. When even this seemed like slacking, they rushed about installing unsold radio sets in private homes, lending them free for the occasion.

Since the Reichstag Building mysteriously went up in flames soon after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, Berlin's vast Kroll Opera House was pressed into service last week by Speaker Goering. In a quarter-mile-wide cordon around it he threw his police and black-jacketed S. S. Storm Troops. Sweating carpenters rushed up a huge banner over the impromptu Reichstag portals: WE FIGHT AND PRAY FOR ADOLF HITLER.

The Ambassadors of the Great Powers, though invited to be present by Speaker Goering, stayed home to a man. But except for the gaping diplomatic box the rest of Kroll Opera House was pack-jammed. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the brown-shirted Deputies marched to their orchestra seats. The lone little man in civilian grey in a front seat was Deputy Dr. Alfred Hugenberg, onetime "Hearst of Germany'' before Nazis regimented the Press. Smartly the Reichstag aisles were closed by S. S. Storm Troops, pistols on hips.

Sirens screeched and an open motorcar swept up with Adolf Hitler. In simple khaki the little Chancellor entered with enormous Speaker Goering, gorgeous in his self-designed uniform as a General of Aviation (see p. 16). Deputies bellowed "Heil Hitler!" General Goering banged his bell, and then there was a long wait while the Chancellor fussed with his papers before he took the rostrum. When he spoke his voice at first lacked its usual barking force. "Deputies, men of the Reichstag," he husked, "by order of the Reich Government, the Reichstag's President Goering called you together today to afford me the possibility to explain. ... I shall be ruthlessly frank. I shall observe only such restrictions as are imposed for reasons of State and, by feelings of shame."

Ersatz. Of the hour and a half speech which followed, during which Orator Hitler slowly worked himself up to normal platform frenzy, a half hour was devoted to a labored introduction rehearsing events "since the abdication of the Kaiser," for "fairness requires that our results be judged by what would have happened if we had not conquered!" Bolshevism would have happened, according to Chancellor Hitler, but he admitted with truly brutal frankness that what is happening now is a boycott of Germany such that her people face having to return this winter to eating Ersatz, the substitute foods they grew to loathe in wartime. Seemingly bowed at this point by Germany's woe the Chancellor wandered off into strange digressions: "Among countless documents I have been obliged to read this week I found the diary of a man who in 1918 was thrown into a course of resistance to the laws and now lives in a world wherein law per se seems to incite to resistance. A moving document! . . . A glimpse at the mentality of humans who, without knowing it, have found their last confession of faith in Nihilism."

Knife Night. For the next hour Chancellor Hitler's address rambled darkly among the alleged plots of the men shot by his orders. Tears streamed down his face as he told of a five-hour soul struggle between himself and Storm Troop Chief of Staff Ernst Roehm. "I adjured him for the last time voluntarily to abandon this madness. . . . The result of our conversation, however, turned out to be that Roehm, realizing he in no circumstances could count on me for his scheme, started preparations to eliminate me personally." The scheme (and Herr Hitler's allusions to it were maddeningly vague) was apparantly to get the German Army out from under control of its seasoned generals and into Nazi hands with Captain Roehm as Defense Minister.

According to Chancellor Hitler he was and is the champion of the career Reichswehr generals and President von Hindenburg. The nefarious plotters, he said, included onetime Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, Reichswehr careerist par excellence, Captain Roehm and "a foreign diplomat." Simple Storm Troopers, declared the Chancellor, knew nothing of this plotted coup against the Reichswehr. They naively supposed that what was wanted was a "new and in this case a bloody uprising--'The Night of the Long Knives'--as it was gruesomely described."

"Only a merciless bloody stroke," cried the Chancellor pounding the rostrum with his fist, "could smother the spreading revolt! ... In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German nation; thereby the Supreme Court of the German people during these 24 hours consisted of myself!" With burning indignation in his tone the Chancellor added: "If I am confronted with the opinion that only the due process of law could have balanced guilt and extirpation exactly, I issue a solemn protest against such a viewpoint."

Breast Beaters. To most observers the Chancellor seemed thus far to have been trying to convince the Reichswehr generals that he deserves the confidence of the strongest armed force in Germany. He closed with an appeal to Nazis and the S. A. Storm Troops, recently ordered not to wear their uniforms during July. Cried the Chancellor, his voice now rising with its old barking vigor: "In a few weeks time brown shirts will again dominate the streets of German towns. ... I should like to offer forgetfulness from this moment to all who were in part guilty of this act of insanity! . . . May they all beat their own breasts! . . . May they all feel themselves responsible for the most precious gift that can exist for the German people: order within and domestic peace."

Exhausted as he left the tribune amid handclaps and cheers, Chancellor Hitler threw himself into a chair, his head back, breathing heavily. While Speaker Goering boomed a speech conveying the thanks of the Reichstag, Herr Hitler's head fell forward on his breast and he seemed not to hear General Goering's bellowings: "I myself begged the Traitor Roehm on my knees to remain loyal but he only laughed. . . . The Leader's action against the mutineers is bound to win over to his side all Germans who are still on the sidelines."

As Speaker Goering subsided the tense Reichstag saw Chancellor Hitler pull himself together and stalk out amid relieved huzzas.

Aftermath. Correspondents who dashed about Berlin while the speech blared from loud speakers reported that it seemed to be received by the populace with unusual apathy. The Chancellor had been expected to read out a full list of the names of all who had been shot. He merely admitted in passing that the number is 77. Repeatedly since the blood purge diplomats of the Great Powers have been promised a German "White Book'' containing documentary evidence. After the Chancellor's speech high German officials said that the White Book will not be published "since it is now unnecessary." Snapped the London Times: "The speech carries no conviction at all. . . . The natural assumption is that if any real proof were available, then the conspirators would not have been shot out of hand, but would have been given a public trial in which their guilt would have been made manifest."

In a final effort to nail down his authority, Chancellor Hitler polished off the week by installing in the former Prussian Diet Building his new so-called "People's Court" which now supplants the German Supreme Court in trying cases of high treason (TIME, May 14). When the 32 judges of the People's Court, all appointed by Adolf Hitler, took their places last week, only twelve turned out to be men of any legal training. The others are Nazi henchmen of the Chancellor, with a sprinkling of Reichswehr officers and several aviators, friends of General Goering who during the War succeeded the late Baron Manfred von Richthofen as flight leader of the death-dealing Richthofen Escadrille.

Likely to be sentenced to death by the People's Court on evidence of treason too flimsy to have been acted on by the Supreme Court, according to German jurists, is mighty-muscled Comrade Ernst Thalmann who in 1932 won 4,982,097 votes as the Communist candidate for President of Germany.

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