GERMANY: Red & Brown Winnings

Berlin went Red last week. The rest of the nation swung toward Brown.* Everyone admitted, on the morning after, that Republican Germany’s sixth election had been her biggest, most expensive, most hysterical. There has been no poll so startling since 1912. when German workmen went Pink for the first time, rebuked Kaiser Wilhelm with a thumping Socialist vote which the War Lord refused to heed.

In Germany the total number of votes cast is vital. For every 60,000 ballots cast one deputy goes to the Reichstag. Last week the turnout was so large (c. 35,790,000 against 25,379,045 at the last election in 1928) that the new chamber will have some 575 seats, instead of 491.

Jubilant were Berlin’s ultra Reds, led by blond, broad-shouldered, blustering Ernst Thalmann. Rolling up 408,642 votes, his Communist party easily topped Berlin’s poll. The Socialists were No. 2, with 346,014 ballots—thus proving Berlin the world’s most radical capital of a Great Power next to Moscow. National returns showed a Communist gain throughout Germany of 40%, the party jumping from 54 Reichstag seats to 76.

Red had won spectacularly, but twice as sensational was the win of Brown. In the last Reichstag there was a “joke party” of twelve deputies, headed by Austrian-born Herr Adolf Hitler, crony of General Erich von Ludendorv with whom he spilled Bavarian blood in 1923 trying to stage a putsch (revolution). Scorned as a “wild man,” this Fascist fanatic has been storming up and down depressed Germany, promising Prosperity if given enough votes to do two things: 1) replace Germany’s “do nothing” Reichstag and President by a Dictator (presumably the “wild man”); 2) Repudiate Germany’s obligations under the Young Plan, thus lifting “from bowed and bloody German backs the galling Reparations yoke!”

Result: Demagog Hitler’s Fascist party (named “National Socialist” to mislead workmen) rose last week from ninth to second rank, from twelve Reichstag seats to 107, from joke to menace.

What did the Red and Brown sensations mean? They can almost be ignored in considering two quiet election facts: 1) that there were recorded a series of small losses to all the centre parties of Prime Minister Heinrich Brüning’s “Concentration Cabinet” (TIME, April 7) which is thus left stranded, discredited; 2) the emergence of the regular Socialist party (after losing ten seats) as still Germany’s strongest.*

With these paramount facts in mind the result of the election becomes a lucid alternative: either irascible Prime Minister “Iron Cross” Brüning, protege of President von Hindenburg, will refuse to accept defeat, dissolve the Reichstag a second time as he did last summer (TIME, July 28) and attempt to continue ruling by executive decree; or as is much more likely Herr Brüning’s “Concentration Cabinet” of the Centre will quietly give way to a Left-Centre “Grand Coalition” of these same parties plus the Socialists. In either case Reds and Browns would be excluded, may be counted on to remain merely blatant right and left “lunatic fringes” on the garment of government.

*Official color of shirts worn by National Socialists.

*Returns:

Next Reichstag Last Reichstag

Socialists 143 153

Fascists 107 12

Communists 76 54

Catholic Centre 68 62

Nationalists 43 73

People’s Party 29 45

Economic Party 23 23

State Party 20 25

Bavarian People’s Party 19 16

German Farmers Union 18 13

Christian Socialists 14 0

Peoples Conservatives 5 0