GERMANY: Handsome Adolf

All epoch-making revolutionary events have been produced not by the written but by the spoken word!

Adolf Hitler

Not in Berlin, not even in Prussia, but in Saxony, in Leipzig sits the German Supreme Court: das Reichsgericht. Justice is done beneath a mighty dome topped by a big bronze statue of Truth. Through tall casement windows Saxon sunbeams glint upon carved oak. In such a setting presiding Judge Baumgarten (except when fiddling with one of his ears) is a sight awesome as Olympian Jove. Boldly to face the justice down, to use the Supreme Court dome as a demagog’s thumping tub, to hurl from dem Reichsgericht a defy which reverberated throughout Europe, such was the feat last week of Adolf Hitler, No. IBrown Shirt Fascist (TIME, Aug. 25).

Ostensibly the proceedings were a trial for High Treason. Three young German army officers (Lieutenants Richard Scheringer, Hans Ludin, Friedrich Wendt) were charged with inciting their men to join a Fascist putsch should it be proclaimed. Without quite admitting their guilt the young officers waxed hotly truculent. “I would obey an order to shoot down Communists,” shouted Lieutenant Scheringer, “but I would disobey a command to fire on men of my own persuasion!”

Exactly what was this “persuasion”? Evading damaging admissions, the Lieutenants said in effect that their views are those of Brown Shirt Hitler, leader of the National Socialist [Fascist] party whose sensational gains in the last election make it second strongest in Germany (TIME, Sept. 22). If such views be treason, argued the defense, then make the most of it!

Smart, the defense determined to do exactly this, subpenaed Herr Hitler as a witness, got ready to offer him the opportunity to use the witness stand as a soapbox.

Housewives & Blue Eyes. “Hitler Kommt!” cried 2,000 excited Saxons massed inside and outside the supreme courthouse. Many were women—for thrifty German housewives particularly dislike paying reparations, have swallowed eagerly the brash Fascist promises to repudiate the Young Plan. As Herr Hitler’s motorcar swirled up the women pelted him with flowers. As this medium sized man with a small blond mustache but hard, blue, twinkling eyes stepped out, soprano voices cried “Ach, der schöne Adolf!” (Ah, handsome Adolf!). But so vast, dim, labyrinthine is the supreme courthouse that Witness Hitler, studiously quiet at first, stepped into the chamber and was actually on the stand before the courtroom galleries saw him.

“Heads Shall Roll!” Asked if he were planning revolution, Herr Hitler answered composedly:

“Nein, we are merely preparing an intellectual eruption of the German people by peaceful means.”

When this drew from the gallery a roar of “Germany Awake!” (Fascist slogan), Judge Baumgarten glared at the assemblage, rumbled, “Silence, this is not a theatre!” but soon Herr Hitler in smashing demagog style was carrying all before him.

“To us,” he cried, “the old Imperial Germany was a state for which we were proud to fight—a state with glorious traditions. The second Reich in which we now are living is predicated on democracy and pacifism. We propose to make the third Reich one of healthy and glorious nationalism—a state for the people, and shall put an end to the process of national disintegration. We shall accomplish this with legal and constitutional means, and shall mold our state into that form which we deem necessary for it!”

Queried Judge Baumgarten: “What form?”

Hesitating not a second, Herr Hitler roared back:

“If our movement succeeds we shall erect a people’s tribunal before which the November criminals of 1918* shall expiate their crime and I frankly predict you shall then see their heads rolling in the sand.

“We National Socialists [Fascists] refuse to recognize the treaties concluded over the heads of the German people as of permanent duration and also propose to fight the War guilt lie! We shall seek to abrogate or revise these by diplomatic negotiations, and I solemnly assert if these fail we shall proceed to ignore or circumvent them, with legal means if possible; failing that, with illegal means. The world may call that illegal, but I am answerable solely to the German people for my actions!”

“Blessed Be . . . Youth!” After such staggering words from the leader of Germany’s No. 2 party (the Socialists are No. I), French, German, British papers seethed. Viscount Rothermere, blatant “Hearst of England,” who would like to see a dictator (himself) in London, personally visited Munich (Hitler bailiwick) last week, sent glowing cables to his Daily Mail:

“We must change our conception of Germany. Hitherto we have thought of her as a prisoner of war.

“The new Germany is rising before our eyes. She is strong today and she will be much stronger a few years hence. She is determined now and she may before long be defiant.

“Under Herr Hitler’s control, the youth of Germany will be effectively organized against the corruption of Communism.”

Hindenburg Dictatorship? In Berlin, tense with rumors of imaginary Fascist putsches which did not materialize last week, stern old President Paul von Hindenburg and grimly determined Chancellor Heinrich Briining considered what they should do.

If Herr Hitler had spoken as he did in the sanctum sanctorum of German justice at Leipzig, into what inflammatory bombast might he not burst when the new Reichstag convenes on Oct. 16 next? Herren Hindenburg and Briining know as well as anyone else that the German Republic was actually proclaimed “not in written but in spoken words” from a window of the Reichstag by one Philipp Scheidemann, Socialist deputy who had neither “right” to do so nor “reason” to expect success (except the shouts of the mob). What has happened once can happen again.

The Prime Minister’s anxiety was acute because he had not yet been able to obtain from the small “centre” parties and the Socialist party (largest) any assurance that these would stand together in a coalition, supporting either Herr Briining’s or some other moderate cabinet against the Fascist Right and Communist Left—two extremes quite capable of voting together to oust a government which pleased neither.

If he cannot obtain such support for himself or arrange it for some other “moderate,” Prime Minister Brüning, according to his closest friends last week, was agreed with Old Paul that they must “save the nation from itself” by adjourning the new Reichstag (only just elected) and embarking on a high-handed program of rule by “executive decree”—in other words Dictatorship, a procedure made quasi-legal by article 48 of the German Constitution conferring on the President “extraordinary powers.”

Unterbermsgrün. Just one actual clash occurred in the excited but lawabiding Reich last week. A number of angry Communist sidewalkers with brickbats pitched upon 150 parading Fascists at Unterbermsgrun in Bavaria, broke up the parade, injured 29 Fascists, four “critically,” then went on about their business.

*The German Socialists and Social Democrats who in 1918 proclaimed the Republic, brought about Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication.