Foreign News: One-Year Plan

Germany’s Junker Government never tries to dodge a crisis. A showdown with Adolf Hitler might have been postponed for a month. It was not, and the results are still successful from the Government’s point of view. Faced with the necessity of going before a hostile Reichstag, last week they tried another showdown. There were many Cabinet conferences, then lean Chancellor Franz von Papen went down to Münster to make a speech before the Westphalian Peasants’ Congress. He minced no words. First came an attack on Handsome Adolf for his manifesto on the Beuthen death sentences (see above):

“The unrestraint of the manifesto of the leader of the National Socialist movement fits badly his claims to be leader of the state. I do not concede him the right to consider the minority in Germany which follows his banner as being alone the German nation and treating all his other countrymen as outlaws.”

Then came practical admission that if Hitler and other parties unite in a vote of no confidence he will dissolve the Reichstag and rule by open dictatorship:

“It is my duty to guard the nation’s reconstruction against party influences. . . . The nation’s problems can be solved only by a man serving the nation, not a party. If necessary I shall use force to establish equal rights for all citizens.”

Ending rumors that a monarchist coup was imminent, he added:

“We do not intend to deviate from the fundamental principles of the constitution or even to make a change in the form of the state.”

Then came his bid for popularity, his effort to win approval for the drastic measures the “Cabinet of Monocles” has been taking. Chancellor von Papen presented a One-Year Plan to revive German industry and relieve unemployment. Basis of the plan was the belief he shares with Herbert Hoover that Depression is really over:

“A number of important symptoms indicate that the bottom has been reached in prices, and that all that is necessary is to give the flywheel a push and the economic machinery will spin of it” own accord.”

That being so, the von Papen Plan envisages not one but eight pushes:

1) As a spur to industry, the Government is prepared to remit $476,000,000 in taxes to industrial firms. This will not be in cash (which the Government has not got), but in certificates which may be used to pay almost any other German tax but the income tax. Money thus remitted will be used, it is hoped, to renovate and modernize plants, thus providing extra jobs.

2) Tax certificates totaling $166,600,000 will be given firms who employ more men at the rate of $95.20 per job provided.

3) Wages must be cut. The more men a company employs the lower the wages it will be allowed to pay.

4) To help reduce overcrowding in the professions, a working year will be introduced between graduating from gymnasium (high school) and entering a university.

5) Rejection by the Government of the principle of autarchy—economic self-sufficiency—which means a loweringof Germany’s present tariff walls. To safeguard against dumping, there will be “moderate” regulation of imports.

6) Maintenance of a staple currency.

7) Appropriation of $32,130,000 for immediate public works.

8) Reforms in the administration of Prussia, to save money by abolishing superfluous posts and dualism between Prussia and the Reich.

Chancellor von Papen returned to Berlin where he and Defense Minister Kurt von Schleicher lunched with Adolf Hitler, just returned from his fishing trip (see p. 14). But flatly refusing Hitler a place in the Government, Chancellor von Papen left at once for Neudeck, East Prussia to secure President von Hindenburg’s support for his imminent showdown with the convening Reichstag.