TIME: Almanac 1995

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ TIME: Almanac 1995 / TIME Almanac 1995.iso / time / portrait / hitler / hitler.005 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-02-22 | 10.9 KB | 240 lines

<text id=93HT1279> <link 93XV0060> <link 93XP0433> <title> Hitler: "Four Year Plans" </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--Hitler Portrait </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> February 13, 1933 "Four-Year Plans" </hdr> <body> Work done during Adolf Hitler's first week in power: -- Chancellor Hitler announced that the Catholic Centre and Bavarian People's Parties had refused him their support (thus leaving him 46 seats short of a Reichstag majority), promptly obtained a decree dissolving the Reichstag from President von Hindenburg and called new elections for March 5. Too late Catholic Centre Leader Monsignor Ludwig Kaas complained to the President that Herr Hitler "deliberately broke off negotiations"; too late Chairman Fritz Schaffer of the Bavarian People's party telegraphed to the President that he had not even been consulted. -- Putting away his Fascist brown shirt and barring Fascist uniforms from his entourage, Chancellor Hitler transferred routine management of his Party to a newly created General Secretary, Captain Otto Wagener, 44, once of the Imperial General Staff, who was installed last week at Berlin's Kaiserhof Hotel in rooms adjoining the Chancellor's. -- Renouncing his salary of 48,000 marks ($11,400) as Chancellor, Herr Hitler cried, "I shall continue to live by my pen." (Standard Cabinet practice decrees that statesmen shall peddle no writings while in office lest they be suspected of accepting in payment gifts or bribes.) -- German police banned open air Communist meetings throughout the Reich, suppressed all Communist sheets in the industrial Ruhr, suppressed the Berlin Communist organ The Red Flag and 16 others, suppressed the historic Socialist Vorwarts for three days and confiscated as "treasonable" 1,000,000 copies of a special edition which Vorwarts published to open the Socialist election campaign. (Electioneered Vorwarts in its suppressed issue: "Against the plans of the Hitler government we call you to fight. Defend yourselves. Protect your right of self-determination as citizens of the State. Rise against your oppressors. Break their political and economic power.") -- Pouncing without search-warrants police began a campaign of bursting into homes and meeting places of Communists all over Germany, ransacking them for treasonable documents which they claimed to find in qualities. Communists retorted by firing from rooftops and darkened windows on their tormentors, caused the Berlin police to create "searchlight squads." Before the week was out 26 Germans--Communists, police and Fascists--had been murdered for reasons purely political (mostly in savage side- street affrays). -- Believing that Fascists can win any election held in Germany just now, Chancellor Hitler ordered his henchmen in Prussia's State Diet to present a motion for its dissolution. Desperate, the Communists, Catholic Centrists and Socialists in the Diet forgot that they are to each other like fire, oil & water, combined to defeat dissolution by a vote of 214 to 196. In these circumstances dissolution could best be forced by removing the Socialist Premier of Prussia, fiery Dr. Otto Braun, who was explicitly confirmed in his office by Germany's Supreme Court last autumn. Last week Chancellor Hitler was soon able to publish the following decree: "The Supreme Court decision of Oct. 25, 1932 caused confusion in the Prussian Government, endangering the well being of the State. "Therefore, I transfer to the Federal Commissioner for Prussia [Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen] until further notice the powers which the aforesaid decision gave to the Prussian Cabinet. "[Signed] Hindenburg." With Premier Braun and Cabinet thus politically annihilated by a stroke of Der Feldmarshal's pen. Lieut.-Colonel von Papen proclaimed dissolution of the Prussian Diet and elections March 5, the same day as the Reichstag elections. Pale with fury, Herr Braun served notice that he will again appeal to the Supreme Court. -- As dinner guest of General von Hammerstein-Eguord, Chief of the Reichswehr, Chancellor Hitler delivered to Germany's army chiefs an address the whole of which was kept secret. -- Chancellor Hitler ordered a State funeral at the Republic's expense (a supreme honor previously accorded by the Republic only to President Friedrich Ebert and Dr. Gustav Stresemann) to be held last week for one Joseph Zauritz, policeman, and one Eberhard Maikovsky, "Fascist Martyr," both of whom had been murdered since Hitler was made Chancellor. In vain Policeman Zauritz's family declared that he had been Communist, protested the State funeral. It took place before 500,000 Berliners who jammed Unter den Linden and the vast square between onetime Kaiser Wilhelm II's Palace and Berlin's (Protestant) Cathedral. For the occasion Chancellor Hitler put on his brown shirt again, sat in a front pew. Pastor Hossenfelder, in his funeral sermon, called Herr Hitler "the man whom God has given us for a leader" and said that the two dead men, having cheered the Chancellor's appointment, died "on a day overflowing with happiness." Eager to cash in on the Hitler apotheosis, former Crown Prince Wilhelm laid wreaths on the biers, espied his brother Prince August ("Auwi") Wilhelm standing nearby in a Fascist uniform, gave him the Fascist salute. Only last month when Herr Hitler's fortunes seemed waning, "Auwi" was ordered by Wilhelm II to quit the Fascist Party, defied his father, glowed and strutted last week as his astuteness was vindicated. Marching in the funeral procession, 50,000 Brown Shirts and Steel Helmets (war veterans) carried last week not the flags of the Republic but those of the Empire. -- To a radio microphone, instead of to the Reichstag, Chancellor Hitler read his Cabinet's program speech, actually a campaign harangue which will be played on Party phonographs and plastered on official billboards throughout Germany: Program Speech. Thundered Adolf Hitler over Germany's State Radio: "Fourteen years of Marxism have ruined Germany! One year of Bolshevism would destroy Germany!...The National Government will firmly protect Christianity as the groundwork of our entire morality.... The National Government will carry out the great work of reorganizing the economic life of our people by means of two great four-year plans: 1) salvation of the German farmer, with the object of maintaining the nourishment and therewith the vital basis of the nation; and 2) salvation of the German worker by a powerful and comprehensive attack on unemployment.... "To the pillars of this program belong the idea of compulsory labor service. "Provision for daily bread will be as important a concern for us as fulfillment of social obligation toward the sick and aged.... "Great as is our love for our army as the bearer of our arms and the symbol of our great past, yet we would be happy if the world, through limitation of armaments, would render increase of our own weapons nevermore necessary.... "It [the National Socialist Government] is determined in four years to make good the wrongs of 14 years.... "Faithful to the command of the General Field Marshal, we wish to begin. May Almighty God take our work in His mercy, mold our will rightly, bless our insight and favor us with the confidence of our people. For we wish to fight, not for ourselves, but for Germany." Four-Year Plans. Campaign workers at Fascist headquarters indicated that Chancellor Hitler's strategy is to avoid defining either his "Four-Year Plans" or other features of the Cabinet's program until Germany's elections have been won by bombast, demagoguery, appeals to patriotism and prejudice. When correspondents cornered the Chancellor last week, when one of them asked flatly for an explanation of his Four-Year Plan to end unemployment, Herr Hitler dynamically but disarmingly replied: "I am glad you asked me that! If I had wanted to make a campaign speech I could have promised that by the middle of March unemployment would have been wiped out and by May the farmer would have been back on his feet. "But you didn't hear me do that! I'm more honest than most of my opponents. I wouldn't make such promises. "It is impossible to head a ship on the right course in a moment. It takes time. All I ask is four years!" Reactions to Hitler. As one Fascist to another, Chancellor Hitler said to the Berlin correspondent of Italy's semi-official Giornale d'Italia: "I have always stressed the necessity of a cordial relationship with Italy, and now that I am responsible for German statesmanship, I am determined to realize this aim...I extend my greetings, not as Chief of the Government but as a fighter for a common idea." In Rome Il Duce waited, as did other European statesmen, to see how big and how prolonged a flash Chancellor Hitler will be in Germany's pan. Said Giornale d'Italia: "Italy cannot but greet with profound cordiality the new German Government... Italy, far from fearing, hails the development of this new force." In other capitals than Rome, leading newsorgans were extremely cautious in their comments. Typical, the London Times observed that "resignation to the inevitable [appointment of Hitler as Chancellor] is far from implying satisfaction." "Whether Hitler succeeds in maintaining power or whether he very soon falls," said Le Temps of Paris, his chancellorship "ordains the greatest vigilance and prudence as regards limitation or reduction of armaments." Among semi-official newsorgans only the Belgrade Pravda, mouthpiece of Jugoslavia's anxiously anti-Italian Government, raised a desperate alarm: "The rise of Hitler as Chancellor means the rebirth of the old, imperialistic, warlike Germany, thirsting for revenge!" Flaming Reichstag (March 6, 1933) With Chancellor Adolf Hitler seeking control of the Reichstag by a campaign of unparalleled violence and bitterness leading up to the General Election, Sunday March 5, suddenly this week the Reichstag Building caught fire. Starting in four places at once, flames soon swept up to the great square gilded cupola of the Reichstag, as famous through Germany as is the dome of the Capitol in Washington among U.S. citizens. Soon the cupola was a glowing hodge-podge of incandescent girders. Every fire engine in Berlin was called out before the blaze was under control. Whatever the national election result this Sunday, it will be a long time before the Reichstag Deputies have a proper place to sit. </body> </article> </text>