(2 of 2)
Same day Chancellor Hitler rushed nervously off to East Prussia to make what peace he could with President von Hindenburg. That the President was not entirely disinterested his personal enemies claimed. There is a certain Dr. Günther Gereke who raised a huge campaign fund for Paul von Hindenburg's last reelection (TIME. April 18, 1932) and afterwards kept a large remainder of the fund under circumstances which suggested that it was being held in reserve as a personal political war chest for the President. To arrest and convict Dr. Gereke of malfeasance was one of the Nazis' first acts, but his case has been carried to a higher court in which Son Colonel Oscar von Hindenburg has twice testified as a witness for Dr. Gereke. Well posted observers suspected President von Hindenburg of putting pressure on Chancellor Hitler to hush up the Gereke affair and of sending up a von Papen trial balloon to test the solidity of the Nazi State.
As the crucial test last week von Papen offered his resignation to Herr Hitler who refused it with excited protestations. This evident shakiness in high Nazi places emboldened German army officers to start rumors that Defense Minister General Werner von Blomberg might attempt a monarchist coup. But with 2,000,000 Nazis enrolled as brownshirt troopers. many of them armed, few Germans believed that any Hindenburg henchman would thus risk civil war. It seemed enough for the present to give Adolf Hitler the scare of his career.
In Nazi eyes Dr. Goebbels loomed more than ever a possible successor to Herr Hitler as he rushed among the masses last week and drew cheers from large brownshirt gatherings in Berlin with attacks plainly meant for von Papen and his Hindenburg ilk. "My party comrades," cried Dr. Goebbels, "only the National Socialist party has the right to criticize. To all others I deny that right. If we had relied upon those suave cavaliers who see in National Socialism only a transitory phenomenon, Germany would have been lost. The importance of these persons should not be overestimated. If we stamp our feet, they will scurry to their holes like mice. We have the power and we will keep it. Our power is absolutely unlimited. Not even the Crown Prince can take it away from us, because the people are behind us. Reactionaries point backward; we point forward!"
Chancellor Hitler, returning to Berlin from his parley, with President von Hindenburg, banged his big desk for the benefit of a British correspondent and shouted: "At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense I tell you that the Nazi movement will go on for 1,000 years! . . . Don't forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power!"