(See front cover)
Fighting every inch of the way, three men stood out against the advance of Fascism in Germany last week: pale, bespectacled Chancellor Heinrich Bruning; white-haired Paul von Hindenburg; and their faithful lieutenant, Minister of the Interior and of War Wilhelm Groener. Each morning foreign correspondents in Berlin expected the Bruning Government to fall and Fascist Adolf Hitler, who only fortnight ago pounded a platform and shouted in his best Mussolini manner "Right goes hand in hand with Might!", to seize the Government. Municipal elections were held in Stuttgart. Hitlerites nearly doubled their previous vote. The provincial diets of Oldenburg, Brunswick and Hesse were all Hitler-controlled. Adolf Hitler sat in Berlin giving press interviews as though he were already Chief of State. In Leipzig a congress of pharmacists and physicians turned into a typical Fascist rally. Hitlerite orators, drunk with the sound of their own voices, shouted their program to maintain the superiority of "the Nordic race, the finest flower on the tree of humanity." They mentioned the hanging of Marxists, abolition of trade unions, compulsory sterilization of Jews.
The Brüning-Hindenburg-Groener triumvirate have faced almost monthly crises for the past 18 months. One more did not cause them to lose their heads. First move was to issue one more emergency decree described by German correspondents as "the most tremendous effort ever made by a German government to save the German people and economic system."
The Decree took up 46 pages of the Federal legal gazette. It may be divided into two parts, one containing measures aimed to throttle the spread of Fascism. another of measures to take the place of Nazi promises. Anti-Fascist measures:
1) Three-months imprisonment for any one defaming public officials.
2) Prohibition of all political meetings or outdoor demonstrations until Jan. 2.
3) Prohibition of the wearing of political uniforms of any kind except in homes.
4) Empowering of State authorities to demand the surrender of all firearms.
5) The present curbs on the sale of firearms to be extended to blackjacks, clubs and other blunt instruments.
Political and economic measures included:
1) Reduction of a few taxes, but an increase in the "turnover tax" on all transactions except sales of staple foodstuffs from .85% to 2%.
2) Issuance of new four-pfennig (if) coins.
3) Various degrees of confiscation to prevent the flight of capital abroad.
4) Reduction of the interest rate on security loans from 10% to 9%.
5) Protection of landowners against forced sales by stipulating that no bid less than 70% of the property's assessed value need be accepted.
6) Interest on bonds, loans, mortgages to be reduced to 6% where it is as high as 8% ; reductions of 25% to 50% on interest rates higher than 8%.