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Economics & Food—Alfred Hugenberg.
Labor—Franz Seldte (Leader of Germany's "Steel Helmet" War veterans).
Minister Without Portfolio, Reich Commissioner for Air and State Minister of Interior for Prussia—Hermann Wilhelm Göring (Hitlerite Speaker of the Reichstag).
Significance. At first glance this Cabinet seemed to bristle with anti-Hitler "safeguards":
No. 1: von Papen
No. 2: von Neurath who was Foreign Minister in the past two cabinets, is tolerably well liked in France where Hitler is Beelzebub.
No. 3: General von Blomberg, never before in politics, a crony of President von Hindenburg, who can be trusted to keep the Army out of Hitler mischief.
No. 4: Count von Krosigk, another holdover, firmly entrenched in his Ministry of Finance.
On second glance, the Cabinet was seen to give Adolf Hitler a handsome slice of power, providing the Centre Parties support him when the Reichstag meets, which seemed not improbable, considering the "safeguards."
As Chancellor, Herr Hitler hopes shortly to provoke an election and go to the country with a matchless slogan: "For Hindenburg and Hitler!"
As Minister of Interior, Hitler-Henchman Frick will control Germany's electoral machinery and the Federal police.
Speaker Göring, another Hitler henchman will have similar control, as Prussian Minister of Interior, in Germany's largest state.
Potentially last week formation of the Hitler Cabinet was of such maximum importance that Berlin's famed Der Tag (not a Hitler organ) cried: "This historic day marks the birth of a new Germany!"
"In appointing this Cabinet," warned the Socialist Vorwärts, "the President has assumed a fearful responsibility. He is the guarantor that this Government shall not depart from a constitutional basis and that it shall resign immediately as soon as defeated in the Reichstag."
Reassured the Börsen (Stock Exchange) Courier: "Hitler the Chancellor will be a different man than Hitler the agitator."
On Berlin 'change stocks rose two or three points on news of the Hitler Cabinet, closed after losing most of their small gains.
Slightly ludicrous was the appointment of Dr. Hugenberg (who is constantly proposed for Chancellor by his newspapers), to the Ministry of Economics and Food.
Rise of Hitler. Recalling that Napoleon was born in Corsica, loyal Hitlerites boast: "Our Leader is more German than Napoleon was French!"
The new Chancellor was born to the wife of an Austrian customs inspector on the German frontier of Austria in 1889. Shy, nervous and inclined to keep to himself, Adolf was encouraged by his mother to do watercolors. In his 'teens he became an orphan, went to Vienna, tried to be a painter, became a builder's helper ("house painter" to his critics) and emigrated to Munich with $4 in his pocket rather than perform his Austrian compulsory military service.
No coward, he enlisted in the German Army in 1914, mostly fought against British troops, never learned English, picked up a little French, won an Iron Cross and ended the War in a hospital, gassed.