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 Schäffer 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 Vorwärts for three days and confiscated as "treasonable" 1,000,000 copies of a special edition which Vorwärts published to open the Socialist election campaign.*
¶ 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 quantities. 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."