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With Premier Braun & 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 a 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 obligations toward the sick and aged. . . .