Eight Deputies of the German Reichstag, or slightly more than 1% of its membership, are known to have been shot during Chancellor Hitler's blood purge (TIME, July 9). Thanking their stars last week, the other 99% turned out to cheer him. They were under no compulsion except that Reichstag Speaker Hermann Wilhelm Göring, whose secret police did much of the shooting, announced that any Deputy who did not appear would have to produce a doctor's certificate of illness.
No sluggard, Herr Hitler had written his great Purge Speech, as Germans called it, entirely alone last week, shutting himself off from friends and advisers. He moved his office from the exposed front of the Chancellory to the back. "Every German must hear this speech!", commanded the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. In their eagerness to obey, German radio dealers rigged up loud speakers in almost every public square throughout the Fatherland. When even this seemed like slacking, they rushed about installing unsold radio sets in private homes, lending them free for the occasion.
Since the Reichstag Building mysteriously went up in flames soon after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, Berlin's vast Kroll Opera House was pressed into service last week by Speaker Göring. In a quarter-mile-wide cordon around it he threw his police and black-jacketed S. S. Storm Troops. Sweating carpenters rushed up a huge banner over the impromptu Reichstag portals: WE FIGHT AND PRAY FOR ADOLF HITLER.
The Ambassadors of the Great Powers, though invited to be present by Speaker Göring, stayed home to a man. But except for the gaping diplomatic box the rest of Kroll Opera House was pack-jammed. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the brown-shirted Deputies marched to their orchestra seats. The lone little man in civilian grey in a front seat was Deputy Dr. Alfred Hugenberg, onetime "Hearst of Germany'' before Nazis regimented the Press. Smartly the Reichstag aisles were closed by S. S. Storm Troops, pistols on hips.
Sirens screeched and an open motorcar swept up with Adolf Hitler. In simple khaki the little Chancellor entered with enormous Speaker Göring, gorgeous in his self-designed uniform as a General of Aviation (see p. 16). Deputies bellowed "Heil Hitler!" General Göring banged his bell, and then there was a long wait while the Chancellor fussed with his papers before he took the rostrum. When he spoke his voice at first lacked its usual barking force. "Deputies, men of the Reichstag," he husked, "by order of the Reich Government, the Reichstag's President Göring called you together today to afford me the possibility to explain. ... I shall be ruthlessly frank. I shall observe only such restrictions as are imposed for reasons of State and, by feelings of shame."