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There were no set speeches, no previously formulated accusations. Herr Hitler's first words about the Reichstag fire were stagy, forced, phony: "Das ist das Werk der Kommunisten." (This is the work of Communists.) This time his first statement was spontaneous, slangy, more relief than calculated vindictiveness: "Glück muss der Mensch haben." (A fellow has got to be lucky.)
Berlin papers took no consistent, officially inspired line. Most grumbled about the work of foreigners. None admitted the possibility of internal unrest, of underground revolt.* None capitalized on the martyr angle.
Whatever the answer, one of a pair of alternatives was inescapable: Either the famed German secret police made a bad slip, or somebody fairly close to Adolf Hitler wants him dead.
As if in direct answer to Nazi hopes that the narrow escape would make Adolf Hitler better loved, some Berlin hater winged a brick through the plate-glass window of Hitler's favorite, official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. Herr Hitler was all dressed up in luck last week. The brick did not touch the big portrait of the Führer in the window.
* This week violence was abroad in Germany: a large barracks of Adolf Hitler's Elite Guard at Konstanz, just across the border from Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, burned; 43 were killed and 60 injured in a collision of two passenger trains on a single track line near Oppeln, Prussia.