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Both Reichsbank President Dr. Hjalmar Schacht and ex-Crown Prince Wilhelm denied over the telephone rumors that they had been shot. But the Government announced ominously that "a few more executions may soon be made known" and it was established that a Nazi trooper had shot the Chief of the Catholic Action Society, Herr Erich J. G. Klausener, charged with having been slated to be Minister of Transportation in some conspirator's government.
The crowning sensation of last week's killings came when Secret Police pushed into the swank suburban mansion of General Kurt von Schleicher, immediate predecessor of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor and the officer to whom it fell in 1918 to tell All Highest Wilhelm II that his army was no longer faithful to the Crown and that he had best flee to Holland.
General von Schleicher was for years the master intrigant and "Field Grey Eminence" of the German Reichswehr. The Hohenzollerns have always looked to him as their smartest stalking horse for a return of the Monarchy. Not long ago Paris heard rumors that Chancellor Hitler would be ousted by a military coup led by General von Schleicher.
These rumors and whatever proofs General Göring may have had last week cost General von Schleicher dear. According to the official Nazi version General von Schleicher resisted arrest by the Secret Police ''with a weapon in his hand," Frau von Schleicher flung herself before her husband to protect him and the Secret Police shot them both "in self defense." Later an eyewitness reported that six men in civilian garb had driven into the von Schleicher driveway, summoned the General and his wife, riddled them with bullets in gangster style, sped away without a word.
Bewildered correspondents could get no news of the shooting at the Ministry of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment, which they found strangely vacated by club-footed Minister Paul Josef Goebbels and his propaganda staff. Dominant and domineering General Göring, resplendent in an Air Force uniform of his own design, gave out the first official news.
"All of Prussia is firm in my hands!" he shouted. "Hitler is stronger than ever. Most of the Storm Troopers are loyal. They were merely misled." He then sketched hastily the vague outlines of a plot supposed to have had for its object the kidnapping of Adolf Hitler who was to have been forced to sign a paper turning Germany over for three days to the violence of Storm Troops. In an official printed release General Göring declared:
"The main go-between in the conspiracy was former Reich Chancellor General von Schleicher, who made connection between Captain Roehm and a foreign power* and those eternally dissatisfied figures of yesterday. ... It was self-understood that General von Schleicher had to be arrested. While being arrested, he attempted to make a lightning assault upon those men who were to arrest him. Thereby he lost his life."
Meanwhile Chancellor Hitler had telephoned from Munich to the Nazi Governor of Hanover, an apparently blameless young man with a good war record, Herr Viktor Lutze. "I appoint you to succeed Roehm!" barked the Chancellor into the telephone. "You are the new Storm Troop Chief of Staff!"