(4 of 5)
Popping into his plane Herr Hitler then flew to Berlin. To the astonishment of correspondents, he alighted arm in arm with Propaganda Minister Dr. Goebbels whom they had supposed to be in hiding since he had been called "the brains of Roehm" and was rumored in Berlin to be the intellectual head of Storm Troop discontent.
Grinning, Dr. Goebbels limped back into his Propaganda Ministry and resumed charge of the German Press which soon printed a list of Hitler "Commandments" to be communicated by Staff Chief Viktor Lutze to Storm Troops.
These revealed orgies costing 30,000 marks per month at Berlin Storm Troop Headquarters, the hiring of expensive limousines with party funds and other extravagances which Adolf Hitler, a teetotaler, vegetarian and non-smoker ordered stopped. "In particular," enjoined gentle Adolf, "I would like every mother to be able to give her sons to the S. A. without fear that they would become more or less corrupted. I want to see the S. A. leaders men and not laughable monkeys."
Next move was an organized Nazi drive to cheer Germans up and make them forget the blood bath. Every newspaper seller was made to wear a label on his hat reading Gute Laune ("Good Cheer"). Restaurant bands and radio orchestras were commanded to play nothing but lively music and to play it loud.
Since the German people heard only the Hitler side of events last week, their reaction was to decide that the Chancellor had at last proved himself a Strong Man, purged his Party of its worst element and emerged with enhanced prestige. In Paris the indiscreet entourage of tabasco-tongued Foreign Minister Louis Barthou dropped broad hints that further trouble and the fall of Chancellor Hitler are expected and that the foreign policy of France has been based on these expectations for months.
Shocked British editors deplored Adolf Hitler's "gangster methods." Only head of a foreign state to comment was spry little Chancellor of Austria Engelbert Dollfuss, an extremely devout Catholic. "Does it not now become apparent," he observed piously, "that when one leaves the path of Christian thought, the path of Justice, one enters a path of Error from which there is no turning back? . . . Does not the light at last dawn upon us that one can not make a people happy with violence?"
The light for which Germans waited most anxiously was some dawning indication from President von Hindenburg of his attitude toward last week's massacre. Troubled more than usual by his prostate, the 86-year-old Reichsprasident was at his country estate at Neudeck in East Prussia attended by physicians so numerous that they were called a "major medical council." There were rumors that Old Paul was dead, promptly denied by his State Secretary Dr. Otto Meissner. Forty-eight hours after the shooting began the Hitler Government released two telegrams calculated to set all doubts at rest.
The first was to Chancellor Hitler:
I GATHER FROM REPORTS SUBMITTED TO ME THAT BY ENERGETIC INTERVENTION YOU COURAGEOUSLY, AT THE RISK OF YOUR LIFE, SUPPRESSED ALL TREASONABLE MACHINATIONS AT THE OUTSET. YOU SAVED THE GERMAN PEOPLE FROM GRAVE DANGER. I THEREFORE CONVEY TO YOU EXPRESSIONS OF SINCERE, HEARTFELT THANKS AND APPRECIATION.
HINDENBURG