(3 of 3)
Official returns, as finally released, showed an increase in the total number of voters so phenomenal, compared to Danzig's last election, as to suggest ballot-box stuffing. Even so the Danzig Nazi Party failed to reach its Constitution-scrapping goal of 67% of the votes, polled 59-9%, a gain of slight importance over the 51% won two years ago.
This means that the 40.1% of Danzigers who voted non-Nazi this week can now appeal to the League Council when it meets this week demanding protection from Danzig's Nazi rowdies. Already drafted, this protest had been scoffed at by the Nazi orators from Berlin who roared that: "The League cannot consider protests from an insignificant minority!" Not insignificant was 40.1%. From London to Moscow this week European editors referred to "Hitler's heaviest moral setback since the Blood Purge." In Germany, after Danzig returns were known, no German of any prominence would comment. The official Press, obliged to rave at somebody, raved against Danzig's onetime Nazi Premier Dr. Rauschning who appealed last week for anti-Nazi votes. When Danzig Nazi gangsters threatened to beat up Dr. Rauschning and he stepped over the border into Poland the German Official News Agency reported "RATS DESERT A SINKING SHIP. Rauschning is no longer to be found in Danzig. He is just full of treason."
Unable to get Rauschning, the brownshirt gangsters beat up two Polish diplomats, smashed windows of the homes of the Portuguese and Lithuanian consuls for Gdynia, who live in Danzig, and perpetrated upon Danzigers 85 verified assaults.
"The Nazis say 'German is Danzig' and indeed we are mostly of German blood," said a prominent Catholic Danziger, "but Danzig is not Nazi. Danzig is Danzig!"
*Pronounced as though sneezing, "Dan-tzikhh!" *Not a nonsense word pattern, this sentence becomes clear when it is recalled that in many German minds today "Honor" is a synonym for either "German aggrandizement'' or "honor," whichever suits the context.