Schleicher Cabinet Appointed
Schleicher Also Defence Minister
– Vossische Zeitung
The older generation has brought out its strongest and final representative in the General; it now has nothing in reserve. The last horse has been led out, and the stall is empty.
– Tägliche Rundschau
WHAT DOES SCHLEICHER’S APPOINTMENT MEAN?
Another Government Ruling Against the Will of the People! Worst of all, the military is being dragged into the internal struggle for power!
– Völkischer Beobachter
Reinhold Quaatz attended a church service at the Holy Trinity Church on Wilhelmplatz, situated immediately next to the Kaiserhof.
Hindenburg, a pious, evangelical Lutheran, could often be found in this understated church. If the president was at the service – and he attended regularly when in Berlin – it became a kind of public spectacle. Many parents brought their children purely so they could catch a glimpse of the living legend.
The round building, consecrated in 1739, had stood there for nearly two centuries; Bismarck had been confirmed there. It was a residue of old Prussia, and on Sunday it was packed. Half an hour before the service was due to start, people were already crammed into the galleries like sardines, clad in their Sunday best, while outside a few hundred spectators were jostling to catch sight of the most senior political figure in the Reich.
Police officers kept the road clear for the president, who finally drew up in his limousine. His chauffeur opened the door, and Hindenburg climbed out unassisted, tipping his hat to greet the crowd. There was a reverent silence in the church. On either side of the altar sat a number of severely disabled worshippers, most of them veterans of the First World War.
Hindenburg strode to the front, top hat in one hand and hymnal in the other, closely followed by his son and Otto Meissner. A few elderly ladies curtseyed. The priest came to meet Hindenburg, squeezing his right hand between his own – and bowed.
Space had been saved for Hindenburg and his companions in the front pew. He knew the hymns by heart, his resonant bass echoing loudly. Finally, the priest announced, ‘From the depths of our hearts we ask God the Almighty to protect the grey head that bides among us.’
When the service was over, Hindenburg leant across to the veterans, who wore their medals on their chests. One or two had seen combat in the Franco-Prussian War, and they told the Field Marshal the sites where they’d been wounded, whispering the names of battlefields. Old stories, ones nobody else wanted to hear. Hindenburg wanted to hear.
He shook hands with the old men, every single one of them, and only then did he turn away.
When would it happen, the Communist uprising so many people feared? Or would the SA be first to lose their nerve? Plotkin observed uneasily that there were more police than usual out on the streets, and uniformed Nazis stood on every corner with their collection boxes. Then it dawned on him: the Reichstag was due to open in two days; no wonder they were taking so many precautions. But what were the SA up to?
Adolf Hitler was still out and about in Thuringia. Today was the election, and the Führer was touting for votes. In Eisfeld he was awarded honorary citizenship of the town by the local council. In Sonneberg he addressed more than ten thousand supporters: ‘And this nation, our very lifeblood, shall I now abandon it for a mess of pottage, for titles and frivolous hopes? I cannot act otherwise today than I did four months ago. A “cabinet of social equity”, they’re calling the new government, and they are always finding new names to hide the inner vacuity of the whole business.’
Ernst Thälmann, Chairman of the KPD, travelled to his home town of Hamburg to attend a regional party conference in the district of Wasserkante, where he was feted as the ‘Leader of the German Proletariat’. A portrait of Lenin hung in the hall. Thälmann called for a ‘mass attack on the Fascist Schleicher dictatorship’.
Such was the logic of the Communists. It was the line dictated by Moscow, and the line Thälmann had drummed into his party. Everyone to the right of the Communists were Fascists.
A clandestine meeting. Schleicher and Strasser. The chancellor, a guest of the Nazi who could split the NSDAP.
Many of the district party leaders are behind me, said Strasser. They’d rather follow me than Hitler.
You could be Vice-Chancellor, said Schleicher. Maybe even Prime Minister of Prussia.
Paul von Hindenburg’s farewell letter to Franz von Papen was made public, for who knows what reason. ‘It is with a heavy heart, persuaded only by your personal representations and in consideration of the reasons presented to me that I allow you to be relieved of this office,’ wrote the president.
My confidence in and respect for you yourself and what you have accomplished remain undiminished. During your tenure as Chancellor of the Reich and Commissioner for Prussia, which regrettably lasted only six months, I have come to greatly appreciate your devotion to work, your willingness to accept responsibility, your selfless love of the Fatherland and your noble character. I will never forget my time working with you. For everything you have done for our Fatherland over these difficult months, I express my deepest thanks, on behalf of the Reich as well as my own.
The German national football team played in front of fifty thousand spectators in Düsseldorf. Their opponents were the Dutch, who had brought eight thousand fans of their own. The match was a fiasco for the host team and their coach, Otto Nerz; Richard Hofmann, a German striker, had a particularly unfortunate day. They were lucky to get away 2–0.
It’s hard to say how the Germans compared to other international squads. Football wasn’t part of the Olympic Games that summer, and at the first World Cup in 1930 they had been put off by the three-week voyage to Uruguay.
By late evening, there was one clear loser at the Thuringian elections: the NSDAP. Goebbels had already identified the culprit: Strasser. He’d never really put his back into the campaign, Goebbels noted afterwards. Nor had he shown any enthusiasm. Was this jealousy talking? Everyone in the party knew how ambitious Goebbels was, that he coveted responsibility for the entire propaganda machine of the NSDAP. Strasser was currently entrusted with Propaganda Department 11, which dealt with all the party’s speakers and was in charge of their training and appearances, but Goebbels considered himself the movement’s greatest agitator. After the Führer, of course.