IN BERLIN -A WEEK LATER
By A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
IN Berlin, in the great old days of opposition, when the Storm Troops had something to storm and the Nazi movement was sweeping onward unitedly, Hitler used to stay at the Hotel Kaiserhof and take his tea in the centre court. Anyone could enter the den and watch the lion feed. And during the first year of his Chancellor- ship he would still stay there if they were changing his room at the Reichskanzlei opposite, and usually he would drink there about three times a week.
Now that is all over. Grim guards of the Reichswehr and steel-helmeted police stand outside the offices in the Wilhelmstrasse. The ministers, thus protected against each other, sit feverishly working out their plans to save their Party, or their faction within the Party, or them- selves. When they leave the Wilhelmstrasse it is to seek peace in the country " after their exertions of the past -week " : for in large parts of the country the news- papers are still believed and the N.S.D.A.P. is still assumed intact, loyal, and semi-sacred.
Berlin, however, has got over that phase. The Begeislerung of 1983 has long been forgotten under the gadfly pricks of Doktor Goebbels. Slowly it has im- pressed itself upon Berlin that the concentration camps are not big enough for the whole population, and that if the people maintains a level standard of grumbling against restrictions, and cautiously raises the standard as the economic crisis deepens, the people's will must be done. Not slowly, but with a dramatic suddenness Berliners of all classes tell you that Papen is their man, that Papen must not be shot or forced to resign, and secretly they look forward to the day when he will have defeated Goebbels and give them their Press, drama, and enter- tainments again.
Why are they so frank ? Partly because the regime has impoverished them, and very largely in spite of the " terror " so much advertised during this last week. Criticism had reached a momentum months ago which in turn had been accelerated by Papen's brave Marburg speech. All the shootings of Goring and Himmler could not silence it. But what chiefly has loosened their tongues is the realization that the Gestapa are not watching them, the ordinary non-political folk, any more. The Gestapo, are watching the Goring Special Police, and both are watching the S.A., and the S.A. are being wheedled or bullied by the S.S. It is a fight within the Party, whose leadership has already trussed and gelded its own unique creation, the Storm Troops.
That is why the Berlin public are willing to speak, and why they have become so slack about the Hitler salute and the German Greeting. They are not shocked by the shootings without trial or the " exertions " of the past week : the horror that has swept your country does not fix on them at all. .Yet to say that the past brutalities of the regime have made them callous would be inexact. Most of them know nothing of the brutali- ties, and when in united 1933 they heard a story of cruelty they were generally willing to attribute it to the Emigrants. . Their indifference to the deaths in Berlin and Munich testifies to an indifference to the regime. "_The leaders are putting each other up against the wall—we always said that they would do so." That, too, is why the leaders as yet have not set foot in the Kaiserhof. Only the S.S. shots feel quite safe there, and at their head can sometimes be seen Dietrich, now promoted to Obergruppenfuehrer for his steadfast- ness in execution. Also Himinler, head of the S.S. and the Gestapa and the best guarded German outside the Reichswehr, walks through to his bedroom, and so does Hess, Hitler's bushy-browed and inoffensive deputy.
For it was not the surviving leaders who won the glorious Second Revolution of June 30th. The indis- pensable Reichswehr won that day : they not only rid themselves of the menace of Rohm to their organiza- tion, but they made a cleft in the Nazi granite front which time and the economic weather will drive deeper. As yet the cleft is shallow. Not many of the Brown- shirts know that their holiday will outlast August, and most still are loyal to the Filluvr rather than to his dead Chief of Staff. But when the few return to find under Lutze plenty of money-collecting to do and speeches to make, but no marching, arms or warlike insignia ; and when their comrades stamp the cold streets without boots or uniforms or even a job, the dissensions which already rend the leadership and the Cabinet may well split the leadership clean off the party.
There are signs too in Berlin that the people will go with the S.A. Already, with the potato famine and the appointment of an economic dictator in Dr. Schmitt, rumour is beginning to switch over from the supposed death of thousands, related with a lack of emotion only possible in Berlin, to something far nearer home. Begin- ning with the working class and progressing through the shopkeepers there are stories of famine in this and that, and many people expect bread-queues this winter.
Opinion therefore is tepid in the general public, the Nazi leaders are wildly suspicious of each other, and in a few months if Germany grows poorer the Nazi following itself will be falling away. Above all this welter there stands one rock of bronze, the Reichswehr with its commander-in-chief, President Hindenburg. The Reichs- wehr, except in acute crisis, never plays a military part in politics. Its weight without bayonets is usually able to push Germany its own way, and it does not throw its weight about too much. Just for the moment it is satisfied, and it will support Hitler so long as he does not attack the President's friend Papen. If Hitler can preserve his mental balance, if he does not wash Germany once more in the bloodbath, if he can keep his sporting lieutenants from stalking the gentry who deal with Papen, if he can hold the Nazi " idealists " off the Roman Catholics, then the Reichswehr will sustain him even when his party has fallen to pieces under him. If not, Hitler's own days are numbered, and there are people in Germany who, remembering the fate of their friends and the methods that he used against men who were not proved to be his enemies, will not wait long upon the Reichswehr's secession. For this, Hindenburg must survive and keep his friends in power. The gangs who, remote from the people and the army, now rule Germany, would stick at little to save themselves, but they would hardly dare dispatch him before his time.
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