Braun v. Brownshirts

Orderly Germans marched on toward a Fascist form of Government last week. In four out of five State Diet elections they voted pluralities to the Fascist Party of Brown-Shirted Adolf Hitler. Three Fascists were killed in election riots.

Dominant in Germany is Prussia, a State which is 62$ of the Fatherland. Dominant in Prussia since 1919. when the German Republic was founded, has been the Socialist Party--the party with a plurality. Last week this 13-year-old Socialist dominance was shaken. Fascism emerged from the Diet election as Prussia's No. 1 party thus:

Party Former Diet Seats New Diet Seats Fascists 6 162 Socialists 157 93 Centrists 71 67 Communists 56 57 Nationalists 82 31 People's Party 40 1 Democrats 21 2 Christian Socialist 0 1 Hanoverians 4 1

Among the Fascist Deputies elected was Prince August Wilhelm, fourth son of Wilhelm II and "First Hohenzollern in a Republican Parliament." The People's Party, famed when it was led by the late, great Dr. Gustav Stresemann, collapsed like a pricked balloon. The Communists barely held their own. Triumphant Adolf Hitler, who has stumped the Fatherland by air at a man-killing pace, rolled up for his Fascist Party in Prussia the imposing plurality of 162.

Nevertheless bald and owlish Dr. Otto Braun, the Socialist Leader who has ruled as Premier of Prussia for eleven years at the head of a rock-firm Socialist-Centrist coalition, was still last week in power. It was estimated that Dr. Braun will be able to muster 162 seats when the Diet convenes in June. Thus his coalition strength would exactly equal the strength of the Fascist Party alone. But Adolf Hitler can probably count on the support of "The Little Man In Blue," Dr. Alfred Hugenberg. newspaper tycoon and Nationalist leader. A Hitler-Hugenberg-Splinter-party coalition would muster 203 seats, only nine short of a majority in the Diet of 422.

Dr. Braun, shrewd, had expected some such close shave as this. Therefore, just before the election, he persuaded the old Prussian Diet to pass a bill having the effect that Dr. Braun can only be ousted as Premier if his opponent can muster a majority. Up to the time this measure passed a plurality in the Diet had always sufficed to elect Prussia's Premier. Last week Prussia's shrewd old owl was variously reported as "determined to keep the Premiership at all costs" and as "so appalled by the losses of his own party, not to mention the Fascist gains, that he feels he must resign."

Deadlock, for the time being, seemed to be the significance of the election in Prussia. In Hamburg, Anhalt and Wuerttemberg the Brownshirts won similar pluralities, produced similar deadlocks. In Bavaria, second largest German State, the Fascists last week made their poorest showing, were not able to nose out of first place the locally potent Bavarian People's Party.

Germans were inclined to agree that in all five State Diet elections Adolf Hitler's Brownshirts came just near enough to grasping power to rear up heartbreaking difficulties against getting any legislative action whatsoever.

"Today's election leaves the situation obscure," anxiously observed the semi-official Paris daily Le Matin. "Will the most powerful party in Prussia accept being excluded from the Government by means of a Parliamentary maneuver?"

"Hitler is not yet master," thankfully observed Le Journal, "but only strong and clever coalitions can prevent him from playing a capital role in German politics."

Despite the fact that Roman Catholic bishops have warned their German flocks against Catholic Hitler, terming him a firebrand contemptuous of authority, rumors soon sprang up in Berlin that enough Catholic Deputies of the Centre would vote with the Fascists and Nationalists to give Herren Hitler & Hugenberg an absolute majority with control of the Prussian Diet.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.