Operatic Mystery

Telegraph repeaters clicked frantically throughout the Fatherland one day last week. Most urgent. Clear all lines. Berlin calling every Army officer above the rank of colonel, every Storm Troop leader, every Labor Corps leader, every Nazi Youth and Party leader. All were ordered to drop whatever they might be doing and rush to Berlin. Added the Realmleader's official circular telegram: NO EXCUSES WILL BE ACCEPTED.

In Berlin people with matinee and evening tickets for the State Opera found that theoretically they could get their money back. Practically the entire Opera district was walled off by police, soldiers and Nazi troopers. Standing shoulder to shoulder down the curbstones, they formed living cordons between which the snorting motor cars of Reichswehr officers and Nazi leaders raced. Police and troops snapped to salute as sky-blue uniformed General Goring dashed up, beaming and bowing in response to cheers which a foreign correspondent described as "unuttered." (The writer was later rebuked by the Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment for such "base cynicism.")

As the Realmleader's car arrived Adolf Hitler, who usually stands up in the back to be cheered, sat morosely in front with his chauffeur--a new one. Magically the whisper flew, "Two Storm Troopers fired yesterday on the Realmleader, killing his chauffeur." Amid heartbreaking tension the vast State Opera filled to bursting. All correspondents were shut out. Everyone inside was sworn to utter secrecy. An hour and a half later the Opera disgorged. That night it filled again with the same secrecy-sworn galaxy of leaders. They heard Tannhauser sung. To perform by special command of Der Reichsjilhrer, beauteous Prima Dona Maria Mueller, half German and half Czech, had been all but jerked off the boat on, which she was about to sail to Manhattan's Metropolitan.

Amid near panic in Berlin, rumors festered so thick that Alarmist Johannes Steel, Foreign Editor of the New York Post, fairly dithered: "The fortnight following Jan. 13 [date of the Saar plebiscite] may be the bloodiest two weeks in the history of Germany. Riots, executions, wholesale imprisonment involving 10,000 to 15,000 men and women, with possibly civil war, will sweep that unfortunate nation from its Baltic coasts to the banks of the Rhine."

According to belated government press handouts the hush-hush Opera conclave had three objectives: 1) to combat a lying press campaign against Germany which Herr Hitler believed was being launched abroad; 2) to reassure citizens of the Saar that Germany is the ideal country for them to join; 3) to flabbergast the world with a fresh, monster demonstration of German loyalty to the Realmleader. After Orator Hitler's speech, according to the State's handout, "he was rewarded with spontaneous applause. One might well say that surely treason does not lurk about him. Only loyalty stands watch over him."

Considering the official source and the fact that impartial observers had been locked out, this statement seemed calculated to multiply the volume of "foreign lies." As editors abroad demanded facts which their men in Berlin simply could not get, slow leaks from Germans sworn to secrecy produced a composite rumor which fitted together fairly well. The rumor: Germany's Reichswehr has been demanding a show-down on the death of onetime Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher, shot with his wife by Nazis during the Blood Purge (TIME, July 9). The General's regiment has demanded that either something be proved against von Schleicher, so that his name can be stricken in dishonor from the regimental rolls, or that the General's innocence be acknowledged, his assassins punished. In the State Opera these demands of military honor were satisfied, so the rumor ran, by Nazi admissions that General and Frau von Schleicher were innocent, Nazi assurances that the guilty had been punished. Moreover some sort of declaration was made regarding the relations of the Party and the Army. In a significant editorial

Dr. Alfred ("Rosie") Rosenberg, director of the Realmleader's personal newsorgan, declared, "The Party is the unchallenged political master of Germany, whereas the Army is its defender and sole bearer of arms"--implying that Storm Troopers may no longer go about with pistols in their belts. "Whatever remains of past differences between the Party and the Army," concluded "Rosie," "has now been swept away by the forceful rush of the Realmleader's speech. Constructive work must and will result from this historic hour in the Prussian State Opera House."

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