Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

472 DER FUEHRERsuch proclamations as this appeared in the National Socialist press:Halt! Before you leave your present party, convinced of the truth ofthe National Socialist idea, reflect if you cannot be more useful to theNational Socialist Movement by remaining a member where you areand informing us about all the occurrences and intentions of yourpresent party comrades I . . . Your work will be valued as highly as thesacrifices of every party comrade and S.A. man who does his duty!One of those who did their duty thus silently was sitting at the table asAbegg conferred with Torgler and Kasper. This was Councillor(Regierungsrat) Werner Diels; Abegg had unsuspectingly called him inas a witness, and he took down a protocol of the conversation. Treasoncould not have been performed more comfortably; Diels took hisprotocol to Papen and reported that the Prussian government was allyingitself with Bolshevism!This forced Schleicher's hand; reluctantly he permitted theReichswehr to march. On the morning of July 20, 1932, Papen asked thePrussian cabinet ministers to call at the Chancellery. He told them that astate of military emergency had been proclaimed in Prussia; Generalvon Rundstedt, commander of the Berlin division, had been given fullpower. The ministers, said Papen, should regard themselves as deposed.He, Papen, as 'Reich Commissioner,' would assume power in Prussiaand set other commissioners over the ministries. It was a shortconversation without much argument and counter-argument; on his wayout, Severing said philosophically that in this hour world history was inthe making. The ministers returned to their offices; when Severing wasback at his desk, he received a telephone call from a certain Bracht,mayor of Essen; Bracht declared that he was Severing's successor andwould present himself at twelve o'clock.This was the gravest political upheaval that Germany had experiencedin thirteen years; superficially, it occurred as a sequence of depressinglytragi-comic scenes without greatness. It was the leadership of the SocialDemocratic Party which determined the form and course of thisupheaval. These men decided to accept the blow and offer no resistance.