New Constitution & Enigma

A scrupulous respecter of his Constitution is President Roosevelt compared to Realmleader Hitler. Abruptly one day last week an Undersecretary of the German Ministry of Interior, one Wilhelm Stuckart, informed Germans officially on behalf of the Government that as of that day they had a new Constitution.

The old Constitution adopted at Weimar in 1919, when the German Republic was founded, has never been repealed. Yet Dr. Stuckart's announcement emphatically meant just what it said: Germany has a new Constitution. It has a new Constitution because Nazis say so, and the looseness of the whole operation was basically characteristic of the way in which Germany is ruled today.

Speaking for the Government, Dr. Stuckart said that Germany has a new Constitution because there have been enacted ''basic laws." Among these he cited the Law of March 24, 1933 by which the Cabinet was empowered to decree even laws which violate the Constitution and are admitted by all to be unconstitutional. He also mentioned the Law of July 3, 1934 merging the Nazi Party with the German Government, and making the higher Storm Troop leaders members of the German Cabinet. Other laws declared last week to have "made the new Constitution" have abolished locally-chosen state governments in Germany, placed the entire Fatherland under the direct administration of the Federal Government, merged the Party leadership, the Presidency and the Chancellorship into one office concentrated in the person of Adolf Hitler. Finally the sensational Law For the Protection of German Blood And German Honor (TIME, Sept. 23) was declared last week to be a most basic portion of the new Constitution.

Blood & Honor. On the third anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, 25,000 Storm Troops hurried last week from all over Germany to surge in a brown tide into the Lustgarten adjoining Wilhelm II's onetime Palace. "Welcome, Comrades of the Old Guard!" shouted Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, "Welcome to Berlin which we have purged until it is no longer a Jewish cesspool!"

With the 25,000 rigid at attention. Realmleader Adolf Hitler burst at full lung power into a rasping, bellowing state-of-the-nation speech which belied rumors that his throat has been freshly operated upon for removal of another polyp. Bareheaded amid a raw and wintry breeze, Orator Hitler keynoted: "All that I am, I am through you! All that you are, you are through me! . . . Whoever opposes us now, my comrades, opposes us not because we are Nazis but because we have restored military independence to Germany. . . . We are no longer defenseless Helots but citizens of the world, self-confident and erect. . . . Germany will be as peace-loving as any nation can be, provided we Germans are not touched in our honor! . . . Comrades, fighting and sacrifice remain before us!"

Tucked away in a copy of the Official Gazette, not immediately issued last week but finally released, was a new Cabinet decree law fully as basic as anything in the so-called new Constitution. It was signed by Herr Hitler and the War Minister, General Werner von Blomberg. It annuls a regulation which has stood since Kaiser Wilhelm provided on March 19, 1914 that, in principle, the German Army shall not be used for police purposes against German citizens. The new Hitler-Blomberg decree fatefully empowers the Army to take German law & order into its hands, the Realmleader still being supreme commander of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Hereafter the Army may be ordered to "break resistance" of German civilians, forcibly take persons into custody, "protect persons or materials entrusted to their guardianship."

Second Eclipse? Events had not moved sufficiently far this week to determine whether the new order means a fresh eclipse of the Storm Troops. Their power waned greatly after the "Blood Purge" (TIME, July 9, 1934), but in 1935 strongly waxed again. Somewhat of an enigma, Adolf Hitler keeps Germans guessing at many things. For example, the law concentrating all power in the Realmleader authorizes him to indicate how his successor is to be chosen and implies that he must do so. Yet he continues to delay. Nowadays he even delights in oratorical passages implying with throbbing pathos that his own end may not be far off.

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