Word: hitleritis
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...been announced that the evening's speech would be delivered by Herr Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess. But at 8:04, Adolf Hitler took the rostrum. Traditionally the annual beer-hall speech has been secret; but this time it was broadcast. For 57 minutes Herr Hitler let them have it (see p. 22). At 9:01 he stepped down from the rostrum and briefly passed among his followers. Usually on these occasions he has sat down to sip beer and swap yarns until wee hours, but this time he left the hall after just nine minutes. With...
...Then [9:21, exactly eleven minutes after Adolf Hitler left] a muffled detonation and shattering glass! There were several hysterical screams. The force of the explosion hurled me against a table. A few seconds of silence and darkness; then in the dim light of a couple of bulbs which remained intact, I saw the first persons stagger through a door. They were covered with dust...
...pulled off, as official Germany bitterly charged, by the British secret service? Probably not. Britain's intelligence officers are bright enough to know that assassinating Hitler would only serve to glorify him as a martyr...
...hoax, as the French charged, a fake accident staged and executed by Hitler's own henchmen to bring the Führer close to martyrdom and thus rally waning popular support for the regime? Was it another Reichstag fire? What about the mysterious and providential changes in plan? What about the fact that not a single big-shot Nazi remained in the beer hall even though the Führer's prompt departure was unforeseen? Despite these startling coincidences, this theory was hardly more credible than the German charge that Winston Churchill sank the Athenia...
There were no set speeches, no previously formulated accusations. Herr Hitler's first words about the Reichstag fire were stagy, forced, phony: "Das ist das Werk der Kommunisten." (This is the work of Communists.) This time his first statement was spontaneous, slangy, more relief than calculated vindictiveness: "Glück muss der Mensch haben." (A fellow has got to be lucky...