Word: reichstag
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Nazis charge that the fire was set by Communists as the symbol of and signal for a nation-wide Communist revolt. Not the slightest proof of this ever materialized, the Nazis themselves assuming all power instead and using the Reichstag fire as an excuse for Chancellor Hitler's repressive acts (TIME, March 13 et seq.). Last week amid Firebug van der Lubbe's passionate protest, Judge Bunger suspended the trial for half an hour and the Dutchman was led below. When brought back into court he again seemed stupefied as in the past but suddenly began to writhe...
...robed judges of the German Supreme Court started violently and some half rose from their chairs. Without warning the Dutch Sphinx of the Reichstag Fire Trial, ox-dumb Marinus van der Lubbe who has sat as though drugged or stupefied for weeks on end, suddenly leaped to his feet, clear-eyed and bubbling with protests which he hurled at Presiding Judge Dr. Wilhelm Bünger...
...This trial began in Leipzig," he shouted, "then moved to Berlin, and now we are back in Leipzig but nothing ever happens. I don't agree to that! I burned down the Reichstag and I want to have my sentence-twenty years in prison or Death! I have been questioned for over eight months. I want something to happen! This trial has now been going on for two months. How long is it going to take to get a verdict...
Also voted on was the question of electing a new Reichstag all members of which had been picked by Chancellor Hitler and lumped together on the ballot under a single circle in which the voter could write "Ja." If he wrote anything else or nothing his paper was thrown out as "spoiled." Official score for the new Reichstag: 39,626,647 Jas and 3,348,362 spoiled ballots...
What shape the first of these will assume is not difficult to divine. The Reichstag is to become constitutionally and distinctly a council incapable of anything save advice. It is conceivable that the body might vote itself to be separated into functional groups, of the "trade-profession" variety. Mr. Hitler, with his ear well-cocked to the earth, is to be sole ruler. This latter, of course, is true today. But it will be a happy premium against the future to have the Reichstag vote itself out of power...