Word: reichstag
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...Machiavelli of modern German politics, had maneuvered party leaders and the President into an impasse from which the only exit was to make him Chancellor. Beginning three weeks ago with Adolf Hitler, the party leaders were forced to admit that none of them could find a majority in the Reichstag on which to base a Cabinet. This they could not do because President von Hindenburg demanded pledges in advance that they carry out his reactionary policies-policies which the 85-year-old President was advised by Defense Minister von Schleicher are essential to the safety of the Reich...
Haste in picking a new Chancellor was urgent because the German crisis had already run 14 days since the resignation of Lieut.-Colonel von Papen's "Cabinet of Monocles"; and because last week only four more days remained before the newly elected Reichstag was scheduled to meet. The thing to do, President von Hindenburg decided, was to reappoint his favorite protégé, Chancellor Franz von Papen...
...famed "Brown House" headquarters in Munich and went to bed on a Schlafwagen (sleeper) bound for Berlin. In the dead of night he exchanged telegrams with two most militant Fascists, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Party chieftain in Berlin, and mighty-midriffed Hermann Göring, Speaker of the Reichstag, who induced him to leave his train at dawn, meet them in Weimar. Apparently they told Leader Hitler, somewhat of a waverer despite his bombast, that the Fascist Party must stick by its announced resolve to fight any Cabinet not headed by Hitler. Soon Fascist headquarters officially announced "our Party declines...
...Cabinet. Because all German Chancellors for the past two years have ruled in defiance of the Reichstag, dissolving it when necessary by Presidential decree, Chancellor von Schleicher ignored the theoretical odds against him, proceeded calmly to build his Cabinet. There was a chance-slim but a chance-that with well-hated Colonel von Papen definitely out, the Reichstag might be cajoled by Chancellor von Schleicher into adjourning until next year under the familiar German formula of a "Christmas Truce...
...months is the approximate period necessary to dissolve a Reichstag and re-elect another. This year President von Hindenburg has already dissolved two Reichstags. Dare he dissolve a third? To do so would be equivalent to breaking once & for all with the German Republic, setting up a pure dictatorship...