5 January 2025

Adolf Hitler's rise to power appears quite swift looking back 100 years later. It's this same swiftness to power we see with fascists in the US led by Donald Trump.

In the July 3rd edition of The Indianapolis Times ran several front page stores about Hitler. The below copy accompanied the above photo array. It shows how in 10 years, Hitler and his buddy Josef Goebbels, took over Germany.

In 1923, Adolf Hitler was an obscure Austrian house painter (1) just beginning to become prominent as an oratorical exhorter of a modest “Brown Shirt’ movement. His Brown Shirt membership began to grow as he continued feverish organization efforts with Josef Goebbels, an aid (2). The movement spread, gained force, and ten years later Hitler was replying to cheering tens of thousands from his Berlin hotel win- dow (3). Scarcely more than ten years from his modest beginnings, this man was chancellor, and is shown (4) paying respects to venerable President Von Hindenburg (right) attended by Herman Goerring, another aid, now the premier of Prussia. Late last year came an ill omen when Hitler, laying the cornerstone for a new Munich building, broke the hammer (5) with which he was completing the ceremony. But early this year new heights were reached when 2,000,000 Germans pledged allegiance to Hitler's regime in a gigantic ceremony at Berlin's Tempelhof alrport (6). Only a few weeks ago, Hitler made a hurried flight to Venice for secret conferences with Benito Mussolini, Italian Fascist leader (7)-and there, it is believed, he received some pointed advice from the Italian dictator. Today (8), victor over an insurgent faction, Adolf Hitler sits on the hot lid of a country that seethes with dissension and uncertainty.

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Another front page story was about how the Nazi party was killing its own members deemed traitors.

'Every Traitor Must Be Killed,' Nazis Declare
By United Press

BERLIN, July 3.— Extraordinary tension in the streets of Berlin today was the only outward sign of the crisis through which the nation is passing and which has raised in every mind the question:

"What will be Hitler's next move?"

Significantly, to this query, the reply of most of the Nazi enthusiasts is:

"The purging of the party must go on until the last traitor is show."

Nazi leaders, still considering the extent to which their punishment of rebels shall go, began today to count up the dead.

Authorities were compiling a casualty list, promised for publication after cabinet approval, and sought final - or semi-final - reports from the provinces.

Deaths announced by the government or verified from authentic sources included:

General Kurt von Schleicher and his wife, "shot in resisting arrest."

Ernst Roehm, storm troop chief of staff, executed Sunday evening.

Heinrich Klausener, Catholic action leader, shot in mysterious circumstances.

Seven intimate coleaders of Roehm, executed - Schneidhuber, Heines, Ernst, Kayn, Schmid, Heidebrek and Sprete.

Gregor Strasser, former Nazi leader, "suicide."

Hubert von Bose, Vice-Chancellor von Papen's secretary, "shot while resisting search of the chancellery." This is a revised version of his death, first announced as suicide.

Alexander Glaser, Munich lawyer and Karl Zehnter, Munich hotelman, executed.

Nineteen storm troops leaders executed at Lichterfelde Cadet school here. Names have not been announced. The storm troop leader, Ernst, mentioned among Roehm's friends, was shot there also.

Eight other unnamed storm troop leaders shot elsewhere.

The shooting of three more prominent persons was reported today in reliable sources.

They included Gustav von Kahr, Catholic leader in Munich; Colonel Von Bredow, former right-hand man of the late General Schleicher, one of the revolt leaders, and Edgar Jung, who wrote Vice-Chancellor Franz Van Papen's disputed Marburg speech, attacking radical Nazis. Jung and Kahr were executed.

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Another front page story was by William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard Foreign Editor.

WASHINGTON, July 3 - Adolf Hitler, rather than Captain Ernst Roehm, Brown Shirt chief of staff whom he ordered shot, appears to be headed toward a monarchy.

In Berlin, Wednesday, April 18, I attended a foreign office party in the Wilhelmstrasse. Captain Roehm was there and he made a little talk. He was introduced by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who later was to stand at Hitler's side when Hitler ordered Roehm before the firing squad.

A few feet from me and directly in front of Captain Roehm sat Prince August Wilhem, son of the former kaiser and now reported under arrest. Present also were members of the diplomatic corps.

In phrases filled with praise, Goebbels described Roehm as one of Hitler's most trusted lieutenants, and told how, since the fight in the Hofbrauhaus at Munich in 1921, where Roehm and forty-six Nazi "police" held the field against 800 Marxists, Roehm had been one of the chosen few.

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Roehm got up from his table and took his stand by a window. He was of massive build and ugly as a bulldog.

"The Sturmabetelung (storm troops)," he began, "are the champions of the will and idea of the National-Socialist revolution.

"After November, 1918, the governing parts of the Social Democrats ruled the street. It controlled the entire political life of Germany. It prevented with brutal force every enlightenment of the people.

"If Adolf Hitler did not wish to give up all idea of presenting his ideas to the people, therefore, he had to meet force with force. For this purpose he found a small troop of followers to protect his meetings in the early days of the movement."

It was after the Hofbrauhaus fight, Roehm remind pridefully, that Hitler himself "rewarded" the little band that had defended him with the title "Sturmabteilung," the now famous S. A. (pronounced Ess Ah) and of which Roehm, who helped create and built it up, was made chief of staff.

"At the moment an S. A. puts on the brown shirt," he explained proudly, "he submits himself, unreservedly to its laws, which are: First, obedience to the death of Adolf Hitler. Second, body and soul, life and possessions, all for Germany!"

The true reason for S. A. said Roehm, was to protect Hitler's ideas from Marxism on the one hand, and reaction on the other. But while they did not deceive themselves that Marxism is dead in Germany, he believed it was no longer a serious menace.

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Pausing, Roehm lifted his eyes and looked in the direction of the Hohenzollern's table.

"Frequently," he said, "the ideas reaction and monarchy are considered equivalent, although at bottom they have nothing to do with each other. But when reaction writes the word monarchy on its shield it is doing no service to the monarchical idea."

Prince August Wilhelm gazed at the tablecloth.

"If the German people wished to give itself again an overlord," Roehm pursued, "it would do it against, rather than on behalf of, the reactionaries. Anyhow I believe this: The German imperial crown lies on the battlefield and I doubt whether the German people wishes to fight for it there."

The prince's face became a tragic mask. A friend nudged him jibingly. He stirred, turned and smiled wanly.

Roehm, I am convinced, was a Hitler fanatic, a Hitlerite who faced the firing squad still believing all of the wild things Hitler used to bellow from the stump. An immoral monster, if you will, but loyal to his old buddy.

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PERHAPS it is Hitler who is changing and who finds his old intimates embarrassing. Unquestionably, he has veered greatly to the right.

Today Germany is almost a military dictatorship with Hitler for a facade. The reichswehr, middle-class Germany's shield, is behind him and protecting him from his own brown shirts which Roehm commanded.

If it is true that Roehm was on the point of marching on Berlin, as claimed, it was hardly in order set up a monarchy. More probably it was because he had become convinced that Hitler himself was swinging toward the right, perhaps toward the monarchy, and thus was betraying the cause.

Had Roehm succeed, Germany likely would have swung toward the left - not toward Communism, but toward Socialism, which Roehm preferred rather than the monarchy.