GERMANY: Braun v. Brownshirts

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Orderly Germans marched on toward a Fascist form of Government last week. In four out of five State Diet elections they voted pluralities to the Fascist Party of Brown-Shirted Adolf Hitler. Three Fascists were killed in election riots.

Dominant in Germany is Prussia, a State which is 62$ of the Fatherland. Dominant in Prussia since 1919. when the German Republic was founded, has been the Socialist Party—the party with a plurality. Last week this 13-year-old Socialist dominance was shaken. Fascism emerged from the Diet election as Prussia's No. 1 party thus:

Party Former Diet Seats New Diet Seats Fascists 6 162 Socialists 157 93 Centrists 71 67 Communists 56 57 Nationalists 82 31 People's Party 40 1 Democrats 21 2 Christian Socialist 0 1 Hanoverians 4 1

Among the Fascist Deputies elected was Prince August Wilhelm, fourth son of Wilhelm II and "First Hohenzollern in a Republican Parliament." The People's Party, famed when it was led by the late, great Dr. Gustav Stresemann, collapsed like a pricked balloon. The Communists barely held their own. Triumphant Adolf Hitler, who has stumped the Fatherland by air at a man-killing pace, rolled up for his Fascist Party in Prussia the imposing plurality of 162.

Nevertheless bald and owlish Dr. Otto Braun, the Socialist Leader who has ruled as Premier of Prussia for eleven years at the head of a rock-firm Socialist-Centrist coalition, was still last week in power. It was estimated that Dr. Braun will be able to muster 162 seats when the Diet convenes in June. Thus his coalition strength would exactly equal the strength of the Fascist Party alone. But Adolf Hitler can probably count on the support of "The Little Man In Blue," Dr. Alfred Hugenberg. newspaper tycoon and Nationalist leader. A Hitler-Hugenberg-Splinter-party coalition would muster 203 seats, only nine short of a majority in the Diet of 422.

Dr. Braun, shrewd, had expected some such close shave as this. Therefore, just before the election, he persuaded the old Prussian Diet to pass a bill having the effect that Dr. Braun can only be ousted as Premier if his opponent can muster a majority. Up to the time this measure passed a plurality in the Diet had always sufficed to elect Prussia's Premier. Last week Prussia's shrewd old owl was variously reported as "determined to keep the Premiership at all costs" and as "so appalled by the losses of his own party, not to mention the Fascist gains, that he feels he must resign."