Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

530 DER FUEHRERdebts from private resources: 'The name of the recipient, his privatefortune, the amount of his indebtedness and assets at different times hisprivate income, the amount of the loan to relieve indebtedness and theamount transferred by the recipient to his creditors shall all be, itemized.. . .' The whole Reichstag raged against the big landowners, with theNational Socialists in the lead, sure of having the people behind them;only the German Nationalists, a lost grouplet voted against theresolution.The big landowner of Neudeck, who filled the post of ReichsPresident, very probably regarded these decisions of the budgetcommittee as bitter proof that Schleicher had failed to curb theReichstag. There had been no 'relaxation of tension.' The immediateissue was East Prussian landed property, for which Hinden-burg surelyhad stronger feelings than for West German coal mines or the shippinginterests of Hamburg and Bremen. But if Hinden-burg was perturbed,because the big landowners were menaced, then he certainly was evenmore perturbed because his government no longer had the Reichstag inhand.Even Schleicher for a moment lost his lighthearted confidence andconsidered a desperate plan, which had been recommended to him byHugenberg and Papen as well as to Hindenburg: to dissolve theReichstag and then to declare a state of emergency precluding elections;meanwhile to form a strong and popular cabinet. This would have beenunconstitutional, a coup d'etat; but Hindenburg's overstrained authoritymight still have sanctioned it. Now the very men, who up till then hadbeen Schleicher's most faithful friends, stayed his hand; the day after thedecisions of the budget committee, Kaas, the leader of the Center, wentto Schleicher and gave him a sharp warning. Schleicher replied thatthere was no cause for alarm; that he was contemplating no state ofemergency; that it was only Hugenberg and Papen who were trying toforce him to take the dangerous path of open dictatorship against thepeople. At the time he said this, it may have been true. On the same dayKaas wrote Schleicher a pathetic letter, probably prearranged by the twoof them; he sent a copy to Hindenburg and then made the letter public.He threatened revolution in the streets if the Reichstag were forciblydismissed: 'Illegality from above will unleash illegal-