‘STORM TROOPS’ TURNED LOOSE

The first trial of strength between Hitler and the Bavarian Cabinet was a triumph for the former. The Government said “You shan’t”; the leader of the National Socialists replied, “I will,” and he did. Encouraged by this success, he continued to organise and arm his “storm troops,” to review them as their military chief, and to exercise them in manoeuvres for the isolation of a Munich hypothetically in the hands of the Reds. He also turned them loose on the Socialists’ meetings, many of which they broke up.

It turned out, however, that the Socialists were “très mechants.”

When they were attacked they had the audacity to defend themselves. They argued that, if Hitler had the right to form bands to assail them, they had an equal right to take similar measures for their own protection.

The result was that Bavaria became the theatre of a feud between Hitler and the Socialists, which recently has been assuming sanguinary forms. Meanwhile the Government, compromised by its own encouragement of Hitler and its close connections with other “patriotic” bodies which had made common cause with him, was rapidly losing its authority.

May Day brought things to a crisis. The Socialists received permission to demonstrate, and Hitler, who almost daily threatened to take the law into his own hands, declared that he would prevent them from doing so. He duly mustered his forces, and actually turned out a battery of light field pieces, which he trained on the ground which was to be the scene of the Socialist gathering.