In the Garden of Beasts

today is not the cowardly and corrupt bourgeoisie of 1918 but the fist of the entire people. It is the fist of the nation that is clenched and will smash down anyone who dares to undertake even the slightest attempt at sabotage.”
    Goebbels acted immediately to suppress Papen’s speech. He banned its broadcast and ordered the destruction of the gramophonerecords onto which it had been cast. He banned newspapers from publishing its text or reporting on its contents, though at least one newspaper, the
Frankfurter Zeitung
, did manage to publish extracts. So intent was Goebbels on stopping dissemination of the speech that copies of the paper “were snatched from the hands of the guests of restaurants and coffee houses,” Dodd reported.
    Papen’s allies used the presses of Papen’s own newspaper,
Germania
, to produce copies of the speech for quiet distribution to diplomats, foreign correspondents, and others. The speech caused a stir throughout the world. The
New York Times
requested that Dodd’s embassy provide the full text by telegraph. Newspapers in London and Paris made the speech a sensation.
    The event intensified the sense of disquiet suffusing Berlin. “There was something in the sultry air,” wrote Hans Gisevius, the Gestapo memoirist, “and a flood of probable and wildly fantastic rumors spilled out over the intimidated populace. Insane tales were fondly believed. Everyone whispered and peddled fresh rumors.” Men on both sides of the political chasm “became extremely concerned with the question of whether assassins had been hired to murder them and who these killers might be.”
    Someone threw a hand-grenade fuse from the roof of a building onto Unter den Linden. It exploded, but the only harm was to the psyches of various government and SA leaders who happened to be in the vicinity. Karl Ernst, the young and ruthless leader of the Berlin division of the SA, had passed by five minutes before the explosion and claimed he was its target and that Himmler was behind it.
    In this cauldron of tension and fear, the idea of Himmler wishing to kill Ernst was utterly plausible. Even after a police investigation identified the would-be assassin as a disgruntled part-time worker, an aura of fear and doubt remained, like smoke drifting from a gun barrel. Wrote Gisevius, “There was so much whispering, so much winking and nodding of heads, that traces of suspicion remained.”
    The nation seemed poised at the climax of some cinematic thriller. “Tension was at the highest pitch,” Gisevius wrote. “The tormenting uncertainty was harder to bear than the excessive heat and humidity. No one knew what was going to happen next and everyone feltthat something fearful was in the air.” Victor Klemperer, the Jewish philologist, sensed it as well. “Everywhere uncertainty, ferment, secrets,” he wrote in his diary in mid-June. “We live from day to day.”
    FOR DODD, PAPEN’S MARBURG SPEECH seemed a marker of what he had long believed—that Hitler’s regime was too brutal and irrational to last. Hitler’s own vice-chancellor had spoken out against the regime and survived. Was this indeed the spark that would bring Hitler’s government to an end? And if so, how strange that it should be struck by so uncourageous a soul as Papen.
    “There is now great excitement all over Germany,” Dodd wrote in his diary on Wednesday, June 20. “All old and intellectual Germans are highly pleased.” Suddenly fragments of other news began to make more sense, including a heightened fury in the speeches of Hitler and his deputies. “All guards of the leaders are said to be showing signs of revolt,” Dodd wrote. “At the same time, aircraft practice and military drills and maneuvers are reported to be increasingly common sights by those who drive about the country.”
    That same Wednesday, Papen went to Hitler to complain about the suppression of his speech. “I spoke at Marburg as an emissary of the president,” he told Hitler. “Goebbels’s intervention will force me to resign. I shall inform Hindenburg immediately.”
    To Hitler this was a serious threat. He recognized that President Hindenburg possessed the constitutional authority to unseat him and commanded the loyalty of the regular army, and that both these factors made Hindenburg the one truly potent force in Germany over which he had no control. Hitler understood as well that Hindenburg and Papen—the president’s “Fränzchen”—maintained a close