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Share DZ Season 002 Part 03. How Hitler Almost Missed the Bus. 22 December 1932. Not possible. Hitler Chancellor in just over 30 days!
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DZ Season 002 Part 03. How Hitler Almost Missed the Bus. 22 December 1932. Not possible. Hitler Chancellor in just over 30 days!
It’s 22 December 1932 and Adolf Hitler is still as far as he has ever been from becoming the leader of Germany – hopefully he never will. That’s what most people think – but not everyone.
Bella Fromm was a woman with a coquettish mouth and dark eyebrows. She was forty one years old and a journalist. She worked for the Vossische Zeitung newspaper. This paper was a must read if you wanted to try to keep up with the politics in Berlin – and nowadays that was no easy thing to do.
Bella had come from a wealthy Jewish family. By now she’d been married twice. She’d had a daughter from the first marriage, but right now, once again she was single – alone again naturally. The inflation disaster that hit Germany in 1923 had wiped out a lot of her inherited wealth and she had needed to get a job – hence she was now a journalist writing a column called “Berlin Diplomats”. She covered what was happening with the foreign emissaries, staff and foreign ministry and the politicians in Berlin. She kept her poison-tongued political analysis out of her newspaper column, saving it for her diary and her closest confidantes. If she wanted to have good relations with these people, insulting them or betraying their confidences was not the best way to go about it. Being a Jew today in Germany, 1932 that is, did mean that there were some people that didn’t want to talk to you anyway – like say the National Socialist Party.
Although she’d lost a lot of her wealth, she had managed to hold onto a villa in Berlin, a sports car and two horses. Not bad in these financially distressed times.
It was worth hearing her thoughts on what was happening in Germany and where the country was headed to – and she knew because she has access to having a chat to US Consul-General George Messersmith. He’d arrived in Berlin two years ago and was keeping a close eye on the Nazis in particular.
Tag words: Bella Fromm; American Consul-General George Messersmith; Völkischer Beobachter; Nazi Party; Joseph Goebbels; Magda Goebbels; Professor Walter Stoeckel; Adolf Hitler; Franz von Papen; Kurt von Schleicher; President Hindenberg; Vossische Zeitung; Gregor Strasser; Karl von Wiegand; Henkell;
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By Paul FordyceIt’s 22 December 1932 and Adolf Hitler is still as far as he has ever been from becoming the leader of Germany – hopefully he never will. That’s what most people think – but not everyone.
Bella Fromm was a woman with a coquettish mouth and dark eyebrows. She was forty one years old and a journalist. She worked for the Vossische Zeitung newspaper. This paper was a must read if you wanted to try to keep up with the politics in Berlin – and nowadays that was no easy thing to do.
Bella had come from a wealthy Jewish family. By now she’d been married twice. She’d had a daughter from the first marriage, but right now, once again she was single – alone again naturally. The inflation disaster that hit Germany in 1923 had wiped out a lot of her inherited wealth and she had needed to get a job – hence she was now a journalist writing a column called “Berlin Diplomats”. She covered what was happening with the foreign emissaries, staff and foreign ministry and the politicians in Berlin. She kept her poison-tongued political analysis out of her newspaper column, saving it for her diary and her closest confidantes. If she wanted to have good relations with these people, insulting them or betraying their confidences was not the best way to go about it. Being a Jew today in Germany, 1932 that is, did mean that there were some people that didn’t want to talk to you anyway – like say the National Socialist Party.
Although she’d lost a lot of her wealth, she had managed to hold onto a villa in Berlin, a sports car and two horses. Not bad in these financially distressed times.
It was worth hearing her thoughts on what was happening in Germany and where the country was headed to – and she knew because she has access to having a chat to US Consul-General George Messersmith. He’d arrived in Berlin two years ago and was keeping a close eye on the Nazis in particular.
Tag words: Bella Fromm; American Consul-General George Messersmith; Völkischer Beobachter; Nazi Party; Joseph Goebbels; Magda Goebbels; Professor Walter Stoeckel; Adolf Hitler; Franz von Papen; Kurt von Schleicher; President Hindenberg; Vossische Zeitung; Gregor Strasser; Karl von Wiegand; Henkell;