Fury in the Reichstag
The man with the neatly trimmed square mustache rose from his seat with military precision. “I shall take this opportunity to speak.”
What the hell? After setting the stage so deliberately, what could this man possibly have to say?
“Respected Chancellor, Mr. President of the Reichstag, and… you destroyers of Germany!”
Destroyers of Germany? What was that supposed to mean…
“Those shivering and starving in the cold outside this warm chamber know that everything the Chancellor has said is utterly meaningless.”
“What?”
This wasn’t the logical rebuttal of Representative Krischpin, nor the appeal to outdated dignity from that National People’s Party grandfather earlier. It was pure, groundless condemnation. Brüning, who had maintained a courteous tone toward every opponent—including me—until now, saw his voice turn ice-cold.
“The Chancellor speaks of ‘national credit.’ But who is this credit truly for? The German worker, or the ‘Jewish’ bankers in London and Paris?”
Hitler deliberately put weight on the word Juden.
“The Chancellor is not governing the state—he is merely acting as a collection agent for the victorious powers! His austerity measures are nothing but legalized plunder, squeezing the blood of the German people to fatten foreign bellies. The democracy the Chancellor holds so dear is a shackle imposed by outsiders to exploit the great German nation! He deceives you all with glittering words like sovereignty and rule of law!”
“Representative Hitler, this is a chamber of debate, not a—”
“Look! The Chancellor tries once again to silence the German voice. What you must hear is not some polished sound trapped inside the prison of democracy, but the raw cry of Germans who will reclaim the glory of our nation!”
What kind of bullshit is this?
“Representative Hitler!”
“And I have something to say to the Marxist followers on the left, who occupy a hundred and forty seats.”
Whether Brüning tried to stop him or not, Hitler kept speaking. “The Social Democrats talk about rights and welfare. But in 1918, while Germany’s great soldiers fought the French, British, and Russian scum on the front lines, what were they doing? They plunged a knife into our backs! In the name of democracy they hacked off the limbs of the German eagle, and now they wrap those stumps in bandages and pretend to be heroes!”
“Representative Hitler, cease your remarks at once.”
“The peace they scream for is nothing but submission to foreign powers, and the democracy they defend will become Germany’s tomb!”
“Stop spouting nonsense and get down here!”
Jeers were already flying from our side of the chamber. I stood up too, ready to join the booing, when—
“And at the far left end sits that wicked little bitch who tempts you with the promise of bread, along with her gang!”
Hitler pointed straight at us.
“…Me?”
“They call it socialism. But the socialism these reds preach is treason—it throws the noble soul of the glorious German people at the feet of the rabble in Moscow!”
This crazy bastard—
“Popular sovereignty? Don’t make me laugh! They divide the German nation into classes and set them against one another. Then, in the chaos, they scatter mud into our pure blood like a plague! True socialism is not the people ruling the state, but the state becoming the people and establishing mighty national hegemony!”
Wow… just… wow……
I gripped the microphone and started to rise, but Ernst, seated to my right, seized my arm.
“Hold on, Emilia. Hold on!”
“Let go. I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”
“The German nation—the Aryan—is the greatest on earth. What Germany needs is not cowardly submission disguised as peace, nor red propaganda, but the racial purity of the German people! We must rearm Germany regardless of what the West says and carve out our Lebensraum from the Pyrenees to the Urals. Such things can never be won through the cowards’ tools of dialogue and compromise. Politics is not conversation. It is victory or defeat. Germany has already lost once! You who listen to me—only your strength, only your resolve, can lead Germany to victory!”
To spout such absurd sophistry with that much arrogance… My hand around the microphone would not stop shaking.
“And there stands the woman who strolled boldly into this chamber, seduced the people, and planted the seeds of communism! With a creature like her present, is this a parliament or a brothel?”
“Shut your filthy mouth!”
I switched on the microphone and screamed. Parliamentary procedure no longer mattered.
“National what? Spare me! Hey! You really think the people will fall for that?! That insane cult of national superiority—do you think no one understands it means wiping out every other ethnicity on German soil, enslaving them, and using even Germans as fuel for the war machine you call the state?”
This man is worse than any cult.
“Do you even know what democracy is? Have you ever once asked yourself why the Chancellor, the Social Democrats, and I fight so hard for it? Of course not—your brain isn’t big enough! Democracy is the instrument of self-realization. It gives every citizen equal power and opportunity to carve out their own path!”
Terms from the ethics textbooks I had studied decades ago in a South Korean middle school rose one by one in my mind.
“Every human being has the right to happiness! Germans, Bohemians, Walloons, Flemings—men, women, young and old, all equal! And happiness is not something handed down from above. You must be able to seek it yourself! Not living as others command, but discovering what makes you happy, what you are capable of—that is life itself! That concept doesn’t exist inside your skull. All you have is glory. Blood. Army. How is that any different from the thinking of a ten-year-old? People think far more deeply than you imagine. They exist not for some grand purpose, but simply to exist!”
“Everyone, this woman is twisting words again! What have these people who spout abstract nonsense ever contributed to humanity? We must reject such empty talk, awaken the superiority and purity of the German race, and achieve true hegemony!”
“Hey! Look me in the eyes when you speak! Did your parents teach you to talk to people that way? Look at me!”
Only when I dragged his mother and father into it did Hitler finally turn his gaze toward me.
“Germans will not listen to a mass murderer like you! These people have lived under capitalist exploitation and oppression for years. When the capitalists ran out of money to throw them, they were kicked to the curb. And you blame that on the left and the Jews? All classes uniting for national purity? Bullshit! Socialism is not a word for half-witted fools like you to misuse! You’re forty years old and that’s all you’ve learned?!”
By now every scrap of politeness had vanished. He had already called me a whore who belonged in a brothel; I would bury him under every insult and personal attack I knew.
“Socialism means the workers—the vast majority of the people—who have suffered endless capitalist oppression finally throw off those chains and seize economic power. It begins with people making decisions together with their comrades at the workplaces closest to their lives! Why? Because every person must be equally granted the right to decide the course of their own life! And that right begins at the workplace! Your version of socialism is nothing but exclusion and hatred. You drag out eighteenth-century garbage like ‘Aryan purity’ and call everyone else impure. Tell me, is your own bloodline so clean? Have you checked your family tree lately? While idiots like you babble about the ‘national community,’ we communists fight so that every person on earth can be freed from the oppression of capital and find the happiness of self-realization. Do you understand?”
“Since you asked me to look you in the eye, I shall. You have no logic, Frau. People like you who chase only individual happiness have always hindered the progress of the state and the advancement of mankind. The moment the left peddles its delusions of self-realization and happiness, we shall soar to truly liberate the German nation and resurrect its suppressed glory.”
“You talk too much. In the end all you’re saying is that you’ll kill everyone who isn’t German, so where do you get the nerve to play noble knight?”
I genuinely loathed that affected speech pattern. It sounded even more repulsive coming from him.
“Why do you live? This isn’t an attack—I’m asking you seriously. Why do you live? There has to be a reason. Do you just keep breathing because you were born?”
I still didn’t understand why neither the Chancellor nor the Speaker had intervened, but I pressed on.
“I live to be happy! Everyone lives to be happy. Isn’t that the purpose of politics? What does your pathetic ideology even offer? Does it make the German nation rich? No! The war you started turns German lives into cogs in a military machine while only you and your followers grow fat. The German people have the right not to be used as fuel for the war engine called Germany, deluded by the ravings of a creature like you! Because every single person is precious!”
“Everyone, the left has deceived you with such honeyed lies until now. This wicked woman uses her seductive lips to lure you once more into the madness of revolution with sweet words of liberation and happiness! You are magnificent. You who carry German blood are the true masters of the world! Those who will lead Germany with iron resolve, refusing to fall for such temptation, are none other than you!”
“Everyone is magnificent! Everyone has the right to realize their self and pursue happiness! Who the hell are you to block their path? Do you think the German people don’t see that you want to pour German blood as oil into the state machine that crushes and murders other nations?!”
“Both of you, be silent! This is the sacred Reichstag!”
“You won’t stop a mass murderer from running his mouth in the sacred Reichstag?!”
“Servant of the West and the Jews, do not interfere in the conversation between that whore and myself!”
“Hey!”
At the endless barrage of crude provocations, I finally hurled the microphone at him. It struck the floor of the chamber with a loud clang and rolled away.
“Look at the whore who was mocking you with that silver tongue, now unable to contain her rage. Quite the spectacle, isn’t it, my fellow Germans?”
“You fucking bastard, I’m really going to kill you! I’ll do it with my own two hands!”
But the microphone was already gone from my grasp.
“Representative Hitler, refrain from such blatant insults directed at a female member of this chamber!”
“Indeed. This is the Reichstag. Choose your words with decency.”
“That man is the embodiment of evil! How can he wear a human face?”
While the Communists, Social Democrats, Center Party, and every other faction hurled condemnation at Hitler, I stood mute without a microphone.
“I hereby declare this session of the Reichstag temporarily dissolved. All members are asked to leave the chamber.”
In the end, the Speaker pronounced the dissolution.