Berlin, January 30, 1933. Adolf Hitler has just become Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.
In the evening, André François-Poncet, French Ambassador in Berlin, relates what he sees: a brown tide invades the streets lit by the torches of the SA.
“In thick columns, they pass under the triumphal quadriga of the Brandenburg Gate.
The torches they brandish form a river of fire which penetrates into the heart of the city (...) and in front of the French embassy from where I look, with a heavy heart, its luminous wake, it slants in the Wilhelmstrasse and rolls under the windows of the marshal.
The old man is standing there, leaning on a cane, seized by the power of the phenomenon that he himself has triggered. "
We can not agree more.
At the age of 86, Marshal Hindenburg, reelected President of the Weimar Republic, witnesses the triumph of the one who is going to destroy it,
"this Bohemian corporal"
whom he despised a few months before but to whom he ended up bowing.
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