862.00/2780

Memorandum by the Secretary of State

The German Ambassador came to tell me that he would be in New York seeing his wife and children off on Thursday so he came in now to talk over the situation in the German Government. He said, frankly, that he had no special instructions from his Government, except the general word that the foreign policy would be unchanged. He said he could only speculate as to the reasons which had caused the change in the Government and the downfall of the Bruening Ministry, which came as a complete surprise to him as well, he supposed, as to us. His surmise was that the change was caused entirely by interior politics: possibly the President felt that he had gone as far as he possibly could with emergency decrees; possibly there were some changes which he desired in Bruening’s Cabinet which Bruening did not care to yield on. I asked whether it could have been due to the machinations of pressure of military groups. The Ambassador said that he always suspected military groups but that he had no evidence of that here; that Groener had made a speech before the Diet which was said to have been unfortunate and to have made a bad effect, but it was mainly due to his delivery because the Ambassador had read the speech and it seemed all right; that President von Hindenburg may have feared that the Nazis would get so strong, if he delayed longer, as to enable them to make changes outside of the Constitution and that, therefore, he hoped that by this change and the holding of a prompt election he might be able to keep matters within the boundaries of the Constitution.

H[enry] L. S[timson]