500.A15A4/1874: Telegram
The Chargé in Germany (Gordon) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 17—2:20 p.m.]
81. As Associated Press is cabling full text of Hitler’s speech3 which you of course will wish to study carefully in its entirety I will not attempt to summarize it but will report by mail.
[Page 150]I may add, however, that the speech was entirely different in tone from all others I have heard the Chancellor deliver.
I have been informed on excellent authority in the strictest confidence who wrote the main lines of the speech and this individual is certainly to be classed as relatively conservative; it does therefore seem significant that on this occasion the Chancellor should have been willing to entrust the preparation of his speech to such quarters.
Delivery of speech, which occupied 50 minutes, was made in a dramatic setting with majority of persons both on the floor and in the galleries in Nazi uniform including the Chancellor and the Reichstag president.4 At the end of the speech Goering read resolution submitted in the name of Nazi Nationalist Center and the Bavarian Peoples Parties to the effect that the Reichstag approved the spirit of the Chancellor and stood squarely behind the Government; a standing vote thereon being taken the entire Reichstag including the Social Democratic deputies present arose in a body.