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The heavily-armed Ordnertruppe filling and surrounding the Marienplatz notwithstanding, several listeners dared to boo the reference to the Social Democratic government. “The Social Democrats are the ones who asked for help, the Socialist Prime Minister Hoffman is the one who requested that troops be sent to throw out the Bolsheviks!” Halstead shouted in response, and paused to bow politely as Johannes Hoffman, taken captive by the Ordnertruppe twenty-four hours before, was led to a standing position behind him on the platform. Halstead then launched into a screamed sentence, without giving either further acknowledgment of the Prime Minister’s arrival or any acknowledgment at all of the fact that it was the Berlin government’s help Hoffman had requested, and not Halstead’s. “Hear this now and hear this loud and clear: the Darbeitpartei shall always keep its word! The Darbeitpartei shall always do what is best for Germany and what is best for the German worker!” Halstead allowed the renewed cheering to wash over him as he sucked in air to continue. “And what does the German Workers’ Party stand for, you might ask? We stand for a united Germany, a triumphant Germany, a Germany beholden to neither the Capitalists of the West nor the Communists of the East!” The cheering grew more pronounced, and Halstead launched into both a description of the next day’s Darbeitpartei May Day rally to be held on the Froettmaninger Heath and a repetition of his dire predictions of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
############Wally set to leading the Darcy cows into the cowshed for the afternoon milking as soon as he had changed out of the suit he had worn to two Darcy family memorial services. Sally and her two sisters arrived much later, in a wagon driven by a young male cousin who eyed the stranger in his uncle’s field with suspicion as his wagon rumbled along the road of drying spring mud to the Darcy farmhouse. |