 How could I forsake you?Anyone who struggles, lives, fights, and, if need be, dies for Germany has the right on his side.”

The government under Chancellor Franz von Papen, which strove for law and order amid rising political violence, had only days before passed an emergency decree authorizing the death sentence for politically motivated killings.Chancellor von Papen was not keen to see the five murderers executed soon after the crime as he feared an escalation of Nazi violence nationwide.