Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

106 DER FUEHRERin his own private life, this miserable human nothing could think only inpublic terms, feel only the feeling of the mass, and when the nothingspoke with the people, it was as though the voice of the people werespeaking.What Hitler told the people about the depravity of the Jews, he couldsay just as effectively about the Prussian junkers, the Pope in Rome, orthe high English nobility. His revelation of a world conspiracy of Jewsachieved its extraordinary effect, not because of the Jews, but becauseof the world conspiracy. The sentiment that our modern society hadarrived at a breaking point, that millions and millions would be crushedin the impending collapse, tormented every man's soul. With unerringsureness Hitler expressed the speechless panic of the masses faced by aninvisible enemy and gave the nameless specter a name. He was a purefragment of the modern mass soul, unclouded by any personal qualities.One scarcely need ask with what arts he conquered the masses; he didnot conquer them, he portrayed and represented them. His speeches areday-dreams of this mass soul; they are chaotic, full of contradictions, iftheir words arc taken literally, often senseless, as dreams are, and yetcharged with deeper meaning. Vulgar vilification, flat jokes alternatewith ringing, sometimes exalted, phrases. The speeches begin alwayswith deep pessimism and end in overjoyed redemption, a triumphanthappy ending; often they can be refuted by reason, but they follow thefar mightier logic of the subconscious, which no refutation can touch.Hitler has given speech to the speechless terror of the modern mass, andto the nameless fear he has given a name. That makes him the greatestmass orator of the mass age.He grew in the decay of his own cause. Rohm set out to reorganizethe suddenly broken army with the greatest possible speed. Things hadto be done less openly than before. Clubs with harmless names werefounded; they were all private armies of varying sizes. Hitler himselfwas given a private band, Rohm producing the personnel, the arms, theofficers. In place of the little group of soldiers from the Hofbrauhaus,Hitler could soon muster companies and even regiments. The troop wasgiven (August, 1921) the supposedly harmless but quite transparentname of 'Gymnastics and Sports Division.' Its first recruitingproclamation said: