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

ARYANS OF ALL NATIONS, UNITE 107The N.S.D.A.P. (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei:National Socialist German Workers' Party) has formed its owngymnastics and sport division within the framework of its organization.It will embody and propagate the military idea of a free nation. ... It willinstill a boundless desire for action in the hearts of our young members,hammer and burn into their brains that history does not make men, butmen history. And that the man who lends himself defenseless to thechains of slavery deserves the slave's yoke. In it, we will continue tocultivate loyalty between comrade and comrade, and joyful obedience tothe leader. . . .It was at this time that the private from the List Regiment first met theman who one day should be his second in power. This occurred in thethick of the struggle over the Citizens' Defense, at one of those greatdemonstrations on a public square which raise passions to fever heat butlead only to defeat. A former captain of the Luftwaffe, at that time aprivate citizen unconcerned with politics, was an onlooker. Hitler, bythis time widely known and a center of much controversy, was leaningsilently against a pillar, not far from the former captain. Thedemonstration was drawing to an end. Voices arose: Let Hitler speak! Aman stepped up and asked Hitler if he would like to say a few words.Only then did Goring see who was standing next to him. He had heard agood deal about Hitler. Hitler said in his firm, thundering voice: 'If Ispoke, I would destroy the unity of the meeting. I don't want to do that!'That was all. But the captain went home and said to his wife that he hadseen and heard this man for the first time and had carried away anindelible impression; he believed in Hitler. This was a later story,perhaps somewhat exaggerated; but Hermann Wilhelm Goring wasneither the first nor the last whom Hitler's astonishing voice hadhypnotized with an insignificant remark.Goring, born January 12, 1893, in Rosenheim, Bavaria, son of aGerman diplomat at that time consul-general in Haiti, might actually becalled a foster-child of the Prussian Army. He spent part of his youth inthe house of a Jewish friend of the family in Austria; later he grew up,far from home and family life, in several boarding-schools; finally in theofficers' school of Lichterfelde, near Ber-