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

112 DER FUEHRERbehind him too. To break all resistance for good, he left the party forthree days, and the trembling members obediently chose him as the first,unlimited chairman, for practical purposes responsible to no one, inplace of Anton Drexler, the modest founder, who had to content himselfwith the post of honorary chairman (July 29, 1921). From that day on,Hitler was the leader of Munich's National Socialist Movement.But he failed in his attempt to force the 'leader principle' upon otheranti-Semitic, 'racial,' or 'German Socialist' groups over the rest ofGermany. A nation-wide convention of these groups in Munich,January, 1922, rejected Hitler's plea for absolute power — tiny groups,little men, but they did not accept a dictator.These men — anti-Semitic, reactionary, militarist, as they certainlywere — probably were completely at a loss to understand the meaningof the new movement. Not a few may have shivered inwardly whenHitler in his speech coldly declared: 'I thank Messrs. Klintsch andMaurice [Klintsch's aide] for their activity in the organization of thestorm troop. Even if Klintsch has been in prison for suspicion of theErzberger killing, we did not shake him off as certain other partieswould have. On the contrary: when he came back we carried himthrough the hall on our shoulders.'They may have asked themselves, 'What's the good of it all?' whenthey heard Hitler shout: 'We want nothing to do with parliaments.Anyone who goes into a swamp sinks into the muck. The big thingshave always been done in opposition to parliaments. . . .' And possiblythey found that Hitler was expecting too much from them when he said:'A minority suffices to overthrow a state when the majority of thepopulation has gone soft and lost its direction.' He even despised whatthey considered the greatest achievements of German history: '. . . Andwe do not want the thing they call unity, which includes everything thatis rotten; what we want is struggle; struggle against Jewish democracy,which is no more nor less than a machine for the elimination of genius... we do not want millions of indifferent rabble, we want a hundredthousand men — headstrong, defiant men. Our success will force themillions to follow us.'With such speeches Hitler frightened away those who would have