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

Chapter VIITHE DEATH OF MONEYIN THE SUMMER OF 1923, HITLER TOLD A STORY in a largemeeting: 'We have just had a big gymnastic festival in Munich. Threehundred thousand athletes from all over the country assembled here.That must have brought our city lots of business, you think. Now listento this: There was an old woman who sold picture postcards. She wasglad because the festival would bring her plenty of customers. She wasbeside herself with joy when sales far exceeded her expectations.Business had really been good — or so she thought. But now the oldwoman is sitting in front of an empty shop, crying her eyes out. For withthe miserable paper money she took in for her cards, she can't buy ahundredth of her old stock. Her business is ruined, her livelihoodabsolutely destroyed. She can go begging. And the same despair isseizing the whole people. We are facing a revolution. . . .'This was the story of the end of the world — seemingly the story ofan old woman, but really, in seven or eight phrases, the story of thedestruction of German, indeed of European, self-reliance and dignity.The truths which had seemed most certain, the multiplication table andthe difference between good and evil, vanished before the eyes of theuncomprehending individual. First it was the story of the Germaninflation, which reduced the supposedly eternal value of the Germanmark from $024 to $.000,000,000,024; or, in other words: an objectwhich had previously been worth twenty-four cents, now cost a sumwhich would formerly have equaled three times the national wealth. Toa lesser degree, it was also