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

128 DER FUEHRERmonster nurtured by this movement was The Protocols of the Wise Menof Zion.Nowhere, with the exception of Russia, did the state destroy propertyas radically as in Germany. And it was not the workers who did it. Notthe Social Democrats, who in 1918 had proclaimed the republic; or theCommunists, who reviled the Social Democrats as 'traitors to theworking class,' and for years kept disturbing the peace with vain,hopeless attempts at revolt. The workers had no intention at all ofdestroying property. Plans to this effect stood in the party programs, butnowhere else. For the proletarian is a component of the capitalisteconomy, and what he wishes is not to abolish exploiting capitalism, butto exploit it himself.On November 9, 1918, Philipp Scheidemann, the Social Democraticleader, proclaimed the republic in Berlin, saying, 'The German peoplehas been victorious all along the line'; but a week later, the leaders ofthe German working-class, who had been victorious all along the line,concluded a pact with the leaders of the German employers 'for themaintenance of our economic life.' And both sides solemnly declared'that the reconstruction of our national economy requires the pooling ofall economic and intellectual forces and the harmonious collaboration ofall.' It could not have been said more clearly: to save capitalism from thecrushing vise of war socialism was the aim of the workers as well as thecapitalists.At this time Socialist demonstrations were swarming through thecapital; as the masses passed through the Tiergarten, the great park inthe middle of Berlin, a voice is said to have cried out: 'Comrades,preserve revolutionary discipline! Don't walk on the grass!' A legend,perhaps. But how apt!Actually the leader of German capitalism after the war, Hugo Stinnes,destroyed far more private property than all the German Socialists.Mammoth industrialist with super-capitalist dreams of domination, heunconsciously sought after super-capitalist forms. Such was themagnitude of the property he amassed, and such the methods by whichhe amassed it, that the very concept of property burst asunder. Between1920 and 1923, Stinnes was the most powerful man in Germany — inso far as we may speak of power in those dissolved, anarchic times. Bybold combination of widely ramified in-