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

130 DER FUEHRERmany, like all countries, had been bled white by the war, and this realdecline in wealth was inevitably followed by a decline in nominal titlesto wealth, in the form of currency. Germany's money had been turned tocannon and hand-grenades. The grenades produced corpses, the cannonfell into the hands of the enemy, the national wealth was turned to dust.Germany had scarcely anything left.But after the war, even the little that remained was flung away, topreserve at least political peace in the land. While Stinnes, on his royalindustrialthrone at Muhlheim on the Ruhr, calmly took it upon himselfto destroy private property in Germany, Hitler stamped furiously backand forth on his platform in the ill-lit beer hall and shouted: 'You had noright to make the whole economy, state as well as private enterprises,unprofitable, by overfilling them with workers at a time when themarket was stagnant and there was a shortage of raw materials!' Hespoke like a learned doctor of economics, and just this sounded quiteincredible in his mouth; but then the beer-hall orator expressed an idea,far surpassing Stinnes in political wisdom: the chaos should have beenexploited for a transformation of the German economy. He censured thegovernment, because, 'when the soldiers streamed back from the front, itdid not distribute them among much-needed projects [public works andhousing], but sent them back to the places from which they had beencalled to the colors.'He understood that the old laissez-faire economy could not berestored. He understood that the old liberal Germany could not berebuilt. He early realized what his friend Rudolf Hess wrote, many yearslater: 'For Adolf Hitler the revolt of 1918 was a necessity of Fate, for,despite its criminal leadership, it swept away many survivals of a timethat was outlived, survivals that would have created obstacles to theNational Socialist revolution.' He knew how much he owed to thechaos. At the height of the year 1923 it was the chaos which literally fedhim and his followers; for the decay of the mark blew small financialcontributions, made in substantial foreign currency by friends inCzechoslovakia, Switzerland, the United States, up to gigantic sums inmarks; a person could live comfortably for a week on a dollar at thattime, and for a hundred