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

THE DEATH OF MONEY 133manure heap. And don't go complaining: how mean of the farmer! Willone of you step forward and say he is willing to give away his work ofmany months for nothing?' The money you offer the farmer 'is no longera note on work done, it is a note on a swindling regime. And that meanshunger!' On this Hitler set his great hope, on the 'revolt of starvingbillionaires.' The revolt against the parliamentary regime in Germanywas inevitable, and hunger would bend the masses under dictatorship:'If the horrified people notice that they can starve on billions, they mustarrive at this conclusion: we will no longer submit to a state which isbuilt on the swindling idea of the majority, we want dictatorship!'To repeat the same in the words of the Wise Men of Zion: 'By envyand hatred, by struggle and warfare, even by spreading hunger,destitution, and plagues, we shall bring the people to such a pass thattheir only escape will lie in total submission to our domination.'Adolf Hitler is a true child of the old German self-contempt. At allevents, the German people was one of the first to witness the decay ofthose material values which a whole century had taken as the highest ofall values. The German nation was one of the first to experience thedeath of the unlimited free property which had lent such a royal pride tomodern humanity. Money had lost its value — what, then, could haveany value? Of course, many were accustomed to having no money; butthat even with money you had nothing — that was a twilight of thegods, as horrible as anything. Wagner could have foreseen. When amark was no longer a mark, the period of nihilism foreseen byNietzsche seemed to be at hand. First the Kaiser had gone, then thesilver coins with his likeness had gone, and unknown faces, sometimesdistorted to frightful grimaces by eccentric artists, stared at you fromworthless paper notes. The world's aim was changing. A cynicalfrivolity penetrated men's souls; no one knew what he really possessedand some men wondered what they really were. This could not be comparedto any depreciation of currency in the past, with the assignats ofthe French Revolution, for example; for at that time the mass of realproperty was not even touched by the depreciation. But in modern timeswealth largely consists of claims and credits, which have value only aslong as the state protects and secures them,