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

134 DER FUEHRERMen understood this with terrible clarity when the state stoppedprotecting and securing their wealth.Man had measured himself by money; his worth had been measuredby money; through money he was someone or at least hoped to becomesomeone. Men had come and gone, risen and fallen, but money hadbeen permanent and immortal. Now he state had managed to kill thisimmortal thing. The state was the conqueror and successor of money.And thus the state was everything. Man looked down at himself and sawthat he was nothing.In this state of self-contempt, insults aroused the enthusiasm of themasses. 'The German people,' Hitler told them, was 'made up ofchildren, for only a childish people would accept million-mark bills.' Tohear these flattering words, the people were even willing to pay a fewmillions in admission. 'True, a third of the German people are heroes,but another third arc fools, and the last third are cowards.' When aFrench firing squad in Dusseldorf shot a patriotic German saboteur bythe name of Albert Leo Schlageter, Hitler cried out: 'The German peopledidn't deserve this sacrifice. . . . The German people of today is truly notworthy to possess a Schlageter.'The majority of the people were 'the broad mass of the undecided, thestand-asiders, the lazy, the cowardly'; and without being dragged off theplatform, he could say to a meeting of five thousand persons: 'Truestrength is a quality of few men, or else we would not have the wordhero. The masses consist of average men, democrats. But a hundredblind men do not make one seer, a thousand cowards do not make ahero, a hundred thousand parliamentarians do not make a statesman.Cowardly men choose the most cowardly as their leaders, so that theywon't have to show courage; and they choose the stupidest among thestupid, so that everyone can have the feeling that he's a little better thanthe leader. A people subjected to the decisions of the majority is on theroad to ruin.' He wanted every single one of his listeners to feel that thisapplied to him, and said so plainly: 'There is a delusion in the politicalthinking of the broad masses. They think: anyone can govern. Everyshoemaker or tailor, they think, is capable of running a state. . . .' And,slapping an intimidated audience full in the face: 'We have become socowardly that the democratic poison threatens to pene-