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

THE DEATH OF MONEY 139to pay the bill.' In the 1923 edition the whole passage is reduced to onebrief sentence: 'If Wilson hadn't been a swindler, he would not havebecome president of a democracy.' In the edition of 1933, the entirequotation is omitted.Sometimes Hitler could not make up his mind whether to heap theblame for everything on France or on the Jews. So he said in one of hisspeeches (newspaper version): 'Between Germany and France there is arift that cannot be leveled by pacifist telegrams or cowardly submission.The attitude of France toward the Reich is the same today as it was fourhundred, three hundred, two hundred, one hundred and fifty years ago. .. . No chance to mend this rift...'But in the same speech he said (book version): 'Between Germanyand France there was a fundamental rift that could not be leveled bypacifist telegrams or cowardly submission. Before the war bothcountries could live beside each other in arms only. True, for Germanythe war of 1870 closed a century-old hostility. But in France flaminghatred against Germany was cultivated with all methods of newspaperpropaganda, in textbooks, on the stage, in the movies. . . . Who croakedthe ugliest calumnies? . . . All the Jewish newspapers of France. Tobring about bad feeling and exploit it was, as everybody can see, theaim of World Jewry.'Thus the prophet falsifies his own words. With the deepest convictionhe contradicts his deepest convictions. It is as though the various headsof a many-headed beast were biting one another.The truth is irremediably buried beneath these deceptions andcontradictions. How, then, can the speaker expect to put through asingle incisive, suitable lie, when from speech to speech, from sentenceto sentence, he changes even the lies? Whom does he expect to persuadethat he himself believes a single one of these mutually contradictorylies? And to what purpose does he try to spread an opinion among thepeople, when on the very next day he is going to sacrifice that opinion?Such questions arc asked by those who do not understand propaganda,who regard propaganda as the art of instilling an opinion in themasses. Actually it is the art of receiving an opinion from the masses.