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

WAR IN THE RUHR 155strengthen the authority of the state. What did he mean by the smashingof Marxism ? the minister asked. Now he was threatened by a longspeech with no clear answer. The minister interrupted Hitler and said: 'Ifyou continue your propaganda in its present form, it will inevitably leadto a violent explosion some day, whatever your intentions. You can'tjust go on talking for years, some day you will have to act.'Hitler jumped up from his chair, beat his breast with his right hand,and cried: 'Herr Minister, I give you my word of honor, never as long asI live will I make a putsch!' He repeated: 'My word of honor, I willnever make a putsch!'The minister replied: 'All respect to your word of honor, but if you goon making such speeches as you have been making, the stream will oneday burst loose of its own accord, and you will be faced with the choiceof sinking or swimming with it. And you will swim with it.'Despite its apparent insignificance, the scene is historically memorable.It was Hitler's first pledge of peace. His word of honor. Therewould be no putsch!The epoch of unknown soldiers was dawning. Mussolini had justshown how you can make yourself dictator with the help of a fewthousand ruffians. Hitler passionately admired the 'great man in thesouth'; the man who had risen from the trenches 'in dirty boots' andattained the highest power. In the whole of central Europe the oldconcepts of domination or revolution, upper or lower class, lost theirhistorical meaning through the upsurge of new forces, represented bythe unknown, hitherto insignificant, yet menacing faces — 'a scourge,making a mockery of all ethical and honorable political activity . . .rabble released from prison for the purpose . . . in close fraternizationand intermarriage with the petty officers' groups ... with the stateshutting an eye to murder, arson, and robbery': these were the verywords by which an irate collaborator of Hitler, driven from GermanSouth Tyrol by the Italian Fascists, described Mussolini's armedbohemia in the Volkischer Beobachter. Near Munich dwelt, seeminglyin' retirement, General Erich Ludendorff, honored by the officers like agod, feared by the republican ministers in Berlin, suspected and admiredby foreign govern-