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

WAR IN THE RUHR 171unflinching, prepared for the utmost. For when the German people riseagain, the rest will rise again, too. . . . The Ruhr should have become theGerman Moscow! . . . Behind the burning Ruhr, such a nation wouldhave organized its resistance to the death. If this had been done, Francewould have proceeded with the greatest caution. And the rest of theworld would have realized that Germany had recovered. A reorientationof our foreign policy would have been the first obvious consequence, aconsequence welcomed in London. Not out of love for us. No, for theone aim which from time immemorial has guided England's policies:the aim of securing safety and peace, by creating an approximatebalance of continental powers. . . . Cuno should have seized on the Ruhrquestion to harness the rising flame of our national spirit withdetermination and show France that a new hour was dawning. Furnaceafter furnace, bridge after bridge had to be blasted! France's army wouldnot have allowed itself to be lashed into the horror of such a worldcatastrophe. By God, we would be in a different position today!A speech full of decision and political boldness! It has but one failing: itwas never delivered.Forged words of flame, addressed to his officers and Communists.For this is the constant and secret sense of his propaganda: theReichswehr is spiritually slipping out of his hands, he must refresh itand renew it constantly with the spirit of adventurism, the spirit of theextremists of Right and Left, the Uprooted and Disinherited. This mustsucceed in this decisive year of 1923, for thereon hangs his fate formany years to come, and perhaps for good. Germany must not return toorder. The chaos must grow, there must be misery; that is a necessity ofFate: 'We have on our side historical truth and the growing misery of thepeople, which with natural necessity will bring a violent outbreak,' heonce said to two thousand persons, by way of balm and consolation.The possessions, hope, and faith of the German people lay in ruins.They were slipping into a night of despair, and Hitler, the shifting,restless flame, nourished by the gases of putrefaction, sent forth afascinating glow. Hideous triumph: 'The hungry will cry out for bread,and the twenty million Germans, who, according to Clemenceau, are toomany in Germany, will face a terrible destiny.