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

174 DER FUEHRERwere beginning to part. In the beginning the split was barely visible, forthe lower ranks still hung closely, intimately together; the stormtroopers still were at the same time 'black' Reichswehr; Hitler still hopedto force his will one day upon the hesitant generals who could not throwhim off as easily as they might have wished. But a rift there was; andless than a year later it would be an abyss.Thus the separation between the moderates and the extremists was onthe way. On September 2, the extremists, i.e., National Socialists andseveral other combat leagues, gathered in Nuremberg. It was a meetingof about one hundred thousand people; the origin of the 'party meetings'of later days. Hitler and Ludendorff met, almost on the same level; butstill in the eyes of most Ludendorff was the real leader, Hitler only hisaide and tool. The combat leagues and storm troopers formed a looselyknit union, the 'German Combat Union.' It had, in spite of strongwordedproclamations, no definite aims; it was concluded in expectationof the 'national catastrophe' which Hitler had predicted for a long time.For in the midst of the chaos, amid the disintegration of a millionfortunes and careers, Germany was gathering her strength for a newaccomplishment. It had grown clear that if the Ruhr War werecontinued, Germany would bleed to death economically. But it was alsoknown that the French people had no heart for this costly war in peacetime;that they dreaded any armed expedition into the heart of Germanyand wanted to keep their soldiers at home; at heart they no longersupported the intransigent Poincare. Both sides had but one desire, toend the mad struggle; and in the depths of her misery, Germany found aleadership possessing the moral courage to take the first step towardpeace, a step which at first sight seemed a capitulation, but whichactually led to a series of successes in the field of foreign relations, to aneconomic upsurge at home, and the restoration of defeated Germany tothe ranks of a great power. This policy was, to a large extent, inspiredby England. Lord d'Abernon, British ambassador to Berlin, was one ofits spiritual fathers. In August the Reichstag overthrew the Cuno cabinet;Doctor Gustav Stresemann, a parliamentarian of the half liberal,half nationalist Right, a former chauvinist, for a time an