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

176 DER FUEHRERwould answer by a bloody revolution immediately, but he probablyknew before that Rohm would be able to talk him out of this senselessplan. Whether Kahr, by habit and tradition a somewhat soft and halfheartedcounter-revolutionary and anti-Prussian, this time meantbusiness, he probably even did not know himself; anyhow, in order notto be caught by surprise, Berlin proclaimed a state of siege for the wholeReich; and there they were. Since liquidation of the Ruhr adventure,stopping of the endless flow of money into the 'hole in the West,' andfinal settlement of the reparation problem and, thereby, stabilization ofmoney were the only sensible things to do, Bavaria in all probabilitywould have given in finally; her businessmen would have seen to that,had it not been for two circumstances.In the Rhineland, occupied by French and Belgian forces, amovement had arisen, demanding separation of the western provinces;establishment of an independent state; and alliance with or even kind ofincorporation into France. Unknown leaders suddenly had thousands offollowers, dominated the streets, occupied government buildings, anddeclared independent governments. It goes without saying that theyenjoyed the favor of the French army of occupation. The separatistswere an army of the Uprooted and Disinherited, very much like theNational Socialist cohorts in the south. Seemingly at one another'sthroats, they strove for the same aim — chaos. The separatists who thendominated the Rhineland were the same rabble who — as stormtroopers — were to torment Germany in 1933. Often they were thesame individuals. The danger was that even more serious people,especially businessmen, favored the idea of separation. And Rhinelandwas the 'heartland' of German industry.But resistance was too strong, especially among the workers, to whomseparatism smelled too much like international big business Themovement did not become really popular. Then England pro testedagainst this attempt to create a French vassal state on the Rhine, andafter some weeks of seeming success, the separatist movement suddenlycollapsed. Even the French army hardly dared to protect its remnantsagainst the popular indignation. One winter's night a little group ofarmed civilians rowed across the Rhine