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

208 DER FUEHRERthe Ruhr; the eight hundred million gold marks flowed into Germany;more hundreds of millions and ultimately billions came from Englandand America in the years that followed. For Germany, internallypacified, rebuilding her economy, passed now as a place where moneycould be invested profitably and safely. To be sure, the inflation hadcost the masses a fortune which they never recovered; later it becameevident that this destruction of money and hence of bourgeois selfesteemwas no unique, transitory stroke of misfortune, but heralded along wave of destruction and annihilation. But for the present, smooth,friendly conditions seemed to be returning, and hearts were filled withan illusory hope that the terrible catastrophe of 1923 would not berepeated, and should, therefore, in God's name be forgotten.National Socialism was forgotten along with it. Impotent andembittered in his prison, Hitler laid down the leadership, broke withLudendorff in a harsh and disrespectful manner, drew forth old sheets ofmanuscript on which he had begun to write in 1922, and dictated tovarious fellow prisoners, lastly to Rudolf Hess, the continuation of awork of monumental conception to which he later gave the title MeinKampf.Thirteen years later, Hitler spoke hard words of self-condemnationabout his putsch of 1923. In 1922, he had given Minister Schweyer hisword of honor, never to make a putsch. One year later, he might havehad the excuse that the circumstances had been stronger than he. But in1936, he admitted without shame: 'Today I can frankly own that in theyears from 1920 to 1923 I thought of nothing else but a putsch.' Then headded: 'I can calmly say this: that was the rashest decision of my life.When I think back on it today, I grow dizzy. ... If today you saw one ofour squads from the year 1923 marching by, you would ask: Whatworkhouse have they escaped from? . . . But Fate meant well with us. Itdid not permit an action to succeed, which if it had succeeded, would inthe end have inevitably crashed as a result of the movement's innerimmaturity in those days, and its deficient organizational andintellectual foundation.'What Hitler wanted to say was that thirteen years ago he actually didnot know the direction in which he was going. He hardly understood thereasons that were leading him there.