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

INTERLUDE 231by the simple system of peace through the sword. He dropped Germany'salliance with Russia and based Germany's delicate security inthe heart of Europe on the excessively increased German armament; aneffort that could be accomplished only by a nation at a high technicallevel.Everything came too late to Germany. Democracy came too late,national unity came too late — and now technology came too late.About a hundred years before, the nation had first become conscious ofits unity through a great literary and philosophical movement; but thismovement had been powerless to create a political unity; violence andwar had then forged a dubious, superficial unity, but now a new nationalexperience descended on Germany: the consciousness of a greattechnical achievement, the building of German industry between 1870and 1910. Industry was expanding in other countries, but nowhere did itdevelop such national self-confidence as in the land to which Bach,Kant, Goethe, Beethoven, had not given sufficient strength and pride.The steel of Krupp's cannon in Essen, the optical lenses in Jena, the hightension lines along the Rhine, the chemical products of Mannheim andthe lower Rhine — all this, taken together, was a great national campaignagainst English, Belgian, and even French industry, which up tothe twentieth century had dominated the German market. Now, step bystep, the foreign industries were forced out, pursued into the worldmarket, and there, too, undersold and defeated.This was the time when the acquisition of African colonies wasexplained to the nation with arguments like this: some 60,000,000Britishers owned 13,500,000 square miles or almost a fourth of all landon the globe; about 130,000,000 Russians lived (at that time) on morethan 8,500,000 square miles; why should 70,000,000 Germans belocked up in 200,000 square miles?On February 21, 1902, the Emperor of this technological nationreceived a remarkable letter in his 'New Palace' at Potsdam. A friendand admirer wrote these words of encouragement and exhortation: 'Wehave arrived at a turning-point in world history. Never, as far back ashistory takes us, has there been a world situation remotely resemblingthe present; how then should the old institutions hold up? The newworld is the work of science (including technology), and it is sciencewhich will dominate it.'