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

246 DER FUEHRERof souls, should have possessed the power to bestow on him so soothinga sleep. 'My faith in the Germans has never wavered for a moment, butmy hope, I must own, had sunk to a low ebb. At one stroke you havetransformed the state of my soul.' One more who had succumbed to thethundering, hypnotic voice!Hitler had come to Wahnfried in the company of two men. One was alittle-known anti-Semitic poet and journalist of Czech origin, a fulsomeadmirer of Wagner; his name was Josef Czerny, and, in order to have aGerman pseudonym, he called himself Josef Stol-zing, after theWagnerian figure. The other was Alfred Rosenberg, the Russo-Germanand prophet of the Wise Men of Zion. It appears that it was he who hadacquainted Hitler with Chamberlain's ideas, and since Hitler was tooimpatient for steady reading, had underlined the most important anduseful sentences in the thick tomes. Rosenberg regarded himself asChamberlain's disciple and successor, and as executant of his spirituallegacy. After Chamberlain's death in 1926, the Russo-German wrote abiography of the Anglo-German, published an anthology of his writings,and himself wrote a book the very title of which was intended to indicatethat it was a continuation of Chamberlain's chief work: The Mythof the Twentieth Century.Among the guests at Wahnfried, Hitler met Count Richard duMoulin-Eckart of French emigre stock, the biographer of CosimaWagner; he met Count Manfred Gravina, an Italian, who married one ofWagner's daughters; he met the wife of Chamberlain's publisher, ElsaBruckmann, nee Rumanian Princess Cantacuzenc. This Rumanianprincess soon became one of Hitler's most ardent supporters — like anAmerican woman from the same circle, the widow of the publisherHanfstangl.Chamberlain had developed the doctrine of the elective affinity ofAryans, extending beyond nations. The phrases and the gestures arestubbornly German; but in reality an international type, dimly foreseenby Heine and Nietzsche, was in process of formation. To the AustrianHitler, Chamberlain wrote: 'I always wonder whether the lack ofpolitical instinct, for which the Germans are so often reproached, is nota symptom of a far profounder gift for state-building. Theorganizational talent of the Germans is in any