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

272 DER FUEHRERAnd then the hardest blow fell: the 'decay' went so far as to hoist thenational banner.In spring, 1925, Friedrich Ebert, the Social Democratic President ofGermany, died. As candidates for his successor the parties of the Rightput forward Paul von Beneckendorff and Hindenburg, the old fieldmarshal, the supposed general-in-chief in the World War. This livingmonument of the 'heroic lie' had for some time after the war acted as ashield and a tool for stronger schemers — not without finding its ownadvantage in it. After the German Army had gone astray in the last daysof 1918, a group of generals and other officers had wandered throughGermany, settled first in the western German city of Kassel, then inKolberg on the Baltic. This wandering band of officers was the GermanGeneral Staff, hence the soul of the army and in those days for allintents and purposes the army itself. Everywhere they dragged theirvenerable field marshal with them like a totem; it was then that Kurtvon Schleicher had his idea of the 'Free Corps.' In June, 1919, whenPresident Ebert telephoned Hindenburg to inquire whether he, theresponsible leader of the largely disbanded army, considered resistanceagainst the hard peace terms of Versailles to be possible, the marshalsilently left the room, pretending a physical need, and his chief of staff,Groener, had to tell Ebert that resistance was hopeless; afterwardHindenburg came back into the room and said to Groener: 'Now youhave taken this responsibility, too, upon yourself.' When the war seemedlost in the military sense, Hindenburg, on Ludendorff's advice, hadhastily requested an armistice because he did not know whether thefront could still hold another day; a year and a half later, Hindenburg,evidently instructed by others, launched the slogan that the Germanfront had been 'knifed from behind' by treason. Running for President,he let his election propaganda men promise that he would restore thefortunes destroyed by inflation; afterward there was no further mentionof this.Why Hindenburg? Because he was a general, because he representedthe army, the war, or the Kaiser? Very few people in Germany wouldhave tolerated the Kaiser or even one of his sons. Very few voted forLudendorff, the real World War chief, when he ran in the first elections.Essentially Hindenburg was elected pre-