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

THE AGE OF GOLD 275Rohm at an earlier day, he said contemptuously: 'What we face today isMarxist masses of humanity, not German people' — the twentythousand, according to report, 'applauded loudly.'And yet there was no reason to despair. He only had to look beyondthe border; there he, as well as everybody, could see what was comingfor Germany. For even before the world knew the name of Hitler,dictatorship covered a larger area than democracy on the map o£Europe. In 1926, the dictatorship of a party apparatus ruled in Russiaand was moving rapidly toward the dictatorship of a single man;Lithuania and Poland were governed by dictatorships; it was a matter oftaste whether to call the systems prevailing in Hungary, Yugoslavia,Bulgaria, and Greece oligarchy or dictatorship— it certainly was notdemocracy; a dictator modernized Turkey; a dictator held Spain inquestionable peace and order; the darling and white-haired boy amongall these dictators ruled clamorously over Italy, admired and publiclypraised even by the democrats of other countries, by Sir AustenChamberlain and Winston Churchill.This was the state of affairs eight years after the war which had beenfought to make the world safe for democracy. But in the mid-twentiesthe leading men of all democracies saw the most important problem inmaking the world safe for construction, economy, and capital; and forthis greater stability of political conditions, a mild or even drasticrestriction of democracy often seemed expedient, at times indispensable.The economic leaders who took the leadership from the politicians wereno democratic doctrinaires, especially where internal conditions inforeign countries were involved.In those years Alfred Rosenberg liked to show in the VolkischerBeobachter that Mussolini was dependent on Jewish finance capital,particularly the Jewish finance capital of America — he believed thatAmerican banking was in Jewish hands. Julius Streicher called theItalian dictator simply a Jewish hireling, apparently expressing Hitler'sthought. It is certain that international finance in that period and for along time to come was overwhelmingly friendly to dictatorship. Butwhat probably most of the present and future dictators really thoughtwas expressed by Rosenberg as early as 1927 at the first Party Day inNuremberg: 'The gold currency of the Jewish world