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

282 DER FUEHRERintelligence — had not stuffed his own head too full; he also found itright and proper that Hitler should avail himself of his friend'sknowledge where it suited him and leave it unused where it did not suithim.At Munich University there was then a former German general who,before the World War, had spent some time in Tokyo on a diplomaticmission; he had become a professor and lectured on a new sciencewhich he called geo-politics. This professor and retired general, KarlHaushofer, was the teacher and friend of Rudolf Hess; he was anoccasional guest at Landsberg, and Hitler and Hess were certainlystimulated by their conversations with him; Hitler's 'space as a factor ofpower,' is Haushofer's expression. But this does not mean thatHaushofer was 'Hitler's guiding brain' as he has sometimes been called.The essential parts of the book do not deal with foreign policy ormilitary geography, but with race, political education, the building of aspiritual force at home. Hitler always insisted on the predominance ofdomestic politics over foreign policy; holding that the formerdetermined the latter.Hence far too much has been read into the so-called foreign policychapters of the book. No statesman is in a position to indicate ten yearsin advance what he is going to do later; on the pathless fields of politicsone cannot proceed by schedule like an engineer. The whole work isessentially a loud argument with the author's closest friends andassociates, with the moderate nationalist parties, the so-calledbourgeoisie, and with his own party friends, Feder, Rohm, GregorStrasser.Hitler's strongest hold on his party in these times was the ownershipof the party's paper, the Volkischer Beobachter. But the paper did notmake money. Max Amann, in a practical sense the most important of hiscollaborators, was now business manager of the Volkischer Beobachter,paid his editorial workers starvation wages, gave them prodigiousamounts of work to do, and had furious arguments with AlfredRosenberg. The two threw scissors and inkwells at each other's head.The paper must be sensational, Amann demanded; it must politicallyeducate our members, said Rosenberg, whom God had not created to bea newspaperman. 'I spit on the members; business comes first,' Amanncried back; and he said the