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

FEW FLAMES BURN IN GERMANY 301getting mixed up in political discussions.' When Hitler spoke is publiche had to grow up from a human nonentity to monumental size;Goebbels, too, had to overcome his natural timidity before he couldbecome incisive and unforgettable.Between his most talented pupil and Hitler there arose a spiritualintimacy which permitted Hitler to use Goebbels as a thinking tool; in1928, he appointed him party propaganda leader, and that he hasremained ever since. The younger man did not become an echo and acomplement for Hitler like Hess, but a perfectly functioning executiveorgan; Goebbels avidly seized on the slogans thrown out by his leader,and developed an artistry in giving form to Hitler's original ideas. It canbe shown that Goebbels copied many of his ideas and phrases fromHitler; his life's aim was to be Hitler's mouthpiece. Hitler had given hisparty the swastika flag; in 1932, Goebbels had millions of swastikas cutout of paper and strewn on the streets—this characterizes thecollaboration between the two.Hitler distributed his creatures throughout the party, systematically setrivals beside his rivals, fomented quarrels among his lieutenants overwhom he remained the unassailable leader — such was the work ofparty building up to 1930. The endless quarrels among his faithfulenabled him to build a new organ of his authority into the partyapparatus. To deal with the internal accusations of all sorts and keeppublic justice away from the many shady members of his elite band, heestablished in 1926 a party court, the so-called Untersuchungs- undSchlichtungs-Ausschuss (Committee for Examination and Adjustment),popularly known by the unbeautiful abbreviation: Uschla. The Uschla ina sense is the secret moral strong-box of the party, in which the NationalSocialists keep their best and strongest possession, their cynicism, safefrom the world. Its first leader was a former general by the name ofHeinemann; he took his job too seriously, failing to understand the realpurpose of the institution, and had to be dismissed. His successor wasMajor Walter Buch, a discharged Reichswehr officer who had not beenconspicuous in the party up till then; his assistants were Ulrich Graf, theloyal henchman wounded at the Feldherrn Halle, and the lawyer HansFrank, a human instrument blindly devoted to