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

FEW FLAMES BURN IN GERMANY 307there is revealed, under a narrow forehead, a look of curious objectivity.Apart from pose and calling, he gives the impression of a certaincourtesy — even modesty. But this objectivity is of that frightful sortthat can look unmoved on the most grisly of horrors. A demonic will topower has been attributed to him; in truth he, more than any other of thefirst rank of his party, has been guided by devotion to the cause, andcompared to others he might be considered a model of personalselflessness. He is married, his private life is unassuming. He lovesflowers and birds, yet this offers no contradiction to his political role;personally he is almost without demands. More than anyone else in thiscircle, he feels that he is only a part of the whole embodied in the personof his supreme leader; his passion for race and race-building arises froma deep contempt of the individual, including his own. He has foundclassic formulas for the creed of the armed intellectual — that the stateis all, the individual nothing. He takes the doctrine of 'you are nothing,your people are everything,' more seriously than almost anyone else inthe movement, and for that reason Hitler took this man more seriouslythan many others who were more intelligent.Himmler understood with his heart when his Fuhrer demanded thatthe party must become the racial elite of Germany, the party of theruling minority. But by the party was meant Hitler's party which grewout of the unbridled National Socialist mass and raised itself above themass; Himmler saw his own S.S. as the motive force of this specialparty. 'We are not more intelligent than two thousand years ago,' he saidto his men in 1931. 'The military history of antiquity, the history of thePrussian Army two or three hundred years ago — again and again wesee that wars are waged with men, but that every leader surroundshimself with an organization of men of special quality when things areat their worst and hardest; that is the guard. There has always been aguard; the Persians, the Greeks, Caesar, Old Fritz, 1 Napoleon, all had aguard, and so on up to the World War; and the guard of the newGermany will be the S.S. The guard is an elite of especially chosenmen.'1 Frederick II, the Great.