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

312 DER FUEHRERContemptuously Hitler replied: 'This nation of sixty-two millionsmust advance its claims to the globe. . . . Germany will not be saved bymen who fall a victim to universal world love, but by those who directuniversal hatred to themselves.' Seeckt, the specialist, regarded thepeople's war of millions as a useless bloody drama of the past: 'Perhapsthe principle of the mass army, of national mobilization, is already onthe wane; the fureur du nombre is at an end. The mass becomesimmobile. It cannot maneuver, hence cannot win; it can only crush.' ButHitler: 'The basic idea of National Socialism, in its striving to create astrong race, is that an entire people must enter the lists and fight for itslife. If it succumbs, that is right. The earth is not for cowardly peoples!'And: 'The earth is our football; in this game we do not for a momentrenounce staking our whole people.' In Seeckt's eyes the World Warconfuted itself; Hitler by contrast: 'For the National Socialists the WorldWar has not ended. We have not disarmed. As soldiers we do not weepand complain, we do not rack our brains whether we may not have donethe enemy an injustice.' Seeckt uttered the obvious, 'Precisely the soldierwill greet all efforts to lessen the possibilities of war,' and Hitler repliedwith the cannibalistic wisdom which he held to be obvious, 'All thenations which have surrendered to peace have not only ceased todominate the world, but have slowly rotted.' Seeckt, following thedoctrine of Clausewitz, the German philosopher of war, declared peaceto be the aim of every war, but Hitler knew better: 'There is nodifferentiation between war and peace. There is always struggle.'These were not clever speeches. With his strident battle-cry Hitler didnot sweep millions off their feet; he only expressed the sentiment of hisgroup of uprooted men who in 1928 were still a small circle aroundtheir little-regarded Fuhrer. Himself uprooted, he screamed out hisnostalgia for war, his lost home: 'I was a dispatch carrier at Arras,' herelated, 'in the night when the roaring twenty-one-centimeter cannonssuddenly began to speak and illumine the horizon with lightnings. ThenI had the ecstatic feeling: Here stands Germany, that is our language —over there they know this language and hide from it!' He was speakingto two thousand people, and the reports tell of 'stormy, continuousapplause.' On