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

322 DER FUEHRERAmerica has developed with the years and has grown more serious. Theland of 'Jewish domination, stock-exchange dictatorship, and thecrassest capitalism' has become, in his eyes, a land of magnificentnational planning; a land with an alarming headstart over Germany onthe road to the mechanized nation. America sucks the whole world dry;she can do this because she possesses the space which Europe, andparticularly Germany, lacks. 'Every emigration,' says Hitler sadly, 'willlead to a loss of energetic, bold men. The coward never leaves his home.The little proletarian must have self-confidence when he says: Now I'mgoing to Argentina. That is Vikingism, a voyage of the Argonauts that isnot sung, but which should be sung, as the most terrible catastrophe thathas struck our nation. It accumulated through the decades and centuriesand gave a new continent a highly valuable human content. We cameface to face with it in 1918 on the Western Front.'Respect for the American menace, fear of American strength, andenvy of American space — all this is, for Hitler, an entirely newconception of America; it has developed slowly, in conflict with hisoriginal idea of American 'barbarism.' He describes the Americanmenace in the same admiring tone which, at times, he adopts forCommunism, and again the enemy becomes his model. The creepingAmerican menace has transformed itself into a stormy catastrophe forall. Europe and particularly for Germany, since the United States hasbegun to subject its immigrants to a strict physical examination,rejecting the sick and defective Germany, says Hitler, could do no betterthan imitate the catastrophe.Emigration to America [he says] has been brought into a formconstructively dangerous for us, in so far as the human material whichwe deliver to America is not picked out by poverty alone. No, thereceiver himself picks out this material and examines it to see if it issuitable for his own racial aims. . . . The natural process of selectionhas become an artificial one. The American Union strictly prescribeshow a man must be constituted if he is to be admitted. What ourbourgeois democracy does not want to understand is there prescribed bylaw. Health, a certain stature, are demanded; no one may havehereditary taints, etc. From a multitude of men, they seek the mosthighly valued individuals. This