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

FIRST TRIUMPH 333perity into world prosperity and every crisis into a world crisis; but eachrise and fall made the extent of American leadership clear. America hadgiven Europe, and particularly Germany, more than money. Therenewal of German productive technique after 1924 was based on anAmerican idea, the assembly line; it so affected all life in Germany thatthe words laufendes Band (assembly line) have found all sorts offigurative uses in the German language. Since her discovery fourhundred and fifty years ago, America has never ceased to live in theEuropean imagination as a fairy tale turned reality, as a proof that theseemingly impossible is possible; first as the land of unlimited wealth,then of unlimited natural wonders, then of unlimited liberty, and finallyof unlimited technical possibilities. As a technical model, the UnitedStates has played an immeasurable part in the building of two statesalien to it: the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. TheAmerican engineers who built Russian factories and German 'studycommissions' bore the American idea across the ocean, and the magic of'America' became more potent throughout Europe than that of any othercountry, even of France or Italy with their ancient civilizations; even ofthe Soviet Union.But this technical leadership of America in turn helped to create asituation that finally upset all gains made before. Almost everywhere onthe globe the era after the First World War was filled with an effort tobuild, to create, to produce — an effort that looked noble andenterprising, but in its final effect was as destructive as it seemedcreative. Countries which had hitherto produced chiefly raw materialsand agrarian products began to develop manufactures at least for theirown use; states which had not existed until then tried to start industriesof their own that had not existed until then either. Some entered theworld market as new competitors, underbidding everyone in sight,partly with the help of starvation wages — Japan, for instance.. But ofall new competitors by far the strongest in force and capacities wasAmerica. The gradual rise in American customs duties gave the worldmarket a sign that a new industrial country was entering into sharperand sharper competition with the old production centers. The Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922 showed that America intended to protecther