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

28 DER FUEHREREntente, who with a straight face, stammering broken German, listenedto their reports, and then delivered the traitors to eager assassins.'We will transfer them from their rascally lives to death,' Rohm usedto say in such cases. 'That is the soldier's law of self-defense.' Manyyears later, generals might from time to time appear as witnesses beforecourts and parliamentary committees, raise their right hands and swearthat they had known nothing of the murders, and had no idea who themurderers were. The job was done by Rohm and his henchmen, theHeineses, Neunzerts, Schweikharts, and Ballys — to mention only afew of all those who have been half or totally forgotten. He was not theonly such leader in the Reich. There was Lieutenant Rossbach inPomerania, Captain von Pfeffer in the Ruhr; there was Captain Ehrhardtwho marched through the whole of Germany with his armed band, andat the height of his career instigated the putsch which was stifled by thegeneral strike. Rohm was more conscious of his goal than any of theothers; his career was the most successful, his end the most tragic.In any case, it was the officers of middle rank, captains, or at mostmajors, who relieved the generals of their responsibility, ostensiblywithout their knowledge, often actually against their will. They shovedtheir generals aside, in the end openly combated them, and during thewhole period grimly despised them for their cowardice and inertia. Theofficers' class struggle became the struggle of the lower against thehigher officers. When the German Republic disbanded the army, moregenerals retained their posts than the English army has in peacetime;those who were discharged received pensions they could live on. Thewell-paid generals became easily reconciled to the republic; they werenot grateful enough to admit it openly, nor courageous enough to denyit. But the lieutenants and captains saw no place for advancement in thetiny army of a hundred thousand men; they saw themselves reduced tothe level of armed elite proletarians; many, with no official position atall, marched through the land at the head of mercenary bands, subsidizedby heavy industrialists and landowners to protect their factoriesor estates from the specter of communist revolution.This seemed the end of the lordly life to which the German in-