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

THE ARMED INTELLECTUALS 29tellectual youth had grown accustomed during the war. Their schoolcourse had been broken off ahead of time; their examinations had beenmade easy for them. After a short period of active service, they weresent to an officers' training course and soon they were lieutenants with amonthly salary of three hundred gold marks. It was a dangerousexistence, but one full of pride and pleasure. The material level of lifewas high enough to permit of a hard fall, when, as Rohm put it, 'peacebroke out.' He adds in his autobiography: 'Since I am an immature andbad man, war appeals to me more than peace.' But peace had come.These armed intellectuals were the German army, they preserved itsspirit, upheld its tradition. Even before the First World War, it hadceased to be the army of Prussian junkers, which foreigners held it tobe. Its most brilliant mind, its leader in the World War, was ErichLudendorff, a man of bourgeois origin, like most of the importantGerman generals in the World War, such as von Mac-kensen, vonKluck, Groener, Max Hoffmann, Scheer. When the Kaiser offered himnobility, Ludendorff declined, saying he wished to bear the same nameas his father. Since the broad mass of the lower officers gives an armyits character, the German Army of the World War could be called anarmy of armed students. And since these intellectuals in uniform foundno career and no bread in the breakdown after the peace, their officerdays remained for many the high point of their existence; the hope for areturn of the golden days remained their secret consolation.Among these bright-colored, though plucked birds, Rohm wasconspicuous by his simplicity; he had the nature of a leader, not of anaristocrat. This freebooter captain was inspired by an almost worshipfullove for his subordinates; he was the type of superior officer who livesand dies for his troop and is constantly fighting his superior officers intheir behalf. 'Respect and affection for your subordinate, not the praiseof your superior, is the highest ideal,' he wrote as a young lieutenant. Ingeneral, obedience was not his strong point. 'The thinking subordinate isthe natural enemy of his superior,' is another of his maxims. And thisfatherly soldier was a homosexual murderer.We shall not go into the apparent contradictions in Rohm's