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

344 DER FUEHRERthrough the German streets on Sundays with brass bands and heldmaneuvers in the country. From 1925 to 1930, they faced one another ina state of armed peace like the armies and navies of the world powers;they tried to frighten one another by their existence and generallyavoided open clashes. This changed at once when the true uprooted anddisinherited, the National Socialists and Communists, entered the field.In 1930, there began a continuous series of street fights, with thousandsof dead and wounded on both sides. The Communists organized as 'RedFront Fighters' or 'Anti-Fascists,' sometimes effectively trained byRussian instructors. Their slogan was: 'Strike the Fascists wherever youfind them!' But even earlier, in ornate German, spiced with wronglyused foreign words, Goebbels had cried: 'Dominance of the street givesclaim to the state; we must mount the barricades!'At this time, when the authority of parliament began to decline, astrange new experiment started: the Reichswehr tried to regenerateparliament and democracy.The Reichswehr as a political force was embodied in three persons:Hindenburg, Marshal, President, and Supreme Commander; WilhelmGroener, his old chief of staff in 1918-19, with whom he had dethronedthe emperor; and who now was Minister of the Reichswehr; and theformer captain, now General Kurt von Schleicher, deviser of the FreeCorps, now Groener's most important aide and political adviser.Schleicher, who, for an officer, was on extremely good terms withparliament and even the parliamentary leaders of the Left, in thebeginning of 1930 conceived the idea that a new form of governmentmust be found; a government which would be able to force its will uponthe representatives of the people, but by their own consent. The manwhom he wanted to appoint as Chancellor was Doctor HeinrichBruning, at that time one of the leaders of the Catholic Center Party.Bruning was a former officer; but he was also an able politician andspeaker, familiar with the ways of administration and parliament, and aman of an unselfish character. Schleicher's attention had been drawn tohim when Bruning began to criticize the high cost of publicadministration and warn against the dangers of the Young Plan.The opportunity for Bruning's appointment came when Her-