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

FIRST TRIUMPH 347voting themselves increased profits in the enlarged industry. The basicdifference between large and small property became clear to the smallshareholders when their holdings were wiped out by the stock-exchangecrash, while the big men bought up the depreciated values. Every smallenterprise suffered under the pressure of large-scale industry. Thedepartment stores stifled the small shop; the small tavern-keepersbecame mere slaves of the breweries; the small business could get nobank credit, while the large industry obtained it with ease. Thus, a classwhich, for a century, had tenaciously defended private property in allsocial struggles developed a hatred against large-scale property,blending with the old hatred of the propertyless proletarian. An 'anticapitalist'longing had awakened in the German people, said GregorStrasser in the Reichstag.The Wise Men of Zion in their day gave a masterly picture of asimilar state of decay; they showed the helplessness of a type ofgovernment which preaches democracy, but can help itself only bydictatorship; and how the political pirate exploits this period of decay:'We shall arm all parties, set up state authority as a target for everyambition, and turn the states into arenas for uprisings. Just a little morepatience and the uprisings and collapses will be universal. Untiringbabblers will turn the sessions of parliaments and cabinets into bouts oforatory. Insolent journalists will each day attack the representatives ofthe government. The misuse of power will finally shake the pillars ofthe state and prepare their collapse.'The crisis had made the masses aware that they were cut off from thesprings and levers of their own fate. The state had become their destinymore than ever before, and at the same time it had become moreinvisible and nameless; a body of rulers almost unknown to the people,which decided on the basis of unknown principles whether the peopleshould eat or go hungry. While the state lay hidden in the yellowtwilight of the Reichstag, the Brown gangs appeared in the streetscrying: 'Germany, awaken!' They marched with flags and music, andgreat crowds followed them to their mass meetings. There a sprightlylittle orator with a club foot declared, 'Today no one knows who rulesGermany, for the supposedly ruling bourgeois parties baptizethemselves with new