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

THE UNHAPPIEST OF ALL MEN 367commanded the German people to take the 'ancient peoples' ideal ofbeauty' as a model, he justified this by saying: 'Since it is better toimitate something good than to produce something new and bad, thepredominantly intuitive creations of these peoples can today fulfill theireducational and leading mission as a style raised above doubt.'Here art loses itself in politics, where, as a matter of principle,everything serves as a means to an end. The end is permanence andgreatness: 'There is nothing in all the cultural monuments,' says Hitler,'that does not owe its existence to a political intention. Rome and Hellas— no cultural state has arisen except through political hope and the willto obtain monuments in harmony with it, monuments to the unificationof peoples, to celebrate the outstanding might of the central politicalpower. ... I could not imagine the victory of our philosophy of life,otherwise than embodied in monuments which outlast the times.' And'Art and politics belong together as nothing else on earth belongstogether.'Hitler dreams of his own giant monument in the future. 'When apeople is extinguished and men are silent, the stones will speak' — ofthe great deceased, in whom his own people stamped its 'highest values.''Everything that I say and do belongs to history,' he said at a time whenthe great red posters with his name attracted at most a thousand peopleto a beer hall. For basically everything that he said or did was calculatedonly to imprint his infinitely enlarged image on the present, to multiplyhimself in his creation, and to disappear as a man behind his legend.He made the masses see what they did not see, and not to see whatthey did see. The masses, yes — but what about individuals, particularlythose around him? They still had before them this face that looked likean advertisement for a shaving lotion; this emptiness with the avid,frightened eyes; this sometimes slinking, sometimes hopping, nevernaturally moving form with its narrow shoulders; this whole impersonalappearance, in which for want of other distinguishing features theridiculously correct suit most caught the eye. They were forced to hearthis know-it-all, equipped with all the semi-education of his age, talkingconstantly of things he did not understand; they had to swallow themiserable