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

THE UNHAPPIEST OF ALL MEN 373This was what came out when he spoke of his best men withoutembellishment. They had had the insolence not to take him seriously; inbitter complaint, the Fuhrer, who had thought himself capable ofdebating with retired colonels in officers' clubs on tank technique,bellowed forth his sense of injury: 'I was not a child of well-to-doparents. I was not educated at universities, but was drawn through thehardest school of life, through poverty and misery. The superficialworld never asks what a man has learned, and least of all what his realabilities are; as a rule, unfortunately, it asks only for his diplomas. Theynever noticed that I had learned more than tens of thousands of ourintellectuals; they only saw that my diplomas were lacking. And I wasnot an officer but a common soldier. . . .'No school diplomas! That was his whole misfortune — or so at leasthe told himself. In reality it was the qualities of the man, the lack ofintegrated personality, which made this extraordinary historicalphenomenon a lightweight in the human sense, and through all theterrors of his career surrounded it with an air of absurdity. Hitler wasalready the man of the hour in Germany, very probably the man oftomorrow, and in the eyes of many the man of destiny; and still the mostable men of his entourage refused to take him seriously — except as ademagogue. Could this be merely the phil-istinism of mediocre talentsunable to appreciate genius? What people noticed about Hitler was notthe madness of his actions; even the most hostile observer soon saw thatbehind the first deceptive cloud of noise and excitement there was anamazing certainty and purposiveness in his movements. But whatalways surprised men who spoke with Hitler face to face was thepoverty of his arguments and explanations, particularly in privateconversations, where it was not brilliance or wit that mattered, butthinking. When it was soberly explained to him that Germany's one totwo billion marks in annual reparations were assuredly a heavy burden,but could hardly be responsible for the crisis, he answered in allseriousness that with the rapidity of currency circulation one billionmarks left in Germany would provide the country with seven or eighttimes as much in wages and salaries. Whether he was predict-ing thesecond German inflation — which never occurred — or the