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

32 DER FUEHRERwas sending forth his new armies, after moving his cannon to the Rhineunder the tricolor of France.The German Army was undergoing a revolution, a profound spiritualand physical metamorphosis. The impact upon this army of a foreign,supra-national world policy, conceived in gigantic Russian images, gavebirth to the great movement which has been known ever since asNational Socialism. A captain from the German provinces and a Russo-German student had to meet before the power of Germany and theworld-embracing fantasy of the East could combine into an explosivemixture. Personally Rohm always rejected Rosenberg's distantperspectives and probably never took them seriously. 'Europe and therest of the world,' he says, 'can perish in flames. What is that to us?Germany must live and be iree.' Such a sentiment is the antithesis of anybroad world policy. From the outset the two men sensed that they wereforeign to one another; they hated one another throughout theircollaboration. But their work was stronger than they.The Rohm type surely did not recognize the ironical textbook ofworld domination in the Protocols. To him it sufficed that it was aneffective pamphlet against the Jews. The defeated German officers'corps needed such a book. For an army that wants to maintain itsprestige among the people must not be defeated. For forty years thisarmy had been trained to defeat the French; it could not accustom itselfto failure. The Protocols offered consolation: 'It was not the French whodefeated us but the Jews.'At all times and among all nations, crafty and strong personalitieshave recognized the simple secret of rule by violence. Four hundredyears ago, an Italian gave it the theoretical form which today seems tous the most valid. A Frenchman adapted these thoughts to the modernage. But it took a band of Russian conspirators to transform the theoriesinto a practical program. And in Germany the program was to beconsciously applied for the first time. German officers took the idea ofworld domination seriously.Those who wish to transform the world must be able to transformthemselves. Every real revolutionary deed begins with one's ownperson. After his last unsuccessful putsch in 1923, General Luden-dorff,for long years the idol and leader of all national revolutionary