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

THE ARMED INTELLECTUALS 33movemcnts in Germany, said in court: 'Events have taught me, and itpains me to own, that the leading stratum of our society is incapable ofgiving the German people the will to freedom.'Rohm says it more simply: 'Only he who is without possessions hasideals.'A broken people, a broken army, broken men. The new movementrises out of wreckage. Ideals had to fall into the mire, destinies to beshattered, characters to sicken, before something new could be born. Forthis thing was new, and from the very beginning it was frightful.Rosenberg lost his home, Rohm his people; the type which now fell inwith them, bringing them their greatest strength, had nothing to lose.The gilded troop met in feebly lighted beer halls, smelling of coldsmoke. Officers became conspirators. And they were no longer alone —that was the decisive factor. Now they were with workers. Not with themain body of the workers, with the mighty masses from the factories,but with the flotsam, the stragglers living on the fringe of their class, theworkers at odd jobs and the unemployed. The declassed of all classescame together; those of the upper and the lower classes made commoncause. In all times this has been the way of counter-revolution: an upperlayer that has lost its hold in society seeks the people and finds therabble. The officers were out to find a demagogue, of whom it could besaid that he was a worker. They would cry out to him: Leader,command us, we shall follow.In their class struggle the officers were forced by circumstances tocreate a workers' army; they found their leader in the lowest mass oftheir subordinates, and commanded him to command. The spirit ofhistory, in its fantastic mockery, could not have drawn an apter figure. Itwas the man who had sent his comrades to the slaughterhouse wall afterthe overthrow of the Munich soviet. A human nothing, a graypersonality even among soldiers, 'modest and for that very reasoninconspicuous,' as a superior has characterized him; not even a German,but a homeless derelict from the Viennese melting-pot. The army inwhich he was a soldier was charged with energy, laden withpossibilities, but he descended to