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

ADOLPHE LEGALITE 393rolled by on the roads. Often the guards with their rifles were powerlessagainst the famished and desperate marauders. Young men, who hadseen the last remnants of property dwindle away in their families andhad never learned the meaning of work, wandered through thecountryside in bands, literally singing with hunger; the residentialsections were full of the terrible singing of poor people, who had neverdreamed that they would some day be singing for bread. It was stillgood times for the unemployed when they could crowd in long, gray,shabby lines on the pavement outside the so-called employment offices;they presented a little booklet at a window, and a grumbling officialpasted in a stamp certifying that they had presented themselves and hadvainly asked for work. This entitled them to an unemployment benefit,which might amount to as much as seventy marks in a month. When thegray, shabby army swelled beyond measure, they were allowed to comeonly twice a week; but after thirteen weeks of unemployment a personwas transferred into another class, where the benefits were muchsmaller and actually were based on a kind of state charity. Originallywhat he received had been an insurance benefit; he had paid for it ingood times by a compulsory deduction from his wages. Little by little, itbecame a gift from the state.Everyone expected help from the state in his distress; when theeconomy collapsed, the state became the symbol of security, sustenance,productivity. Unable to collect their rents, landlords could no longer payinterest on their mortgages; a quarry-owner in the Rhineland took toliving in his quarry, because no building was going on; barbers werestarving because their customers could not afford to be shaved; astationer lost his customers to a new one-price store; a dry goods shopwas crushed by a near-by department store. The state had to help, raise asubsidy fund, and was besieged with pleas to pass a law againstdepartment stores and one-price stores, which it finally did. As in 1923,millions of personal failures and collapses gave rise again to a feeling ofthe state's omnipotence and divinity. It was a feeling that fluctuatedbetween confidence and fear; the optimist, according to a widespreadjoke, predicted: Next winter we'll all go begging. The pessimistinquired: From whom?The industrialists were afraid to produce, because production was