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

ADOLPHE LEGALITE 397hall, ran up the stairs, and then came back, disappointed, saying: 'Theyescaped. . . . Over there, that part belongs to the Reichswehr.'The S.A. strove persistently to penetrate the lower ranks of theReichswehr. Tested members were formally discharged from the party,then volunteered for the small professional army. In the new militaryatmosphere they were sometimes lost to their old loyalties, butsometimes they proved excellent listening-posts and agitators. Theirparty made it its business to cement their loyalties by constant presents,tobacco and food. To be sure, the generals still remained sharply alooffrom the Uprooted and Disinherited, despised them and threatenedthem. But the lieutenants and captains, in the gray dullness of theirunpromising service, again, as in 1923, were attracted by the hope thatHitler would some day create a big army which would transformlieutenants into captains, the captains into majors, the majors intocolonels and generals. For these officers were not only desperatepatriots, but also poor devils in need of money. A large section of themcame from the class that had lost its fortune in the inflation; they ledsomewhat threadbare private lives on monthly salaries of two hundredmarks and upward, and complained bitterly that the German officer wasno longer the social lion he had been. It was a new society, plutocraticbut bourgeois and unfeudal; it set new social types, famous artists andwriters for instance, higher than the members of that armed class which,after all, had lost the war. But all this was bound to change if there wasa big army again, with high ranks and high salaries; and Hitler promisedto create this army.Thus it happened that National Socialist cells formed among theyoung officers. One of them, Lieutenant Wilhelm Scheringer, expressedthe mood among these young armed intellectuals in September, 1930, ina newspaper article of great significance. 'The actual purpose of theReichswehr,' he said, 'to be a citadel of the military idea and the basictroop for the future war of liberation, pales. The need of earning breadbecomes all-important. Soldiers turn into officials, officers becomecandidates for pensions. What remains is a police troop.' This, in theeyes of these desperate men, for whom the World War was not yet over,was the most terrible thing that could happen; the army was threateningto forget the