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

Chapter XVII'NOW I HAVE THEM IN MYPOCKET!'HITLER WAS ON HIS WAY TO BECOMING THE MAN of the hour.This did not necessarily mean that it would be the hour of this man.Decay and disintegration of society certainly created an atmosphere inwhich Hitler could thrive; however, a thorough process of adaptationwas required. He had to pay the price for power, and this price alwaysconsists — among other things — of principles which have to besacrificed.Up to 1930, the coming man of destiny had appealed to an uprooted,disinherited, and small minority of desperate men, and had promisedthem the 'coming great divine judgment,' the 'great hour for Empire andNation' — war against France. Now he was appealing to the masses forwhom the enemy was not France but poverty; who did not want war butjobs. And so war speeches had to stop. His article in January, whichexpressed the hope that world peace would 'go down in blood and fire,'was about the last utterance of this style. From now on his slogan in hisstruggle for Germany was 'democracy'; in his struggle for Europe it wassomething even more surprising: peace.Peace between armed intellectuals. For Hitler made his peace offer inan exchange of open letters with a French writer who had been aSocialist and now was kind of a Fascist, Gustave Herve. It was Hervewho opened the conversation in October, 1930.