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

NOW I HAVE THEM IN MY POCKET! 419papers: 'Never in my life have I been as well disposed and inwardlycontented as in these days' — the darkest for the German economy. 'Forin these days hard reality has opened the eyes of millions of Germans tothe unprecedented swindles, lies, and betrayals of the Marxist deceiversof the people. In these days,' says Hitler, highly pleased to have won abet through the misery of his people, 'great masses have seen, perhapsfor the first time, who was right: the Young Plan swindlers, or the menof the Young Plan popular protest. In these days, therefore' — whenonce again hundreds of thousands thought they had lost their smallsavings, when millions failed to receive their wages and salaries — 'Ihave rightly felt happy and content, while conversely fear andconsternation have crawled up the necks of the party and newspaperswindlers of the Young Front.'That is Hitler. The house must burn for the sake of this flame. WhenHoover proclaimed his moratorium, it looked for a moment as thoughthe doom would itself be doomed in the last minute as in 1923. Andnow Fate sent him this bank crisis. The state declared itself incapable ofmastering the financial catastrophe, which it could have mastered.Hjalmar Schacht demanded 'salvation from this system.' 'If the worddemocracy has any meaning at all,' said Schacht in the NationalSocialist jargon which he had opportunistically assumed, 'it means thesubordination of the individual, employer as well as worker, to the greatdemands of the common welfare.'In this summer of distress the anti-democratic forces rallied in a trulydemoniac lust of destruction. To bring about the downfall of the powerthat was still most dangerous to them, the Social Democratic Prussiangovernment with its police and administrative apparatus, the Rightistorganizations again engineered one of their noisy and for the most partunsuccessful plebiscites. Their supposedly bitterest enemies, theCommunists, marched with them. The disinherited of the Left called ontheir supporters to vote with the disinherited of the Right and thusoverthrow the Prussian government; in this they were faithful to theirbelief that not the National Socialists but the Social Democrats were the'main enemy.'In the Prussian plebiscite, the Communists were privileged to