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

420 DER FUEHRERjoin with the house of Hohenzollern. Prince August Wilhelm, a son ofthe former Kaiser, had become a member of the National Socialist Partyand an S.A. man. When police dispersed a National Socialist crowd inthe city of Konigsberg, using their clubs, it happened that the prince wasin the crowd; proudly he wrote to his father about this absolutely newexperience, and Wilhelm answered from his Dutch exile: 'You may beproud that you were permitted to become a martyr of this great people'smovement.' But princes and Communists together were unable to arouseenough people against the Prussian government; the plebiscite gavethem only 9,800,000 votes, or 36 per cent (August 9, 1931).This was certainly no time for princes. When Bruning cautiouslysounded Hindenburg out on the subject of appointing a grandson of theformer emperor as regent in Germany, the man who had dethronedWilhelm II balked, this time acting the all too loyal servant. The onlylegal emperor, Hindenburg said, or rather the only legal king of Prussia,was the man in comfortable Dutch exile; to appoint one of his grandsonswould be against tradition and legitimacy.No king could give Germany bread, and it was bread that almostliterally began to be lacking. Foreign markets were glutted and could nolonger absorb the German exports to pay for raw materials. EvenGerman capitalists had begun to withdraw funds from the collapsingeconomy. Bruning decreed stern laws forbidding the flight of capital,and raised the discount rate of the Reichsbank, for practical purposes theminimum rate for capital interest, to 15 percent. Loan capital became asrare as butter in wartime. Again Germany sought the aid of foreigncapital.In this misery Germany had to decide between two possible foreignpolicies: either leaning on England — and this was advocated by Hitler— or looking for help in an understanding with France, France had anew premier who had started a policy of buying or bribing a number ofeastern and southeastern states — Austria among them — with loans, tobind them more firmly to the French line. He was also willing to buyGermany with a loan, provided she would renounce for ten years anyrevision of her international treaties. This French premier, who wantedto purchase