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

424 DER FUEHRERinfluence his party to moderate its attacks on the government; otherwiseGermany would be ruined. Formally Goring may have given a sharpanswer; but events ran their course. Catholic bishops had excludedNational Socialists from worship because Rosenberg's utterancescompelled them to regard the party as anti-Christian; the whole Catholicpress carried on an impassioned fight against the party and its dubious'positive Christianity.' But the Catholic Church, which had alreadyreached an understanding with Italian Fascism (1929), could not ignorethe fact that National Socialism officially combated Bolshevism andactually embodied strong anti-Bolshevist forces. In August, 1931,Goring went to Rome and was received by Cardinal Pacelli, the Pope'ssecretary of state (the future Pope Pius XII); he attempted to dispel theVatican's poor opinion of National Socialism.But these conversations and attempts at understanding were not aimedat a dictatorship such as Papen demanded; the aim was the creation of anew popular majority, and Hitler himself had pointed the way when heswore his oath to legality and the constitution. Here a cleavage arosebetween himself and the bourgeois-national groups; between theNational Socialists and the German Nationalists under AlfredHugenberg. Hugenberg, like Papen, desired the dictatorship of a leaderclassindependent of the people, of a group too small to be called even aminority. However, it was a half-dictatorial government, but one basedon a majority and confirmed by parliament, which the other greatopportunist in this political game, General von Schleicher, desired. Tothis end he obtained for Hitler an interview with Hindenburg.The two men were seeing one another for the first time? Hitler wasagitated and embarrassed and seems to have feared the meeting with thedull old man. He was afraid to go without someone who was sure of hisnerves. Rohm would have been the right man; he, after all, wasresponsible for the close connection with the Reichs-wehr, thusindirectly for the invitation itself. But Hindenburg had a personalrevulsion against the homosexual adventurer, and Goring could not bearthe idea that Hitler should appear before the field marshal with anyonebut him. Goring was in Sweden at the deathbed of his wife, whose longillness was drawing to an end. Hitler