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

NOW I HAVE THEM IN MY POCKET! 425wired him impetuously; the meeting with Hindenburg seemed to both atthem a turning-point in history. The dying woman herself is said to haveurged her husband to go. Goring left her, met Hitler in Berlin, and wentwith him to Hindenburg.What was said at the meeting is still unknown. Probably Hitler spentsome time on his favorite theme, that only National Socialism couldsave the country — all Europe, in fact — from Bolshevism. It is certainthat he complained of how patriots — that is, himself and his party —were being persecuted, and presumably in his agitation he threatenedthat under such circumstances no spirited resistance could be expectedof the German people if tomorrow the Poles should overrun the easternborder. At all events, the meeting was a failure. Schleicher later relatedthat the old gentleman had been disappointed and had said that he wouldnot make this 'Bohemian corporal' chancellor, but 'at most generalpostmaster.' Hindenburg seems to have had the impression that Hitlerwas no real German. As for Goring, he never again saw his wife alive.It was a dismal time in Hitler's personal life. Geli Raubal, his belovedniece, had died three weeks before. Hitler does not seem to have been infull possession of his faculties at this time; he drifted along and lethimself be pushed into decisions which he himself held to be mistaken,such as a new alliance with Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm. On October11, one day after the talk with Hindenburg, a solemn foundation of a socalled'national front' was laid in the little spa of Harzburg, with manybrown and green uniforms. Hitler felt like a prisoner; he was sodisgruntled and agitated that he could scarcely speak, and he refused toeat at the same table with Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm leaders, FranzSeldte and Theodor Duesterberg. In his speech he flung a few attacks atBruning and demanded 'that the power and responsibility be put into thehands of the national opposition'; but went no further than to reject 'governmentswhich are formed without us or against us.' On the other hand,he did not shrink from saying that as long as Bruning governed againstthem, the National Socialists would not defend the national boundaries:'From now on, a system which persecutes us cannot count on our helpor protection in times of need, or even of mortal peril.'