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

DEFEAT 441When these landowners maintained that agriculture could thrive ontheir poor soil only in the form of large estates, the truth was that evenin this form it could not thrive. The rye of eastern Germany could notcompete on the world market with that of Canada or the Argentine;spirits, the most important product of their potatoes, was produced insuch great quantity that it could not be sold. 'It's not a nice thing to say,'one of them declared, 'but if the German people would only drink more!'And things grew worse than ever when the landlords tried to improvetheir estates. Let your estates run down, Oldenburg-Januschau had beenadvising them since 1924 when Germany's period of post-warprosperity began. Instead of that, many borrowed large sums of moneyfrom the banks and burdened their poor holdings with costly farmbuildings and stills. With a great expenditure, usually not of their ownmoney, they tried to squeeze from the poor soil yields that it simplycould not give. From the purely business point of view, it would havebeen sensible to turn large parts of the East German soil into pasture, oreven better, forest, as was done in the Scotch Highlands at the end of theeighteenth century. The large Prussian landholdings were saved by thePrussian army, and not only because many officers came of junkerfamilies. The army was interested in maintaining the large East Germanestates, because it regarded them as necessary for war. Even if the ryeand potatoes cost too much to produce, even if people did not like thetaste of the black bread — these coarse and expensive foodstuffs werenevertheless a great food reserve in the event of a war in whichGermany would be a besieged fortress. 'That nation is doomed to decaywhose agriculture decays,' said Field Marshal Helmut von Moltke, thefounder of the Prussian General Staff. The rye production of the EastGerman junkers was protected and artificially kept alive by means ofhigh tariffs on foreign grain. The junkers themselves thought the statewas only doing its duty, and that inadequately. They threatened theGerman Kaiser that they would obstruct the building of the Germanfleet in parliament if their tariffs were not approved. Few classes havebeen so adept at manipulating the state for their personal interests. Ottovon Bismarck, who was one of them, frankly admitted: 'A state thattakes my property is no