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

446 DER FUEHRERhad formed a new organization with an unprecedented propagandistappeal. The old 'Black, Red, and Gold Reichsbanner,' the fightingorganization of the Social Democrats and the trade unions, had beenreorganized under a new leadership. The new organization was calledthe 'Iron Front'; it tried to emulate the Communist principle oforganizing the workers in the larger factories into self-contained combatgroups; and it began to make preparations for a serious civil war. Theidea was to win a firm grip on some of the big, strategically importantfactories, and by threatening nationwide sabotage to cut the nerves andsinews of any political coup before it started.This front bore the actual burden of Hindenburg's election campaign.But even if the democratic masses rallied to Hindenburg, the candidatehimself was no democrat — as has often been the case with the leadingfigures of democracy, and not only in Germany. Since labor leaders andcapitalists were both for Hindenburg, Hitler might well have cried out:There you have it, Isaac and Moses Cohn, the capitalist and the laborleader arm in arm, a pair of brothers wanting the same thing. True, forsome time he had been moderating this tone — association with bigindustrialists and bankers had doubtless taught him caution. But in theprovinces his speakers made no bones about calling Hindenburg thecandidate of the Jews. The Communists, in turn, required no great flightof the imagination to represent Social Democratic support of theKaiser's field marshal as a 'betrayal of the workers.' As seven yearsbefore, they chose Ernst Thaelmann, their party chairman, as theircandidate.Hitler set himself up as the candidate of the workers and the massesin opposition to Hindenburg. He described conditions in a sentence thatwas effective and not untrue: 'Things have come to such a pass that twoworkingmen must feed one unemployed.' When asked by what right heset himself above all the authorities, specialists, ministers, andexcellencies, Hitler declared: 'With the right of a man who comes of thenameless mass that is the people,' and Groener may again have scentedBolshevism. In an open letter to Hindenburg, Hitler complained aboutpersecution by the police: 'Even you, Herr Reichs President, cannot setaside the