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

HINDENBURG'S STICK 473The Communists thought differently. They proclaimed a generalstrike to support a government which they themselves had overthrowntwo weeks before. Nowhere did anyone follow their call, and thishistoric fact contains the profoundest reason for the otherwiseincomprehensible decision of the Social Democratic leaders. Thecondition of the German working class had changed since March, 1920,when in a similar situation they won their strike against the militaryputsch. Six to eight million unemployed were waiting outside thefactory gates; the workers' leaders believed that they could not expect ageneral stoppage, a solid outpouring from the factories that would crushall opposition.Rundstedt had orders to arrest the Social Democratic leaders at thefirst sign of resistance; later, Reichswehr officers boasted that theywould not have shrunk back from mass shootings. But it is improbablethat the Reichswehr would have risked a blood-bath; it would have beenthe opposite of what they had longed for since 1919. If there had beenan uprising, its leadership could have been moved to the Rhineland,which, in accordance with the treaties of Versailles and Locarno, theReichswehr could not enter. It is possible that the South German statesand their governments would have joined the Prussian government; forthese states, with their largely Catholic population, were embittered bythe fall of Bruning, distrusted the Prussian junkers and militarycamarilla. The South and West of the Reich were beginning to showresistance to the hegemony of the North and East; again there was talkof the frontier drawn by the river Main, which divided Germany, historicallyand temperamentally, into North and South, much as theMason-Dixon line divides the United States.But resistance along these lines required preparation, and there hadbeen little preparation. The 'Iron Front' was still in the building and itwas not ready to strike. Side by side with the Reichswehr, the S.A. andthe Stahlhelm would at once have marched out in great swarms andalmost entirely dominated the great plains of northern and easternGermany. Against them, the Prussian police presented no reliable force,particularly in the smaller towns. But in this struggle the SocialDemocratic leaders may have feared their friends, the Communists,even more than their enemies. It was the