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

Chapter XXTHE RACE WITHCATASTROPHE'GREAT HOPELESSNESS REIGNS AMONG THE PARTYcomrades. The S.A. is desperate,' wrote Goebbels in his diary the nextday. Hitler's failure struck the Uprooted and Disinherited personally, intheir most private sensibilities. It meant no state power, no statetreasury, no state jobs. For the numerous administrators of party homes,the S.A. kitchens, the uniform factories, it meant creditors in terror oflosing their money, rude reminders, expired notes; for the party as awhole, with all its subsidiary organizations, it meant the menace of abankruptcy to the amount of twelve millions; for thousands ofemployees it meant starvation sooner or later.For some it meant the executioner's axe. A special court sentenced thefive murderers of Potempa to death, in strict accordance with the law.Hitler sent the five who had trampled a man to death before the eyes ofhis own mother a telegram beginning with the words: 'My comrades! Inthe face of this most hideous blood sentence, I feel myself bound withyou in unlimited loyalty . . .' The five murderers, he said, had his picturehanging in their cells; how then could he forsake them? 'In ourmovement, comradeship does not cease when someone makes amistake.' Moreover, the murdered man had been a Communist and aPole, hence an enemy of Germany, and 'anyone who struggles, lives,fights, and, if need be,