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

THE RACE WITH CATASTROPHE 489decisive hour. The soldier who was fighting at the fronts will not forgetthat this system was not worthy of his sacrifices. With this world, withthis society, with this mentality, nothing binds us any longer. It is theobject of our hatred and contempt.' And Hitler added: 'I can only saythat if in November, 1918, I had had only one army corps under me, therevolution would not have succeeded.'If, in his few conferences with Hindenburg, he had been able to makethis point clear to the old man, perhaps he would not be in the tight spothe was now. True, the field marshal might have understood thatNational Socialism had the one great aim of making a secondNovember, 1918, impossible; but it was beyond the old man'sunderstanding why mass meetings were necessary for this purpose. Andthe 'Bohemian corporal' and old Reichswehr spy just was not the typefrom which Hindenburg would take a lecture. Now Hitler had amonghis followers some other old generals and colonels who perhaps mightbe able to do what he was not. They were banded together in acommittee for the sole purpose of influencing a dozen generals andcolonels in the Reichswehr staff; their leader, Franz von Epp, the manwho in bygone times had helped to 'invent' Hitler, was assigned toinfluence Hindenburg himself. This 'Military-Political Bureau'(Wehrpolitisches Ami) was going to make the old generals understandwhy there had to be a National Socialist Movement: to win 'spiritualdomination over the people . . .; to penetrate,' as the program of the newbureau put it, 'the soul of the proletariat'; as a matter of fact, 'only theNational Socialist S.A. has succeeded in drawing valuable fightermaterial from these circles.'Meanwhile, let nobody fool himself that this new army would be hadjust for the asking. What was the use that Schleicher clamored in public:'Germany will do what is necessary for her national defense, whateverhappens' — and, 'We shall no longer stand for being treated as a secondclassnation'? But it was, in Hitler's opinion, even worse that Papen stillchased after his dream of a Franco-German occidental front, a Franco-German understanding that would give Germany her much-covetedarmy. No wonder that Mussolini became angry and shouted his anger inthe face of