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

508 DER FUEHRERring, Ley, and Goebbels would do the same. They set out; theirreception was not always friendly. 'A heavy depression prevails in theorganization,' wrote Goebbels in his diary. 'The sentiment among theparty membership is still divided,' he finds on December 10. 'It costs usno end of effort to keep the S.A. and the party administration on a clearcourse [December 15] . . .' Occasionally he reports that he has beensuccessful in 'lifting up' the mood of a meeting; but this was not alwaysthe case. On December 17, Hitler addressed his functionaries in Halle.Only his will counted in the party, he shouted; then he bade each one ofthem give him his hand and swear loyalty. While those in the front rowswere giving him their hands, fighting broke out in the back of the room;men were knocked down, rebellious S.A. and S.S. men shouted that thecomedy should be stopped. In these speeches, Hitler did not strike avery convincing tone: 'Perhaps our enemies did give us a numericalsetback in the last Reichstag elections, but next year we shall pay themback with interest and compound interest. . . .' In three months thecatastrophe would be at hand: 'I think that in March we shall again facethese gentry in open battle. By then we shall have created the necessaryconditions and the guaranty that our blade will be sharp.'But at first this timorous hope in the misfortune of the fatherland wasbitterly disappointed. Hitler's prophecies, that without him no Germangovernment could accomplish anything in foreign affairs, again turnedout to be false. After the MacDonald cabinet in England had decided forGermany's right to equality in armaments, Paul-Boncour, now FrenchForeign Minister, made it plain that France would break with Englandunder no circumstances and that no German-English front must arise.The result was a great moral success for the Schleicher government. OnDecember 6, the Disarmament Conference reconvened in Geneva.Again Germany was represented. On December 11, Germany, Italy,France, England, and the United States agreed 'that one of the principlesthat should guide the conference on disarmament should be to grantGermany and the other powers, disarmed by treaty, equality of rights ina system that would provide security for all nations, and that theprinciple should itself be embodied in a convention con-