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

534 DER FUEHRERpress the debate on the Eastern Aid, and Hindenburg demanded that hedo this without dictatorship. The old man did not act in fear but inanger. Hitler did not force his hand; Hindenburg broke Schleicher'sattempt to do just this. The true interpretation of the episode is simplythat the fickle old man felt the weight of Schleicher's domination andshook it off when it became just a fraction of an ounce too much.The old President seems to have referred in harsh terms to theconversation in the Reichswehr Ministry and the plans for arrestingPapen and Hugenberg. According to Schleicher's own version, heanswered fearlessly that most of the rumors were nonsense, but that hedid indeed regard it as his duty to do his utmost to prevent a return ofPapen to the government. For such a government meant civil war, andneither the Reichswehr nor the police was morally equal to a civil war.In a statement which he himself gave to the press, he declared that 'not asingle word is true' of all the assertions about a march of the Reichswehron Berlin and the arrest of Hugenberg and Papen; these were 'absolutelysenseless and malicious inventions and slanders.' However, 'Herr vonSchleicher considered it his urgent duty as Chancellor still in office andas leader of the German armed forces, to describe to the President thedangers which, in his opinion, were inherent in the plan, still muchdiscussed in public, of reappointing former Chancellor von Papen. Herrvon Schleicher regarded such a cabinet, based on a tenth of the Germanpeople, as a challenge to the other nine tenths of the German people; inview of the complications and political struggles which, in his opinion,were inevitable, such a challenge would have led to demoralization inthe Reichswehr and the police. In this situation, he declared it was theright and duty of the Chancellor and Reichswehr Minister in office toprevent such a development to the best of his ability.'With a stubbornness bordering on mutiny, these Reichswehr officerswere determined to prevent a new Papen cabinet. Throughmisunderstandings, this, too, gave rise to a legend that Schleicherwanted, by a coup d'etat, to prevent Hitler from taking power.According to his own account, which, perhaps with slight shifts ofemphasis, is not unworthy of credence, he desired the exact oppo-