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

Chapter XXIITHE REICHSTAG FIREON JANUARY 31, GOEBBELS WROTE IN HIS DIARY:In a conference with the Leader we establish the directives for thestruggle against the Red terror. For the present we shall dispense withdirect counter-measures. The Bolshevist attempt at revolution must firstflare up. At the proper moment we shall then strike.Thus began the quest for a Communist uprising, the great secret ofevery counter-revolution. Revolution always needs legal justification, itmust claim to re-establish broken laws. To endure, an act of violencerequires the consent of the victims. Hence revolution, in its formulatedaims, is always directed against the illegal abuse of state authority bythe government, and even when it overthrows institutions that aredecades or centuries old, it does so, at the very least, in the name of a'natural' law, if it has no positive, written law at hand. But even in themost extreme cases, legitimacy is almost always preserved in someform, perhaps by invoking the authority of a parliament created for thispurpose. Even the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia attacked thestate in defense of a higher authority, conceived as legitimate, theauthority of the councils of workers and soldiers. Conversely, thecounter-revolution regularly attacks the menace to legitimate authorityby the governed. In the classical case of European counter-revolution,Louis Bonaparte and the party of the 'Mountain' clashed under theseconflicting battle-cries; an even more classical and venerable example isfound