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

552 DER FUEHRERfour weeks the whole working class will be united under the leadershipof the Communist Party.' Brauer thought Torgler must be suffering fromthe strain. But a few days later, he met Soviet Ambassador Chinchookin Hamburg. Brauer asked the same question and received the sameanswer: 'No, they [the National Socialists] must come to power now,and then at last the old fight will come to an end. In four weeks theCommunists will have the leadership of the whole working class.' Nodisappointment could destroy this faith. A German Communist leaderby the name of Heckert, who fled to Russia a few weeks later, publiclydeclared before the executive committee of the Communist Internationalthat the German events had confirmed Comrade Stalin's predictions, andthat Social Democracy and Fascism were twin brothers. In a resolutionof April 1, 1933, the International stated that the open Fascist dictatorshipin Germany had freed the masses from the influence of SocialDemocracy and thus 'accelerated the tempo of the evolution of Germanytoward proletariat revolution.'The Communists were prepared for illegal struggle; they hadmaintained an illegal machine for years under the parliamentarygovernments. They were convinced that they would come through thebrief period of Hitler's dictatorship relatively unharmed, while theSocial Democrats, softened by democracy, would succumb to theunaccustomed climate. The calculations of the conservatives and theBolsheviks were startlingly similar. Generals, junkers, big capital, andCommunists were convinced alike that it was the generals, the junkers,and big capital who really had state power; all were agreed that Hitler asChancellor would inevitably disappoint the masses and lose hissupporters. The National Socialists were full of contempt for thisunrealistic view; Hitler declared publicly that he had set electionsbecause a government cannot rule in the long run unless it has thepeople behind it; because 'there can be no resurrection of the nationwithout the might of the workers'; true, for these reasons, he wished theGerman people to decide for him — but 'not because I lack thedetermination to settle with the spoilers of the nation without anelection. . . . On the contrary, their lordships' — he meant the generals,junkers, and capitalists — 'can be convinced: on the fifth of March, sohelp me