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

566 DER FUEHRERseparatism. If anyone could prevent the open rebellion of these statesagainst the unity of the Reich, it was the SA. For Hitler's governmenthad been created just to keep the Reichswehr out of politics, to avoidusing the troops in civil strife.Since 1871, it had been a truism of German politics that the Bavarianpeople at heart wanted nothing to do with the 'Lutheran' and 'Prussian'German Reich; the Bavarian royalist projects of 1933 were still basedupon this belief. Like all historical truths, this, too had died one day, andmost observers were slow to notice the fact: after the World War a newgeneration had grown up in Bavaria, loyal at heart to the Reich,rejecting Bavarian separatism, and year after year obtaining strongerand stronger majorities in the elections. The three groups of NationalSocialists, Social Democrats, and Communists were agreed on nothingbut this one point: that the great majority of the Bavarian people wereabsolutely devoted to the Reich. It was one of Hitler's greatest politicalachievements to have recognized this truth more clearly than hisopponents, and to have acted on this knowledge.Again the telegraph was put to work, this time by Frick, ReichMinister of the Interior. He wired to Baden, Wurttemberg, Saxony,appointed the gauleiters or S.A. leaders as Reich police commissars;these police commissars put the white arm-bands of the auxiliary policeon their S.A. men; with strict legality they occupied governmentbuildings, herded the ministers into their new concentration camps,often with the usual brutality. Separatism was not to be feared in thesestates, but Hitler could not leave their administrative apparatus tothemselves. In Bavaria, on the other hand, an attempt was in progressthat really might have endangered the edifice of the Reich. Circlessupporting the Held regime considered placing Prince Rupprecht at thehead of the state, not as king, but under the title of 'general statecommissar,' once borne by the ill-starred Gustav von Kahr. This was tooccur on March 11.The Held government, like the Braun-Severing government in Prussiabefore it, no longer had a majority in parliament; here again theopposing majority was incapable of forming a government of its own;here, too, German democracy had slowly destroyed itself through thegrowth of the radical parties; and thus, if Hitler