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

THE REICHSTAG FIRE 573opinions; at his crowded banquets, Hitler suddenly found himself sittingbeside actresses, no longer exactly in their prime, who whispered to himhow they had been kept down by the old Jewish theater clique; playersof second- or third-rate roles suddenly turned up at rehearsals andannounced that in the name of the Leader they were assuming thedirection of this theater, which from now on should serve the trueGerman intellectual effort; and the drama critic of the National Socialistnewspaper was on the spot with a play from the days of Frederick theGreat, or, if he was a little more modern, with a so-called front-linedrama from the World War; if he was a real genius, the product mightbe entitled S.A. Man Kruse, a Life of Struggle for Nation and Leader;Jewish publishers of big democratic newspapers began to ask a localreporter for his political advice, because he was reputed to be a memberof an S.A. group in his free time.If ever the bankrupts and intellectually underprivileged have had aperiod of greatness, it was in the spring of 1933, in the realms ofliterature, theater, press, and film in Germany; the wild determination ofthousands of shipwrecked, untalented careerists to make something ofthemselves on this great occasion, merely by proclaiming their politicalfaith, gave the so-called National Socialist Revolution a powerfulimpetus, absolutely genuine in the human sense, an impetus arisingfrom the most primitive instincts of greed. With the skill of a truegeneral, Goebbels hurled this army of incompetent opportunists and jobhuntersagainst the large and small key positions of German intellectuallife, and took them by storm. The radio, which in principle had alwaysbeen an instrument of the government in Germany, but for reasons ofobjectivity had scarcely been used for political struggle by formergovernments, was immediately taken in hand by Goebbels, and men ofdoubtful reputation even by National Socialist standards were appointedheads of the big stations; for these shady characters, owing to their lackof other accomplishments, were at least reliable.These new lords and masters, suddenly raised to the light fromobscurity and personal nonentity, looked important in their silverbraideduniforms and helped to spread a mood of sudden bliss. Theunexpected had suddenly come to pass, nothing had be-