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

COUP D'ETAT BY INSTALLMENTS 591ployers the power to discharge an employee 'on suspicion of hostility tothe state' — in other words, to fire Social Democrats and Communists;the real decision rested with the National Socialist 'shop cell.' Theworkers began to join the shop cells by droves.Under the Weimar Republic the German factories and mines werepolitical battlefields, and the political life of the masses was reflectedmore strongly in them than in the unpopular apparatus of the publicelections. In the revolution of 1918-19, factory councils had arisen,which later became permanent and official under the name of 'workshopcouncils.' Intended by their Socialist founders as a democraticinstrument for the expropriation of the 'capitalists,' for the removal orsubjection of owners or managers, in practice these councils oftenbecame an instrument for leading the masses; shrewd and up-to-dateemployers were often able to use them as an instrument of control overtheir workers. Others, to be sure, complained that they were no longer'master in their own house'; on the other hand, the trade unionssometimes found that the councils obstructed their own influence on theworkers. In the big industries, the elections to these councils oftenrepresented important political decisions. On April 7, such a decisionoccurred in the mines of the Ruhr. The National Socialists hadproclaimed that no Social Democrat elected to the industrial councilwould be permitted to hold office; the workers understood, and theNational Socialist shop cells, with 30.8 per cent of the votes cast, for thefirst time overshadowed the Social Democratic unions.The mass flight of the workers threw the trade unions into a crisis.The workers still belonged to them formally, but many stopped payingtheir dues, creating financial difficulties for the unions. Theembarrassed leaders insisted that they really had nothing to do withpolitics; as early as March 21, Leipart and his colleagues published astatement that Social Democracy and the trade unions had different andseparate functions; that the trade unions would not reject state control;and, apparently in the belief that capitalism had conquered withNational Socialism, the statement added: 'The trade unions declarethemselves ready to form a working organization with the employers' —the employers whom Engel, two weeks later, was to call a heap of dung.