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

COUP D'ETAT BY INSTALLMENTS 593gave an answer characteristic of Hitler's reptile-like leadership: 'Wehave no direct commission, but the Leader expects us to handleeverything in the sense of the new state idea.' Consequently, thenegotiations could lead to no practical result, but they were historicallysignificant in that they confronted the new type of intellectual fightingto win the workers with the old class-conscious labor leaders. Bruckersaid: 'We do not recognize that trade-union leaders must come from theunions and from the same trade as the workers. The chairman of a tradeunion can, for example, be a doctor. Wage negotiations with employerswill not exist in future. Wage contracts: no! Wage schedules: yes! Infuture the state will regulate wages and prices.' Whereupon Leipart,struggling to make himself understood: 'Do you know how thingslooked fifty years ago? Do you know that the workers slaved forfourteen hours a day; that they had no vacation and hardly a Sundayoff? Do you know that their wages were bad; that they lodged inmiserable huts; and were totally excluded from cultural benefits? Thenwe came and raised the workers up to their present position.' Grass-manspoke up: 'The working-class leader must come of the same social classas the worker if he wants to be understood. We have the sameupbringing and feel the same pressure. Even if the workers beef at theirleader off and on, they know that he is their man. . . .' The NationalSocialist Fikenscher: 'In our shop cells all active persons have equalrights and equal obligations: the editor, the engineer, and the doctor,side by side with the worker. . . .' Eggert, a trade-unionist: 'In our tradeunions we speak our own language which permits us to think and feelwith the worker. If you try to approach the worker from outside, you'llnever be able to get inside him. The stock of skilled workers will alwaysstand behind us!'This was a desperate self-deception. The skilled worker stood wherehis interests called him; for decades the trade-union leaders had beentraining him to do just that; but now his interests instructed him betterthan his leaders. Whether the employers would really be a 'heap of dung'may not yet have been decided; but it had been decided that theNational Socialist shop cell could drive any resister from his place ofwork. Meanwhile, Hitler received re-