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

598 DER FUEHRERTo a frightening degree the masses themselves had lost their sense ofloyalty; many showed a suicidal frenzy in breaking with their customaryideals, connections, parties, leaders. They looked on in silence as theirpolitical world fell into ruins, and tacitly acknowledged that a new,uncertain, but bold edifice was growing up. This was no sudden, generalflocking to National Socialism, but a cynical lack of resistance — 'theyhave won out, that makes them right.' A million people would not haveparticipated voluntarily in the National Socialist May Day celebration atthe Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin; but the workers in the large factories letthemselves be coerced with little opposition. The directors andmanagers had to march first, and this was called 'German Socialism.' Inevery city in Germany, the masses marched out to some meadow; inevery city Hitler's voice, speaking to the million at the TempelhoferFeld, thundered from loudspeakers.For the first time Hitler spoke directly to the mass of the workers; tothose whom he had only recently compared with a people at a lowcultural level. Now he said that for him there could be no greater pridethan 'to say at the end of my days: I have won the German worker forthe German Reich.' If he had wished to tell the truth, he would have hadto admit that what he wanted was power, and that for this reason hewould take away their trade unions; it would have been a forceful,impressive lie if he had promised them a Socialist Germany, as theEngels and their comrades were doing throughout the country. ButHitler avoided the full truth and the downright lie. In the Reichstag hehad already indicated that he expected German economic revivalthrough a great effort on the part of employers; his government, he haddeclared, was not planning 'an economic bureaucracy organized by thestate, but the strongest encouragement of private initiative withrecognition of private property.' Even to the workers at the TempelhoferFeld he declared that creative initiative must be liberated 'from thecatastrophic effects of majority decisions, not only in parliament, no,but in economic life as well.'Here Leipart might have cried out that Hitler was no Socialist! Hitler'sown followers, his anti-capitalist and shop cell leaders, his Bruckers andEngels, may have looked on very sourly when he