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

COUP D'ETAT BY INSTALLMENTS 599praised, as the embodiment of 'creative initiative,' what they themselveshad called a 'heap of dung.' But Hitler knew the masses and their state ofmind better than his critics. The masses wanted work, no state of thefuture; the crisis was a problem capable of solution; energy could solveit, and here was energy. Hitler's political gift did not express itself indrawing practical economic plans, which would have been hard for him,but in proclaiming that he would stand all concepts of social rank ontheir heads — by brute force if necessary. The old society, he said, hadlooked down on the manual worker; now that would cease; and in orderto teach rich people respect for manual labor, it was 'our unbreakabledetermination to put every single German, whoever he may be, whetherrich and well-born, or poor, into contact with manual labor once in hislife, to make him acquainted with it.' This was the meaning of MayFirst, the new festival, to be observed 'down the centuries': to bring theGermans back together, 'and if they demur, to force them together.'In the long run, only those can be coerced who really want to be, andthis was the secret of Hitler's whole policy of successful coercion.Hitler's task was to find work for masses who wanted work; desperatelydifficult as this had seemed at some moments, it would have been athousand times more difficult to force masses to work who did not wantto. If the people's determination to work were combined with an equaldetermination on the part of the government, the question of program,the method, was almost secondary. Actually, the government had as yetno National Socialist plan for shaping economic life; its economicpolicy was not directed by National Socialists; as under Schleicher, themost pressing task was to relieve the crisis, 'in opposition to the laws ofeconomic reason.' In Hitler's speech of May 1, he did not promise anykey project to revive the whole economic machine; but he did have aprivate plan intended to put some scores of thousands to work formeager pay: the construction of giant motor highways through thelength and breadth of Germany. The country actually was deficient inhighways, because it had comparatively few automobiles; it was Hitler'sdream that a great increase of automobile construction would bringGermany the same blessings it had showered on the