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

600 DER FUEHRERUnited States ten years before. Behind this was the idea which NationalSocialism now cast with force upon the modern world: that themysterious primal force of political economy, demand, or need could becreated and guided from above, here discouraged and there drivenforward. But the prerequisite for this was absolute authority, whichseemed obtainable only from absolute power. And, therefore, on themorning after the great labor festival, the trucks filled with stormtroopers were again rolling through the streets of Germany. This timethey stopped in front of the trade-union headquarters; the Brown bandsstormed in, arrested the leading functionaries, in Berlin as well as in thestates. Leipart and Grassman were beaten, forced to run long distancesand do knee-bends; the same occurred all over the Reich with suchoppressive uniformity that for the first time the German public learnedthe full meaning of 'co-ordination.' In paralyzed wonder, the overpoweredworkers looked on at their own ruin. There was no fight.Robert Ley addressed a pathetic proclamation to the workers: 'Worker,'he assured them, 'your institutions are sacred and unassailable to usNational Socialists. I myself am a poor son of peasants and have knownpoverty. Worker, I swear to you that we shall not only preserveeverything you have; we shall extend the protective laws and the rightsof the worker, in order that he may enter into the new National Socialiststate as an equal and respected member of the nation.'From these National Socialist acts of violence, a sense of power, wellnighunaccountable to outsiders, spread to the German workers.Injustice, repression, and destruction were the order of the day; but thevictims acquiesced and were contented. They approved the power, evenwhen it made mistakes and did injustice; for it was through lack ofpower that conditions had grown so bad. In the spring of 1933, the idealof the age, a functioning social machine, was reflected in the barbaricjoy of the German masses at the violence and energy with which thestate and economic life had been set running again. With a stroke of hispen, Ley put an end to the historic state of affairs in which trade unions,with different political views and different aims, had existed side byside; all were now fused into a single body, and the armed intellectual