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

CONQUEST BY PEACE 625For the first time since he had been making speeches, Hitler seemedto express the sentiment of the whole German people without distinctionof parties; for the first time he found agreement without the slightestjarring note of opposition — if one overlooked the fact that one sixth ofthe Reichstag, the Communist fraction, was forcibly excluded.However, it was the party which up till then had come out for peacewith the greatest conviction, which now found it hardest to support thispeace speech. No Social Democratic Party could honorably have givenits support on any point to a government of concentration camps andbreach of the constitution, for any kind of support was bound tostrengthen the tyranny. But Frick, shortly before the session opened,dryly said to the parties that they had better think carefully beforevoting, for in this hour of the fatherland's need, the life of the individualwould be of no importance. This was intended to mean: anyone whovotes against the government will be beaten to death, and his comradesin the concentration camps with him. A part of the Social Democraticleaders had already fled abroad, and between the emigres and those whohad remained at home a bitter struggle, not free of personal irritation,was going on about the line to be taken. While the exiles, headed by theparty chairman Wels, claimed to represent the party leadership andwished to organize an unlimited underground struggle against theregime, those who had remained behind, led by Paul Loebe, formerpresident of the Reichstag, and Carl Severing, were for carrying on'within the framework of legal possibilities,' of course with great tacticalcaution. In line with this caution they decided after Hitler's speech tojoin in the Reichstag's declaration of approval; they comfortedthemselves with the thought that even if this were not exactly thebravest kind of resistance to the government, it at least served the causeof peace. The Reichstag expressed unanimous support of Hitler's peace.With his peace speech Hitler had immediately become the mostpowerful and most widely heard speaker in the world. He was now amolder and disseminator of world views, to whom the whole earthlistened, whether in agreement or hostility; he wielded an influence onpublic opinion such as history had seldom before seen.And so began the campaign of spiritual conquest that Houston