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

626 DER FUEHRERChamberlain had demanded and Goebbels had announced; it was thefirst trumpet blast of the 'great world mission.' National Socialism, saidHitler, had arisen from the same roots as the nationalism of the Polesand Czechs. If you listened attentively, a faint cry of 'Aryans of allnations, unite,' could be heard behind his words. Hitler might boasttoday that he was destroying democracy and tomorrow claim that hewas bringing the 'true' or 'ennobled' democracy, as Goebbels put it; itwas neither the first nor presumably the last time that despotism hascalled itself democracy. Since the dramas of Friedrich Schiller, thephilosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and the operas of Richard Wagner,there had been no such effective attempt at the spiritual conquest, or'Germanization,' of the world as in Hitler's peace speeches which werenow to follow one another over a period of years. It is easy to see thatthe herald of peace literally followed the counsel of the Wise Men ofZion, 'always to appear outwardly honorable and conciliatory'; 'to accustomthe peoples to take our IOU's for cash' and in this way lead them'some day to regard us as the benefactors and saviors of the human race.'But the effect cannot be explained by mere oratorical sleight of hand.Hitler's speeches expressed a feeling shared by the post-war generationof all nations — and perhaps by the speaker himself at the moment —that the relations between nations must have a meaning which war couldnot have. For the world — H. S. Chamberlain had seen and expressedthis — is a task capable of solution, and the great final solution is peace— for Chamberlain a 'German peace.' The last war, at its outbreakwelcomed as a gift from Heaven and cheered with astonishinguniformity by nearly all nations, had turned out to be the greatest of alldeceptions, a world horror that benefited the people of no country. Noless had been the disillusionment of the peace, which did not bring withit the world order for which men had hoped.Hitler with all his political powers was not the prophetic figure thatcould promise and make credible this world future which had hithertofailed to materialize, though he occasionally had something of the sortin mind — as he occasionally had everything in mind. Nevertheless inhis speech — which in places, to use Hans Grimm's words, 'was morethan himself' — there was the distant