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

58 DER FUEHRERventured this risk, but it seems to have been the example of thevenerated Wagner which particularly strengthened the young AdolfHitler in his decision to look on economic society as his enemy, toregard the need of working as a disgrace, and to take his stronginclination for doing nothing as a proof of his higher calling. He hatedthe whole great sphere of human existence which is devoted to theregular transference of energy into product; and he hated the men whohad let themselves be caught and crushed in this process of production.All his life the workers were for him a picture of horror, a dismalgruesome mass, and his thoughts about the working rabble were not fardifferent from those of a Shakespearean aristocrat; everything which helater said from the speaker's platform to flatter the manual worker waspure lies. 'The workers are an indulgent mass, they know nothing buttheir belly, booze, and women,' he said to Hanisch; and those unwillingto accept Hanisch as a witness need but to glance through Hitler's laterpublic utterances, and they will find confirmation enough.Observe, for instance, how he portrays the workers, whom hesupposedly knew on the building; how at first he kept aloof from them,for 'my clothing was still more or less in order, my speech cultivated' —what an illusion! —'and my nature reserved,' and if it had been up tohim, he would 'not have concerned myself with my new environment.'With the horror and revulsion of the man regarding himself as a highertype, he here saw for the first time the 'human dragon,' the human massmonster of manual labor, which knows no ideals, which 'rejectedeverything' that young Adolf has learned to honor: ' ... the nation as theinvention of the capitalistic classes, the fatherland as an instrument ofthe bourgeoisie for the exploitation of the working class; the authorityof law as a means for oppressing the proletariat; the school as an institutionfor breeding slaves and also slave-holders; religion as a means ofstultifying the people and making them easier to exploit; morality as asymptom of stupid, sheeplike patience.' In Hitler's opinion the workerhad such thoughts because he was the embodiment of materialisticselfishness; and though in his public utterances he usually adds that thisis purely the result of seduction by Jewish Marxism, he privately ownsthat in his conviction the baseness of