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

HITLER VERSUS NATIONAL SOCIALISM 643The intellectuals who led the National Socialist 'Combat League ofthe Middle-Class Tradespeople' now wanted to put this socialism intoserious practice. Out of the existing economic organizations theywanted to create an apparatus which would give small capital the sameadvantages as big capital: lower operating costs, easier access to rawmaterials, wider information on the marketing situation, etc.; but wouldnot destroy the independence of small business. At the same time, themonopolies were to be investigated, and where they could not provetheir necessity for the 'common good,' they were gradually to bedissolved. In this brand of socialism, property would be retained andeven protected, but only in so far as it could be shown that it served the'common good.'These economic control organizations, strengthening small businessfor competition with big business and controlling the operation ofmonopolies, have been termed 'estates,' or in Italy, 'corporations': the'corporate state,' a favorite project of Catholic social politicians of the'Quadragesimo anno' school, seemed to many the ideal economic formfor the Third Reich.The man who pressed these projects was Otto Wagener. He had beena major in the German Army, then leader of a Free Corps, which afterthe German collapse had fought independently against the Red Army inthe Baltic; he now headed the economic section in the Brown House,which Hitler had wanted to dissolve at the time of Gregor Strasser's fall.It still existed to the great distress of Wilhelm Keppler, who, in Hitler'spresence, had given Papen and Baron von Schroeder his word thatNational Socialism would engage in no foolish economic experiments.Hitler personally had little understanding of the controversy. Whatattention he did give economic matters was directed toward great stateprojects such as motor highways; mass undertakings which would putmasses of men back to work overnight. He personally hardly wasted athought on the corporate state. His great goal for the future was thecreation of a new man.The idea that material conditions could mold the spirit of a generationwas profoundly alien to him; on the contrary, he saw in materialcircumstances the product of a spiritual condition, of a 'weltanschauung'as he called it. This urge to create a new weltan-