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

HITLER VERSUS NATIONAL SOCIALISM 645oughly organized into clubs and great centralized organizations. It hasbeen estimated that toward the end of 1932 no less than twelve millionyoung Germans out of a population of sixty-six millions were organizedinto youth associations, for the most part sport groups; theseassociations, in turn, were bound together in a 'Reich Committee ofGerman Youth Associations,' a bureau with innumerable desks and cardindexes. The co-ordination of the youth began, true to form, with theoccupation of this office by some uniformed young men (April 5, 1933).'A year ago,' even the Volkis-cher Beobachter lamented ironically, 'theReich leadership had only two rooms, and not very large ones, in theBrown House in Munich. Today it is a whole four-story building, andeven now it is too small for the apparatus, which is growing andgrowing . . .' Cheered by the growth of this apparatus, Hitler now beganto make speeches in which he promised that National Socialism wouldendure for centuries, because it was more than a political movement. Ina speech of March, 1934, he described what had really happened in thegreat revolution of the preceding spring. Not the conquest of power, notthe creation of new political conditions, not the economic measures hadbeen the decisive factor — no, 'decisive, in the last analysis, is that inthis year we created the basis for a German rebirth, which will perhapsbe realized in a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years.'It is such certainty of a blessed future that can give a man the strengthfor shameless deeds in the present. The National Socialists overran their'friends' to whom, five months earlier, they had bound themselves byoaths and words of honor; on June 21, the S.A., pistol in hand, stormedthe meeting places and offices of the German National Combat Ringthroughout Germany; there were shooting and casualties; Goring hadthe leaders arrested by his police chiefs. Hugenberg sent a courier toHindenburg in distant Neudeck for help, but Hindenburg did nothing tosave any of the old parties, Left or Right.Next day, Frick, the Minister of the Interior, suppressed the SocialDemocratic Party. From their exile in Czechoslovakia the party'scommittee built an underground organization, which at times attainedconsiderable size, but lacked experience and suffered grave