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

HITLER VERSUS NATIONAL SOCIALISM 647ating signs around their necks. Some of them were sent to concentrationcamps, as though they had been Social Democrats or Jews. Thosearrested included priests.The great event, the 'second revolution' for which Rohm and hisfollowers had been clamoring for months, seemed imminent. Churches,economics, political parties — nothing and nobody had been able toresist. The 'reaction' seemed beaten on the whole front. Again the goalappeared to be reached at last; eleven months after Hitler had missed itfirst, stopped by Hindenburg. These times were definitely gone;Hindenburg could no longer threaten him with the big stick.But he did. On June 29, the President summoned Hitler to Neudeck,and made serious representations to him regarding the initiateddestruction of the Protestant Church. As he had done on some previousoccasions, for example before the fall of Groener, he put his verbalreproaches in writing and published them. He spoke of 'anxiety for thefreedom of the Church.' If the attacks were continued, let aloneintensified, they 'cannot fail to cause grave damage to the nation and thefatherland, and national unity will inevitably suffer'; Goring'sdictatorship over the Church must cease. This was the first publicremonstrance Hitler had received from Hindenburg since he hadbecome Chancellor.Now would have been the moment for Hitler to stick desperately tohis policy and his plans — if he had had a policy and a plan. But he hadonly a tactical method. He had only tried to find out how far he could gowithout resistance. Now, here was resistance, and this resistance did notlie only in Hindenburg's limited insight or stubborn will. The old manwas fundamentally right. The revolution had reached the point where itcould become a danger to its leader himself.Therefore Hitler obeyed Hindenburg at once. Church questions weretaken out of Goring's hands and transferred to the more moderate Frick.Hossenfelder vanished completely from the scene. The GermanChristians gave up their insistence that only Aryans could be Christians;they also abandoned their plan to fuse the two main branches of GermanProtestantism, Calvinists and Lutherans, into a uniform GermanProtestantism. It was, however, con-