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

Chapter XXVIOTHER PEOPLE'S MONEYIN THE SUMMER OF 1933, VERNON BARTLETT, THE Britishjournalist, took a trip through National Socialist Germany, and on hisreturn he published a book of impressions. 'I do not believe— and mostemphatically do not believe —' he wrote, 'that Germany wants war. Notyet! And it will not be her fault alone if she ever does.'Hitler — this was Bartlett's conviction — was far too concerned withthe internal, and especially economic, reconstruction of his country tothink of war. The Englishman had astonishing ideas regarding the shapeof this reconstruction: 'Hitler, like Gandhi, wants a return to thespinning wheel, not only because he is an economic nationalist, butbecause he believes in simplicity. The most important feature of theGerman Revolution is that it is, in essence, a reaction against excessivematerialism.'This was Bartlett's way of saying what many Germans, notablySchacht, had been preaching for years: that Germany must base herselfon the home soil, save, live frugally, and work twelve hours a day, andthis should continue for a generation, as Frederick the Great haddemanded in his time. Schacht continued his sermon under the ThirdReich: 'Economic self-abnegation and readiness to content ourselveswith reduced luxury expenditures' — this, he declared on July 31 in aradio speech addressed to the United States, was the essence of the newGermany; today many were working voluntarily for the community atreduced wages. Writers like Oswald Spengler held up frugality and hardlabor to the German people as the supreme blessing. In his campaignspeeches of Febru-