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

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY 655ary and March, Hitler had appealed to the pride of his audience bypromising them the greatness of a hard life. The fight for work, he saidsome months later, was Germany's war, and here victory was in theoffing; Germany needed no other wars and victories.Through want to greatness, through hunger to power — this was theinterpretation put on the first economic measures of the NationalSocialists by several foreign observers; this was the only connectionthey could see between German economic policy and National Socialistpower politics. At the end of August, John F. Thelwall, commercialattache at the British Embassy in Berlin, reported to his governmentwith scarcely concealed admiration that in many spheres the supportersof the new German government were willing, for the sake of theirprinciples, to renounce economic and political advantage. The standardsof a democratic, individualistic, and capitalist state like Great Britain, hesaid, did not apply; and what surely seemed most startling of all to aforeigner was that, where party ideals and economic necessities cameinto conflict, it was always the ideals that won out.The persecution of the Jews seemed an outstanding example of Naziindifference to economic expediency, and it is probable that Thelwallhad this particularly in mind. In reality, the treatment of the Jewsexemplified the extreme concern of the Third Reich with economicmatters after the first revolutionary holiday. True, the Jews wereexpelled from some intellectual professions at the very start, and beyonda doubt German economic life and technology lost valuable workerswithout any pressing necessity, as for example in the field of chemicalresearch where Jews were especially prominent. But these Jews werenot driven out for reasons of political idealism; it was merely thatunemployed National Socialist intellectuals wanted jobs. In the main,the regime distinguished for a long time between useful and non-usefulJews. Jewish lawyers and civil servants were mercilessly removed, butJewish doctors received much better treatment; despite all the furyagainst the 'Jewish mind,' indispensable Jewish economic journalistslong retained their positions on the business press; Jewish technicianskept their places in industry for an astonishingly long time; after the firstboycott mood had cleared, Jewish businessmen were graciously as-