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

752 DER FUEHRERUnd kommt die Stunde der Vergeltung, Stehn wir zu jedemMassenmord bereit! 1Before the students of Marburg, von Papen declared threateningly thatthe question whether the German Reich would be a Christian state ornot was still to be fought out. The everlasting lecturing of the peoplemust stop, he said. The situation was serious, the laws were defective,the people were suffering from economic distress, they were tired ofhearing everything painted in glowing colors! Propaganda, he went on,does not create great men, nor is propaganda alone sufficient tomaintain the confidence of the people; the absolute rule of one partycould only be a transitional state of affairs.Von Papen's speech aroused Germany as no other speech had arousedher for a long time; it expressed what millions were feeling and whateven Hitler himself had to recognize at the bottom of his heart. True, onthe same day, in a speech before his followers in the city of Gera, heabused von Papen (although without mentioning his name) as a wormand ridiculous dwarf whom the Fuhrer 'would crush with the fist of theentire German nation' if he engaged in serious sabotage; but there wasnothing serious in these grumblers who believed that they could slow upthe gigantic renascence movement of the people with a few figures ofspeech; 'this state is in its first youth, and you may be sure that in athousand years it will still stand unbroken.' But it could not be deniedthat von Papen had spoken the truth and that, once more, he had proclaimedpublicly what Hitler himself knew was true. And von Papenhad received a congratulatory telegram from Hindenburg.It would have been more than a miracle if after von Papen's speech,Rohm and his friends had not begun preparing for the great settling ofaccounts or at least for a decision in the near future. When Hitler spokein Gera he still believed that the decision, which in fact had been made,would not look like a decision; he thought that his cheated followerswould accept the fraud and that the politically killed, just to please him,would pretend they were still alive. But1 Sharpen the long knives on the sidewalks, so that they can cut the clergymen's bodiesbetter. . . . When the hour of retribution strikes, we will be ready for mass murder.