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

760 DER FUEHRERwhich, despite the small distance involved, would have cut the companyoff from the world for a few hours, something might have happened inthe rest of Germany. It is very likely that Hitler had given thisinterpretation to the plan; the excursion looked extremely like atemporary arrest. It has never become known whether the suspicion wasjustified; for all Hitler's dislike of exact facts, it is hardly credible thathe would have concealed such a picturesque and convincing detail,when he later attempted to describe the 'plot' in a public speech.Actually he did not go beyond vague, even though hair-raising,insinuations. But it is conceivable that the report of the plannedsteamship trip clinched the matter in his mind: he was in personaldanger; they wanted to capture Germany, perhaps even kill the greatfaith of our time.By one o'clock, Hitler was finally convinced, as he put it later, that'only ruthless and bloody blows might still succeed in throttling theextension of the rebellion.' At that moment, he said, he had no need 'toinvestigate if all or some of these conspirators, inciters, wreckers, andwell-poisoners of public opinion might suffer too hard a fate,' for 'at alltimes rebellious divisions have been brought back to order bydecimation.' Decimation meant, as Rudolf Hess explained in a speechmade about the same time, 'that every tenth man, without anyinvestigation, whether innocent or guilty, was struck by a bullet.'With this bloody decision in his heart, at two past midnight Hitlerflew from the Hangelar airdrome near Bonn to Munich in orderpersonally to direct the decimation. He had made up his mind that 'onlyone man could and had to confront the chief of staff. He had brokenfaith with me, and I alone had to call him to account for it.' But the greatsecret of Hitler's political method, which he had only occasionallyhinted at in words — the fact that the vaster the politician's field ofaction, the more he can expect one difficulty to be superseded and thussolved by another — was now to prove hideously true.For even before Hitler appeared on the scene, the opposing forces hadclashed. In Munich, Walter Buch and Minister of the Interior AdolfWagner had formed an action group, to which belonged ChristianWeber and Emil Maurice as well as Joseph Berchtold,