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

772 DER FUEHRERswallowed, and staring ahead of him said: 'He is still our Fuhrer!'Thus the prophets' words had at last come true. The Fuhrer had'trampled on the bodies' of his best friends; along with his enemies hemurdered these friends in the most criminal and the most frivolousfashion; and for that very reason he was admired by the people —including those of his victims who escaped death. Once again greatnesshad come cheaply as soon as he could bring himself to be great; and themass character of the horrors silenced the question of good and evil,justice and injustice, in men's souls, leaving them only with the feelingthat a hideous necessity had worked itself out. By his gruesome deed ofJune 30, 1934, Hitler, in the eyes of the German people, definitelyassumed the dimensions of an historical, superhuman being, whoserights and reasons could no longer be questioned. 'There won't beanother revolution in Germany for the next thousand years,' heproclaimed.The belief in the necessity of evil, which slumbers in the lowestdepths of the human soul, had been awakened by Hitler as by no otherman in the history of Europe; the fact that he could do what he had doneseemed like a confirmation of Hess's fanatical words: that throughHitler higher powers were fulfilling man's destiny. Hitler now began todo frightful things easily, and the more frightful they were, the moreeasily he did them. He discovered the secret law of history which hasmade all bloody figures like himself bigger than life-size when the timeswere favorable: the law by which the most horrible deeds become lessheavy to bear, the more monstrous and numerous they are, because inthe end each horror wipes out its predecessor in the minds of the people.Hitler had known this for a long time; his own career, the deeds thathad raised him to leadership, had proved it to him many years before.The piles of corpses on June 30, 1934, must have given him the finalproof that since 1919 his path of murder and violence had been the rightpath to greatness.A few days after June 30, at midnight, Hitler, exhausted and disheveled,appeared at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin and shouted: 'Imust work until tomorrow at noon, and I must not be disturbed!' Helocked himself up in his room. A quarter of an hour later, his voice washeard again: he wanted a plane. At almost the