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

THE BLOOD PURGE 77.3same hour as a few days before in Bonn, he left for Munich. At daybreak,his car took him from the Oberwiesenfeld airport to the BrownHouse in Brienner Street. Impetuously he leaped up the steps to the Hallof Honor, hung with banners and flags, including the 'bloody banner' ofNovember 9, 1923. Silently he stared at the banners for a while, then randown the steps, entered his car, and hurried back to the airport.PostscriptThis book has related from its beginnings a story which has not yetcome to an end.In it, I have shown — or tried to show — the roots of Hitlerism andthe growth of that sinister philosophy of force which seemed, at onetime, almost destined to overshadow the earth.There is a double question this book has tried to answer: What sort ofpeople were they who were capable of committing the crimes heredescribed; and (even more urgently) what sort of people were capable ofsubmitting to them?The question cannot be answered with a definition or a formula. Greatevents can be understood only when they have been experienced orsuffered, at least in spirit; and to know something deeply is toexperience it. This book has attempted to let the reader share theexperiences of a generation; its story is the reader's own.The ending I have given it — the days when the blood purge gaveHitler absolute mastery of his party and of Germany — is less arbitrarythan may, perhaps, appear. For by that time, the pattern was set and theweapon forged. Having enslaved his own people, Hitler was ready touse the techniques he had learned — which I have here analyzed — toenslave the continent. The shots in the Stadelheim Prison were the firstshots of the Second World War.Hitler was able to enslave his own people because he seemed to