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

BURNING HEAVENS REFLECTED IN MUD PUDDLE 91stamps. I also succeeded in having our little invitations to meetingshectographed. When, in addition to all that, I pressed for largermeetings, Harrer couldn't follow me. He retired, and that gave me a freepath.Imagine that thundering voice, demanding three rubber stamps! Andthe speeches in behalf of hectographed invitations! Hitler was just thirtyyears old. To judge by all of his own accounts and those of others, hewas a human nothing; consistently, he began his historical career as apolitical nothing. All his life he has loved to describe the tininess ofthose beginnings. He himself has indirectly admitted that a sure instinctled him among the smallest fellows — because only there could he hopeto be greatest. But never has he uttered so much as a word to the effectthat he performed all this political work as a political employee of theReichs-wehr; that as a paid 'political soldier' he started the first massmeeting of his soldier-party.'We ourselves were horrified at our boldness. Would one of us be ableto speak in this hall? Would he get stage-fright and start to stammerafter the tenth sentence and be shouted and whistled down? That is whythis hall is holy to us and eternal in our memory, because we didsucceed that time. When we came in, the hall was full of opponents,Red trash and some so-called "neutrals," but actually all enemies. Thefirst speaker was Doctor Dingfelder. Then I had the honor of speakingto a big crowd for the first time. I hadn't been talking ten minutes whenthey began to yell interruptions at me from all sides. A small troop ofmy most faithful supporters intervened from time to time; here and therethere was a gleam of side-arms. After two hours we managed to assertourselves. I will never forget the time when we read our program for thefirst time and flung this challenge at the people: Now, if you dare, comeout against it! All that happened since then was not as hard as this firststep. . . .'This is his own later report of the first public meeting held by theparty. It took place on February 24, 1920, in the Hofbrauhaus inMunich. Hitler was not the chief speaker, but the homeopathicphysician, Johannes Dingfelder. Nor was Hitler the party leader. Theleader, after the retirement of the above-mentioned Harrer, was