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

94 DER FUEHRERThen follows two strange paragraphs. Point 13 runs: 'We demand thatall corporate enterprises [trusts] be taken over by the state.' And point17: 'We demand a passage of a law for confiscation withoutremuneration of land for communal purposes, abolition of land rent andthe prevention of all speculation in soil.'Points 11, 13, and 17 can be called the Socialist part of the program.They embrace two central ideas: the destruction of finance capital andthe protection of the creative industrial personality. They also embody aless pronounced tendency to attack large property-holdings as such. Theidea that the power of finance capital could be broken by the abolitionof capital interest originated with Gottfried Feder. In the beginning, thisplan made a tremendous impression on Hitler; not because he approvedit from the economic point of view — about such things he admittedlyunderstood nothing— but because Hitler regarded all finance capital asJewish capital. Point 13 is intended to protect small business. 'Takenover by the state' sounds strongly Socialist, but the main emphasis is noton this; the real meaning of the clause is that the corporations should beeliminated from private business and replaced by small individualenterprises. Needless to say, none of these points ever has beenachieved.The program then coined some fine-sounding slogans. It affirmed thatthe party upholds the standpoint of a positive Christianity (few peoplerealized that this meant a non-Biblical, non-ecclesiastical Christianity);and that the ethical principle of the movement was: 'The common goodbefore the individual good.' Finally: 'In order that all this may be carriedout, we demand the creation of a strong central power in the Reich,unconditional authority of the political central parliament over thewhole Reich and its general organization: chambers representing thecorporations and trades shall be constituted. . . .'The word 'parliament' is striking. Apparently the founders of the partywere not yet clear or not yet agreed concerning one of their chief aims:the replacement of democracy by dictatorship. The original founders,the Drexlers and Harrers, actually did not want a dictatorship. Theexample of Soviet Russia was too terrifying. They occasionally referredto their party as a 'party of the Left.'