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

ARYANS OF ALL NATIONS, UNITE 115from all acts of violence. For months he pleaded with the government tostretch a point and suspend the third month too. But the newgovernment had no such intention; it even considered a punishmentwhich would have been far greater than three months' imprisonment.Technically Hitler was a foreigner; his conviction for a felony gave thegovernment the right to deport him. For ten years this threat ofdeportation hung over Hitler's head, and it is doubtful whether he everfeared anything more in all his life. Count Lerchenfeld, the newBavarian premier, a distinguished gray-haired gendeman, whosemanners were far too good for an age of murderers, intimated inparliament that such inciters to passion and disunity did not necessarilyhave to be tolerated in the country (April, 1922). Hitler replied in anopen letter to the count:... I admit that by the letter of our present Jewish law, I really am a'foreigner.' I might argue, Your Lordship, that my birthplace is only twohundred and fifty yards from the Bavarian border, that it was Bavarianterritory a hundred years ago, and, as I hope, will be returned to theGerman Reich in less time than that. . . . Blood is thicker than water,Your Lordship, and by blood I am not only proud to be a German, buteven prouder that fortune permitted me to stake my blood for myGermanism. At that time, it would have been child's play for me, YourLordship, to win citizenship. I neglected to do so, because I ventured toretain my unshakable hope in a greater Germany, and also myconviction that a day would come when a German's right to work withhis people would not be judged by papers and certificates, Your Lordship,but exclusively by his blood and by his worth. . . .If Hitler attacks a count in writing, he will never fail to call him 'YourLordship' in every third line. But in this letter he was fighting more thansome accidental count. He was fighting the whole new course of affairsthat began late in 1921, with the induction of the Wirth-Rathenaugovernment. This government had adopted a new attitude toward thepeace treaty:' the only way was to try to live with it. Wirth and Rathenauwanted to stop protesting against the treaty and to fulfill it, believingthat the very attempt to carry out its provisions would demonstrate theirimpossibility.