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

178 DER FUEHRERKahr, von Lossow, and the commander of the Bavarian police troops,one von Seisser, formed a triumvirate with practically unlimited powerin Bavaria. The three may have been uncertain for some time whetherthey meant to reach an understanding with the government in Berlin oroverthrow it. But they were pretty well agreed as to one aim: todiscipline Hitler and render him harmless. Not to destroy him entirely,but to reduce him to the level of a tool. They employed the illusory,halfway methods which have destroyed so many moderate rulers whothought they could make pacts with extremists and use them as tools.'We always tried,' said Lossow later with childish pride, 'to bring HerrHitler back to reality, to the realm of facts, for we had recognized thehealthy core of the Hitlerite movement. We saw this core in themovement's power of recruiting the workers to a national point of view.'Then something decisive happened: the Communist pretextdisappeared. First the Communists shrank from an open uprising; theydid so on orders given by the man who at that time already practicallywielded the strongest influence on the international Communistmachine: the secretary general of the Russian Communist Party, JosefDugashwili Stalin. By a technical mistake there was an isolatedoutbreak in Hamburg (October 26); for three days the Red workers fireddesperately from roofs and windows and for this folly of theirinadequate leadership died in vain. Then Berlin liquidated what was left.Northern German Reichswehr marched into Saxony and Thuringia(October 29), deposed the Socialist and Communist, but neverthelessquite legal, governments by force and thus put an end to the 'Bolshevistmenace.' With it disappeared Hitler's strongest propaganda weapon; andit is an irony of history that Josef Stalin had a share in this blow.This was, for all intents and purposes, the end of the march on Berlinas the triumvirate of dictators in Bavaria soon found out. Seisser, in thefirst days of November, went to Berlin, talked with General von Seeckt,came back and reported that Seeckt wouldn't march. The big financialbackers lost interest in the counter-revolution. These financial backers,anyway, never had been behind Hitler, but behind men like Kahr. Evena meeting between the