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

INTERLUDE 215German revolutionary chauvinism broke out among the Germanintellectuals. They hated not only the French, but their princes as well,because most of them favored the French emperor, who had addedenormously to their power. The well-informed even despised such afigure as the king of Prussia, who, when for the first time he saw hispeople's army that was embarking on the fight for freedom, could thinkof nothing to say but 'Dirty men!' Karl, Baron vom Stein, the mindbehind the Prussian reforms, hated by his king and suspected ofJacobinism, went so far as to say that he knew but one fatherland, andthat was Germany. Another patriot, Ernst Moritz Arndt, the poet,proclaimed that Germany must extend 'as far as the German tongue isheard.' In 1813, Prussia rose up in a people's war against the dominationof the French. It was a German revolution, but a European tragedy. Forthis people's war — the most intellectual of all wars as the Frenchhistorian, Ernest Renan, later said — was at the same time a war ofEuropean reaction (French kings and aristocrats included) against theFrench Revolution which Napoleon had not entirely perverted. When inMarch, 1814, the cannon thundered in Berlin to celebrate the finalvictory, a man of the people — so Carl Varnhagen von Ense, the writer,tells the story — cried out sadly: 'There you have it, Paris has beentaken, the nobles have won!'The French grenadiers with their bearskin caps vanished, but theemperor's portrait remained hanging on the wall of many a Germanliving-room. The corpse of Saint Helena — the hieroglyph in the ocean,as a German poet put it — became a myth even mightier than the livingman had been. In the first half of the nineteenth century, he became forFrance a symbol of national pride and consciousness of power. ForGermany, politically torn, divided, and humiliated by their ownmiserable rulers, Napoleon became the embodiment of human Titanism,a demigod who had set out to build the Tower of Babel, a hero, a modelof intellect and will. Once, when Ludwig van Beethoven wanted toboast, he said: 'If I knew as much about war as I do about music, Iwould defeat him!'Thus oppressed Germany admired her oppressor and almost forgavethe tyrant his tyranny because of its immensity. Germans becameaccustomed to the concept of injustice ennobled by genius,