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

244 DER FUEHRERhope had arisen, part of that strange millennial belief in the coming of agreat and bright future which had seized almost the whole world afterthe dark four years of butchery. A national parliament gave Germany ademocratic constitution, called 'the freest constitution in the world,'which it assuredly was on paper. There was the famous promise of apeace that would 'make the world safe for democracy' and realize thehighest goal of the European nations, the right of self-determination.And then this German democracy seeped away: not immediately inexternals and institutions, but in the hearts of men. The German masseshad expected a better world from democracy, better at least than thewar; the development was rather for the worse. The Allied blockadeagainst starving Germany went on, war conditions went on; finally,there was a peace which did not really end the war, but intentionally leftimportant questions unsettled. Of this Treaty of Versailles three thingscan be said with certainty: it burdened Germany — and only Germany— with a war guilt, whose onesidedness has not been confirmed byhistorical research; it subjected Germany (badly bled, but materiallyalmost intact) to a morally defensible, but economically senseless andunfulfillable, indemnity; and though granting the right of selfdeterminationto many peoples, refused it to Germany. But the chief sinof this peace was its lack of democracy. The democratic framers of thistreaty had not understood that democracy, national in its beginnings,was moving toward world scope. They might have learned fromChamberlain, from the Wise Men of Zion, from Wagner and Nietzsche,in short, from the Antichrist, that the time had come to organize theworld as a whole because, as Chamberlain had put it twenty yearsbefore, 'the planet had become small and round.' They should have triedto create the beginnings of a world democracy which would givenations the feeling that they were masters and not playthings of theirdestiny; that they could mold their own policies instead of being merevictims of their politicians. Instead of this, they dissected the world,Europe and Asia at least, into innumerable, ostensibly democraticnational sectors, actually infected with the germs of national hatred andviolence. With the current means and concepts of their time, the men ofVersailles could have