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

258 DER FUEHRERwhom she laughed at if she saw them at all — so poor, insignificant,and slimy was the impression they made. The disorganized, reducedNational Socialist band had lost the savior's and prophet's pride of theirearly days when they were a legend to themselves and felt the protectingwings of the Reichswehr over them. Now they were oppressed by theconsciousness of defeat, of having failed at an hour when the stars werefavorable as they never again would be.New pride had to be injected into this demoralized band behind theirbeer mugs in the Burgerbrau Keller. And if people call you fools — andif this state doesn't want to hear any more about you — if you don't getahead in your jobs — if you go bankrupt in your businesses and aren'ttaken seriously in society, it is because this post-war world doesn'tknow how to distinguish between high and low, between noble andcommon. Men are unequal, but you are the higher type, and that is whatthe world does not admit.It is no malicious legend that the leadership and nucleus of NationalSocialism in the years from 1925 to 1930 consisted for the most part offailures; of men who became National Socialist functionaries becausethey found nothing better; of the figures Lieutenant Bruckner described,who joined in 1923 because they hoped to become something andstayed on in desperation because they had not become anything; of menwhose professional career (according to their own literal statements inthe handbook of the German Reichstag) ran more or less as follows:'About two years each in agriculture, big banks, glass industry, andtextile trade,' or, 'clerk, buyer, traveling salesman, assistant gymnasticsteachers, manager, director of a home' — how many bankruptcies ordismissals are hidden among these shifting careers? Or, student,merchant, again student, again merchant, then so-called privatesecretary (in reality on relief), then owner of a tiny poultry farm — thisis the career of Heinrich Himmler, later chief of the secret police. Or,transport flier, then so-called student, then storm-troop leader, then foryears completely without occupation, frequent visitor at pawnshops, fora time inmate of a nerve sanitarium, later parachute manufacturer andrepresentative for aeroplane motors, deep in debt, for years snowedunder by complaints over unredeemed notes — this