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

FIRST TRIUMPH 331ing for general world revolution. The privations of the consumers, theexploitation of the workers, made" the Soviet Union appear gray andpoor beside most capitalist countries. Some observers spoke of statecapitalism. Actually, in the year 1928, the armed intellectual definitelytook power in Russia. The chief aim became almost at once the creationof a great war machine.On the other side of the globe, prices on the New York StockExchange crashed in October, 1929. It was the beginning of that crisiswhich, within a few months, spread to all continents: the depression of1929-1933. The age characterized by Henry Ford when he said that'anything which is economically right is also morally right' was drawingto an end. In Russia and the United States two tremors of the same crisisoccurred. With satisfaction the Russians beheld one more of thecapitalist crises predicted by Marxism; with fear American capitalistssaw the approaching socialist doom; meanwhile both countries movedtoward a new social form.Between the two upheavals, Germany sought her way. She was thefirst European country to feel the full impact of the crisis. This crisiswas brought to Germany neither by the Peace of Versailles nor by thepolicy of rapprochement with her former war enemies. The economicburdens of the Versailles Peace did not weigh more heavily on Germanythan on the other countries, for their pressure practically was interceptedby the golden shower of foreign capital that up to 1928 incessantly filledthe vacuums of German economics. It would be too simple to say thatGerman reparations were paid with borrowed foreign capital; on thecontrary, the entire system of borrowing and high interest payments puta heavy additional burden on the German economy. But it was the timewhen in many countries the burdens and mortgages were not felt, atleast by the working masses in the cities, because economic progressmade up for them. In Germany improvement and cheapening ofproduction made the situation appear sounder than it was. From 1926wages, which had been sharply cut down by the stabilization of 1924,began to rise, not seldom pushed up by successful strikes, always acertain sign of at least seeming prosperity. But the most remarkable gainthe working masses made in the German Repub-