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

FIRST TRIUMPH 339land. Germany was still burdened with the obligation imposed by theTreaties of Versailles and Locarno never to send troops into theliberated Rhineland or build fortifications; the Reichswehr was stilllimited to a hundred thousand men, without aviation or heavy guns. Butaside from the small Saar territory, German soil was free. France hadwithdrawn behind her own borders.But this political triumph of the Weimar Republic was immediatelyovershadowed by the mounting economic and financial crisis. In 1928America had exported over a billion dollars, in 1929, it was only$221,000,000. What Schacht and Hitler had prophesied began tohappen; the golden stream which had flown over Germany dried up.German communities, which had leaned heavily on foreign loans, fellinto difficulties; the Reich's Treasury itself did, and the pressure of thetoo hastily augmented salaries of the civil servants began to be felt.Wages had gone up, but so had unemployment. The critics of thegovernment, Schacht among them, asked that the costs of administration— that is, salaries — should be cut down; the employers and theiradvocates, again Schacht among them, wanted a cut in wages and in thecost of social insurances. They argued that the slowing down of foreigncapital import made the burdens of the Young Plan too heavy, andSchacht finally joined them in condemning his own work. In February,1930, he resigned is president of the Reichsbank.The opening attack of big business on the economic structure of theWeimar Republic gave Hitler his first great chance; it was a splitbetween two forces which hitherto had both been against him. To besure, he had finally found supporters among the industrialists, but themost important of them, big as they were, nevertheless were not typicalof German industry as a whole.One was Fritz Thyssen, son of a powerful industry-builder of theKaiser's day, a Catholic and convinced nationalist; during the Ruhr Warhe had faced a French military court. Thyssen was the prototype of theNational Socialist money-man, an adept at eight-figure bankruptcies. Hewas the chief shareholder in the most powerful German steel trust, theVereinigte Stahlwerke; from its Very beginning, the VereinigteStahlwerke had watered its stock. A shaky structure, its sharesconstandy dragged down prices in the