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

Chapter XVI'ADOLPHE LEGALITE'UP TO 1930 THE MASSIVE SUCCESS OF ADOLF HITLER couldbe understood only with a constant eye to an epoch hiding from itsdoom. After 1930 the epoch struggling with doom can no longer beunderstood except with a constant eye to Adolf Hitler. The world crisiswas driving toward the point where it awaited Hitler — or some otherdemon who was ready to trample beneath iron feet the generationawakening from its dream of money and abundance. Dictatorship hadestablished itself firmly at many points on the globe; the Bolshevist andFascist designs were completed; the souls were prepared. A meaninghad to be given to a world that had grown meaningless; if this could bedone in no other way, then by force. The poor people of the wholeworld were stirred to their very depth by a deeply symbolical newsreport from South America: the fire-boxes of locomotives were to beadapted for burning coffee instead of coal. Very well, then, have apleasant journey with your coffee that we can no longer pay for;farewell, all you other foreign pleasures and comforts! Keep them. Wecan no longer buy them, for you no longer buy our coal, but use coffeefor fuel; you don't even buy our locomotives any more! Said HjalmarSchacht: 'We must do like Frederick the Great in the eighteenth century— base ourselves firmly upon the home economy and take from ourhome soil what can in any way be taken; and for a generation we mustlive frugally, save and work.' And by so doing, the youthful extremistsadded, we shall utterly smash this declining world.