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

406 DER FUEHRERwill then make the National Socialist revolution. . . .' When the judgeasked him: 'Only in a constitutional way?' he replied sharply:'Absolutely!' The judge could not believe that he really thought he couldachieve power without recourse to violence, but Hitler swore that he didthink so. Then, the judge asked, once he had achieved power by 'strictlylegal' means, would he not use force against those who had beendefeated and weakened? On this point he would not express himself atfirst. Actually Hitler had made the most blood-curdling threats in hisspeeches; and if Seeckt had promised that the dictatorship of the armywould not be a bloody tyranny, Hitler had promised that his dictatorshipwould be bloody. 'Either our heads or the heads of the others will roll,'he had predicted years before. The judge reminded him of this, andHitler answered slowly and solemnly, savoring all the horror of hisfavorite fantasy, and calculating its effect on millions of men: 'When theNational Socialist Movement is victorious in its struggle, there will be aNational Socialist court of justice; November, 1918, will be expiated,and heads will roll too.' For the constitution, said Hitler to the judge,does not prescribe the goal, but only the road to it; it was the road of theWise Men of Zion: via the strictest democracy to the most unbridledtyranny. 'We are traveling the road prescribed in the constitution,' saidHitler at a meeting, 'toward the goals prescribed by us' — towardbeheadings, shootings, mutilations. One of Hitler's most gifted coworkers,the journalist Johann von Leers, described the scene in Leipziga year later with enthusiasm: '. . . when Hitler uttered the wonderfulwords that sprang from the hearts of all of us, the lofty promise ofexpiation: then heads will roll!' Scarcely any other of his utterances everso stirred up the mud that filled the souls of his men.Just the same, he had sworn that he would not mount the barricadeswith guns, that he would not march, not shoot, not storm, the enemypositions; to his contemporaries it seemed as though Hitler had swornthat he was not Hitler. Actually he had with his oath shown himself tobe what he was: a destroyer of democracy through democracy. To besure, he did not really hope to obtain a majority of the German peopleand hence of parliament. It was enough for him to lead the strongestminority, to perpetuate