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

448 DER FUEHRERBut the German voters showed with determination that they wouldnot tolerate Hitler's coup. Hindenburg's campaign office had announcedthat he would receive 18,000,000 votes. Goebbels had retorted that onthe day after elections the T would have to be crossed off this figure.Hitler, more cautious and worried, admitted in a speech that regardlesshow the elections turned out, the fight would go on. As it happened,Hindenburg obtained 18,600,000 votes, Hitler only 11300,000; the2,500,000 of the upper class who supported the great-grandson ofAbraham Selig Duesterberg found themselves hopelessly lost on thebattlefield of democracy. The Communists garnered nearly five millionvotes for Thaelmann, two and a half times as many as seven yearsbefore.The victor's name was Hindenburg, but it was democracy that hadreally been victorious. Hindenburg's support consisted of the solidSocial Democratic block of eight to nine million voters; some sixmillion Catholic voters, who followed Bruning; and the greater part ofthe moderate liberal bourgeoisie. The figures clearly showed that only asmall fraction of the conservative, reactionary, military-mindedpopulation had followed the old magnetism of Hindenburg's name.Goebbels was beside himself; he dashed to the telephone and askedHitler in Munich whether the useless election battle should not beabandoned. It is possible, though not certain, that he asked whether theS.A. should not march and correct the election results by a coup d'etat.Hitler rapidly countered the danger of unauthorized eruptions by thedesperate announcement that he would continue the electoral struggle.This meant: I forbid violence; we remain legal.For when all the figures were computed, it turned out that Hindenburghad not achieved an absolute majority. A second election was requiredby law, and in the very night of his defeat, Hitler dictated to OttoDietrich, his press agent, a proclamation to show his disappointed andfrightened followers that they had really won a great victory. 'Fromseven men we have grown to almost eleven and a half million,' he said.In difficult circumstances he always found consolation in recollectingthe party's meager beginnings. Since 1930, he went on, they had gainedfive million votes. As Duesterberg's votes 'rightly' belonged to them,they really had