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

HINDENBURG'S STICK 475German masses developed a new sense of their own worth, a new selfreliance.Papen's coup brought him no luck. From the first day of hisgovernment, his own Center Party, aside, perhaps, from a few churchdignitaries and Catholic nobles, was bitterly hostile to him. For theCatholic masses Papen was a renegade, the representative of a 'paperthinupper crust' which 'looks at the people with a cold, domineeringeye.' By his Prussian stroke he made enemies of both people andleadership in the South German states, and in Bavaria key men began tomake speeches to the effect that if Papen should dare to send them aReichs Commissioner, they would arrest him at the border. They,should be made to realize in Berlin, said Councillor Schaeffer, one ofthe leaders of the Bavarian People's Party, 'that at the time when theCathedral of Bamberg was being built in the south of Germany, thePrussians in the region of Berlin were still climbing around on trees.'The Bavarian ministers, led by Prime Minister Heinrich Held, aCatholic, fighting with his unreliable parliament much as Braun andSevering had fought with theirs, declared that they would cede not evento force. Hitler cried that the unity of the Reich was menaced, and thatnot Papen, but 'the National Socialist Movement has the great andresponsible task of becoming the preserver of Reich unity.' Goebbelssaid that Papen was shattering the Reich by his clumsiness; therefore:'Out with Papen and Gayl! Adolf Hitler to power!'With the breaking of the Social Democrats in Prussia and thesettlement of the reparations in Lausanne, Papen had already overreachedhimself — and this was only the beginning! His ultimate goalwas to put an end to the rule of sterile masses; the great day of theenlightened minority was dawning everywhere in the 'Abend-land'! Thecollaboration with Soviet Russia was definitely dropped; the policy ofsecretly fabricating guns and ammunition, of building forbiddenmilitary planes and training pilots with the help of the Red Army, wasabandoned; the so-called Berlin Treaty of Friendship (1926), modeledon the old Rapallo Treaty, was not renewed when it expired in 1931.But the democratic Herriot government in France, firmly clinging to theidea of collective security against the German threat and therefore eagerfor an understanding with