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

514 DER FUEHRERbe limited, in order to obtain 'healthy prices'; by the purchase of onehundred and ten thousand tons of potato flakes, by a law ordering themixture of potato spirits with gasoline, and by similar measures, 'theassault of the record potato harvest may have been repelled at least inpart.'The coal miners complained because Germany was not freezing, andnearly the whole farming population felt embittered and hopelessbecause there was too much to eat. Schleicher does not seem to havefathomed the full seriousness of this discontent. It came as a greatsurprise to him when a spark from abroad caused the whole rebelliousmixture to explode.The decisions of Ottawa were beginning to inflame Europe. The newEmpire tariffs forced Danish butter out of England; desperate Danishproducers now threw their butter on the German market at dumpingprices, and in December, 1932, German butter prices quickly fell to anew and unexpected low. In the last years German agriculture hadstepped up its butter production; and so Germany now suffered from asurplus of butter in addition to grain and potatoes. This caused theprofoundest hardship to German agriculture, for it largely affected smalland medium farms. The Schleicher government was unwilling to barDanish butter, for fear of driving the Danes to counter-measures againstGerman industrial exports. Instead, it thought up a remarkable way ofrelieving the distress of the butter producers. It persuaded margarineproducers to mix fifteen thousand tons of the finest Danish butter withtheir product each year. The butter producers were not at all pleasedwith this secret improvement of margarine, for they feared thatmargarine would become so good that consumers would cease to buyany butter at all. They loudly demanded that Schleicher should barDanish butter from Germany as Papen had planned to do; and whenSchleicher refused, the butter producers gave the danger signal to thewhole of agriculture by declaring that Schleicher was hostile to farminginterests. Toward the end of the year the League for the Defense ofPeasant Interests (Interessenverband der Bauern) in Wurttembergdeclared in 'boundless indignation' that agriculture, the most importantoccupational group, was being sacrificed to a 'more than senselessexport fanaticism'; the league