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

CHANCELLOR AT LAST 517that the S.A. Home was the headquarters of a band of thieves whocommitted burglaries all over the region; on one occasion Adolf Hitler'sstorm troopers had arranged a hold-up with a store cashier. And inseveral other localities the police discovered that the S.A. barracks werepositive robbers' dens, in which stolen goods were stored. InRegensburg in Bavaria, Mairhofer, the National Socialist gauleiter, wassentenced to a month in prison for defrauding the unemployment reliefoffice; Hitler publicly thanked the convicted swindler 'for his selfsacrificingactivity in the party'; he was forced to depose him, butpromised to 'appoint him to another post in which he could be useful tothe movement.' In Dresden, S.A. man Hentsch was murdered in thewoods; a National Socialist deputy fled abroad; and it was whispered inthe party that other recent killings ascribed to the 'Marxists' could beexplained in the same way. The top S.A. leadership maintained, in asecret order of December 8, that the troop was full of Communist stoolpigeonswho aimed to provoke the S.A. to perpetrating blood-baths —in other words, whether provoked by Communists or not, blood-bathswere in preparation. The German Nationalists were convinced morestrongly than ever that this undisciplined, disintegrating troop was whatthey had always described as Bolshevism.Were these the noblest and best of the nation, the cream of selfsacrificeand will-power? Challenged, Hitler sometimes answered: 'Withus the criminals are better cared for than with the Communists'; it wasabsurd, he said, to expect force to be respectable; it was the mission ofNational Socialism to transform the dark passions of the masses intostrength for the nation; if National Socialism were destroyed, this forcewould not be destroyed with it, but would turn against the nation in theform of sub-human criminals and Communists, which were the samething.Meanwhile, Strasser had returned from Italy. He sent word to Hitlerthrough Mutschmann, gauleiter of Saxony, that he would enter into theReich government; that he was ready for a reconciliation, but only oncondition that he become general secretary of the party with virtuallyunlimited powers. On January 3, he resumed his conversations withSchleicher; on the fourth, he was received for the first time byHindenburg, who listened to him