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

574 DER FUEHRERcome something; wonders were still possible. That the man whom hisown party comrade Rosenberg had kicked through the doorway when hecame begging for ten marks had suddenly become Minister of theInterior and omnipotent master in Bavaria seemed like the confirmationof some Messianic prophecy. For years millions had thought thateverything must be changed; for thousands the change had now come topass.Under Goebbels's direction, the parvenus now staged a great victorycelebration; the outward occasion was the convening of the newlyelected Reichstag. As the scene, Goebbels had chosen the grave ofFrederick the Great, that Prussian King whom the National Socialistsrather unaccountably proclaimed as the first German socialist. TheGarnisonkirche (garrison church) in Potsdam near Berlin, where thePrussian Kings lie buried, is looked upon by a limited number of peoplein Germany as a national shrine, somewhat comparable to IndependenceHall in Philadelphia, or, even more, to the Invalides in Paris. For thePrussian officers' corps, above all, this place is endowed with asentimental aura; to the German public the city of Weimar, with itsmemories of the great German poets, is far dearer; it is with good reasonthat the German Republic was founded in Weimar. And now, as acalculated gesture, Weimar was to be replaced by Potsdam.On March 21, the members of the Reichstag met in the Garnisonkirche,but the Left parties were not invited. Prior to the act of state, themembers of the government and the Reichstag had attended services atvarious churches. Hitler and Goebbels were conspicuous by theirabsence. 'In the morning I go to the Luisenstadt Cemetery with theLeader,' writes Goebbels. 'We do not attend the services, but stand at thegraves of our fallen comrades.'Then a glittering procession poured into the Garnisonkirche.Hindenburg read a short speech, in which he maintained that the peoplehad 'with a clear majority shown its support of this governmentappointed by my confidence' — meaning that everything is in the bestdemocratic order, but this applies only to the present government, mindyou, not to a purely National Socialist regime. 'Thereby,' Hindenburgcontinued, 'the people have given the government a constitutional basisfor its work.' Hitler, in one of his