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

HE IS BOTH TERRIBLE AND BANAL 59human nature is to blame. 'The whole mass of workers,' he said twentyyears later (1930) to his rebellious follower, Otto Strasser, 'wantsnothing else but bread and games; they have no understanding for anyideals.' Otto Strasser triumphantly publicized those words and Hitler didnot deny them, for all his companions knew what he thought and theyfelt the same. One of his friends and advisers, Gottfried Feder, whenchallenged, wrote in profound embarrassment that 'the core of thisutterance, supposing it really to have been made, must in a certain sensebe recognized as correct.' 'No false humanity!' Hitler added. Thus thinksthe intellectual thirsting for power who, again in Hitler's words, feelshimself to be the 'new master class' which 'on the basis of its better racehas the right to rule, and which ruthlessly maintains and secures thisdomination over the broad masses.' In order to understand the rise of theyouth, Adolf Hitler, from the vagabond art student to the master man,we must understand what inborn distaste divides the master man frommere physical labor. All his life Hitler remembered Reinhold Hanisch'sadvice; fifteen years later, as a mature man he called the Socialistmovement a 'movement of men who either possessed no clarity ofthought or in the course of time have grown alien to all intellectualwork. A gigantic organization of working beasts without intellectualleadership.' Ten more years later, when he was Chancellor, he assertedthat it was necessary only to give the 'primitive' mass enough to eat;they did not demand more.Consequently, all Hanisch's little anecdotes about young Adolf'shostility to work are credible and convincing. The conversations alsosound genuine. Did the worker know no idealism? Hanisch, whohimself had formerly been a worker, was hurt and objected that workershad proved their idealism by making many European revolutions. Hitleranswered contemptuously that some people didn't seem to know that theEuropean revolution of 1848, for example, had been made by students.Hanisch bitterly accused his friend of not knowing the real workers,since those he saw around him in the Home for Men were mostly idlersand drunkards; the respectable workers, however, preferred to live infurnished rooms, seeking family connections; they liked to tinker ontheir nights off,