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

730 DER FUEHRERpeace, had granted him the status of infantry general with the right towear the army uniform.'Thus they handed each other public property or plundered greatprivate properties. This armed Bohemia managed to make itself bothagreeable and frightful to organized wealth and justified Machiavelli'ssaying that soldiers are stronger than money, for soldiers can alwaysfind money, but money does not always find soldiers. The mass of rankand-fileNational Socialists, however, who had no share in this coolplunder, boasted of their revolutionary purity and called Goring and hisclique 'reactionaries,' more out of envy than political conviction. Thekernel of the 'old fighters' among the three million S.A. men still faredas they had in 1923, when Wilhelm Bruckner described their desperategamble: they had staked their poverty and their lives on the greatpolitical undertaking in order to find jobs as paid soldiers or officers inthe future German army; and they had been waiting too long accordingto their lights. When Hitler wrangled with England and France over thesize of the future army, he was, in the eyes of the 'old fighters,' fightingfor their most important personal interests. For the time being, despiteall the Fuhrer's warning speeches, they still stuck to the belief thatwithin a short time they would be that army — from the plain S.A. manup to the Obergruppenfuhrer who had the rank of a commandinggeneral and who, according to an order issued by Blomberg, wastactfully to be saluted like a general by the Reichswehr soldiers.On June 2, when Hitler gathered the S.A. leaders in Reichenhall andonce more forbade them in sharp terms to continue the revolution, healso hammered into them the idea that 'only the army of the Reich is theweapon-bearer of the nation.' Several of the brown chieftains comfortedthemselves with the thought that their Fuhrer spoke thus only becausehe was afraid of Hindenburg and Blomberg; but Rohm certainly knewthat Hitler had never spoken or thought otherwise. His promise that theS.A. would 'form a Guard and be the unshakable bearers of ourideological values' meant little; the term 'ideological values' had to betranslated for these veteran mercenaries before they could understand it.With their 'ideological values,' Hitler said, they would 'penetrate the en-