hitler

66ated into the newspaper columns he thought he knew theingredients with which synthetic public opinion could becompounded. He had to be careful to eliminate elementswhich would neutralize one another and he had to be evenmore careful to use elements whose presence could be easilyexplained to the “Masse Mensch.”At one of the “mass meetings” of the German LabourParty, attended by a dozen proletarians, Hitler was captivatedby the address of Gottfried Feder, a glib young man,half charlatan and half scholar, with a way of dressing upnonsense like common-sense. Herr Feder explained to hisaudience a subtle distinction between two sorts of capital.Every member of the audience understood him because theexplanation, offered with all the display of scientific demonstration,was so absurd that the most vacant looking proletariancould see it was true.Herr Feder‟s great discovery was the distinction betweentwo kinds of capital: one of them was the loan capital, whichpeople with money and no work on their hands farm outto others against consideration, called interest. The otherone was the industrial capital, which feeds the arteries of industry.This was a marvellous idea, Hitler thought. Loan capitalwas Jewish and industrial capital was Christian. Henceloan capital could be expropriated and distributed among theproletariat. Industrial capital, on the other hand, would notbe touched. Against this arrangement the Christian capitalistswould have no objections. They would like it becausea movement sponsoring such a program would draw