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of national existence, and even Hitler could not harness his peoplewith it indefinitely save by invoking the patriotic motif and engulfinghis nation in war. In such a situation war becomes the onlyescape even for a dictatorial government.The policy has had one important consequence. Inevitably it putsthe government in complete control of the fiscal department ofindustry. The government decides what industries are needed andeither provides the funds or arranges for them by compulsion. Itbecomes the universal banker, investment broker, biggest bondholder,and, in many cases, shareholder. Business remains in privatehands, but investment becomes socialized. This is what has happenedin Germany.When Hitler came to power he was confronted with his promisesto establish the corporative system. Thyssen says that Hitler entrustedto him this task. But when Thyssen began, he discovered, tohis dismay, that the Nazi leaders were interested in other matters.The old socialist wing of the party was preoccupied with economicmatters and the nationalist element, led by Hugenberg, was equallybent upon bringing the economic system under management. Butmen like Hitler and Goering and Goebbels and Roehm and their ilkwere bent chiefly on power and the multitude of arrangements underway to that end. Thyssen saw that the Nazi leaders had no plans—above all no economic plan. Everything was improvisation. The lastvisitor with the most attractive and imaginative and sensationaldrug to be shot into the arm of society was apt to command theFührer's assent. Otto Strasser, from the Left, and Rauschning confirmthis statement. Thyssen says that Hitler was not interested ineconomics, that he agreed with everybody. Hitler himself confirmsthe criticism about his attitude toward economic matters. In MeinKampf he had said that the intelligentsia looked upon the Germancollapse as of economic origin. But economics, he insisted, was onlyof second or third importance. "The political, ethical-moral as wellas factors of blood and race are of the first importance." However,a Supreme Economic Council was formed to be the center of planning.It met once and never met again, and Thyssen?s dream of atightly organized system based on the old guild idea under the commandof Germany's greatest industrialist came to an