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taking over all trusts by the state, abolition of all unearned incomes,state share in the profits of all large industries, confiscation of landswithout compensation, relentless measures against makers of profits,the right of all citizens to equal rights, and a strong central governmentdominated by the parliament—all this was swept aside andforgotten. Instead he took over the policies and principles enunciatedand practiced by his various precursors—autarchy or theplanned economy, government-created purchasing power throughdebt from the republican government, and militarism and imperialismfrom the old empire. The dictatorship was all neatly set up forhim. Even the destruction of the power of the individual states waswell advanced. Under the old Germany the federal government hadto depend on the states for part of its revenues. Under republicanGermany the states became the mendicants of the central government.In the end the government of Prussia as an independent entityfree of the federal state was liquidated. Hitler, instead of moldingthe new German state in his own mold, permitted the powerfulminorities of that state to mold his government. And that Germanstate even presented him with the only instrument that can make anautarchy supported by government debt work—if only for a while—the dictatorship.On the question of the dictatorship Hitler was a completely practicalman. This was a point he had thought about. He proceeded todo all that was necessary to nail it down and perpetuate it in hisperson. But a dictatorship founded in a modern state that hastinkered with the processes of democracy, particularly a dictatorshipthat is achieved by demagogic means, must root itself in the toleranceand acquiescence, if not the outright approval, of the people. HenceHitler adopted a group of devices—the one-party system, theprinciple of the elite, the military party, the suppression of allopposition of party, press, book, or speech, and the intensified employmentof propaganda on the positive side to sell to Germans theaims of the Nazi party through radio, newspapers and movies,schools and colleges. These entailed persecution, the jail, the concentrationcamp, exile, violence in various forms, and the brutalitiesthat are common to all dictatorships. It is these performances offorce that have commanded the attention of the writers and com-147