Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

The visitors were greatly startled by the Führer’s response, delivered with the force of a blow: "You have not been conducting yourself as a friend, and therefore you have not been summoned as a friend!" The speaker rose to his feet and, pointing an accusing finger at the new arrival, went on: "Learn once for all, I have had enough of your insubordination! You continue at your peril!" It set the big man back on his heels, and his large mouth dropped open.

Would the Führer of the Nazis have attacked his subordinate in that abrupt and violent way if he had not already got steamed up? Impossible to say; but the astonishment and dismay of Herr Strasser were apparent. He opened his mouth as if to ask what was the matter, but then he closed it again, for he got no chance. Hitler was launched upon a tirade; he rushed at the man—not to strike him, but to thrust the accusing finger within a couple of inches of the big nose and shriek:

"Your intrigues are known! Your insolence is resented! Your public utterances are incitements to treason, and if you do not mend your ways you will be driven out. Go and join your brother’s Schwarze Front, and the other disguised Communists and scoundrels! I—I, Adolf Hitler, am the Führer of the N.S.D.A.P., and it is for me to determine policies. I will not have opposition, I will not have argument, I will have obedience. We are in the midst of a war, and I demand loyalty, I demand discipline. "Zucht! Zucht! Zucht!" It is one of those many German words which require a clearing of the throat, and the unfortunate Strasser flinched as if from a rain of small particles of moisture.

"Adolf, who has been telling you stories about me?" He forced the sentence in while the Führer caught his breath.

"I make it my business to know what is going on in my movement. Do you imagine that you can go about expressing contempt for my policies without word of it coming to me?"

"Somebody has been lying, Adolf. I have said only what I have said to you: that now is the time for action, and that our foes desire nothing but delay, so that they can weaken us by their intrigues".

"They weaken us because of arrogance and self-will in my own party officials; because these presumptuous ones dare to set themselves up as authorities and thinkers. I think for the National Socialists, I—and I have ordered you to hold your tongue— Maul halten— and obey my orders, follow my policies and not your own stupid notions. Your brother has turned himself into a criminal and an outlaw because of that same arrogance"

"Leave Otto out of it, Adolf. You know that I have broken with him. I do not see him and have no dealings with him."

"Ich geb' ' n Dreck d’rum!" cried Adolf; he spoke that kind of German. Talking to a Bavarian, he added: "Das ist mir Sau-wurscht!"

He rushed on: "You stay in the party and carry on Otto’s agitation in favor of discarded policies. I am the captain of this ship, and it is not for the crew to tell me what to do, but to do what I tell them. Once more, I demand unity in the face of our foes. Understand me, I command it! I speak as your Führer!"

Lanny thought he had never seen a man so beside himself with excitement. Adolf Hitler’s face had become purple, he danced about as he talked, and every word was emphasized as with a hammer blow of his finger. Lanny thought the two men would surely fight; but no, presently he saw that the other was going to take it. Perhaps he had seen the same thing happen before, and had learned to deal with it. He stopped arguing, stopped trying to protest; he simply stood there and let his Führer rave, let the storm blow itself out— if it ever would blow itself out. Would the ocean ever be the same after such a hurricane?

Lanny had learned much about the internal affairs of the Nazi party from the conversation of Kurt and Heinrich. Also, during the summer he had been getting the German papers, and these had been full of a furious party conflict over the question of the old program, which Hitler had been paring down until now there was nothing left of it. Here in North Germany many of the Nazis took the "Socialist" part of their label seriously; they insisted upon talking about the communizing of department stores, the confiscation of landed estates, the ending of interest slavery, common wealth before private wealth, and so on. It had caused a regular civil war in the party earlier in the year. The two Strasser brothers, Gregor and Otto, had fought for the old program and had been beaten.

Gregor had submitted, but Otto had quit the party and organized a revolutionary group of his own, which the Hitlerites called the "Black Front" and which they were fighting with bludgeons and revolvers, just as they fought the Communists. Later on, immediately before the elections, there had been another attempt at internal revolution; the rebels had seized the offices of the Berlin party paper, Der Angriff, holding it by force of arms and publishing the paper for three days. A tremendous scandal, and one which the enemies of the movement had not failed to exploit.

So here was Gregor Strasser, Reich Organization Leader Number 1. A lieutenant in the World War, he had become an apothecary, but had given up his business in order to oppose the Reds and then to help Adi prepare for the Beerhall Putsch. He was perhaps the most competent organizer the party had, and had come to Berlin and built the Sturmabteilung by his efforts. Hitler, distrusting him as too far to the left, had formed a new personal guard, the Schutz-staffel, or S.S. So there were two rival armies inside the Nazi party of all Germany; which was going to prevail?

Lanny wondered, had Hitler really lost his temper or was this merely a policy? Was this the way Germans enforced obedience— the drill-sergeant technique? Apparently it was working, for the big man’s bull voice dropped low; he stood meekly and took his licking like a schoolboy ordered to let down his pants. Lanny wondered also: why did the Führer permit a foreigner to witness such a demonstration? Did he think it would impress an American? Did he love power so much that it pleased him to exhibit it in the presence of strangers? Or did he feel so secure in his mastery that he didn’t care what anybody thought of him? This last appeared to be in character with his procedure of putting his whole defiant program into a book and selling it to anybody in the world who had twelve marks.

Lanny listened again to the whole story of Mein Kampf. He learned that Adolf Hitler meant to outwit the world, but in his own good time and in his own way. He meant to suppress his land program to please the Junkers and his industrial program to please the steel kings, and so get their money and use it to buy arms for his S.A. and his S.S. He meant to promise everything to everybody and so get their votes—everybody except the abscheulichen Bolschewisten and the verfluchten Juden. He meant to get power and take office, and nobody was going to block him from his goal. If any Dummkopf tried it he would crush him like a louse, and he told him so.

When Strasser ventured to point out that Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Führer’s favorite propagandist, had said that he was developing a "legality complex," the Führer replied that he would deal with "Juppchen" at his own convenience; he was dealing now with Gregor Strasser, and telling him that he was not to utter another word of criticism of his Führer’s policies, but to devote his energies to putting down the Reds and teaching discipline to his organization, which lacked it so shamefully. Adolf Hitler would do his own dickering with the politicians, playing them one against another, worming his way closer and closer to the chancellorship which was his goal—and in due course he would show them all, and his own friends would be ashamed of their blindness and presumption in having doubted their inspired leader.