X
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.
So Lanny received a demonstration of what it meant to be a master of men. Perhaps that was what the Führer intended; for not until he had received the submission of his Reich Organization Leader Number 1 and had dismissed him did he turn again to his guest. "Well, Mr. Budd," he said, "you see what it takes to put people to work for a cause. Wouldn’t you like to come and help me?"
Said Lanny: "I am afraid I am without any competence for such a task". If there was a trace of dryness in his tone the Führer missed it, for he smiled amiably, and seemed to be of the opinion that he had done a very good afternoon’s work.
Long afterward Lanny learned from Kurt Meissner what the Führer thought about that meeting. He said that young Mr. Budd was a perfect type of the American privileged classes: good-looking, easy-going, and perfectly worthless. It would be a very simple task to cause that nation to split itself to pieces, and the National Socialist movement would take it in charge.