656
PARTISAN REVIEW
and diplomatic aggressiveness. The second solution was ruled out be–
cause of the existing balance of strength, because of popular pas–
sions. Moreover, by concentrating its attack on the "social traitors,"
the Communist party was robbing the parties of the left of the small
chances of success they might have had. Neither the masses nor the
parties were willing to accept the sacrifices implied in the first solu–
tion. Adjustment to world economic conditions would probably have
required a devaluation of the mark, which was unpopular because of
the memories of the inflation, or failing that, a lowering of nominal
wages, which was resisted by the trade unions, and a credit policy
inspired by the theories of Keynes. Recovery under these condi–
tions
would have been slow and gradual. It would logically have
im–
plied a diplomatic armistice over a period of a few years. But na–
tionalistic feeling among the people had been exacerbated by eco–
nomic distress and by the propaganda against the Treaty of Ver–
sailles. Rightist circles were impatient to recover sovereignty with
regard to armaments. The coalition of the Hitlerites and the na–
tionalists, symbol of the
rapprochement
between the revolutionaries
and the traditional conservatives, was founded on the common will
to achieve certain objectives- liquidation of unemployment on a
national basis, rearmament, and revision of the Treaty of Ver–
sailles.
We shall not contend that the former ruling classes unanimously
desired this solution, and the share of responsibility of each group
remains a matter of controversy- i.e, how much individual respon–
sibility is to be attributed to the financiers and captains of industry
who contributed money to the National Socialist movement, and to
the Rhenish bankers and East Prussian landowners who brought
about the coalition of January 1933. All formulas ascribing a specific
attitude to any single one of the ruling classes have always been
semi-mythological
in
character. There was no lack of conservatives
who were uneasy about the brown-shirted demagogues. All that can
be said
is
that
in
the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the
prerequisite was the consent to this adventure given by a fraction of
the former ruling classes. Apprentice sorcerers, these men expected
the Fuehrer to subject the masses to discipline, to reintegrate the
millions of the unemployed into the army or to absorb them
in
the factories, to restore sovereignty and power to Germany; they,
