Word: reichswehr
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...Power may not get the U.S. readers it deserves, but it will hold those it gets in a vise of armchair fascination. It is rich in characters and scenes that a novelist might envy and an actor yearn to play. And as the field-grey shadows of the Reichswehr's erstwhile leaders goose-step across the pages of Nemesis of Power, they may well be passing in review on the parade ground of posterity's judgment...
Among the first to strut by is the brilliant, bemonocled chief who led the army through the early post-World War I years. Steel blue of eye, trap-tight of lip, Hans von Seeckt was called "the Sphinx." The Sphinx's two rules for the Reichswehr as a political power: it must be 1) "above party," and 2) "a state within a state." In the early '20s, Seeckt kept the telephone pact with the Socialists, at the same time busied himself with building up the cadres of a new German army and a new armament industry-both...
...professional soldier, he fought in the Boxer war, in World War I (when Turkey was Germany's ally) became chief of staff of the Seventh Ottoman Army. Between wars, he was a member of the Steel Helmet, a right-wing but anti-Nazi party. He retired from the Reichswehr in 1930, went to China as Chiang Kai-shek's military adviser, became his good friend and stayed on to help him fight the Japanese even after Germany had formed the Axis...
...Among his titles: Marshal of Greater Germany; Infantry General of the Reichswehr; Min ister of Aviation; Director of State Theaters & Operas; Hunting Master of Germany; and Chief Forester of the Reich...
...more step was necessary: the newly minted politician must find a political party. Hitler found it in the German Workers' Party, a tiny group which the Bavarian Reichswehr officers had sent him to observe. He became member No. 7 of the little party which was later to become the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis). He found an impressionistic economic program in the scrambled economic theories of another member, Gottfried Feder. And he found something much more important - his voice. One night a visitor said some friendly words about Jews. Without thinking twice, Hit ler burst forth...