This principle gradually became recognized inside the Movement as the natural one, at least as far as control of the Party was concerned.
The best way to make Committees innocuous, which did nothing or merely brewed up unpractical recom¬ mendations, was to set them to do some real work. It made one laugh to see how the members would silently fade away, and suddenly were nowhere to be found ! It reminded me of our great institution of the same kind, the Reichstag. How quickly that would all blow away if they were put to some real work, instead of just talk, especially if each member was made personally responsible for any work which he did.
In December, 1920, we acquired the Völkischer Beobachter. This paper, which, as its name suggests, was meant generally for popular consumption, was to become the organ of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. At first it appeared twice weekly, but at the beginning of 1923 it became a daily paper, and at the end of August it started appearing in its later wellknown large form.
The Völkischer Beobachter was a so-called ‘^popular” organ with all the advantages and, still more, the faults and weaknesses attaching to popular institutions. Excellent though its contents were, its management was impossible as a business proposition. The underlying idea was that it ought to be maintained by popular subscription ; it was not realized that it would have to make its way in competition with the rest, and that it would be indecent to expect the subscription of good patriots to cover mistakes and negligence on the business side of an enterprise.
I took great pains at the time to alter these conditions the danger of which I soon recognized. In 1914, in the War, I made the acquaintance of Max Amann, who is now the general business Director of the Party. In the summer of 1921 I applied to my old comrade in the regiment, whom I met by chance one day, and asked him to become business manager for