The Oppermanns (McNally Editions)

by Lion Feuchtwanger

Certainly this arson has been managed clumsily and stupidly,” he said. “But everything they have done has been clumsy and stupid; nevertheless, so far, they haven’t made a single miscalculation. They have gambled on the stupidity of the masses with alarming accuracy. The Leader himself frankly stated that such gambles were the fundamental principle of his political actions: why shouldn’t they continue along these lines? With dreadful single-mindedness of purpose they continued the lies that General Headquarters had to drop at the end of the war. And the peasants and small tradespeople believed every lie they uttered. Why shouldn’t they have been taken in by those lies? The principle of those fellows was really appallingly simple: let your yes mean no and let your no mean yes. They don’t bother about unnecessary niceties. They are gigantic, shockingly coarsened, provincial Machiavellis. Their success is chiefly due to this primitive peasant craftiness. The fact is, the others inevitably persist in believing that no one could be taken in by such crudeness. And then, equally inevitably, everyone is taken in.”