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06672_Field_TCUM T237.txt
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1996-04-10
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Hitler made a special horror of the Versailles Treaty
because it had deflated the German army. After 1870 the heel-
clicking members of the German army had become the new
symbol of tribal unity and power. In England and America the
same sense of numerical grandeur from sheer numbers was
associated with the mounting output of industry, and the
statistics of wealth and production: “tanks a million.” The
power of sheer numbers, in wealth or in crowds, to set up a
dynamic drive toward growth and aggrandizement is
mysterious. Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power illustrates the
profound tie between monetary inflation and crowd behavior.
He is baffled by our failure to study inflation as a crowd
phenomenon, since its effects on our modern world are
pervasive. The drive toward unlimited growth inherent in any
kind of crowd, heap, or horde would seem to link economic and
population inflation.