Chapter VII: The Revolution
WITH THE YEAR 1915 enemy propaganda began in our country, after 1916
it became more and more intensive, till finally, at the beginning of the year
1918, it swelled to a positive flood. Now the results of this seduction could
be seen at every step. The army gradually learned to think as the enemy wanted
it to.
And the German counter-action was a complete failure.
In the person of the man whose intellect and will made
him its leader, the army had the intention and determination to take up the
struggle in this field, too, but it lacked the instrument which would have been
necessary. And from the psychological point of view, it was wrong to have this
enlightenment work carried on by the troops themselves. If it was to be
effective, it had to come from home. Only then was there any assurance of
success among the men who, after all, had been performing immortal deeds of
heroism and privation for nearly four years for this homeland.
But what came out of the home country?
Was this failure stupidity or crime?
In midsummer of 1918, after the evacuation of the
southern bank of the Marne, the German press above all conducted itself with
such miserable awkwardness, nay, criminal stupidity, that my wrath mounted by
the day, and the question arose within me: Is there really no one who can put
an end to this spiritual squandering of the army's heroism?
What happened in France in 1914 when we swept into the
country in an unprecedented storm of victory? What did Italy do in the days
after her Isonzo front had collapsed? And what again did France do in the
spring of 1918 when the attack of the German divisions seemed to lift her
positions off their hinges and the far-reaching arm of the heavy long-range
batteries began to knock at the doors of Paris?
How they whipped the fever heat of national passion into
the faces of the hastily retreating regiments in those countries ! What
propaganda and ingenious demagogy were used to hammer the faith in final
victory back into the hearts of the broken fronts!
Meanwhile, what happened in our country?
Nothing, or worse than nothing.
Rage and indignation often rose up in me when I looked at
the latest newspapers, and came face to face with the psychological mass murder
that was being committed.
More than once I was tormented by the thought that if
Providence had put me in the place of the incapable or criminal incompetents or
scoundrels in our propaganda service, our battle with Destiny would have taken
a different turn.
In these months I felt for the first time the whole
malice of Destiny which kept me at the front in a position where every negro
might accidentally shoot me to bits, while elsewhere I would have been able to
perform quite different services for the fatherland !
For even then I was rash enough to believe that I would
have succeeded in this.
But I was a nameless soldier, one among eight
million!
And so it was better to hold my tongue and do my duty in the
trenches as best I could.
In the summer of 1915, the first enemy leaflets fell into
our hands.
Aside from a few changes in the form of presentation,
their Content was almost always the same, to wit: that the suffering was
growing greater and greater in Germany; that the War was going to last forever
while the hope of winning it was gradually vanishing; that the people at home
were, therefore, longing for peace, but that 'militarism' and the 'Kaiser' did
not allow it; that the whole world-to whom this was very well known- was,
therefore, not waging a war on the German people, but exclusively against the
sole guilty party, the Kaiser; that, therefore, the War would not be over
before this enemy of peaceful humanity should be eliminated; that when the War
was ended, the libertarian and democratic nations would take the German people
into the league of eternal world peace, which would be assured from the hour
when ' Prussian militarism ' was destroyed.
The better to illustrate these claims, 'letters from home'
were often reprinted whose contents seemed to confirm these assertions.
On
the whole, we only laughed in those days at all these efforts. The leaflets
were read, then sent back to the higher staffs, and for the most part forgotten
until the wind again sent a load of them sailing down into the trenches; for,
as a rule, the leaflets were brought over by airplanes.
In this type of propaganda there was one point which soon
inevitably attracted attention: in every sector of the front where Bavarians
were stationed, Prussia was attacked with extraordinary consistency, with the
assurance that not only was Prussia on the one hand the really guilty and
responsible party for the whole war, but that on the other hand there was not
the slightest hostility against Bavaria in particular; however, there was no
helping Bavaria as long as she served Prussian militarism and helped to pull
its chestnuts out of the fire.
Actually this kind of propaganda began to achieve certain
effects in 1915. The feeling against Prussia grew quite visibly among the
troops-yet not a single step was taken against it from above. This was more
than a mere sin of omission, and sooner or later we were bound to suffer most
catastrophically for it; and not just the 'Prussians,' but the whole German
people, to which Bavaria herself is not the last to belong.
In this direction enemy propaganda began to achieve
unquestionable successes from 1916 on.
Likewise the complaining letters direct from home had long
been having their effect. It was no longer necessary for the enemy to transmit
them to the frontline soldiers by means of leaflets, etc. And against this,
aside from a few psychologically idiotic 'admonitions' on the part of the
'government,' nothing was done. Just as before, the front was flooded with this
poison dished up by thoughtless women at home, who, of course, did not suspect
that this was the way to raise the enemy's confidence in victory to the highest
pitch, thus consequently to prolong and sharpen the sufferings of their men at
the fighting front. In the time that followed, the senseless letters of German
women cost hundreds of thousands of men their lives.
Thus, as early as 1916, there appeared various phenomena
that would better have been absents The men at the front complained and
'beefed'; they began to be dissatisfied in many ways and sometimes were even
righteously indignant. While they starved and suffered, while their people at
home lived in misery, there was abundance and high-living in other circles.
Yes, even at the fighting front all was not in order in this respect.
Even then a slight crisis was emerging-but these were
still
'internal' affairs. The same man, who at first had cursed and
grumbled, silently did his duty a few minutes later as though
this was a
matter of course. The same company, which at first was discontented, clung to
the piece of trench it had to defend as though Germany's fate depended on these
few hundred yards of mudholes. It was still the front of the old, glorious army
of heroes!
I was to learn the difference between it and the homeland
in a
glaring contrast.
At the end of September, 1916, my division moved into the
Battle of the Somme. For us it was the first of the tremendous battles of
materiel which now followed, and the impression was hard to describe-it was
more like hell than war.
Under a whirlwind of drumfire that lasted for weeks, the
German front held fast, sometimes forced back a little, then again pushing
forward, but never wavering.
On October 7, 1916, I was wounded.
I was brought safely to the rear, and from there was to
return to Germany with a transport.
Two years had now passed since I had seen the homeland
under such conditions an almost endless time. I could scarcely imagine how
Germans looked who were not in uniform. As I lay in the field hospital at
Hermies, I almost collapsed for fright when suddenly the voice of a German
woman serving as a nurse addressed a man lying beside me.
For the first time in two years to hear such a
sound!
The closer our train which was to bring us home approached the
border, the more inwardly restless each of us became. All the towns passed by,
through which we had ridden two years previous as young soldiers: Brussels,
Louvain, Liege, and at last we thought we recognized the first German house by
its high gable and beautiful shutters.
The fatherland!
In October, 1914, we had burned with stormy enthusiasm as
we crossed the border; now silence and emotion reigned. Each of us was happy
that Fate again permitted him to see what he had had to defend so hard with his
life, and each man was wellnigh ashamed to let another look him in the
eye.
It was almost on the anniversary of the day when I left for the
front that I reached the hospital at Beelitz near Berlin.
What a change! From the mud of the Battle of the Somme
into the white beds of this miraculous building! In the beginning we hardly
dared to lie in them properly. Only gradually could we reaccustom ourselves to
this new world.
Unfortunately, this world was new in another respect as
well.
The spirit of the army at the front seemed no longer to be a guest
here.l Here for the first time I heard a thing that was still unknown at the
front; men bragging about their own cowardice! For the cursing and 'beefing'
you could hear at the front were never an incitement to shirk duty or a
glorification of the coward. No! The coward still passed as a coward and as
nothing else; and al he contempt which struck him was still general, just like
the admiration that was given to the real hero. But here in the hospital it was
partly almost the opposite: the most unscrupulous agitators did the talking and
attempted with all the means of their contemptible eloquence to make the
conceptions of the decent soldiers ridiculous and hold up the spineless coward
as an example. A few wretched scoundrels in particular set the tone. One
boasted that he himself had pulled his hand through a barbed-wire entanglement
in order to be sent to the hospital; in spite of this absurd wound he seemed to
have been here for an endless time, and for that matter he had only gotten into
the transport to Germany by a swindle. This poisonous fellow went so far in his
insolent effrontery as to represent his own cowardice as an emanation 2 Of
higher bravery than the hero's death of an honest soldier. Many listened in
silence, others went away, but a few assented.
Disgust mounted to my throat, but the agitator was calmly
tolerated in the institution. What could be done? The management couldn't help
knowing, and actually did know, exactly who and what he was. But nothing was
done.
When I could again walk properly, I obtained permission to go to
Berlin.
Clearly there was dire misery everywhere. The big city was suffering
from hunger. Discontent was great. In various soldiers' homes the tone was like
that in the hospital. It gave you the impression that these scoundrels were
intentionally frequenting such places in order to spread their views.
But much, much worse were conditions in Munich itself !
When I was discharged from the hospital as cured and
transferred to the replacement battalion, I thought I could no longer recognize
the city. Anger, discontent, cursing, wherever you went! In the replacement
battalion itself the mood was beneath all criticism. Here a contributing factor
was the immeasurably clumsy way in which the field soldiers were treated by old
training officers who hadn't spent a single hour in the field and for this
reason alone were only partially able to create a decent relationship with the
old soldiers. For it had to be admitted that the latter possessed certain
qualities which could be explained by their service at the front, but which
remained totally incomprehensible to the leaders of these replacement
detachments while the officer who had come from the front was at least able to
explain them. The latter, of course, was respected by the men quite differently
than the rear commander. But aside from this, the general mood was miserable:
to be a slacker passed almost as a sign of higher wisdom, while loyal
steadfastness was considered a symptom of inner weakness and narrow-mindedness.
The offices were filled with Jews. Nearly every clerk was a Jew and nearly
every Jew was a clerk. I was amazed at this plethora of warriors of the chosen
people and could not help but compare them with their rare representatives at
the front.
As regards economic life, things were even worse Here the
Jewish people had become really 'indispensable.' The spider was slowly
beginning to suck the blood out of the people's pores. Through the war
corporations, they had found an instrument with which, little by little, to
finish off the national free economy
The necessity of an unlimited centralization was
emphasized
Thus, in the year 191S17 nearly the whole of production
was under the control of Jewish finance.
But against whom was the hatred of the people
directed?
At this time I saw with horror a catastrophe approaching
which, unless averted in time, would inevitably lead to collapse.
While the Jew robbed the whole nation and pressed it
beneath his domination, an agitation was carried on against the 'Prussians.' At
home, as at the front, nothing was done against this poisonous propaganda. No
one seemed to suspect that the collapse of Prussia would not by a long shot
bring with it a resurgence of Bavaria; no, that on the contrary any fall of the
one would inevitably carry the other along with it into the abyss.
I felt very badly about this behavior. In it I could only
see the craftiest trick of the Jew, calculated to distract the general
attention from himself and to others. While the Bavarian and the Prussian
fought, he stole the existence of both of them from under their nose; while the
Bavarians were cursing the Prussians, the Jew organized the revolution and
smashed Prussia and Bavaria at once.
I could not bear this accursed quarrel among German
peoples, and was glad to return to the front, for which I reported at once
after my arrival in Munich.
At the beginning of March, 1917, I was back with my
regiment.
Toward the end of I911, the low point of the army's
dejection seemed to have passed. The whole army took fresh hope and fresh
courage after the Russian collapse. The conviction that the War would end with
the victory of Germany, after all, began to seize the troops more and more.
Again singing could be heard and the Calamity Lanes became rarer. Again people
believed in the future of the fatherland.
Especially the Italian collapse of autumn, 1917, had had
the most wonderful effect; in this victory we saw a proof of the possibility of
breaking through the front, even aside from the Russian theater of war. A
glorious faith flowed again into the hearts of the millions, enabling them to
await spring, 1918, with relief and confidence. The foe was visibly depressed.
In this winter he remained quieter than usual. This was the lull before the
storm.
But, while those at the front were undertaking the last preparations
for the final conclusion of the eternal struggle, while endless transports of
men and materiel were rolling toward the West Front, and the troops were being
trained for the great attack- the biggest piece of chicanery in the whole war
broke out in Germany.
Germany must not be victorious; in the last hour, with
victory already threatening to be with the German banners, a means was chosen
which seemed suited to stifle the German spring attack in the germ with one
blow, to make victory impossible:
The munitions strike was organized
If it succeeded, the German front was bound to collapse,
and the Vorwarts' desire that this time victory should not be with the German
banners would inevitably be fulfilled. Owing to the lack of munitions, the
front would inevitably be pierced in a few weeks; thus the offensive was
thwarted, the Entente saved international capital was made master of Germany,
and the inner aim of the Marxist swindle of nations achieved.
To smash the national economy and establish the rule of
international capital a goal which actually was achieved, thanks to the
stupidity and credulity of the one side and the bottomless cowardice of the
other.
To be sure, the munitions strike did not have all the hoped-for
success with regard to starving the front of arms; it collapsed too soon for
the lack of munitions as such-as the plan had been- to doom the army to
destruction.
But how much more terrible was the moral damage that had
been done!
In the first place: What was the army fighting for if the
homeland itself no longer wanted victory? For whom the immense sacrifices and
privations? The soldier is expected to fight for victory and the homeland goes
on strike against it!
And in the second place: What was the effect on the
enemy?
In the winter of 1917 to 1918, dark clouds appeared for the first
time in the firmament of the Allied world. For nearly four years they had been
assailing the German warrior and had been unable to encompass his downfall; and
all this while the German had only his shield arm free for defense, while his
sword was obliged to strike, now in the East, now in the South. But now at last
the giant's back was free. Streams of blood had flown before he administered
final defeat to one of his foes. Now in the West his shield was going to be
joined by his sword; up till then the enemy had been unable to break his
defense, and now he himself was facing attack.
The enemy feared him and trembled for their
victory.
In London and Paris one deliberation followed another, but at the
front sleepy silence prevailed. Suddenly their high mightinesses lost their
effrontery. Even enemy propaganda was having a hard time of it; it was no
longer so easy to prove the hopelessness of German victory.
But this also applied to the Allied troops at the fronts.
A ghastly light began to dawn slowly even on them. Their inner attitude toward
the German soldier had changed. Until then he may have seemed to them a fool
destined to defeat; but now it was the destroyer of the Russian ally that stood
before them. The limitation of the German offensives to the East, though born
of necessity, now seemed to them brilliant tactics. For three years these
Germans had stormed the Russian front, at first it seemed without the slightest
success. The Allies almost laughed over this aimless undertaking; for in the
end the Russian giant with his overwhelming number of men was sure to remain
the victor while Germany would inevitably collapse from loss of blood. Reality
seemed to confirm this hope.
Since the September days of 1914, when for the first time
the endless hordes of Russian prisoners from the Battle of Tannenberg began
moving into Germany over the roads and railways, this stream was almost without
end-but for every defeated and destroyed army a new one arose. Inexhaustibly
the gigantic Empire gave the Tsar more and more new soldiers and the War its
new victims. How long could Germany keep up this race? Would not the day
inevitably come when the Germans would win their last victory and still the
Russian armies would not be marching to their last battle? And then what? In
all human probability the victory of Russia could be postponed, but it was
bound to come.
Now all these hopes were at an end: the ally who had laid
the greatest blood sacrifices on the altar of common interests was at the end
of his strength, and lay prone at the feet of the inexorable assailant. Fear
and horror crept into the hearts of the soldiers who had hitherto believed so
blindly. They feared the coming spring. For if up until then they had not
succeeded in defeating the German when he was able to place only part of his
forces on the Western Front, how could they count on victory now that the
entire power of this incredible heroic state seemed to be concentrating for an
attack on the West?
The shadows of the South Tyrolean Mountains lay oppressive
on the fantasy; as far as the mists of Flanders, the defeated armies of Cadorna
conjured up gloomy faces, and faith in victory ceded to fear of coming
defeat.
Then-when out of the cool nights the Allied soldiers already seemed
to hear the dull rumble of the advancing storm units of the German army, and
with eyes fixed in fear and trepidation awaited the approaching judgment,
suddenly a flaming red light arose in Germany, casting its glow into the last
shell-hole of the enemy front: at the very moment when the German divisions
were receiving their last instructions for the great attack, the general strike
broke out in Germany.
At first the world was speechless. But then enemy
propaganda hurled itself with a sigh of relief on this help that came in the
eleventh hour. At one stroke the means was found to restore the sinking
confidence of the Allied soldiers, once again to represent the probability of
victory as certain,l and transform dread anxiety in the face of coming events
into determined confidence. Now the regiments awaiting the German attack could
be sent into the greatest battle of all time with the conviction that, not the
boldness of the German assault would decide the end of this war but the
perseverance of the defense. Let the Germans achieve as many victories as they
pleased; at home the revolution was before the door, and not the victorious
army..
English, French, and American newspapers began to implant this faith
in the hearts of their readers while an infinitely shrewd propaganda raised the
spirits of the troops at the front.
'Germany facing revolution! Victory of the Allies
inevitable! This was the best medicine to help the wavering poilu and Tommy
back on their feet. Now rifles and machine guns could again be made to fire,
and a headlong flight in panic fear was replaced by hopeful resistance.
This was the result of the munitions strike. It strengthened the
enemy peoples' belief in victory and relieved the paralyzing despair of the
Allied front-in the time that followed, thousands of German soldiers had to pay
for this with their blood. The instigators of this vilest of all scoundrelly
tricks were the aspirants to the highest state positions of revolutionary
Germany.
On the German side, it is true, the visible reaction to this crime
could at first apparently be handled; on the enemy side, however, the
consequences did not fail to appear. The resistance had lost the aimlessness of
an army giving up all as lost, and took on the bitterness of a struggle for
victory.
For now, in all human probability, victory was inevitable if the
Western Front could stand up under a German attack for only a few months. The
parliaments of the Entente, however, recognized the possibilities for the
future and approved unprecedented expenditures for continuing the propaganda to
disrupt Germany.
I had the good fortune to fight in the first two
offensives and in the last.
These became the most tremendous impressions of my life;
tremendous because now for the last time, as in 1914, the fight lost the
character of defense and assumed that of attack. A sigh of relief passed
through the trenches and the dugouts of the German army when at length, after
more than three years' endurance in the enemy hell, the day of retribution
came. Once again the victorious battalions cheered and hung the last wreaths of
immortal laurel on their banners rent by the storm of victory. Once again the
songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching
columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful
children.
In midsummer of 1918, oppressive sultriness lay over the
front. At home there was fighting. For what? In the different detachments of
the field army all sorts of things were being said: that the war was now
hopeless and only fools could believe in victory That not the people but only
capital and the monarchy had an interest in holding out any longer-all this
came from the homeland and was discussed even at the front.
At first the front reacted very little. What did we care
about universal suffrage? Had we fought four years for that? It was vile
banditry to steal the war aim of the dead heroes from their very graves. The
young regiments had not gone to their death in Flanders crying: 'Long dive
universal suffrage and the secret ballot,' but crying: 'Deutschland uber Alles
in der Welt.' A small yet not entirely insignificant, difference. But most of
those who cried out for suffrage hadn't ever been in the place where they now
wanted to fight for it. The front was unknown to the whole political party
rabble. Only a small fraction of the Parliamentary ian gentlemen could be seen
where all decent Germans with sound limbs left were sojourning at that
time.
And so the old personnel at the front was not very receptive to this
new war aims of Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann, Barth, Liebnitz, etc. They couldn't
for the life of them see why suddenly the slackers should have the right to
arrogate to themselves control of the state over the heads of the army.
My
personal attitude was established from the very start. I hated the whole gang
of miserable party scoundrels and betrayers of the people in the extreme. It
had long been clear to me that this whole gang was not really concerned with
the welfare of the nation, but with filling empty pockets. For this they were
ready to sacrifice the whole nation, and if necessary to let Germany be
destroyed; and in my eyes this made them ripe for hanging. To take
consideration of their wishes was to sacrifice the interests of the working
people for the benefit of a few pickpockets; these wishes could only be
fulfilled by giving up Germany.
And the great majority of the embattled army still
thought the same. Only the reinforcements coming from home rapidly grew worse
and worse, so that their arrival meant, not a reinforcement but a weakening of
our fighting strength. Especially the young reinforcements were mostly
worthless. It was often hard to believe that these were sons of the same nation
which had once sent its youth out to the battle for Ypres.
In August and September, the symptoms of disorganization
increased more and more rapidly, although the effect of the enemy attack was
not to be compared with the terror of our former defensive battles. The past
Battle of Flanders and the Battle of the Somme had been awesome by
comparison.
At the end of September, my division arrived for the third
time at the positions which as young volunteer regiments we had once
stormed.
What a memory!
In October and November of I914, we had there received our
baptism of fire. Fatherland love in our heart and songs on our lips, our young
regiments had gone into the battle as to a dance The most precious blood there
sacrificed itself joyfully, in the faith that it was preserving the
independence and freedom of the fatherland.
In July, I917, we set foot for the second time on the
ground that was sacred to all of us. For in it the best comrades slumbered
still almost children, who had run to their death with gleaming eyes for the
one true fatherland.
We old soldiers, who had then marched out with the
regiment stood in respectful emotion at this shrine of 'loyalty and obedience
to the death.'
Now in a hard defensive battle the regiment was to defend
this soil which it had stormed three years earlier.
With three weeks of drumfire the Englishman prepared the
great Flanders offensive. The spirits of the dead seemed to quicken; the
regiment clawed its way into the filthy mud, bit into the various holes and
craters, and neither gave ground nor wavered. As once before in this place, it
grew steadily smaller and thinner, until the British attack finally broke loose
on July 13, 1917.
In the first days of August we were relieved.
The regiment had turned into a few companies: crusted with
mud they tottered back, more like ghosts than men. But aside from a few hundred
meters of shell holes, the Englishman had found nothing but death.
Now, in the fall of 1918, we stood for the third time on
the storm site of 1914. The little city of Comines where we then rested had now
become our battlefield. Yet, though the battlefield was the same, the men had
changed: for now 'political discussions went on even among the troops. As
everywhere, the poison of the hinterland began, here too, to be effective. And
the younger recruit fell down completely for he came from home.
In the night of October 13, the English gas attack on the
southern front before Ypres burst loose; they used yellow-cross gas, whose
effects were still unknown to us as far as personal experience was concerned.
In this same night I myself was to become acquainted with it. On a hill south
of Wervick, we came on the evening of October 13 into several hours of drumfire
with gas shells which continued all night more or less violently. As early as
midnight, a number of us passed out, a few of our comrades forever. Toward
morning I, too, was seized with pain which grew worse with every quarter hour,
and at seven in the morning I stumbled and tottered back with burning eyes;
taking with me my last report of the War.
A few hours later, my eyes had turned into glowing coals;
it had grown dark around me.
Thus I came to the hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania, and
there I was fated to experience-the greatest villainy of the century.
For a long time there had been something indefinite but
repulsive in the air. People were telling each other that in the next few weeks
it would ' start in '-but I was unable to imagine what was meant by this. First
I thought of a strike like that of the spring. Unfavorable rumors were
constantly coming from the navy, which was said to be in a state of ferment.
But this, too, seemed to me more the product of the imagination of individual
scoundrels than an affair involving real masses. Even in the hospital, people
were discussing the end of the War which they hoped would come soon, but no one
counted on anything immediate. I was unable to read the papers.
In November the general tension increased.
And then one day, suddenly and unexpectedly, the calamity
descended. Sailors arrived in trucks and proclaimed the revolution; a few
Jewish youths were the 'leaders' in this struggle for the 'freedom, beauty, and
dignity' of our national existence. None of them had been at the front. By way
of a so-called 'gonorrhoea hospital,' the three Orientals had been sent back
home from their second-line base. Now they raised the red rag in the
homeland.
In the last few days I had been getting along better. The
piercing pain in my eye sockets was diminishing; slowly I succeeded in
distinguishing the broad outlines of the things about me. I was given grounds
for hoping that I should recover my eyesight at least well enough to be able to
pursue some profession later. To be sure, I could no longer hope that I would
ever be able to draw again. In any case, I was on the road to improvement when
the monstrous thing happened.
My first hope was still that this high treason might still
be a more or less local affair. I also tried to bolster up a few comrades in
this view. Particularly my Bavarian friends in the hospital were more than
accessible to this. The mood there was anything but 'revolutionary.' I could
not imagine that the madness would break out in Munich, too. Loyalty to the
venerable House of Wittelsbach seemed to me stronger, after all, than the will
of a few Jews. Thus I could not help but believe that this was merely a Putsch
on the part of the navy and would be crushed in the next few days.
The next few days came and with them the most terrible
certainty of my life. The rumors became more and more oppressive. What I had
taken for a local affair was now said to be a general revolution. To this was
added the disgraceful news from the front. They wanted to capitulate. Was such
a thing really possible?
On November 10, the pastor came to the hospital for a
short address: now we learned everything.
In extreme agitation, I, too, was present at the short
speech. The dignified old gentleman seemed all a-tremble as he informed us that
the House of Hollenzollern should no longer bear the German imperial crown;
that the fatherland had become a ' republic '; that we must pray to the
Almighty not to refuse His blessing to this change and not to abandon our
people in the times to come. He could not help himself, he had to speak a few
words in memory of the royal house. He began to praise its services in
Pomerania, in Prussia, nay, to the German fatherland, and-here he began to sob
gently to himself-in the little hall the deepest dejection settled on all
hearts, and I believe that not an eye was able to restrain its tears. But when
the old gentleman tried to go on, and began to tell us that we must now end the
long War, yes, that now that it was lost and we were throwing ourselves upon
the mercy of the victors, our fatherland would for the future be exposed to
dire oppression, that the armistice should be accepted with confidence in the
magnanimity of our previous enemies-I could stand it no longer. It became
impossible for me to sit still one minute more. Again everything went black
before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw
myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow.
Since the day when I had stood at my mother's grave, I had not wept.
When in my youth Fate seized me with merciless hardness, my defiance mounted.
When in the long war years Death snatched so many a dear comrade and friend
from our ranks, it would have seemed to me almost a sin to complain- after all,
were they not dying for Germany? And when at length the creeping gas-in the
last days of the dreadful struggle- attacked me, too, and began to gnaw at my
eyes, and beneath the fear of going blind forever, I nearly lost heart for a
moment, the voice of my conscience thundered at me: Miserable wretch, are you
going to cry when thousands are a hundred times worse off than you! And so I
bore my lot in dull silence. But now I could not help it. Only now did I see
how all personal suffering vanishes in comparison with the misfortune of the
fatherland.
And so it had all been in vain. In vain all the
sacrifices and privations; in vain the hunger and thirst of months which were
often endless; in vain the hours in which, with mortal fear clutching at our
hearts, we nevertheless did our duty; and in vain the death of two millions who
died. Would not the graves of all the hundreds of thousands open, the graves of
those who with faith in the fatherland had marched forth never to return? Would
they not open and send the silent mud- and blood-covered heroes back as spirits
of vengeance to the homeland which had cheated them with such mockery of the
highest sacrifice which a man can make to his people in this world? Had they
died for is, the soldiers of August and September, 1914? Was it for this that
in the autumn of the same year the volunteer regiments marched after their old
comrades? Was it for this that these boys of seventeen sank into the earth of
Flanders? Was this the meaning of the sacrifice which the German mother made to
the fatherland when with sore heart she let her best-loved boys march off,
never to see them again? Did all this happen only so that a gang of wretched
criminals could lay hands on the fatherland?
Was it for this that the German soldier had stood host in
the sun's heat-and in snowstorms, hungry, thirsty, and freezing, weary from
sleepless nights and endless marches? Was it for this that he had lain in the
hell of the drumfire and in the fever of gas attacks without wavering, always
thoughtful of his one duty to preserve the fatherland from the enemy
peril?
Verily these heroes deserved a headstone: 'Thou Wanderer who comest
to Germany, tell those at home that we lie here, true to the fatherland and
obedient to duty.'
And what about those at home-?
And yet, was it only our own sacrifice that we had to
weigh in the balance? Was the Germany of the past less precious? Was there no
obligation toward our own history? Were we still worthy to relate the glory of
the past to ourselves? And how could this deed be justified to future
generations?
Miserable and degenerate criminals!
The more I tried to achieve clarity on the monstrous event
in this hour, the more the shame of indignation and disgrace burned my brow.
What was all the pain in my eyes compared to this misery?
There followed terrible days and even worse nights-I knew
that all was lost. Only fools, liars, and criminals could hope in the mercy of
the enemy. In these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for
this deed.
In the days that followed, my own fate became known to
me.
I could not help but laugh at the thought of my own future which
only a short time before had given me such bitter concern. Was it not
ridiculous to expect to build houses on such ground? At last it became clear to
me that what had happened was what I had so often feared but had never been
able to believe with my emotions.
Kaiser William II was the first German Emperor to hold
out a conciliatory hand to the leaders of Marxism, without suspecting that
scoundrels have no honor. While they still held the imperial hand in theirs,
their other hand was reaching for the dagger.
There is no making pacts with Jews; there can only be the
hard: either-or.
I, for my part, decided to go into
politics.
WITH THE YEAR 1915 enemy propaganda began in our country, after 1916
it became more and more intensive, till finally, at the beginning of the year
1918, it swelled to a positive flood. Now the results of this seduction could
be seen at every step. The army gradually learned to think as the enemy wanted
it to.
And the German counter-action was a complete failure.
In the person of the man whose intellect and will made
him its leader, the army had the intention and determination to take up the
struggle in this field, too, but it lacked the instrument which would have been
necessary. And from the psychological point of view, it was wrong to have this
enlightenment work carried on by the troops themselves. If it was to be
effective, it had to come from home. Only then was there any assurance of
success among the men who, after all, had been performing immortal deeds of
heroism and privation for nearly four years for this homeland.
But what came out of the home country?
Was this failure stupidity or crime?
In midsummer of 1918, after the evacuation of the
southern bank of the Marne, the German press above all conducted itself with
such miserable awkwardness, nay, criminal stupidity, that my wrath mounted by
the day, and the question arose within me: Is there really no one who can put
an end to this spiritual squandering of the army's heroism?
What happened in France in 1914 when we swept into the
country in an unprecedented storm of victory? What did Italy do in the days
after her Isonzo front had collapsed? And what again did France do in the
spring of 1918 when the attack of the German divisions seemed to lift her
positions off their hinges and the far-reaching arm of the heavy long-range
batteries began to knock at the doors of Paris?
How they whipped the fever heat of national passion into
the faces of the hastily retreating regiments in those countries ! What
propaganda and ingenious demagogy were used to hammer the faith in final
victory back into the hearts of the broken fronts!
Meanwhile, what happened in our country?
Nothing, or worse than nothing.
Rage and indignation often rose up in me when I looked at
the latest newspapers, and came face to face with the psychological mass murder
that was being committed.
More than once I was tormented by the thought that if
Providence had put me in the place of the incapable or criminal incompetents or
scoundrels in our propaganda service, our battle with Destiny would have taken
a different turn.
In these months I felt for the first time the whole
malice of Destiny which kept me at the front in a position where every negro
might accidentally shoot me to bits, while elsewhere I would have been able to
perform quite different services for the fatherland !
For even then I was rash enough to believe that I would
have succeeded in this.
But I was a nameless soldier, one among eight
million!
And so it was better to hold my tongue and do my duty in the
trenches as best I could.
In the summer of 1915, the first enemy leaflets fell into
our hands.
Aside from a few changes in the form of presentation,
their Content was almost always the same, to wit: that the suffering was
growing greater and greater in Germany; that the War was going to last forever
while the hope of winning it was gradually vanishing; that the people at home
were, therefore, longing for peace, but that 'militarism' and the 'Kaiser' did
not allow it; that the whole world-to whom this was very well known- was,
therefore, not waging a war on the German people, but exclusively against the
sole guilty party, the Kaiser; that, therefore, the War would not be over
before this enemy of peaceful humanity should be eliminated; that when the War
was ended, the libertarian and democratic nations would take the German people
into the league of eternal world peace, which would be assured from the hour
when ' Prussian militarism ' was destroyed.
The better to illustrate these claims, 'letters from home'
were often reprinted whose contents seemed to confirm these assertions.
On
the whole, we only laughed in those days at all these efforts. The leaflets
were read, then sent back to the higher staffs, and for the most part forgotten
until the wind again sent a load of them sailing down into the trenches; for,
as a rule, the leaflets were brought over by airplanes.
In this type of propaganda there was one point which soon
inevitably attracted attention: in every sector of the front where Bavarians
were stationed, Prussia was attacked with extraordinary consistency, with the
assurance that not only was Prussia on the one hand the really guilty and
responsible party for the whole war, but that on the other hand there was not
the slightest hostility against Bavaria in particular; however, there was no
helping Bavaria as long as she served Prussian militarism and helped to pull
its chestnuts out of the fire.
Actually this kind of propaganda began to achieve certain
effects in 1915. The feeling against Prussia grew quite visibly among the
troops-yet not a single step was taken against it from above. This was more
than a mere sin of omission, and sooner or later we were bound to suffer most
catastrophically for it; and not just the 'Prussians,' but the whole German
people, to which Bavaria herself is not the last to belong.
In this direction enemy propaganda began to achieve
unquestionable successes from 1916 on.
Likewise the complaining letters direct from home had long
been having their effect. It was no longer necessary for the enemy to transmit
them to the frontline soldiers by means of leaflets, etc. And against this,
aside from a few psychologically idiotic 'admonitions' on the part of the
'government,' nothing was done. Just as before, the front was flooded with this
poison dished up by thoughtless women at home, who, of course, did not suspect
that this was the way to raise the enemy's confidence in victory to the highest
pitch, thus consequently to prolong and sharpen the sufferings of their men at
the fighting front. In the time that followed, the senseless letters of German
women cost hundreds of thousands of men their lives.
Thus, as early as 1916, there appeared various phenomena
that would better have been absents The men at the front complained and
'beefed'; they began to be dissatisfied in many ways and sometimes were even
righteously indignant. While they starved and suffered, while their people at
home lived in misery, there was abundance and high-living in other circles.
Yes, even at the fighting front all was not in order in this respect.
Even then a slight crisis was emerging-but these were
still
'internal' affairs. The same man, who at first had cursed and
grumbled, silently did his duty a few minutes later as though
this was a
matter of course. The same company, which at first was discontented, clung to
the piece of trench it had to defend as though Germany's fate depended on these
few hundred yards of mudholes. It was still the front of the old, glorious army
of heroes!
I was to learn the difference between it and the homeland
in a
glaring contrast.
At the end of September, 1916, my division moved into the
Battle of the Somme. For us it was the first of the tremendous battles of
materiel which now followed, and the impression was hard to describe-it was
more like hell than war.
Under a whirlwind of drumfire that lasted for weeks, the
German front held fast, sometimes forced back a little, then again pushing
forward, but never wavering.
On October 7, 1916, I was wounded.
I was brought safely to the rear, and from there was to
return to Germany with a transport.
Two years had now passed since I had seen the homeland
under such conditions an almost endless time. I could scarcely imagine how
Germans looked who were not in uniform. As I lay in the field hospital at
Hermies, I almost collapsed for fright when suddenly the voice of a German
woman serving as a nurse addressed a man lying beside me.
For the first time in two years to hear such a
sound!
The closer our train which was to bring us home approached the
border, the more inwardly restless each of us became. All the towns passed by,
through which we had ridden two years previous as young soldiers: Brussels,
Louvain, Liege, and at last we thought we recognized the first German house by
its high gable and beautiful shutters.
The fatherland!
In October, 1914, we had burned with stormy enthusiasm as
we crossed the border; now silence and emotion reigned. Each of us was happy
that Fate again permitted him to see what he had had to defend so hard with his
life, and each man was wellnigh ashamed to let another look him in the
eye.
It was almost on the anniversary of the day when I left for the
front that I reached the hospital at Beelitz near Berlin.
What a change! From the mud of the Battle of the Somme
into the white beds of this miraculous building! In the beginning we hardly
dared to lie in them properly. Only gradually could we reaccustom ourselves to
this new world.
Unfortunately, this world was new in another respect as
well.
The spirit of the army at the front seemed no longer to be a guest
here.l Here for the first time I heard a thing that was still unknown at the
front; men bragging about their own cowardice! For the cursing and 'beefing'
you could hear at the front were never an incitement to shirk duty or a
glorification of the coward. No! The coward still passed as a coward and as
nothing else; and al he contempt which struck him was still general, just like
the admiration that was given to the real hero. But here in the hospital it was
partly almost the opposite: the most unscrupulous agitators did the talking and
attempted with all the means of their contemptible eloquence to make the
conceptions of the decent soldiers ridiculous and hold up the spineless coward
as an example. A few wretched scoundrels in particular set the tone. One
boasted that he himself had pulled his hand through a barbed-wire entanglement
in order to be sent to the hospital; in spite of this absurd wound he seemed to
have been here for an endless time, and for that matter he had only gotten into
the transport to Germany by a swindle. This poisonous fellow went so far in his
insolent effrontery as to represent his own cowardice as an emanation 2 Of
higher bravery than the hero's death of an honest soldier. Many listened in
silence, others went away, but a few assented.
Disgust mounted to my throat, but the agitator was calmly
tolerated in the institution. What could be done? The management couldn't help
knowing, and actually did know, exactly who and what he was. But nothing was
done.
When I could again walk properly, I obtained permission to go to
Berlin.
Clearly there was dire misery everywhere. The big city was suffering
from hunger. Discontent was great. In various soldiers' homes the tone was like
that in the hospital. It gave you the impression that these scoundrels were
intentionally frequenting such places in order to spread their views.
But much, much worse were conditions in Munich itself !
When I was discharged from the hospital as cured and
transferred to the replacement battalion, I thought I could no longer recognize
the city. Anger, discontent, cursing, wherever you went! In the replacement
battalion itself the mood was beneath all criticism. Here a contributing factor
was the immeasurably clumsy way in which the field soldiers were treated by old
training officers who hadn't spent a single hour in the field and for this
reason alone were only partially able to create a decent relationship with the
old soldiers. For it had to be admitted that the latter possessed certain
qualities which could be explained by their service at the front, but which
remained totally incomprehensible to the leaders of these replacement
detachments while the officer who had come from the front was at least able to
explain them. The latter, of course, was respected by the men quite differently
than the rear commander. But aside from this, the general mood was miserable:
to be a slacker passed almost as a sign of higher wisdom, while loyal
steadfastness was considered a symptom of inner weakness and narrow-mindedness.
The offices were filled with Jews. Nearly every clerk was a Jew and nearly
every Jew was a clerk. I was amazed at this plethora of warriors of the chosen
people and could not help but compare them with their rare representatives at
the front.
As regards economic life, things were even worse Here the
Jewish people had become really 'indispensable.' The spider was slowly
beginning to suck the blood out of the people's pores. Through the war
corporations, they had found an instrument with which, little by little, to
finish off the national free economy
The necessity of an unlimited centralization was
emphasized
Thus, in the year 191S17 nearly the whole of production
was under the control of Jewish finance.
But against whom was the hatred of the people
directed?
At this time I saw with horror a catastrophe approaching
which, unless averted in time, would inevitably lead to collapse.
While the Jew robbed the whole nation and pressed it
beneath his domination, an agitation was carried on against the 'Prussians.' At
home, as at the front, nothing was done against this poisonous propaganda. No
one seemed to suspect that the collapse of Prussia would not by a long shot
bring with it a resurgence of Bavaria; no, that on the contrary any fall of the
one would inevitably carry the other along with it into the abyss.
I felt very badly about this behavior. In it I could only
see the craftiest trick of the Jew, calculated to distract the general
attention from himself and to others. While the Bavarian and the Prussian
fought, he stole the existence of both of them from under their nose; while the
Bavarians were cursing the Prussians, the Jew organized the revolution and
smashed Prussia and Bavaria at once.
I could not bear this accursed quarrel among German
peoples, and was glad to return to the front, for which I reported at once
after my arrival in Munich.
At the beginning of March, 1917, I was back with my
regiment.
Toward the end of I911, the low point of the army's
dejection seemed to have passed. The whole army took fresh hope and fresh
courage after the Russian collapse. The conviction that the War would end with
the victory of Germany, after all, began to seize the troops more and more.
Again singing could be heard and the Calamity Lanes became rarer. Again people
believed in the future of the fatherland.
Especially the Italian collapse of autumn, 1917, had had
the most wonderful effect; in this victory we saw a proof of the possibility of
breaking through the front, even aside from the Russian theater of war. A
glorious faith flowed again into the hearts of the millions, enabling them to
await spring, 1918, with relief and confidence. The foe was visibly depressed.
In this winter he remained quieter than usual. This was the lull before the
storm.
But, while those at the front were undertaking the last preparations
for the final conclusion of the eternal struggle, while endless transports of
men and materiel were rolling toward the West Front, and the troops were being
trained for the great attack- the biggest piece of chicanery in the whole war
broke out in Germany.
Germany must not be victorious; in the last hour, with
victory already threatening to be with the German banners, a means was chosen
which seemed suited to stifle the German spring attack in the germ with one
blow, to make victory impossible:
The munitions strike was organized
If it succeeded, the German front was bound to collapse,
and the Vorwarts' desire that this time victory should not be with the German
banners would inevitably be fulfilled. Owing to the lack of munitions, the
front would inevitably be pierced in a few weeks; thus the offensive was
thwarted, the Entente saved international capital was made master of Germany,
and the inner aim of the Marxist swindle of nations achieved.
To smash the national economy and establish the rule of
international capital a goal which actually was achieved, thanks to the
stupidity and credulity of the one side and the bottomless cowardice of the
other.
To be sure, the munitions strike did not have all the hoped-for
success with regard to starving the front of arms; it collapsed too soon for
the lack of munitions as such-as the plan had been- to doom the army to
destruction.
But how much more terrible was the moral damage that had
been done!
In the first place: What was the army fighting for if the
homeland itself no longer wanted victory? For whom the immense sacrifices and
privations? The soldier is expected to fight for victory and the homeland goes
on strike against it!
And in the second place: What was the effect on the
enemy?
In the winter of 1917 to 1918, dark clouds appeared for the first
time in the firmament of the Allied world. For nearly four years they had been
assailing the German warrior and had been unable to encompass his downfall; and
all this while the German had only his shield arm free for defense, while his
sword was obliged to strike, now in the East, now in the South. But now at last
the giant's back was free. Streams of blood had flown before he administered
final defeat to one of his foes. Now in the West his shield was going to be
joined by his sword; up till then the enemy had been unable to break his
defense, and now he himself was facing attack.
The enemy feared him and trembled for their
victory.
In London and Paris one deliberation followed another, but at the
front sleepy silence prevailed. Suddenly their high mightinesses lost their
effrontery. Even enemy propaganda was having a hard time of it; it was no
longer so easy to prove the hopelessness of German victory.
But this also applied to the Allied troops at the fronts.
A ghastly light began to dawn slowly even on them. Their inner attitude toward
the German soldier had changed. Until then he may have seemed to them a fool
destined to defeat; but now it was the destroyer of the Russian ally that stood
before them. The limitation of the German offensives to the East, though born
of necessity, now seemed to them brilliant tactics. For three years these
Germans had stormed the Russian front, at first it seemed without the slightest
success. The Allies almost laughed over this aimless undertaking; for in the
end the Russian giant with his overwhelming number of men was sure to remain
the victor while Germany would inevitably collapse from loss of blood. Reality
seemed to confirm this hope.
Since the September days of 1914, when for the first time
the endless hordes of Russian prisoners from the Battle of Tannenberg began
moving into Germany over the roads and railways, this stream was almost without
end-but for every defeated and destroyed army a new one arose. Inexhaustibly
the gigantic Empire gave the Tsar more and more new soldiers and the War its
new victims. How long could Germany keep up this race? Would not the day
inevitably come when the Germans would win their last victory and still the
Russian armies would not be marching to their last battle? And then what? In
all human probability the victory of Russia could be postponed, but it was
bound to come.
Now all these hopes were at an end: the ally who had laid
the greatest blood sacrifices on the altar of common interests was at the end
of his strength, and lay prone at the feet of the inexorable assailant. Fear
and horror crept into the hearts of the soldiers who had hitherto believed so
blindly. They feared the coming spring. For if up until then they had not
succeeded in defeating the German when he was able to place only part of his
forces on the Western Front, how could they count on victory now that the
entire power of this incredible heroic state seemed to be concentrating for an
attack on the West?
The shadows of the South Tyrolean Mountains lay oppressive
on the fantasy; as far as the mists of Flanders, the defeated armies of Cadorna
conjured up gloomy faces, and faith in victory ceded to fear of coming
defeat.
Then-when out of the cool nights the Allied soldiers already seemed
to hear the dull rumble of the advancing storm units of the German army, and
with eyes fixed in fear and trepidation awaited the approaching judgment,
suddenly a flaming red light arose in Germany, casting its glow into the last
shell-hole of the enemy front: at the very moment when the German divisions
were receiving their last instructions for the great attack, the general strike
broke out in Germany.
At first the world was speechless. But then enemy
propaganda hurled itself with a sigh of relief on this help that came in the
eleventh hour. At one stroke the means was found to restore the sinking
confidence of the Allied soldiers, once again to represent the probability of
victory as certain,l and transform dread anxiety in the face of coming events
into determined confidence. Now the regiments awaiting the German attack could
be sent into the greatest battle of all time with the conviction that, not the
boldness of the German assault would decide the end of this war but the
perseverance of the defense. Let the Germans achieve as many victories as they
pleased; at home the revolution was before the door, and not the victorious
army..
English, French, and American newspapers began to implant this faith
in the hearts of their readers while an infinitely shrewd propaganda raised the
spirits of the troops at the front.
'Germany facing revolution! Victory of the Allies
inevitable! This was the best medicine to help the wavering poilu and Tommy
back on their feet. Now rifles and machine guns could again be made to fire,
and a headlong flight in panic fear was replaced by hopeful resistance.
This was the result of the munitions strike. It strengthened the
enemy peoples' belief in victory and relieved the paralyzing despair of the
Allied front-in the time that followed, thousands of German soldiers had to pay
for this with their blood. The instigators of this vilest of all scoundrelly
tricks were the aspirants to the highest state positions of revolutionary
Germany.
On the German side, it is true, the visible reaction to this crime
could at first apparently be handled; on the enemy side, however, the
consequences did not fail to appear. The resistance had lost the aimlessness of
an army giving up all as lost, and took on the bitterness of a struggle for
victory.
For now, in all human probability, victory was inevitable if the
Western Front could stand up under a German attack for only a few months. The
parliaments of the Entente, however, recognized the possibilities for the
future and approved unprecedented expenditures for continuing the propaganda to
disrupt Germany.
I had the good fortune to fight in the first two
offensives and in the last.
These became the most tremendous impressions of my life;
tremendous because now for the last time, as in 1914, the fight lost the
character of defense and assumed that of attack. A sigh of relief passed
through the trenches and the dugouts of the German army when at length, after
more than three years' endurance in the enemy hell, the day of retribution
came. Once again the victorious battalions cheered and hung the last wreaths of
immortal laurel on their banners rent by the storm of victory. Once again the
songs of the fatherland roared to the heavens along the endless marching
columns, and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on His ungrateful
children.
In midsummer of 1918, oppressive sultriness lay over the
front. At home there was fighting. For what? In the different detachments of
the field army all sorts of things were being said: that the war was now
hopeless and only fools could believe in victory That not the people but only
capital and the monarchy had an interest in holding out any longer-all this
came from the homeland and was discussed even at the front.
At first the front reacted very little. What did we care
about universal suffrage? Had we fought four years for that? It was vile
banditry to steal the war aim of the dead heroes from their very graves. The
young regiments had not gone to their death in Flanders crying: 'Long dive
universal suffrage and the secret ballot,' but crying: 'Deutschland uber Alles
in der Welt.' A small yet not entirely insignificant, difference. But most of
those who cried out for suffrage hadn't ever been in the place where they now
wanted to fight for it. The front was unknown to the whole political party
rabble. Only a small fraction of the Parliamentary ian gentlemen could be seen
where all decent Germans with sound limbs left were sojourning at that
time.
And so the old personnel at the front was not very receptive to this
new war aims of Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann, Barth, Liebnitz, etc. They couldn't
for the life of them see why suddenly the slackers should have the right to
arrogate to themselves control of the state over the heads of the army.
My
personal attitude was established from the very start. I hated the whole gang
of miserable party scoundrels and betrayers of the people in the extreme. It
had long been clear to me that this whole gang was not really concerned with
the welfare of the nation, but with filling empty pockets. For this they were
ready to sacrifice the whole nation, and if necessary to let Germany be
destroyed; and in my eyes this made them ripe for hanging. To take
consideration of their wishes was to sacrifice the interests of the working
people for the benefit of a few pickpockets; these wishes could only be
fulfilled by giving up Germany.
And the great majority of the embattled army still
thought the same. Only the reinforcements coming from home rapidly grew worse
and worse, so that their arrival meant, not a reinforcement but a weakening of
our fighting strength. Especially the young reinforcements were mostly
worthless. It was often hard to believe that these were sons of the same nation
which had once sent its youth out to the battle for Ypres.
In August and September, the symptoms of disorganization
increased more and more rapidly, although the effect of the enemy attack was
not to be compared with the terror of our former defensive battles. The past
Battle of Flanders and the Battle of the Somme had been awesome by
comparison.
At the end of September, my division arrived for the third
time at the positions which as young volunteer regiments we had once
stormed.
What a memory!
In October and November of I914, we had there received our
baptism of fire. Fatherland love in our heart and songs on our lips, our young
regiments had gone into the battle as to a dance The most precious blood there
sacrificed itself joyfully, in the faith that it was preserving the
independence and freedom of the fatherland.
In July, I917, we set foot for the second time on the
ground that was sacred to all of us. For in it the best comrades slumbered
still almost children, who had run to their death with gleaming eyes for the
one true fatherland.
We old soldiers, who had then marched out with the
regiment stood in respectful emotion at this shrine of 'loyalty and obedience
to the death.'
Now in a hard defensive battle the regiment was to defend
this soil which it had stormed three years earlier.
With three weeks of drumfire the Englishman prepared the
great Flanders offensive. The spirits of the dead seemed to quicken; the
regiment clawed its way into the filthy mud, bit into the various holes and
craters, and neither gave ground nor wavered. As once before in this place, it
grew steadily smaller and thinner, until the British attack finally broke loose
on July 13, 1917.
In the first days of August we were relieved.
The regiment had turned into a few companies: crusted with
mud they tottered back, more like ghosts than men. But aside from a few hundred
meters of shell holes, the Englishman had found nothing but death.
Now, in the fall of 1918, we stood for the third time on
the storm site of 1914. The little city of Comines where we then rested had now
become our battlefield. Yet, though the battlefield was the same, the men had
changed: for now 'political discussions went on even among the troops. As
everywhere, the poison of the hinterland began, here too, to be effective. And
the younger recruit fell down completely for he came from home.
In the night of October 13, the English gas attack on the
southern front before Ypres burst loose; they used yellow-cross gas, whose
effects were still unknown to us as far as personal experience was concerned.
In this same night I myself was to become acquainted with it. On a hill south
of Wervick, we came on the evening of October 13 into several hours of drumfire
with gas shells which continued all night more or less violently. As early as
midnight, a number of us passed out, a few of our comrades forever. Toward
morning I, too, was seized with pain which grew worse with every quarter hour,
and at seven in the morning I stumbled and tottered back with burning eyes;
taking with me my last report of the War.
A few hours later, my eyes had turned into glowing coals;
it had grown dark around me.
Thus I came to the hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania, and
there I was fated to experience-the greatest villainy of the century.
For a long time there had been something indefinite but
repulsive in the air. People were telling each other that in the next few weeks
it would ' start in '-but I was unable to imagine what was meant by this. First
I thought of a strike like that of the spring. Unfavorable rumors were
constantly coming from the navy, which was said to be in a state of ferment.
But this, too, seemed to me more the product of the imagination of individual
scoundrels than an affair involving real masses. Even in the hospital, people
were discussing the end of the War which they hoped would come soon, but no one
counted on anything immediate. I was unable to read the papers.
In November the general tension increased.
And then one day, suddenly and unexpectedly, the calamity
descended. Sailors arrived in trucks and proclaimed the revolution; a few
Jewish youths were the 'leaders' in this struggle for the 'freedom, beauty, and
dignity' of our national existence. None of them had been at the front. By way
of a so-called 'gonorrhoea hospital,' the three Orientals had been sent back
home from their second-line base. Now they raised the red rag in the
homeland.
In the last few days I had been getting along better. The
piercing pain in my eye sockets was diminishing; slowly I succeeded in
distinguishing the broad outlines of the things about me. I was given grounds
for hoping that I should recover my eyesight at least well enough to be able to
pursue some profession later. To be sure, I could no longer hope that I would
ever be able to draw again. In any case, I was on the road to improvement when
the monstrous thing happened.
My first hope was still that this high treason might still
be a more or less local affair. I also tried to bolster up a few comrades in
this view. Particularly my Bavarian friends in the hospital were more than
accessible to this. The mood there was anything but 'revolutionary.' I could
not imagine that the madness would break out in Munich, too. Loyalty to the
venerable House of Wittelsbach seemed to me stronger, after all, than the will
of a few Jews. Thus I could not help but believe that this was merely a Putsch
on the part of the navy and would be crushed in the next few days.
The next few days came and with them the most terrible
certainty of my life. The rumors became more and more oppressive. What I had
taken for a local affair was now said to be a general revolution. To this was
added the disgraceful news from the front. They wanted to capitulate. Was such
a thing really possible?
On November 10, the pastor came to the hospital for a
short address: now we learned everything.
In extreme agitation, I, too, was present at the short
speech. The dignified old gentleman seemed all a-tremble as he informed us that
the House of Hollenzollern should no longer bear the German imperial crown;
that the fatherland had become a ' republic '; that we must pray to the
Almighty not to refuse His blessing to this change and not to abandon our
people in the times to come. He could not help himself, he had to speak a few
words in memory of the royal house. He began to praise its services in
Pomerania, in Prussia, nay, to the German fatherland, and-here he began to sob
gently to himself-in the little hall the deepest dejection settled on all
hearts, and I believe that not an eye was able to restrain its tears. But when
the old gentleman tried to go on, and began to tell us that we must now end the
long War, yes, that now that it was lost and we were throwing ourselves upon
the mercy of the victors, our fatherland would for the future be exposed to
dire oppression, that the armistice should be accepted with confidence in the
magnanimity of our previous enemies-I could stand it no longer. It became
impossible for me to sit still one minute more. Again everything went black
before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw
myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow.
Since the day when I had stood at my mother's grave, I had not wept.
When in my youth Fate seized me with merciless hardness, my defiance mounted.
When in the long war years Death snatched so many a dear comrade and friend
from our ranks, it would have seemed to me almost a sin to complain- after all,
were they not dying for Germany? And when at length the creeping gas-in the
last days of the dreadful struggle- attacked me, too, and began to gnaw at my
eyes, and beneath the fear of going blind forever, I nearly lost heart for a
moment, the voice of my conscience thundered at me: Miserable wretch, are you
going to cry when thousands are a hundred times worse off than you! And so I
bore my lot in dull silence. But now I could not help it. Only now did I see
how all personal suffering vanishes in comparison with the misfortune of the
fatherland.
And so it had all been in vain. In vain all the
sacrifices and privations; in vain the hunger and thirst of months which were
often endless; in vain the hours in which, with mortal fear clutching at our
hearts, we nevertheless did our duty; and in vain the death of two millions who
died. Would not the graves of all the hundreds of thousands open, the graves of
those who with faith in the fatherland had marched forth never to return? Would
they not open and send the silent mud- and blood-covered heroes back as spirits
of vengeance to the homeland which had cheated them with such mockery of the
highest sacrifice which a man can make to his people in this world? Had they
died for is, the soldiers of August and September, 1914? Was it for this that
in the autumn of the same year the volunteer regiments marched after their old
comrades? Was it for this that these boys of seventeen sank into the earth of
Flanders? Was this the meaning of the sacrifice which the German mother made to
the fatherland when with sore heart she let her best-loved boys march off,
never to see them again? Did all this happen only so that a gang of wretched
criminals could lay hands on the fatherland?
Was it for this that the German soldier had stood host in
the sun's heat-and in snowstorms, hungry, thirsty, and freezing, weary from
sleepless nights and endless marches? Was it for this that he had lain in the
hell of the drumfire and in the fever of gas attacks without wavering, always
thoughtful of his one duty to preserve the fatherland from the enemy
peril?
Verily these heroes deserved a headstone: 'Thou Wanderer who comest
to Germany, tell those at home that we lie here, true to the fatherland and
obedient to duty.'
And what about those at home-?
And yet, was it only our own sacrifice that we had to
weigh in the balance? Was the Germany of the past less precious? Was there no
obligation toward our own history? Were we still worthy to relate the glory of
the past to ourselves? And how could this deed be justified to future
generations?
Miserable and degenerate criminals!
The more I tried to achieve clarity on the monstrous event
in this hour, the more the shame of indignation and disgrace burned my brow.
What was all the pain in my eyes compared to this misery?
There followed terrible days and even worse nights-I knew
that all was lost. Only fools, liars, and criminals could hope in the mercy of
the enemy. In these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for
this deed.
In the days that followed, my own fate became known to
me.
I could not help but laugh at the thought of my own future which
only a short time before had given me such bitter concern. Was it not
ridiculous to expect to build houses on such ground? At last it became clear to
me that what had happened was what I had so often feared but had never been
able to believe with my emotions.
Kaiser William II was the first German Emperor to hold
out a conciliatory hand to the leaders of Marxism, without suspecting that
scoundrels have no honor. While they still held the imperial hand in theirs,
their other hand was reaching for the dagger.
There is no making pacts with Jews; there can only be the
hard: either-or.
I, for my part, decided to go into
politics.
Chapter VIII: The Beginning of My
Political Activity
AT THE END of November, 1918, I returned to Munich. Again I went to
the replacement battalion of my regiment, which was in the hands of 'soldiers'
councils.' Their whole activity was so repellent to me that I decided at once
to leave again as soon as possible. With Schmiedt Ernst, a faithful war
comrade, I went to Traunstein and remained there till the camp was broken
up.
In March, 1919, we went back to Munich.
The situation was untenable and moved inevitably toward a
further continuation of the revolution. Eisner's death only hastened the
development and finally led to a dictatorship of the Councils, or, better
expressed, to a passing rule of the Jews, as had been the original aim of the
instigators of the whole revolution.
At this time endless plans chased one another through my
head. For days I wondered what could be done, but the end of every meditation
was the sober realization that I, nameless as I was, did not possess the least
basis for any useful action. I shall come back to speak of the reasons why
then, as before, I could not decide to join any of the existing parties.
In
the course of the new revolution of the Councils I for the first time acted in
such a way as to arouse the disapproval of the Central Council. Early in the
morning of April 27, 1919, I was to be arrested, but, faced with my leveled
carbine, the three scoundrels lacked the necessary courage and marched off as
they had come.
A few days after the liberation of Munich, I was ordered
to report to the examining commission concerned with revolutionary occurrences
in the Second Infantry Regiment.
This was my first more or less purely political
activity.
Only a few weeks afterward I received orders to attend a ' course '
that was held for members of the armed forces. In it the soldier was supposed
to learn certain fundamentals of civic thinking. For me the value of the whole
affair was that I now obtained an opportunity of fleeting a few like-minded
comrades with whom I could thoroughly discuss the situation of the moment. All
of us were more or less firmly convinced that Germany could no longer be saved
from the impending collapse by the parties of the November crime, the Center
and the Social Democracy, and that the so-called 'bourgeois-national'
formations, even with the best of intentions, could never repair what had
happened. A whole series of preconditions were lacking, without which such a
task simply could not succeed. The following period confirmed the opinion we
then held. Thus, in our own circle we discussed the foundation of a new party.
The basic ideas which we had in mind were the same as those later realized in
the ' German Workers' Party.' The name of the movement to be founded would from
the very beginning have to offer the possibility of approaching the broad
masses; for without this quality the whole task seemed aimless and superfluous.
Thus we arrived at the name of ' Social Revolutionary Party'; this because the
social views of the new organization did indeed mean a revolution.
But the deeper ground for this lay in the following:
however much I had concerned myself with economic questions at an earlier day,
my efforts had remained more or less within the limits resulting from the
contemplation of social questions as such. Only later did this framework
broaden through examination of the German alliance policy. This in very great
part was the outcome of a false estimation of economics as well as unclarity
concerning the possible basis for sustaining the German people in the future.
But all these ideas were based on the opinion that capital in any case was
solely the result of labor and, therefore, like itself was subject to the
correction of all those factors which can either advance or thwart human
activity; and the national importance of capital was that it depended so
completely on the greatness, freedom, and power of the state, hence of the
nation, that this bond in itself would inevitably cause capital to further the
state and the nation owing to its simple instinct of self-preservation or of
reproduction. This dependence of capital on the independent free state would,
therefore, force capital in turn to champion this freedom, power, strength,
etc., of the nation.
Thus, the task of the state toward capital was
comparatively simple and clear: it only had to make certain that capital remain
the handmaiden of the state and not fancy itself the mistress of the nation.
This point of view could then be defined between two restrictive limits:
preservation of a solvent, national, and independent economy on the one hand,
assurance of the social rights of the workers on the other.
Previously I had been unable to recognize with the desired
clarity the difference between this pure capital as the end result of
productive labor and a capital whose existence and essence rests exclusively on
speculation. For this I lacked the initial inspiration, which had simply not
come my way.
But now this was provided most amply by one of the various
gentlemen lecturing in the above-mentioned course: Gottfried Feder.
For the first time in my life I heard a principled discussion of
international stock exchange and loan capital.
Right after listening to Feder's first lecture, the
thought ran through my head that I had now found the way to one of the most
essential premises for the foundation of a new party.
In my eyes Feder's merit consisted in having established
with ruthless brutality the speculative and economic character of stock
exchange and loan capital, and in having exposed its eternal and age-old
presupposition which is interest. His arguments were so sound in all
fundamental questions that their critics from the start questioned the
theoretical correctness of the idea less than they doubted the practical
possibility of its execution. But what in the eyes of others was a weakness of
Feder's arguments, in my eyes constituted their strength.
It is not the task of a theoretician to determine the
varying degrees in which a cause can be realized, but to establish the cause as
such: that is to say: he must concern himself less with the road than with the
goal. In this, however, the basic correctness of an idea is decisive and not
the difficulty of its execution. As soon as the theoretician attempts to take
account of so-called 'utility' and 'reality' instead of the absolute truth, his
work will cease to be a polar star of seeking humanity and instead will become
a prescription for everyday life. The theoretician of a movement must lay down
its goal, the politician strive for its fulfillment. The thinking of the one,
therefore, will be determined by eternal truth, the actions of the other more
by the practical reality of the moment. The greatness of the one lies in the
absolute abstract soundness of his idea, that of the other in his correct
attitude toward the given facts and their advantageous application; and in this
the theoretician's aim must serve as his guiding star. While the touchstone for
the stature of a politician may be regarded as the success of his plans and
acts-in other words, the degree to which they become reality-the realization of
the theoretician's ultimate purpose can never be realized, since, though human
thought can apprehend truths and set up crystal-clear aims, complete
fulfillment will fail due to the general imperfection and inadequacy of man.
The more abstractly correct and hence powerful the idea will be, the more
impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend
on human beings. Therefore, the stature of the theoretician must not be
measured by the fulfillment of his aims, but by their soundness and the
influence they have had on the development of humanity. If this were not so,
the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this
earth, since the fulfillment of their ethical purposes will never be even
approximately complete. In its workings, even the religion of love is only the
weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however,
lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human
development of culture, ethics, and morality.
The enormous difference between the tasks of the
theoretician and the politician is also the reason why a union of both in one
person is almost never found. This is especially true of the so-called
'successful' politician of small format, whose activity for the most part is
only an 'art of the possible,' as Bismarck rather modestly characterized
politics in general. The freer such a 'politician' keeps himself from great
ideas, the easier and often the more visible, but always the more rapid, his
successes will be. To be sure, they are dedicated to earthly transitoriness and
sometimes do not survive the death of their fathers. The work of such
politicians, by and large, is unimportant nor posterity, since their successes
in the present are based solely on keeping at a distance all really great and
profound problems and ideas, which as such would only have been of value for
later generations.
The execution of such aims, which have value and
significance for the most distant times, usually brings little reward to the
man who champions them and rarely finds understanding among the great masses,
who for the moment have more understanding for beer and milk regulations than
for farsighted plans for the future, whose realization can only occur far
hence, and whose benefits will be reaped only by posterity.
Thus, from a certain vanity, which is always a cousin of
stupidity, the great mass of politicians will keep far removed from all really
weighty plans for the future, in order not to lose the momentary sympathy of
the great mob. The success and significance of such a politician lie then
exclusively in the present, and do not exist for posterity. But small minds are
little troubled by this; they are content.
With the theoretician conditions are different. His
importance lies almost always solely in the future, for not seldom he is what
is described by the world as 'unworldly.' For if the art of the politician is
really the art of the possible, the theoretician is one of those of whom it can
be said that they are pleasing to the gods only if they demand and want the
impossible. He will almost always have to renounce the recognition of the
present, but in return, provided his ideas are immortal, will harvest the fame
of posterity.
In long periods of humanity, it may happen once that the
politician is wedded to the theoretician. The more profound this fusion,
however, the greater are the obstacles opposing the work of the politician. He
no longer works for necessities which will be understood by the first best
shopkeeper, but for aims which only the fewest comprehend. Therefore, his life
is torn by love and hate. The protest of the present which does not understand
the man, struggles with the recognition of posterity-for which he works.
For
the greater a man's works for the future, the less the present can comprehend
them; the harder his fight, and the rarer success. If, however, once in
centuries success does come to a man, perhaps in his latter days a faint beam
of his coming glory may shine upon him. To be sure, these great men are only
the Marathon runners of history; the laurel wreath of the present touches only
the brow of the dying hero.
Among them must be counted the great warriors in this
world who, though not understood by the present, are nevertheless prepared to
carry the fight for their ideas and ideals to their end. They are the men who
some day will be closest to the heart of the people; it almost seems as though
every individual feels the duty of compensating in the past for the sins which
the present once committed against the great. Their life and work are followed
with admiring gratitude and emotion, and especially in days of gloom they have
the power to raise up broken hearts and despairing souls.
To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but
all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin
Luther as well as Richard Wagner.
As I listened to Gottfried Feder's first lecture about
the 'breaking of interest slavery,' I knew at once that this was a theoretical
truth which would inevitably be of immense importance for the future of the
German people. The sharp separation of stock exchange capital from the national
economy offered the possibility of opposing the internationalization of the
German economy without at the same time menacing the foundations of an
independent national self-maintenance by a struggle against all capital. The
development of Germany was much too clear in my eyes for me not to know that
the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile nations, but
against international capital. In Feder's lecture I sensed a powerful slogan
for this coming struggle.
And here again later developments proved how correct our
sentiment of those days was. Today the know-it-alls among our
bourgeois
politicians no longer laugh at us: today even they, in so far as they are not
conscious liars, see that international stock exchange capital was not only the
greatest agitator for the War, but that especially, now that the fight is over,
it spares no effort to turn the peace into a hell.
The fight against international finance and loan capital
became the most important point in the program of the German nation's struggle
for its economic independence and freedom.
As regards the objections of so-called practical men, they
can be answered as follows: All fears regarding the terrible economic
consequences of the ' breaking of interest slavery ' are superfluous; for, in
the first place, the previous economic prescriptions have turned out very badly
for the German people, and your positions on the problems of national
self-maintenance remind us strongly of the reports of similar experts in former
times, for example, those of the Bavarian medical board on the question of
introducing the railroad. It is well known that none of the fears of this
exalted corporation were later realized: the travelers in the trains of the new
'steam horse ' did not get dizzy, the onlookers did not get sick, and the board
fences to hide the new invention from sight were given up-only the board fences
around the brains of all so-called 'experts' were preserved for
posterity.
In the second place, the following should be noted: every
idea, even the best, becomes a danger if it parades as a purpose in itself,
being in reality only a means to one. For me and all true National Socialists
there is but one doctrine: people and fatherland.
What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and
reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the
purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that
our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the
creator of the universe.
Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all
knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this
point of view and used or rejected according to its utility. Then no theory
will stiffen into a dead doctrine, since it is life alone that all things must
serve.
Thus, it was the conclusions of Gottfried Feder that caused me to
delve into the fundamentals of this field with which I had previously not been
very familiar.
I began to study again, and now for the first time really
achieved an understanding of the content of the Jew Karl Marx's life effort.
Only now did his Capital become really intelligible to me, and also the
struggle of the Social Democracy against the national economy, which aims only
to prepare the ground for the domination of truly international finance and
stock exchange capital.
But also in another respect these courses were of the
greatest consequence to me.
One day I asked for the floor. One of the participants
felt obliged to break a lance for the Jews and began to defend them in lengthy
arguments. This aroused me to an answer. The overwhelming majority of the
students present took my standpoint The result was that a few days later I was
sent into a Munich regiment as a so-called 'educational officer.'
Discipline among the men was still comparatively weak at
that time. It suffered from the after-effects of the period of soldiers'
councils. Only very slowly and cautiously was it possible to replace voluntary
obedience-the pretty name that was given to the pig-sty under Kurt Eisner-by
the old military discipline and subordination. Accordingly, the men were now
expected to learn to feel and think in a national and patriotic way. In these
two directions lay the field of my new activity.
I started out with the greatest enthusiasm and love. For
all at once I was offered an opportunity of speaking before a larger audience;
and the thing that I had always presumed from pure feeling without knowing it
was now corroborated: I could 'speak.' My voice, too, had grown so much better
that I could be sufficiently understood at least in every corner of the small
squad rooms.
No task could make me happier than this, for now before
being discharged I was able to perform useful services to the institution which
had been so close to my heart: the army.
And I could boast of some success: in the course of my
lectures I led many hundreds, indeed thousands, of comrades back to their
people and fatherland. I 'nationalized' the troops and was thus also able to
help strengthen the general discipline.
Here again I became acquainted with a number of
like-minded comrades, who later began to form the nucleus of the new
movement.
Political Activity
AT THE END of November, 1918, I returned to Munich. Again I went to
the replacement battalion of my regiment, which was in the hands of 'soldiers'
councils.' Their whole activity was so repellent to me that I decided at once
to leave again as soon as possible. With Schmiedt Ernst, a faithful war
comrade, I went to Traunstein and remained there till the camp was broken
up.
In March, 1919, we went back to Munich.
The situation was untenable and moved inevitably toward a
further continuation of the revolution. Eisner's death only hastened the
development and finally led to a dictatorship of the Councils, or, better
expressed, to a passing rule of the Jews, as had been the original aim of the
instigators of the whole revolution.
At this time endless plans chased one another through my
head. For days I wondered what could be done, but the end of every meditation
was the sober realization that I, nameless as I was, did not possess the least
basis for any useful action. I shall come back to speak of the reasons why
then, as before, I could not decide to join any of the existing parties.
In
the course of the new revolution of the Councils I for the first time acted in
such a way as to arouse the disapproval of the Central Council. Early in the
morning of April 27, 1919, I was to be arrested, but, faced with my leveled
carbine, the three scoundrels lacked the necessary courage and marched off as
they had come.
A few days after the liberation of Munich, I was ordered
to report to the examining commission concerned with revolutionary occurrences
in the Second Infantry Regiment.
This was my first more or less purely political
activity.
Only a few weeks afterward I received orders to attend a ' course '
that was held for members of the armed forces. In it the soldier was supposed
to learn certain fundamentals of civic thinking. For me the value of the whole
affair was that I now obtained an opportunity of fleeting a few like-minded
comrades with whom I could thoroughly discuss the situation of the moment. All
of us were more or less firmly convinced that Germany could no longer be saved
from the impending collapse by the parties of the November crime, the Center
and the Social Democracy, and that the so-called 'bourgeois-national'
formations, even with the best of intentions, could never repair what had
happened. A whole series of preconditions were lacking, without which such a
task simply could not succeed. The following period confirmed the opinion we
then held. Thus, in our own circle we discussed the foundation of a new party.
The basic ideas which we had in mind were the same as those later realized in
the ' German Workers' Party.' The name of the movement to be founded would from
the very beginning have to offer the possibility of approaching the broad
masses; for without this quality the whole task seemed aimless and superfluous.
Thus we arrived at the name of ' Social Revolutionary Party'; this because the
social views of the new organization did indeed mean a revolution.
But the deeper ground for this lay in the following:
however much I had concerned myself with economic questions at an earlier day,
my efforts had remained more or less within the limits resulting from the
contemplation of social questions as such. Only later did this framework
broaden through examination of the German alliance policy. This in very great
part was the outcome of a false estimation of economics as well as unclarity
concerning the possible basis for sustaining the German people in the future.
But all these ideas were based on the opinion that capital in any case was
solely the result of labor and, therefore, like itself was subject to the
correction of all those factors which can either advance or thwart human
activity; and the national importance of capital was that it depended so
completely on the greatness, freedom, and power of the state, hence of the
nation, that this bond in itself would inevitably cause capital to further the
state and the nation owing to its simple instinct of self-preservation or of
reproduction. This dependence of capital on the independent free state would,
therefore, force capital in turn to champion this freedom, power, strength,
etc., of the nation.
Thus, the task of the state toward capital was
comparatively simple and clear: it only had to make certain that capital remain
the handmaiden of the state and not fancy itself the mistress of the nation.
This point of view could then be defined between two restrictive limits:
preservation of a solvent, national, and independent economy on the one hand,
assurance of the social rights of the workers on the other.
Previously I had been unable to recognize with the desired
clarity the difference between this pure capital as the end result of
productive labor and a capital whose existence and essence rests exclusively on
speculation. For this I lacked the initial inspiration, which had simply not
come my way.
But now this was provided most amply by one of the various
gentlemen lecturing in the above-mentioned course: Gottfried Feder.
For the first time in my life I heard a principled discussion of
international stock exchange and loan capital.
Right after listening to Feder's first lecture, the
thought ran through my head that I had now found the way to one of the most
essential premises for the foundation of a new party.
In my eyes Feder's merit consisted in having established
with ruthless brutality the speculative and economic character of stock
exchange and loan capital, and in having exposed its eternal and age-old
presupposition which is interest. His arguments were so sound in all
fundamental questions that their critics from the start questioned the
theoretical correctness of the idea less than they doubted the practical
possibility of its execution. But what in the eyes of others was a weakness of
Feder's arguments, in my eyes constituted their strength.
It is not the task of a theoretician to determine the
varying degrees in which a cause can be realized, but to establish the cause as
such: that is to say: he must concern himself less with the road than with the
goal. In this, however, the basic correctness of an idea is decisive and not
the difficulty of its execution. As soon as the theoretician attempts to take
account of so-called 'utility' and 'reality' instead of the absolute truth, his
work will cease to be a polar star of seeking humanity and instead will become
a prescription for everyday life. The theoretician of a movement must lay down
its goal, the politician strive for its fulfillment. The thinking of the one,
therefore, will be determined by eternal truth, the actions of the other more
by the practical reality of the moment. The greatness of the one lies in the
absolute abstract soundness of his idea, that of the other in his correct
attitude toward the given facts and their advantageous application; and in this
the theoretician's aim must serve as his guiding star. While the touchstone for
the stature of a politician may be regarded as the success of his plans and
acts-in other words, the degree to which they become reality-the realization of
the theoretician's ultimate purpose can never be realized, since, though human
thought can apprehend truths and set up crystal-clear aims, complete
fulfillment will fail due to the general imperfection and inadequacy of man.
The more abstractly correct and hence powerful the idea will be, the more
impossible remains its complete fulfillment as long as it continues to depend
on human beings. Therefore, the stature of the theoretician must not be
measured by the fulfillment of his aims, but by their soundness and the
influence they have had on the development of humanity. If this were not so,
the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men of this
earth, since the fulfillment of their ethical purposes will never be even
approximately complete. In its workings, even the religion of love is only the
weak reflection of the will of its exalted founder; its significance, however,
lies in the direction which it attempted to give to a universal human
development of culture, ethics, and morality.
The enormous difference between the tasks of the
theoretician and the politician is also the reason why a union of both in one
person is almost never found. This is especially true of the so-called
'successful' politician of small format, whose activity for the most part is
only an 'art of the possible,' as Bismarck rather modestly characterized
politics in general. The freer such a 'politician' keeps himself from great
ideas, the easier and often the more visible, but always the more rapid, his
successes will be. To be sure, they are dedicated to earthly transitoriness and
sometimes do not survive the death of their fathers. The work of such
politicians, by and large, is unimportant nor posterity, since their successes
in the present are based solely on keeping at a distance all really great and
profound problems and ideas, which as such would only have been of value for
later generations.
The execution of such aims, which have value and
significance for the most distant times, usually brings little reward to the
man who champions them and rarely finds understanding among the great masses,
who for the moment have more understanding for beer and milk regulations than
for farsighted plans for the future, whose realization can only occur far
hence, and whose benefits will be reaped only by posterity.
Thus, from a certain vanity, which is always a cousin of
stupidity, the great mass of politicians will keep far removed from all really
weighty plans for the future, in order not to lose the momentary sympathy of
the great mob. The success and significance of such a politician lie then
exclusively in the present, and do not exist for posterity. But small minds are
little troubled by this; they are content.
With the theoretician conditions are different. His
importance lies almost always solely in the future, for not seldom he is what
is described by the world as 'unworldly.' For if the art of the politician is
really the art of the possible, the theoretician is one of those of whom it can
be said that they are pleasing to the gods only if they demand and want the
impossible. He will almost always have to renounce the recognition of the
present, but in return, provided his ideas are immortal, will harvest the fame
of posterity.
In long periods of humanity, it may happen once that the
politician is wedded to the theoretician. The more profound this fusion,
however, the greater are the obstacles opposing the work of the politician. He
no longer works for necessities which will be understood by the first best
shopkeeper, but for aims which only the fewest comprehend. Therefore, his life
is torn by love and hate. The protest of the present which does not understand
the man, struggles with the recognition of posterity-for which he works.
For
the greater a man's works for the future, the less the present can comprehend
them; the harder his fight, and the rarer success. If, however, once in
centuries success does come to a man, perhaps in his latter days a faint beam
of his coming glory may shine upon him. To be sure, these great men are only
the Marathon runners of history; the laurel wreath of the present touches only
the brow of the dying hero.
Among them must be counted the great warriors in this
world who, though not understood by the present, are nevertheless prepared to
carry the fight for their ideas and ideals to their end. They are the men who
some day will be closest to the heart of the people; it almost seems as though
every individual feels the duty of compensating in the past for the sins which
the present once committed against the great. Their life and work are followed
with admiring gratitude and emotion, and especially in days of gloom they have
the power to raise up broken hearts and despairing souls.
To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but
all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin
Luther as well as Richard Wagner.
As I listened to Gottfried Feder's first lecture about
the 'breaking of interest slavery,' I knew at once that this was a theoretical
truth which would inevitably be of immense importance for the future of the
German people. The sharp separation of stock exchange capital from the national
economy offered the possibility of opposing the internationalization of the
German economy without at the same time menacing the foundations of an
independent national self-maintenance by a struggle against all capital. The
development of Germany was much too clear in my eyes for me not to know that
the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile nations, but
against international capital. In Feder's lecture I sensed a powerful slogan
for this coming struggle.
And here again later developments proved how correct our
sentiment of those days was. Today the know-it-alls among our
bourgeois
politicians no longer laugh at us: today even they, in so far as they are not
conscious liars, see that international stock exchange capital was not only the
greatest agitator for the War, but that especially, now that the fight is over,
it spares no effort to turn the peace into a hell.
The fight against international finance and loan capital
became the most important point in the program of the German nation's struggle
for its economic independence and freedom.
As regards the objections of so-called practical men, they
can be answered as follows: All fears regarding the terrible economic
consequences of the ' breaking of interest slavery ' are superfluous; for, in
the first place, the previous economic prescriptions have turned out very badly
for the German people, and your positions on the problems of national
self-maintenance remind us strongly of the reports of similar experts in former
times, for example, those of the Bavarian medical board on the question of
introducing the railroad. It is well known that none of the fears of this
exalted corporation were later realized: the travelers in the trains of the new
'steam horse ' did not get dizzy, the onlookers did not get sick, and the board
fences to hide the new invention from sight were given up-only the board fences
around the brains of all so-called 'experts' were preserved for
posterity.
In the second place, the following should be noted: every
idea, even the best, becomes a danger if it parades as a purpose in itself,
being in reality only a means to one. For me and all true National Socialists
there is but one doctrine: people and fatherland.
What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and
reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the
purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that
our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the
creator of the universe.
Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all
knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this
point of view and used or rejected according to its utility. Then no theory
will stiffen into a dead doctrine, since it is life alone that all things must
serve.
Thus, it was the conclusions of Gottfried Feder that caused me to
delve into the fundamentals of this field with which I had previously not been
very familiar.
I began to study again, and now for the first time really
achieved an understanding of the content of the Jew Karl Marx's life effort.
Only now did his Capital become really intelligible to me, and also the
struggle of the Social Democracy against the national economy, which aims only
to prepare the ground for the domination of truly international finance and
stock exchange capital.
But also in another respect these courses were of the
greatest consequence to me.
One day I asked for the floor. One of the participants
felt obliged to break a lance for the Jews and began to defend them in lengthy
arguments. This aroused me to an answer. The overwhelming majority of the
students present took my standpoint The result was that a few days later I was
sent into a Munich regiment as a so-called 'educational officer.'
Discipline among the men was still comparatively weak at
that time. It suffered from the after-effects of the period of soldiers'
councils. Only very slowly and cautiously was it possible to replace voluntary
obedience-the pretty name that was given to the pig-sty under Kurt Eisner-by
the old military discipline and subordination. Accordingly, the men were now
expected to learn to feel and think in a national and patriotic way. In these
two directions lay the field of my new activity.
I started out with the greatest enthusiasm and love. For
all at once I was offered an opportunity of speaking before a larger audience;
and the thing that I had always presumed from pure feeling without knowing it
was now corroborated: I could 'speak.' My voice, too, had grown so much better
that I could be sufficiently understood at least in every corner of the small
squad rooms.
No task could make me happier than this, for now before
being discharged I was able to perform useful services to the institution which
had been so close to my heart: the army.
And I could boast of some success: in the course of my
lectures I led many hundreds, indeed thousands, of comrades back to their
people and fatherland. I 'nationalized' the troops and was thus also able to
help strengthen the general discipline.
Here again I became acquainted with a number of
like-minded comrades, who later began to form the nucleus of the new
movement.