Chapter IX: The 'German Workers'
Party'
ONE DAY I received orders from my headquarters to find out what was
behind an apparently political organization which was planning to hold a
meeting within th next few days under the name of 'German Workers' Party'-with
Gottfried Feder as one of the speakers. I was told to go and take a look at the
organization and then make a report.
The curiosity of the army toward political parties in
those days was more than understandable. The revolution had given the soldiers
the right of political activity, and it was just the most inexperienced among
them who made the most ample use of it. Not until the moment when the Center
and the Social Democracy were forced to recognize, to their own grief, that the
sympathies of the soldiers were beginning to turn away from the revolutionary
parties toward the national movement and reawakening, did they see fit to
deprive the troops of suffrage again and prohibit their political
activity.
It was illuminating that the Center and the Marxists
should have taken this measure, for if they had not undertaken this curtailment
of ' civil rights '-as the political equality of the soldiers after the
revolution was called-within a few years there would have been no revolution,
and hence no more national dishonor and disgrace. The troops were then well on
their way toward ridding the nation of its leeches and the stooges of the
Entente within our walls. The fact that the so-called 'national' parties voted
enthusiastically for the correction of the previous views of the November
criminals, and thus helped to blunt the instrument of a national rising, again
showed what the eternally doctrinaire ideas of these innocents among innocents
can lead to. This bourgeoisie was really suffering from mental senility; in all
seriousness they harbored the opinion that the army would again become what it
had been, to wit, a stronghold of German military power; while the Center and
Marxism planned only to tear out its dangerous national poison fang, without
which, however, an army remains forever a police force, but is not a troop
capable of fighting an enemy-as has been amply proved in the time that
followed.
Or did our 'national politicians' believe that the
development of the army could have been other than national? That would have
been confoundedly like the gentlemen and is what comes of not being a soldier
in war but a big-mouth; in other words, a parliamentarian with no notion of
what goes on in the hearts of men who are reminded by the most colossal past
that they were once the best soldiers in the world.
And so I decided to attend the above-mentioned meeting of
this party which up till then had been entirely unknown to me too.
In the evening when I entered the 'Leiber Room' of the
former Sterneckerbrau in Munich, I found some twenty to twenty-five people
present, chiefly from the lower classes of the population.
Feder's lecture
was known to me from the courses, so I was able to devote myself to an
inspection of the organization itself.
My impression was neither good nor
bad; a new organization like so many others. This was a time in which anyone
who was not satisfied with developments and no longer had any confidence in the
existing parties felt called upon to found a new party. Everywhere these
organizations sprang out of the ground, only to vanish silently after a time.
The founders for the most part had no idea what it means to make a party-let
alone a movement out of a club. And so these organizations nearly always stifle
automatically in their absurd philistinism.
I judged the 'German Workers' Party' no differently. When
Feder finally stopped talking, I was happy. I had seen enough and wanted to
leave when the free discussion period, which was now announced, moved me to
remain, after all. But here, too everything seemed to run along insignificantly
until suddenly a 'professor' took the floor; he first questioned the soundness
of Feder's arguments and then-after Feder replied very well- suddenly appealed
to 'the facts,' but not without recommending most urgently that the young party
take up the 'separation' of Bavaria from 'Prussia' as a particularly important
programmatic point. With bold effrontery the man maintained that in this case
German-Austria would at once join Bavaria, that the peace would then become
much better, and more similar nonsense. At this point I could not help
demanding the floor and giving the learned gentleman my opinion on this
point-with the result that the previous speaker, even before I was finished,
left the hall like a wet poodle. As I spoke, the audience had listened with
astonished faces, and only as I was beginning to say good night to the
assemblage and go away did a man come leaping after me, introduce himself (I
had not quite understood his name), and press a little booklet into my hand,
apparently a political pamphlet, with the urgent request that I read
it.
This was very agreeable to me, for now I had reason to hope that I
might become acquainted with this dull organization in a simpler way, without
having to attend any more such interesting meetings. Incidentally this apparent
worker had made a good impression on me. And with this I left the hall.
At
that time I was still living in the barracks of the Second Infantry Regiment in
a little room that still very distinctly bore the traces of the revolution.
During the day I was out, mostly with the Forty-First Rifle Regiment, or at
meetings, or lectures in some other army unit, etc. Only at night did I sleep
in my quarters. Since I regularly woke up before five o'clock in the morning, I
had gotten in the habit of putting a few left-overs or crusts of bread on the
floor for the mice which amused themselves in my little room, and watching the
droll little beasts chasing around after these choice morsels. I had known so
much poverty in my life that I was well able to imagine the hunger, and hence
also the pleasure, of the little creatures.
At about five o'clock in the morning after this meeting,
I thus lay awake in my cot, watching the chase and bustle. Since I could no
longer fall asleep, I suddenly remembered the past evening and my mind fell on
the booklet which the worker had given me. I began to read. It was a little
pamphlet in which the author, this same worker, described how he had returned
to national thinking out of the Babel of Marxist and trade-unionist phrases;
hence also the title: My Political Awakening.l Once I had begun, I read the
little book through with interest; for it reflected a process similar to the
one which I myself had gone through twelve years before. Involuntarily I saw my
own development come to life before my eyes. In the course of the day I
reflected a few times on the matter and was finally about to put it aside when,
less than a week later, much to my surprise, I received a postcard saying that
I had been accepted in the German Workers' Party; I was requested to express
myself on the subject and for this purpose to attend a committee meeting of
this party on the following Wednesday.
I must admit that I was astonished at this way of
'winning' members and I didn't know whether to be angry or to laugh. I had no
intention of joining a ready-made party, but wanted to found one of my own.
What they asked of me was presumptuous and out of the question.
I was about to send the gentlemen my answer in writing
when curiosity won out and I decided to appear on the appointed day to explain
my reasons by word of mouth.
Wednesday came. The tavern in which the said meeting was
to take place was the 'Aites Rosenbad' in the Herrenstrasse, a very run-down
place that no one seemed to stray into more than once in a blue moon. No
wonder, in the year 1919 when the menu of even the larger restaurants could
offer only the scantiest and most modest allurements. Up to this time this
tavern had been totally unknown to me.
I went through the ill-lit dining room in which not a
soul was sitting, opened the door to the back room, and the 'session' was
before me. In the dim light of a broken-down gas lamp four young people sat at
a table, among them the author of the little pamphlet, who at once greeted me
most joyfully and bade me welcome as a new member of the German Workers'
Party
Really, I was somewhat taken aback. As I was now informed that the
actual 'national chairman' had not yet arrived, I decided to wait with my
declaration. This gentleman finally appeared. It was the same who had presided
at the meeting in the Sterneckerbrau on the occasion of Feder's lecture
Meanwhile, I had again become very curious, and waited expectantly
for what was to come. Now at least I came to know the names of the individual
gentlemen. The chairman of the 'national organization' was a Herr Harrer, that
of the Munich District, Anton Drexler.
The minutes of the last meeting were read and the
secretary was given a vote of confidence. Next came the treasury report- all in
all the association possessed seven marks and fifty pfennigs p; for which
the treasurer received a vote of general confidence. This, too, was entered in
the minutes. Then the first chairman read the answers to a letter from Kiel,
one from Dusseldorf, and one from Berlin, and everyone expressed approval. Next
a report was given on the incoming mail: a letter from Berlin, one from
Dusseldorf and one from Kiel, whose arrival seemed to be received with great
satisfaction. This growing correspondence was interpreted as the best and most
visible sign of the spreading importance of the German Workers' Party, and
then-then there was a long deliberation with regard to the answers to be
made.
Terrible, terrible! This was club life of the worst manner and sort.
Was I to join this organization?
Next, new memberships were discussed; in other words, my
capture was taken up.
I now began to ask questions-but, aside from a few
directives, there was nothing, no program, no leaflet, no printed matter at
all, no membership cards, not even a miserable rubber stamp, only obvious good
faith and good intentions.
I had stopped smiling, for what was this if not a typical
sign of the complete helplessness and total despair of all existing parties,
their programs, their purposes, and their activity? The thing that drove these
few young people to activity that was outwardly so absurd was only the
emanation of their inner voice, which more instinctively than consciously
showed them that all parties up till then were suited neither for raising up
the German nation nor for curing its inner wounds. I quickly read the typed
'directives' and in them I saw more seeking than knowledge. Much was vague or
unclear, much was missing, but nothing was present which could not have passed
as a sign of a struggling realization.
I knew what these men felt: it was the longing for a new
movement which should be more than a party in the previous sense of the
wold.
That evening when I returned to the barracks I had formed my judgment
of this association.
I was facing the hardest question of my life: should I
join or should I decline?
Reason could advise me only to decline, but my feeling
left me no rest, and as often as I tried to remember the absurdity of this
whole club, my feeling argued for it.
I was restless in the days that followed.
I began to ponder back and forth. I had long been resolved
to engage in political activity; that this could be done only in a new movement
was likewise clear to me, only the impetus to act had hitherto been lacking. I
am not one of those people who begin something today and lay it down tomorrow,
if possible taking up something else again. This very conviction among others
was the main reason why it was so hard for me to make up my mind to join such a
new organization. I knew that for me a decision would be for good, with no
turning back. For me it was no passing game but grim earnest. Even then I had
an instinctive revulsion toward men who start everything and never carry
anything out These jacks-of-all-trades were loathsome to me. I regarded the
activity of such people as worse than doing nothing.
And this way of thinking constituted one of the main
reasons why I could not make up my mind as easily as some others do to found a
cause which either had to become everything or else would do better not to
exist at all.
Fate itself now seemed to give me a hint. I should never
have gone into one of the existing large parties, and later on I shall go into
the reasons for this more closely. This absurd little organization with its few
members seemed to me to possess the one advantage that it had not frozen into
an 'organization,' but left the individual an opportunity for real personal
activity. Here it was still possible to work, and the smaller the movement, the
more readily it could be put into the proper form. Here the content, the goal,
and the road could still be determined, which in the existing great parties was
impossible from the outset.
The longer I tried to think it over, the more the
conviction grew in me that through just such a little movement the rise of the
nation could some day be organized, but never through the political
parliamentary parties which clung far too greatly to the old conceptions or
even shared in the profits of the new regime. For it was a new philosophy and
not a new election slogan that had to be proclaimed.
Truly a very grave decision-to begin transforming this
intention into reality!
What prerequisites did I myself bring to this
task?
That I was poor and without means seemed to me the most bearable
part of it, but it was harder that I was numbered among the nameless, that I
was one of the millions whom chance permits to live or summons out of existence
without even their closest neighbors condescending to take any notice of it. In
addition, there was the difficulty which inevitably arose from my lack of
schooling.
The so called 'intelligentsia' always looks down with a
really limitless condescension on anyone who has not been dragged through the
obligatory schools and had the necessary knowledge pumped into him. The
question has never been: What are the man's abilities? but: What has he
learned? To these 'educated' people the biggest empty-head, if he is wrapped in
enough diplomas, is worth more than the brightest boy who happens to lack these
costly envelopes. And so it was easy for me to imagine how this ' educated '
world would confront me, and in this I erred only in so far as even then I
still regarded people as better than in cold reality they for the most part
unfortunately are. As they are, to be sure, the exceptions, as everywhere else,
shine all the more brightly. Thereby, however, I learned always to distinguish
between the eternal students and the men of real ability.
After two days of agonized pondering and reflection, I
finally came to the conviction that I had to take this step.
It was the most decisive resolve of my life. From here
there was and could be no turning back.
And so I registered as a member of the German Workers'
Party and received a provisional membership card with the number
7.
Party'
ONE DAY I received orders from my headquarters to find out what was
behind an apparently political organization which was planning to hold a
meeting within th next few days under the name of 'German Workers' Party'-with
Gottfried Feder as one of the speakers. I was told to go and take a look at the
organization and then make a report.
The curiosity of the army toward political parties in
those days was more than understandable. The revolution had given the soldiers
the right of political activity, and it was just the most inexperienced among
them who made the most ample use of it. Not until the moment when the Center
and the Social Democracy were forced to recognize, to their own grief, that the
sympathies of the soldiers were beginning to turn away from the revolutionary
parties toward the national movement and reawakening, did they see fit to
deprive the troops of suffrage again and prohibit their political
activity.
It was illuminating that the Center and the Marxists
should have taken this measure, for if they had not undertaken this curtailment
of ' civil rights '-as the political equality of the soldiers after the
revolution was called-within a few years there would have been no revolution,
and hence no more national dishonor and disgrace. The troops were then well on
their way toward ridding the nation of its leeches and the stooges of the
Entente within our walls. The fact that the so-called 'national' parties voted
enthusiastically for the correction of the previous views of the November
criminals, and thus helped to blunt the instrument of a national rising, again
showed what the eternally doctrinaire ideas of these innocents among innocents
can lead to. This bourgeoisie was really suffering from mental senility; in all
seriousness they harbored the opinion that the army would again become what it
had been, to wit, a stronghold of German military power; while the Center and
Marxism planned only to tear out its dangerous national poison fang, without
which, however, an army remains forever a police force, but is not a troop
capable of fighting an enemy-as has been amply proved in the time that
followed.
Or did our 'national politicians' believe that the
development of the army could have been other than national? That would have
been confoundedly like the gentlemen and is what comes of not being a soldier
in war but a big-mouth; in other words, a parliamentarian with no notion of
what goes on in the hearts of men who are reminded by the most colossal past
that they were once the best soldiers in the world.
And so I decided to attend the above-mentioned meeting of
this party which up till then had been entirely unknown to me too.
In the evening when I entered the 'Leiber Room' of the
former Sterneckerbrau in Munich, I found some twenty to twenty-five people
present, chiefly from the lower classes of the population.
Feder's lecture
was known to me from the courses, so I was able to devote myself to an
inspection of the organization itself.
My impression was neither good nor
bad; a new organization like so many others. This was a time in which anyone
who was not satisfied with developments and no longer had any confidence in the
existing parties felt called upon to found a new party. Everywhere these
organizations sprang out of the ground, only to vanish silently after a time.
The founders for the most part had no idea what it means to make a party-let
alone a movement out of a club. And so these organizations nearly always stifle
automatically in their absurd philistinism.
I judged the 'German Workers' Party' no differently. When
Feder finally stopped talking, I was happy. I had seen enough and wanted to
leave when the free discussion period, which was now announced, moved me to
remain, after all. But here, too everything seemed to run along insignificantly
until suddenly a 'professor' took the floor; he first questioned the soundness
of Feder's arguments and then-after Feder replied very well- suddenly appealed
to 'the facts,' but not without recommending most urgently that the young party
take up the 'separation' of Bavaria from 'Prussia' as a particularly important
programmatic point. With bold effrontery the man maintained that in this case
German-Austria would at once join Bavaria, that the peace would then become
much better, and more similar nonsense. At this point I could not help
demanding the floor and giving the learned gentleman my opinion on this
point-with the result that the previous speaker, even before I was finished,
left the hall like a wet poodle. As I spoke, the audience had listened with
astonished faces, and only as I was beginning to say good night to the
assemblage and go away did a man come leaping after me, introduce himself (I
had not quite understood his name), and press a little booklet into my hand,
apparently a political pamphlet, with the urgent request that I read
it.
This was very agreeable to me, for now I had reason to hope that I
might become acquainted with this dull organization in a simpler way, without
having to attend any more such interesting meetings. Incidentally this apparent
worker had made a good impression on me. And with this I left the hall.
At
that time I was still living in the barracks of the Second Infantry Regiment in
a little room that still very distinctly bore the traces of the revolution.
During the day I was out, mostly with the Forty-First Rifle Regiment, or at
meetings, or lectures in some other army unit, etc. Only at night did I sleep
in my quarters. Since I regularly woke up before five o'clock in the morning, I
had gotten in the habit of putting a few left-overs or crusts of bread on the
floor for the mice which amused themselves in my little room, and watching the
droll little beasts chasing around after these choice morsels. I had known so
much poverty in my life that I was well able to imagine the hunger, and hence
also the pleasure, of the little creatures.
At about five o'clock in the morning after this meeting,
I thus lay awake in my cot, watching the chase and bustle. Since I could no
longer fall asleep, I suddenly remembered the past evening and my mind fell on
the booklet which the worker had given me. I began to read. It was a little
pamphlet in which the author, this same worker, described how he had returned
to national thinking out of the Babel of Marxist and trade-unionist phrases;
hence also the title: My Political Awakening.l Once I had begun, I read the
little book through with interest; for it reflected a process similar to the
one which I myself had gone through twelve years before. Involuntarily I saw my
own development come to life before my eyes. In the course of the day I
reflected a few times on the matter and was finally about to put it aside when,
less than a week later, much to my surprise, I received a postcard saying that
I had been accepted in the German Workers' Party; I was requested to express
myself on the subject and for this purpose to attend a committee meeting of
this party on the following Wednesday.
I must admit that I was astonished at this way of
'winning' members and I didn't know whether to be angry or to laugh. I had no
intention of joining a ready-made party, but wanted to found one of my own.
What they asked of me was presumptuous and out of the question.
I was about to send the gentlemen my answer in writing
when curiosity won out and I decided to appear on the appointed day to explain
my reasons by word of mouth.
Wednesday came. The tavern in which the said meeting was
to take place was the 'Aites Rosenbad' in the Herrenstrasse, a very run-down
place that no one seemed to stray into more than once in a blue moon. No
wonder, in the year 1919 when the menu of even the larger restaurants could
offer only the scantiest and most modest allurements. Up to this time this
tavern had been totally unknown to me.
I went through the ill-lit dining room in which not a
soul was sitting, opened the door to the back room, and the 'session' was
before me. In the dim light of a broken-down gas lamp four young people sat at
a table, among them the author of the little pamphlet, who at once greeted me
most joyfully and bade me welcome as a new member of the German Workers'
Party
Really, I was somewhat taken aback. As I was now informed that the
actual 'national chairman' had not yet arrived, I decided to wait with my
declaration. This gentleman finally appeared. It was the same who had presided
at the meeting in the Sterneckerbrau on the occasion of Feder's lecture
Meanwhile, I had again become very curious, and waited expectantly
for what was to come. Now at least I came to know the names of the individual
gentlemen. The chairman of the 'national organization' was a Herr Harrer, that
of the Munich District, Anton Drexler.
The minutes of the last meeting were read and the
secretary was given a vote of confidence. Next came the treasury report- all in
all the association possessed seven marks and fifty pfennigs p; for which
the treasurer received a vote of general confidence. This, too, was entered in
the minutes. Then the first chairman read the answers to a letter from Kiel,
one from Dusseldorf, and one from Berlin, and everyone expressed approval. Next
a report was given on the incoming mail: a letter from Berlin, one from
Dusseldorf and one from Kiel, whose arrival seemed to be received with great
satisfaction. This growing correspondence was interpreted as the best and most
visible sign of the spreading importance of the German Workers' Party, and
then-then there was a long deliberation with regard to the answers to be
made.
Terrible, terrible! This was club life of the worst manner and sort.
Was I to join this organization?
Next, new memberships were discussed; in other words, my
capture was taken up.
I now began to ask questions-but, aside from a few
directives, there was nothing, no program, no leaflet, no printed matter at
all, no membership cards, not even a miserable rubber stamp, only obvious good
faith and good intentions.
I had stopped smiling, for what was this if not a typical
sign of the complete helplessness and total despair of all existing parties,
their programs, their purposes, and their activity? The thing that drove these
few young people to activity that was outwardly so absurd was only the
emanation of their inner voice, which more instinctively than consciously
showed them that all parties up till then were suited neither for raising up
the German nation nor for curing its inner wounds. I quickly read the typed
'directives' and in them I saw more seeking than knowledge. Much was vague or
unclear, much was missing, but nothing was present which could not have passed
as a sign of a struggling realization.
I knew what these men felt: it was the longing for a new
movement which should be more than a party in the previous sense of the
wold.
That evening when I returned to the barracks I had formed my judgment
of this association.
I was facing the hardest question of my life: should I
join or should I decline?
Reason could advise me only to decline, but my feeling
left me no rest, and as often as I tried to remember the absurdity of this
whole club, my feeling argued for it.
I was restless in the days that followed.
I began to ponder back and forth. I had long been resolved
to engage in political activity; that this could be done only in a new movement
was likewise clear to me, only the impetus to act had hitherto been lacking. I
am not one of those people who begin something today and lay it down tomorrow,
if possible taking up something else again. This very conviction among others
was the main reason why it was so hard for me to make up my mind to join such a
new organization. I knew that for me a decision would be for good, with no
turning back. For me it was no passing game but grim earnest. Even then I had
an instinctive revulsion toward men who start everything and never carry
anything out These jacks-of-all-trades were loathsome to me. I regarded the
activity of such people as worse than doing nothing.
And this way of thinking constituted one of the main
reasons why I could not make up my mind as easily as some others do to found a
cause which either had to become everything or else would do better not to
exist at all.
Fate itself now seemed to give me a hint. I should never
have gone into one of the existing large parties, and later on I shall go into
the reasons for this more closely. This absurd little organization with its few
members seemed to me to possess the one advantage that it had not frozen into
an 'organization,' but left the individual an opportunity for real personal
activity. Here it was still possible to work, and the smaller the movement, the
more readily it could be put into the proper form. Here the content, the goal,
and the road could still be determined, which in the existing great parties was
impossible from the outset.
The longer I tried to think it over, the more the
conviction grew in me that through just such a little movement the rise of the
nation could some day be organized, but never through the political
parliamentary parties which clung far too greatly to the old conceptions or
even shared in the profits of the new regime. For it was a new philosophy and
not a new election slogan that had to be proclaimed.
Truly a very grave decision-to begin transforming this
intention into reality!
What prerequisites did I myself bring to this
task?
That I was poor and without means seemed to me the most bearable
part of it, but it was harder that I was numbered among the nameless, that I
was one of the millions whom chance permits to live or summons out of existence
without even their closest neighbors condescending to take any notice of it. In
addition, there was the difficulty which inevitably arose from my lack of
schooling.
The so called 'intelligentsia' always looks down with a
really limitless condescension on anyone who has not been dragged through the
obligatory schools and had the necessary knowledge pumped into him. The
question has never been: What are the man's abilities? but: What has he
learned? To these 'educated' people the biggest empty-head, if he is wrapped in
enough diplomas, is worth more than the brightest boy who happens to lack these
costly envelopes. And so it was easy for me to imagine how this ' educated '
world would confront me, and in this I erred only in so far as even then I
still regarded people as better than in cold reality they for the most part
unfortunately are. As they are, to be sure, the exceptions, as everywhere else,
shine all the more brightly. Thereby, however, I learned always to distinguish
between the eternal students and the men of real ability.
After two days of agonized pondering and reflection, I
finally came to the conviction that I had to take this step.
It was the most decisive resolve of my life. From here
there was and could be no turning back.
And so I registered as a member of the German Workers'
Party and received a provisional membership card with the number
7.
Chapter X: Causes of the
Collapse
THE EXTENT of the fall of a body is always measured by the distance
between its momentary position and the one it originally occupied. The same is
true of nations and states. A decisive significance must be ascribed to their
previous position or rather elevation. Only what is accustomed to rise above
the common limit can fall and crash to a manifest low This is what makes the
collapse of the Reich so hard and terrible for every thinking and feeling man,
since it brought a crash from heights which today, in view of the depths of our
present degradation, are scarcely conceivable.
The very founding of the Reich seemed gilded by the magic
of an event which uplifted the entire nation. After a series of incomparable
victories, a Reich was born for the sons and grandsons-a reward for immortal
heroism. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it matters not, the Germans all
had the feeling that this Reich, which did not owe its existence to the
trickery of parliamentary fractions, towered above the measure of other states
by the very exalted manner of its founding; for not in the cackling of a
parliamentary battle of words, but in the thunder and rumbling of the front
surrounding Paris was the solemn act performed: a proclamation of our will,
declaring that the Germans, princes and people, were resolved in the future to
constitute a Reich and once again to raise the imperial crown to symbolic
heights. And this was not done by cowardly murder; no deserters and slackers
were the founders of the Bismarckian state, but the regiments at the
front.
This unique birth and baptism of fire in themselves surrounded the
Reich with a halo of historic glory such as only the oldest states-and they but
seldom-could boast.
And what an ascent now began!
Freedom on the outside provided daily bread within. The
nation became rich in numbers and earthly goods. The honor of the state, and
with it that of the whole people, was protected and shielded by an army which
could point most visibly to the difference from the former German
Union.
So deep is the downfall of the Reich and the German people that
everyone, as though seized by dizziness, seems to have lost feeling and
consciousness; people can scarcely remember the former height, so dreamlike and
unreal do the old greatness and glory seem compared to our present-day misery
Thus it is understandable that people are so blinded by the sublime that they
forget to look for the omens of the gigantic collapse which must after all have
been somehow present.
Of course, this applies only to those for whom Germany
was more than a mere stop-over for making and spending money, since they alone
can feel the present condition as a collapse, while to the others it is the
long-desired fulfillment of their hitherto unsatisfied desires.
The omens were then present and visible, though but very
few attempted to draw a certain lesson from them.
Yet today this is more necessary than ever.
The cure of a sickness can only be achieved if its cause
is known, and the same is true of curing political evils. To be sure, the
outward form of a sickness, its symptom which strikes the eye, is easier to see
and discover than the inner cause. And this is the reason why so many people
never go beyond the recognition of external effects and even confuse them with
the cause, attempting, indeed, to deny the existence of the latter. Thus most
of us primarily see the German collapse only in the general economic misery and
the consequences arising therefrom. Nearly every one of us must personally
suffer these-a cogent ground for every individual to understand the
catastrophe. Much less does the great mass see the collapse in its political,
cultural, ethical, and moral aspect. In this the feeling and understanding of
many fail completely.
That this should be so among the broad masses may still
pass, but for even the circles of the intelligentsia to regard the German
collapse as primarily an 'economic catastrophe,' which can therefore be cured
by economic means, is one of the reasons why a recovery has hitherto been
impossible. Only when it is understood that here, too, economics is only of
second or third-rate importance, and the primary role falls to factors of
politics, ethics, morality, and blood, will we arrive at an understanding of
the present calamity, and thus also be able to find the ways and means for a
cure.
The question of the causes of the German collapse is, therefore, of
decisive importance, particularly for a political movement whose very goal is
supposed to be to quell the defeat.
But, in such research into the past, we
must be very careful not to confuse the more conspicuous effects with the less
visible causes.
The easiest and hence most widespread explanation of the
present misfortune is that it was brought about by the consequences of the lost
War and that therefore the War is the cause of the present evil.
There may be many who will seriously believe this
nonsense but there are still more from whose mouth such an explanation can only
be a lie and conscious falsehood. This last applies to all those who today feed
at the government's cribs. For didn't the prophets of the revolution again and
again point out most urgently to the people that it was a matter of complete
indifference to the broad masses how this War turned out? Did they not, on the
contrary, gravely assure us that at most the 'big capitalist' could have an
interest in a victorious end of the gigantic struggle of nations, but never the
German people as such, let alone the German worker? Indeed, didn't these
apostles of world conciliation maintain the exact opposite: didn't they say
that by a German defeat 'militarism' would be destroyed, but that the German
nation would celebrate its most glorious resurrection? Didn't these circles
glorify the benevolence of the Entente, and didn't they shove tile blame for
the whole bloody struggle on Germany? And could they have done this without
declaring that even military defeat would be without special consequences for
the nation? Wasn't the whole revolution embroidered with the phrase that it
would prevent the victory of the German flag, but that through it the German
people would at last begin advancing toward freedom at home and abroad?
Will you claim that this was not so, you wretched, lying
scoundrels?
It takes a truly Jewish effrontery to attribute the blame
for the collapse solely to the military defeat when the central organ of all
traitors to the nation, the Berlin Vorwarts, wrote that this time the German
people must not bring its banner home victorious!
And now this is supposed to be the cause of our
collapse?
Of course, it would be perfectly futile to fight with such forgetful
liars. I wouldn't waste my words on them if unfortunately this nonsense were
not parroted by so many thoughtless people, who do not seem inspired by malice
or conscious insincerity. Furthermore, these discussions are intended to give
our propaganda fighters an instrument which is very much needed at a time when
the spoken word is often twisted in our mouths.
Thus we have the following to say to the assertion that
the lost War is responsible for the German collapse:
Certainly the loss of the War was of terrible importance
for the future of our fatherland; however, its loss is not a cause, but itself
only a consequence of causes. It was perfectly clear to everyone with insight
and without malice that an unfortunate end of this struggle for life and death
would inevitably lead to extremely devastating consequences. But unfortunately
there were also people who seemed to lack this insight at the right time or
who, contrary to their better knowledge, contested and denied this truth. Such
for the most part were those who, after the fulfillment of their secret wish,
suddenly and belatedly became aware of the catastrophe which had been brought
about by themselves among others. They are guilty of the collapse-not the lost
War as it suddenly pleases them to say and believe. For its loss was, after
all, only the consequence of their activity and not, as they now try to say,
the result of 'bad' leadership. The foe did not consist of cowards either; he,
too, knew how to die. His number from the first day was greater than that of
the German army for he could draw on the technical armament and the arsenals of
the whole world; hence the German victories, won for four years against a whole
world, must regardless of all heroic courage and 'organization,' be attributed
solely to superior leadership, and this iS a fact which cannot be denied out of
existence. The organization and leadership of the German army were the
mightiest that the earth had ever seen. Their deficiencies lay in the limits of
all human adequacy in general.
The collapse of this army was not the cause of our
present-day misfortune, but only the consequence of other crimes, a consequence
which itself again, it must be admitted, ushered in the beginning of a further
and this time visible collapse.
The truth of this can be seen from the following:
Must a military defeat lead to so complete a collapse of a nation
and a state? Since when is this the result of an unfortunate war? Do peoples
perish in consequence of lost wars as such?
The answer to this can be very brief: always, when
military defeat iS the payment meted out to peoples for their inner rottenness,
cowardice, lack of character, in short, unworthiness. If this iS not the case,
the military defeat will rather be the inspiration of a great future
resurrection than the tombstone of a national existence.
History offers innumerable examples for the truth of this
assertion.
Unfortunately, the military defeat of the German people
is not an undeserved catastrophe, but the deserved chastisement of eternal
retribution. We more than deserved this defeat. It is only the greatest outward
symptom of decay amid a whole series of inner symptoms, which perhaps had
remained hidden and invisible to the eyes of most people, or which like
ostriches people did not want to see.
Just consider the attendant circumstances amid which the
German people accepted this defeat. Didn't many circles express the most
shameless joy at the misfortune of the fatherland? And who would do such a
thing if he does not really deserve such a punishment? Why, didn't they go even
further and brag of having finally caused the front to waver? And it was not
the enemy that did this-no, no, it was Germans who poured such disgrace upon
their heads! Can it be said that misfortune struck them unjustly? Since when do
people step forward and take the guilt for a war on themselves? And against
better knowledge and better judgment!
No, and again no. In the way in which the German people
received its defeat, we can recognize most clearly that the true cause of our
collapse must be sought in an entirely different place from the purely military
loss of a few positions or in the failure of an offensive; for if the front as
such had really flagged and if its downfall had really encompassed the doom of
the fatherland, the German people would have received the defeat quite
differently. Then they would have borne the ensuing misfortune with gritted
teeth or would have mourned it, overpowered by grief; then all hearts would
have been filled with rage and anger toward the enemy who had become victorious
through a trick of chance or the will of fate; then, like the Roman Senate, the
nation would have received the defeated divisions with the thanks of the
fatherland for the sacrifices they had made and besought them not to despair of
the Reich. The capitulation would have been signed only with the reason, while
the heart even then would have beaten for the resurrection to come.
This is how a defeat for which only fate was responsible would have
been received. Then people would not have laughed and danced, they would not
have boasted of cowardice and glorified the defeat, they would not have scoffed
at the embattled troops and dragged their banner and cockade in the mud. But
above all: then we should never have had the terrible state of affairs which
prompted a British officer, Colonel Repington, to make the contemptuous
statement: 'Of the Germans, every third man is a traitor.' No, this plague
would never have been able to rise into the stifling flood which for five years
now has been drowning the very last remnant of respect for us on the part of
the rest of the world.
This most of all shows the assertion that the lost War
was the cause of the German collapse to be a lie. No, this military collapse
was itself only the consequence of a large number of symptoms of disease and
their causes, which even in peacetime were with the German nation. This was the
first consequence, catastrophic and visible to all, of an ethical and moral
poisoning, of a diminution in the instinct of self-preservation and its
preconditions, which for many years had begun to undermine the foundations of
the people and the Reich.
It required the whole bottomless falsehood of the Jews
and their Marxist fighting organization to lay the blame for the collapse on
that very man who alone, with superhuman energy and will power, tried to
prevent the catastrophe he foresaw and save the nation from its time of deepest
humiliation and disgrace By branding Ludendorff as guilty for the loss of the
World War they took the weapon of moral right from the one dangerous accuser
who could have risen against the traitors to the fatherland. In this they
proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude of a lie always contains a
certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very
bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and
purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of
their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one,
since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that
were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads and they will not
be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous
misrepresentation in others; yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they
will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes
as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain
and stick-a fact which all the great lie-virtuosi and lying-clubs in this world
know only too well and also make the most treacherous use of.
The foremost connoisseurs of this truth regarding the
possibilities in the use of falsehood and slander have always been the Jews;
for after all, their whole existence is based on one single great lie, to wit,
that they are a religious community while actually they are a race-and what a
race ! One of the greatest minds of humanity has nailed them forever as such in
an eternally correct phrase of fundamental truth: he called them 'the great
masters of the lie.' And anyone who does not recognize this or does not want to
believe it will never in this world be able to help the truth to
victory.
For the German people it must almost be considered a great good
fortune that its period of creeping sickness was suddenly cut short by so
terrible a catastrophe, for otherwise the nation would have gone to the dogs
more slowly perhaps, but all the more certainly. The disease would have become
chronic, while in the acute form of the collapse it at least became clearly and
distinctly recognizable to a considerable number of people. It was no accident
that man mastered the plague more easily than tuberculosis. The one comes in
terrible waves of death that shake humanity to the foundations, the other
slowly and stealthily; the one leads to terrible fear, the other to gradual
indifference. The consequence is that man opposed the one with all the
ruthlessness of his energy, while he tries to control consumption with feeble
means. Thus he mastered the plague, while tuberculosis masters him.
Exactly the same is true of diseases of national bodies. If they do
not take the form of catastrophe, man slowly begins to get accustomed to them
and at length, though it may take some time, perishes all the more certainly of
them. And so it is a good fortune-though a bitter one, to be sure-when Fate
resolves to take a hand in this slow process of putrefaction and with a sudden
blow makes the victim visualize the end of his disease. For more than once,
that is what such a catastrophe amounts to Then it can easily become the cause
of a recovery beginning with the utmost determination.
But even in such a case, the prerequisite is again the
recognition of the inner grounds which cause the disease in question.
Here, too, the most important thing remains the distinction between
the causes and the conditions they call forth. This will be all the more
difficult, the longer the toxins remain in the national body and the more they
become an ingredient of it which is taken for granted. For it is easily
possible that after a certain time unquestionably harmful poisons Bill be
regarded as an ingredient of one's own nation or at best will be tolerated as a
necessary evil, so that a search for the alien virus is no longer regarded as
necessary.
Thus, in the long peace of the pre-War years, certain
harmful features had appeared and been recognized as such, though next to
nothing was done against their virus, aside from a few exceptions. And here
again these exceptions were primarily manifestations of economic life, which
struck the consciousness of the individual more strongly than the harmful
features in a number of other fields.
There were many symptoms of decay which should have
aroused serious reflection.
With respect to economics, the following should be
said:
Through the amazing increase in the German population before the
War, the question of providing the necessary daily bread stepped more and more
sharply into the foreground of all political and economic thought and action.
Unfortunately, those in power could not make up their minds to choose the only
correct solution, but thought they could reach their goal in an easier way.
When they renounced the acquisition of new soil and replaced it by the lunacy
of world economic conquest, the result was bound to be an industrialization as
boundless as it was harmful.
The first consequence of gravest importance was the
weakening of the peasant class. Proportionately as the peasant class
diminished, the mass of the big city proletariat increased more and more, until
finally the balance was completely upset.
Now the abrupt alternation between rich and poor became
really apparent. Abundance and poverty lived so close together that the saddest
consequences could and inevitably did arise. Poverty and frequent unemployment
began to play havoc with people, leaving behind them a memory of discontent and
embitterment. The consequence of this seemed to be political class division.
Despite all the economic prosperity, dissatisfaction became greater and deeper;
in fact, things came to such a pass that the conviction that 'it can't go on
like this much longer' became general, yet without people having or being able
to have any definite idea of what ought to have been done.
These were the typical symptoms of deep discontent which
sought to express themselves in this way.
But worse than this were other consequences induced by
the economization of the nation.
In proportion as economic life grew to be the dominant
mistress of the state, money became the god whom all had to serve and to whom
each man had to bow down. More and more, the gods of heaven were put into the
corner as obsolete and outmoded, and in their stead incense was burned to the
idol Mammon. A truly malignant degeneration set in; what made it most malignant
was that it began at a time when the nation, in a presumably menacing and
critical hour, needed the highest heroic attitude. Germany had to accustom
herself to the idea that some day her attempt to secure her daily bread by
means of 'peaceful economic labor' would have to be defended by the
sword.
Unfortunately, the domination of money was sanctioned even by that
authority which should have most opposed it: His Majesty the Kaiser acted most
unfortunately by drawing the aristocracy into the orbit of the new finance
capital. It must be said to his credit, however, that unfortunately even
Bismarck himself did not recognize the menacing danger in this respect. Thereby
the ideal virtues for all practical purposes had taken a position second to the
value of money, for it was clear that once a beginning had been made in this
direction, the aristocracy of the sword would in a short time inevitably be
overshadowed by the financial aristocracy. Financial operations succeed more
easily than battles. It was no longer inviting for the real hero or statesman
to be brought into relations with some old bank Jew: the man of true ment could
no longer have an interest in the bestowal of cheap decorations; he declined
them with thanks. But regarded purely from the standpoint of blood, such a
development was profoundly unfortunate: more and more, the nobility lost the
racial basis for its existence, and in large measure the designation of
'ignobility' would have been more suitable for it.
A grave economic symptom of decay was the slow
disappearance of the right of private property, and the gradual transference of
the entire economy to the ownership of stock companies.
Now for the first time labor had sunk to the level of an
object of speculation for unscrupulous Jewish business men; the alienation of
property from the wage-worker was increased ad infinitum. The stock exchange
began to triumph and prepared slowly but surely to take the life of the nation
into its guardianship and control.
The internationalization of the German economic life had
been begun even before the War through the medium of stock issues To be sure, a
part of German industry still attempted with resolution to ward off this fate.
At length, however, it, too, fell a victim to the united attack of greedy
finance capital which carried on this fight, with the special help of its most
faithful comrade, the Marxist movement.
The lasting war against German 'heavy industry' was the
visible beginning of the internationalization of German economy toward which
Marxism was striving, though this could not be carried to its ultimate end
until the victory of Marxism and the revolution. While I am writing these
words, the general attack against the German state railways has finally
succeeded, and they are now being handed over to international finance capitals
'International' Social Democracy has thus realized one of its highest
goals.
How far this 'economization' of the German people had succeeded is
most visible in the fact that after the War one of the leading heads of German
industry, and above all of commerce, was finally able to express the opinion
that economic effort as such was alone in a position to re-establish Germany.
This nonsense was poured forth at a moment when France was primarily bringing
back the curriculum of her schools to humanistic foundations in order to combat
the error that the nation and the state owed their survival to economics and
not to eternal ideal values. These words pronounced by a Stinnes created the
most incredible confusion; they were picked up at once, and with amazing
rapidity became the leitmotif of all the quacks and big-mouths that since the
revolution Fate has let loose on Germany in the capacity of
'statesmen.'
One of the worst symptoms of decay in Germany of the
pre-War era was the steadily increasing habit of doing things by halves. This
is always a consequence of uncertainty on some matter and of the cowardice
resulting from this and other grounds. This disease was-further promoted by
education.
German education before the War was afflicted with an
extraordinary number of weaknesses. It was extremely one-sided and adapted to
breeding pure 'knowledge,' with less attention to 'ability.' Even less emphasis
was laid on the development of the character of the individual-in so far as
this is possible; exceedingly little on the sense of joy in responsibility, and
none at all on the training of will and force of decision. Its results, you may
be sure, were not strong men, but compliant ' walking encyclopedias,' as we
Germans were generally looked upon and accordingly estimated before the War.
People liked the German because he was easy to make use of, but respected him
little, precisely because of his weakness of will. It was not for nothing that
more than almost any other people he was prone to lose his nationality and
fatherland. The lovely proverb, 'with hat in hand, he travels all about the
land,' tells the whole story.
This compliance became really disastrous, however, when
it determined the sole form in which the monarch could be approached; that is,
never to contradict him, but agree to anything and everything that His Majesty
condescends to do. Precisely in this place was free, manly dignity most
necessary; otherwise the monarchic institution was one day bound to perish from
all this crawling; for crawling it was and nothing else! And only miserable
crawlers and sneaks-in short, all the decadents who have always felt more at
ease around the highest thrones than sincere, decent, honorable souls-can
regard this as the sole proper form of intercourse with the bearers of the
crown! These 'most humble' creatures, to be sure, despite all their humility
before their master and source of livelihood, have always demonstrated the
greatest arrogance toward the rest of humanity, and worst of all when they pass
themselves off with shameful effrontery on their sinful fellow men as the only
'monarchists'; this is real gall such as only these ennobled or even unennobled
tapeworms are capable of! For in reality these people remained the gravediggers
of the monarchy and particularly the monarchistic idea. Nothing else is
conceivable: a man who is prepared to stand up for a cause will never and can
never be a sneak and a spineless lickspittle. Anyone who is really serious
about the preservation and furtherance of an institution will cling to it with
the last fiber of his heart and will not be able to abandon it if evils of some
sort appear in this institution. To be sure, he will not cry this out to the
whole public as the democratic 'friends' of the monarchy did in the exact same
lying way; he will most earnestly warn and attempt to influence His Majesty,
the bearer of the crown himself. He will not and must not adopt the attitude
that His Majesty remains free to act according to his own will anyway, even if
this obviously must and will lead to a catastrophe, but in such a case he will
have to protect the monarchy against the monarch, and this despite all perils.
If the value of this institution lay in the momentary person of the monarch, it
would be the worst institution that can be imagined; for monarchs only in the
rarest cases are the cream of wisdom and reason or even of character, as some
people like to claim. This is believed only by professional lickspittles and
sneaks, but all straightforward men-and these remain the most valuable men in
the state despite everything- will only feel repelled by the idea of arguing
such nonsense. For them history remains history and the truth the truth even
where monarchs are concerned. No, the good fortune to possess a great monarch
who is also a great man falls to peoples so seldom that they must be content if
the malice of Fate abstains at least from the worst possible mistakes.
Consequently, the value and importance of the monarchic idea cannot
reside in the person of the monarch himself except if Heaven decides to lay the
crown on the brow of a heroic genius like Frederick the Great or a wise
character like William I. This happens once in centuries and hardly more often.
Otherwise the idea takes precedence over the person and the meaning of this
institution must lie exclusively in the institution itself. With this the
monarch himself falls into the sphere of service. Then he, too, becomes a mere
cog in this work, to which he is obligated as such. Then he, too, must comply
with a higher purpose, and the ' monarchist' is then no longer the man who in
silence lets the bearer of the crown profane it, but the man who prevents this.
Otherwise, it would not be permissible to depose an obviously insane prince, if
the sense of the institution lay not in the idea, but in the ' sanctified '
person at any price.
Today it is really necessary to put this down, for in
recent times more and more of these creatures, to whose wretched attitude the
collapse of the monarchy must not least of all be attributed are rising out of
obscurity. With a certain naive gall, these people have started in again to
speak of nothing but 'their King'- whom only a few years ago they left in the
lurch in the critical hour and in the most despicable fashion-and are beginning
to represent every person who is not willing to agree to their lying tirades as
a bad German. And in reality they are the very same poltroons who in 1919
scattered and ran from every red armband, abandoned their King, in a twinkling
exchanged the halberd for the walking stick, put on noncommittal neckties, and
vanished without trace as peaceful ' citizens.' At one stroke they were gone,
these royal champions, and only after the revolutionary storm, thanks to the
activity of others, had subsided enough so that a man could again roar his
'Hail, hail to the King' into the breezes, these 'servants and counselors' of
the crown began again cautiously to emerge. And now they are all here again,
looking back longingly to the fieshpots of Egypt; they can hardly restrain
themselves in their loyalty to the King and their urge to do great things,
until the day when again the first red arm-band will appear, and the whole gang
of ghosts profiting from the old monarchy will again vanish like mice at the
sight of a cat!
If the monarchs were not themselves to blame for these
things, they could be most heartily pitied because of their present defenders.
In any case, they might as well know that with such knights a crown can be
lost, but no crowns gained.
This servility, however, was a flaw in our whole
education, for which we suffered most terribly in this connection. For, as its
consequence, these wretched creatures were able to maintain themselves at all
the courts and gradually undermine the foundations of the monarchy. And when
the structure finally began to totter, they evaporated. Naturally: cringers and
lickspittles do not let themselves be knocked dead for their master. That
monarchs never know this and fail to learn it almost on principle has from time
immemorial been their undoing.
One of the worst symptoms of decay was Mate increasing
cowardice in the face of responsibility, as well as the resultant
halfheartedness in all things.
To be sure, the starting point of this plague in our
country lies in large part in the parliamentary institution in which
irresponsibility of the purest breed is cultivated. Unfortunately, this plague
slowly spread to all other domains of life, most strongly to state life.
Everywhere responsibility was evaded and inadequate half-measures were
preferred as a result; for in the use of such measures personal responsibility
seems reduced to the smallest dimensions.
Just examine the attitude of the various governments
toward a number of truly injurious manifestations of our public life, and you
will easily recognize the terrible significance of this general
half-heartedness and cowardice in the face of responsibility.
I shall take only a few cases from the mass of existing
examples:
Journalistic circles in particular like to describe the press as a
'great power' in the state. As a matter of fact, its importance really is
immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education
in adulthood.
Its readers, by and large, can be divided into three
groups:
First, into those who believe everything they read;
second, into those who have ceased to believe
anything;
third, into the minds which critically examine what they read, and
judge accordingly.
Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It
consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the
simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of
professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all
those who have neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who
partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is
set before them in black and white. To them also belongs the type of lazybones
who could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental laziness seizes
gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the modest
assumption that the someone else has exerted himself considerably. Now, with
all these types, who constitute the great masses, the influence of the press
will be enormous. They are not able or willing themselves to examine what is
set before them, and as a result their whole attitude toward all the problems
of the day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of
others. This can be advantageous when their enlightenment is provided by a
serious and truth-loving party, but it is catastrophic when scoundrels and
liars provide it.
The second group is much smaller in number. It is partly
composed of elements which previously belonged to the first group, but after
long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe
anything that comes before their eyes in print. They hate every newspaper;
either they don't read it at all, or without exception fly into a rage over the
contents, since in their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods.
These people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in the
face of the truth. Consequently, they are lost for all positive, political
work.
The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the
minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught
to think independently, who try to form their own judgment on all things, and
who subject everything they read to a thorough examination and further
development of their own. They will not look at a newspaper without always
collaborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it.
Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve.
For the members of
this third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that newspaper scribblers
can put down is not very dangerous or even very important. Most of them in the
course of their lives have learned to regard every journalist as a rascal on
principle, who tells the truth only once in a blue moon. Unfortunately,
however, the importance of these splendid people lies only in their
intelligence and not in their number- a misfortune at a time when wisdom is
nothing and the majority is everything! Today, when the ballot of the masses
decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the
first: the mob of the simple or credulous.
It is of paramount interest to the state and the nation to
prevent these people from falling into the hands of bad, ignorant, or even
vicious educators. The state, therefore, has the duty of watching over their
education and preventing any mischief. It must particularly exercise strict
control over the press; for its influence on these people is by far the
strongest and most penetrating, since it is applied, not once in a while, but
over and over again. In the uniformity and constant repetition of this
instruction lies its tremendous power. If anywhere, therefore, it is here that
the state must not forget that all means must serve an end; it must not let
itself be confused by the drivel about so-called 'freedom of the press' and let
itself be talked into neglecting its duty and denying the nation the food which
it needs and which is good for it; with ruthless determination it must make
sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of
the state and the nation.
But what food did the German press of the pre-War period
dish out to the people? Was it not the worst poison that can even be imagined?
Wasn't the worst kind of pacifism injected into the heart of our people at a
time when the rest of the world was preparing to throttle Germany, slowly but
surely? Even in peacetime didn't the press inspire the minds of the people with
doubt in the right of their own state, thus from the outset limiting them in
the choice of means for its defense? Was it not the German press which knew how
to make the absurdity of 'Western democracy' palatable to our people until
finally, ensnared by all the enthusiastic tirades, they thought they could
entrust their future to a League of Nations? Did it not help to teach our
people a miserable immorality? Did it not ridicule morality and ethics as
backward and petty-bourgeois, until our people finally became 'modern'? Did it
not with its constant attacks undermine the foundations of the state's
authority until a single thrust sufficed to make the edifice collapse? Did it
not fight with all possible means against every effort to give unto the state
that which is the state's? Did it not belittle the army with constant
criticism, sabotage universal conscription, demand the refusal of military
credits, etc., until the result became inevitable?
The so-called liberal press was actively engaged in
digging the grave of the German people and the German Reich. We can pass by the
lying Marxist sheets in silence; to them lying is just as vitally necessary as
catching mice for a cat; their function is only to break the people's national
and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave's yoke of international
capital and its masters, the Jews.
And what did the state do against this mass poisoning of
the nation? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A few ridiculous decrees, a few fines
for villainy that went too far, and that was the end of it. Instead, they hoped
to curry favor with this plague by flattery, by recognition of the 'value' of
the press, its 'importance,' its 'educational mission,' and more such
nonsense-as for the Jews, they took all this with a crafty smile and
acknowledged it with sly thanks.
The reason, however, for this disgraceful failure on the
part of the state was not that it did not recognize the danger, but rather in a
cowardice crying to high Heaven and the resultant halfheartedness of all
decisions and measures. No one had the courage to use thoroughgoing radical
methods, but in this as in everything else they tinkered about with a lot of
halfway prescriptions, and instead of carrying the thrust to the heart, they at
most irritated the viper-with the result that not only did everything remain as
before, but on the contrary the power of the institutions which should have
been combated increased from year to year.
The defensive struggle of the German government at that
time against the press-mainly that of Jewish origin-which was slowly ruining
the nation was without any straight line, irresolute and above all without any
visible goal. The intelligence of the privy councilors failed completely when
it came to estimating the importance of this struggle, to choosing means or
drawing up a clear plan. Planlessly they fiddled about; sometimes, after being
bitten too badly, they locked up one of the journalistic vipers for a few weeks
or months, but they left the snakes' nest as such perfectly unmolested.
True-this resulted partly from the infinitely wily tactics of the
Jews, on the one hand, and from a stupidity and innocence such as only privy
councilors are capable of, on the other. The Jew was much too clever to allow
his entire press to be attacked uniformly. No, one part of it existed in order
to cover the other. While the Marxist papers assailed in the most dastardly way
everything that can be holy to man; while they infamously attacked the state
and the government and stirred up large sections of the people against one
another, the bourgeois-democratic papers knew how to give an appearance of
their famous objectivity, painstakingly avoided all strong words, well knowing
that empty heads can judge only by externals and never have the faculty of
penetrating the inner core, so that for them the value of a thing is measured
by this exterior instead of by the content; a human weakness to which they owe
what esteem they themselves enjoy.
For these people the Frankfurter Zeitung was the
embodiment of respectability. For it never uses coarse expressions, it rejects
all physical brutality and keeps appealing for struggle with 'intellectual'
weapons, a conception, strange to say, to which especially the least
intelligent people are most attached. This is a result of our half-education
which removes people from the instinct of Nature and pumps a certain amount of
knowledge into them, but cannot create full understanding, since for this
industry and good will alone are no use; the necessary intelligence must be
present, and what is more, it must be inborn. The ultimate wisdom is always the
understanding of the instinct '-that is: a man must never fall into the lunacy
of believing that he has really risen to be lord and master of Nature-which is
so easily induced by the conceit of half-education; he must understand the
fundamental necessity of Nature's rule, and realize how much his existence is
subjected to these laws of eternal fight and upward struggle. Then he will feel
that in a universe where planets revolve around suns, and moons turn about
planets, where force alone forever masters weakness, compelling it to be an
obedient slave or else crushing it, there can be no special laws for man. For
him, too, the eternal principles of this ultimate wisdom hold sway. He can try
to comprehend them; but escape them, never.
And it is precisely for our intellectual demi-monde that
the Jew writes his so-called intellectual press. For them the Frankfurter
Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt are made; for them their tone is chosen, and
on them they exercise their influence. Seemingly they all most sedulously avoid
any outwardly crude forms, and meanwhile from other vessels they nevertheless
pour their poison into the hearts of their readers. Amid a Gezeires 2 Of fine
sounds and phrases they lull their readers into believing that pure science or
even morality is really the motive of their acts, while in reality it is
nothing but a wily, ingenious trick for stealing the enemy's weapon against the
press from under his nose. The one variety oozes respectability, so all
soft-heads are ready to believe them when they say that the faults of others
are only trivial abuses which should never lead to an infringement of the
'freedom of the press'-their term for poisoning and lying to the people. And so
the authorities shy away from taking measures against these bandits, for they
fear that, if they did, they would at once have the ' respectable ' press
against them, a fear which is only too justified. For as soon as they attempt
to proceed against one of these shameful rags, all the others will at once take
its part, but by no means to sanction its mode of struggle, God forbid-but only
to defend the principle of freedom of the press and freedom of public opinion;
these alone must be defended. But in the face of all this shouting, the
strongest men grow weak, for does it not issue from the mouths of 'respectable'
papers?
This poison was able to penetrate the bloodstream of our people
unhindered and do its work, and the state did not possess the power to master
the disease. In the laughable half-measures which it used against the poison,
the menacing decay of the Reich was manifest. For an institution which is no
longer resolved to defend itself with all weapons has for practical purposes
abdicated. Every half-measure is a visible sign of inner decay which must and
will be followed sooner or later by outward collapse.
I believe that the present generation, properly led, will
more easily master this danger. It has experienced various things which had the
power somewhat to strengthen the nerves of those who did not lose them
entirely. In future days the Jew will certainly continue to raise a mighty
uproar in his newspapers if a hand is ever laid on his favorite nest, if an end
is put to the mischief of the press and this instrument of education is put
into the service of the state and no longer left in the hands of aliens and
enemies of the people. But I believe that this will bother us younger men less
than our fathers. A thirty-centimeter shell has always hissed more loudly than
a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers-so let them hiss!
A further example of the halfheartedness and weakness of
the leaders of pre-War Germany in meeting the most important vital questions of
the nation is the following: running parallel to the political, ethical, and
moral contamination of the people, there had been for many years a no less
terrible poisoning of the health of the national body. Especially in the big
cities, syphilis was beginning to spread more and more, while tuberculosis
steadily reaped its harvest of death throughout nearly the whole
country.
Though in both cases the consequences were terrible for the nation,
the authorities could not summon up the energy to take
decisive
measures.
Particularly with regard to syphilis, the attitude of the
leadership of the nation and the state can only be designated as total
capitulation. To fight it seriously, they would have had to take somewhat
broader measures than was actually the case. The invention of a remedy of
questionable character and its commercial exploitation can no longer help much
against this plague. Here again it was only the fight against causes that
mattered and not the elimination of the symptoms. The cause lies, primarily, in
our prostitution of love. Even if its result were not this frightful plague, it
would nevertheless be profoundly injurious to man, since the moral devastations
which accompany this degeneracy suffice to destroy a people slowly but surely.
This Jewification of our spiritual life and mammonization of our mating
instinct will sooner or later destroy our entire offspring, for the powerful
children of a natural emotion will be replaced by the miserable creatures of
financial expediency which is becoming more and more the basis and sole
prerequisite of our marriages. Love finds its outlet elsewhere.
Here, too, of course, Nature can be scorned for a certain
time, but her vengeance will not fail to appear, only it takes a time to
manifest itself, or rather: it is often recognized too late by man.
But the devastating consequences of a lasting disregard of the
natural requirements for marriage can be seen in our nobility. Here we have
before us the results of procreation based partly on purely social compulsion
and partly on financial grounds. The one leads to a general weakening, the
other to a poisoning of the blood, since every department store Jewess is
considered fit to augment the offspring of His Highness-and, indeed, the
offspring look it. In both cases complete degeneration is the
consequence.
Today our bourgeoisie strive to go the same road, and
they will end up at the same goal.
Hastily and indifferently, people tried to pass by the
unpleasant truths, as though by such an attitude events could be undone. No,
the fact that our big city population is growing more and more prostituted in
its love life cannot just be denied out of existence; it simply is so. The most
visible results of this mass contamination can, on the one hand, be found in
the insane asylums, and on the other, unfortunately, in our-children. They in
particular are the sad product of the irresistibly spreading contamination of
our sexual life; the vices of the parents are revealed in the sicknesses of the
children.
There are different ways of reconciling oneself to this unpleasant,
yes, terrible fact: the ones see nothing at all or rather want to see nothing;
this, of course, is by far the simplest and easiest 'position.' The others wrap
themselves in a saint's cloak of prudishness as absurd as it is hypocritical;
they speak of this whole field as if it were a great sin, and above all express
their profound indignation against every sinner caught in the act, then close
their eyes in pious horror to this godless plague and pray God to let sulphur
and brimstone-preferably after their own death-rain down on this whole Sodom
and Gomorrah, thus once again making an instructive example of this shameless
humanity. The third, finally, are perfectly well aware of the terrible
consequences which this plague must and will some day induce, but only shrug
their shoulders, convinced that nothing can be done against the menace, so the
only thing to do is to let things slide.
All this, to be sure, is comfortable and simple, but it
must not be forgotten that a nation will fall victim to such comfortableness.
The excuse that other peoples are no better off, it goes without saying, can
scarcely affect the fact of our own ruin, except that the feeling of seeing
others stricken by the same calamity might for many bring a mitigation of their
own pains. But then more than ever the question becomes: Which people will be
the first and only one to master this plague by its own strength, and which
nations will perish from it? And this is the crux of the whole matter. Here
again we have a touchstone of a race's value-the race which cannot stand the
test will simply die out, making place for healthier or tougher and more
resisting races. For since this question primarily regards the offspring, it is
one of those concerning which it is said with such terrible justice that the
sins of the fathers are avenged down to the tenth generation. But this applies
only to profanation of the blood and the race.
Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin
in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.
How truly wretched was the attitude of pre-War Germany on
this one very question ! What was done to check the contamination of our youth
in the big cities? What was done to attack the infection and mammonization of
our love life? What was done to combat the resulting syphilization of our
people?
This can be answered most easily by stating what should have been
done.
First of all, it was not permissible to take this question
frivolously; it had to be understood that the fortune or misfortune of
generations would depend on its solution; yes, that it could, if not had to be,
decisive for the entire future of our people. Such a realization, however,
obligated us to ruthless measures and surgical operations. What we needed most
was the conviction that first of all the whole attention of the nation had to
be concentrated upon this terrible danger, so that every single individual
could become inwardly conscious of the importance of this struggle. Truly
incisive and sometimes almost unbearable obligations and burdens can only be
made generally effective if, in addition to compulsion, the realization of
necessity is transmitted to the individual. But this requires a tremendous
enlightenment excluding all other problems of the day which might have a
distracting effect.
In all cases where the fulfillment of apparently
impossible demand.s or tasks is involved, the whole attention of a people must
be focused and concentrated on this one question, as though life and death
actually depended on its solution. Only in this way will a people be made
willing and able to perform great tasks and exertions.
This principle applies also to the individual man in so
far as he wants to achieve great goals. He, too, will be able to do this only
in steplike sections, and he, too, will always have to unite his entire
energies on the achievement of a definitely delimited task, until this task
seems fulfilled and a new section can be marked out. Anyone who does not so
divide the road to be conquered into separate stages and does not try to
conquer these one by one, systematically with the sharpest concentration of all
his forces, will never be able to reach the ultimate goal, but will be left
lying somewhere along the road, or perhaps even off it. This gradual working up
to a goal is an art, and to conquer the road step by step in this way you must
throw in your last ounce of energy.
The very first prerequisite needed for attacking such a
difficult stretch of the human road is for the leadership to succeed in
representing to the masses of the people the partial goal which now has to be
achieved, or rather conquered, as the one which is solely and alone worthy of
attention, on whose conquest everything depends. The great mass of the people
cannot see the whole road ahead of them without growing weary and despairing of
the task. A certain number of them will keep the goal in mind, but will only be
able to see the road in small, partial stretches, like the wanderer, who
likewise knows and recognizes the end of his journey, but is better able to
conquer the endless highway if he divides it into sections and boldly attacks
each one as though it represented the desired goal itself. Only in this way
does he advance without losing heart.
Thus, by the use of all propagandist means, the question
of combating syphilis should have been made to appear as the task of the
nation. Not just one more task. To this end, its injurious effects should have
been thoroughly hammered into people as the most terrible misfortune, and this
by the use of all available means, until the entire nation arrived at the
conviction that everything-future or ruin-depended upon the solution of this
question.
Only after such a preparation, if necessary over a period of years,
will the attention, and consequently the determination, of the entire nation be
aroused to such an extent that we can take exceedingly hard measures exacting
the greatest sacrifices without running the risk of not being understood or of
suddenly being left in the lurch by the will of the masses.
For, seriously to attack this plague, tremendous
sacrifices and equally great labors are necessary.
The fight against syphilis demands a fight against
prostitution against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions,
general views among them not least the false prudery of certain
circles.
The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these
things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In
late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist
and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution
which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to
regard himself as the 'image' of God.
Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity, but it cannot be
eliminated by moral lectures, pious intentions, etc.; its limitation and final
abolition presuppose the elimination of innumerable preconditions. The first is
and remains the creation of an opportunity for early marriage as compatible
with human nature- particularly for the man, as the woman in any case is only
the passive part.
How lost, how incomprehensible a part of humanity has
become today can be seen from the fact that mothers in so-called 'good '
society can not seldom be heard to say that they are glad to have found their
child a husband who has sown his wild oats, etc. Since there is hardly any lack
of these, but rather the contrary, the poor girl will be happy to find one of
these worn-out Siegfrieds, and the children will be the visible result of this
'sensible' marriage. If we bear in mind that, aside from this, propagation as
such is limited as much as possible, so that Nature is prevented from making
any choice, since naturally every creature, regardless how miserable, must be
preserved, the only question that remains is why such an institution exists at
all any more and what purpose it is supposed to serve? Isn't it exactly the
same as prostitution itself? Hasn't duty toward posterity passed completely out
of the picture? Or do people fail to realize what a curse on the part of their
children and children's children they are heaping on themselves by such
criminal frivolity in observing the ultimate natural law as well as our
ultimate natural obligation?
Thus, the civilized peoples degenerate and gradually
perish.
And marriage cannot be an end in itself, but must serve the one
higher goal, the increase and preservation of the species and the race. This
alone is its meaning and its task.
Under these conditions its soundness can only be judged
by the way in which it fulfills this task. For this reason alone early marriage
is sound, for it-gives the young marriage that strength from which alone a
healthy and resistant offspring can arise. To be sure, it can be made possible
only by quite a number of social conditions without which early marriage is not
even thinkable. Therefore, a solution of this question, small as it is, cannot
occur without incisive measures of a social sort. The importance of these
should be most understandable at a time when the 'social' - republic, if only
by its incompetence in the solution of the housing question, simply prevents
numerous marriages and thus encourages prostitution.
Our absurd way of regulating salaries, which concerns
itself much too little with the question of the family and its sustenance, is
one more reason that makes many an early marriage impossible.
Thus, a real fight against prostitution can only be
undertaken if a basic change in social conditions makes possible an earlier
marriage than at present can generally take place. This is the very first
premise for a solution of this question.
In the second place, education and training must eradicate
a number of evils about which today no one bothers at all. Above all, in our
present education a balance must be created between mental instruction and
physical training. The institution that is called a Gymnasium today is a
mockery of the Greek model. In our educational system it has been utterly
forgotten that in the long run a healthy mind can dwell only in a healthy body.
Especially if we bear in mind the mass of the people, aside from a few
exceptions, this statement becomes absolutely valid.
In pre-War Germany there was a period in which no one
concerned himself in the least about this truth. They simply went on sinning
against the body and thought that in the one-sided training of the 'mind,' they
possessed a sure guaranty for the greatness of the nation. A mistake whose
consequences began to be felt sooner than was expected. It is no accident that
th Bolshevistic wave never found better soil than in places inhabited by a
population degenerated by hunger and constant undernourishment: in Central
Germany, Saxony, and the Ruhr. But in all these districts the so-called
intelligentsia no longer offers any serious resistance to this Jewish disease,
for the simple reason that this intelligentsia is itself completely degenerate
physically, though less for reasons of poverty than for reasons of education.
In times when not the mind but the fist decides, the purely intellectual
emphasis of our education in the upper classes makes them incapable of
defending themselves, let alone enforcing their will. Not infrequently the
first reason for personal cowardice lies in physical weaknesses.
The excessive emphasis on purely intellectual instruction
and the neglect of physical training also encourage the emergence of sexual
ideas at a much too early age. The youth who achieves the hardness of iron by
sports and gymnastics succumbs to the need of sexual satisfaction less than the
stay-at-home fed exclusively on intellectual fare. And a sensible system of
education must bear this in mind. It must, moreover, not fail to consider that
the healthy young man will expect different things from the woman than a
prematurely corrupted weakling.
Thus, the whole system of education must be so organized
as to use the boy's free time for the useful training of his body. He has no
right to hang about in idleness during these years, to make the streets and
movie-houses unsafe; after his day's work he should steel and harden his young
body, so that later life will not find him too soft. To begin this and also
carry it out, to direct and guide it, is the task of education, and not just
the pumping of so-called wisdom. We must also do away with the conception that
the treatment of the body is the affair of every individual. There is no
freedom to sin at the cost of posterity and hence of the race.
Parallel to the training of the body, a struggle against
the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a
hothouse for sexual ideas and stimulations. Just look at the bill of fare
served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able
to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth. In
shop windows and billboards the vilest means are used to attract the attention
of the crowd. Anyone who has not lost the ability to think himself into their
soul must realize that this must cause great damage in the youth. This sensual,
sultry atmosphere leads to ideas and stimulations at a time when the boy should
have no understanding of such things. The result of this kind of education can
be studied in present-day youth, and it is not exactly gratifying. They mature
too early and consequently grow old before their time. Sometimes the public
learns of court proceedings which permit shattering insights into the emotional
life of our fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds. Who will be surprised that even in
these age-groups syphilis begins to seek its victims? And is it not deplorable
to see a good number of these physically weak, spiritually corrupted young men
obtaining their introduction to marriage through big-city whores?
No, anyone who wants to attack prostitution must first of
all help to eliminate its spiritual basis. He must clear away the filth of the
moral plague of big-city ' civilization ' and he must do this ruthlessly and
without wavering in the face of all the shouting and screaming that will
naturally be let loose. If we do not lift the youth out of the morass of their
present-day environment, they will drown in it. Anyone who refuses to see these
things supports them, and thereby makes himself an accomplice in the slow
prostitution of our future which, whether we like it or not, lies in the coming
generation. This cleansing of our culture must be extended to nearly all
fields. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays
must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the
service of a moral political, and cultural idea. Public life must be freed from
the stifling perfume of our modern eroticism, just as it must be freed from all
unmanly, prudish hypocrisy. In all these things the goal and the road must be
determined by concern for the preservation of the health of our people in body
and soul. The right of personal freedom recedes before the duty to preserve the
race.
Only after these measures are carried out can the medical struggle
against the plague itself be carried through with any prospect of success. But
here, too, there must be no half-measures; the gravest and most ruthless
decisions will have to be made. It is a half-measure to let incurably sick
people steadily contaminate the remaining healthy ones. This is in keeping with
the humanitarianism which, to avoid hurting one individual, lets a hundred
others perish. The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating
equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and if
systematically executed represents the most humane act of mankind. It will
spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will
lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole. The determination to proceed
in this direction will oppose a dam to the further spread of venereal diseases.
For, if necessary, the incurably sick will be pitilessly segregated-a barbaric
measure for the unfortunate who is struck by it, but a blessing for his fellow
men and posterity. The passing pain of a century can and will redeem
millenniums from sufferings.
The struggle against syphilis and the prostitution which
prepares the way for it is one of the most gigantic tasks of humanity, gigantic
because we are facing, not the solution of a single question, but the
elimination of a large number of evils which bring about this plague as a
resultant manifestation. For in this case the sickening of the body is only the
consequence of a sickening of the moral, social, and racial instincts.
But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought
to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I
think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the
Almighty.
But how did they try to deal with this plague in old Germany? Viewed
calmly, the answer is really dismal. Assuredly, government circles well
recognized the terrible evils, though perhaps they were not quite able to
ponder the consequences; but in the struggle against it they failed totally,
and instead of thoroughgoing reforms preferred to take pitiful measures. They
tinkered with the disease and left the causes untouched. They submitted the
individual prostitute to a medical examination, supervised her as best they
could, and, in case they established disease, put her in some hospital from
which after a superficial cure they again let her loose on the rest of
humanity.
To be sure, they had introduced a 'protective paragraph' according
to which anyone who was not entirely healthy or cured must avoid sexual
intercourse under penalty of the law. Surely this measure is sound in itself,
but in its practical application it was almost a total failure. In the first
place, the woman, in case she is smitten by misfortune-if only due to our, or
rather her, education-will in most cases refuse to be dragged into court as a
witness against the wretched thief of her health-often under the most
embarrassing attendant circumstances. She, in particular, has little to gain
from it; in most cases she will be the one to suffer most-for she will be
struck much harder by the contempt of her loveless fellow creatures than would
be the case with a man. Finally, imagine the situation if the conveyor of the
disease is her own husband. Should she accuse him? Or what else should she
do?
In the case of the man, there is the additional fact that
unfortunately he often runs across the path of this plague after ample
consumption of alcohol, since in this condition he is least able to judge the
qualities of his 'fair one,' a fact which is only too well known to the
diseased prostitute, and always causes her to angle after men in this ideal
condition. And the upshot of it all is that the man who gets an unpleasant
surprise later can, even by thoroughly racking his brains, not remember his
kind benefactress, which should not be surprising in a city like Berlin or even
Munich. In addition, it must be considered that often we have to deal with
visitors from the provinces who are completely befuddled by all the magic of
the big city.
Finally, however: who can know whether he is sick or
healthy? Are there not numerous cases in which a patient apparently cured
relapses and causes frightful mischief without himself suspecting it at
first?
Thus, the practical effect of this protection by legal punishment of
a guilty infection is in reality practically nil. Exactly the same is true of
the supervision of prostitutes; and finally, the cure itself, even today, is
dubious. Only one thing is certain: despite all measures the plague spread more
and more, giving striking confirmation of their ineffectualness.
The fight against the prostitution of the people's soul
was a failure all along the line, or rather, that is, nothing at all was
done.
Let anyone who is inclined to take this lightly just study the basic
statistical facts on the dissemination of this plague, compare its growth in
the last hundred years, and then imagine its further development-and he would
really need the simplicity of an ass to keep an unpleasant shudder from running
down his back.
The weakness and halfheartedness of the position taken in
old Germany toward so terrible a phenomenon may be evaluated as a visible sign
of a people's decay. If the power to fight for one's own health is no longer
present, the right to live in this world of struggle ends. This world belongs
only to the forceful 'whole' man and not to the weak 'half ' man.
One of the most obvious manifestations of decay in the old
Reich was the slow decline of the cultural level, and by culture I do not mean
what today is designated by the word ' civilization.' The latter, on the
contrary, rather seems hostile to a truly high standard of thinking and
living.
Even before the turn of the century an element began to intrude into
our art which up to that time could be regarded as entirely foreign and
unknown. To be sure, even in earlier times there were occasional aberrations of
taste, but such cases were rather artistic derailments, to which posterity
could attribute at least a certain historical value, than products no longer of
an artistic degeneration, but of a spiritual degeneration that had reached the
point of destroying the spirit. In them the political collapse, which later
became more visible, was culturally indicated.
Art Bolshevism is the only possible cultural form and
spiritual expression of Bolshevism as a whole.
Anyone to whom this seems strange need only subject the
art of the happily Bolshevized states to an examination, and, to his horror, he
will be confronted by the morbid excrescences of insane and degenerate men,
with which, since the turn of the century, we have become familiar under the
collective concepts of cubism and dadaism, as the official and recognized art
of those states. Even in the short period of the Bavarian Republic of Councils,
this phenomenon appeared. Even here it could be seen that all the official
posters, propagandist drawings in the newspapers, etc., bore the imprint, not
only of political but of cultural decay.
No more than a political collapse of the present magnitude
would have been conceivable sixty years ago was a cultural collapse such as
began to manifest itself in futurist and cubist works since 1900 thinkable.
Sixty years ago an exhibition of so-called dadaistic 'experiences' would have
seemed simply impossible and its organizers would have ended up in the
madhouse, while today they even preside over art associations. This plague
could not appear at that time, because neither would public opinion have
tolerated it nor the state calmly looked on. For it is the business of the
state, in other words, of its leaders, to prevent a people from being driven
into the arms of spiritual madness. And this is where such a development would
some day inevitably end. For on the day when this type of art really
corresponded to the general view of things, one of the gravest transformations
of humanity would have occurred: the regressive development of the human mind
would have begun and the end would be scarcely conceivable.
Once we pass the development of our cultural life in the
last twenty-five years in review from this standpoint, we shall be horrified to
see how far we are already engaged in this regression. Everywhere we encounter
seeds which represent the beginnings of parasitic growths which must sooner or
later be the ruin of our culture. In them, too, we can recognize the symptoms
of decay of a slowly rotting world. Woe to the peoples who can no longer master
this disease!
Such diseases could be seen in Germany in nearly every
field of art and culture. Everything seemed to have passed the high point and
to be hastening toward the abyss. The theater was sinking manifestly lower and
even then would have disappeared completely as a cultural factor if the Court
Theaters at least had not turned against the prostitution of art. If we
disregard them and a few other praiseworthy examples, the offerings of the
stage were of such a nature that it would have been more profitable for the
nation to keep away from them entirely. It was a sad sign of inner decay that
the youth could no longer be sent into most of these so-called ' abodes of art
'-a fact which was admitted with shameless frankness by a general display of
the penny-arcade warning: 'Young people are not admitted!'
Bear in mind that such precautionary measures had to be
taken in the places which should have existed primarily for the education of
the youth and not for the delectation of old and jaded sections of the
population. What would the great dramatists of all times have said to such a
regulation, and what, above all, to the circumstances which caused it? How
Schiller would have flared up, how Goethe would have turned away in
indignation!
But after all, what are Schiller, Goethe, or Shakespeare
compared to the heroes of the newer German poetic art? Old, outworn, outmoded,
nay, obsolete. For that was the characteristic thing about that period: not
that the period itself produced nothing but filth, but that in the bargain it
befouled everything that was really great in the past. This, to be sure, is a
phenomenon that can always be observed at such times. The baser and more
contemptible the products of the time and its people, the Lore it hates the
witnesses to the greater nobility and dignity of a former day. In such times
the people would best like to efface the memory of mankind's past completely,
so that by excluding every possibility of comparison they could pass off their
own trash as 'art.' Hence every new institution, the more wretched and
miserable it is, will try all the harder to extinguish the last traces of the
past time, whereas every true renascence of humanity can start with an easy
mind from the good achievements of past generations; in fact, can often make
them truly appreciated for the first time. It does not have to fear that it
will pale before the past; no, of itself it contributes so valuable an addition
to the general store of human culture that often, in order to make this culture
fully appreciated, it strives to keep alive the memory of former achievements,
thus making sure that the present will fully understand the new gift. Only
those who can give nothing valuable to the world, but try to act as if they
were going to give it God knows what, will hate everything that was previously
gives and would best like to negate or even destroy it.
The truth of this is by no means limited to the field of
general culture, but applies to politics as well. Revolutionary new movements
will hate the old forms in proportion to their own inferiority. Here, too, we
can see how eagerness to make their own trash appear to be something noteworthy
leads to blind hatred against the superior good of the past. As long, for
example, as the historical memory of Frederick the Great is not dead, Friedrich
Ebert can arouse nothing but limited amazement. The hero of Sans-Souci is to
the former Bremen saloon keeper approximately as the sun to the moon; only when
the rays of the sun die can the moon shine. Consequently, the hatred of all new
moons of humanity for the fixed stars is only too comprehensible. In political
life, such nonentities, if Fate temporarily casts power in their lap, not only
besmirch and befoul the past with untiring zeal, but also remove themselves
from general criticism by the most extreme methods. The new German Reich's
legislation for the defense of the Republic may pass as an example of
this.
Therefore, if any new idea, a doctrine, a new philosophy, or even a
political or economic movement tries to deny the entire past, tries to make it
bad or worthless, for this reason alone we must be extremely cautious and
suspicious. As a rule the reason for such hatred is either its own inferiority
or even an evil intention as such. A really beneficial renascence of humanity
will always have to continue building where the last good foundation stops. It
will not have to be ashamed of using already existing truths. For the whole of
human culture, as well as man himself is only the result of a single long
development in which every generation contributed and fitted in its stone. Thus
the meaning and purpose of revolutions is not to tear down the whole building
but to remove what is bad or unsuitable and to continue building on the sound
spot that has been laid bare.
Thus alone can we and may we speak of the progress of
humanity. Otherwise the world would never be redeemed from chaos, since every
generation would be entitled to reject the past and hence destroy the works of
the past as the presupposition for its own work.
Thus, the saddest thing about the state of our whole
culture of the pre-War period was not only the total impotence of artistic and
cultural creative power in general, but the hatred with which the memory of the
greater past was besmirched and effaced. In nearly all fields of art,
especially in the theater and literature, we began around the turn of the
century to produce less that was new and significant, but to disparage the best
of the old work and represent it as inferior and surpassed; as though this
epoch of the most humiliating inferiority could surpass anything at all. And
from this effort to remove the past from the eyes of the present, the evil
intent of the apostles of the future could clearly and distinctly be seen. By
this it should have been recognized that these were no new, even if false,
cultural conceptions, but a process of destroying all culture, paving the way
for a stultification of healthy artistic feeling: the spiritual preparation of
political Bolshevism. For if the age of Pericles seems embodied in the
Parthenon, the Bolshevistic present is embodied in a
cubist
monstrosity.
In this connection we must also point to the cowardice
which here again was manifest in the section of our people which on the basis
of its education and position should have been obligated to resist this
cultural disgrace. But from pure fear of the clamor raised by the apostles of
Bolshevistic art, who furiously attacked anyone who didn't want to recognize
the crown of creation in them and pilloried him as a backward philistine, they
renounced all serious resistance and reconciled themselves to what seemed after
all inevitable. They were positively scared stiff that these half-wits or
scoundrels would accuse them of lack of understanding; as though it were a
disgrace not to understand the products of spiritual degenerates or slimy
swindlers. These cultural disciples, it is true, possessed a very simple means
of passing off their nonsense as something God knows how important: they passed
off all sorts of incomprehensible and obviously crazy stuff on their amazed
fellow men as a so-called inner experience, a cheap way of taking any word of
opposition out of the mouths of most people in advance. For beyond a doubt this
could be an inner experience; the doubtful part was whether it is permissible
to dish up the hallucinations of lunatics or criminals to the healthy world.
The works of a Moritz von Schwind, or of a Bocklin, were also an inner
experience, but of artists graced by God and not of clowns.
Here was a good occasion to study the pitiful cowardice
of our so-called intelligentsia, which dodged any serious resistance to this
poisoning of the healthy instinct of our people and left it to the people
themselves to deal with this insolent nonsense. In order not to be considered
lacking in artistic understanding, people stood for every mockery of art and
ended up by becoming really uncertain in the judgment of good and bad.
All in all, these were tokens of times that were getting very
bad.
As another disquieting attribute, the following must yet
be stated:
In the nineteenth century our cities began more and more
to lose the character of cultural sites and to descend to the level of mere
human settlements. The small attachment of our present big-city proletariat for
the town they live in is the consequence of the fact that it is only the
individual's accidental local stopping place, and nothing more. This is partly
connected with the frequent change of residence caused by social conditions,
which do not give a man time to form a closer bond with the city, and another
cause is to be found in the general cultural insignificance and poverty of our
present-day cities per se.
At the time of the wars of liberations the German cities
were not only small in number, but also modest as to size. The few really big
cities were mostly princely residences, and as such nearly always possessed a
certain cultural value and for the most part also a certain artistic picture.
The few places with more than fifty thousand inhabitants were, compared to
present-day cities with the same population, rich in scientific and artistic
treasures When Munich numbered sixty thousand souls, it was already on its way
to becoming one of the first German art centers; today nearly every factory
town has reached this number, if not many times surpassed it, yet some cannot
lay claim to the slightest real values. Masses of apartments and tenements, and
nothing more How, in view of such emptiness, any special bond could be expected
to arise with such a town must remain a mystery. No one will be particularly
attached to a city which has nothing more to offer than every other, which
lacks every individual note and in which everything has been carefully avoided
which might even look like art or anything of the sort.
But, as if this were not enough, even the really big
cities grow relatively poorer in real art treasures with the mounting increase
in the population. They seem more and more standardized and give entirely the
same picture as the poor little factory towns, though in larger dimensions.
What recent times have added to the cultural content of our big cities is
totally inadequate. All our cities are living on the fame and treasures of the
past. For instance, take from present-day Munich everything that was created
under Ludwig I,l and you will note with horror how poor the addition of
significant artistic creations has been since that time. The same is true of
Berlin and most other big cities.
The essential point, however, is the following: our big
cities of today possess no monuments dominating the city picture, which might
somehow be regarded as the symbols of the whole epoch. This was true in the
cities of antiquity, since nearly every one possessed a special monument in
which it took pride. The characteristic aspect of the ancient city did not lie
in private buildings, but in the community monuments which seemed made, not for
the moment, but for eternity, because they were intended to reflect, not the
wealth of an individual owner, but the greatness and wealth of the community.
Thus arose monuments which were very well suited to unite the individual
inhabitant with his city in a way which today sometimes seems almost
incomprehensible to us. For what the ancient had before his eyes was less the
humble houses of private owners than the magnificent edifices of the whole
community. Compared to them the dwelling house really sank to the level of an
insignificant object of secondary importance.
Only if we compare the dimensions of the ancient state
structures with contemporary dwelling houses can we understand the overpowering
sweep and force of this emphasis on the principle of giving first place to
public works. The few still towering colossuses which we admire in the ruins
and wreckage of the ancient world are not former business palaces, but temples
and state structures; in other words, works whose owner was the community. Even
in the splendor of late Rome the first place was not taken by the villas and
palaces of Individual citizens, but by the temples and baths, the stadiums,
circuses, aqueducts, basilicas, etc., of the state, hence of the whole
people.
Even the Germanic Middle Ages upheld the same guiding principle,
though amid totally different conceptions of art. What in antiquity found its
expression in the Acropolis or the Pantheon now cloaked itself in the forms of
the Gothic Cathedral. Like giants these monumental structures towered over the
swarming frames wooden, and brick buildings of the medieval city, and thus
became symbols which even today, with the tenements climbing higher and higher
beside them, determine the character and picture of these towns. Cathedrals,
town halls, grain markets, and battlements are the visible signs of a Inception
which in the last analysis was the same as that of antiquity.
Yet how truly deplorable the relation between state
buildings and private buildings has become today! If the fate of Rome should
strike Berlin, future generations would some day admire the department stores
of a few Jews as the mightiest works of our era and the hotels of a few
corporations as the characteristic expression of the culture of our times. Just
compare the miserable discrepancy prevailing in a city like even Berlin between
the structures of the Reich and those of finance and commerce
Even the sum of money spent on state buildings is usually
laughable and inadequate. Works are not built for eternity, but at most for the
need of the moment. And in them there is no dominant higher idea. At the time
of its construction, the Berlin Schloss was a work of different stature than
the new library, for instance, in the setting of the present time. While a
single battleship represented a value of approximately sixty millions, hardly
half of this sum was approved for the first magnificent building of the Reich,
intended to stand for eternity, the Reichstag Building. Indeed, when the
question of interior furnishings came up for decision, the exalted house voted
against the use of stone and ordered the walls trimmed with plaster; this time,
I must admit, the parliamentarians did right for a change: stone walls are no
place for plaster heads.
Thus, our cities of the present lack the outstanding
symbol of national community which, we must therefore not be surprised to find,
sees no symbol of itself in the cities. The inevitable result is a desolation
whose practical effect is the total indifference of the big-city dweller to the
destiny of his city.
This, too, is a sign of our declining culture and our
general collapse. The epoch is stifling in the pettiest utilitarianism or
better expressed in the service of money. And we have no call for surprise if
under such a deity little sense of heroism remains. The present time is only
harvesting what the immediate past has sown.
All these symptoms of decay are in the last analysis only
the consequences of the absence of a definite, uniformly acknowledged
philosophy and she resultant general uncertainty in the judgment and attitude
toward the various great problems of the time. That is why, beginning in
education, everyone is half-hearted and vacillating, shunning responsibility
and thus ending in cowardly tolerance of even recognized abuses. Humanitarian
bilge becomes stylish and, by weakly yielding to cankers and sparing
individuals, the future of millions is sacrificed.
How widespread the general disunity was growing is shown
by an examination of religious conditions before the War. Here, too, a unified
and effective philosophical conviction had long since been lost in large
sections of the nation. In this the members officially breaking away from the
churches play a less important role than those who are completely indifferent.
While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win
new followers for their doctrine-an activity which can boast but very modest
success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular right
here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either
are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences,
particularly from the moral point of view, are not favorable.
Also noteworthy is the increasingly violent struggle
against the dogmatic foundations of the various churches without which in this
human world the practical existence of a religious faith is not conceivable.
The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the
masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various
substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that
they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds.
But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the
unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all
efficacy. What the current mores, without which assuredly hundreds of thousands
of well-bred people would live sensibly and reasonably but millions of others
would not, are for general living, state principles are for the state, and
dogmas for the current religion. Only through them is the wavering and
infinitely interpretable, purely intellectual idea delimited and brought into a
form without which it could never become faith. Otherwise the idea would never
pass beyond a metaphysical conception; in short, a philosophical opinion. The
attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle
against the general legal foundations of a state, and, as the latter would end
in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious
nihilism.
For the political man, the value of a religion must be estimated
less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better substitute. As
long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can be demolished only by
fools or criminals.
Not the smallest blame for the none too delectable
religious conditions must be borne by those who encumber the religious idea
with too many things of a purely earthly nature and thus often bring it into a
totally unnecessary conflict with so-called exact science. In this victory will
almost always fall to the latter, though perhaps after a hard struggle, and
religion will suffer serious damage in the eyes of all those who are unable to
raise themselves above a purely superficial knowledge.
Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the
misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply
enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an
implement to perform political or rather business services for them. These
insolent liars, it is true, proclaim their creed in a stentorian voice to the
whole world for other sinners to hear; but their intention is not, if
necessary, to die for it, but to live better. For a single-political swindle,
provided it brings in enough, they are willing to sell the heart of a whole
religion; for ten parliamentary mandates they would ally themselves with the
Marxistic mortal enemies of all religions-and for a minister's chair they would
even enter into marriage with the devil, unless the devil were deterred by a
remnant of decency.
If in Germany before the War religious life for many had
an unpleasant aftertaste, this could be attributed to the abuse of Christianity
on the-part of a so-called ' Christian ' party and the shameless way in which
they attempted to identify the Catholic faith with a political party.
This false association was a calamity which may have brought
parliamentary mandates to a number of good-for-nothings but injury to the
Church.
The consequence, however, had to be borne by the whole nation, since
the outcome of the resultant slackening of religious life occurred at a time
when everyone was beginning to waver and vacillate anyway, and the traditional
foundations of ethics and morality were threatening to collapse.
This, too, created cracks and rifts in our nation which
might present no danger as long as no special strain-arose, but which
inevitably became catastrophic when by the force of great events the question
of the inner solidity of the nation achieved decisive importance.
Likewise in the field of politics the observant eye could
discern evils which, if not remedied or altered within a reasonable time, could
be and had to be regarded as signs of the Reich's coming decay. The aimlessness
of German domestic and foreign policy was apparent to everyone who was not
purposely blind. The regime of compromise seemed to be most in keeping with
Bismarck's conception that 'politics is an art of the possible.' But between
Bismarck and the later German chancellors there was a slight difference which
made it permissible for the former to let fall such an utterance on the nature
of politics while the same view from the mouths of his successors could not but
take on an entirely different meaning. For Bismarck with this phrase only
wanted to say that for the achievement of a definite political goal all
possibilities should be utilized, or, in other words, that all possibilities
should be taken into account; in the view of his successors, however, this
utterance solemnly released them from the necessity of having any political
ideas or goals whatever. And the leadership of the Reich at this time really
had no more political goals; for the necessary foundation of a definite
philosophy was lacking, as well as the necessary clarity on the inner laws
governing the development of all political life.
There were not a few who saw things blackly in this
respect and flayed the planlessness and heedlessness of the Reich's policies,
and well recognized their inner weakness and hollowness but these were only
outsiders in political life; the official government authorities passed by the
observations of a Houston Stewart Chamberlain with the same indifference as
still occurs today. These people are too stupid to think any-thing for
themselves and too conceited to learn what is necessary from others-an age-old
truth which caused Oxenstierna to cry out: 'The world is governed by a mere
fraction of wisdom';l and indeed nearly every ministerial secretary embodies
only an atom of this fraction. Only since Germany has become a republic, this
no longer applies. That is why it has been forbidden by the Law for the Defense
of the Republic 2 to believe, let alone discuss, any such thought. Oxenstierna
was lucky to live when he did, and not in this wise republic of ours.
Even in the pre-War period that institution which was supposed to
embody the strength of the Reich was recognized by many as its greatest
weakness: the parliament or Reichstag. Cowardice and irresponsibility were here
completely wedded.
One of the foolish remarks which today we not
infrequently hear is that parliamentarism in Germany has 'gone wrong since the
revolution.' This too easily gives the impression that it was different before
the revolution. In reality the effect of this institution can be nothing else
than devastating-and this was true even in those days when most people wore
blinders and saw nothing and wanted to see nothing. For if Germany was crushed,
it was owing not least to this institution; no thanks are owing to the
Reichstag that the catastrophe did not occur earlier; this must be attributed
to the resistance to the activity of this gravedigger of the German nation and
the German Reich, which persisted in the years of peace.
Out of the vast number of devastating evils for which
this institution was directly or indirectly responsible, I shall pick only a
single one which is most in keeping with the inner essence of this most
irresponsible institution of all times: the terrible halfheartedness and
weakness of the political leaders of the Reich both at home and abroad, which,
primarily attributable to the activities of the Reichstag, developed into one
of the chief reasons for the political collapse.
Half-hearted was everything that was subject in any way
to the influence of this parliament, regardless which way you look.
Half-hearted and weak was the alliance policy of the Reich in its
foreign relations. By trying to preserve peace it steered inevitably toward
war.
Half-hearted was the Polish policy. It consisted in irritating
without ever seriously going through with anything. The result was neither a
victory for the Germans nor conciliation of the Poles, but hostility with
Russia instead.
Half-hearted was the solution of the Alsace-Lorraine
question. Instead of crushing the head of the French hydra once and for all
with a brutal fist, and then granting the Alsatian equal rights, neither of the
two was done. Nor could it be, for in the ranks of the biggest parties sat the
biggest traitors-in the Center, for example, Herr Wetterle.
All this, however, would have been bearable if the
general halfheartedness had not taken possession of that power on whose
existence the survival of the Reich ultimately depended: the army.
The sins of the so-called 'German Reichstag' would alone
suffice to cover it for all times with the curse of the German nation. For the
most miserable reasons, these parliamentary rabble stole and struck from the
hand of the nation its weapon of self-preservation, the only defense of our
people's freedom and independence. If today the graves of Flanders field were
to open, from them would arise the bloody accusers, hundreds of thousands of
the best young Germans who, due to the unscrupulousness of these
parliamentarian criminals, were driven, poorly trained and half-trained, into
the arms of death; the fatherland lost them and millions of crippled and dead,
solely and alone so that a few hundred misleaders of the people could
perpetrate their political swindles and blackmail, or merely rattle off their
doctrinaire theories.
While the Jews in their Marxist and democratic press
proclaimed to the whole world the lie about 'German militarism' and sought to
incriminate Germany by all means, the Marxist and democratic parties were
obstructing any comprehensive training of the German national man-power. The
enormous crime that was thus committed could not help but be clear to everyone
who just considered that, in case of a coming war, the entire nation would have
to take up arms, and that, therefore, through the rascality of these savory
representatives of their own so-called 'popular representation,' millions of
Germans were driven to face the enemy half-trained and badly trained. But even
if the consequences resulting from the brutal and savage unscrupulousness of
these parliamentary pimps were left entirely out of consideration: this lack of
trained soldiers at the beginning of the War could easily lead to its loss, and
this was most terribly confirmed in the great World War.
The loss of the fight for the freedom and independence of
the German nation is the result of the half-heartedness and weakness manifested
even in peacetime as regards drafting the entire national man-power for the
defense of the fatherland.
If too few recruits were trained on the land, the same
halfheartedness was at work on the sea, making the weapon of national
self-preservation more or less worthless. Unfortunately the navy leadership was
itself infected with the spirit of halfheartedness. The tendency to build all
ships a little smaller than the English ships which were being launched at the
same time was hardly farsighted, much less brilliant. Especially a fleet which
from the beginning can in point of pure numbers not be brought to the same
level as its presumable adversary must seek to compensate for the lack of
numbers by the superior fighting power of its individual ships. It is the
superior fighting power which matters and not any legendary superiority in
'quality.' Actually modern technology is so far advanced and has achieved so
much uniformity in the various civilized countries that it must be held
impossible to give the ships of one power an appreciably larger combat value
than the ships of like tonnage of another state. And it is even less
conceivable to achieve a superiority with smaller deplacement as compared to
larger.
In actual fact, the smaller tonnage of the German ships was possible
only at the cost of speed and armament. The phrase with which people attempted
to justify this fact showed a very serious lack of logic in the department
responsible for this in peacetime. They declared, for instance, that the
material of the German guns was so obviously superior to the British that the
German 28-centimeter gun was not behind the British 30.5centimeter gun in
performance!!
But for this very reason it would have been our duty to
change over to the 30.5-centimeter gun, for the goal should have been the
achievement, not of equal but of superior fighting power. Otherwise it would
have been superfluous for the army to order the 42-centimeter mortar, since the
German 21-centimeter mortar was in itself superior to any then existing high
trajectory French cannon, and the fortresses would have likewise fallen to the
30.5-centimeter mortar. The leadership of the land army, however, thought
soundly, while that of the navy unfortunately did not.
The neglect of superior artillery power and superior speed
lay entirely in. the absolutely erroneous so-called 'idea of risk.' The navy
leadership by the very form in which it expanded the fleet renounced attack and
thus from the outset inevitably assumed the defensive. But in this they also
renounced the ultimate success which is and can only be forever in
attack.
A ship of smaller speed and weaker armament will as a rule be sent
to the bottom by a speedier and more heavily armed enemy at the firing distance
favorable for the latter. A number of our cruisers were to find this out to
their bitter grief. The utter mistakenness of the peacetime opinion of the navy
staff was shown by the War, which forced the introduction, whenever possible,
of modified armament in old ships and better armament in newer ones. If in the
battle of Skagerrak the German ships had had the tonnage, the armament, the
same speed as the English ships, the British navy would have found a watery
grave beneath the hurricane of the more accurate and more effective German
38-centimeter shells.
Japan carried on a different naval policy in those days.
There, on principle, the entire emphasis was laid on giving every single new
ship superior fighting power over the presumable adversary. The result was a
greater possibility of offensive utilization of the navy.
While the staff of the land army still kept free of such
basically false trains of thought, the navy, which unfortunately had better
'parliamentary' representation, succumbed to the spirit of parliament. It was
organized on the basis of half-baked ideas and was later used in a similar way.
What immortal fame the navy nevertheless achieved could only be set to the
account of the skill of the German armaments worker and the ability and
incomparable heroism of the individual officers and crews. If the previous
naval high command had shown corresponding intelligence, these sacrifices would
not have been in vain.
Thus perhaps it was precisely the superior parliamentary
dexterity of the navy's peacetime head that resulted in its misfortune, since,
even in its building, parliamentary instead of purely military criteria
unfortunately began to play the decisive role. The half-heartedness and
weakness as well as the meager logic in thinking, characteristic of the
parliamentary institution, began to color the leadership of the navy.
The land army, as already emphasized, still refrained from such
basically false trains of thought. Particularly the colonel in the great
General Staff of that time, Ludendorff, carried on a desperate struggle against
the criminal half-heartedness and weakness with which the Reichstag approached
the vital problems of the nation, and for the most part negated them. If the
struggle which this officer then carried on was nevertheless in vain, the blame
was borne half by parliament and half by the attitude and weakness even more
miserable, if possible- of Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Yet today this
does not in the least prevent those who were responsible for the German
collapse from putting the blame precisely on him who alone combated this
neglect of national interests-one swindle more or less is nothing to these born
crooks.
Anyone who contemplates all the sacrifices which were heaped on the
nation by the criminal frivolity of these most irresponsible among
irresponsibles, who passes in review all the uselessly sacrificed dead and
maimed, as well as the boundless shame and disgrace, the immeasurable misery
which has now struck us, and knows that all this happened only to clear the
path to ministers' chairs for a gang of unscrupulous climbers and
job-hunters-anyone who contemplates all this will understand that these
creatures can, believe me, be described only by words such as ' scoundrel, ' '
villain, ' ' scum, ' and ' criminal, ' otherwise the meaning and purpose of
having these expressions in our linguistic usage would be incomprehensible. For
compared to these traitors to the nation, every pimp is a man of honor.
Strangely enough, all the really seamy sides of old
Germany attracted attention only when the inner solidarity of the nation would
inevitably suffer thereby. Yes, indeed, in such cases the unpleasant truths
were positively bellowed to the broad masses, while otherwise the same people
preferred modestly to conceal many things and in part simply to deny them. This
was the case when the open discussion of a question might have led to an
improvement. At the same time, the government offices in charge knew next to
nothing of the value and nature of propaganda. The fact that by clever and
persevering use of propaganda even heaven can be represented as hell to the
people, and conversely the most wretched life as paradise, was known only to
the Jew, who acted accordingly; the German, or rather his government, hadn't
the faintest idea of this.
During the War we were to suffer most gravely for all
this.
Along with all the evils of German life before the War
here indicated, and many more, there were also many advantages. In a fair
examination, we must even recognize that most of our weaknesses were largely
shared by other countries and peoples, and in some, indeed, we were put
completely in the shade, while they did not possess many of our own actual
advantages.
At the head of these advantages we can, among other
things, set the fact that, of nearly all European peoples, the German people
still made the greatest attempt to preserve the national character of its
economy and despite certain evil omens was least subject to international
financial control. A dangerous advantage, to be sure, which later became the
greatest instigator of the World War. But aside from this and many other
things, we must, from the vast number of healthy sources of national strength,
pick three institutions which in their kind were exemplary and in part
unequaled.
First, the state form as such and the special stamp which
it had received in modern Germany.
Here we may really disregard the individual monarchs who
as men are subject to all the weaknesses which are customarily visited upon
this earth and its children; if we were not lenient in this, we would have to
despair of the present altogether, for are not the representatives of the
present regime, considered as personalities, intellectually and morally of the
most modest proportions that we can conceive of even racking our brains for a
long time? Anyone who measures the 'value' of the German revolution by the
value and stature of the personalities which it has given the German people
since November, 1919, will have to hide his head for shame before the judgment
of future generations, whose tongue it will no longer be possible to stop by
protective laws, etc., and which therefore will say what today all of us know
to be true, to wit, that brains and virtue in our modern German leaders are
inversely proportionate to their vices and the size of their mouths.
To
be sure, the monarchy had grown alien to many, to the broad masses above all.
This was the consequence of the fact that the monarchs were not always
surrounded by the brightest -to put it mildly-and above all not by the
sincerest minds. Unfortunately, a number of them liked fiatterers better than
straightforward natures, and consequently it was the fiatterers who
'instructed' them. A very grave evil at a time when many of the world's old
opinions had undergone a great change, spreading naturally to the estimation in
which many old-established traditions of the courts were held.
Thus, at the turn of the century the common man in the
street could no longer find any special admiration for the princess who rode
along the front in uniform. Apparently those in authority were incapable of
correctly judging the effect of such a parade in the eyes of the people, for if
they had, such unfortunate performances would doubtless not have occurred.
Moreover, the humanitarian bilge-not always entirely sincere-that these circles
went in for repelled more than it attracted. If, for example, Princess X
condescended to taste a sample of food in a people's kitchen, in former days it
might have looked well, but now the result was the opposite. We may be
justified in assuming that Her Highness really had no idea that the food on the
day she sampled it was a little different from what it usually was; but it was
quite enough that the people knew it.
Thus, what may possibly have been the best intention
became ridiculous, if not actually irritating.
Stories about the monarch's proverbial frugality, his
much too early rising and his slaving away until late into the night, amid the
permanent peril of threatening undernourishment, aroused very dubious comments.
People did not ask to know what food and how much of it the monarch deigned to
consume; they did not begrudge him a 'square' meal; nor were they out to
deprive him of the sleep he needed; they were satisfied if in other things, as
a man and character, he was an honor to the name of his house and to the
nation, and if he fulfilled his duties as a ruler. Telling fairy tales helped
little, but did all the more harm.
This and many similar things were mere trifles, however.
What had a worse effect on sections of the nation, that were unfortunately very
large, was the mounting conviction that people were ruled from the top no
matter what happened, and that, therefore, the individual had no need to bother
about anything. As long as the government was really good, or at least had the
best intentions, this was bearable. But woe betide if the old government whose
intentions were after all good were replaced by a new one which was not so
decent; then spineless compliance and childlike faith were the gravest calamity
that could be conceived of.
But along with these and many other weaknesses, there were
unquestionable assets.
For one thing, the stability of the entire state
leadership, brought about by the monarchic form of state and the removal of the
highest state posts from the welter of speculation by ambitious politicians.
Furthermore, the dignity of the institution as such and the authority which
this alone created: likewise the raising of the civil service and particularly
the army above the level of party obligations. One more advantage was the
personal embodiment of the state's summit in the monarch as a person, and the
example of responsibility which is bound to be stronger in a monarch than in
the accidental rabble of a parliamentary majority-the proverbial
incorruptibility of the German administration could primarily be attributed to
this. Finally, the cultural value of the monarchy for the German people was
high and could very well compensate for other drawbacks. The German court
cities were still the refuge of an artistic state of mind, which is
increasingly threatening to die out in our materialistic times. What the German
princes did for art and science, particularly in the nineteenth century, was
exemplary. The present period in any case cannot be compared with it.
As the greatest credit factor, however, in this period of
incipient and slowly spreading decomposition of our nation, we must note the
army. It was the mightiest school of the German nation, and not for nothing was
the hatred of all our enemies directed against this buttress of national
freedom and independence. No more glorious monument can be dedicated to this
unique institution than a statement of the truth that it was slandered, hated,
combated, and also feared by all inferior peoples. The fact that the rage of
the international exploiters of our people in Versailles was directed primarily
against the old German army permits us to recognize it as the bastion of our
national freedom against the power of the stock exchange. Without this warning
power, the intentions of Versailles would long since have been carried out
against our people. What the German people owes to the army can be briefly
summed up in a single word, to wit: everything.
The army trained men for unconditional responsibility at
a time when this quality had grown rare and evasion of it was becoming more and
more the order of the day, starting with the model prototype of all
irresponsibility, the parliament; it trained men in personal courage in an age
when cowardice threatened to become a raging disease and the spirit of
sacrifice, the willingness to give oneself for the general welfare, was looked
on almost as stupidity, and the only man regarded as intelligent was the one
who best knew how to indulge and advance his own ego. it was the school that
still taught the individual German not to seek the salvation of the nation in
lying phrases about an international brotherhood between Negroes, Germans,
Chinese, French, etc., but in the force and solidarity of our own
nation.
The army trained men in resolution while elsewhere in life
indecision and doubt were beginning to determine the actions of men. In an age
when everywhere the know-it-alls were setting the tone, it meant something to
uphold the principle that some command is always better than none. In this sole
principle there was still an unspoiled robust health which would long since
have disappeared from the rest of our life if the army and its training had not
provided a continuous renewal of this primal force. We need only see the
terrible indecision of the Reich's present leaders, who can summon up the
energy for no action unless it is the forced signing of a new decree for
plundering the people; in this case, to be sure, they reject all responsibility
and with the agility of a court stenographer sign everything that anyone may
see fit to put before them. In this case the decision is easy to take; for it
is dictated.
The army trained men in idealism and devotion to the
fatherland and its greatness while everywhere else greed and materialism had
spread abroad. It educated a single people in contrast to the division into
classes and in this perhaps its sole mistake was the institution of voluntary
one-year enlistment. A mistake, because through it the principle of
unconditional equality was broken, and-the man with higher education was
removed from the setting of his general environment, while precisely the exact
opposite would have been advantageous. In view of the great unworldliness of
our upper classes and their constantly mounting estrangement from their own
people, the army could have exerted a particularly beneficial effect if in its
own ranks, at least, it had avoided any segregation of the so-called
intelligentsia. That this was not done was a mistake; but what institution in
this world makes no mistakes? In this one, at any rate, the good was so
predominant that the few weaknesses lay far beneath the average degree of human
imperfection.
It must be attributed to the army of the old Reich as its
highest merit that at a time when heads were generally counted by majorities,
it placed heads above the majority. Confronted with -the Jewish-democratic idea
of a blind-worship of numbers, the army sustained belief in personality. And
thus it trained what the new epoch most urgently needed: men. In the morass of
a universally spreading softening and effeminization, each year three hundred
and fifty thousand vigorous young men sprang from the ranks of the army, men
who in their two years' training had lost the softness of youth and achieved
bodies hard as steel. The young man who practiced obedience during this time
could-then learn to command. By his very step you could recognize the soldier
who had done his service.
This was--the highest school of the German nation, and it
was not for nothing that the bitterest hatred of those who from envy and-greed
needed and desired the impotence of the Reich and the defenselessness of its
citizens was concentrated on it What many Germans in their blindness or ill
will did not want to see was recognized-by the foreign world: the German army
was the mightiest weapon serving the freedom of the German nation and the
sustenance of its children.
The third in the league, along with the state form and
the army, was the incomparable civil service of the old Reich.
Germany was the best organized and best administered
country in the world. The German government official might well be accused of
bureaucratic red tape, but in the other countries things were no better in this
respect; they were worse. But what the other countries did not possess was the
wonderful solidity of this apparatus and the incorruptible honesty of its
members. It was better to be a little old-fashioned, but honest and loyal, than
enlightened and modern, but of inferior character and, as is often seen today,
ignorant and incompetent. For if today people like to pretend that the German
administration of the pre-War period, though bureaucratically sound, was bad
from a business point of view, only the following answer can be given: what
country in the world had an institution better directed and better organized in
a business sense than Germany's state railways? It was reserved to the
revolution to go on wrecking this exemplary apparatus until at last it seemed
ripe for being taken out of the hands of the nation and socialized according to
the lights of this Republic's founders; in other words, made to serve
international stock exchange capital, the power behind the German
revolution.
What especially distinguished the German civil service and
administrative apparatus was their independence from the individual governments
whose passing political views could have no effect on the job of German civil
servant. Since the revolution, it must be admitted, this has completely
changed. Ability and competence were replaced by party ties and a self-reliant,
independent character became more of a hindrance than a help.
The state
form, the army. and the civil service formed the basis for the old Reich's
wonderful power and strength. These first and foremost were the reasons for a
quality which is totally lacking in the present-day state: state's authority!
For this is not based on bull-sessions in parliaments or provincial diets, or
on laws for its protection, or court sentences to frighten those who insolently
deny it, etc., but on the general confidence which may and can be placed in the
leadership and administration of a commonwealth. This confidence, in turn,
results only from an unshakable inner faith in the selflessness and honesty of
the government and administration of a country and from an agreement between
the spirit of the laws and the general ethical view. For in the long run
government systems are not maintained by the pressure of violence, but by faith
in their soundness and in the. truthfulness with which they represent and
advance the interests of a people.
Gravely as certain evils of the pre-War period corroded
and threatened to undermine the inner strength of the nation, it must not be
forgotten that other states suffered even more than Germany from most of these
ailments and yet in the critical hour of danger did not nag and perish. But if
we consider that the German weaknesses before the War were balanced by equally
great strengths, the ultimate cause of the collapse can and must lie in a
different field; and this is actually the case.
The deepest and ultimate reason for the decline of the
old Reich lay in its failure to recognize the racial problem and its importance
for the historical development of peoples. For events in the lives of peoples
are not expressions of chance, but processes related to the self-preservation
and propagation of the species and the race and subject to the laws of Nature,
even if people are not conscious of the inner reason for their
actions.
Collapse
THE EXTENT of the fall of a body is always measured by the distance
between its momentary position and the one it originally occupied. The same is
true of nations and states. A decisive significance must be ascribed to their
previous position or rather elevation. Only what is accustomed to rise above
the common limit can fall and crash to a manifest low This is what makes the
collapse of the Reich so hard and terrible for every thinking and feeling man,
since it brought a crash from heights which today, in view of the depths of our
present degradation, are scarcely conceivable.
The very founding of the Reich seemed gilded by the magic
of an event which uplifted the entire nation. After a series of incomparable
victories, a Reich was born for the sons and grandsons-a reward for immortal
heroism. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it matters not, the Germans all
had the feeling that this Reich, which did not owe its existence to the
trickery of parliamentary fractions, towered above the measure of other states
by the very exalted manner of its founding; for not in the cackling of a
parliamentary battle of words, but in the thunder and rumbling of the front
surrounding Paris was the solemn act performed: a proclamation of our will,
declaring that the Germans, princes and people, were resolved in the future to
constitute a Reich and once again to raise the imperial crown to symbolic
heights. And this was not done by cowardly murder; no deserters and slackers
were the founders of the Bismarckian state, but the regiments at the
front.
This unique birth and baptism of fire in themselves surrounded the
Reich with a halo of historic glory such as only the oldest states-and they but
seldom-could boast.
And what an ascent now began!
Freedom on the outside provided daily bread within. The
nation became rich in numbers and earthly goods. The honor of the state, and
with it that of the whole people, was protected and shielded by an army which
could point most visibly to the difference from the former German
Union.
So deep is the downfall of the Reich and the German people that
everyone, as though seized by dizziness, seems to have lost feeling and
consciousness; people can scarcely remember the former height, so dreamlike and
unreal do the old greatness and glory seem compared to our present-day misery
Thus it is understandable that people are so blinded by the sublime that they
forget to look for the omens of the gigantic collapse which must after all have
been somehow present.
Of course, this applies only to those for whom Germany
was more than a mere stop-over for making and spending money, since they alone
can feel the present condition as a collapse, while to the others it is the
long-desired fulfillment of their hitherto unsatisfied desires.
The omens were then present and visible, though but very
few attempted to draw a certain lesson from them.
Yet today this is more necessary than ever.
The cure of a sickness can only be achieved if its cause
is known, and the same is true of curing political evils. To be sure, the
outward form of a sickness, its symptom which strikes the eye, is easier to see
and discover than the inner cause. And this is the reason why so many people
never go beyond the recognition of external effects and even confuse them with
the cause, attempting, indeed, to deny the existence of the latter. Thus most
of us primarily see the German collapse only in the general economic misery and
the consequences arising therefrom. Nearly every one of us must personally
suffer these-a cogent ground for every individual to understand the
catastrophe. Much less does the great mass see the collapse in its political,
cultural, ethical, and moral aspect. In this the feeling and understanding of
many fail completely.
That this should be so among the broad masses may still
pass, but for even the circles of the intelligentsia to regard the German
collapse as primarily an 'economic catastrophe,' which can therefore be cured
by economic means, is one of the reasons why a recovery has hitherto been
impossible. Only when it is understood that here, too, economics is only of
second or third-rate importance, and the primary role falls to factors of
politics, ethics, morality, and blood, will we arrive at an understanding of
the present calamity, and thus also be able to find the ways and means for a
cure.
The question of the causes of the German collapse is, therefore, of
decisive importance, particularly for a political movement whose very goal is
supposed to be to quell the defeat.
But, in such research into the past, we
must be very careful not to confuse the more conspicuous effects with the less
visible causes.
The easiest and hence most widespread explanation of the
present misfortune is that it was brought about by the consequences of the lost
War and that therefore the War is the cause of the present evil.
There may be many who will seriously believe this
nonsense but there are still more from whose mouth such an explanation can only
be a lie and conscious falsehood. This last applies to all those who today feed
at the government's cribs. For didn't the prophets of the revolution again and
again point out most urgently to the people that it was a matter of complete
indifference to the broad masses how this War turned out? Did they not, on the
contrary, gravely assure us that at most the 'big capitalist' could have an
interest in a victorious end of the gigantic struggle of nations, but never the
German people as such, let alone the German worker? Indeed, didn't these
apostles of world conciliation maintain the exact opposite: didn't they say
that by a German defeat 'militarism' would be destroyed, but that the German
nation would celebrate its most glorious resurrection? Didn't these circles
glorify the benevolence of the Entente, and didn't they shove tile blame for
the whole bloody struggle on Germany? And could they have done this without
declaring that even military defeat would be without special consequences for
the nation? Wasn't the whole revolution embroidered with the phrase that it
would prevent the victory of the German flag, but that through it the German
people would at last begin advancing toward freedom at home and abroad?
Will you claim that this was not so, you wretched, lying
scoundrels?
It takes a truly Jewish effrontery to attribute the blame
for the collapse solely to the military defeat when the central organ of all
traitors to the nation, the Berlin Vorwarts, wrote that this time the German
people must not bring its banner home victorious!
And now this is supposed to be the cause of our
collapse?
Of course, it would be perfectly futile to fight with such forgetful
liars. I wouldn't waste my words on them if unfortunately this nonsense were
not parroted by so many thoughtless people, who do not seem inspired by malice
or conscious insincerity. Furthermore, these discussions are intended to give
our propaganda fighters an instrument which is very much needed at a time when
the spoken word is often twisted in our mouths.
Thus we have the following to say to the assertion that
the lost War is responsible for the German collapse:
Certainly the loss of the War was of terrible importance
for the future of our fatherland; however, its loss is not a cause, but itself
only a consequence of causes. It was perfectly clear to everyone with insight
and without malice that an unfortunate end of this struggle for life and death
would inevitably lead to extremely devastating consequences. But unfortunately
there were also people who seemed to lack this insight at the right time or
who, contrary to their better knowledge, contested and denied this truth. Such
for the most part were those who, after the fulfillment of their secret wish,
suddenly and belatedly became aware of the catastrophe which had been brought
about by themselves among others. They are guilty of the collapse-not the lost
War as it suddenly pleases them to say and believe. For its loss was, after
all, only the consequence of their activity and not, as they now try to say,
the result of 'bad' leadership. The foe did not consist of cowards either; he,
too, knew how to die. His number from the first day was greater than that of
the German army for he could draw on the technical armament and the arsenals of
the whole world; hence the German victories, won for four years against a whole
world, must regardless of all heroic courage and 'organization,' be attributed
solely to superior leadership, and this iS a fact which cannot be denied out of
existence. The organization and leadership of the German army were the
mightiest that the earth had ever seen. Their deficiencies lay in the limits of
all human adequacy in general.
The collapse of this army was not the cause of our
present-day misfortune, but only the consequence of other crimes, a consequence
which itself again, it must be admitted, ushered in the beginning of a further
and this time visible collapse.
The truth of this can be seen from the following:
Must a military defeat lead to so complete a collapse of a nation
and a state? Since when is this the result of an unfortunate war? Do peoples
perish in consequence of lost wars as such?
The answer to this can be very brief: always, when
military defeat iS the payment meted out to peoples for their inner rottenness,
cowardice, lack of character, in short, unworthiness. If this iS not the case,
the military defeat will rather be the inspiration of a great future
resurrection than the tombstone of a national existence.
History offers innumerable examples for the truth of this
assertion.
Unfortunately, the military defeat of the German people
is not an undeserved catastrophe, but the deserved chastisement of eternal
retribution. We more than deserved this defeat. It is only the greatest outward
symptom of decay amid a whole series of inner symptoms, which perhaps had
remained hidden and invisible to the eyes of most people, or which like
ostriches people did not want to see.
Just consider the attendant circumstances amid which the
German people accepted this defeat. Didn't many circles express the most
shameless joy at the misfortune of the fatherland? And who would do such a
thing if he does not really deserve such a punishment? Why, didn't they go even
further and brag of having finally caused the front to waver? And it was not
the enemy that did this-no, no, it was Germans who poured such disgrace upon
their heads! Can it be said that misfortune struck them unjustly? Since when do
people step forward and take the guilt for a war on themselves? And against
better knowledge and better judgment!
No, and again no. In the way in which the German people
received its defeat, we can recognize most clearly that the true cause of our
collapse must be sought in an entirely different place from the purely military
loss of a few positions or in the failure of an offensive; for if the front as
such had really flagged and if its downfall had really encompassed the doom of
the fatherland, the German people would have received the defeat quite
differently. Then they would have borne the ensuing misfortune with gritted
teeth or would have mourned it, overpowered by grief; then all hearts would
have been filled with rage and anger toward the enemy who had become victorious
through a trick of chance or the will of fate; then, like the Roman Senate, the
nation would have received the defeated divisions with the thanks of the
fatherland for the sacrifices they had made and besought them not to despair of
the Reich. The capitulation would have been signed only with the reason, while
the heart even then would have beaten for the resurrection to come.
This is how a defeat for which only fate was responsible would have
been received. Then people would not have laughed and danced, they would not
have boasted of cowardice and glorified the defeat, they would not have scoffed
at the embattled troops and dragged their banner and cockade in the mud. But
above all: then we should never have had the terrible state of affairs which
prompted a British officer, Colonel Repington, to make the contemptuous
statement: 'Of the Germans, every third man is a traitor.' No, this plague
would never have been able to rise into the stifling flood which for five years
now has been drowning the very last remnant of respect for us on the part of
the rest of the world.
This most of all shows the assertion that the lost War
was the cause of the German collapse to be a lie. No, this military collapse
was itself only the consequence of a large number of symptoms of disease and
their causes, which even in peacetime were with the German nation. This was the
first consequence, catastrophic and visible to all, of an ethical and moral
poisoning, of a diminution in the instinct of self-preservation and its
preconditions, which for many years had begun to undermine the foundations of
the people and the Reich.
It required the whole bottomless falsehood of the Jews
and their Marxist fighting organization to lay the blame for the collapse on
that very man who alone, with superhuman energy and will power, tried to
prevent the catastrophe he foresaw and save the nation from its time of deepest
humiliation and disgrace By branding Ludendorff as guilty for the loss of the
World War they took the weapon of moral right from the one dangerous accuser
who could have risen against the traitors to the fatherland. In this they
proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude of a lie always contains a
certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very
bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and
purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of
their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one,
since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that
were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads and they will not
be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous
misrepresentation in others; yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they
will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes
as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain
and stick-a fact which all the great lie-virtuosi and lying-clubs in this world
know only too well and also make the most treacherous use of.
The foremost connoisseurs of this truth regarding the
possibilities in the use of falsehood and slander have always been the Jews;
for after all, their whole existence is based on one single great lie, to wit,
that they are a religious community while actually they are a race-and what a
race ! One of the greatest minds of humanity has nailed them forever as such in
an eternally correct phrase of fundamental truth: he called them 'the great
masters of the lie.' And anyone who does not recognize this or does not want to
believe it will never in this world be able to help the truth to
victory.
For the German people it must almost be considered a great good
fortune that its period of creeping sickness was suddenly cut short by so
terrible a catastrophe, for otherwise the nation would have gone to the dogs
more slowly perhaps, but all the more certainly. The disease would have become
chronic, while in the acute form of the collapse it at least became clearly and
distinctly recognizable to a considerable number of people. It was no accident
that man mastered the plague more easily than tuberculosis. The one comes in
terrible waves of death that shake humanity to the foundations, the other
slowly and stealthily; the one leads to terrible fear, the other to gradual
indifference. The consequence is that man opposed the one with all the
ruthlessness of his energy, while he tries to control consumption with feeble
means. Thus he mastered the plague, while tuberculosis masters him.
Exactly the same is true of diseases of national bodies. If they do
not take the form of catastrophe, man slowly begins to get accustomed to them
and at length, though it may take some time, perishes all the more certainly of
them. And so it is a good fortune-though a bitter one, to be sure-when Fate
resolves to take a hand in this slow process of putrefaction and with a sudden
blow makes the victim visualize the end of his disease. For more than once,
that is what such a catastrophe amounts to Then it can easily become the cause
of a recovery beginning with the utmost determination.
But even in such a case, the prerequisite is again the
recognition of the inner grounds which cause the disease in question.
Here, too, the most important thing remains the distinction between
the causes and the conditions they call forth. This will be all the more
difficult, the longer the toxins remain in the national body and the more they
become an ingredient of it which is taken for granted. For it is easily
possible that after a certain time unquestionably harmful poisons Bill be
regarded as an ingredient of one's own nation or at best will be tolerated as a
necessary evil, so that a search for the alien virus is no longer regarded as
necessary.
Thus, in the long peace of the pre-War years, certain
harmful features had appeared and been recognized as such, though next to
nothing was done against their virus, aside from a few exceptions. And here
again these exceptions were primarily manifestations of economic life, which
struck the consciousness of the individual more strongly than the harmful
features in a number of other fields.
There were many symptoms of decay which should have
aroused serious reflection.
With respect to economics, the following should be
said:
Through the amazing increase in the German population before the
War, the question of providing the necessary daily bread stepped more and more
sharply into the foreground of all political and economic thought and action.
Unfortunately, those in power could not make up their minds to choose the only
correct solution, but thought they could reach their goal in an easier way.
When they renounced the acquisition of new soil and replaced it by the lunacy
of world economic conquest, the result was bound to be an industrialization as
boundless as it was harmful.
The first consequence of gravest importance was the
weakening of the peasant class. Proportionately as the peasant class
diminished, the mass of the big city proletariat increased more and more, until
finally the balance was completely upset.
Now the abrupt alternation between rich and poor became
really apparent. Abundance and poverty lived so close together that the saddest
consequences could and inevitably did arise. Poverty and frequent unemployment
began to play havoc with people, leaving behind them a memory of discontent and
embitterment. The consequence of this seemed to be political class division.
Despite all the economic prosperity, dissatisfaction became greater and deeper;
in fact, things came to such a pass that the conviction that 'it can't go on
like this much longer' became general, yet without people having or being able
to have any definite idea of what ought to have been done.
These were the typical symptoms of deep discontent which
sought to express themselves in this way.
But worse than this were other consequences induced by
the economization of the nation.
In proportion as economic life grew to be the dominant
mistress of the state, money became the god whom all had to serve and to whom
each man had to bow down. More and more, the gods of heaven were put into the
corner as obsolete and outmoded, and in their stead incense was burned to the
idol Mammon. A truly malignant degeneration set in; what made it most malignant
was that it began at a time when the nation, in a presumably menacing and
critical hour, needed the highest heroic attitude. Germany had to accustom
herself to the idea that some day her attempt to secure her daily bread by
means of 'peaceful economic labor' would have to be defended by the
sword.
Unfortunately, the domination of money was sanctioned even by that
authority which should have most opposed it: His Majesty the Kaiser acted most
unfortunately by drawing the aristocracy into the orbit of the new finance
capital. It must be said to his credit, however, that unfortunately even
Bismarck himself did not recognize the menacing danger in this respect. Thereby
the ideal virtues for all practical purposes had taken a position second to the
value of money, for it was clear that once a beginning had been made in this
direction, the aristocracy of the sword would in a short time inevitably be
overshadowed by the financial aristocracy. Financial operations succeed more
easily than battles. It was no longer inviting for the real hero or statesman
to be brought into relations with some old bank Jew: the man of true ment could
no longer have an interest in the bestowal of cheap decorations; he declined
them with thanks. But regarded purely from the standpoint of blood, such a
development was profoundly unfortunate: more and more, the nobility lost the
racial basis for its existence, and in large measure the designation of
'ignobility' would have been more suitable for it.
A grave economic symptom of decay was the slow
disappearance of the right of private property, and the gradual transference of
the entire economy to the ownership of stock companies.
Now for the first time labor had sunk to the level of an
object of speculation for unscrupulous Jewish business men; the alienation of
property from the wage-worker was increased ad infinitum. The stock exchange
began to triumph and prepared slowly but surely to take the life of the nation
into its guardianship and control.
The internationalization of the German economic life had
been begun even before the War through the medium of stock issues To be sure, a
part of German industry still attempted with resolution to ward off this fate.
At length, however, it, too, fell a victim to the united attack of greedy
finance capital which carried on this fight, with the special help of its most
faithful comrade, the Marxist movement.
The lasting war against German 'heavy industry' was the
visible beginning of the internationalization of German economy toward which
Marxism was striving, though this could not be carried to its ultimate end
until the victory of Marxism and the revolution. While I am writing these
words, the general attack against the German state railways has finally
succeeded, and they are now being handed over to international finance capitals
'International' Social Democracy has thus realized one of its highest
goals.
How far this 'economization' of the German people had succeeded is
most visible in the fact that after the War one of the leading heads of German
industry, and above all of commerce, was finally able to express the opinion
that economic effort as such was alone in a position to re-establish Germany.
This nonsense was poured forth at a moment when France was primarily bringing
back the curriculum of her schools to humanistic foundations in order to combat
the error that the nation and the state owed their survival to economics and
not to eternal ideal values. These words pronounced by a Stinnes created the
most incredible confusion; they were picked up at once, and with amazing
rapidity became the leitmotif of all the quacks and big-mouths that since the
revolution Fate has let loose on Germany in the capacity of
'statesmen.'
One of the worst symptoms of decay in Germany of the
pre-War era was the steadily increasing habit of doing things by halves. This
is always a consequence of uncertainty on some matter and of the cowardice
resulting from this and other grounds. This disease was-further promoted by
education.
German education before the War was afflicted with an
extraordinary number of weaknesses. It was extremely one-sided and adapted to
breeding pure 'knowledge,' with less attention to 'ability.' Even less emphasis
was laid on the development of the character of the individual-in so far as
this is possible; exceedingly little on the sense of joy in responsibility, and
none at all on the training of will and force of decision. Its results, you may
be sure, were not strong men, but compliant ' walking encyclopedias,' as we
Germans were generally looked upon and accordingly estimated before the War.
People liked the German because he was easy to make use of, but respected him
little, precisely because of his weakness of will. It was not for nothing that
more than almost any other people he was prone to lose his nationality and
fatherland. The lovely proverb, 'with hat in hand, he travels all about the
land,' tells the whole story.
This compliance became really disastrous, however, when
it determined the sole form in which the monarch could be approached; that is,
never to contradict him, but agree to anything and everything that His Majesty
condescends to do. Precisely in this place was free, manly dignity most
necessary; otherwise the monarchic institution was one day bound to perish from
all this crawling; for crawling it was and nothing else! And only miserable
crawlers and sneaks-in short, all the decadents who have always felt more at
ease around the highest thrones than sincere, decent, honorable souls-can
regard this as the sole proper form of intercourse with the bearers of the
crown! These 'most humble' creatures, to be sure, despite all their humility
before their master and source of livelihood, have always demonstrated the
greatest arrogance toward the rest of humanity, and worst of all when they pass
themselves off with shameful effrontery on their sinful fellow men as the only
'monarchists'; this is real gall such as only these ennobled or even unennobled
tapeworms are capable of! For in reality these people remained the gravediggers
of the monarchy and particularly the monarchistic idea. Nothing else is
conceivable: a man who is prepared to stand up for a cause will never and can
never be a sneak and a spineless lickspittle. Anyone who is really serious
about the preservation and furtherance of an institution will cling to it with
the last fiber of his heart and will not be able to abandon it if evils of some
sort appear in this institution. To be sure, he will not cry this out to the
whole public as the democratic 'friends' of the monarchy did in the exact same
lying way; he will most earnestly warn and attempt to influence His Majesty,
the bearer of the crown himself. He will not and must not adopt the attitude
that His Majesty remains free to act according to his own will anyway, even if
this obviously must and will lead to a catastrophe, but in such a case he will
have to protect the monarchy against the monarch, and this despite all perils.
If the value of this institution lay in the momentary person of the monarch, it
would be the worst institution that can be imagined; for monarchs only in the
rarest cases are the cream of wisdom and reason or even of character, as some
people like to claim. This is believed only by professional lickspittles and
sneaks, but all straightforward men-and these remain the most valuable men in
the state despite everything- will only feel repelled by the idea of arguing
such nonsense. For them history remains history and the truth the truth even
where monarchs are concerned. No, the good fortune to possess a great monarch
who is also a great man falls to peoples so seldom that they must be content if
the malice of Fate abstains at least from the worst possible mistakes.
Consequently, the value and importance of the monarchic idea cannot
reside in the person of the monarch himself except if Heaven decides to lay the
crown on the brow of a heroic genius like Frederick the Great or a wise
character like William I. This happens once in centuries and hardly more often.
Otherwise the idea takes precedence over the person and the meaning of this
institution must lie exclusively in the institution itself. With this the
monarch himself falls into the sphere of service. Then he, too, becomes a mere
cog in this work, to which he is obligated as such. Then he, too, must comply
with a higher purpose, and the ' monarchist' is then no longer the man who in
silence lets the bearer of the crown profane it, but the man who prevents this.
Otherwise, it would not be permissible to depose an obviously insane prince, if
the sense of the institution lay not in the idea, but in the ' sanctified '
person at any price.
Today it is really necessary to put this down, for in
recent times more and more of these creatures, to whose wretched attitude the
collapse of the monarchy must not least of all be attributed are rising out of
obscurity. With a certain naive gall, these people have started in again to
speak of nothing but 'their King'- whom only a few years ago they left in the
lurch in the critical hour and in the most despicable fashion-and are beginning
to represent every person who is not willing to agree to their lying tirades as
a bad German. And in reality they are the very same poltroons who in 1919
scattered and ran from every red armband, abandoned their King, in a twinkling
exchanged the halberd for the walking stick, put on noncommittal neckties, and
vanished without trace as peaceful ' citizens.' At one stroke they were gone,
these royal champions, and only after the revolutionary storm, thanks to the
activity of others, had subsided enough so that a man could again roar his
'Hail, hail to the King' into the breezes, these 'servants and counselors' of
the crown began again cautiously to emerge. And now they are all here again,
looking back longingly to the fieshpots of Egypt; they can hardly restrain
themselves in their loyalty to the King and their urge to do great things,
until the day when again the first red arm-band will appear, and the whole gang
of ghosts profiting from the old monarchy will again vanish like mice at the
sight of a cat!
If the monarchs were not themselves to blame for these
things, they could be most heartily pitied because of their present defenders.
In any case, they might as well know that with such knights a crown can be
lost, but no crowns gained.
This servility, however, was a flaw in our whole
education, for which we suffered most terribly in this connection. For, as its
consequence, these wretched creatures were able to maintain themselves at all
the courts and gradually undermine the foundations of the monarchy. And when
the structure finally began to totter, they evaporated. Naturally: cringers and
lickspittles do not let themselves be knocked dead for their master. That
monarchs never know this and fail to learn it almost on principle has from time
immemorial been their undoing.
One of the worst symptoms of decay was Mate increasing
cowardice in the face of responsibility, as well as the resultant
halfheartedness in all things.
To be sure, the starting point of this plague in our
country lies in large part in the parliamentary institution in which
irresponsibility of the purest breed is cultivated. Unfortunately, this plague
slowly spread to all other domains of life, most strongly to state life.
Everywhere responsibility was evaded and inadequate half-measures were
preferred as a result; for in the use of such measures personal responsibility
seems reduced to the smallest dimensions.
Just examine the attitude of the various governments
toward a number of truly injurious manifestations of our public life, and you
will easily recognize the terrible significance of this general
half-heartedness and cowardice in the face of responsibility.
I shall take only a few cases from the mass of existing
examples:
Journalistic circles in particular like to describe the press as a
'great power' in the state. As a matter of fact, its importance really is
immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education
in adulthood.
Its readers, by and large, can be divided into three
groups:
First, into those who believe everything they read;
second, into those who have ceased to believe
anything;
third, into the minds which critically examine what they read, and
judge accordingly.
Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It
consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the
simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of
professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all
those who have neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who
partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is
set before them in black and white. To them also belongs the type of lazybones
who could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental laziness seizes
gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the modest
assumption that the someone else has exerted himself considerably. Now, with
all these types, who constitute the great masses, the influence of the press
will be enormous. They are not able or willing themselves to examine what is
set before them, and as a result their whole attitude toward all the problems
of the day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of
others. This can be advantageous when their enlightenment is provided by a
serious and truth-loving party, but it is catastrophic when scoundrels and
liars provide it.
The second group is much smaller in number. It is partly
composed of elements which previously belonged to the first group, but after
long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe
anything that comes before their eyes in print. They hate every newspaper;
either they don't read it at all, or without exception fly into a rage over the
contents, since in their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods.
These people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in the
face of the truth. Consequently, they are lost for all positive, political
work.
The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the
minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught
to think independently, who try to form their own judgment on all things, and
who subject everything they read to a thorough examination and further
development of their own. They will not look at a newspaper without always
collaborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it.
Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve.
For the members of
this third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that newspaper scribblers
can put down is not very dangerous or even very important. Most of them in the
course of their lives have learned to regard every journalist as a rascal on
principle, who tells the truth only once in a blue moon. Unfortunately,
however, the importance of these splendid people lies only in their
intelligence and not in their number- a misfortune at a time when wisdom is
nothing and the majority is everything! Today, when the ballot of the masses
decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the
first: the mob of the simple or credulous.
It is of paramount interest to the state and the nation to
prevent these people from falling into the hands of bad, ignorant, or even
vicious educators. The state, therefore, has the duty of watching over their
education and preventing any mischief. It must particularly exercise strict
control over the press; for its influence on these people is by far the
strongest and most penetrating, since it is applied, not once in a while, but
over and over again. In the uniformity and constant repetition of this
instruction lies its tremendous power. If anywhere, therefore, it is here that
the state must not forget that all means must serve an end; it must not let
itself be confused by the drivel about so-called 'freedom of the press' and let
itself be talked into neglecting its duty and denying the nation the food which
it needs and which is good for it; with ruthless determination it must make
sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of
the state and the nation.
But what food did the German press of the pre-War period
dish out to the people? Was it not the worst poison that can even be imagined?
Wasn't the worst kind of pacifism injected into the heart of our people at a
time when the rest of the world was preparing to throttle Germany, slowly but
surely? Even in peacetime didn't the press inspire the minds of the people with
doubt in the right of their own state, thus from the outset limiting them in
the choice of means for its defense? Was it not the German press which knew how
to make the absurdity of 'Western democracy' palatable to our people until
finally, ensnared by all the enthusiastic tirades, they thought they could
entrust their future to a League of Nations? Did it not help to teach our
people a miserable immorality? Did it not ridicule morality and ethics as
backward and petty-bourgeois, until our people finally became 'modern'? Did it
not with its constant attacks undermine the foundations of the state's
authority until a single thrust sufficed to make the edifice collapse? Did it
not fight with all possible means against every effort to give unto the state
that which is the state's? Did it not belittle the army with constant
criticism, sabotage universal conscription, demand the refusal of military
credits, etc., until the result became inevitable?
The so-called liberal press was actively engaged in
digging the grave of the German people and the German Reich. We can pass by the
lying Marxist sheets in silence; to them lying is just as vitally necessary as
catching mice for a cat; their function is only to break the people's national
and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave's yoke of international
capital and its masters, the Jews.
And what did the state do against this mass poisoning of
the nation? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A few ridiculous decrees, a few fines
for villainy that went too far, and that was the end of it. Instead, they hoped
to curry favor with this plague by flattery, by recognition of the 'value' of
the press, its 'importance,' its 'educational mission,' and more such
nonsense-as for the Jews, they took all this with a crafty smile and
acknowledged it with sly thanks.
The reason, however, for this disgraceful failure on the
part of the state was not that it did not recognize the danger, but rather in a
cowardice crying to high Heaven and the resultant halfheartedness of all
decisions and measures. No one had the courage to use thoroughgoing radical
methods, but in this as in everything else they tinkered about with a lot of
halfway prescriptions, and instead of carrying the thrust to the heart, they at
most irritated the viper-with the result that not only did everything remain as
before, but on the contrary the power of the institutions which should have
been combated increased from year to year.
The defensive struggle of the German government at that
time against the press-mainly that of Jewish origin-which was slowly ruining
the nation was without any straight line, irresolute and above all without any
visible goal. The intelligence of the privy councilors failed completely when
it came to estimating the importance of this struggle, to choosing means or
drawing up a clear plan. Planlessly they fiddled about; sometimes, after being
bitten too badly, they locked up one of the journalistic vipers for a few weeks
or months, but they left the snakes' nest as such perfectly unmolested.
True-this resulted partly from the infinitely wily tactics of the
Jews, on the one hand, and from a stupidity and innocence such as only privy
councilors are capable of, on the other. The Jew was much too clever to allow
his entire press to be attacked uniformly. No, one part of it existed in order
to cover the other. While the Marxist papers assailed in the most dastardly way
everything that can be holy to man; while they infamously attacked the state
and the government and stirred up large sections of the people against one
another, the bourgeois-democratic papers knew how to give an appearance of
their famous objectivity, painstakingly avoided all strong words, well knowing
that empty heads can judge only by externals and never have the faculty of
penetrating the inner core, so that for them the value of a thing is measured
by this exterior instead of by the content; a human weakness to which they owe
what esteem they themselves enjoy.
For these people the Frankfurter Zeitung was the
embodiment of respectability. For it never uses coarse expressions, it rejects
all physical brutality and keeps appealing for struggle with 'intellectual'
weapons, a conception, strange to say, to which especially the least
intelligent people are most attached. This is a result of our half-education
which removes people from the instinct of Nature and pumps a certain amount of
knowledge into them, but cannot create full understanding, since for this
industry and good will alone are no use; the necessary intelligence must be
present, and what is more, it must be inborn. The ultimate wisdom is always the
understanding of the instinct '-that is: a man must never fall into the lunacy
of believing that he has really risen to be lord and master of Nature-which is
so easily induced by the conceit of half-education; he must understand the
fundamental necessity of Nature's rule, and realize how much his existence is
subjected to these laws of eternal fight and upward struggle. Then he will feel
that in a universe where planets revolve around suns, and moons turn about
planets, where force alone forever masters weakness, compelling it to be an
obedient slave or else crushing it, there can be no special laws for man. For
him, too, the eternal principles of this ultimate wisdom hold sway. He can try
to comprehend them; but escape them, never.
And it is precisely for our intellectual demi-monde that
the Jew writes his so-called intellectual press. For them the Frankfurter
Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt are made; for them their tone is chosen, and
on them they exercise their influence. Seemingly they all most sedulously avoid
any outwardly crude forms, and meanwhile from other vessels they nevertheless
pour their poison into the hearts of their readers. Amid a Gezeires 2 Of fine
sounds and phrases they lull their readers into believing that pure science or
even morality is really the motive of their acts, while in reality it is
nothing but a wily, ingenious trick for stealing the enemy's weapon against the
press from under his nose. The one variety oozes respectability, so all
soft-heads are ready to believe them when they say that the faults of others
are only trivial abuses which should never lead to an infringement of the
'freedom of the press'-their term for poisoning and lying to the people. And so
the authorities shy away from taking measures against these bandits, for they
fear that, if they did, they would at once have the ' respectable ' press
against them, a fear which is only too justified. For as soon as they attempt
to proceed against one of these shameful rags, all the others will at once take
its part, but by no means to sanction its mode of struggle, God forbid-but only
to defend the principle of freedom of the press and freedom of public opinion;
these alone must be defended. But in the face of all this shouting, the
strongest men grow weak, for does it not issue from the mouths of 'respectable'
papers?
This poison was able to penetrate the bloodstream of our people
unhindered and do its work, and the state did not possess the power to master
the disease. In the laughable half-measures which it used against the poison,
the menacing decay of the Reich was manifest. For an institution which is no
longer resolved to defend itself with all weapons has for practical purposes
abdicated. Every half-measure is a visible sign of inner decay which must and
will be followed sooner or later by outward collapse.
I believe that the present generation, properly led, will
more easily master this danger. It has experienced various things which had the
power somewhat to strengthen the nerves of those who did not lose them
entirely. In future days the Jew will certainly continue to raise a mighty
uproar in his newspapers if a hand is ever laid on his favorite nest, if an end
is put to the mischief of the press and this instrument of education is put
into the service of the state and no longer left in the hands of aliens and
enemies of the people. But I believe that this will bother us younger men less
than our fathers. A thirty-centimeter shell has always hissed more loudly than
a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers-so let them hiss!
A further example of the halfheartedness and weakness of
the leaders of pre-War Germany in meeting the most important vital questions of
the nation is the following: running parallel to the political, ethical, and
moral contamination of the people, there had been for many years a no less
terrible poisoning of the health of the national body. Especially in the big
cities, syphilis was beginning to spread more and more, while tuberculosis
steadily reaped its harvest of death throughout nearly the whole
country.
Though in both cases the consequences were terrible for the nation,
the authorities could not summon up the energy to take
decisive
measures.
Particularly with regard to syphilis, the attitude of the
leadership of the nation and the state can only be designated as total
capitulation. To fight it seriously, they would have had to take somewhat
broader measures than was actually the case. The invention of a remedy of
questionable character and its commercial exploitation can no longer help much
against this plague. Here again it was only the fight against causes that
mattered and not the elimination of the symptoms. The cause lies, primarily, in
our prostitution of love. Even if its result were not this frightful plague, it
would nevertheless be profoundly injurious to man, since the moral devastations
which accompany this degeneracy suffice to destroy a people slowly but surely.
This Jewification of our spiritual life and mammonization of our mating
instinct will sooner or later destroy our entire offspring, for the powerful
children of a natural emotion will be replaced by the miserable creatures of
financial expediency which is becoming more and more the basis and sole
prerequisite of our marriages. Love finds its outlet elsewhere.
Here, too, of course, Nature can be scorned for a certain
time, but her vengeance will not fail to appear, only it takes a time to
manifest itself, or rather: it is often recognized too late by man.
But the devastating consequences of a lasting disregard of the
natural requirements for marriage can be seen in our nobility. Here we have
before us the results of procreation based partly on purely social compulsion
and partly on financial grounds. The one leads to a general weakening, the
other to a poisoning of the blood, since every department store Jewess is
considered fit to augment the offspring of His Highness-and, indeed, the
offspring look it. In both cases complete degeneration is the
consequence.
Today our bourgeoisie strive to go the same road, and
they will end up at the same goal.
Hastily and indifferently, people tried to pass by the
unpleasant truths, as though by such an attitude events could be undone. No,
the fact that our big city population is growing more and more prostituted in
its love life cannot just be denied out of existence; it simply is so. The most
visible results of this mass contamination can, on the one hand, be found in
the insane asylums, and on the other, unfortunately, in our-children. They in
particular are the sad product of the irresistibly spreading contamination of
our sexual life; the vices of the parents are revealed in the sicknesses of the
children.
There are different ways of reconciling oneself to this unpleasant,
yes, terrible fact: the ones see nothing at all or rather want to see nothing;
this, of course, is by far the simplest and easiest 'position.' The others wrap
themselves in a saint's cloak of prudishness as absurd as it is hypocritical;
they speak of this whole field as if it were a great sin, and above all express
their profound indignation against every sinner caught in the act, then close
their eyes in pious horror to this godless plague and pray God to let sulphur
and brimstone-preferably after their own death-rain down on this whole Sodom
and Gomorrah, thus once again making an instructive example of this shameless
humanity. The third, finally, are perfectly well aware of the terrible
consequences which this plague must and will some day induce, but only shrug
their shoulders, convinced that nothing can be done against the menace, so the
only thing to do is to let things slide.
All this, to be sure, is comfortable and simple, but it
must not be forgotten that a nation will fall victim to such comfortableness.
The excuse that other peoples are no better off, it goes without saying, can
scarcely affect the fact of our own ruin, except that the feeling of seeing
others stricken by the same calamity might for many bring a mitigation of their
own pains. But then more than ever the question becomes: Which people will be
the first and only one to master this plague by its own strength, and which
nations will perish from it? And this is the crux of the whole matter. Here
again we have a touchstone of a race's value-the race which cannot stand the
test will simply die out, making place for healthier or tougher and more
resisting races. For since this question primarily regards the offspring, it is
one of those concerning which it is said with such terrible justice that the
sins of the fathers are avenged down to the tenth generation. But this applies
only to profanation of the blood and the race.
Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin
in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.
How truly wretched was the attitude of pre-War Germany on
this one very question ! What was done to check the contamination of our youth
in the big cities? What was done to attack the infection and mammonization of
our love life? What was done to combat the resulting syphilization of our
people?
This can be answered most easily by stating what should have been
done.
First of all, it was not permissible to take this question
frivolously; it had to be understood that the fortune or misfortune of
generations would depend on its solution; yes, that it could, if not had to be,
decisive for the entire future of our people. Such a realization, however,
obligated us to ruthless measures and surgical operations. What we needed most
was the conviction that first of all the whole attention of the nation had to
be concentrated upon this terrible danger, so that every single individual
could become inwardly conscious of the importance of this struggle. Truly
incisive and sometimes almost unbearable obligations and burdens can only be
made generally effective if, in addition to compulsion, the realization of
necessity is transmitted to the individual. But this requires a tremendous
enlightenment excluding all other problems of the day which might have a
distracting effect.
In all cases where the fulfillment of apparently
impossible demand.s or tasks is involved, the whole attention of a people must
be focused and concentrated on this one question, as though life and death
actually depended on its solution. Only in this way will a people be made
willing and able to perform great tasks and exertions.
This principle applies also to the individual man in so
far as he wants to achieve great goals. He, too, will be able to do this only
in steplike sections, and he, too, will always have to unite his entire
energies on the achievement of a definitely delimited task, until this task
seems fulfilled and a new section can be marked out. Anyone who does not so
divide the road to be conquered into separate stages and does not try to
conquer these one by one, systematically with the sharpest concentration of all
his forces, will never be able to reach the ultimate goal, but will be left
lying somewhere along the road, or perhaps even off it. This gradual working up
to a goal is an art, and to conquer the road step by step in this way you must
throw in your last ounce of energy.
The very first prerequisite needed for attacking such a
difficult stretch of the human road is for the leadership to succeed in
representing to the masses of the people the partial goal which now has to be
achieved, or rather conquered, as the one which is solely and alone worthy of
attention, on whose conquest everything depends. The great mass of the people
cannot see the whole road ahead of them without growing weary and despairing of
the task. A certain number of them will keep the goal in mind, but will only be
able to see the road in small, partial stretches, like the wanderer, who
likewise knows and recognizes the end of his journey, but is better able to
conquer the endless highway if he divides it into sections and boldly attacks
each one as though it represented the desired goal itself. Only in this way
does he advance without losing heart.
Thus, by the use of all propagandist means, the question
of combating syphilis should have been made to appear as the task of the
nation. Not just one more task. To this end, its injurious effects should have
been thoroughly hammered into people as the most terrible misfortune, and this
by the use of all available means, until the entire nation arrived at the
conviction that everything-future or ruin-depended upon the solution of this
question.
Only after such a preparation, if necessary over a period of years,
will the attention, and consequently the determination, of the entire nation be
aroused to such an extent that we can take exceedingly hard measures exacting
the greatest sacrifices without running the risk of not being understood or of
suddenly being left in the lurch by the will of the masses.
For, seriously to attack this plague, tremendous
sacrifices and equally great labors are necessary.
The fight against syphilis demands a fight against
prostitution against prejudices, old habits, against previous conceptions,
general views among them not least the false prudery of certain
circles.
The first prerequisite for even the moral right to combat these
things is the facilitation of earlier marriage for the coming generation. In
late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist
and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution
which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to
regard himself as the 'image' of God.
Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity, but it cannot be
eliminated by moral lectures, pious intentions, etc.; its limitation and final
abolition presuppose the elimination of innumerable preconditions. The first is
and remains the creation of an opportunity for early marriage as compatible
with human nature- particularly for the man, as the woman in any case is only
the passive part.
How lost, how incomprehensible a part of humanity has
become today can be seen from the fact that mothers in so-called 'good '
society can not seldom be heard to say that they are glad to have found their
child a husband who has sown his wild oats, etc. Since there is hardly any lack
of these, but rather the contrary, the poor girl will be happy to find one of
these worn-out Siegfrieds, and the children will be the visible result of this
'sensible' marriage. If we bear in mind that, aside from this, propagation as
such is limited as much as possible, so that Nature is prevented from making
any choice, since naturally every creature, regardless how miserable, must be
preserved, the only question that remains is why such an institution exists at
all any more and what purpose it is supposed to serve? Isn't it exactly the
same as prostitution itself? Hasn't duty toward posterity passed completely out
of the picture? Or do people fail to realize what a curse on the part of their
children and children's children they are heaping on themselves by such
criminal frivolity in observing the ultimate natural law as well as our
ultimate natural obligation?
Thus, the civilized peoples degenerate and gradually
perish.
And marriage cannot be an end in itself, but must serve the one
higher goal, the increase and preservation of the species and the race. This
alone is its meaning and its task.
Under these conditions its soundness can only be judged
by the way in which it fulfills this task. For this reason alone early marriage
is sound, for it-gives the young marriage that strength from which alone a
healthy and resistant offspring can arise. To be sure, it can be made possible
only by quite a number of social conditions without which early marriage is not
even thinkable. Therefore, a solution of this question, small as it is, cannot
occur without incisive measures of a social sort. The importance of these
should be most understandable at a time when the 'social' - republic, if only
by its incompetence in the solution of the housing question, simply prevents
numerous marriages and thus encourages prostitution.
Our absurd way of regulating salaries, which concerns
itself much too little with the question of the family and its sustenance, is
one more reason that makes many an early marriage impossible.
Thus, a real fight against prostitution can only be
undertaken if a basic change in social conditions makes possible an earlier
marriage than at present can generally take place. This is the very first
premise for a solution of this question.
In the second place, education and training must eradicate
a number of evils about which today no one bothers at all. Above all, in our
present education a balance must be created between mental instruction and
physical training. The institution that is called a Gymnasium today is a
mockery of the Greek model. In our educational system it has been utterly
forgotten that in the long run a healthy mind can dwell only in a healthy body.
Especially if we bear in mind the mass of the people, aside from a few
exceptions, this statement becomes absolutely valid.
In pre-War Germany there was a period in which no one
concerned himself in the least about this truth. They simply went on sinning
against the body and thought that in the one-sided training of the 'mind,' they
possessed a sure guaranty for the greatness of the nation. A mistake whose
consequences began to be felt sooner than was expected. It is no accident that
th Bolshevistic wave never found better soil than in places inhabited by a
population degenerated by hunger and constant undernourishment: in Central
Germany, Saxony, and the Ruhr. But in all these districts the so-called
intelligentsia no longer offers any serious resistance to this Jewish disease,
for the simple reason that this intelligentsia is itself completely degenerate
physically, though less for reasons of poverty than for reasons of education.
In times when not the mind but the fist decides, the purely intellectual
emphasis of our education in the upper classes makes them incapable of
defending themselves, let alone enforcing their will. Not infrequently the
first reason for personal cowardice lies in physical weaknesses.
The excessive emphasis on purely intellectual instruction
and the neglect of physical training also encourage the emergence of sexual
ideas at a much too early age. The youth who achieves the hardness of iron by
sports and gymnastics succumbs to the need of sexual satisfaction less than the
stay-at-home fed exclusively on intellectual fare. And a sensible system of
education must bear this in mind. It must, moreover, not fail to consider that
the healthy young man will expect different things from the woman than a
prematurely corrupted weakling.
Thus, the whole system of education must be so organized
as to use the boy's free time for the useful training of his body. He has no
right to hang about in idleness during these years, to make the streets and
movie-houses unsafe; after his day's work he should steel and harden his young
body, so that later life will not find him too soft. To begin this and also
carry it out, to direct and guide it, is the task of education, and not just
the pumping of so-called wisdom. We must also do away with the conception that
the treatment of the body is the affair of every individual. There is no
freedom to sin at the cost of posterity and hence of the race.
Parallel to the training of the body, a struggle against
the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a
hothouse for sexual ideas and stimulations. Just look at the bill of fare
served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able
to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth. In
shop windows and billboards the vilest means are used to attract the attention
of the crowd. Anyone who has not lost the ability to think himself into their
soul must realize that this must cause great damage in the youth. This sensual,
sultry atmosphere leads to ideas and stimulations at a time when the boy should
have no understanding of such things. The result of this kind of education can
be studied in present-day youth, and it is not exactly gratifying. They mature
too early and consequently grow old before their time. Sometimes the public
learns of court proceedings which permit shattering insights into the emotional
life of our fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds. Who will be surprised that even in
these age-groups syphilis begins to seek its victims? And is it not deplorable
to see a good number of these physically weak, spiritually corrupted young men
obtaining their introduction to marriage through big-city whores?
No, anyone who wants to attack prostitution must first of
all help to eliminate its spiritual basis. He must clear away the filth of the
moral plague of big-city ' civilization ' and he must do this ruthlessly and
without wavering in the face of all the shouting and screaming that will
naturally be let loose. If we do not lift the youth out of the morass of their
present-day environment, they will drown in it. Anyone who refuses to see these
things supports them, and thereby makes himself an accomplice in the slow
prostitution of our future which, whether we like it or not, lies in the coming
generation. This cleansing of our culture must be extended to nearly all
fields. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays
must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the
service of a moral political, and cultural idea. Public life must be freed from
the stifling perfume of our modern eroticism, just as it must be freed from all
unmanly, prudish hypocrisy. In all these things the goal and the road must be
determined by concern for the preservation of the health of our people in body
and soul. The right of personal freedom recedes before the duty to preserve the
race.
Only after these measures are carried out can the medical struggle
against the plague itself be carried through with any prospect of success. But
here, too, there must be no half-measures; the gravest and most ruthless
decisions will have to be made. It is a half-measure to let incurably sick
people steadily contaminate the remaining healthy ones. This is in keeping with
the humanitarianism which, to avoid hurting one individual, lets a hundred
others perish. The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating
equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and if
systematically executed represents the most humane act of mankind. It will
spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will
lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole. The determination to proceed
in this direction will oppose a dam to the further spread of venereal diseases.
For, if necessary, the incurably sick will be pitilessly segregated-a barbaric
measure for the unfortunate who is struck by it, but a blessing for his fellow
men and posterity. The passing pain of a century can and will redeem
millenniums from sufferings.
The struggle against syphilis and the prostitution which
prepares the way for it is one of the most gigantic tasks of humanity, gigantic
because we are facing, not the solution of a single question, but the
elimination of a large number of evils which bring about this plague as a
resultant manifestation. For in this case the sickening of the body is only the
consequence of a sickening of the moral, social, and racial instincts.
But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought
to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I
think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the
Almighty.
But how did they try to deal with this plague in old Germany? Viewed
calmly, the answer is really dismal. Assuredly, government circles well
recognized the terrible evils, though perhaps they were not quite able to
ponder the consequences; but in the struggle against it they failed totally,
and instead of thoroughgoing reforms preferred to take pitiful measures. They
tinkered with the disease and left the causes untouched. They submitted the
individual prostitute to a medical examination, supervised her as best they
could, and, in case they established disease, put her in some hospital from
which after a superficial cure they again let her loose on the rest of
humanity.
To be sure, they had introduced a 'protective paragraph' according
to which anyone who was not entirely healthy or cured must avoid sexual
intercourse under penalty of the law. Surely this measure is sound in itself,
but in its practical application it was almost a total failure. In the first
place, the woman, in case she is smitten by misfortune-if only due to our, or
rather her, education-will in most cases refuse to be dragged into court as a
witness against the wretched thief of her health-often under the most
embarrassing attendant circumstances. She, in particular, has little to gain
from it; in most cases she will be the one to suffer most-for she will be
struck much harder by the contempt of her loveless fellow creatures than would
be the case with a man. Finally, imagine the situation if the conveyor of the
disease is her own husband. Should she accuse him? Or what else should she
do?
In the case of the man, there is the additional fact that
unfortunately he often runs across the path of this plague after ample
consumption of alcohol, since in this condition he is least able to judge the
qualities of his 'fair one,' a fact which is only too well known to the
diseased prostitute, and always causes her to angle after men in this ideal
condition. And the upshot of it all is that the man who gets an unpleasant
surprise later can, even by thoroughly racking his brains, not remember his
kind benefactress, which should not be surprising in a city like Berlin or even
Munich. In addition, it must be considered that often we have to deal with
visitors from the provinces who are completely befuddled by all the magic of
the big city.
Finally, however: who can know whether he is sick or
healthy? Are there not numerous cases in which a patient apparently cured
relapses and causes frightful mischief without himself suspecting it at
first?
Thus, the practical effect of this protection by legal punishment of
a guilty infection is in reality practically nil. Exactly the same is true of
the supervision of prostitutes; and finally, the cure itself, even today, is
dubious. Only one thing is certain: despite all measures the plague spread more
and more, giving striking confirmation of their ineffectualness.
The fight against the prostitution of the people's soul
was a failure all along the line, or rather, that is, nothing at all was
done.
Let anyone who is inclined to take this lightly just study the basic
statistical facts on the dissemination of this plague, compare its growth in
the last hundred years, and then imagine its further development-and he would
really need the simplicity of an ass to keep an unpleasant shudder from running
down his back.
The weakness and halfheartedness of the position taken in
old Germany toward so terrible a phenomenon may be evaluated as a visible sign
of a people's decay. If the power to fight for one's own health is no longer
present, the right to live in this world of struggle ends. This world belongs
only to the forceful 'whole' man and not to the weak 'half ' man.
One of the most obvious manifestations of decay in the old
Reich was the slow decline of the cultural level, and by culture I do not mean
what today is designated by the word ' civilization.' The latter, on the
contrary, rather seems hostile to a truly high standard of thinking and
living.
Even before the turn of the century an element began to intrude into
our art which up to that time could be regarded as entirely foreign and
unknown. To be sure, even in earlier times there were occasional aberrations of
taste, but such cases were rather artistic derailments, to which posterity
could attribute at least a certain historical value, than products no longer of
an artistic degeneration, but of a spiritual degeneration that had reached the
point of destroying the spirit. In them the political collapse, which later
became more visible, was culturally indicated.
Art Bolshevism is the only possible cultural form and
spiritual expression of Bolshevism as a whole.
Anyone to whom this seems strange need only subject the
art of the happily Bolshevized states to an examination, and, to his horror, he
will be confronted by the morbid excrescences of insane and degenerate men,
with which, since the turn of the century, we have become familiar under the
collective concepts of cubism and dadaism, as the official and recognized art
of those states. Even in the short period of the Bavarian Republic of Councils,
this phenomenon appeared. Even here it could be seen that all the official
posters, propagandist drawings in the newspapers, etc., bore the imprint, not
only of political but of cultural decay.
No more than a political collapse of the present magnitude
would have been conceivable sixty years ago was a cultural collapse such as
began to manifest itself in futurist and cubist works since 1900 thinkable.
Sixty years ago an exhibition of so-called dadaistic 'experiences' would have
seemed simply impossible and its organizers would have ended up in the
madhouse, while today they even preside over art associations. This plague
could not appear at that time, because neither would public opinion have
tolerated it nor the state calmly looked on. For it is the business of the
state, in other words, of its leaders, to prevent a people from being driven
into the arms of spiritual madness. And this is where such a development would
some day inevitably end. For on the day when this type of art really
corresponded to the general view of things, one of the gravest transformations
of humanity would have occurred: the regressive development of the human mind
would have begun and the end would be scarcely conceivable.
Once we pass the development of our cultural life in the
last twenty-five years in review from this standpoint, we shall be horrified to
see how far we are already engaged in this regression. Everywhere we encounter
seeds which represent the beginnings of parasitic growths which must sooner or
later be the ruin of our culture. In them, too, we can recognize the symptoms
of decay of a slowly rotting world. Woe to the peoples who can no longer master
this disease!
Such diseases could be seen in Germany in nearly every
field of art and culture. Everything seemed to have passed the high point and
to be hastening toward the abyss. The theater was sinking manifestly lower and
even then would have disappeared completely as a cultural factor if the Court
Theaters at least had not turned against the prostitution of art. If we
disregard them and a few other praiseworthy examples, the offerings of the
stage were of such a nature that it would have been more profitable for the
nation to keep away from them entirely. It was a sad sign of inner decay that
the youth could no longer be sent into most of these so-called ' abodes of art
'-a fact which was admitted with shameless frankness by a general display of
the penny-arcade warning: 'Young people are not admitted!'
Bear in mind that such precautionary measures had to be
taken in the places which should have existed primarily for the education of
the youth and not for the delectation of old and jaded sections of the
population. What would the great dramatists of all times have said to such a
regulation, and what, above all, to the circumstances which caused it? How
Schiller would have flared up, how Goethe would have turned away in
indignation!
But after all, what are Schiller, Goethe, or Shakespeare
compared to the heroes of the newer German poetic art? Old, outworn, outmoded,
nay, obsolete. For that was the characteristic thing about that period: not
that the period itself produced nothing but filth, but that in the bargain it
befouled everything that was really great in the past. This, to be sure, is a
phenomenon that can always be observed at such times. The baser and more
contemptible the products of the time and its people, the Lore it hates the
witnesses to the greater nobility and dignity of a former day. In such times
the people would best like to efface the memory of mankind's past completely,
so that by excluding every possibility of comparison they could pass off their
own trash as 'art.' Hence every new institution, the more wretched and
miserable it is, will try all the harder to extinguish the last traces of the
past time, whereas every true renascence of humanity can start with an easy
mind from the good achievements of past generations; in fact, can often make
them truly appreciated for the first time. It does not have to fear that it
will pale before the past; no, of itself it contributes so valuable an addition
to the general store of human culture that often, in order to make this culture
fully appreciated, it strives to keep alive the memory of former achievements,
thus making sure that the present will fully understand the new gift. Only
those who can give nothing valuable to the world, but try to act as if they
were going to give it God knows what, will hate everything that was previously
gives and would best like to negate or even destroy it.
The truth of this is by no means limited to the field of
general culture, but applies to politics as well. Revolutionary new movements
will hate the old forms in proportion to their own inferiority. Here, too, we
can see how eagerness to make their own trash appear to be something noteworthy
leads to blind hatred against the superior good of the past. As long, for
example, as the historical memory of Frederick the Great is not dead, Friedrich
Ebert can arouse nothing but limited amazement. The hero of Sans-Souci is to
the former Bremen saloon keeper approximately as the sun to the moon; only when
the rays of the sun die can the moon shine. Consequently, the hatred of all new
moons of humanity for the fixed stars is only too comprehensible. In political
life, such nonentities, if Fate temporarily casts power in their lap, not only
besmirch and befoul the past with untiring zeal, but also remove themselves
from general criticism by the most extreme methods. The new German Reich's
legislation for the defense of the Republic may pass as an example of
this.
Therefore, if any new idea, a doctrine, a new philosophy, or even a
political or economic movement tries to deny the entire past, tries to make it
bad or worthless, for this reason alone we must be extremely cautious and
suspicious. As a rule the reason for such hatred is either its own inferiority
or even an evil intention as such. A really beneficial renascence of humanity
will always have to continue building where the last good foundation stops. It
will not have to be ashamed of using already existing truths. For the whole of
human culture, as well as man himself is only the result of a single long
development in which every generation contributed and fitted in its stone. Thus
the meaning and purpose of revolutions is not to tear down the whole building
but to remove what is bad or unsuitable and to continue building on the sound
spot that has been laid bare.
Thus alone can we and may we speak of the progress of
humanity. Otherwise the world would never be redeemed from chaos, since every
generation would be entitled to reject the past and hence destroy the works of
the past as the presupposition for its own work.
Thus, the saddest thing about the state of our whole
culture of the pre-War period was not only the total impotence of artistic and
cultural creative power in general, but the hatred with which the memory of the
greater past was besmirched and effaced. In nearly all fields of art,
especially in the theater and literature, we began around the turn of the
century to produce less that was new and significant, but to disparage the best
of the old work and represent it as inferior and surpassed; as though this
epoch of the most humiliating inferiority could surpass anything at all. And
from this effort to remove the past from the eyes of the present, the evil
intent of the apostles of the future could clearly and distinctly be seen. By
this it should have been recognized that these were no new, even if false,
cultural conceptions, but a process of destroying all culture, paving the way
for a stultification of healthy artistic feeling: the spiritual preparation of
political Bolshevism. For if the age of Pericles seems embodied in the
Parthenon, the Bolshevistic present is embodied in a
cubist
monstrosity.
In this connection we must also point to the cowardice
which here again was manifest in the section of our people which on the basis
of its education and position should have been obligated to resist this
cultural disgrace. But from pure fear of the clamor raised by the apostles of
Bolshevistic art, who furiously attacked anyone who didn't want to recognize
the crown of creation in them and pilloried him as a backward philistine, they
renounced all serious resistance and reconciled themselves to what seemed after
all inevitable. They were positively scared stiff that these half-wits or
scoundrels would accuse them of lack of understanding; as though it were a
disgrace not to understand the products of spiritual degenerates or slimy
swindlers. These cultural disciples, it is true, possessed a very simple means
of passing off their nonsense as something God knows how important: they passed
off all sorts of incomprehensible and obviously crazy stuff on their amazed
fellow men as a so-called inner experience, a cheap way of taking any word of
opposition out of the mouths of most people in advance. For beyond a doubt this
could be an inner experience; the doubtful part was whether it is permissible
to dish up the hallucinations of lunatics or criminals to the healthy world.
The works of a Moritz von Schwind, or of a Bocklin, were also an inner
experience, but of artists graced by God and not of clowns.
Here was a good occasion to study the pitiful cowardice
of our so-called intelligentsia, which dodged any serious resistance to this
poisoning of the healthy instinct of our people and left it to the people
themselves to deal with this insolent nonsense. In order not to be considered
lacking in artistic understanding, people stood for every mockery of art and
ended up by becoming really uncertain in the judgment of good and bad.
All in all, these were tokens of times that were getting very
bad.
As another disquieting attribute, the following must yet
be stated:
In the nineteenth century our cities began more and more
to lose the character of cultural sites and to descend to the level of mere
human settlements. The small attachment of our present big-city proletariat for
the town they live in is the consequence of the fact that it is only the
individual's accidental local stopping place, and nothing more. This is partly
connected with the frequent change of residence caused by social conditions,
which do not give a man time to form a closer bond with the city, and another
cause is to be found in the general cultural insignificance and poverty of our
present-day cities per se.
At the time of the wars of liberations the German cities
were not only small in number, but also modest as to size. The few really big
cities were mostly princely residences, and as such nearly always possessed a
certain cultural value and for the most part also a certain artistic picture.
The few places with more than fifty thousand inhabitants were, compared to
present-day cities with the same population, rich in scientific and artistic
treasures When Munich numbered sixty thousand souls, it was already on its way
to becoming one of the first German art centers; today nearly every factory
town has reached this number, if not many times surpassed it, yet some cannot
lay claim to the slightest real values. Masses of apartments and tenements, and
nothing more How, in view of such emptiness, any special bond could be expected
to arise with such a town must remain a mystery. No one will be particularly
attached to a city which has nothing more to offer than every other, which
lacks every individual note and in which everything has been carefully avoided
which might even look like art or anything of the sort.
But, as if this were not enough, even the really big
cities grow relatively poorer in real art treasures with the mounting increase
in the population. They seem more and more standardized and give entirely the
same picture as the poor little factory towns, though in larger dimensions.
What recent times have added to the cultural content of our big cities is
totally inadequate. All our cities are living on the fame and treasures of the
past. For instance, take from present-day Munich everything that was created
under Ludwig I,l and you will note with horror how poor the addition of
significant artistic creations has been since that time. The same is true of
Berlin and most other big cities.
The essential point, however, is the following: our big
cities of today possess no monuments dominating the city picture, which might
somehow be regarded as the symbols of the whole epoch. This was true in the
cities of antiquity, since nearly every one possessed a special monument in
which it took pride. The characteristic aspect of the ancient city did not lie
in private buildings, but in the community monuments which seemed made, not for
the moment, but for eternity, because they were intended to reflect, not the
wealth of an individual owner, but the greatness and wealth of the community.
Thus arose monuments which were very well suited to unite the individual
inhabitant with his city in a way which today sometimes seems almost
incomprehensible to us. For what the ancient had before his eyes was less the
humble houses of private owners than the magnificent edifices of the whole
community. Compared to them the dwelling house really sank to the level of an
insignificant object of secondary importance.
Only if we compare the dimensions of the ancient state
structures with contemporary dwelling houses can we understand the overpowering
sweep and force of this emphasis on the principle of giving first place to
public works. The few still towering colossuses which we admire in the ruins
and wreckage of the ancient world are not former business palaces, but temples
and state structures; in other words, works whose owner was the community. Even
in the splendor of late Rome the first place was not taken by the villas and
palaces of Individual citizens, but by the temples and baths, the stadiums,
circuses, aqueducts, basilicas, etc., of the state, hence of the whole
people.
Even the Germanic Middle Ages upheld the same guiding principle,
though amid totally different conceptions of art. What in antiquity found its
expression in the Acropolis or the Pantheon now cloaked itself in the forms of
the Gothic Cathedral. Like giants these monumental structures towered over the
swarming frames wooden, and brick buildings of the medieval city, and thus
became symbols which even today, with the tenements climbing higher and higher
beside them, determine the character and picture of these towns. Cathedrals,
town halls, grain markets, and battlements are the visible signs of a Inception
which in the last analysis was the same as that of antiquity.
Yet how truly deplorable the relation between state
buildings and private buildings has become today! If the fate of Rome should
strike Berlin, future generations would some day admire the department stores
of a few Jews as the mightiest works of our era and the hotels of a few
corporations as the characteristic expression of the culture of our times. Just
compare the miserable discrepancy prevailing in a city like even Berlin between
the structures of the Reich and those of finance and commerce
Even the sum of money spent on state buildings is usually
laughable and inadequate. Works are not built for eternity, but at most for the
need of the moment. And in them there is no dominant higher idea. At the time
of its construction, the Berlin Schloss was a work of different stature than
the new library, for instance, in the setting of the present time. While a
single battleship represented a value of approximately sixty millions, hardly
half of this sum was approved for the first magnificent building of the Reich,
intended to stand for eternity, the Reichstag Building. Indeed, when the
question of interior furnishings came up for decision, the exalted house voted
against the use of stone and ordered the walls trimmed with plaster; this time,
I must admit, the parliamentarians did right for a change: stone walls are no
place for plaster heads.
Thus, our cities of the present lack the outstanding
symbol of national community which, we must therefore not be surprised to find,
sees no symbol of itself in the cities. The inevitable result is a desolation
whose practical effect is the total indifference of the big-city dweller to the
destiny of his city.
This, too, is a sign of our declining culture and our
general collapse. The epoch is stifling in the pettiest utilitarianism or
better expressed in the service of money. And we have no call for surprise if
under such a deity little sense of heroism remains. The present time is only
harvesting what the immediate past has sown.
All these symptoms of decay are in the last analysis only
the consequences of the absence of a definite, uniformly acknowledged
philosophy and she resultant general uncertainty in the judgment and attitude
toward the various great problems of the time. That is why, beginning in
education, everyone is half-hearted and vacillating, shunning responsibility
and thus ending in cowardly tolerance of even recognized abuses. Humanitarian
bilge becomes stylish and, by weakly yielding to cankers and sparing
individuals, the future of millions is sacrificed.
How widespread the general disunity was growing is shown
by an examination of religious conditions before the War. Here, too, a unified
and effective philosophical conviction had long since been lost in large
sections of the nation. In this the members officially breaking away from the
churches play a less important role than those who are completely indifferent.
While both denominations maintain missions in Asia and Africa in order to win
new followers for their doctrine-an activity which can boast but very modest
success compared to the advance of the Mohammedan faith in particular right
here in Europe they lose millions and millions of inward adherents who either
are alien to all religious life or simply go their own ways. The consequences,
particularly from the moral point of view, are not favorable.
Also noteworthy is the increasingly violent struggle
against the dogmatic foundations of the various churches without which in this
human world the practical existence of a religious faith is not conceivable.
The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely for the
masses, faith is often the sole foundation of a moral attitude. The various
substitutes have not proved so successful from the standpoint of results that
they could be regarded as a useful replacement for previous religious creeds.
But if religious doctrine and faith are really to embrace the broad masses, the
unconditional authority of the content of this faith is the foundation of all
efficacy. What the current mores, without which assuredly hundreds of thousands
of well-bred people would live sensibly and reasonably but millions of others
would not, are for general living, state principles are for the state, and
dogmas for the current religion. Only through them is the wavering and
infinitely interpretable, purely intellectual idea delimited and brought into a
form without which it could never become faith. Otherwise the idea would never
pass beyond a metaphysical conception; in short, a philosophical opinion. The
attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle
against the general legal foundations of a state, and, as the latter would end
in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious
nihilism.
For the political man, the value of a religion must be estimated
less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly better substitute. As
long as this appears to be lacking, what is present can be demolished only by
fools or criminals.
Not the smallest blame for the none too delectable
religious conditions must be borne by those who encumber the religious idea
with too many things of a purely earthly nature and thus often bring it into a
totally unnecessary conflict with so-called exact science. In this victory will
almost always fall to the latter, though perhaps after a hard struggle, and
religion will suffer serious damage in the eyes of all those who are unable to
raise themselves above a purely superficial knowledge.
Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the
misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply
enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an
implement to perform political or rather business services for them. These
insolent liars, it is true, proclaim their creed in a stentorian voice to the
whole world for other sinners to hear; but their intention is not, if
necessary, to die for it, but to live better. For a single-political swindle,
provided it brings in enough, they are willing to sell the heart of a whole
religion; for ten parliamentary mandates they would ally themselves with the
Marxistic mortal enemies of all religions-and for a minister's chair they would
even enter into marriage with the devil, unless the devil were deterred by a
remnant of decency.
If in Germany before the War religious life for many had
an unpleasant aftertaste, this could be attributed to the abuse of Christianity
on the-part of a so-called ' Christian ' party and the shameless way in which
they attempted to identify the Catholic faith with a political party.
This false association was a calamity which may have brought
parliamentary mandates to a number of good-for-nothings but injury to the
Church.
The consequence, however, had to be borne by the whole nation, since
the outcome of the resultant slackening of religious life occurred at a time
when everyone was beginning to waver and vacillate anyway, and the traditional
foundations of ethics and morality were threatening to collapse.
This, too, created cracks and rifts in our nation which
might present no danger as long as no special strain-arose, but which
inevitably became catastrophic when by the force of great events the question
of the inner solidity of the nation achieved decisive importance.
Likewise in the field of politics the observant eye could
discern evils which, if not remedied or altered within a reasonable time, could
be and had to be regarded as signs of the Reich's coming decay. The aimlessness
of German domestic and foreign policy was apparent to everyone who was not
purposely blind. The regime of compromise seemed to be most in keeping with
Bismarck's conception that 'politics is an art of the possible.' But between
Bismarck and the later German chancellors there was a slight difference which
made it permissible for the former to let fall such an utterance on the nature
of politics while the same view from the mouths of his successors could not but
take on an entirely different meaning. For Bismarck with this phrase only
wanted to say that for the achievement of a definite political goal all
possibilities should be utilized, or, in other words, that all possibilities
should be taken into account; in the view of his successors, however, this
utterance solemnly released them from the necessity of having any political
ideas or goals whatever. And the leadership of the Reich at this time really
had no more political goals; for the necessary foundation of a definite
philosophy was lacking, as well as the necessary clarity on the inner laws
governing the development of all political life.
There were not a few who saw things blackly in this
respect and flayed the planlessness and heedlessness of the Reich's policies,
and well recognized their inner weakness and hollowness but these were only
outsiders in political life; the official government authorities passed by the
observations of a Houston Stewart Chamberlain with the same indifference as
still occurs today. These people are too stupid to think any-thing for
themselves and too conceited to learn what is necessary from others-an age-old
truth which caused Oxenstierna to cry out: 'The world is governed by a mere
fraction of wisdom';l and indeed nearly every ministerial secretary embodies
only an atom of this fraction. Only since Germany has become a republic, this
no longer applies. That is why it has been forbidden by the Law for the Defense
of the Republic 2 to believe, let alone discuss, any such thought. Oxenstierna
was lucky to live when he did, and not in this wise republic of ours.
Even in the pre-War period that institution which was supposed to
embody the strength of the Reich was recognized by many as its greatest
weakness: the parliament or Reichstag. Cowardice and irresponsibility were here
completely wedded.
One of the foolish remarks which today we not
infrequently hear is that parliamentarism in Germany has 'gone wrong since the
revolution.' This too easily gives the impression that it was different before
the revolution. In reality the effect of this institution can be nothing else
than devastating-and this was true even in those days when most people wore
blinders and saw nothing and wanted to see nothing. For if Germany was crushed,
it was owing not least to this institution; no thanks are owing to the
Reichstag that the catastrophe did not occur earlier; this must be attributed
to the resistance to the activity of this gravedigger of the German nation and
the German Reich, which persisted in the years of peace.
Out of the vast number of devastating evils for which
this institution was directly or indirectly responsible, I shall pick only a
single one which is most in keeping with the inner essence of this most
irresponsible institution of all times: the terrible halfheartedness and
weakness of the political leaders of the Reich both at home and abroad, which,
primarily attributable to the activities of the Reichstag, developed into one
of the chief reasons for the political collapse.
Half-hearted was everything that was subject in any way
to the influence of this parliament, regardless which way you look.
Half-hearted and weak was the alliance policy of the Reich in its
foreign relations. By trying to preserve peace it steered inevitably toward
war.
Half-hearted was the Polish policy. It consisted in irritating
without ever seriously going through with anything. The result was neither a
victory for the Germans nor conciliation of the Poles, but hostility with
Russia instead.
Half-hearted was the solution of the Alsace-Lorraine
question. Instead of crushing the head of the French hydra once and for all
with a brutal fist, and then granting the Alsatian equal rights, neither of the
two was done. Nor could it be, for in the ranks of the biggest parties sat the
biggest traitors-in the Center, for example, Herr Wetterle.
All this, however, would have been bearable if the
general halfheartedness had not taken possession of that power on whose
existence the survival of the Reich ultimately depended: the army.
The sins of the so-called 'German Reichstag' would alone
suffice to cover it for all times with the curse of the German nation. For the
most miserable reasons, these parliamentary rabble stole and struck from the
hand of the nation its weapon of self-preservation, the only defense of our
people's freedom and independence. If today the graves of Flanders field were
to open, from them would arise the bloody accusers, hundreds of thousands of
the best young Germans who, due to the unscrupulousness of these
parliamentarian criminals, were driven, poorly trained and half-trained, into
the arms of death; the fatherland lost them and millions of crippled and dead,
solely and alone so that a few hundred misleaders of the people could
perpetrate their political swindles and blackmail, or merely rattle off their
doctrinaire theories.
While the Jews in their Marxist and democratic press
proclaimed to the whole world the lie about 'German militarism' and sought to
incriminate Germany by all means, the Marxist and democratic parties were
obstructing any comprehensive training of the German national man-power. The
enormous crime that was thus committed could not help but be clear to everyone
who just considered that, in case of a coming war, the entire nation would have
to take up arms, and that, therefore, through the rascality of these savory
representatives of their own so-called 'popular representation,' millions of
Germans were driven to face the enemy half-trained and badly trained. But even
if the consequences resulting from the brutal and savage unscrupulousness of
these parliamentary pimps were left entirely out of consideration: this lack of
trained soldiers at the beginning of the War could easily lead to its loss, and
this was most terribly confirmed in the great World War.
The loss of the fight for the freedom and independence of
the German nation is the result of the half-heartedness and weakness manifested
even in peacetime as regards drafting the entire national man-power for the
defense of the fatherland.
If too few recruits were trained on the land, the same
halfheartedness was at work on the sea, making the weapon of national
self-preservation more or less worthless. Unfortunately the navy leadership was
itself infected with the spirit of halfheartedness. The tendency to build all
ships a little smaller than the English ships which were being launched at the
same time was hardly farsighted, much less brilliant. Especially a fleet which
from the beginning can in point of pure numbers not be brought to the same
level as its presumable adversary must seek to compensate for the lack of
numbers by the superior fighting power of its individual ships. It is the
superior fighting power which matters and not any legendary superiority in
'quality.' Actually modern technology is so far advanced and has achieved so
much uniformity in the various civilized countries that it must be held
impossible to give the ships of one power an appreciably larger combat value
than the ships of like tonnage of another state. And it is even less
conceivable to achieve a superiority with smaller deplacement as compared to
larger.
In actual fact, the smaller tonnage of the German ships was possible
only at the cost of speed and armament. The phrase with which people attempted
to justify this fact showed a very serious lack of logic in the department
responsible for this in peacetime. They declared, for instance, that the
material of the German guns was so obviously superior to the British that the
German 28-centimeter gun was not behind the British 30.5centimeter gun in
performance!!
But for this very reason it would have been our duty to
change over to the 30.5-centimeter gun, for the goal should have been the
achievement, not of equal but of superior fighting power. Otherwise it would
have been superfluous for the army to order the 42-centimeter mortar, since the
German 21-centimeter mortar was in itself superior to any then existing high
trajectory French cannon, and the fortresses would have likewise fallen to the
30.5-centimeter mortar. The leadership of the land army, however, thought
soundly, while that of the navy unfortunately did not.
The neglect of superior artillery power and superior speed
lay entirely in. the absolutely erroneous so-called 'idea of risk.' The navy
leadership by the very form in which it expanded the fleet renounced attack and
thus from the outset inevitably assumed the defensive. But in this they also
renounced the ultimate success which is and can only be forever in
attack.
A ship of smaller speed and weaker armament will as a rule be sent
to the bottom by a speedier and more heavily armed enemy at the firing distance
favorable for the latter. A number of our cruisers were to find this out to
their bitter grief. The utter mistakenness of the peacetime opinion of the navy
staff was shown by the War, which forced the introduction, whenever possible,
of modified armament in old ships and better armament in newer ones. If in the
battle of Skagerrak the German ships had had the tonnage, the armament, the
same speed as the English ships, the British navy would have found a watery
grave beneath the hurricane of the more accurate and more effective German
38-centimeter shells.
Japan carried on a different naval policy in those days.
There, on principle, the entire emphasis was laid on giving every single new
ship superior fighting power over the presumable adversary. The result was a
greater possibility of offensive utilization of the navy.
While the staff of the land army still kept free of such
basically false trains of thought, the navy, which unfortunately had better
'parliamentary' representation, succumbed to the spirit of parliament. It was
organized on the basis of half-baked ideas and was later used in a similar way.
What immortal fame the navy nevertheless achieved could only be set to the
account of the skill of the German armaments worker and the ability and
incomparable heroism of the individual officers and crews. If the previous
naval high command had shown corresponding intelligence, these sacrifices would
not have been in vain.
Thus perhaps it was precisely the superior parliamentary
dexterity of the navy's peacetime head that resulted in its misfortune, since,
even in its building, parliamentary instead of purely military criteria
unfortunately began to play the decisive role. The half-heartedness and
weakness as well as the meager logic in thinking, characteristic of the
parliamentary institution, began to color the leadership of the navy.
The land army, as already emphasized, still refrained from such
basically false trains of thought. Particularly the colonel in the great
General Staff of that time, Ludendorff, carried on a desperate struggle against
the criminal half-heartedness and weakness with which the Reichstag approached
the vital problems of the nation, and for the most part negated them. If the
struggle which this officer then carried on was nevertheless in vain, the blame
was borne half by parliament and half by the attitude and weakness even more
miserable, if possible- of Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Yet today this
does not in the least prevent those who were responsible for the German
collapse from putting the blame precisely on him who alone combated this
neglect of national interests-one swindle more or less is nothing to these born
crooks.
Anyone who contemplates all the sacrifices which were heaped on the
nation by the criminal frivolity of these most irresponsible among
irresponsibles, who passes in review all the uselessly sacrificed dead and
maimed, as well as the boundless shame and disgrace, the immeasurable misery
which has now struck us, and knows that all this happened only to clear the
path to ministers' chairs for a gang of unscrupulous climbers and
job-hunters-anyone who contemplates all this will understand that these
creatures can, believe me, be described only by words such as ' scoundrel, ' '
villain, ' ' scum, ' and ' criminal, ' otherwise the meaning and purpose of
having these expressions in our linguistic usage would be incomprehensible. For
compared to these traitors to the nation, every pimp is a man of honor.
Strangely enough, all the really seamy sides of old
Germany attracted attention only when the inner solidarity of the nation would
inevitably suffer thereby. Yes, indeed, in such cases the unpleasant truths
were positively bellowed to the broad masses, while otherwise the same people
preferred modestly to conceal many things and in part simply to deny them. This
was the case when the open discussion of a question might have led to an
improvement. At the same time, the government offices in charge knew next to
nothing of the value and nature of propaganda. The fact that by clever and
persevering use of propaganda even heaven can be represented as hell to the
people, and conversely the most wretched life as paradise, was known only to
the Jew, who acted accordingly; the German, or rather his government, hadn't
the faintest idea of this.
During the War we were to suffer most gravely for all
this.
Along with all the evils of German life before the War
here indicated, and many more, there were also many advantages. In a fair
examination, we must even recognize that most of our weaknesses were largely
shared by other countries and peoples, and in some, indeed, we were put
completely in the shade, while they did not possess many of our own actual
advantages.
At the head of these advantages we can, among other
things, set the fact that, of nearly all European peoples, the German people
still made the greatest attempt to preserve the national character of its
economy and despite certain evil omens was least subject to international
financial control. A dangerous advantage, to be sure, which later became the
greatest instigator of the World War. But aside from this and many other
things, we must, from the vast number of healthy sources of national strength,
pick three institutions which in their kind were exemplary and in part
unequaled.
First, the state form as such and the special stamp which
it had received in modern Germany.
Here we may really disregard the individual monarchs who
as men are subject to all the weaknesses which are customarily visited upon
this earth and its children; if we were not lenient in this, we would have to
despair of the present altogether, for are not the representatives of the
present regime, considered as personalities, intellectually and morally of the
most modest proportions that we can conceive of even racking our brains for a
long time? Anyone who measures the 'value' of the German revolution by the
value and stature of the personalities which it has given the German people
since November, 1919, will have to hide his head for shame before the judgment
of future generations, whose tongue it will no longer be possible to stop by
protective laws, etc., and which therefore will say what today all of us know
to be true, to wit, that brains and virtue in our modern German leaders are
inversely proportionate to their vices and the size of their mouths.
To
be sure, the monarchy had grown alien to many, to the broad masses above all.
This was the consequence of the fact that the monarchs were not always
surrounded by the brightest -to put it mildly-and above all not by the
sincerest minds. Unfortunately, a number of them liked fiatterers better than
straightforward natures, and consequently it was the fiatterers who
'instructed' them. A very grave evil at a time when many of the world's old
opinions had undergone a great change, spreading naturally to the estimation in
which many old-established traditions of the courts were held.
Thus, at the turn of the century the common man in the
street could no longer find any special admiration for the princess who rode
along the front in uniform. Apparently those in authority were incapable of
correctly judging the effect of such a parade in the eyes of the people, for if
they had, such unfortunate performances would doubtless not have occurred.
Moreover, the humanitarian bilge-not always entirely sincere-that these circles
went in for repelled more than it attracted. If, for example, Princess X
condescended to taste a sample of food in a people's kitchen, in former days it
might have looked well, but now the result was the opposite. We may be
justified in assuming that Her Highness really had no idea that the food on the
day she sampled it was a little different from what it usually was; but it was
quite enough that the people knew it.
Thus, what may possibly have been the best intention
became ridiculous, if not actually irritating.
Stories about the monarch's proverbial frugality, his
much too early rising and his slaving away until late into the night, amid the
permanent peril of threatening undernourishment, aroused very dubious comments.
People did not ask to know what food and how much of it the monarch deigned to
consume; they did not begrudge him a 'square' meal; nor were they out to
deprive him of the sleep he needed; they were satisfied if in other things, as
a man and character, he was an honor to the name of his house and to the
nation, and if he fulfilled his duties as a ruler. Telling fairy tales helped
little, but did all the more harm.
This and many similar things were mere trifles, however.
What had a worse effect on sections of the nation, that were unfortunately very
large, was the mounting conviction that people were ruled from the top no
matter what happened, and that, therefore, the individual had no need to bother
about anything. As long as the government was really good, or at least had the
best intentions, this was bearable. But woe betide if the old government whose
intentions were after all good were replaced by a new one which was not so
decent; then spineless compliance and childlike faith were the gravest calamity
that could be conceived of.
But along with these and many other weaknesses, there were
unquestionable assets.
For one thing, the stability of the entire state
leadership, brought about by the monarchic form of state and the removal of the
highest state posts from the welter of speculation by ambitious politicians.
Furthermore, the dignity of the institution as such and the authority which
this alone created: likewise the raising of the civil service and particularly
the army above the level of party obligations. One more advantage was the
personal embodiment of the state's summit in the monarch as a person, and the
example of responsibility which is bound to be stronger in a monarch than in
the accidental rabble of a parliamentary majority-the proverbial
incorruptibility of the German administration could primarily be attributed to
this. Finally, the cultural value of the monarchy for the German people was
high and could very well compensate for other drawbacks. The German court
cities were still the refuge of an artistic state of mind, which is
increasingly threatening to die out in our materialistic times. What the German
princes did for art and science, particularly in the nineteenth century, was
exemplary. The present period in any case cannot be compared with it.
As the greatest credit factor, however, in this period of
incipient and slowly spreading decomposition of our nation, we must note the
army. It was the mightiest school of the German nation, and not for nothing was
the hatred of all our enemies directed against this buttress of national
freedom and independence. No more glorious monument can be dedicated to this
unique institution than a statement of the truth that it was slandered, hated,
combated, and also feared by all inferior peoples. The fact that the rage of
the international exploiters of our people in Versailles was directed primarily
against the old German army permits us to recognize it as the bastion of our
national freedom against the power of the stock exchange. Without this warning
power, the intentions of Versailles would long since have been carried out
against our people. What the German people owes to the army can be briefly
summed up in a single word, to wit: everything.
The army trained men for unconditional responsibility at
a time when this quality had grown rare and evasion of it was becoming more and
more the order of the day, starting with the model prototype of all
irresponsibility, the parliament; it trained men in personal courage in an age
when cowardice threatened to become a raging disease and the spirit of
sacrifice, the willingness to give oneself for the general welfare, was looked
on almost as stupidity, and the only man regarded as intelligent was the one
who best knew how to indulge and advance his own ego. it was the school that
still taught the individual German not to seek the salvation of the nation in
lying phrases about an international brotherhood between Negroes, Germans,
Chinese, French, etc., but in the force and solidarity of our own
nation.
The army trained men in resolution while elsewhere in life
indecision and doubt were beginning to determine the actions of men. In an age
when everywhere the know-it-alls were setting the tone, it meant something to
uphold the principle that some command is always better than none. In this sole
principle there was still an unspoiled robust health which would long since
have disappeared from the rest of our life if the army and its training had not
provided a continuous renewal of this primal force. We need only see the
terrible indecision of the Reich's present leaders, who can summon up the
energy for no action unless it is the forced signing of a new decree for
plundering the people; in this case, to be sure, they reject all responsibility
and with the agility of a court stenographer sign everything that anyone may
see fit to put before them. In this case the decision is easy to take; for it
is dictated.
The army trained men in idealism and devotion to the
fatherland and its greatness while everywhere else greed and materialism had
spread abroad. It educated a single people in contrast to the division into
classes and in this perhaps its sole mistake was the institution of voluntary
one-year enlistment. A mistake, because through it the principle of
unconditional equality was broken, and-the man with higher education was
removed from the setting of his general environment, while precisely the exact
opposite would have been advantageous. In view of the great unworldliness of
our upper classes and their constantly mounting estrangement from their own
people, the army could have exerted a particularly beneficial effect if in its
own ranks, at least, it had avoided any segregation of the so-called
intelligentsia. That this was not done was a mistake; but what institution in
this world makes no mistakes? In this one, at any rate, the good was so
predominant that the few weaknesses lay far beneath the average degree of human
imperfection.
It must be attributed to the army of the old Reich as its
highest merit that at a time when heads were generally counted by majorities,
it placed heads above the majority. Confronted with -the Jewish-democratic idea
of a blind-worship of numbers, the army sustained belief in personality. And
thus it trained what the new epoch most urgently needed: men. In the morass of
a universally spreading softening and effeminization, each year three hundred
and fifty thousand vigorous young men sprang from the ranks of the army, men
who in their two years' training had lost the softness of youth and achieved
bodies hard as steel. The young man who practiced obedience during this time
could-then learn to command. By his very step you could recognize the soldier
who had done his service.
This was--the highest school of the German nation, and it
was not for nothing that the bitterest hatred of those who from envy and-greed
needed and desired the impotence of the Reich and the defenselessness of its
citizens was concentrated on it What many Germans in their blindness or ill
will did not want to see was recognized-by the foreign world: the German army
was the mightiest weapon serving the freedom of the German nation and the
sustenance of its children.
The third in the league, along with the state form and
the army, was the incomparable civil service of the old Reich.
Germany was the best organized and best administered
country in the world. The German government official might well be accused of
bureaucratic red tape, but in the other countries things were no better in this
respect; they were worse. But what the other countries did not possess was the
wonderful solidity of this apparatus and the incorruptible honesty of its
members. It was better to be a little old-fashioned, but honest and loyal, than
enlightened and modern, but of inferior character and, as is often seen today,
ignorant and incompetent. For if today people like to pretend that the German
administration of the pre-War period, though bureaucratically sound, was bad
from a business point of view, only the following answer can be given: what
country in the world had an institution better directed and better organized in
a business sense than Germany's state railways? It was reserved to the
revolution to go on wrecking this exemplary apparatus until at last it seemed
ripe for being taken out of the hands of the nation and socialized according to
the lights of this Republic's founders; in other words, made to serve
international stock exchange capital, the power behind the German
revolution.
What especially distinguished the German civil service and
administrative apparatus was their independence from the individual governments
whose passing political views could have no effect on the job of German civil
servant. Since the revolution, it must be admitted, this has completely
changed. Ability and competence were replaced by party ties and a self-reliant,
independent character became more of a hindrance than a help.
The state
form, the army. and the civil service formed the basis for the old Reich's
wonderful power and strength. These first and foremost were the reasons for a
quality which is totally lacking in the present-day state: state's authority!
For this is not based on bull-sessions in parliaments or provincial diets, or
on laws for its protection, or court sentences to frighten those who insolently
deny it, etc., but on the general confidence which may and can be placed in the
leadership and administration of a commonwealth. This confidence, in turn,
results only from an unshakable inner faith in the selflessness and honesty of
the government and administration of a country and from an agreement between
the spirit of the laws and the general ethical view. For in the long run
government systems are not maintained by the pressure of violence, but by faith
in their soundness and in the. truthfulness with which they represent and
advance the interests of a people.
Gravely as certain evils of the pre-War period corroded
and threatened to undermine the inner strength of the nation, it must not be
forgotten that other states suffered even more than Germany from most of these
ailments and yet in the critical hour of danger did not nag and perish. But if
we consider that the German weaknesses before the War were balanced by equally
great strengths, the ultimate cause of the collapse can and must lie in a
different field; and this is actually the case.
The deepest and ultimate reason for the decline of the
old Reich lay in its failure to recognize the racial problem and its importance
for the historical development of peoples. For events in the lives of peoples
are not expressions of chance, but processes related to the self-preservation
and propagation of the species and the race and subject to the laws of Nature,
even if people are not conscious of the inner reason for their
actions.