Chapter IX: Basic Ideas Regarding
the Meaning and Organization of the SA
The strength of the old state rested on three pillars: the
monarchical form of government, the civil service, and the army. The Revolution
of 1918 abolished the form of government, dissolved the army and abandoned the
civil service to the corruption of party politics. Thus the essential supports
of what is called the Authority of the State were shattered. This authority
nearly always depends on three elements, which are the essential foundations of
all authority.
Popular support is the first element which is necessary
for the creation of authority. But an authority resting on that foundation
alone is still quite frail, uncertain and vacillating. Hence everyone who finds
himself vested with an authority that is based only on popular support must
take measures to improve and consolidate the foundations of that authority by
the creation of force. Accordingly we must look upon power, that is to say, the
capacity to use force, as the second foundation on which all authority is
based. This foundation is more stable and secure, but not always stronger, than
the first. If popular support and power are united together and can endure for
a certain time, then an authority may arise which is based on a still stronger
foundation, namely, the authority of tradition. And, finally, if popular
support, power, and tradition are united together, then the authority based on
them may be looked upon as invincible.
In Germany the Revolution abolished this last foundation.
There was no longer even a traditional authority. With the collapse of the old
Reich, the suppression of the monarchical form of government, the destruction
of all the old insignia of greatness and the imperial symbols, tradition was
shattered at a blow. The result was that the authority of the State was shaken
to its foundations.
The second pillar of statal authority, namely power, also
ceased to exist. In order to carry through the Revolution it was necessary to
dissolve that body which had hitherto incorporated the organized force and
power of the State, namely, the Army. Indeed, some detached fragments of the
Army itself had to be employed as fighting elements in the Revolution. The
Armies at the front were not subjected in the same measure to this process of
disruption; but as they gradually left farther behind them the fields of glory
on which they had fought heroically for four-and-half years, they were attacked
by the solvent acid that had permeated the Fatherland; and when they arrived at
the demobilizing centres they fell into that state of confusion which was
styled voluntary obedience in the time of the Soldiers' Councils.
Of course it was out of the question to think of founding
any kind of authority on this crowd of mutineering soldiers, who looked upon
military service as a work of eight hours per day. Therefore the second
element, that which guarantees the stability of authority, was also abolished
and the Revolution had only the original element, popular support, on which to
build up its authority. But this basis was extraordinarily insecure. By means
of a few violent thrusts the Revolution had shattered the old statal edifice to
its deepest foundations, but only because the normal equilibrium within the
social structure of the nation had already been destroyed by the war.
Every national body is made up of three main classes. At one extreme
we have the best of the people, taking the word 'best' here to indicate those
who are highly endowed with the civic virtues and are noted for their courage
and their readiness to sacrifice their private interests. At the other extreme
are the worst dregs of humanity, in whom vice and egotistic interests prevail.
Between these two extremes stands the third class, which is made up of the
broad middle stratum, who do not represent radiant heroism or vulgar vice.
The stages of a nation's rise are accomplished exclusively under the
leadership of the best extreme.
Times of normal and symmetrical development, or of stable
conditions, owe their existence and outwardly visible characteristics to the
preponderating influence of the middle stratum. In this stage the two extreme
classes are balanced against one another; in other words, they are relatively
cancelled out.
Times of national collapse are determined by the
preponderating influence of the worst elements.
It must be noted here, however, that the broad masses,
which constitute what I have called the middle section, come forward and make
their influence felt only when the two extreme sections are engaged in mutual
strife. In case one of the extreme sections comes out victorious the middle
section will readily submit to its domination. If the best dominate, the broad
masses will follow it. Should the worst extreme turn out triumphant, then the
middle section will at least offer no opposition to it; for the masses that
constitute the middle class never fight their own battles.
The outpouring of blood for four-and-a-half years during
the war destroyed the inner equilibrium between these three sections in so far
as it can be said – though admitting the sacrifices made by the middle section
– that the class which consisted of the best human elements almost completely
disappeared through the loss of so much of its blood in the war, because it was
impossible to replace the truly enormous quantity of heroic German blood which
had been shed during those four-and-a-half years. In hundreds of thousands of
cases it was always a matter of 'volunteers to the front', volunteers for
patrol and duty, volunteer dispatch carriers, volunteers for establishing and
working telephonic communications, volunteers for bridge-building, volunteers
for the submarines, volunteers for the air service, volunteers for the storm
battalions, and so on, and so on. During four-and-a-half years, and on
thousands of occasions, there was always the call for volunteers and again for
volunteers. And the result was always the same. Beardless young fellows or
fully developed men, all filled with an ardent love for their country, urged on
by their own courageous spirit or by a lofty sense of their duty – it was
always such men who answered the call for volunteers. Tens of thousands, indeed
hundreds of thousands, of such men came forward, so that that kind of human
material steadily grew scarcer and scarcer. What did not actually fall was
maimed in the fight or gradually had to join the ranks of the crippled because
of the wounds they were constantly receiving, and thus they had to carry on
interminably owing to the steady decrease in the supply of such men. In 1914
whole armies were composed of volunteers who, owing to a criminal lack of
conscience on the part of our feckless parliamentarians, had not received any
proper training in times of peace, and so were thrown as defenceless
cannon-fodder to the enemy. The four hundred thousand who thus fell or were
permanently maimed on the battlefields of Flanders could not be replaced any
more. Their loss was something far more than merely numerical. With their death
the scales, which were already too lightly weighed at that end of the social
structure which represented our best human quality, now moved upwards rapidly,
becoming heavier on the other end with those vulgar elements of infamy and
cowardice – in short, there was an increase in the elements that constituted
the worst extreme of our population.
And there was something more: While for four-and-a-half
years our best human material was being thinned to an exceptional degree on the
battlefields, our worst people wonderfully succeeded in saving themselves. For
each hero who made the supreme sacrifice and ascended the steps of Valhalla,
there was a shirker who cunningly dodged death on the plea of being engaged in
business that was more or less useful at home.
And so the picture which presented itself at the end of
the war was this: The great middle stratum of the nation had fulfilled its duty
and paid its toll of blood. One extreme of the population, which was
constituted of the best elements, had given a typical example of its heroism
and had sacrificed itself almost to a man. The other extreme, which was
constituted of the worst elements of the population, had preserved itself
almost intact, through taking advantage of absurd laws and also because the
authorities failed to enforce certain articles of the military code.
This carefully preserved scum of our nation then made the
Revolution. And the reason why it could do so was that the extreme section
composed of the best elements was no longer there to oppose it. It no longer
existed.
Hence the German Revolution, from the very beginning, depended on
only one section of the population. This act of Cain was not committed by the
German people as such, but by an obscure canaille of deserters, hooligans, etc.
The man at the front gladly welcomed the end of the strife in which
so much blood had been shed. He was happy to be able to return home and see his
wife and children once again. But he had no moral connection with the
Revolution. He did not like it, nor did he like those who had provoked and
organized it. During the four-and-a-half years of that bitter struggle at the
front he had come to forget the party hyenas at home and all their wrangling
had become foreign to him.
The Revolution was really popular only with a small
section of the German people: namely, that class and their accomplices who had
selected the rucksack as the hall-mark of all honourable citizens in this new
State. They did not like the Revolution for its own sake, though many people
still erroneously believe the contrary, but for the consequences which followed
in its train.
But it was very difficult to establish any abiding
authority on the popular support given to these Marxist freebooters. And yet
the young Republic stood in need of authority at any cost, unless it was ready
to agree to be overthrown after a short period of chaos by an elementary force
assembled from those last elements that still remained among the best extreme
of the population.
The danger which those who were responsible for the
Revolution feared most at that time was that, in the turmoil of the confusion
which they themselves had created, the ground would suddenly be taken from
under their feet, that they might be suddenly seized and transported to another
terrain by an iron grip, such as has often appeared at these junctures in the
history of nations. The Republic must be consolidated at all costs.
Hence it was forced almost immediately after its foundation to erect
another pillar beside that wavering pillar of popularity. They found that power
must be organized once again in order to procure a firmer foundation for their
authority.
When those who had been the matadors of the Revolution in
December 1918, and January and February 1919, felt the ground trembling beneath
their feet they looked around them for men who would be ready to reinforce them
with military support; for their feeble position was dependent only on whatever
popular favour they enjoyed. The 'anti-militarist' Republic had need of
soldiers. But the first and only pillar on which the authority of the State
rested, namely, its popularity, was grounded only on a conglomeration of
rowdies and thieves, burglars, deserters, shirkers, etc. Therefore in that
section of the nation which we have called the evil extreme it was useless to
look for men who would be willing to sacrifice their lives on behalf of a new
ideal. The section which had nourished the revolutionary idea and carried out
the Revolution was neither able nor willing to call on the soldiers to protect
it. For that section had no wish whatsoever to organize a republican State, but
to disorganize what already existed and thus satisfy its own instincts all the
better. Their password was not the organization and construction of the German
Republic, but rather the plundering of it.
Hence the cry for help sent out by the public
representatives, who were beset by a thousand anxieties, did not find any
response among this class of people, but rather provoked a feeling of
bitterness and repudiation. For they looked upon this step as the beginning of
a breach of faith and trust, and in the building up of an authority which was
no longer based on popular support but also on force they saw the beginning of
a hostile move against what the Revolution meant essentially for those
elements. They feared that measures might be taken against the right to robbery
and absolute domination on the part of a horde of thieves and plunderers – in
short, the worst rabble – who had broken out of the convict prisons and left
their chains behind.
The representatives of the people might cry out as much as
they liked, but they could get no help from that rabble. The cries for help
were met with the counter-cry 'traitors' by those very people on whose support
the popularity of the regime was founded.
Then for the first time large numbers of young Germans
were found who were ready to button on the military uniform once again in the
service of 'Peace and Order', as they believed, shouldering the carbine and
rifle and donning the steel helmet to defend the wreckers of the Fatherland.
Volunteer corps were assembled and, although hating the Revolution, they began
to defend it. The practical effect of their action was to render the Revolution
firm and stable. In doing this they acted in perfect good faith.
The real organizer of the Revolution and the actual
wire-puller behind it, the international Jew, had sized up the situation
correctly. The German people were not yet ripe to be drawn into the blood swamp
of Bolshevism, as the Russian people had been drawn. And that was because there
was a closer racial union between the intellectual classes in Germany and the
manual workers, and also because broad social strata were permeated with
cultured people, such as was the case also in the other States of Western
Europe; but this state of affairs was completely lacking in Russia. In that
country the intellectual classes were mostly not of Russian nationality, or at
least they did not have the racial characteristics of the Slav. The thin upper
layer of intellectuals which then existed in Russia might be abolished at any
time, because there was no intermediate stratum connecting it organically with
the great mass of the people. There the mental and moral level of the great
mass of the people was frightfully low.
In Russia the moment the agitators were successful in
inciting broad masses of the people, who could not read or write, against the
upper layer of intellectuals who were not in contact with the masses or
permanently linked with them in any way – at that moment the destiny of Russia
was decided, the success of the Revolution was assured. Thereupon the
analphabetic Russian became the slave of his Jewish dictators who, on their
side, were shrewd enough to name their dictatorship 'The Dictatorship of the
People'.
In the case of Germany an additional factor must be taken into
account. Here the Revolution could be carried into effect only if the Army
could first be gradually dismembered. But the real author of the Revolution and
of the process of disintegration in the Army was not the soldier who had fought
at the front but the canaille which more or less shunned the light and which
were either quartered in the home garrisons or were officiating as
'indispensables' somewhere in the business world at home. This army was
reinforced by ten thousand deserters who, without running any particular risk,
could turn their backs on the Front. At all times the real poltroon fears
nothing so much as death. But at the Front he had death before his eyes every
day in a thousand different shapes. There has always been one possible way, and
one only, of making weak or wavering men, or even downright poltroons, face
their duty steadfastly. This means that the deserter must be given to
understand that his desertion will bring upon him just the very thing he is
flying from. At the Front a man may die, but the deserter must die. Only this
draconian threat against every attempt to desert the flag can have a terrifying
effect, not merely on the individual but also on the mass. Therein lay the
meaning and purpose of the military penal code.
It was a fine belief to think that the great struggle for
the life of a nation could be carried through if it were based solely on
voluntary fidelity arising from and sustained by the knowledge that such a
struggle was necessary. The voluntary fulfilment of one's duty is a motive that
determines the actions of only the best men, but not of the average type of
men. Hence special laws are necessary; just as, for instance, the law against
stealing, which was not made for men who are honest on principle but for the
weak and unstable elements. Such laws are meant to hinder the evil-doer through
their deterrent effect and thus prevent a state of affairs from arising in
which the honest man is considered the more stupid, and which would end in the
belief that it is better to have a share in the robbery than to stand by with
empty hands or allow oneself to be robbed.
It was a mistake to believe that in a struggle which,
according to all human foresight, might last for several years it would be
possible to dispense with those expedients which the experience of hundreds and
even of thousands of years had proved to be effective in making weak and
unstable men face and fulfil their duty in difficult times and at moments of
great nervous stress.
For the voluntary war hero it is, of course, not necessary
to have the death penalty in the military code, but it is necessary for the
cowardly egoists who value their own lives more than the existence of the
community in the hour of national need. Such weak and characterless people can
be held back from surrendering to their cowardice only by the application of
the heaviest penalties. When men have to struggle with death every day and
remain for weeks in trenches of mire, often very badly supplied with food, the
man who is unsure of himself and begins to waver cannot be made to stick to his
post by threats of imprisonment or even penal servitude. Only by a ruthless
enforcement of the death penalty can this be effected. For experience shows
that at such a time the recruit considers prison a thousand times more
preferable than the battlefield. In prison at least his precious life is not in
danger. The practical abolition of the death penalty during the war was a
mistake for which we had to pay dearly. Such omission really meant that the
military penal code was no longer recognized as valid. An army of deserters
poured into the stations at the rear or returned home, especially in 1918, and
there began to form that huge criminal organization with which we were suddenly
faced, after November 7th, 1918, and which perpetrated the Revolution.
The Front had nothing to do with all this. Naturally, the soldiers
at the Front were yearning for peace. But it was precisely that fact which
represented a special danger for the Revolution. For when the German soldiers
began to draw near home, after the Armistice, the revolutionaries were in
trepidation and asked the same question again and again: What will the troops
from the Front do? Will the field-greys stand for it?
During those weeks the Revolution was forced to give
itself at least an external appearance of moderation, if it were not to run the
risk of being wrecked in a moment by a few German divisions. For at that time,
even if the commander of one division alone had made up his mind to rally the
soldiers of his division, who had always remained faithful to him, in an
onslaught to tear down the red flag and put the 'councils' up against the wall,
or, if there was any resistance, to break it with trench-mortars and hand
grenades, that division would have grown into an army of sixty divisions in
less than four weeks. The Jew wire-pullers were terrified by this prospect more
than by anything else; and to forestall this particular danger they found it
necessary to give the Revolution a certain aspect of moderation. They dared not
allow it to degenerate into Bolshevism, so they had to face the existing
conditions by putting up the hypocritical picture of 'order and tranquillity'.
Hence many important concessions, the appeal to the old civil service and to
the heads of the old Army. They would be needed at least for a certain time,
and only when they had served the purpose of Turks' Heads could the deserved
kick-out be administered with impunity. Then the Republic would be taken
entirely out of the hands of the old servants of the State and delivered into
the claws of the revolutionaries.
They thought that this was the only plan which would
succeed in duping the old generals and civil servants and disarm any eventual
opposition beforehand through the apparently harmless and mild character of the
new regime.
Practical experience has shown to what extent the plan
succeeded.
The Revolution, however, was not made by the peaceful and
orderly elements of the nation but rather by rioters, thieves and robbers. And
the way in which the Revolution was developing did not accord with the
intentions of these latter elements; still, on tactical grounds, it was not
possible to explain to them the reasons for the course things were taking and
make that course acceptable.
As Social Democracy gradually gained power it lost more
and more the character of a crude revolutionary party. Of course in their inner
hearts the Social Democrats wanted a revolution; and their leaders had no other
end in view. Certainly not. But what finally resulted was only a revolutionary
programme; but not a body of men who would be able to carry it out. A
revolution cannot be carried through by a party of ten million members. If such
a movement were attempted the leaders would find that it was not an extreme
section of the population on which they had to depend butrather the broad
masses of the middle stratum; hence the inert masses.
Recognizing all this, already during the war, the Jews
caused the famous split in the Social Democratic Party. While the Social
Democratic Party, conforming to the inertia of its mass following, clung like a
leaden weight on the neck of the national defence, the actively radical
elements were extracted from it and formed into new aggressive columns for
purposes of attack. The Independent Socialist Party and the Spartacist League
were the storm battalions of revolutionary Marxism. The objective assigned to
them was to create a fait accompli, on the grounds of which the masses of the
Social Democratic Party could take their stand, having been prepared for this
event long beforehand. The feckless bourgeoisie had been estimated at its just
value by the Marxists and treated en canaille. Nobody bothered about it,
knowing well that in their canine servility the representatives of an old and
worn-out generation would not be able to offer any serious resistance.
When the Revolution had succeeded and its artificers believed that
the main pillars of the old State had been broken down, the Army returning from
the Front began to appear in the light of a sinister sphinx and thus made it
necessary to slow down the national course of the Revolution. The main body of
the Social Democratic horde occupied the conquered positions, and the
Independent Socialist and Spartacist storm battalions were side-tracked.
But that did not happen without a struggle.
The activist assault formations that had started the
Revolution were dissatisfied and felt that they had been betrayed. They now
wanted to continue the fight on their own account. But their illimitable
racketeering became odious even to the wire-pullers of the Revolution. For the
Revolution itself had scarcely been accomplished when two camps appeared. In
the one camp were the elements of peace and order; in the other were those of
blood and terror. Was it not perfectly natural that our bourgeoisie should rush
with flying colours to the camp of peace and order? For once in their lives
their piteous political organizations found it possible to act, inasmuch as the
ground had been prepared for them on which they were glad to get a new footing;
and thus to a certain extent they found themselves in coalition with that power
which they hated but feared. The German political bourgeoisie achieved the high
honour of being able to associate itself with the accursed Marxist leaders for
the purpose of combating Bolshevism.
Thus the following state of affairs took shape as early
as December 1918 and January 1919:
A minority constituted of the worst elements had made the
Revolution. And behind this minority all the Marxist parties immediately fell
into step. The Revolution itself had an outward appearance of moderation, which
aroused against it the enmity of the fanatical extremists. These began to
launch hand-grenades and fire machine-guns, occupying public buildings, thus
threatening to destroy the moderate appearance of the Revolution. To prevent
this terror from developing further a truce was concluded between the
representatives of the new regime and the adherents of the old order, so as to
be able to wage a common fight against the extremists. The result was that the
enemies of the Republic ceased to oppose the Republic as such and helped to
subjugate those who were also enemies of the Republic, though for quite
different reasons. But a further result was that all danger of the adherents of
the old State putting up a fight against the new was now definitely averted.
This fact must always be clearly kept in mind. Only by remembering
it can we understand how it was possible that a nation in which nine-tenths of
the people had not joined in a revolution, where seven-tenths repudiated it and
six-tenths detested it – how this nation allowed the Revolution to be imposed
upon it by the remaining one-tenth of the population.
Gradually the barricade heroes in the Spartacist camp
petered out, and so did the nationalist patriots and idealists on the other
side. As these two groups steadily dwindled, the masses of the middle stratum,
as always happens, triumphed. The Bourgeoisie and the Marxists met together on
the grounds of accomplished facts, and the Republic began to be consolidated.
At first, however, that did not prevent the bourgeois parties from propounding
their monarchist ideas for some time further, especially at the elections,
whereby they endeavoured to conjure up the spirits of the dead past to
encourage their own feeble-hearted followers. It was not an honest proceeding.
In their hearts they had broken with the monarchy long ago; but the foulness of
the new regime had begun to extend its corruptive action and make itself felt
in the camp of the bourgeois parties. The common bourgeois politician now felt
better in the slime of republican corruption than in the severe decency of the
defunct State, which still lived in his memory.
As I have already pointed out, after the destruction of
the old Army the revolutionary leaders were forced to strengthen statal
authority by creating a new factor of power. In the conditions that existed
they could do this only by winning over to their side the adherents of an
outlook which was a direct contradiction of their own. From those elements
alone it was possible slowly to create a new army which, limited numerically by
the peace treaties, had to be subsequently transformed in spirit so as to
become an instrument of the new regime.
Setting aside the defects of the old State, which really
became the cause of the Revolution, if we ask how it was possible to carry the
Revolution to a successful issue as a political act, we arrive at the following
conclusions:
1. It was due to a process of dry rot in our conceptions
of duty and obedience.
2. It was due also to the passive timidity of the Parties
who were supposed to uphold the State.
To this the following must be added: The dry rot which
attacked our concepts of duty and obedience was fundamentally due to our wholly
non-national and purely State education. From this came the habit of confusing
means and ends. Consciousness of duty, fulfilment of duty, and obedience, are
not ends in themselves no more than the State is an end in itself; but they all
ought to be employed as means to facilitate and assure the existence of a
community of people who are kindred both physically and spiritually. At a
moment when a nation is manifestly collapsing and when all outward signs show
that it is on the point of becoming the victim of ruthless oppression, thanks
to the conduct of a few miscreants, to obey these people and fulfil one's duty
towards them is merely doctrinaire formalism, and indeed pure folly; whereas,
on the other hand, the refusal of obedience and fulfilment of duty in such a
case might save the nation from collapse. According to our current bourgeois
idea of the State, if a divisional general received from above the order not to
shoot he fulfilled his duty and therefore acted rightly in not shooting,
because to the bourgeois mind blind formal obedience is a more valuable thing
than the life of a nation. But according to the National Socialist concept it
is not obedience to weak superiors that should prevail at such moments, in such
an hour the duty of assuming personal responsibility towards the whole nation
makes its appearance.
The Revolution succeeded because that concept had ceased
to be a vital force with our people, or rather with our governments, and died
down to something that was merely formal and doctrinaire.
As regards the second point, it may be said that the more
profound cause of the fecklessness of the bourgeois parties must be attributed
to the fact that the most active and upright section of our people had lost
their lives in the war. Apart from that, the bourgeois parties, which may be
considered as the only political formations that stood by the old State, were
convinced that they ought to defend their principles only by intellectual ways
and means, since the use of physical force was permitted only to the State.
That outlook was a sign of the weakness and decadence which had been gradually
developing. And it was also senseless at a period when there was a political
adversary who had long ago abandoned that standpoint and, instead of this, had
openly declared that he meant to attain his political ends by force whenever
that became possible. When Marxism emerged in the world of bourgeois democracy,
as a consequence of that democracy itself, the appeal sent out by the bourgeois
democracy to fight Marxism with intellectual weapons was a piece of folly for
which a terrible expiation had to be made later on. For Marxism always
professed the doctrine that the use of arms was a matter which had to be judged
from the standpoint of expediency and that success justified the use of arms.
This idea was proved correct during the days from November 7 to 10,
1918. The Marxists did not then bother themselves in the least about parliament
or democracy, but they gave the death blow to both by turning loose their horde
of criminals to shoot and raise hell.
When the Revolution was over the bourgeois parties
changed the title of their firm and suddenly reappeared, the heroic leaders
emerging from dark cellars or more lightsome storehouses where they had sought
refuge. But, just as happens in the case of all representatives of antiquated
institutions, they had not forgotten their errors or learned anything new.
Their political programme was grounded in the past, even though they themselves
had become reconciled to the new regime. Their aim was to secure a share in the
new establishment, and so they continued the use of words as their sole weapon.
Therefore after the Revolution the bourgeois parties also
capitulated to the street in a miserable fashion.
When the law for the Protection of the Republic was
introduced the majority was not at first in favour of it. But, confronted with
two hundred thousand Marxists demonstrating in the streets, the bourgeois
'statesmen' were so terror-stricken that they voted for the Law against their
wills, for the edifying reason that otherwise they feared they might get their
heads smashed by the enraged masses on leaving the Reichstag.
And so the new State developed along its own course, as
if there had been no national opposition at all.
The only organizations which at that time had the
strength and courage to face Marxism and its enraged masses were first of all
the volunteer corps, and subsequently the organizations for self-defence, the
civic guards and finally the associations formed by the demobilized soldiers of
the old Army.
But the existence of these bodies did not appreciably
change the course of German history; and that for the following causes:
As the so-called national parties were without influence, because
they had no force which could effectively demonstrate in the street, the
Leagues of Defence could not exercise any influence because they had no
political idea and especially because they had no definite political aim in
view.
The success which Marxism once attained was due to perfect
co-operation between political purposes and ruthless force. What deprived
nationalist Germany of all practical hopes of shaping German development was
the lack of a determined co-operation between brute force and political aims
wisely chosen.
Whatever may have been the aspirations of the 'national'
parties, they had no force whatsoever to fight for these aspirations, least of
all in the streets.
The Defense Leagues had force at their disposal. They
were masters of the street and of the State, but they lacked political ideas
and aims on behalf of which their forces might have been or could have been
employed in the interests of the German nation. The cunning Jew was able in
both cases, by his astute powers of persuasion, in reinforcing an already
existing tendency to make this unfortunate state of affairs permanent and at
the same time to drive the roots of it still deeper.
The Jew succeeded brilliantly in using his Press for the
purpose of spreading abroad the idea that the defence associations were of a
'non-political' character just as in politics he was always astute enough to
praise the purely intellectual character of the struggle and demand that it
must always be kept on that plane
Millions of German imbeciles then repeated this folly
without having the slightest suspicion that by so doing they were, for all
practical purposes, disarming themselves and delivering themselves defenceless
into the hands of the Jew.
But there is a natural explanation of this also. The lack
of a great idea which would re-shape things anew has always meant a limitation
in fighting power. The conviction of the right to employ even the most brutal
weapons is always associated with an ardent faith in the necessity for a new
and revolutionary transformation of the world.
A movement which does not fight for such high aims and
ideals will never have recourse to extreme means.
The appearance of a new and great idea was the secret of
success in the French Revolution. The Russian Revolution owes its triumph to an
idea. And it was only the idea that enabled Fascism triumphantly to subject a
whole nation to a process of complete renovation.
Bourgeois parties are not capable of such an achievement.
And it was not the bourgeois parties alone that fixed their aim in a
restoration of the past. The defence associations also did so, in so far as
they concerned themselves with political aims at all. The spirit of the old war
legions and Kyffauser tendencies lived in them and therewith helped politically
to blunt the sharpest weapons which the German nation then possessed and allow
them to rust in the hands of republican serfs. The fact that these associations
were inspired by the best of intentions in so doing, and certainly acted in
good faith, does not alter in the slightest degree the foolishness of the
course they adopted.
In the consolidated Reichswehr Marxism gradually acquired
the support of force, which it needed for its authority. As a logical
consequence it proceeded to abolish those defence associations which it
considered dangerous, declaring that they were now no longer necessary. Some
rash leaders who defied the Marxist orders were summoned to court and sent to
prison. But they all got what they had deserved.
The founding of the National Socialist German Labour
Party incited a movement which was the first to fix its aim, not in a
mechanical restoration of the past - as the bourgeois parties did - but in the
substitution of an organic People's State for the present absurd statal
mechanism.
From the first day of its foundation the new movement took
its stand on the principle that its ideas had to be propagated by intellectual
means but that, wherever necessary, muscular force must be employed to support
this propaganda. In accordance with their conviction of the paramount
importance of the new doctrine, the leaders of the new movement naturally
believe that no sacrifice can be considered too great when it is a question of
carrying through the purpose of the movement.
I have emphasized that in certain circumstances a
movement which is meant to win over the hearts of the people must be ready to
defend itself with its own forces against terrorist attempts on the part of its
adversaries. It has invariably happened in the history of the world that formal
State authority has failed to break a reign of terror which was inspired by a
philosophy of life. It can only be conquered by a new and different philosophy
of life whose representatives are quite as audacious and determined. The
acknowledgment of this fact has always been very unpleasant for the bureaucrats
who are the protectors of the State, but the fact remains nevertheless. The
rulers of the State can guarantee tranquillity and order only in case the State
embodies a philosophy which is shared in by the people as a whole; so that
elements of disturbance can be treated as isolated criminals, instead of being
considered as the champions of an idea which is diametrically opposed to
official opinions. If such should be the case the State may employ the most
violent measures for centuries long against the terror that threatens it; but
in the end all these measures will prove futile, and the State will have to
succumb.
The German State is intensely overrun by Marxism. In a struggle that
went on for seventy years the State was not able to prevent the triumph of the
Marxist idea. Even though the sentences to penal servitude and imprisonment
amounted in all to thousands of years, and even though the most sanguinary
methods of repression were in innumerable instances threatened against the
champions of the Marxist philosophy, in the end the State was forced to
capitulate almost completely. The ordinary bourgeois political leaders will
deny all this, but their protests are futile.
Seeing that the State capitulated unconditionally to
Marxism on November 9th, 1918, it will not suddenly rise up tomorrow as the
conqueror of Marxism. On the contrary. Bourgeois simpletons sitting on office
stools in the various ministries babble about the necessity of not governing
against the wishes of the workers, and by the word 'workers' they mean the
Marxists. By identifying the German worker with Marxism not only are they
guilty of a vile falsification of the truth, but they thus try to hide their
own collapse before the Marxist idea and the Marxist organization.
In
view of the complete subordination of the present State to Marxism, the
National Socialist Movement feels all the more bound not only to prepare the
way for the triumph of its idea by appealing to the reason and understanding of
the public but also to take upon itself the responsibility of organizing its
own defence against the terror of the International, which is intoxicated with
its own victory.
I have already described how practical experience in our
young movement led us slowly to organize a system of defence for our meetings.
This gradually assumed the character of a military body specially trained for
the maintenance of order, and tended to develop into a service which would have
its properly organized cadres.
This new formation might resemble the defence
associations externally, but in reality there were no grounds of comparison
between the one and the other.
As I have already said, the German defence organizations
did not have any definite political ideas of their own. They really were only
associations for mutual protection, and they were trained and organized
accordingly, so that they were an illegal complement or auxiliary to the legal
forces of the State. Their character as free corps arose only from the way in
which they were constructed and the situation in which the State found itself
at that time. But they certainly could not claim to be free corps on the
grounds that they were associations formed freely and privately for the purpose
of fighting for their own freely formed political convictions. Such they were
not, despite the fact that some of their leaders and some associations as such
were definitely opposed to the Republic. For before we can speak of political
convictions in the higher sense we must be something more than merely convinced
that the existing regime is defective. Political convictions in the higher
sense mean that one has the picture of a new regime clearly before one's mind,
feels that the establishment of this regime is an absolute necessity and sets
himself to carry out that purpose as the highest task to which his life can be
devoted.
The troops for the preservation of order, which were then formed
under the National Socialist Movement, were fundamentally different from all
the other defence associations by reason of the fact that our formations were
not meant in any way to defend the state of things created by the Revolution,
but rather that they were meant exclusively to support our struggle for the
creation of a new Germany.
In the beginning this body was merely a guard to maintain
order at our meetings. Its first task was limited to making it possible for us
to hold our meetings, which otherwise would have been completely prevented by
our opponents. These men were at that time trained merely for purposes of
attack, but they were not taught to adore the big stick exclusively, as was
then pretended in stupid German patriotic circles. They used the cudgel because
they knew that it can be made impossible for high ideals to be put forward if
the man who endeavours to propagate them can be struck down with the cudgel. As
a matter of fact, it has happened in history not infrequently that some of the
greatest minds have perished under the blows of the most insignificant helots.
Our bodyguards did not look upon violence as an end in itself, but they
protected the expositors of ideal aims and purposes against hostile coercion by
violence. They also understood that there was no obligation to undertake the
defence of a State which did not guarantee the defence of the nation, but that,
on the contrary, they had to defend the nation against those who were
threatening to destroy nation and State.
After the fight which took place at the meeting in the
Munich Hofbräuhaus, where the small number of our guards who were present won
everlasting fame for themselves by the heroic manner in which they stormed the
adversaries; these guards were called The Storm Detachment. As the name itself
indicates, they represent only a detachment of the Movement. They are one
constituent element of it, just as is the Press, the propaganda, educational
institutes, and other sections of the Party.
We learned how necessary was the formation of such a
body, not only from our experience on the occasion of that memorable meeting
but also when we sought gradually to carry the Movement beyond Munich and
extend it to the other parts of Germany. Once we had begun to appear as a
danger to Marxism the Marxists lost no opportunity of trying to crush
beforehand all preparations for the holding of National Socialist meetings.
When they did not succeed in this they tried to break up the meeting itself. It
goes without saying that all the Marxist organizations, no matter of what grade
or view, blindly supported the policy and activities of their representations
in every case. But what is to be said of the bourgeois parties who, when they
were reduced to silence by these same Marxists and in many places did not dare
to send their speakers to appear before the public, yet showed themselves
pleased, in a stupid and incomprehensible manner, every time we received any
kind of set-back in our fight against Marxism. The bourgeois parties were happy
to think that those whom they themselves could not stand up against, but had to
knuckle down to, could not be broken by us. What must be said of those State
officials, chiefs of police, and even cabinet ministers, who showed a
scandalous lack of principle in presenting themselves externally to the public
as 'national' and yet shamelessly acted as the henchmen of the Marxists in the
disputes which we, National Socialists, had with the latter. What can be said
of persons who debased themselves so far, for the sake of a little abject
praise in the Jewish Press, that they persecuted those men to whose heroic
courage and intervention, regardless of risk, they were partly indebted for not
having been torn to pieces by the Red mob a few years previously and strung up
to the lamp-posts?
One day these lamentable phenomena fired the late but
unforgotten Prefect Pöhner – a man whose unbending straightforwardness forced
him to hate all twisters and to hate them as only a man with an honest heart
can hate – to say: "In all my life I wished to be first a German and then an
official, and I never wanted to mix up with these creatures who, as if they
were kept officials, prostituted themselves before anybody who could play lord
and master for the time being."
It was a specially sad thing that gradually tens of
thousands of honest and loyal servants of the State did not only come under the
power of such people but were also slowly contaminated by their unprincipled
morals. Moreover, these kind of men pursued honest officials with a furious
hatred, degrading them and driving them from their positions, and yet passed
themselves off as 'national' by the aid of their lying hypocrisy.
From officials of that kind we could expect no support,
and only in very rare instances was it given. Only by building up its own
defence could our movement become secure and attract that amount of public
attention and general respect which is given to those who can defend themselves
when attacked.
As an underlying principle in the internal development of
the Storm Detachment, we came to the decision that not only should it be
perfectly trained in bodily efficiency but that the men should be so instructed
as to make them indomitably convinced champions of the National Socialist ideas
and, finally, that they should be schooled to observe the strictest discipline.
This body was to have nothing to do with the defence organizations of the
bourgeois type and especially not with any secret organization.
My reasons at that time for guarding strictly against
letting the Storm Detachment of the German National Socialist Labour Party
appear as a defence association were as follows:
On purely practical grounds it is impossible to build up
a national defence organization by means of private associations, unless the
State makes an enormous contribution to it. Whoever thinks otherwise
overestimates his own powers. Now it is entirely out of the question to form
organizations of any military value for a definite purpose on the principle of
so-called 'voluntary discipline'. Here the chief support for enforcing orders,
namely, the power of inflicting punishment, is lacking. In the autumn, or
rather in the spring, of 1919 it was still possible to raise 'volunteer corps',
not only because most of the men who came forward at that time had been through
the school of the old Army, but also because the kind of duty imposed there
constrained the individual to absolute obedience at least for a definite period
of time.
That spirit is entirely lacking in the volunteer defence
organizations of today. The more the defence association grows, the weaker its
discipline becomes and so much the less can one demand from the individual
members. Thus the whole organization will more and more assume the character of
the old non-political associations of war comrades and veterans.
It is impossible to carry through a voluntary training in
military service for larger masses unless one is assured absolute power of
command. There will always be few men who will voluntarily and spontaneously
submit to that kind of obedience which is considered natural and necessary in
the Army.
Moreover, a proper system of military training cannot be
developed where there are such ridiculously scanty means as those at the
disposal of the defence associations. The principal task of such an institution
must be to impart the best and most reliable kind of instruction. Eight years
have passed since the end of the War, and during that time none of our German
youth, at an age when formerly they would have had to do military service, have
received any systematic training at all. The aim of a defence association
cannot be to enlist here and now all those who have already received a military
training; for in that case it could be reckoned with mathematical accuracy when
the last member would leave the association. Even the younger soldier from 1918
will no longer be fit for front-line service twenty years later, and we are
approaching that state of things with a rapidity that gives cause for anxiety.
Thus the defence associations must assume more and more the aspect of the old
ex-service men's societies. But that cannot be the meaning and purpose of an
institution which calls itself, not an association of ex-service men but a
defence association, indicating by this title that it considers its task to be,
not only to preserve the tradition of the old soldiers and hold them together
but also to propagate the idea of national defence and be able to carry this
idea into practical effect, which means the creation of a body of men who are
fit and trained for military defence.
But this implies that those elements will receive a
military training which up to now have received none. This is something that in
practice is impossible for the defence associations. Real soldiers cannot be
made by a training of one or two hours per week. In view of the enormously
increasing demands which modern warfare imposes on each individual soldier
today, a military service of two years is barely sufficient to transform a raw
recruit into a trained soldier. At the Front during the War we all saw the
fearful consequences which our young recruits had to suffer from their lack of
a thorough military training. Volunteer formations which had been drilled for
fifteen or twenty weeks under an iron discipline and shown unlimited
self-denial proved nevertheless to be no better than cannon fodder at the
Front. Only when distributed among the ranks of the old and experienced
soldiers could the young recruits, who had been trained for four or six months,
become useful members of a regiment. Guided by the 'old men', they adapted
themselves gradually to their task.
In the light of all this, how hopeless must the attempt
be to create a body of fighting troops by a so-called training of one or two
hours in the week, without any definite power of command and without any
considerable means. In that way perhaps one could refresh military training in
old soldiers, but raw recruits cannot thus be transformed into expert soldiers.
How such a proceeding produces utterly worthless results may also be
demonstrated by the fact that at the same time as these so-called volunteer
defence associations, with great effort and outcry and under difficulties and
lack of necessities, try to educate and train a few thousand men of goodwill
(the others need not be taken into account) for purposes of national defence,
the State teaches our young men democratic and pacifist ideas and thus deprives
millions and millions of their national instincts, poisons their logical sense
of patriotism and gradually turns them into a herd of sheep who will patiently
follow any arbitrary command. Thus they render ridiculous all those attempts
made by the defence associations to inculcate their ideas in the minds of the
German youth.
Almost more important is the following consideration,
which has always made me take up a stand against all attempts at a so-called
military training on the basis of the volunteer associations.
Assuming that, in spite of all the difficulties just
mentioned, a defence association were successful in training a certain number
of Germans every year to be efficient soldiers, not only as regards their
mental outlook but also as regards bodily efficiency and the expert handling of
arms, the result must necessarily be null and void in a State whose whole
tendency makes it not only look upon such a defensive formation as undesirable
but even positively hate it, because such an association would completely
contradict the intimate aims of the political leaders, who are the corrupters
of this State.
But anyhow, such a result would be worthless under
governments which have demonstrated by their own acts that they do not lay the
slightest importance on the military power of the nation and are not disposed
to permit an appeal to that power only in case that it were necessary for the
protection of their own malignant existence.
And that is the state of affairs today. It is not
ridiculous to think of training some ten thousand men in the use of arms, and
carry on that training surreptitiously, when a few years previously the State,
having shamefully sacrificed eight-and-a-half million highly trained soldiers,
not merely did not require their services any more, but, as a mark of gratitude
for their sacrifices, held them up to public contumely. Shall we train soldiers
for a regime which besmirched and spat upon our most glorious soldiers, tore
the medals and badges from their breasts, trampled on their flags and derided
their achievements? Has the present regime taken one step towards restoring the
honour of the old army and bringing those who destroyed and outraged it to
answer for their deeds? Not in the least. On the contrary, the people I have
just referred to may be seen enthroned in the highest positions under the State
today. And yet it was said at Leipzig: "Right goes with might." Since, however,
in our Republic today might is in the hands of the very men who arranged for
the Revolution, and since that Revolution represents a most despicable act of
high treason against the nation – yea, the vilest act in German history – there
can surely be no grounds for saying that might of this character should be
enhanced by the formation of a new young army. It is against all sound reason.
The importance which this State attached, after the Revolution of
1918, to the reinforcement of its position from the military point of view is
clearly and unmistakably demonstrated by its attitude towards the large
self-defence organizations which existed in that period. They were not
unwelcome as long as they were of use for the personal protection of the
miserable creatures cast up by the Revolution.
But the danger to these creatures seemed to disappear as
the debasement of our people gradually increased. As the existence of the
defence associations no longer implied a reinforcement of the national policy
they became superfluous. Hence every effort was made to disarm them and
suppress them wherever that was possible.
History records only a few examples of gratitude on the
part of princes. But there is not one patriot among the new bourgeoisie who can
count on the gratitude of revolutionary incendiaries and assassins, persons who
have enriched themselves from the public spoil and betrayed the nation. In
examining the problem as to the wisdom of forming these defence associations I
have never ceased to ask: 'For whom shall I train these young men? For what
purpose will they be employed when they will have to be called out?' The answer
to these questions lays down at the same time the best rule for us to follow.
If the present State should one day have to call upon trained troops
of this kind it would never be for the purpose of defending the interests of
the nation vis-à-vis those of the stranger but rather to protect the oppressors
of the nation inside the country against the danger of a general outbreak of
wrath on the part of a nation which has been deceived and betrayed and whose
interests have been bartered away.
For this reason it was decided that the Storm Detachment
of the German National Socialist Labour Party ought not to be in the nature of
a military organization. It had to be an instrument of protection and education
for the National Socialist Movement and its duties should be in quite a
different sphere from that of the military defence association.
And, of course, the Storm Detachment should not be in the
nature of a secret organization. Secret organizations are established only for
purposes that are against the law. Therewith the purpose of such an
organization is limited by its very nature. Considering the loquacious
propensities of the German people, it is not possible to build up any vast
organization, keeping it secret at the same time and cloaking its purpose.
Every attempt of that kind is destined to turn out absolutely futile. It is not
merely that our police officials today have at their disposal a staff of
eavesdroppers and other such rabble who are ready to play traitor, like Judas,
for thirty pieces of silver and will betray whatever secrets they can discover
and will invent what they would like to reveal. In order to forestall such
eventualities, it is never possible to bind one's own followers to the silence
that is necessary. Only small groups can become really secret societies, and
that only after long years of filtration. But the very smallness of such groups
would deprive them of all value for the National Socialist Movement. What we
needed then and need now is not one or two hundred dare-devil conspirators but
a hundred thousand devoted champions of our philosophy of life. The work must
not be done through secret conventicles but through formidable mass
demonstrations in public. Dagger and pistol and poison-vial cannot clear the
way for the progress of the movement. That can be done only by winning over the
man in the street. We must overthrow Marxism, so that for the future National
Socialism will be master of the street, just as it will one day become master
of the State.
There is another danger connected with secret societies.
It lies in the fact that their members often completely misunderstand the
greatness of the task in hand and are apt to believe that a favourable destiny
can be assured for the nation all at once by means of a single murder. Such a
belief may find historical justification by appealing to cases where a nation
had been suffering under the tyranny of some oppressor who at the same time was
a man of genius and whose extraordinary personality guaranteed the internal
solidity of his position and enabled him to maintain his fearful oppression. In
such cases a man may suddenly arise from the ranks of the people who is ready
to sacrifice himself and plunge the deadly steel into the heart of the hated
individual. In order to look upon such a deed as abhorrent one must have the
republican mentality of that petty canaille who are conscious of their own
crime. But the greatest champion of liberty that the German people have ever
had has glorified such a deed in William Tell.
During 1919 and 1920 there was danger that the members of
secret organizations, under the influence of great historical examples and
overcome by the immensity of the nation's misfortunes, might attempt to wreak
vengeance on the destroyers of their country, under the belief that this would
end the miseries of the people. All such attempts were sheer folly, for the
reason that the Marxist triumph was not due to the superior genius of one
remarkable person but rather to immeasurable incompetence and cowardly shirking
on the part of the bourgeoisie. The hardest criticism that can be uttered
against our bourgeoisie is simply to state the fact that it submitted to the
Revolution, even though the Revolution did not produce one single man of
eminent worth. One can always understand how it was possible to capitulate
before a Robespierre, a Danton, or a Marat; but it was utterly scandalous to go
down on all fours before the withered Scheidemann, the obese Herr Erzberger,
Frederick Ebert, and the innumerable other political pigmies of the Revolution.
There was not a single man of parts in whom one could see the revolutionary man
of genius. Therein lay the country's misfortune; for they were only
revolutionary bugs, Spartacists wholesale and retail. To suppress one of them
would be an act of no consequence. The only result would be that another pair
of bloodsuckers, equally fat and thirsty, would be ready to take his place.
During those years we had to take up a determined stand against an
idea which owed its origin and foundation to historical episodes that were
really great, but to which our own despicable epoch did not bear the slightest
similarity.
The same reply may be given when there is question of
putting somebody 'on the spot' who has acted as a traitor to his country. It
would be ridiculous and illogical to shoot a poor wretch who had betrayed the
position of a howitzer to the enemy while the highest positions of the
government are occupied by a rabble who bartered away a whole empire, who have
on their consciences the deaths of two million men who were sacrificed in vain,
fellows who were responsible for the millions maimed in the war and who make a
thriving business out of the republican regime without allowing their souls to
be disturbed in any way. It would be absurd to do away with small traitors in a
State whose government has absolved the great traitors from all punishment. For
it might easily happen that one day an honest idealist, who, out of love for
his country, had removed from circulation some miserable informer that had
given information about secret stores of arms might now be called to answer for
his act before the chief traitors of the country. And there is still an
important question: Shall some small traitorous creature be suppressed by
another small traitor, or by an idealist? In the former case the result would
be doubtful and the deed would almost surely be revealed later on. In the
second case a petty rascal is put out of the way and the life of an idealist
who may be irreplaceable is in jeopardy.
For myself, I believe that small thieves should not be
hanged while big thieves are allowed to go free. One day a national tribunal
will have to judge and sentence some tens of thousands of organizers who were
responsible for the criminal November betrayal and all the consequences that
followed on it. Such an example will teach the necessary lesson, once and for
ever, to those paltry traitors who revealed to the enemy the places where arms
were hidden.
On the grounds of these considerations I steadfastly
forbade all participation in secret societies, and I took care that the Storm
Detachment should not assume such a character. During those years I kept the
National Socialist Movement away from those experiments which were being
undertaken by young Germans who for the most part were inspired with a sublime
idealism but who became the victims of their own deeds, because they could not
ameliorate the lot of their fatherland to the slightest degree.
If then the Storm Detachment must not be either a
military defence organization or a secret society, the following conclusions
must result:
1. Its training must not be organized from the military
standpoint but from the standpoint of what is most practical for party
purposes. Seeing that its members must undergo a good physical training, the
place of chief importance must not be given to military drill but rather to the
practice of sports. I have always considered boxing and ju-jitsu more important
than some kind of bad, because mediocre, training in rifle-shooting. If the
German nation were presented with a body of young men who had been perfectly
trained in athletic sports, who were imbued with an ardent love for their
country and a readiness to take the initiative in a fight, then the national
State could make an army out of that body within less than two years if it were
necessary, provided the cadres already existed. In the actual state of affairs
only the Reichswehr could furnish the cadres and not a defence organization
that was neither one thing nor the other. Bodily efficiency would develop in
the individual a conviction of his superiority and would give him that
confidence which is always based only on the consciousness of one's own powers.
They must also develop that athletic agility which can be employed as a
defensive weapon in the service of the Movement.
2. In order to safeguard the Storm Detachment against any
tendency towards secrecy, not only must the uniform be such that it can
immediately be recognized by everybody, but the large number of its effectives
show the direction in which the Movement is going and which must be known to
the whole public. The members of the Storm Detachment must not hold secret
gatherings but must march in the open and thus, by their actions, put an end to
all legends about a secret organization. In order to keep them away from all
temptations towards finding an outlet for their activities in small
conspiracies, from the very beginning we had to inculcate in their minds the
great idea of the Movement and educate them so thoroughly to the task of
defending this idea that their horizon became enlarged and that the individual
no longer considered it his mission to remove from circulation some rascal or
other, whether big or small, but to devote himself entirely to the task of
bringing about the establishment of a new National Socialist People's State. In
this way the struggle against the present State was placed on a higher plane
than that of petty revenge and small conspiracies. It was elevated to the level
of a spiritual struggle on behalf of a philosophical war, for the destruction
of Marxism in all its shapes and forms.
3. The form of organization adopted for the Storm
Detachment, as well as its uniform and equipment, had to follow different
models from those of the old Army. They had to be specially suited to the
requirements of the task that was assigned to the Storm Detachment.
These were the ideas I followed in 1920 and 1921. I endeavoured to
instil them gradually into the members of the young organization. And the
result was that by the midsummer of 1922 we had a goodly number of formations
which consisted of a hundred men each. By the late autumn of that year these
formations received their distinctive uniforms. There were three events which
turned out to be of supreme importance for the subsequent development of the
Storm Detachment.
1. The great mass demonstration against the Law for the
Protection of the Republic. This demonstration was held in the late summer of
1922 on the Königs-platz in Munich, by all the patriotic societies. The
National Socialist Movement also participated in it. The march-past of our
party, in serried ranks, was led by six Munich companies of a hundred men each,
followed by the political sections of the Party. Two bands marched with us and
about fifteen flags were carried. When the National Socialists arrived at the
great square it was already half full, but no flag was flying. Our entry
aroused unbounded enthusiasm. I myself had the honour of being one of the
speakers who addressed that mass of about sixty thousand people.
The demonstration was an overwhelming success; especially
because it was proved for the first time that nationalist Munich could march on
the streets, in spite of all threats from the Reds. Members of the organization
for the defence of the Red Republic endeavoured to hinder the marching columns
by their terrorist activities, but they were scattered by the companies of the
Storm Detachment within a few minutes and sent off with bleeding skulls. The
National Socialist Movement had then shown for the first time that in future it
was determined to exercise the right to march on the streets and thus take this
monopoly away from the international traitors and enemies of the country.
The result of that day was an incontestable proof that our ideas for
the creation of the Storm Detachment were right, both from the psychological
viewpoint and as to the manner in which this body was organized.
On the basis of this success the enlistment progressed so
rapidly that within a few weeks the number of Munich companies of a hundred men
each became doubled.
2. The expedition to Coburg in October 1922.
Certain People's Societies had decided to hold a German
Day at Coburg. I was invited to take part, with the intimation that they wished
me to bring a following along. This invitation, which I received at eleven
o'clock in the morning, arrived just in time. Within an hour the arrangements
for our participation in the German Congress were ready. I picked eight hundred
men of the Storm Detachment to accompany me. These were divided into about
fourteen companies and had to be brought by special train from Munich to
Coburg, which had just voted by plebiscite to be annexed to Bavaria.
Corresponding orders were given to other groups of the National Socialist Storm
Detachment which had meanwhile been formed in various other localities.
This was the first time that such a special train ran in Germany. At
all the places where the new members of the Storm Detachment joined us our
train caused a sensation. Many of the people had never seen our flag. And it
made a very great impression.
As we arrived at the station in Coburg we were received
by a deputation of the organizing committee of the German Day. They announced
that it had been 'arranged' at the orders of local trades unions – that is to
say, the Independent and Communist Parties – that we should not enter the town
with our flags unfurled and our band playing (we had a band consisting of
forty-two musicians with us) and that we should not march with closed ranks.
I immediately rejected these unmilitary conditions and did not fail
to declare before the gentlemen who had arranged this 'day' how astonished I
was at the idea of their negotiating with such people and coming to an
agreement with them. Then I announced that the Storm Troops would immediately
march into the town in company formation, with our flags flying and the band
playing.
And that is what happened.
As we came out into the station yard we were met by a
growling and yelling mob of several thousand, that shouted at us: 'Assassins',
'Bandits', 'Robbers', 'Criminals'. These were the choice names which these
exemplary founders of the German Republic showered on us. The young Storm
Detachment gave a model example of order. The companies fell into formation on
the square in front of the station and at first took no notice of the insults
hurled at them by the mob. The police were anxious. They did not pilot us to
the quarters assigned to us on the outskirts of Coburg, a city quite unknown to
us, but to the Hofbräuhaus Keller in the centre of the town. Right and left of
our march the tumult raised by the accompanying mob steadily increased.
Scarcely had the last company entered the courtyard of the Hofbräuhaus when the
huge mass made a rush to get in after them, shouting madly. In order to prevent
this, the police closed the gates. Seeing the position was untenable I called
the Storm Detachment to attention and then asked the police to open the gates
immediately. After a good deal of hesitation, they consented.
We now marched back along the same route as we had come,
in the direction of our quarters, and there we had to make a stand against the
crowd. As their cries and yells all along the route had failed to disturb the
equanimity of our companies, the champions of true Socialism, Equality, and
Fraternity now took to throwing stones. That brought our patience to an end.
For ten minutes long, blows fell right and left, like a devastating shower of
hail. Fifteen minutes later there were no more Reds to be seen in the street.
The collisions which took place when the night came on were more
serious. Patrols of the Storm Detachment had discovered National Socialists who
had been attacked singly and were in an atrocious state. Thereupon we made
short work of the opponents. By the following morning the Red terror, under
which Coburg had been suffering for years, was definitely smashed.
Adopting the typically Marxist and Jewish method of spreading
falsehoods, leaflets were distributed by hand on the streets, bearing the
caption: "Comrades and Comradesses of the International Proletariat." These
leaflets were meant to arouse the wrath of the populace. Twisting the facts
completely around, they declared that our 'bands of assasins' had commenced 'a
war of extermination against the peaceful workers of Coburg'. At half-past one
that day there was to be a 'great popular demonstration', at which it was hoped
that the workers of the whole district would turn up. I was determined finally
to crush this Red terror and so I summoned the Storm Detachment to meet at
midday. Their number had now increased to 1,500. I decided to march with these
men to the Coburg Festival and to cross the big square where the Red
demonstration was to take place. I wanted to see if they would attempt to
assault us again. When we entered the square we found that instead of the ten
thousand that had been advertised, there were only a few hundred people
present. As we approached they remained silent for the most part, and some ran
away. Only at certain points along the route some bodies of Reds, who had
arrived from outside the city and had not yet come to know us, attempted to
start a row. But a few fisticuffs put them to flight. And now one could see how
the population, which had for such a long time been so wretchedly intimidated,
slowly woke up and recovered their courage. They welcomed us openly, and in the
evening, on our return march, spontaneous shouts of jubilation broke out at
several points along the route.
At the station the railway employees informed us all of a
sudden that our train would not move. Thereupon I had some of the ringleaders
told that if this were the case I would have all the Red Party heroes arrested
that fell into our hands, that we would drive the train ourselves, but that we
would take away with us, in the locomotive and tender and in some of the
carriages, a few dozen members of this brotherhood of international solidarity.
I did not omit to let those gentry know that if we had to conduct the train the
journey would undoubtedly be a very risky adventure and that we might all break
our necks. It would be a consolation, however, to know that we should not go to
Eternity alone, but in equality and fraternity with the Red gentry.
Thereupon the train departed punctually and we arrived next morning
in Munich safe and sound.
Thus at Coburg, for the first time since 1914, the
equality of all citizens before the law was re-established. For even if some
coxcomb of a higher official should assert today that the State protects the
lives of its citizens, at least in those days it was not so. For at that time
the citizens had to defend themselves against the representatives of the
present State.
At first it was not possible fully to estimate the
importance of the consequences which resulted from that day. The victorious
Storm Troops had their confidence in themselves considerably reinforced and
also their faith in the sagacity of their leaders. Our contemporaries began to
pay us special attention and for the first time many recognized the National
Socialist Movement as an organization that in all probability was destined to
bring the Marxist folly to a deserving end.
Only the democrats lamented the fact that we had not the
complaisance to allow our skulls to be cracked and that we had dared, in a
democratic Republic, to hit back with fists and sticks at a brutal assault,
rather than with pacifist chants.
Generally speaking, the bourgeois Press was partly
distressed and partly vulgar, as always. Only a few decent newspapers expressed
their satisfaction that at least in one locality the Marxist street bullies had
been effectively dealt with.
And in Coburg itself at least a part of the Marxist
workers who must be looked upon as misled, learned from the blows of National
Socialist fists that these workers were also fighting for ideals, because
experience teaches that the human being fights only for something in which he
believes and which he loves.
The Storm Detachment itself benefited most from the Coburg
events. It grew so quickly in numbers that at the Party Congress in January
1923 six thousand men participated in the ceremony of consecrating the flags
and the first companies were fully clad in their new uniform.
Our experience in Coburg proved how essential it is to
introduce one distinctive uniform for the Storm Detachment, not only for the
purpose of strengthening the esprit de corps but also to avoid confusion
and the danger of not recognizing the opponent in a squabble. Up to that time
they had merely worn the armlet, but now the tunic and the well-known cap were
added.
But the Coburg experience had also another important result. We now
determined to break the Red Terror in all those localities where for many years
it had prevented men of other views from holding their meetings. We were
determined to restore the right of free assembly. From that time onwards we
brought our battalions together in such places and little by little the red
citadels of Bavaria, one after another, fell before the National Socialist
propaganda. The Storm Troops became more and more adept at their job. They
increasingly lost all semblance of an aimless and lifeless defence movement and
came out into the light as an active militant organization, fighting for the
establishment of a new German State.
This logical development continued until March 1923. Then
an event occurred which made me divert the Movement from the course hitherto
followed and introduce some changes in its outer formation.
In the first months of 1923 the French occupied the Ruhr
district. The consequence of this was of great importance in the development of
the Storm Detachment.
It is not yet possible, nor would it be in the interest
of the nation, to write or speak openly and freely on the subject. I shall
speak of it only as far as the matter has been dealt with in public discussions
and thus brought to the knowledge of everybody.
The occupation of the Ruhr district, which did not come
as a surprise to us, gave grounds for hoping that Germany would at last abandon
its cowardly policy of submission and therewith give the defensive associations
a definite task to fulfil. The Storm Detachment also, which now numbered
several thousand of robust and vigorous young men, should not be excluded from
this national service. During the spring and summer of 1923 it was transformed
into a fighting military organization. It is to this reorganization that we
must in great part attribute the later developments that took place during
1923, in so far as it affected our Movement.
Elsewhere I shall deal in broad outline with the
development of events in 1923. Here I wish only to state that the
transformation of the Storm Detachment at that time must have been detrimental
to the interests of the Movement if the conditions that had motivated the
change were not to be carried into effect, namely, the adoption of a policy of
active resistance against France.
The events which took place at the close of 1923,
terrible as they may appear at first sight, were almost a necessity if looked
at from a higher standpoint; because, in view of the attitude taken by the
Government of the German Reich, conversion of the Storm Troops into a military
force would be meaningless and thus a transformation which would also be
harmful to the Movement was ended at one stroke. At the same time it was made
possible for us to reconstruct at the point where we had been diverted from the
proper course.
In the year 1925 the German National Socialist Labour
Party was re-founded and had to organize and train its Storm Detachment once
again according to the principles I have laid down. It must return to the
original idea and once more it must consider its most essential task to
function as the instrument of defence and reinforcement in the spiritual
struggle to establish the ideals of the Movement.
The Storm Detachment must not be allowed to sink to the
level of something in the nature of a defence organization or a secret society.
Steps must be taken rather to make it a vanguard of 100,000 men in the struggle
for the National Socialist ideal which is based on the profound principle of a
People's State.
the Meaning and Organization of the SA
The strength of the old state rested on three pillars: the
monarchical form of government, the civil service, and the army. The Revolution
of 1918 abolished the form of government, dissolved the army and abandoned the
civil service to the corruption of party politics. Thus the essential supports
of what is called the Authority of the State were shattered. This authority
nearly always depends on three elements, which are the essential foundations of
all authority.
Popular support is the first element which is necessary
for the creation of authority. But an authority resting on that foundation
alone is still quite frail, uncertain and vacillating. Hence everyone who finds
himself vested with an authority that is based only on popular support must
take measures to improve and consolidate the foundations of that authority by
the creation of force. Accordingly we must look upon power, that is to say, the
capacity to use force, as the second foundation on which all authority is
based. This foundation is more stable and secure, but not always stronger, than
the first. If popular support and power are united together and can endure for
a certain time, then an authority may arise which is based on a still stronger
foundation, namely, the authority of tradition. And, finally, if popular
support, power, and tradition are united together, then the authority based on
them may be looked upon as invincible.
In Germany the Revolution abolished this last foundation.
There was no longer even a traditional authority. With the collapse of the old
Reich, the suppression of the monarchical form of government, the destruction
of all the old insignia of greatness and the imperial symbols, tradition was
shattered at a blow. The result was that the authority of the State was shaken
to its foundations.
The second pillar of statal authority, namely power, also
ceased to exist. In order to carry through the Revolution it was necessary to
dissolve that body which had hitherto incorporated the organized force and
power of the State, namely, the Army. Indeed, some detached fragments of the
Army itself had to be employed as fighting elements in the Revolution. The
Armies at the front were not subjected in the same measure to this process of
disruption; but as they gradually left farther behind them the fields of glory
on which they had fought heroically for four-and-half years, they were attacked
by the solvent acid that had permeated the Fatherland; and when they arrived at
the demobilizing centres they fell into that state of confusion which was
styled voluntary obedience in the time of the Soldiers' Councils.
Of course it was out of the question to think of founding
any kind of authority on this crowd of mutineering soldiers, who looked upon
military service as a work of eight hours per day. Therefore the second
element, that which guarantees the stability of authority, was also abolished
and the Revolution had only the original element, popular support, on which to
build up its authority. But this basis was extraordinarily insecure. By means
of a few violent thrusts the Revolution had shattered the old statal edifice to
its deepest foundations, but only because the normal equilibrium within the
social structure of the nation had already been destroyed by the war.
Every national body is made up of three main classes. At one extreme
we have the best of the people, taking the word 'best' here to indicate those
who are highly endowed with the civic virtues and are noted for their courage
and their readiness to sacrifice their private interests. At the other extreme
are the worst dregs of humanity, in whom vice and egotistic interests prevail.
Between these two extremes stands the third class, which is made up of the
broad middle stratum, who do not represent radiant heroism or vulgar vice.
The stages of a nation's rise are accomplished exclusively under the
leadership of the best extreme.
Times of normal and symmetrical development, or of stable
conditions, owe their existence and outwardly visible characteristics to the
preponderating influence of the middle stratum. In this stage the two extreme
classes are balanced against one another; in other words, they are relatively
cancelled out.
Times of national collapse are determined by the
preponderating influence of the worst elements.
It must be noted here, however, that the broad masses,
which constitute what I have called the middle section, come forward and make
their influence felt only when the two extreme sections are engaged in mutual
strife. In case one of the extreme sections comes out victorious the middle
section will readily submit to its domination. If the best dominate, the broad
masses will follow it. Should the worst extreme turn out triumphant, then the
middle section will at least offer no opposition to it; for the masses that
constitute the middle class never fight their own battles.
The outpouring of blood for four-and-a-half years during
the war destroyed the inner equilibrium between these three sections in so far
as it can be said – though admitting the sacrifices made by the middle section
– that the class which consisted of the best human elements almost completely
disappeared through the loss of so much of its blood in the war, because it was
impossible to replace the truly enormous quantity of heroic German blood which
had been shed during those four-and-a-half years. In hundreds of thousands of
cases it was always a matter of 'volunteers to the front', volunteers for
patrol and duty, volunteer dispatch carriers, volunteers for establishing and
working telephonic communications, volunteers for bridge-building, volunteers
for the submarines, volunteers for the air service, volunteers for the storm
battalions, and so on, and so on. During four-and-a-half years, and on
thousands of occasions, there was always the call for volunteers and again for
volunteers. And the result was always the same. Beardless young fellows or
fully developed men, all filled with an ardent love for their country, urged on
by their own courageous spirit or by a lofty sense of their duty – it was
always such men who answered the call for volunteers. Tens of thousands, indeed
hundreds of thousands, of such men came forward, so that that kind of human
material steadily grew scarcer and scarcer. What did not actually fall was
maimed in the fight or gradually had to join the ranks of the crippled because
of the wounds they were constantly receiving, and thus they had to carry on
interminably owing to the steady decrease in the supply of such men. In 1914
whole armies were composed of volunteers who, owing to a criminal lack of
conscience on the part of our feckless parliamentarians, had not received any
proper training in times of peace, and so were thrown as defenceless
cannon-fodder to the enemy. The four hundred thousand who thus fell or were
permanently maimed on the battlefields of Flanders could not be replaced any
more. Their loss was something far more than merely numerical. With their death
the scales, which were already too lightly weighed at that end of the social
structure which represented our best human quality, now moved upwards rapidly,
becoming heavier on the other end with those vulgar elements of infamy and
cowardice – in short, there was an increase in the elements that constituted
the worst extreme of our population.
And there was something more: While for four-and-a-half
years our best human material was being thinned to an exceptional degree on the
battlefields, our worst people wonderfully succeeded in saving themselves. For
each hero who made the supreme sacrifice and ascended the steps of Valhalla,
there was a shirker who cunningly dodged death on the plea of being engaged in
business that was more or less useful at home.
And so the picture which presented itself at the end of
the war was this: The great middle stratum of the nation had fulfilled its duty
and paid its toll of blood. One extreme of the population, which was
constituted of the best elements, had given a typical example of its heroism
and had sacrificed itself almost to a man. The other extreme, which was
constituted of the worst elements of the population, had preserved itself
almost intact, through taking advantage of absurd laws and also because the
authorities failed to enforce certain articles of the military code.
This carefully preserved scum of our nation then made the
Revolution. And the reason why it could do so was that the extreme section
composed of the best elements was no longer there to oppose it. It no longer
existed.
Hence the German Revolution, from the very beginning, depended on
only one section of the population. This act of Cain was not committed by the
German people as such, but by an obscure canaille of deserters, hooligans, etc.
The man at the front gladly welcomed the end of the strife in which
so much blood had been shed. He was happy to be able to return home and see his
wife and children once again. But he had no moral connection with the
Revolution. He did not like it, nor did he like those who had provoked and
organized it. During the four-and-a-half years of that bitter struggle at the
front he had come to forget the party hyenas at home and all their wrangling
had become foreign to him.
The Revolution was really popular only with a small
section of the German people: namely, that class and their accomplices who had
selected the rucksack as the hall-mark of all honourable citizens in this new
State. They did not like the Revolution for its own sake, though many people
still erroneously believe the contrary, but for the consequences which followed
in its train.
But it was very difficult to establish any abiding
authority on the popular support given to these Marxist freebooters. And yet
the young Republic stood in need of authority at any cost, unless it was ready
to agree to be overthrown after a short period of chaos by an elementary force
assembled from those last elements that still remained among the best extreme
of the population.
The danger which those who were responsible for the
Revolution feared most at that time was that, in the turmoil of the confusion
which they themselves had created, the ground would suddenly be taken from
under their feet, that they might be suddenly seized and transported to another
terrain by an iron grip, such as has often appeared at these junctures in the
history of nations. The Republic must be consolidated at all costs.
Hence it was forced almost immediately after its foundation to erect
another pillar beside that wavering pillar of popularity. They found that power
must be organized once again in order to procure a firmer foundation for their
authority.
When those who had been the matadors of the Revolution in
December 1918, and January and February 1919, felt the ground trembling beneath
their feet they looked around them for men who would be ready to reinforce them
with military support; for their feeble position was dependent only on whatever
popular favour they enjoyed. The 'anti-militarist' Republic had need of
soldiers. But the first and only pillar on which the authority of the State
rested, namely, its popularity, was grounded only on a conglomeration of
rowdies and thieves, burglars, deserters, shirkers, etc. Therefore in that
section of the nation which we have called the evil extreme it was useless to
look for men who would be willing to sacrifice their lives on behalf of a new
ideal. The section which had nourished the revolutionary idea and carried out
the Revolution was neither able nor willing to call on the soldiers to protect
it. For that section had no wish whatsoever to organize a republican State, but
to disorganize what already existed and thus satisfy its own instincts all the
better. Their password was not the organization and construction of the German
Republic, but rather the plundering of it.
Hence the cry for help sent out by the public
representatives, who were beset by a thousand anxieties, did not find any
response among this class of people, but rather provoked a feeling of
bitterness and repudiation. For they looked upon this step as the beginning of
a breach of faith and trust, and in the building up of an authority which was
no longer based on popular support but also on force they saw the beginning of
a hostile move against what the Revolution meant essentially for those
elements. They feared that measures might be taken against the right to robbery
and absolute domination on the part of a horde of thieves and plunderers – in
short, the worst rabble – who had broken out of the convict prisons and left
their chains behind.
The representatives of the people might cry out as much as
they liked, but they could get no help from that rabble. The cries for help
were met with the counter-cry 'traitors' by those very people on whose support
the popularity of the regime was founded.
Then for the first time large numbers of young Germans
were found who were ready to button on the military uniform once again in the
service of 'Peace and Order', as they believed, shouldering the carbine and
rifle and donning the steel helmet to defend the wreckers of the Fatherland.
Volunteer corps were assembled and, although hating the Revolution, they began
to defend it. The practical effect of their action was to render the Revolution
firm and stable. In doing this they acted in perfect good faith.
The real organizer of the Revolution and the actual
wire-puller behind it, the international Jew, had sized up the situation
correctly. The German people were not yet ripe to be drawn into the blood swamp
of Bolshevism, as the Russian people had been drawn. And that was because there
was a closer racial union between the intellectual classes in Germany and the
manual workers, and also because broad social strata were permeated with
cultured people, such as was the case also in the other States of Western
Europe; but this state of affairs was completely lacking in Russia. In that
country the intellectual classes were mostly not of Russian nationality, or at
least they did not have the racial characteristics of the Slav. The thin upper
layer of intellectuals which then existed in Russia might be abolished at any
time, because there was no intermediate stratum connecting it organically with
the great mass of the people. There the mental and moral level of the great
mass of the people was frightfully low.
In Russia the moment the agitators were successful in
inciting broad masses of the people, who could not read or write, against the
upper layer of intellectuals who were not in contact with the masses or
permanently linked with them in any way – at that moment the destiny of Russia
was decided, the success of the Revolution was assured. Thereupon the
analphabetic Russian became the slave of his Jewish dictators who, on their
side, were shrewd enough to name their dictatorship 'The Dictatorship of the
People'.
In the case of Germany an additional factor must be taken into
account. Here the Revolution could be carried into effect only if the Army
could first be gradually dismembered. But the real author of the Revolution and
of the process of disintegration in the Army was not the soldier who had fought
at the front but the canaille which more or less shunned the light and which
were either quartered in the home garrisons or were officiating as
'indispensables' somewhere in the business world at home. This army was
reinforced by ten thousand deserters who, without running any particular risk,
could turn their backs on the Front. At all times the real poltroon fears
nothing so much as death. But at the Front he had death before his eyes every
day in a thousand different shapes. There has always been one possible way, and
one only, of making weak or wavering men, or even downright poltroons, face
their duty steadfastly. This means that the deserter must be given to
understand that his desertion will bring upon him just the very thing he is
flying from. At the Front a man may die, but the deserter must die. Only this
draconian threat against every attempt to desert the flag can have a terrifying
effect, not merely on the individual but also on the mass. Therein lay the
meaning and purpose of the military penal code.
It was a fine belief to think that the great struggle for
the life of a nation could be carried through if it were based solely on
voluntary fidelity arising from and sustained by the knowledge that such a
struggle was necessary. The voluntary fulfilment of one's duty is a motive that
determines the actions of only the best men, but not of the average type of
men. Hence special laws are necessary; just as, for instance, the law against
stealing, which was not made for men who are honest on principle but for the
weak and unstable elements. Such laws are meant to hinder the evil-doer through
their deterrent effect and thus prevent a state of affairs from arising in
which the honest man is considered the more stupid, and which would end in the
belief that it is better to have a share in the robbery than to stand by with
empty hands or allow oneself to be robbed.
It was a mistake to believe that in a struggle which,
according to all human foresight, might last for several years it would be
possible to dispense with those expedients which the experience of hundreds and
even of thousands of years had proved to be effective in making weak and
unstable men face and fulfil their duty in difficult times and at moments of
great nervous stress.
For the voluntary war hero it is, of course, not necessary
to have the death penalty in the military code, but it is necessary for the
cowardly egoists who value their own lives more than the existence of the
community in the hour of national need. Such weak and characterless people can
be held back from surrendering to their cowardice only by the application of
the heaviest penalties. When men have to struggle with death every day and
remain for weeks in trenches of mire, often very badly supplied with food, the
man who is unsure of himself and begins to waver cannot be made to stick to his
post by threats of imprisonment or even penal servitude. Only by a ruthless
enforcement of the death penalty can this be effected. For experience shows
that at such a time the recruit considers prison a thousand times more
preferable than the battlefield. In prison at least his precious life is not in
danger. The practical abolition of the death penalty during the war was a
mistake for which we had to pay dearly. Such omission really meant that the
military penal code was no longer recognized as valid. An army of deserters
poured into the stations at the rear or returned home, especially in 1918, and
there began to form that huge criminal organization with which we were suddenly
faced, after November 7th, 1918, and which perpetrated the Revolution.
The Front had nothing to do with all this. Naturally, the soldiers
at the Front were yearning for peace. But it was precisely that fact which
represented a special danger for the Revolution. For when the German soldiers
began to draw near home, after the Armistice, the revolutionaries were in
trepidation and asked the same question again and again: What will the troops
from the Front do? Will the field-greys stand for it?
During those weeks the Revolution was forced to give
itself at least an external appearance of moderation, if it were not to run the
risk of being wrecked in a moment by a few German divisions. For at that time,
even if the commander of one division alone had made up his mind to rally the
soldiers of his division, who had always remained faithful to him, in an
onslaught to tear down the red flag and put the 'councils' up against the wall,
or, if there was any resistance, to break it with trench-mortars and hand
grenades, that division would have grown into an army of sixty divisions in
less than four weeks. The Jew wire-pullers were terrified by this prospect more
than by anything else; and to forestall this particular danger they found it
necessary to give the Revolution a certain aspect of moderation. They dared not
allow it to degenerate into Bolshevism, so they had to face the existing
conditions by putting up the hypocritical picture of 'order and tranquillity'.
Hence many important concessions, the appeal to the old civil service and to
the heads of the old Army. They would be needed at least for a certain time,
and only when they had served the purpose of Turks' Heads could the deserved
kick-out be administered with impunity. Then the Republic would be taken
entirely out of the hands of the old servants of the State and delivered into
the claws of the revolutionaries.
They thought that this was the only plan which would
succeed in duping the old generals and civil servants and disarm any eventual
opposition beforehand through the apparently harmless and mild character of the
new regime.
Practical experience has shown to what extent the plan
succeeded.
The Revolution, however, was not made by the peaceful and
orderly elements of the nation but rather by rioters, thieves and robbers. And
the way in which the Revolution was developing did not accord with the
intentions of these latter elements; still, on tactical grounds, it was not
possible to explain to them the reasons for the course things were taking and
make that course acceptable.
As Social Democracy gradually gained power it lost more
and more the character of a crude revolutionary party. Of course in their inner
hearts the Social Democrats wanted a revolution; and their leaders had no other
end in view. Certainly not. But what finally resulted was only a revolutionary
programme; but not a body of men who would be able to carry it out. A
revolution cannot be carried through by a party of ten million members. If such
a movement were attempted the leaders would find that it was not an extreme
section of the population on which they had to depend butrather the broad
masses of the middle stratum; hence the inert masses.
Recognizing all this, already during the war, the Jews
caused the famous split in the Social Democratic Party. While the Social
Democratic Party, conforming to the inertia of its mass following, clung like a
leaden weight on the neck of the national defence, the actively radical
elements were extracted from it and formed into new aggressive columns for
purposes of attack. The Independent Socialist Party and the Spartacist League
were the storm battalions of revolutionary Marxism. The objective assigned to
them was to create a fait accompli, on the grounds of which the masses of the
Social Democratic Party could take their stand, having been prepared for this
event long beforehand. The feckless bourgeoisie had been estimated at its just
value by the Marxists and treated en canaille. Nobody bothered about it,
knowing well that in their canine servility the representatives of an old and
worn-out generation would not be able to offer any serious resistance.
When the Revolution had succeeded and its artificers believed that
the main pillars of the old State had been broken down, the Army returning from
the Front began to appear in the light of a sinister sphinx and thus made it
necessary to slow down the national course of the Revolution. The main body of
the Social Democratic horde occupied the conquered positions, and the
Independent Socialist and Spartacist storm battalions were side-tracked.
But that did not happen without a struggle.
The activist assault formations that had started the
Revolution were dissatisfied and felt that they had been betrayed. They now
wanted to continue the fight on their own account. But their illimitable
racketeering became odious even to the wire-pullers of the Revolution. For the
Revolution itself had scarcely been accomplished when two camps appeared. In
the one camp were the elements of peace and order; in the other were those of
blood and terror. Was it not perfectly natural that our bourgeoisie should rush
with flying colours to the camp of peace and order? For once in their lives
their piteous political organizations found it possible to act, inasmuch as the
ground had been prepared for them on which they were glad to get a new footing;
and thus to a certain extent they found themselves in coalition with that power
which they hated but feared. The German political bourgeoisie achieved the high
honour of being able to associate itself with the accursed Marxist leaders for
the purpose of combating Bolshevism.
Thus the following state of affairs took shape as early
as December 1918 and January 1919:
A minority constituted of the worst elements had made the
Revolution. And behind this minority all the Marxist parties immediately fell
into step. The Revolution itself had an outward appearance of moderation, which
aroused against it the enmity of the fanatical extremists. These began to
launch hand-grenades and fire machine-guns, occupying public buildings, thus
threatening to destroy the moderate appearance of the Revolution. To prevent
this terror from developing further a truce was concluded between the
representatives of the new regime and the adherents of the old order, so as to
be able to wage a common fight against the extremists. The result was that the
enemies of the Republic ceased to oppose the Republic as such and helped to
subjugate those who were also enemies of the Republic, though for quite
different reasons. But a further result was that all danger of the adherents of
the old State putting up a fight against the new was now definitely averted.
This fact must always be clearly kept in mind. Only by remembering
it can we understand how it was possible that a nation in which nine-tenths of
the people had not joined in a revolution, where seven-tenths repudiated it and
six-tenths detested it – how this nation allowed the Revolution to be imposed
upon it by the remaining one-tenth of the population.
Gradually the barricade heroes in the Spartacist camp
petered out, and so did the nationalist patriots and idealists on the other
side. As these two groups steadily dwindled, the masses of the middle stratum,
as always happens, triumphed. The Bourgeoisie and the Marxists met together on
the grounds of accomplished facts, and the Republic began to be consolidated.
At first, however, that did not prevent the bourgeois parties from propounding
their monarchist ideas for some time further, especially at the elections,
whereby they endeavoured to conjure up the spirits of the dead past to
encourage their own feeble-hearted followers. It was not an honest proceeding.
In their hearts they had broken with the monarchy long ago; but the foulness of
the new regime had begun to extend its corruptive action and make itself felt
in the camp of the bourgeois parties. The common bourgeois politician now felt
better in the slime of republican corruption than in the severe decency of the
defunct State, which still lived in his memory.
As I have already pointed out, after the destruction of
the old Army the revolutionary leaders were forced to strengthen statal
authority by creating a new factor of power. In the conditions that existed
they could do this only by winning over to their side the adherents of an
outlook which was a direct contradiction of their own. From those elements
alone it was possible slowly to create a new army which, limited numerically by
the peace treaties, had to be subsequently transformed in spirit so as to
become an instrument of the new regime.
Setting aside the defects of the old State, which really
became the cause of the Revolution, if we ask how it was possible to carry the
Revolution to a successful issue as a political act, we arrive at the following
conclusions:
1. It was due to a process of dry rot in our conceptions
of duty and obedience.
2. It was due also to the passive timidity of the Parties
who were supposed to uphold the State.
To this the following must be added: The dry rot which
attacked our concepts of duty and obedience was fundamentally due to our wholly
non-national and purely State education. From this came the habit of confusing
means and ends. Consciousness of duty, fulfilment of duty, and obedience, are
not ends in themselves no more than the State is an end in itself; but they all
ought to be employed as means to facilitate and assure the existence of a
community of people who are kindred both physically and spiritually. At a
moment when a nation is manifestly collapsing and when all outward signs show
that it is on the point of becoming the victim of ruthless oppression, thanks
to the conduct of a few miscreants, to obey these people and fulfil one's duty
towards them is merely doctrinaire formalism, and indeed pure folly; whereas,
on the other hand, the refusal of obedience and fulfilment of duty in such a
case might save the nation from collapse. According to our current bourgeois
idea of the State, if a divisional general received from above the order not to
shoot he fulfilled his duty and therefore acted rightly in not shooting,
because to the bourgeois mind blind formal obedience is a more valuable thing
than the life of a nation. But according to the National Socialist concept it
is not obedience to weak superiors that should prevail at such moments, in such
an hour the duty of assuming personal responsibility towards the whole nation
makes its appearance.
The Revolution succeeded because that concept had ceased
to be a vital force with our people, or rather with our governments, and died
down to something that was merely formal and doctrinaire.
As regards the second point, it may be said that the more
profound cause of the fecklessness of the bourgeois parties must be attributed
to the fact that the most active and upright section of our people had lost
their lives in the war. Apart from that, the bourgeois parties, which may be
considered as the only political formations that stood by the old State, were
convinced that they ought to defend their principles only by intellectual ways
and means, since the use of physical force was permitted only to the State.
That outlook was a sign of the weakness and decadence which had been gradually
developing. And it was also senseless at a period when there was a political
adversary who had long ago abandoned that standpoint and, instead of this, had
openly declared that he meant to attain his political ends by force whenever
that became possible. When Marxism emerged in the world of bourgeois democracy,
as a consequence of that democracy itself, the appeal sent out by the bourgeois
democracy to fight Marxism with intellectual weapons was a piece of folly for
which a terrible expiation had to be made later on. For Marxism always
professed the doctrine that the use of arms was a matter which had to be judged
from the standpoint of expediency and that success justified the use of arms.
This idea was proved correct during the days from November 7 to 10,
1918. The Marxists did not then bother themselves in the least about parliament
or democracy, but they gave the death blow to both by turning loose their horde
of criminals to shoot and raise hell.
When the Revolution was over the bourgeois parties
changed the title of their firm and suddenly reappeared, the heroic leaders
emerging from dark cellars or more lightsome storehouses where they had sought
refuge. But, just as happens in the case of all representatives of antiquated
institutions, they had not forgotten their errors or learned anything new.
Their political programme was grounded in the past, even though they themselves
had become reconciled to the new regime. Their aim was to secure a share in the
new establishment, and so they continued the use of words as their sole weapon.
Therefore after the Revolution the bourgeois parties also
capitulated to the street in a miserable fashion.
When the law for the Protection of the Republic was
introduced the majority was not at first in favour of it. But, confronted with
two hundred thousand Marxists demonstrating in the streets, the bourgeois
'statesmen' were so terror-stricken that they voted for the Law against their
wills, for the edifying reason that otherwise they feared they might get their
heads smashed by the enraged masses on leaving the Reichstag.
And so the new State developed along its own course, as
if there had been no national opposition at all.
The only organizations which at that time had the
strength and courage to face Marxism and its enraged masses were first of all
the volunteer corps, and subsequently the organizations for self-defence, the
civic guards and finally the associations formed by the demobilized soldiers of
the old Army.
But the existence of these bodies did not appreciably
change the course of German history; and that for the following causes:
As the so-called national parties were without influence, because
they had no force which could effectively demonstrate in the street, the
Leagues of Defence could not exercise any influence because they had no
political idea and especially because they had no definite political aim in
view.
The success which Marxism once attained was due to perfect
co-operation between political purposes and ruthless force. What deprived
nationalist Germany of all practical hopes of shaping German development was
the lack of a determined co-operation between brute force and political aims
wisely chosen.
Whatever may have been the aspirations of the 'national'
parties, they had no force whatsoever to fight for these aspirations, least of
all in the streets.
The Defense Leagues had force at their disposal. They
were masters of the street and of the State, but they lacked political ideas
and aims on behalf of which their forces might have been or could have been
employed in the interests of the German nation. The cunning Jew was able in
both cases, by his astute powers of persuasion, in reinforcing an already
existing tendency to make this unfortunate state of affairs permanent and at
the same time to drive the roots of it still deeper.
The Jew succeeded brilliantly in using his Press for the
purpose of spreading abroad the idea that the defence associations were of a
'non-political' character just as in politics he was always astute enough to
praise the purely intellectual character of the struggle and demand that it
must always be kept on that plane
Millions of German imbeciles then repeated this folly
without having the slightest suspicion that by so doing they were, for all
practical purposes, disarming themselves and delivering themselves defenceless
into the hands of the Jew.
But there is a natural explanation of this also. The lack
of a great idea which would re-shape things anew has always meant a limitation
in fighting power. The conviction of the right to employ even the most brutal
weapons is always associated with an ardent faith in the necessity for a new
and revolutionary transformation of the world.
A movement which does not fight for such high aims and
ideals will never have recourse to extreme means.
The appearance of a new and great idea was the secret of
success in the French Revolution. The Russian Revolution owes its triumph to an
idea. And it was only the idea that enabled Fascism triumphantly to subject a
whole nation to a process of complete renovation.
Bourgeois parties are not capable of such an achievement.
And it was not the bourgeois parties alone that fixed their aim in a
restoration of the past. The defence associations also did so, in so far as
they concerned themselves with political aims at all. The spirit of the old war
legions and Kyffauser tendencies lived in them and therewith helped politically
to blunt the sharpest weapons which the German nation then possessed and allow
them to rust in the hands of republican serfs. The fact that these associations
were inspired by the best of intentions in so doing, and certainly acted in
good faith, does not alter in the slightest degree the foolishness of the
course they adopted.
In the consolidated Reichswehr Marxism gradually acquired
the support of force, which it needed for its authority. As a logical
consequence it proceeded to abolish those defence associations which it
considered dangerous, declaring that they were now no longer necessary. Some
rash leaders who defied the Marxist orders were summoned to court and sent to
prison. But they all got what they had deserved.
The founding of the National Socialist German Labour
Party incited a movement which was the first to fix its aim, not in a
mechanical restoration of the past - as the bourgeois parties did - but in the
substitution of an organic People's State for the present absurd statal
mechanism.
From the first day of its foundation the new movement took
its stand on the principle that its ideas had to be propagated by intellectual
means but that, wherever necessary, muscular force must be employed to support
this propaganda. In accordance with their conviction of the paramount
importance of the new doctrine, the leaders of the new movement naturally
believe that no sacrifice can be considered too great when it is a question of
carrying through the purpose of the movement.
I have emphasized that in certain circumstances a
movement which is meant to win over the hearts of the people must be ready to
defend itself with its own forces against terrorist attempts on the part of its
adversaries. It has invariably happened in the history of the world that formal
State authority has failed to break a reign of terror which was inspired by a
philosophy of life. It can only be conquered by a new and different philosophy
of life whose representatives are quite as audacious and determined. The
acknowledgment of this fact has always been very unpleasant for the bureaucrats
who are the protectors of the State, but the fact remains nevertheless. The
rulers of the State can guarantee tranquillity and order only in case the State
embodies a philosophy which is shared in by the people as a whole; so that
elements of disturbance can be treated as isolated criminals, instead of being
considered as the champions of an idea which is diametrically opposed to
official opinions. If such should be the case the State may employ the most
violent measures for centuries long against the terror that threatens it; but
in the end all these measures will prove futile, and the State will have to
succumb.
The German State is intensely overrun by Marxism. In a struggle that
went on for seventy years the State was not able to prevent the triumph of the
Marxist idea. Even though the sentences to penal servitude and imprisonment
amounted in all to thousands of years, and even though the most sanguinary
methods of repression were in innumerable instances threatened against the
champions of the Marxist philosophy, in the end the State was forced to
capitulate almost completely. The ordinary bourgeois political leaders will
deny all this, but their protests are futile.
Seeing that the State capitulated unconditionally to
Marxism on November 9th, 1918, it will not suddenly rise up tomorrow as the
conqueror of Marxism. On the contrary. Bourgeois simpletons sitting on office
stools in the various ministries babble about the necessity of not governing
against the wishes of the workers, and by the word 'workers' they mean the
Marxists. By identifying the German worker with Marxism not only are they
guilty of a vile falsification of the truth, but they thus try to hide their
own collapse before the Marxist idea and the Marxist organization.
In
view of the complete subordination of the present State to Marxism, the
National Socialist Movement feels all the more bound not only to prepare the
way for the triumph of its idea by appealing to the reason and understanding of
the public but also to take upon itself the responsibility of organizing its
own defence against the terror of the International, which is intoxicated with
its own victory.
I have already described how practical experience in our
young movement led us slowly to organize a system of defence for our meetings.
This gradually assumed the character of a military body specially trained for
the maintenance of order, and tended to develop into a service which would have
its properly organized cadres.
This new formation might resemble the defence
associations externally, but in reality there were no grounds of comparison
between the one and the other.
As I have already said, the German defence organizations
did not have any definite political ideas of their own. They really were only
associations for mutual protection, and they were trained and organized
accordingly, so that they were an illegal complement or auxiliary to the legal
forces of the State. Their character as free corps arose only from the way in
which they were constructed and the situation in which the State found itself
at that time. But they certainly could not claim to be free corps on the
grounds that they were associations formed freely and privately for the purpose
of fighting for their own freely formed political convictions. Such they were
not, despite the fact that some of their leaders and some associations as such
were definitely opposed to the Republic. For before we can speak of political
convictions in the higher sense we must be something more than merely convinced
that the existing regime is defective. Political convictions in the higher
sense mean that one has the picture of a new regime clearly before one's mind,
feels that the establishment of this regime is an absolute necessity and sets
himself to carry out that purpose as the highest task to which his life can be
devoted.
The troops for the preservation of order, which were then formed
under the National Socialist Movement, were fundamentally different from all
the other defence associations by reason of the fact that our formations were
not meant in any way to defend the state of things created by the Revolution,
but rather that they were meant exclusively to support our struggle for the
creation of a new Germany.
In the beginning this body was merely a guard to maintain
order at our meetings. Its first task was limited to making it possible for us
to hold our meetings, which otherwise would have been completely prevented by
our opponents. These men were at that time trained merely for purposes of
attack, but they were not taught to adore the big stick exclusively, as was
then pretended in stupid German patriotic circles. They used the cudgel because
they knew that it can be made impossible for high ideals to be put forward if
the man who endeavours to propagate them can be struck down with the cudgel. As
a matter of fact, it has happened in history not infrequently that some of the
greatest minds have perished under the blows of the most insignificant helots.
Our bodyguards did not look upon violence as an end in itself, but they
protected the expositors of ideal aims and purposes against hostile coercion by
violence. They also understood that there was no obligation to undertake the
defence of a State which did not guarantee the defence of the nation, but that,
on the contrary, they had to defend the nation against those who were
threatening to destroy nation and State.
After the fight which took place at the meeting in the
Munich Hofbräuhaus, where the small number of our guards who were present won
everlasting fame for themselves by the heroic manner in which they stormed the
adversaries; these guards were called The Storm Detachment. As the name itself
indicates, they represent only a detachment of the Movement. They are one
constituent element of it, just as is the Press, the propaganda, educational
institutes, and other sections of the Party.
We learned how necessary was the formation of such a
body, not only from our experience on the occasion of that memorable meeting
but also when we sought gradually to carry the Movement beyond Munich and
extend it to the other parts of Germany. Once we had begun to appear as a
danger to Marxism the Marxists lost no opportunity of trying to crush
beforehand all preparations for the holding of National Socialist meetings.
When they did not succeed in this they tried to break up the meeting itself. It
goes without saying that all the Marxist organizations, no matter of what grade
or view, blindly supported the policy and activities of their representations
in every case. But what is to be said of the bourgeois parties who, when they
were reduced to silence by these same Marxists and in many places did not dare
to send their speakers to appear before the public, yet showed themselves
pleased, in a stupid and incomprehensible manner, every time we received any
kind of set-back in our fight against Marxism. The bourgeois parties were happy
to think that those whom they themselves could not stand up against, but had to
knuckle down to, could not be broken by us. What must be said of those State
officials, chiefs of police, and even cabinet ministers, who showed a
scandalous lack of principle in presenting themselves externally to the public
as 'national' and yet shamelessly acted as the henchmen of the Marxists in the
disputes which we, National Socialists, had with the latter. What can be said
of persons who debased themselves so far, for the sake of a little abject
praise in the Jewish Press, that they persecuted those men to whose heroic
courage and intervention, regardless of risk, they were partly indebted for not
having been torn to pieces by the Red mob a few years previously and strung up
to the lamp-posts?
One day these lamentable phenomena fired the late but
unforgotten Prefect Pöhner – a man whose unbending straightforwardness forced
him to hate all twisters and to hate them as only a man with an honest heart
can hate – to say: "In all my life I wished to be first a German and then an
official, and I never wanted to mix up with these creatures who, as if they
were kept officials, prostituted themselves before anybody who could play lord
and master for the time being."
It was a specially sad thing that gradually tens of
thousands of honest and loyal servants of the State did not only come under the
power of such people but were also slowly contaminated by their unprincipled
morals. Moreover, these kind of men pursued honest officials with a furious
hatred, degrading them and driving them from their positions, and yet passed
themselves off as 'national' by the aid of their lying hypocrisy.
From officials of that kind we could expect no support,
and only in very rare instances was it given. Only by building up its own
defence could our movement become secure and attract that amount of public
attention and general respect which is given to those who can defend themselves
when attacked.
As an underlying principle in the internal development of
the Storm Detachment, we came to the decision that not only should it be
perfectly trained in bodily efficiency but that the men should be so instructed
as to make them indomitably convinced champions of the National Socialist ideas
and, finally, that they should be schooled to observe the strictest discipline.
This body was to have nothing to do with the defence organizations of the
bourgeois type and especially not with any secret organization.
My reasons at that time for guarding strictly against
letting the Storm Detachment of the German National Socialist Labour Party
appear as a defence association were as follows:
On purely practical grounds it is impossible to build up
a national defence organization by means of private associations, unless the
State makes an enormous contribution to it. Whoever thinks otherwise
overestimates his own powers. Now it is entirely out of the question to form
organizations of any military value for a definite purpose on the principle of
so-called 'voluntary discipline'. Here the chief support for enforcing orders,
namely, the power of inflicting punishment, is lacking. In the autumn, or
rather in the spring, of 1919 it was still possible to raise 'volunteer corps',
not only because most of the men who came forward at that time had been through
the school of the old Army, but also because the kind of duty imposed there
constrained the individual to absolute obedience at least for a definite period
of time.
That spirit is entirely lacking in the volunteer defence
organizations of today. The more the defence association grows, the weaker its
discipline becomes and so much the less can one demand from the individual
members. Thus the whole organization will more and more assume the character of
the old non-political associations of war comrades and veterans.
It is impossible to carry through a voluntary training in
military service for larger masses unless one is assured absolute power of
command. There will always be few men who will voluntarily and spontaneously
submit to that kind of obedience which is considered natural and necessary in
the Army.
Moreover, a proper system of military training cannot be
developed where there are such ridiculously scanty means as those at the
disposal of the defence associations. The principal task of such an institution
must be to impart the best and most reliable kind of instruction. Eight years
have passed since the end of the War, and during that time none of our German
youth, at an age when formerly they would have had to do military service, have
received any systematic training at all. The aim of a defence association
cannot be to enlist here and now all those who have already received a military
training; for in that case it could be reckoned with mathematical accuracy when
the last member would leave the association. Even the younger soldier from 1918
will no longer be fit for front-line service twenty years later, and we are
approaching that state of things with a rapidity that gives cause for anxiety.
Thus the defence associations must assume more and more the aspect of the old
ex-service men's societies. But that cannot be the meaning and purpose of an
institution which calls itself, not an association of ex-service men but a
defence association, indicating by this title that it considers its task to be,
not only to preserve the tradition of the old soldiers and hold them together
but also to propagate the idea of national defence and be able to carry this
idea into practical effect, which means the creation of a body of men who are
fit and trained for military defence.
But this implies that those elements will receive a
military training which up to now have received none. This is something that in
practice is impossible for the defence associations. Real soldiers cannot be
made by a training of one or two hours per week. In view of the enormously
increasing demands which modern warfare imposes on each individual soldier
today, a military service of two years is barely sufficient to transform a raw
recruit into a trained soldier. At the Front during the War we all saw the
fearful consequences which our young recruits had to suffer from their lack of
a thorough military training. Volunteer formations which had been drilled for
fifteen or twenty weeks under an iron discipline and shown unlimited
self-denial proved nevertheless to be no better than cannon fodder at the
Front. Only when distributed among the ranks of the old and experienced
soldiers could the young recruits, who had been trained for four or six months,
become useful members of a regiment. Guided by the 'old men', they adapted
themselves gradually to their task.
In the light of all this, how hopeless must the attempt
be to create a body of fighting troops by a so-called training of one or two
hours in the week, without any definite power of command and without any
considerable means. In that way perhaps one could refresh military training in
old soldiers, but raw recruits cannot thus be transformed into expert soldiers.
How such a proceeding produces utterly worthless results may also be
demonstrated by the fact that at the same time as these so-called volunteer
defence associations, with great effort and outcry and under difficulties and
lack of necessities, try to educate and train a few thousand men of goodwill
(the others need not be taken into account) for purposes of national defence,
the State teaches our young men democratic and pacifist ideas and thus deprives
millions and millions of their national instincts, poisons their logical sense
of patriotism and gradually turns them into a herd of sheep who will patiently
follow any arbitrary command. Thus they render ridiculous all those attempts
made by the defence associations to inculcate their ideas in the minds of the
German youth.
Almost more important is the following consideration,
which has always made me take up a stand against all attempts at a so-called
military training on the basis of the volunteer associations.
Assuming that, in spite of all the difficulties just
mentioned, a defence association were successful in training a certain number
of Germans every year to be efficient soldiers, not only as regards their
mental outlook but also as regards bodily efficiency and the expert handling of
arms, the result must necessarily be null and void in a State whose whole
tendency makes it not only look upon such a defensive formation as undesirable
but even positively hate it, because such an association would completely
contradict the intimate aims of the political leaders, who are the corrupters
of this State.
But anyhow, such a result would be worthless under
governments which have demonstrated by their own acts that they do not lay the
slightest importance on the military power of the nation and are not disposed
to permit an appeal to that power only in case that it were necessary for the
protection of their own malignant existence.
And that is the state of affairs today. It is not
ridiculous to think of training some ten thousand men in the use of arms, and
carry on that training surreptitiously, when a few years previously the State,
having shamefully sacrificed eight-and-a-half million highly trained soldiers,
not merely did not require their services any more, but, as a mark of gratitude
for their sacrifices, held them up to public contumely. Shall we train soldiers
for a regime which besmirched and spat upon our most glorious soldiers, tore
the medals and badges from their breasts, trampled on their flags and derided
their achievements? Has the present regime taken one step towards restoring the
honour of the old army and bringing those who destroyed and outraged it to
answer for their deeds? Not in the least. On the contrary, the people I have
just referred to may be seen enthroned in the highest positions under the State
today. And yet it was said at Leipzig: "Right goes with might." Since, however,
in our Republic today might is in the hands of the very men who arranged for
the Revolution, and since that Revolution represents a most despicable act of
high treason against the nation – yea, the vilest act in German history – there
can surely be no grounds for saying that might of this character should be
enhanced by the formation of a new young army. It is against all sound reason.
The importance which this State attached, after the Revolution of
1918, to the reinforcement of its position from the military point of view is
clearly and unmistakably demonstrated by its attitude towards the large
self-defence organizations which existed in that period. They were not
unwelcome as long as they were of use for the personal protection of the
miserable creatures cast up by the Revolution.
But the danger to these creatures seemed to disappear as
the debasement of our people gradually increased. As the existence of the
defence associations no longer implied a reinforcement of the national policy
they became superfluous. Hence every effort was made to disarm them and
suppress them wherever that was possible.
History records only a few examples of gratitude on the
part of princes. But there is not one patriot among the new bourgeoisie who can
count on the gratitude of revolutionary incendiaries and assassins, persons who
have enriched themselves from the public spoil and betrayed the nation. In
examining the problem as to the wisdom of forming these defence associations I
have never ceased to ask: 'For whom shall I train these young men? For what
purpose will they be employed when they will have to be called out?' The answer
to these questions lays down at the same time the best rule for us to follow.
If the present State should one day have to call upon trained troops
of this kind it would never be for the purpose of defending the interests of
the nation vis-à-vis those of the stranger but rather to protect the oppressors
of the nation inside the country against the danger of a general outbreak of
wrath on the part of a nation which has been deceived and betrayed and whose
interests have been bartered away.
For this reason it was decided that the Storm Detachment
of the German National Socialist Labour Party ought not to be in the nature of
a military organization. It had to be an instrument of protection and education
for the National Socialist Movement and its duties should be in quite a
different sphere from that of the military defence association.
And, of course, the Storm Detachment should not be in the
nature of a secret organization. Secret organizations are established only for
purposes that are against the law. Therewith the purpose of such an
organization is limited by its very nature. Considering the loquacious
propensities of the German people, it is not possible to build up any vast
organization, keeping it secret at the same time and cloaking its purpose.
Every attempt of that kind is destined to turn out absolutely futile. It is not
merely that our police officials today have at their disposal a staff of
eavesdroppers and other such rabble who are ready to play traitor, like Judas,
for thirty pieces of silver and will betray whatever secrets they can discover
and will invent what they would like to reveal. In order to forestall such
eventualities, it is never possible to bind one's own followers to the silence
that is necessary. Only small groups can become really secret societies, and
that only after long years of filtration. But the very smallness of such groups
would deprive them of all value for the National Socialist Movement. What we
needed then and need now is not one or two hundred dare-devil conspirators but
a hundred thousand devoted champions of our philosophy of life. The work must
not be done through secret conventicles but through formidable mass
demonstrations in public. Dagger and pistol and poison-vial cannot clear the
way for the progress of the movement. That can be done only by winning over the
man in the street. We must overthrow Marxism, so that for the future National
Socialism will be master of the street, just as it will one day become master
of the State.
There is another danger connected with secret societies.
It lies in the fact that their members often completely misunderstand the
greatness of the task in hand and are apt to believe that a favourable destiny
can be assured for the nation all at once by means of a single murder. Such a
belief may find historical justification by appealing to cases where a nation
had been suffering under the tyranny of some oppressor who at the same time was
a man of genius and whose extraordinary personality guaranteed the internal
solidity of his position and enabled him to maintain his fearful oppression. In
such cases a man may suddenly arise from the ranks of the people who is ready
to sacrifice himself and plunge the deadly steel into the heart of the hated
individual. In order to look upon such a deed as abhorrent one must have the
republican mentality of that petty canaille who are conscious of their own
crime. But the greatest champion of liberty that the German people have ever
had has glorified such a deed in William Tell.
During 1919 and 1920 there was danger that the members of
secret organizations, under the influence of great historical examples and
overcome by the immensity of the nation's misfortunes, might attempt to wreak
vengeance on the destroyers of their country, under the belief that this would
end the miseries of the people. All such attempts were sheer folly, for the
reason that the Marxist triumph was not due to the superior genius of one
remarkable person but rather to immeasurable incompetence and cowardly shirking
on the part of the bourgeoisie. The hardest criticism that can be uttered
against our bourgeoisie is simply to state the fact that it submitted to the
Revolution, even though the Revolution did not produce one single man of
eminent worth. One can always understand how it was possible to capitulate
before a Robespierre, a Danton, or a Marat; but it was utterly scandalous to go
down on all fours before the withered Scheidemann, the obese Herr Erzberger,
Frederick Ebert, and the innumerable other political pigmies of the Revolution.
There was not a single man of parts in whom one could see the revolutionary man
of genius. Therein lay the country's misfortune; for they were only
revolutionary bugs, Spartacists wholesale and retail. To suppress one of them
would be an act of no consequence. The only result would be that another pair
of bloodsuckers, equally fat and thirsty, would be ready to take his place.
During those years we had to take up a determined stand against an
idea which owed its origin and foundation to historical episodes that were
really great, but to which our own despicable epoch did not bear the slightest
similarity.
The same reply may be given when there is question of
putting somebody 'on the spot' who has acted as a traitor to his country. It
would be ridiculous and illogical to shoot a poor wretch who had betrayed the
position of a howitzer to the enemy while the highest positions of the
government are occupied by a rabble who bartered away a whole empire, who have
on their consciences the deaths of two million men who were sacrificed in vain,
fellows who were responsible for the millions maimed in the war and who make a
thriving business out of the republican regime without allowing their souls to
be disturbed in any way. It would be absurd to do away with small traitors in a
State whose government has absolved the great traitors from all punishment. For
it might easily happen that one day an honest idealist, who, out of love for
his country, had removed from circulation some miserable informer that had
given information about secret stores of arms might now be called to answer for
his act before the chief traitors of the country. And there is still an
important question: Shall some small traitorous creature be suppressed by
another small traitor, or by an idealist? In the former case the result would
be doubtful and the deed would almost surely be revealed later on. In the
second case a petty rascal is put out of the way and the life of an idealist
who may be irreplaceable is in jeopardy.
For myself, I believe that small thieves should not be
hanged while big thieves are allowed to go free. One day a national tribunal
will have to judge and sentence some tens of thousands of organizers who were
responsible for the criminal November betrayal and all the consequences that
followed on it. Such an example will teach the necessary lesson, once and for
ever, to those paltry traitors who revealed to the enemy the places where arms
were hidden.
On the grounds of these considerations I steadfastly
forbade all participation in secret societies, and I took care that the Storm
Detachment should not assume such a character. During those years I kept the
National Socialist Movement away from those experiments which were being
undertaken by young Germans who for the most part were inspired with a sublime
idealism but who became the victims of their own deeds, because they could not
ameliorate the lot of their fatherland to the slightest degree.
If then the Storm Detachment must not be either a
military defence organization or a secret society, the following conclusions
must result:
1. Its training must not be organized from the military
standpoint but from the standpoint of what is most practical for party
purposes. Seeing that its members must undergo a good physical training, the
place of chief importance must not be given to military drill but rather to the
practice of sports. I have always considered boxing and ju-jitsu more important
than some kind of bad, because mediocre, training in rifle-shooting. If the
German nation were presented with a body of young men who had been perfectly
trained in athletic sports, who were imbued with an ardent love for their
country and a readiness to take the initiative in a fight, then the national
State could make an army out of that body within less than two years if it were
necessary, provided the cadres already existed. In the actual state of affairs
only the Reichswehr could furnish the cadres and not a defence organization
that was neither one thing nor the other. Bodily efficiency would develop in
the individual a conviction of his superiority and would give him that
confidence which is always based only on the consciousness of one's own powers.
They must also develop that athletic agility which can be employed as a
defensive weapon in the service of the Movement.
2. In order to safeguard the Storm Detachment against any
tendency towards secrecy, not only must the uniform be such that it can
immediately be recognized by everybody, but the large number of its effectives
show the direction in which the Movement is going and which must be known to
the whole public. The members of the Storm Detachment must not hold secret
gatherings but must march in the open and thus, by their actions, put an end to
all legends about a secret organization. In order to keep them away from all
temptations towards finding an outlet for their activities in small
conspiracies, from the very beginning we had to inculcate in their minds the
great idea of the Movement and educate them so thoroughly to the task of
defending this idea that their horizon became enlarged and that the individual
no longer considered it his mission to remove from circulation some rascal or
other, whether big or small, but to devote himself entirely to the task of
bringing about the establishment of a new National Socialist People's State. In
this way the struggle against the present State was placed on a higher plane
than that of petty revenge and small conspiracies. It was elevated to the level
of a spiritual struggle on behalf of a philosophical war, for the destruction
of Marxism in all its shapes and forms.
3. The form of organization adopted for the Storm
Detachment, as well as its uniform and equipment, had to follow different
models from those of the old Army. They had to be specially suited to the
requirements of the task that was assigned to the Storm Detachment.
These were the ideas I followed in 1920 and 1921. I endeavoured to
instil them gradually into the members of the young organization. And the
result was that by the midsummer of 1922 we had a goodly number of formations
which consisted of a hundred men each. By the late autumn of that year these
formations received their distinctive uniforms. There were three events which
turned out to be of supreme importance for the subsequent development of the
Storm Detachment.
1. The great mass demonstration against the Law for the
Protection of the Republic. This demonstration was held in the late summer of
1922 on the Königs-platz in Munich, by all the patriotic societies. The
National Socialist Movement also participated in it. The march-past of our
party, in serried ranks, was led by six Munich companies of a hundred men each,
followed by the political sections of the Party. Two bands marched with us and
about fifteen flags were carried. When the National Socialists arrived at the
great square it was already half full, but no flag was flying. Our entry
aroused unbounded enthusiasm. I myself had the honour of being one of the
speakers who addressed that mass of about sixty thousand people.
The demonstration was an overwhelming success; especially
because it was proved for the first time that nationalist Munich could march on
the streets, in spite of all threats from the Reds. Members of the organization
for the defence of the Red Republic endeavoured to hinder the marching columns
by their terrorist activities, but they were scattered by the companies of the
Storm Detachment within a few minutes and sent off with bleeding skulls. The
National Socialist Movement had then shown for the first time that in future it
was determined to exercise the right to march on the streets and thus take this
monopoly away from the international traitors and enemies of the country.
The result of that day was an incontestable proof that our ideas for
the creation of the Storm Detachment were right, both from the psychological
viewpoint and as to the manner in which this body was organized.
On the basis of this success the enlistment progressed so
rapidly that within a few weeks the number of Munich companies of a hundred men
each became doubled.
2. The expedition to Coburg in October 1922.
Certain People's Societies had decided to hold a German
Day at Coburg. I was invited to take part, with the intimation that they wished
me to bring a following along. This invitation, which I received at eleven
o'clock in the morning, arrived just in time. Within an hour the arrangements
for our participation in the German Congress were ready. I picked eight hundred
men of the Storm Detachment to accompany me. These were divided into about
fourteen companies and had to be brought by special train from Munich to
Coburg, which had just voted by plebiscite to be annexed to Bavaria.
Corresponding orders were given to other groups of the National Socialist Storm
Detachment which had meanwhile been formed in various other localities.
This was the first time that such a special train ran in Germany. At
all the places where the new members of the Storm Detachment joined us our
train caused a sensation. Many of the people had never seen our flag. And it
made a very great impression.
As we arrived at the station in Coburg we were received
by a deputation of the organizing committee of the German Day. They announced
that it had been 'arranged' at the orders of local trades unions – that is to
say, the Independent and Communist Parties – that we should not enter the town
with our flags unfurled and our band playing (we had a band consisting of
forty-two musicians with us) and that we should not march with closed ranks.
I immediately rejected these unmilitary conditions and did not fail
to declare before the gentlemen who had arranged this 'day' how astonished I
was at the idea of their negotiating with such people and coming to an
agreement with them. Then I announced that the Storm Troops would immediately
march into the town in company formation, with our flags flying and the band
playing.
And that is what happened.
As we came out into the station yard we were met by a
growling and yelling mob of several thousand, that shouted at us: 'Assassins',
'Bandits', 'Robbers', 'Criminals'. These were the choice names which these
exemplary founders of the German Republic showered on us. The young Storm
Detachment gave a model example of order. The companies fell into formation on
the square in front of the station and at first took no notice of the insults
hurled at them by the mob. The police were anxious. They did not pilot us to
the quarters assigned to us on the outskirts of Coburg, a city quite unknown to
us, but to the Hofbräuhaus Keller in the centre of the town. Right and left of
our march the tumult raised by the accompanying mob steadily increased.
Scarcely had the last company entered the courtyard of the Hofbräuhaus when the
huge mass made a rush to get in after them, shouting madly. In order to prevent
this, the police closed the gates. Seeing the position was untenable I called
the Storm Detachment to attention and then asked the police to open the gates
immediately. After a good deal of hesitation, they consented.
We now marched back along the same route as we had come,
in the direction of our quarters, and there we had to make a stand against the
crowd. As their cries and yells all along the route had failed to disturb the
equanimity of our companies, the champions of true Socialism, Equality, and
Fraternity now took to throwing stones. That brought our patience to an end.
For ten minutes long, blows fell right and left, like a devastating shower of
hail. Fifteen minutes later there were no more Reds to be seen in the street.
The collisions which took place when the night came on were more
serious. Patrols of the Storm Detachment had discovered National Socialists who
had been attacked singly and were in an atrocious state. Thereupon we made
short work of the opponents. By the following morning the Red terror, under
which Coburg had been suffering for years, was definitely smashed.
Adopting the typically Marxist and Jewish method of spreading
falsehoods, leaflets were distributed by hand on the streets, bearing the
caption: "Comrades and Comradesses of the International Proletariat." These
leaflets were meant to arouse the wrath of the populace. Twisting the facts
completely around, they declared that our 'bands of assasins' had commenced 'a
war of extermination against the peaceful workers of Coburg'. At half-past one
that day there was to be a 'great popular demonstration', at which it was hoped
that the workers of the whole district would turn up. I was determined finally
to crush this Red terror and so I summoned the Storm Detachment to meet at
midday. Their number had now increased to 1,500. I decided to march with these
men to the Coburg Festival and to cross the big square where the Red
demonstration was to take place. I wanted to see if they would attempt to
assault us again. When we entered the square we found that instead of the ten
thousand that had been advertised, there were only a few hundred people
present. As we approached they remained silent for the most part, and some ran
away. Only at certain points along the route some bodies of Reds, who had
arrived from outside the city and had not yet come to know us, attempted to
start a row. But a few fisticuffs put them to flight. And now one could see how
the population, which had for such a long time been so wretchedly intimidated,
slowly woke up and recovered their courage. They welcomed us openly, and in the
evening, on our return march, spontaneous shouts of jubilation broke out at
several points along the route.
At the station the railway employees informed us all of a
sudden that our train would not move. Thereupon I had some of the ringleaders
told that if this were the case I would have all the Red Party heroes arrested
that fell into our hands, that we would drive the train ourselves, but that we
would take away with us, in the locomotive and tender and in some of the
carriages, a few dozen members of this brotherhood of international solidarity.
I did not omit to let those gentry know that if we had to conduct the train the
journey would undoubtedly be a very risky adventure and that we might all break
our necks. It would be a consolation, however, to know that we should not go to
Eternity alone, but in equality and fraternity with the Red gentry.
Thereupon the train departed punctually and we arrived next morning
in Munich safe and sound.
Thus at Coburg, for the first time since 1914, the
equality of all citizens before the law was re-established. For even if some
coxcomb of a higher official should assert today that the State protects the
lives of its citizens, at least in those days it was not so. For at that time
the citizens had to defend themselves against the representatives of the
present State.
At first it was not possible fully to estimate the
importance of the consequences which resulted from that day. The victorious
Storm Troops had their confidence in themselves considerably reinforced and
also their faith in the sagacity of their leaders. Our contemporaries began to
pay us special attention and for the first time many recognized the National
Socialist Movement as an organization that in all probability was destined to
bring the Marxist folly to a deserving end.
Only the democrats lamented the fact that we had not the
complaisance to allow our skulls to be cracked and that we had dared, in a
democratic Republic, to hit back with fists and sticks at a brutal assault,
rather than with pacifist chants.
Generally speaking, the bourgeois Press was partly
distressed and partly vulgar, as always. Only a few decent newspapers expressed
their satisfaction that at least in one locality the Marxist street bullies had
been effectively dealt with.
And in Coburg itself at least a part of the Marxist
workers who must be looked upon as misled, learned from the blows of National
Socialist fists that these workers were also fighting for ideals, because
experience teaches that the human being fights only for something in which he
believes and which he loves.
The Storm Detachment itself benefited most from the Coburg
events. It grew so quickly in numbers that at the Party Congress in January
1923 six thousand men participated in the ceremony of consecrating the flags
and the first companies were fully clad in their new uniform.
Our experience in Coburg proved how essential it is to
introduce one distinctive uniform for the Storm Detachment, not only for the
purpose of strengthening the esprit de corps but also to avoid confusion
and the danger of not recognizing the opponent in a squabble. Up to that time
they had merely worn the armlet, but now the tunic and the well-known cap were
added.
But the Coburg experience had also another important result. We now
determined to break the Red Terror in all those localities where for many years
it had prevented men of other views from holding their meetings. We were
determined to restore the right of free assembly. From that time onwards we
brought our battalions together in such places and little by little the red
citadels of Bavaria, one after another, fell before the National Socialist
propaganda. The Storm Troops became more and more adept at their job. They
increasingly lost all semblance of an aimless and lifeless defence movement and
came out into the light as an active militant organization, fighting for the
establishment of a new German State.
This logical development continued until March 1923. Then
an event occurred which made me divert the Movement from the course hitherto
followed and introduce some changes in its outer formation.
In the first months of 1923 the French occupied the Ruhr
district. The consequence of this was of great importance in the development of
the Storm Detachment.
It is not yet possible, nor would it be in the interest
of the nation, to write or speak openly and freely on the subject. I shall
speak of it only as far as the matter has been dealt with in public discussions
and thus brought to the knowledge of everybody.
The occupation of the Ruhr district, which did not come
as a surprise to us, gave grounds for hoping that Germany would at last abandon
its cowardly policy of submission and therewith give the defensive associations
a definite task to fulfil. The Storm Detachment also, which now numbered
several thousand of robust and vigorous young men, should not be excluded from
this national service. During the spring and summer of 1923 it was transformed
into a fighting military organization. It is to this reorganization that we
must in great part attribute the later developments that took place during
1923, in so far as it affected our Movement.
Elsewhere I shall deal in broad outline with the
development of events in 1923. Here I wish only to state that the
transformation of the Storm Detachment at that time must have been detrimental
to the interests of the Movement if the conditions that had motivated the
change were not to be carried into effect, namely, the adoption of a policy of
active resistance against France.
The events which took place at the close of 1923,
terrible as they may appear at first sight, were almost a necessity if looked
at from a higher standpoint; because, in view of the attitude taken by the
Government of the German Reich, conversion of the Storm Troops into a military
force would be meaningless and thus a transformation which would also be
harmful to the Movement was ended at one stroke. At the same time it was made
possible for us to reconstruct at the point where we had been diverted from the
proper course.
In the year 1925 the German National Socialist Labour
Party was re-founded and had to organize and train its Storm Detachment once
again according to the principles I have laid down. It must return to the
original idea and once more it must consider its most essential task to
function as the instrument of defence and reinforcement in the spiritual
struggle to establish the ideals of the Movement.
The Storm Detachment must not be allowed to sink to the
level of something in the nature of a defence organization or a secret society.
Steps must be taken rather to make it a vanguard of 100,000 men in the struggle
for the National Socialist ideal which is based on the profound principle of a
People's State.
Chapter X: Federalism as a
Mask
In the winter of 1919, and still more in the spring and summer of
1920, the young Party felt bound to take up a definite stand on a question
which already had become quite serious during the War. In the first volume of
this book I have briefly recorded certain facts which I had personally
witnessed and which foreboded the break-up of Germany. In describing these
facts I made reference to the special nature of the propaganda which was
directed by the English as well as the French towards reopening the breach that
had existed between North and South in Germany. In the spring of 1915 there
appeared the first of a series of leaflets which was systematically followed up
and the aim of which was to arouse feeling against Prussia as being solely
responsible for the war. Up to 1916 this system had been developed and
perfected in a cunning and shameless manner. Appealing to the basest of human
instincts, this propaganda endeavoured to arouse the wrath of the South Germans
against the North Germans and after a short time it bore fruit. Persons who
were then in high positions under the Government and in the Army, especially
those attached to headquarters in the Bavarian Army, merited the just reproof
of having blindly neglected their duty and failed to take the necessary steps
to counter such propaganda. But nothing was done. On the contrary, in some
quarters it did not appear to be quite unwelcome and probably they were
short-sighted enough to think that such propaganda might help along the
development of unification in Germany but even that it might automatically
bring about consolidation of the federative forces. Scarcely ever in history
was such a wicked neglect more wickedly avenged. The weakening of Prussia,
which they believed would result from this propaganda, affected the whole of
Germany. It resulted in hastening the collapse which not only wrecked Germany
as a whole but even more particularly the federal states.
In that town where the artificially created hatred against
Prussia raged most violently the revolt against the reigning House was the
beginning of the Revolution.
It would be a mistake to think that the enemy propaganda
was exclusively responsible for creating an anti-Prussian feeling and that
there were no reasons which might excuse the people for having listened to this
propaganda. The incredible fashion in which the national economic interests
were organized during the War, the absolutely crazy system of centralization
which made the whole Reich its ward and exploited the Reich, furnished the
principal grounds for the growth of that anti-Prussian feeling. The average
citizen looked upon the companies for the placing of war contracts, all of
which had their headquarters in Berlin, as identical with Berlin and Berlin
itself as identical with Prussia. The average citizen did not know that the
organization of these robber companies, which were called War Companies, was
not in the hands of Berlin or Prussia and not even in German hands at all.
People recognized only the gross irregularities and the continual encroachments
of that hated institution in the Metropolis of the Reich and directed their
anger towards Berlin and Prussia, all the more because in certain quarters (the
Bavarian Government) nothing was done to correct this attitude, but it was even
welcomed with silent rubbing of hands.
The Jew was far too shrewd not to understand that the
infamous campaign which he had organized, under the cloak of War Companies, for
plundering the German nation would and must eventually arouse opposition. As
long as that opposition did not spring directly at his own throat he had no
reason to be afraid. Hence he decided that the best way of forestalling an
outbreak on the part of the enraged and desperate masses would be to inflame
their wrath and at the same time give it another outlet.
Let Bavaria quarrel as much as it liked with Prussia and
Prussia with Bavaria. The more, the merrier. This bitter strife between the two
states assured peace to the Jew. Thus public attention was completely diverted
from the international maggot in the body of the nation; indeed, he seemed to
have been forgotten. Then when there came a danger that level-headed people, of
whom there are many to be found also in Bavaria, would advise a little more
reserve and a more judicious evaluation of things, thus calming the rage
against Prussia, all the Jew had to do in Berlin was to stage a new provocation
and await results. Every time that was done all those who had profiteered out
of the conflict between North and South filled their lungs and again fanned the
flame of indignation until it became a blaze.
It was a shrewd and expert manoeuvre on the part of the
Jew, to set the different branches of the German people quarrelling with one
another, so that their attention would be turned away from himself and he could
plunder them all the more completely.
Then came the Revolution.
Until the year 1918, or rather until the November of that
year, the average German citizen, particularly the less educated lower
middle-class and the workers, did not rightly understand what was happening and
did not realize what must be the inevitable consequences, especially for
Bavaria, of this internecine strife between the branches of the German people;
but at least those sections which called themselves 'National' ought to have
clearly perceived these consequences on the day that the Revolution broke out.
For the moment the coup d'état had succeeded, the leader and organizer of the
Revolution in Bavaria put himself forward as the defender of 'Bavarian'
interests. The international Jew, Kurt Eisner, began to play off Bavaria
against Prussia. This Oriental was just about the last person in the world that
could be pointed to as the logical defender of Bavarian interests. In his trade
as newspaper reporter he had wandered from place to place all over Germany and
to him it was a matter of sheer indifference whether Bavaria or any other
particular part of God's whole world continued to exist.
In deliberately giving the revolutionary rising in
Bavaria the character of an offensive against Prussia, Kurt Eisner was not
acting in the slightest degree from the standpoint of Bavarian interests, but
merely as the commissioned representative of Jewry. He exploited existing
instincts and antipathies in Bavaria as a means which would help to make the
dismemberment of Germany all the more easy. When once dismembered, the Reich
would fall an easy prey to Bolshevism.
The tactics employed by him were continued for a time
after his death. The Marxists, who had always derided and exploited the
individual German states and their princes, now suddenly appealed, as an
'Independent Party' to those sentiments and instincts which had their strongest
roots in the families of the reigning princes and the individual states.
The fight waged by the Bavarian Soviet Republic against the military
contingents that were sent to free Bavaria from its grasp was represented by
the Marxist propagandists as first of all the 'Struggle of the Bavarian Worker'
against 'Prussian Militarism.' This explains why it was that the suppression of
the Soviet Republic in Munich did not have the same effect there as in the
other German districts. Instead of recalling the masses to a sense of reason,
it led to increased bitterness and anger against Prussia.
The art of the Bolshevik agitators, in representing the
suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic as a victory of 'Prussian
Militarism' over the 'Anti-militarists' and 'Anti-Prussian' people of Bavaria,
bore rich fruit. Whereas on the occasion of the elections to the Bavarian
Legislative Diet, Kurt Eisner did not have ten thousand followers in Munich and
the Communist party less than three thousand, after the fall of the Bavarian
Republic the votes given to the two parties together amounted to nearly one
hundred thousand.
It was then that I personally began to combat that crazy
incitement of some branches of the German people against other branches.
I believe that never in my life did I undertake a more unpopular
task than I did when I took my stand against the anti-Prussian incitement.
During the Soviet regime in Munich great public meetings were held at which
hatred against the rest of Germany, but particularly against Prussia, was
roused up to such a pitch that a North German would have risked his life in
attending one of those meetings. These meetings often ended in wild shouts:
"Away from Prussia", "Down with the Prussians", "War against Prussia", and so
on. This feeling was openly expressed in the Reichstag by a particularly
brilliant defender of Bavarian sovereign rights when he said: "Rather die as a
Bavarian than rot as a Prussian".
One should have attended some of the meetings held at
that time in order to understand what it meant for one when, for the first time
and surrounded by only a handful of friends, I raised my voice against this
folly at a meeting held in the Munich Löwenbräu Keller. Some of my War comrades
stood by me then. And it is easy to imagine how we felt when that raging crowd,
which had lost all control of its reason, roared at us and threatened to kill
us. During the time that we were fighting for the country the same crowd were
for the most part safely ensconced in the rear positions or were peacefully
circulating at home as deserters and shirkers. It is true that that scene
turned out to be of advantage to me. My small band of comrades felt for the
first time absolutely united with me and readily swore to stick by me through
life and death.
These conflicts, which were constantly repeated in 1919,
seemed to become more violent soon after the beginning of 1920. There were
meetings – I remember especially one in the Wagner Hall in the Sonnenstrasse in
Munich – during the course of which my group, now grown much larger, had to
defend themselves against assaults of the most violent character. It happened
more than once that dozens of my followers were mishandled, thrown to the floor
and stamped upon by the attackers and were finally thrown out of the hall more
dead than alive.
The struggle which I had undertaken, first by myself
alone and afterwards with the support of my war comrades, was now continued by
the young movement, I might say almost as a sacred mission.
I am proud of being able to say today that we – depending
almost exclusively on our followers in Bavaria – were responsible for putting
an end, slowly but surely, to the coalition of folly and treason. I say folly
and treason because, although convinced that the masses who joined in it meant
well but were stupid, I cannot attribute such simplicity as an extenuating
circumstance in the case of the organizers and their abetters. I then looked
upon them,and still look upon them today, as traitors in the payment of France.
In one case, that of Dorten, history has already pronounced its judgment.
The situation became specially dangerous at that time by reason of
the fact that they were very astute in their ability to cloak their real
tendencies, by insisting primarily on their federative intentions and claiming
that those were the sole motives of the agitation. Of course it is quite
obvious that the agitation against Prussia had nothing to do with federalism.
Surely 'Federal Activities' is not the phrase with which to describe an effort
to dissolve and dismember another federal state. For an honest federalist, for
whom the formula used by Bismarck to define his idea of the Reich is not a
counterfeit phrase, could not in the same breath express the desire to cut off
portions of the Prussian State, which was created or at least completed by
Bismarck. Nor could he publicly support such a separatist attempt.
What an outcry would be raised in Munich if some prussian
conservative party declared itself in favour of detaching Franconia from
Bavaria or took public action in demanding and promoting such a separatist
policy. Nevertheless, one can only have sympathy for all those real and honest
federalists who did not see through this infamous swindle, for they were its
principal victims. By distorting the federalist idea in such a way its own
champions prepared its grave. One cannot make propaganda for a federalist
configuration of the Reich by debasing and abusing and besmirching the
essential element of such a political structure, namely Prussia, and thus
making such a Confederation impossible, if it ever had been possible. It is all
the more incredible by reason of the fact that the fight carried on by those
so-called federalists was directed against that section of the Prussian people
which was the last that could be looked upon as connected with the November
democracy. For the abuse and attacks of these so-called federalists were not
levelled against the fathers of the Weimar Constitution – the majority of whom
were South Germans or Jews – but against those who represented the old
conservative Prussia, which was the antipodes of the Weimar Constitution. The
fact that the directors of this campaign were careful not to touch the Jews is
not to be wondered at and perhaps gives the key to the whole riddle.
Before the Revolution the Jew was successful in distracting
attention from himself and his War Companies by inciting the masses, and
especially the Bavarians, against Prussia. Similarly he felt obliged, after the
Revolution, to find some way of camouflaging his new plunder campaign which was
nine or ten times greater. And again he succeeded, in this case by provoking
the so-called 'national' elements against one another: the conservative
Bavarians against the Prussians, who were just as conservative. He acted again
with extreme cunning, inasmuch as he who held the reins of Prussia's destiny in
his hands provoked such crude and tactless aggressions that again and again
they set the blood boiling in those who were being continually duped. Never
against the Jew, however, but always the German against his own brother. The
Bavarian did not see the Berlin of four million industrious and efficient
working people, but only the lazy and decadent Berlin which is to be found in
the worst quarters of the West End. And his antipathy was not directed against
this West End of Berlin but against the 'Prussian' city.
In many cases it tempted one to despair.
The ability which the Jew has displayed in turning public
attention away from himself and giving it another direction may be studied also
in what is happening today.
In 1918 there was nothing like an organized anti-Semitic
feeling. I still remember the difficulties we encountered the moment we
mentioned the Jew. We were either confronted with dumb-struck faces or else a
lively and hefty antagonism. The efforts we made at the time to point out the
real enemy to the public seemed to be doomed to failure. But then things began
to change for the better, though only very slowly. The 'League for Defence and
Offence' was defectively organized but at least it had the great merit of
opening up the Jewish question once again. In the winter of 1918–1919 a kind of
anti-semitism began slowly to take root. Later on the National Socialist
Movement presented the Jewish problem in a new light. Taking the question
beyond the restricted circles of the upper classes and small bourgeoisie we
succeeded in transforming it into the driving motive of a great popular
movement. But the moment we were successful in placing this problem before the
German people in the light of an idea that would unite them in one struggle the
Jew reacted. He resorted to his old tactics. With amazing alacrity he hurled
the torch of discord into the patriotic movement and opened a rift there. In
bringing forward the ultramontane question and in the mutual quarrels that it
gave rise to between Catholicism and Protestantism lay the sole possibility, as
conditions then were, of occupying public attention with other problems and
thus ward off the attack which had been concentrated against Jewry. The men who
dragged our people into this controversy can never make amends for the crime
they then committed against the nation. Anyhow, the Jew has attained the ends
he desired. Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another to their
hearts' content, while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is
laughing up his sleeve.
Once it was possible to occupy the attention of the
public for several years with the struggle between federalism and unification,
wearing out their energies in this mutual friction while the Jew trafficked in
the freedom of the nation and sold our country to the masters of international
high finance. So in our day he has succeeded again, this time by raising
ructions between the two German religious denominations while the foundations
on which both rest are being eaten away and destroyed through the poison
injected by the international and cosmopolitan Jew.
Look at the ravages from which our people are suffering
daily as a result of being contaminated with Jewish blood. Bear in mind the
fact that this poisonous contamination can be eliminated from the national body
only after centuries, or perhaps never. Think further of how the process of
racial decomposition is debasing and in some cases even destroying the
fundamental Aryan qualities of our German people, so that our cultural
creativeness as a nation is gradually becoming impotent and we are running the
danger, at least in our great cities, of falling to the level where Southern
Italy is today. This pestilential adulteration of the blood, of which hundreds
of thousands of our people take no account, is being systematically practised
by the Jew today. Systematically these negroid parasites in our national body
corrupt our innocent fair-haired girls and thus destroy something which can no
longer be replaced in this world.
The two Christian denominations look on with indifference
at the profanation and destruction of a noble and unique creature who was given
to the world as a gift of God's grace. For the future of the world, however, it
does not matter which of the two triumphs over the other, the Catholic or the
Protestant. But it does matter whether Aryan humanity survives or perishes. And
yet the two Christian denominations are not contending against the destroyer of
Aryan humanity but are trying to destroy one another. Everybody who has the
right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound, each within his own
denomination, to see to it that he is not constantly talking about the Will of
God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he fulfils the Will of God and
does not allow God's handiwork to be debased. For it was by the Will of God
that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and
their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and
God's Will. Therefore everyone should endeavour, each in his own denomination
of course, and should consider it as his first and most solemn duty to hinder
any and everyone whose conduct tends, either by word or deed, to go outside his
own religious body and pick a quarrel with those of another denomination. For,
in view of the religious schism that exists in Germany, to attack the essential
characteristics of one denomination must necessarily lead to a war of
extermination between the two Christian denominations. Here there can be no
comparison between our position and that of France, or Spain or Italy. In those
three countries one may, for instance, make propaganda for the side that is
fighting against ultramontanism without thereby incurring the danger of a
national rift among the French, or Spanish or Italian people. In Germany,
however, that cannot be so, for here the Protestants would also take part in
such propaganda. And thus the defence which elsewhere only Catholics organize
against clerical aggression in political matters would assume with us the
character of a Protestant attack against Catholicism. What may be tolerated by
the faithful in one denomination even when it seems unjust to them, will at
once be indignantly rejected and opposed on a priori grounds if it should come
from the militant leaders of another denomination. This is so true that even
men who would be ready and willing to fight for the removal of manifest
grievances within their own religious denomination will drop their own fight
and turn their activities against the outsider the moment the abolition of such
grievances is counselled or demanded by one who is not of the same faith. They
consider it unjustified and inadmissible and incorrect for outsiders to meddle
in matters which do not affect them at all. Such attempts are not excused even
when they are inspired by a feeling for the supreme interests of the national
community; because even in our day religious feelings still have deeper roots
than all feeling for political and national expediency. That cannot be changed
by setting one denomination against another in bitter conflict. It can be
changed only if, through a spirit of mutual tolerance, the nation can be
assured of a future the greatness of which will gradually operate as a
conciliating factor in the sphere of religion also. I have no hesitation in
saying that in those men who seek today to embroil the patriotic movement in
religious quarrels I see worse enemies of my country than the international
communists are. For the National Socialist Movement has set itself to the task
of converting those communists. But anyone who goes outside the ranks of his
own Movement and tends to turn it away from the fulfilment of its mission is
acting in a manner that deserves the severest condemnation. He is acting as a
champion of Jewish interests, whether consciously or unconsciously does not
matter. For it is in the interests of the Jews today that the energies of the
patriotic movement should be squandered in a religious conflict, because it is
beginning to be dangerous for the Jews. I have purposely used the phrase about
squandering the energies of the Movement, because nobody but some person who is
entirely ignorant of history could imagine that this movement can solve a
question which the greatest statesmen have tried for centuries to solve, and
tried in vain.
Anyhow the facts speak for themselves. The men who
suddenly discovered, in 1924, that the highest mission of the patriotic
movement was to fight ultramontanism, have not succeeded in smashing
ultramontanism, but they succeeded in splitting the patriotic movement. I have
to guard against the possibility of some immature brain arising in the
patriotic movement which thinks that it can do what even a Bismarck failed to
do. It will be always one of the first duties of those who are directing the
National Socialist Movement to oppose unconditionally any attempt to place the
National Socialist Movement at the service of such a conflict. And anybody who
conducts a propaganda with that end in view must be expelled forthwith from its
ranks.
As a matter of fact we succeeded until the autumn of 1923 in keeping
our movement away from such controversies. The most devoted Protestant could
stand side by side with the most devoted Catholic in our ranks without having
his conscience disturbed in the slightest as far as concerned his religious
convictions. The bitter struggle which both waged in common against the wrecker
of Aryan humanity taught them natural respect and esteem. And it was just in
those years that our movement had to engage in a bitter strife with the Centre
Party not for religious ends but for national, racial, political and economic
ends. The success we then achieved showed that we were right, but it does not
speak today in favour of those who thought they knew better.
In recent years things have gone so far that patriotic
circles, in god-forsaken blindness of their religious strife, could not
recognize the folly of their conduct even from the fact that atheist Marxist
newspapers advocated the cause of one religious denomination or the other,
according as it suited Marxist interests, so as to create confusion through
slogans and declarations which were often immeasurably stupid, now molesting
the one party and again the other, and thus poking the fire to keep the blaze
at its highest.
But in the case of a people like the Germans, whose
history has so often shown them capable of fighting for phantoms to the point
of complete exhaustion, every war-cry is a mortal danger. By these slogans our
people have often been drawn away from the real problems of their existence.
While we were exhausting our energies in religious wars the others were
acquiring their share of the world. And while the patriotic movement is
debating with itself whether the ultramontane danger be greater than the
Jewish, or vice versa, the Jew is destroying the racial basis of our existence
and thereby annihilating our people. As far as regards that kind of 'patriotic'
warrior, on behalf of the National Socialist Movement and therefore of the
German people I pray with all my heart: "Lord, preserve us from such friends,
and then we can easily deal with our enemies."
The controversy over federation and unification, so
cunningly propagandized by the Jews in 1919-1920 and onwards, forced National
Socialism, which repudiated the quarrel, to take up a definite stand in
relation to the essential problem concerned in it. Ought Germany to be a
confederacy or a military State? What is the practical significance of these
terms? To me it seems that the second question is more important than the
first, because it is fundamental to the understanding of the whole problem and
also because the answer to it may help to clear up confusion and therewith have
a conciliating effect.
What is a Confederacy?
By a Confederacy we mean a union of sovereign states which
of their own free will and in virtue of their sovereignty come together and
create a collective unit, ceding to that unit as much of their own sovereign
rights as will render the existence of the union possible and will guarantee
it.
But the theoretical formula is not wholly put into practice by any
confederacy that exists today. And least of all by the American Union, where it
is impossible to speak of original sovereignty in regard to the majority of the
states. Many of them were not included in the federal complex until long after
it had been established. The states that make up the American Union are mostly
in the nature of territories, more or less, formed for technical administrative
purposes, their boundaries having in many cases been fixed in the mapping
office. Originally these states did not and could not possess sovereign rights
of their own. Because it was the Union that created most of the so-called
states. Therefore the sovereign rights, often very comprehensive, which were
left, or rather granted, to the various territories correspond not only to the
whole character of the Confederation but also to its vast space, which is
equivalent to the size of a Continent. Consequently, in speaking of the United
States of America one must not consider them as sovereign states but as
enjoying rights or, better perhaps, autarchic powers, granted to them and
guaranteed by the Constitution.
Nor does our definition adequately express the condition
of affairs in Germany. It is true that in Germany the individual states existed
as states before the Reich and that the Reich was formed from them. The Reich,
however, was not formed by the voluntary and equal co-operation of the
individual states, but rather because the state of Prussia gradually acquired a
position of hegemony over the others. The difference in the territorial area
alone between the German states prevents any comparison with the American
Union. The great difference in territorial area between the very small German
states that then existed and the larger, or even still more the largest,
demonstrates the inequality of their achievements and shows that they could not
take an equal part in founding and shaping the federal Empire. In the case of
most of these individual states it cannot be maintained that they ever enjoyed
real sovereignty; and the term 'State Sovereignty' was really nothing more than
an administrative formula which had no inner meaning. As a matter of fact, not
only developments in the past but also in our own time wiped out several of
these so-called 'Sovereign States' and thus proved in the most definite way how
frail these 'sovereign' state formations were.
I cannot deal here with the historical question of how
these individual states came to be established, but I must call attention to
the fact that hardly in any case did their frontiers coincide with ethical
frontiers of the inhabitants. They were purely political phenomena which for
the most part emerged during the sad epoch when the German Empire was in a
state of exhaustion and was dismembered. They represented both cause and effect
in the process of exhaustion and partition of our fatherland.
The Constitution of the old Reich took all this into
account, at least up to a certain degree, in so far as the individual states
were not accorded equal representation in the Reichstag, but a representation
proportionate to their respective areas, their actual importance and the role
which they played in the formation of the Reich.
The sovereign rights which the individual states
renounced in order to form the Reich were voluntarily ceded only to a very
small degree. For the most part they had no practical existence or they were
simply taken by Prussia under the pressure of her preponderant power. The
principle followed by Bismarck was not to give the Reich what he could take
from the individual states but to demand from the individual states only what
was absolutely necessary for the Reich. A moderate and wise policy. On the one
side Bismarck showed the greatest regard for customs and traditions; on the
other side his policy secured for the new Reich from its foundation onwards a
great measure of love and willing co-operation. But it would be a fundamental
error to attribute Bismarck's decision to any conviction on his part that the
Reich was thus acquiring all the rights of sovereignty which would suflice for
all time. That was far from Bismarck's idea. On the contrary, he wished to
leave over for the future what it would be difficult to carry through at the
moment and might not have been readily agreed to by the individual states. He
trusted to the levelling effect of time and to the pressure exercised by the
process of evolution, the steady action of which appeared more effective than
an attempt to break the resistance which the individual states offered at the
moment. By this policy he showed his great ability in the art of statesmanship.
And, as a matter of fact, the sovereignty of the Reich has continually
increased at the cost of the sovereignty of the individual states. The passing
of time has achieved what Bismarck hoped it would.
The German collapse and the abolition of the monarchical
form of government necessarily hastened this development. The German federal
states, which had not been grounded on ethnical foundations but arose rather
out of political conditions, were bound to lose their importance the moment the
monarchical form of government and the dynasties connected with it were
abolished, for it was to the spirit inherent in these that the individual
states owned their political origin and development. Thus deprived of their
internal raison d'être, they renounced all right to survival and were induced
by purely practical reasons to fuse with their neighbours or else they joined
the more powerful states out of their own free will. That proved in a striking
manner how extraordinarily frail was the actual sovereignty these small phantom
states enjoyed, and it proved too how lightly they were estimated by their own
citizens.
Though the abolition of the monarchical regime and its
representatives had dealt a hard blow to the federal character of the Reich,
still more destructive, from the federal point of view, was the acceptance of
the obligations that resulted from the 'peace' treaty.
It was only natural and logical that the federal states
should lose all sovereign control over the finances the moment the Reich, in
consequence of a lost war, was subjected to financial obligations which could
never be guaranteed through separate treaties with the individual states. The
subsequent steps which led the Reich to take over the posts and railways were
an enforced advance in the process of enslaving our people, a process which the
peace treaties gradually developed. The Reich was forced to secure possession
of resources which had to be constantly increased in order to satisfy the
demands made by further extortions.
The form in which the powers of the Reich were thus
extended to embrace the federal states was often ridiculously stupid, but in
itself the procedure was logical and natural. The blame for it must be laid at
the door of these men and those parties that failed in the hour of need to
concentrate all their energies in an effort to bring the war to a victorious
issue. The guilt lies on those parties which, especially in Bavaria, catered
for their own egotistic interests during the war and refused to the Reich what
the Reich had to requisition to a tenfold greater measure when the war was
lost. The retribution of History! Rarely has the vengeance of Heaven followed
so closely on the crime as it did in this case. Those same parties which, a few
years previously, placed the interests of their own states – especially in
Bavaria – before those of the Reich had now to look on passively while the
pressure of events forced the Reich, in its own interests, to abolish the
existence of the individual states. They were the victims of their own
defaults.
It was an unparalleled example of hypocrisy to raise the
cry of lamentation over the loss which the federal states suffered in being
deprived of their sovereign rights. This cry was raised before the electorate,
for it is only to the electorate that our contemporary parties address
themselves. But these parties, without exception, outbid one another in
accepting a policy of fulfilment which, by the sheer force of circumstances and
in its ultimate consequences, could not but lead to a profound alteration in
the internal structure of the Reich. Bismarck's Reich was free and unhampered
by any obligations towards the outside world.
Bismarck's Reich never had to shoulder such heavy and
entirely unproductive obligations as those to which Germany was subjected under
the Dawes Plan. Also in domestic affairs Bismarck's Reich was able to limit its
powers to a few matters that were absolutely necessary for its existence.
Therefore it could dispense with the necessity of a financial control over
these states and could live from their contributions. On the other side the
relatively small financial tribute which the federal states had to pay to the
Reich induced them to welcome its existence. But it is untrue and unjust to
state now, as certain propagandists do, that the federal states are displeased
with the Reich merely because of their financial subjection to it. No, that is
not how the matter really stands. The lack of sympathy for the political idea
embodied in the Reich is not due to the loss of sovereign rights on the part of
the individual states. It is much more the result of the deplorable fashion in
which the present régime cares for the interests of the German people. Despite
all the celebrations in honour of the national flag and the Constitution, every
section of the German people feels that the present Reich is not in accordance
with its heart's desire. And the Law for the Protection of the Republic may
prevent outrages against republican institutions, but it will not gain the love
of one single German. In its constant anxiety to protect itself against its own
citizens by means of laws and sentences of imprisonment, the Republic has
aroused sharp and humiliating criticism of all republican institutions as such.
For another reason also it is untrue to say, as certain parties
affirm today, that the Reich has ceased to be popular on account of its
overbearing conduct in regard to certain sovereign rights which the individual
states had heretofore enjoyed. Supposing the Reich had not extended its
authority over the individual states, there is no reason to believe that it
would find more favour among those states if the general obligations remained
so heavy as they now are. On the contrary, if the individual states had to pay
their respective shares of the highly increased tribute which the Reich has to
meet today in order to fulfil the provisions of the Versailles Dictate, the
hostility towards the Reich would be infinitely greater. For then not only
would it prove difficult to collect the respective contributions due to the
Reich from the federal states, but coercive methods would have to be employed
in making the collections. The Republic stands on the footing of the peace
treaties and has neither the courage nor the intention to break them. That
being so, it must observe the obligations which the peace treaties have imposed
on it. The responsibility for this situation is to be attributed solely to
those parties who preach unceasingly to the patient electoral masses on the
necessity of maintaining the autonomy of the federal states, while at the same
time they champion and demand of the Reich a policy which must necessarily lead
to the suppression of even the very last of those so-called 'sovereign' rights.
I say necessarily because the present Reich has no other possible
means of bearing the burden of charges which an insane domestic and foreign
policy has laid on it. Here still another wedge is placed on the former, to
drive it in still deeper. Every new debt which the Reich contracts, through the
criminal way in which the interests of Germany are represented vis-à-vis
foreign countries, necessitates a new and stronger blow which drives the under
wedges still deeper, That blow demands another step in the progressive
abolition of the sovereign rights of the individual states, so as not to allow
the germs of opposition to rise up into activity or even to exist.
The chief characteristic difference between the policy of the
present Reich and that of former times lies in this: The old Reich gave freedom
to its people at home and showed itself strong towards the outside world,
whereas the Republic shows itself weak towards the stranger and oppresses its
own citizens at home. In both cases one attitude determines the other. A
vigorous national State does not need to make many laws for the interior,
because of the affection and attachment of its citizens. The international
servile State can live only by coercing its citizens to render it the services
it demands. And it is a piece of impudent falsehood for the present regime to
speak of 'Free citizens'. Only the old Germany could speak in that manner. The
present Republic is a colony of slaves at the service of the stranger. At best
it has subjects, but not citizens. Hence it does not possess a national flag
but only a trade mark, introduced and protected by official decree and
legislative measures. This symbol, which is the Gessler's cap of German
Democracy, will always remain alien to the spirit of our people. On its side,
the Republic having no sense of tradition or respect for past greatness,
dragged the symbol of the past in the mud, but it will be surprised one day to
discover how superficial is the devotion of its citizens to its own symbol. The
Republic has given to itself the character of an intermezzo in German history.
And so this State is bound constantly to restrict more and more the sovereign
rights of the individual states, not only for general reasons of a financial
character but also on principle. For by enforcing a policy of financial
blackmail, to squeeze the last ounce of substance out of its people, it is
forced also to take their last rights away from them, lest the general
discontent may one day flame up into open rebellion.
We, National Socialists, would reverse this formula and
would adopt the following axiom: A strong national Reich which recognizes and
protects to the largest possible measure the rights of its citizens both within
and outside its frontiers can allow freedom to reign at home without trembling
for the safety of the State. On the other hand, a strong national Government
can intervene to a considerable degree in the liberties of the individual
subject as well as in the liberties of the constituent states without thereby
weakening the ideal of the Reich; and it can do this while recognizing its
responsibility for the ideal of the Reich, because in these particular acts and
measures the individual citizen recognizes a means of promoting the prestige of
the nation as a whole.
Of course, every State in the world has to face the
question of unification in its internal organization. And Germany is no
exception in this matter. Nowadays it is absurd to speak of 'statal
sovereignty' for the constituent states of the Reich, because that has already
become impossible on account of the ridiculously small size of so many of these
states. In the sphere of commerce as well as that of administration the
importance of the individual states has been steadily decreasing. Modern means
of communication and mechanical progress have been increasingly restricting
distance and space. What was once a State is today only a province and the
territory covered by a modern State had once the importance of a continent. The
purely technical difficulty of administering a State like Germany is not
greater than that of governing a province like Brandenburg a hundred years ago.
And today it is easier to cover the distance from Munich to Berlin than it was
to cover the distance from Munich to Starnberg a hundred years ago. In view of
the modern means of transport, the whole territory of the Reich today is
smaller than that of certain German federal states at the time of the
Napoleonic wars. To close one's eyes to the consequences of these facts means
to live in the past. There always were, there are and always will be, men who
do this. They may retard but they cannot stop the revolutions of history.
We, National Socialists, must not allow the consequences of that
truth to pass by us unnoticed. In these matters also we must not permit
ourselves to be misled by the phrases of our so-called national bourgeois
parties. I say 'phrases', because these same parodies do not seriously believe
that it is possible for them to carry out their proposals, and because they
themselves are the chief culprits and also the accomplices responsible for the
present state of affairs. Especially in Bavaria, the demands for a halt in the
process of centralization can be no more than a party move behind which there
is no serious idea. If these parties ever had to pass from the realm of
phrase-making into that of practical deeds they would present a sorry
spectacle. Every so-called 'Robbery of Sovereign Rights' from Bavaria by the
Reich has met with no practical resistance, except for some fatuous barking by
way of protest. Indeed, when anyone seriously opposed the madness that was
shown in carrying out this system of centralization he was told by those same
parties that he understood nothing of the nature and needs of the State today.
They slandered him and pronounced him anathema and persecuted him until he was
either shut up in prison or illegally deprived of the right of public speech.
In the light of these facts our followers should become all the more convinced
of the profound hypocrisy which characterizes these so-called federalist
circles. To a certain extent they use the federalist doctrine just as they use
the name of religion, merely as a means of promoting their own base party
interests.
A certain unification, especially in the field of
transport., appears logical. But we, National Socialists, feel it our duty to
oppose with all our might such a development in the modern State, especially
when the measures proposed are solely for the purpose of screening a disastrous
foreign policy and making it possible. And just because the present Reich has
threatened to take over the railways, the posts, the finances, etc., not from
the high standpoint of a national policy, but in order to have in its hands the
means and pledges for an unlimited policy of fulfilment – for that reason we,
National Socialists, must take every step that seems suitable to obstruct and,
if possible, definitely to prevent such a policy. We must fight against the
present system of amalgamating institutions that are vitally important for the
existence of our people, because this system is being adopted solely to
facilitate the payment of milliards and the transference of pledges to the
stranger, under the post-War provisions which our politicians have accepted.
For these reasons also the National Socialist Movement has to take
up a stand against such tendencies.
Moreover, we must oppose such centralization because in
domestic affairs it helps to reinforce a system of government which in all its
manifestations has brought the greatest misfortunes on the German nation. The
present Jewish-Democratic Reich, which has become a veritable curse for the
German people, is seeking to negative the force of the criticism offered by all
the federal states which have not yet become imbued with the spirit of the age,
and is trying to carry out this policy by crushing them to the point of
annihilation. In face of this we National Socialists must try to ground the
opposition of the individual states on such a basis that it will be able to
operate with a good promise of success. We must do this by transforming the
struggle against centralization into something that will be an expression of
the higher interests of the German nation as such. Therefore, while the
Bavarian Populist Party, acting from its own narrow and particularist
standpoint, fights to maintain the 'special rights' of the Bavarian State, we
ought to stand on quite a different ground in fighting for the same rights. Our
grounds ought to be those of the higher national interests in opposition to the
November Democracy.
A still further reason for opposing a centralizing process
of that kind arises from the certain conviction that in great part this
so-called nationalization does not make for unification at all and still less
for simplification. In many cases it is adopted simply as a means of removing
from the sovereign control of the individual states certain institutions which
they wish to place in the hands of the revolutionary parties. In German History
favouritism has never been of so base a character as in the democratic
republic. A great portion of this centralization today is the work of parties
which once promised that they would open the way for the promotion of talent,
meaning thereby that they would fill those posts and offices entirely with
their own partisans. Since the foundation of the Republic the Jews especially
have been obtaining positions in the economic institutions taken over by the
Reich and also positions in the national administration, so that the one and
the other have become preserves of Jewry.
For tactical reasons, this last consideration obliges us
to watch with the greatest attention every further attempt at centralization
and fight it at each step. But in doing this our standpoint must always be that
of a lofty national policy and never a pettifogging particularism.
This last observation is necessary, lest an opinion might arise among
our own followers that we do not accredit to the Reich the right of
incorporating in itself a sovereignty which is superior to that of the
constituent states. As regards this right we cannot and must not entertain the
slightest doubt. Because for us the State is nothing but a form. Its substance,
or content, is the essential thing. And that is the nation, the people. It is
clear therefore that every other interest must be subordinated to the supreme
interests of the nation. In particular we cannot accredit to any other state a
sovereign power and sovereign rights within the confines of the nation and the
Reich, which represents the nation. The absurdity which some federal states
commit by maintaining 'representations' abroad and corresponding foreign
'representations' among themselves – that must cease and will cease. Until this
happens we cannot be surprised if certain foreign countries are dubious about
the political unity of the Reich and act accordingly. The absurdity of these
'representations' is all the greater because they do harm and do not bring the
slightest advantage. If the interests of a German abroad cannot be protected by
the ambassador of the Reich, much less can they be protected by the minister
from some small federal state which appears ridiculous in the framework of the
present world order. The real truth is that these small federal states are
envisaged as points of attack for attempts at secession, which prospect is
always pleasing to a certain foreign State. We, National Socialists, must not
allow some noble caste which has become effete with age to occupy an
ambassadorial post abroad, with the idea that by engrafting one of its withered
branches in new soil the green leaves may sprout again. Already in the time of
the old Reich our diplomatic representatives abroad were such a sorry lot that
a further trial of that experience would be out of the question.
It is certain that in the future the importance of the
individual states will be transferred to the sphere of our cultural policy. The
monarch who did most to make Bavaria an important centre was not an obstinate
particularist with anti-German tendencies, but Ludwig I who was as much devoted
to the ideal of German greatness as he was to that of art. His first
consideration was to use the powers of the state to develop the cultural
position of Bavaria and not its political power. And in doing this he produced
better and more durable results than if he had followed any other line of
conduct. Up to this time Munich was a provincial residence town of only small
importance, but he transformed it into the metropolis of German art and by
doing so he made it an intellectual centre which even today holds Franconia to
Bavaria, though the Franconians are of quite a different temperament. If Munich
had remained as it had been earlier, what has happened in Saxony would have
been repeated in Bavaria, with the diAerence that Leipzig and Bavarian Nürnberg
would have become, not Bavarian but Franconian cities. It was not the cry of
"Down with Prussia" that made Munich great. What made this a city of importance
was the King who wished to present it to the German nation as an artistic jewel
that would have to be seen and appreciated, and so it has turned out in fact.
Therein lies a lesson for the future. The importance of the individual states
in the future will no longer lie in their political or statal power. I look to
them rather as important ethnical and cultural centres. But even in this
respect time will do its levelling work. Modern travelling facilities shuffle
people among one another in such a way that tribal boundaries will fade out and
even the cultural picture will gradually become more of a uniform pattern.
The army must definitely be kept clear of the influence of the
individual states. The coming National Socialist State must not fall back into
the error of the past by imposing on the army a task which is not within its
sphere and never should have been assigned to it. The German army does not
exist for the purpose of being a school in which tribal particularisms are to
be cultivated and preserved, but rather as a school for teaching all the
Germans to understand and adapt their habits to one another. Whatever tends to
have a separating influence in the life of the nation ought to be made a
unifying influence in the army. The army must raise the German boy above the
narrow horizon of his own little native province and set him within the broad
picture of the nation. The youth must learn to know, not the confines of his
own region but those of the fatherland, because it is the latter that he will
have to defend one day. It is therefore absurd to have the German youth do his
military training in his own native region. During that period he ought to
learn to know Germany. This is all the more important today, since young
Germans no longer travel on their own account as they once used to do and thus
enlarge their horizon. In view of this, is it not absurd to leave the young
Bavarian recruit at Munich, the recruit from Baden at Baden itself and the
Württemberger at Stuttgart and so on? And would it not be more reasonable to
show the Rhine and the North Sea to the Bavarian, the Alps to the native of
Hamburg and the mountains of Central Germany to the boy from East Prussia? The
character proper to each region ought to be maintained in the troops but not in
the training garrisons. We may disapprove of every attempt at unification but
not that of unifying the army. On the contrary, even though we should wish to
welcome no other kind of unification, this must be greeted with joy. In view of
the size of the present army of the Reich, it would be absurd to maintain the
federal divisions among the troops. Moreover, in the unification of the German
army which has actually been effected we see a fact which we must not renounce
but restore in the future national army.
Finally a new and triumphant idea should burst every chain
which tends to paralyse its efforts to push forward. National Socialism must
claim the right to impose its principles on the whole German nation, without
regard to what were hitherto the confines of federal states. And we must
educate the German nation in our ideas and principles. As the Churches do not
feel themselves bound or limited by political confines, so the National
Socialist Idea cannot feel itself limited to the territories of the individual
federal states that belong to our Fatherland.
The National Socialist doctrine is not handmaid to the
political interests of the single federal states. One day it must become
teacher to the whole German nation. It must determine the life of the whole
people and shape that life anew. For this reason we must imperatively demand
the right to overstep boundaries that have been traced by a political
development which we repudiate.
The more completely our ideas triumph, the more liberty
can we concede in particular affairs to our citizens at home.
Mask
In the winter of 1919, and still more in the spring and summer of
1920, the young Party felt bound to take up a definite stand on a question
which already had become quite serious during the War. In the first volume of
this book I have briefly recorded certain facts which I had personally
witnessed and which foreboded the break-up of Germany. In describing these
facts I made reference to the special nature of the propaganda which was
directed by the English as well as the French towards reopening the breach that
had existed between North and South in Germany. In the spring of 1915 there
appeared the first of a series of leaflets which was systematically followed up
and the aim of which was to arouse feeling against Prussia as being solely
responsible for the war. Up to 1916 this system had been developed and
perfected in a cunning and shameless manner. Appealing to the basest of human
instincts, this propaganda endeavoured to arouse the wrath of the South Germans
against the North Germans and after a short time it bore fruit. Persons who
were then in high positions under the Government and in the Army, especially
those attached to headquarters in the Bavarian Army, merited the just reproof
of having blindly neglected their duty and failed to take the necessary steps
to counter such propaganda. But nothing was done. On the contrary, in some
quarters it did not appear to be quite unwelcome and probably they were
short-sighted enough to think that such propaganda might help along the
development of unification in Germany but even that it might automatically
bring about consolidation of the federative forces. Scarcely ever in history
was such a wicked neglect more wickedly avenged. The weakening of Prussia,
which they believed would result from this propaganda, affected the whole of
Germany. It resulted in hastening the collapse which not only wrecked Germany
as a whole but even more particularly the federal states.
In that town where the artificially created hatred against
Prussia raged most violently the revolt against the reigning House was the
beginning of the Revolution.
It would be a mistake to think that the enemy propaganda
was exclusively responsible for creating an anti-Prussian feeling and that
there were no reasons which might excuse the people for having listened to this
propaganda. The incredible fashion in which the national economic interests
were organized during the War, the absolutely crazy system of centralization
which made the whole Reich its ward and exploited the Reich, furnished the
principal grounds for the growth of that anti-Prussian feeling. The average
citizen looked upon the companies for the placing of war contracts, all of
which had their headquarters in Berlin, as identical with Berlin and Berlin
itself as identical with Prussia. The average citizen did not know that the
organization of these robber companies, which were called War Companies, was
not in the hands of Berlin or Prussia and not even in German hands at all.
People recognized only the gross irregularities and the continual encroachments
of that hated institution in the Metropolis of the Reich and directed their
anger towards Berlin and Prussia, all the more because in certain quarters (the
Bavarian Government) nothing was done to correct this attitude, but it was even
welcomed with silent rubbing of hands.
The Jew was far too shrewd not to understand that the
infamous campaign which he had organized, under the cloak of War Companies, for
plundering the German nation would and must eventually arouse opposition. As
long as that opposition did not spring directly at his own throat he had no
reason to be afraid. Hence he decided that the best way of forestalling an
outbreak on the part of the enraged and desperate masses would be to inflame
their wrath and at the same time give it another outlet.
Let Bavaria quarrel as much as it liked with Prussia and
Prussia with Bavaria. The more, the merrier. This bitter strife between the two
states assured peace to the Jew. Thus public attention was completely diverted
from the international maggot in the body of the nation; indeed, he seemed to
have been forgotten. Then when there came a danger that level-headed people, of
whom there are many to be found also in Bavaria, would advise a little more
reserve and a more judicious evaluation of things, thus calming the rage
against Prussia, all the Jew had to do in Berlin was to stage a new provocation
and await results. Every time that was done all those who had profiteered out
of the conflict between North and South filled their lungs and again fanned the
flame of indignation until it became a blaze.
It was a shrewd and expert manoeuvre on the part of the
Jew, to set the different branches of the German people quarrelling with one
another, so that their attention would be turned away from himself and he could
plunder them all the more completely.
Then came the Revolution.
Until the year 1918, or rather until the November of that
year, the average German citizen, particularly the less educated lower
middle-class and the workers, did not rightly understand what was happening and
did not realize what must be the inevitable consequences, especially for
Bavaria, of this internecine strife between the branches of the German people;
but at least those sections which called themselves 'National' ought to have
clearly perceived these consequences on the day that the Revolution broke out.
For the moment the coup d'état had succeeded, the leader and organizer of the
Revolution in Bavaria put himself forward as the defender of 'Bavarian'
interests. The international Jew, Kurt Eisner, began to play off Bavaria
against Prussia. This Oriental was just about the last person in the world that
could be pointed to as the logical defender of Bavarian interests. In his trade
as newspaper reporter he had wandered from place to place all over Germany and
to him it was a matter of sheer indifference whether Bavaria or any other
particular part of God's whole world continued to exist.
In deliberately giving the revolutionary rising in
Bavaria the character of an offensive against Prussia, Kurt Eisner was not
acting in the slightest degree from the standpoint of Bavarian interests, but
merely as the commissioned representative of Jewry. He exploited existing
instincts and antipathies in Bavaria as a means which would help to make the
dismemberment of Germany all the more easy. When once dismembered, the Reich
would fall an easy prey to Bolshevism.
The tactics employed by him were continued for a time
after his death. The Marxists, who had always derided and exploited the
individual German states and their princes, now suddenly appealed, as an
'Independent Party' to those sentiments and instincts which had their strongest
roots in the families of the reigning princes and the individual states.
The fight waged by the Bavarian Soviet Republic against the military
contingents that were sent to free Bavaria from its grasp was represented by
the Marxist propagandists as first of all the 'Struggle of the Bavarian Worker'
against 'Prussian Militarism.' This explains why it was that the suppression of
the Soviet Republic in Munich did not have the same effect there as in the
other German districts. Instead of recalling the masses to a sense of reason,
it led to increased bitterness and anger against Prussia.
The art of the Bolshevik agitators, in representing the
suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic as a victory of 'Prussian
Militarism' over the 'Anti-militarists' and 'Anti-Prussian' people of Bavaria,
bore rich fruit. Whereas on the occasion of the elections to the Bavarian
Legislative Diet, Kurt Eisner did not have ten thousand followers in Munich and
the Communist party less than three thousand, after the fall of the Bavarian
Republic the votes given to the two parties together amounted to nearly one
hundred thousand.
It was then that I personally began to combat that crazy
incitement of some branches of the German people against other branches.
I believe that never in my life did I undertake a more unpopular
task than I did when I took my stand against the anti-Prussian incitement.
During the Soviet regime in Munich great public meetings were held at which
hatred against the rest of Germany, but particularly against Prussia, was
roused up to such a pitch that a North German would have risked his life in
attending one of those meetings. These meetings often ended in wild shouts:
"Away from Prussia", "Down with the Prussians", "War against Prussia", and so
on. This feeling was openly expressed in the Reichstag by a particularly
brilliant defender of Bavarian sovereign rights when he said: "Rather die as a
Bavarian than rot as a Prussian".
One should have attended some of the meetings held at
that time in order to understand what it meant for one when, for the first time
and surrounded by only a handful of friends, I raised my voice against this
folly at a meeting held in the Munich Löwenbräu Keller. Some of my War comrades
stood by me then. And it is easy to imagine how we felt when that raging crowd,
which had lost all control of its reason, roared at us and threatened to kill
us. During the time that we were fighting for the country the same crowd were
for the most part safely ensconced in the rear positions or were peacefully
circulating at home as deserters and shirkers. It is true that that scene
turned out to be of advantage to me. My small band of comrades felt for the
first time absolutely united with me and readily swore to stick by me through
life and death.
These conflicts, which were constantly repeated in 1919,
seemed to become more violent soon after the beginning of 1920. There were
meetings – I remember especially one in the Wagner Hall in the Sonnenstrasse in
Munich – during the course of which my group, now grown much larger, had to
defend themselves against assaults of the most violent character. It happened
more than once that dozens of my followers were mishandled, thrown to the floor
and stamped upon by the attackers and were finally thrown out of the hall more
dead than alive.
The struggle which I had undertaken, first by myself
alone and afterwards with the support of my war comrades, was now continued by
the young movement, I might say almost as a sacred mission.
I am proud of being able to say today that we – depending
almost exclusively on our followers in Bavaria – were responsible for putting
an end, slowly but surely, to the coalition of folly and treason. I say folly
and treason because, although convinced that the masses who joined in it meant
well but were stupid, I cannot attribute such simplicity as an extenuating
circumstance in the case of the organizers and their abetters. I then looked
upon them,and still look upon them today, as traitors in the payment of France.
In one case, that of Dorten, history has already pronounced its judgment.
The situation became specially dangerous at that time by reason of
the fact that they were very astute in their ability to cloak their real
tendencies, by insisting primarily on their federative intentions and claiming
that those were the sole motives of the agitation. Of course it is quite
obvious that the agitation against Prussia had nothing to do with federalism.
Surely 'Federal Activities' is not the phrase with which to describe an effort
to dissolve and dismember another federal state. For an honest federalist, for
whom the formula used by Bismarck to define his idea of the Reich is not a
counterfeit phrase, could not in the same breath express the desire to cut off
portions of the Prussian State, which was created or at least completed by
Bismarck. Nor could he publicly support such a separatist attempt.
What an outcry would be raised in Munich if some prussian
conservative party declared itself in favour of detaching Franconia from
Bavaria or took public action in demanding and promoting such a separatist
policy. Nevertheless, one can only have sympathy for all those real and honest
federalists who did not see through this infamous swindle, for they were its
principal victims. By distorting the federalist idea in such a way its own
champions prepared its grave. One cannot make propaganda for a federalist
configuration of the Reich by debasing and abusing and besmirching the
essential element of such a political structure, namely Prussia, and thus
making such a Confederation impossible, if it ever had been possible. It is all
the more incredible by reason of the fact that the fight carried on by those
so-called federalists was directed against that section of the Prussian people
which was the last that could be looked upon as connected with the November
democracy. For the abuse and attacks of these so-called federalists were not
levelled against the fathers of the Weimar Constitution – the majority of whom
were South Germans or Jews – but against those who represented the old
conservative Prussia, which was the antipodes of the Weimar Constitution. The
fact that the directors of this campaign were careful not to touch the Jews is
not to be wondered at and perhaps gives the key to the whole riddle.
Before the Revolution the Jew was successful in distracting
attention from himself and his War Companies by inciting the masses, and
especially the Bavarians, against Prussia. Similarly he felt obliged, after the
Revolution, to find some way of camouflaging his new plunder campaign which was
nine or ten times greater. And again he succeeded, in this case by provoking
the so-called 'national' elements against one another: the conservative
Bavarians against the Prussians, who were just as conservative. He acted again
with extreme cunning, inasmuch as he who held the reins of Prussia's destiny in
his hands provoked such crude and tactless aggressions that again and again
they set the blood boiling in those who were being continually duped. Never
against the Jew, however, but always the German against his own brother. The
Bavarian did not see the Berlin of four million industrious and efficient
working people, but only the lazy and decadent Berlin which is to be found in
the worst quarters of the West End. And his antipathy was not directed against
this West End of Berlin but against the 'Prussian' city.
In many cases it tempted one to despair.
The ability which the Jew has displayed in turning public
attention away from himself and giving it another direction may be studied also
in what is happening today.
In 1918 there was nothing like an organized anti-Semitic
feeling. I still remember the difficulties we encountered the moment we
mentioned the Jew. We were either confronted with dumb-struck faces or else a
lively and hefty antagonism. The efforts we made at the time to point out the
real enemy to the public seemed to be doomed to failure. But then things began
to change for the better, though only very slowly. The 'League for Defence and
Offence' was defectively organized but at least it had the great merit of
opening up the Jewish question once again. In the winter of 1918–1919 a kind of
anti-semitism began slowly to take root. Later on the National Socialist
Movement presented the Jewish problem in a new light. Taking the question
beyond the restricted circles of the upper classes and small bourgeoisie we
succeeded in transforming it into the driving motive of a great popular
movement. But the moment we were successful in placing this problem before the
German people in the light of an idea that would unite them in one struggle the
Jew reacted. He resorted to his old tactics. With amazing alacrity he hurled
the torch of discord into the patriotic movement and opened a rift there. In
bringing forward the ultramontane question and in the mutual quarrels that it
gave rise to between Catholicism and Protestantism lay the sole possibility, as
conditions then were, of occupying public attention with other problems and
thus ward off the attack which had been concentrated against Jewry. The men who
dragged our people into this controversy can never make amends for the crime
they then committed against the nation. Anyhow, the Jew has attained the ends
he desired. Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another to their
hearts' content, while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is
laughing up his sleeve.
Once it was possible to occupy the attention of the
public for several years with the struggle between federalism and unification,
wearing out their energies in this mutual friction while the Jew trafficked in
the freedom of the nation and sold our country to the masters of international
high finance. So in our day he has succeeded again, this time by raising
ructions between the two German religious denominations while the foundations
on which both rest are being eaten away and destroyed through the poison
injected by the international and cosmopolitan Jew.
Look at the ravages from which our people are suffering
daily as a result of being contaminated with Jewish blood. Bear in mind the
fact that this poisonous contamination can be eliminated from the national body
only after centuries, or perhaps never. Think further of how the process of
racial decomposition is debasing and in some cases even destroying the
fundamental Aryan qualities of our German people, so that our cultural
creativeness as a nation is gradually becoming impotent and we are running the
danger, at least in our great cities, of falling to the level where Southern
Italy is today. This pestilential adulteration of the blood, of which hundreds
of thousands of our people take no account, is being systematically practised
by the Jew today. Systematically these negroid parasites in our national body
corrupt our innocent fair-haired girls and thus destroy something which can no
longer be replaced in this world.
The two Christian denominations look on with indifference
at the profanation and destruction of a noble and unique creature who was given
to the world as a gift of God's grace. For the future of the world, however, it
does not matter which of the two triumphs over the other, the Catholic or the
Protestant. But it does matter whether Aryan humanity survives or perishes. And
yet the two Christian denominations are not contending against the destroyer of
Aryan humanity but are trying to destroy one another. Everybody who has the
right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound, each within his own
denomination, to see to it that he is not constantly talking about the Will of
God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he fulfils the Will of God and
does not allow God's handiwork to be debased. For it was by the Will of God
that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and
their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and
God's Will. Therefore everyone should endeavour, each in his own denomination
of course, and should consider it as his first and most solemn duty to hinder
any and everyone whose conduct tends, either by word or deed, to go outside his
own religious body and pick a quarrel with those of another denomination. For,
in view of the religious schism that exists in Germany, to attack the essential
characteristics of one denomination must necessarily lead to a war of
extermination between the two Christian denominations. Here there can be no
comparison between our position and that of France, or Spain or Italy. In those
three countries one may, for instance, make propaganda for the side that is
fighting against ultramontanism without thereby incurring the danger of a
national rift among the French, or Spanish or Italian people. In Germany,
however, that cannot be so, for here the Protestants would also take part in
such propaganda. And thus the defence which elsewhere only Catholics organize
against clerical aggression in political matters would assume with us the
character of a Protestant attack against Catholicism. What may be tolerated by
the faithful in one denomination even when it seems unjust to them, will at
once be indignantly rejected and opposed on a priori grounds if it should come
from the militant leaders of another denomination. This is so true that even
men who would be ready and willing to fight for the removal of manifest
grievances within their own religious denomination will drop their own fight
and turn their activities against the outsider the moment the abolition of such
grievances is counselled or demanded by one who is not of the same faith. They
consider it unjustified and inadmissible and incorrect for outsiders to meddle
in matters which do not affect them at all. Such attempts are not excused even
when they are inspired by a feeling for the supreme interests of the national
community; because even in our day religious feelings still have deeper roots
than all feeling for political and national expediency. That cannot be changed
by setting one denomination against another in bitter conflict. It can be
changed only if, through a spirit of mutual tolerance, the nation can be
assured of a future the greatness of which will gradually operate as a
conciliating factor in the sphere of religion also. I have no hesitation in
saying that in those men who seek today to embroil the patriotic movement in
religious quarrels I see worse enemies of my country than the international
communists are. For the National Socialist Movement has set itself to the task
of converting those communists. But anyone who goes outside the ranks of his
own Movement and tends to turn it away from the fulfilment of its mission is
acting in a manner that deserves the severest condemnation. He is acting as a
champion of Jewish interests, whether consciously or unconsciously does not
matter. For it is in the interests of the Jews today that the energies of the
patriotic movement should be squandered in a religious conflict, because it is
beginning to be dangerous for the Jews. I have purposely used the phrase about
squandering the energies of the Movement, because nobody but some person who is
entirely ignorant of history could imagine that this movement can solve a
question which the greatest statesmen have tried for centuries to solve, and
tried in vain.
Anyhow the facts speak for themselves. The men who
suddenly discovered, in 1924, that the highest mission of the patriotic
movement was to fight ultramontanism, have not succeeded in smashing
ultramontanism, but they succeeded in splitting the patriotic movement. I have
to guard against the possibility of some immature brain arising in the
patriotic movement which thinks that it can do what even a Bismarck failed to
do. It will be always one of the first duties of those who are directing the
National Socialist Movement to oppose unconditionally any attempt to place the
National Socialist Movement at the service of such a conflict. And anybody who
conducts a propaganda with that end in view must be expelled forthwith from its
ranks.
As a matter of fact we succeeded until the autumn of 1923 in keeping
our movement away from such controversies. The most devoted Protestant could
stand side by side with the most devoted Catholic in our ranks without having
his conscience disturbed in the slightest as far as concerned his religious
convictions. The bitter struggle which both waged in common against the wrecker
of Aryan humanity taught them natural respect and esteem. And it was just in
those years that our movement had to engage in a bitter strife with the Centre
Party not for religious ends but for national, racial, political and economic
ends. The success we then achieved showed that we were right, but it does not
speak today in favour of those who thought they knew better.
In recent years things have gone so far that patriotic
circles, in god-forsaken blindness of their religious strife, could not
recognize the folly of their conduct even from the fact that atheist Marxist
newspapers advocated the cause of one religious denomination or the other,
according as it suited Marxist interests, so as to create confusion through
slogans and declarations which were often immeasurably stupid, now molesting
the one party and again the other, and thus poking the fire to keep the blaze
at its highest.
But in the case of a people like the Germans, whose
history has so often shown them capable of fighting for phantoms to the point
of complete exhaustion, every war-cry is a mortal danger. By these slogans our
people have often been drawn away from the real problems of their existence.
While we were exhausting our energies in religious wars the others were
acquiring their share of the world. And while the patriotic movement is
debating with itself whether the ultramontane danger be greater than the
Jewish, or vice versa, the Jew is destroying the racial basis of our existence
and thereby annihilating our people. As far as regards that kind of 'patriotic'
warrior, on behalf of the National Socialist Movement and therefore of the
German people I pray with all my heart: "Lord, preserve us from such friends,
and then we can easily deal with our enemies."
The controversy over federation and unification, so
cunningly propagandized by the Jews in 1919-1920 and onwards, forced National
Socialism, which repudiated the quarrel, to take up a definite stand in
relation to the essential problem concerned in it. Ought Germany to be a
confederacy or a military State? What is the practical significance of these
terms? To me it seems that the second question is more important than the
first, because it is fundamental to the understanding of the whole problem and
also because the answer to it may help to clear up confusion and therewith have
a conciliating effect.
What is a Confederacy?
By a Confederacy we mean a union of sovereign states which
of their own free will and in virtue of their sovereignty come together and
create a collective unit, ceding to that unit as much of their own sovereign
rights as will render the existence of the union possible and will guarantee
it.
But the theoretical formula is not wholly put into practice by any
confederacy that exists today. And least of all by the American Union, where it
is impossible to speak of original sovereignty in regard to the majority of the
states. Many of them were not included in the federal complex until long after
it had been established. The states that make up the American Union are mostly
in the nature of territories, more or less, formed for technical administrative
purposes, their boundaries having in many cases been fixed in the mapping
office. Originally these states did not and could not possess sovereign rights
of their own. Because it was the Union that created most of the so-called
states. Therefore the sovereign rights, often very comprehensive, which were
left, or rather granted, to the various territories correspond not only to the
whole character of the Confederation but also to its vast space, which is
equivalent to the size of a Continent. Consequently, in speaking of the United
States of America one must not consider them as sovereign states but as
enjoying rights or, better perhaps, autarchic powers, granted to them and
guaranteed by the Constitution.
Nor does our definition adequately express the condition
of affairs in Germany. It is true that in Germany the individual states existed
as states before the Reich and that the Reich was formed from them. The Reich,
however, was not formed by the voluntary and equal co-operation of the
individual states, but rather because the state of Prussia gradually acquired a
position of hegemony over the others. The difference in the territorial area
alone between the German states prevents any comparison with the American
Union. The great difference in territorial area between the very small German
states that then existed and the larger, or even still more the largest,
demonstrates the inequality of their achievements and shows that they could not
take an equal part in founding and shaping the federal Empire. In the case of
most of these individual states it cannot be maintained that they ever enjoyed
real sovereignty; and the term 'State Sovereignty' was really nothing more than
an administrative formula which had no inner meaning. As a matter of fact, not
only developments in the past but also in our own time wiped out several of
these so-called 'Sovereign States' and thus proved in the most definite way how
frail these 'sovereign' state formations were.
I cannot deal here with the historical question of how
these individual states came to be established, but I must call attention to
the fact that hardly in any case did their frontiers coincide with ethical
frontiers of the inhabitants. They were purely political phenomena which for
the most part emerged during the sad epoch when the German Empire was in a
state of exhaustion and was dismembered. They represented both cause and effect
in the process of exhaustion and partition of our fatherland.
The Constitution of the old Reich took all this into
account, at least up to a certain degree, in so far as the individual states
were not accorded equal representation in the Reichstag, but a representation
proportionate to their respective areas, their actual importance and the role
which they played in the formation of the Reich.
The sovereign rights which the individual states
renounced in order to form the Reich were voluntarily ceded only to a very
small degree. For the most part they had no practical existence or they were
simply taken by Prussia under the pressure of her preponderant power. The
principle followed by Bismarck was not to give the Reich what he could take
from the individual states but to demand from the individual states only what
was absolutely necessary for the Reich. A moderate and wise policy. On the one
side Bismarck showed the greatest regard for customs and traditions; on the
other side his policy secured for the new Reich from its foundation onwards a
great measure of love and willing co-operation. But it would be a fundamental
error to attribute Bismarck's decision to any conviction on his part that the
Reich was thus acquiring all the rights of sovereignty which would suflice for
all time. That was far from Bismarck's idea. On the contrary, he wished to
leave over for the future what it would be difficult to carry through at the
moment and might not have been readily agreed to by the individual states. He
trusted to the levelling effect of time and to the pressure exercised by the
process of evolution, the steady action of which appeared more effective than
an attempt to break the resistance which the individual states offered at the
moment. By this policy he showed his great ability in the art of statesmanship.
And, as a matter of fact, the sovereignty of the Reich has continually
increased at the cost of the sovereignty of the individual states. The passing
of time has achieved what Bismarck hoped it would.
The German collapse and the abolition of the monarchical
form of government necessarily hastened this development. The German federal
states, which had not been grounded on ethnical foundations but arose rather
out of political conditions, were bound to lose their importance the moment the
monarchical form of government and the dynasties connected with it were
abolished, for it was to the spirit inherent in these that the individual
states owned their political origin and development. Thus deprived of their
internal raison d'être, they renounced all right to survival and were induced
by purely practical reasons to fuse with their neighbours or else they joined
the more powerful states out of their own free will. That proved in a striking
manner how extraordinarily frail was the actual sovereignty these small phantom
states enjoyed, and it proved too how lightly they were estimated by their own
citizens.
Though the abolition of the monarchical regime and its
representatives had dealt a hard blow to the federal character of the Reich,
still more destructive, from the federal point of view, was the acceptance of
the obligations that resulted from the 'peace' treaty.
It was only natural and logical that the federal states
should lose all sovereign control over the finances the moment the Reich, in
consequence of a lost war, was subjected to financial obligations which could
never be guaranteed through separate treaties with the individual states. The
subsequent steps which led the Reich to take over the posts and railways were
an enforced advance in the process of enslaving our people, a process which the
peace treaties gradually developed. The Reich was forced to secure possession
of resources which had to be constantly increased in order to satisfy the
demands made by further extortions.
The form in which the powers of the Reich were thus
extended to embrace the federal states was often ridiculously stupid, but in
itself the procedure was logical and natural. The blame for it must be laid at
the door of these men and those parties that failed in the hour of need to
concentrate all their energies in an effort to bring the war to a victorious
issue. The guilt lies on those parties which, especially in Bavaria, catered
for their own egotistic interests during the war and refused to the Reich what
the Reich had to requisition to a tenfold greater measure when the war was
lost. The retribution of History! Rarely has the vengeance of Heaven followed
so closely on the crime as it did in this case. Those same parties which, a few
years previously, placed the interests of their own states – especially in
Bavaria – before those of the Reich had now to look on passively while the
pressure of events forced the Reich, in its own interests, to abolish the
existence of the individual states. They were the victims of their own
defaults.
It was an unparalleled example of hypocrisy to raise the
cry of lamentation over the loss which the federal states suffered in being
deprived of their sovereign rights. This cry was raised before the electorate,
for it is only to the electorate that our contemporary parties address
themselves. But these parties, without exception, outbid one another in
accepting a policy of fulfilment which, by the sheer force of circumstances and
in its ultimate consequences, could not but lead to a profound alteration in
the internal structure of the Reich. Bismarck's Reich was free and unhampered
by any obligations towards the outside world.
Bismarck's Reich never had to shoulder such heavy and
entirely unproductive obligations as those to which Germany was subjected under
the Dawes Plan. Also in domestic affairs Bismarck's Reich was able to limit its
powers to a few matters that were absolutely necessary for its existence.
Therefore it could dispense with the necessity of a financial control over
these states and could live from their contributions. On the other side the
relatively small financial tribute which the federal states had to pay to the
Reich induced them to welcome its existence. But it is untrue and unjust to
state now, as certain propagandists do, that the federal states are displeased
with the Reich merely because of their financial subjection to it. No, that is
not how the matter really stands. The lack of sympathy for the political idea
embodied in the Reich is not due to the loss of sovereign rights on the part of
the individual states. It is much more the result of the deplorable fashion in
which the present régime cares for the interests of the German people. Despite
all the celebrations in honour of the national flag and the Constitution, every
section of the German people feels that the present Reich is not in accordance
with its heart's desire. And the Law for the Protection of the Republic may
prevent outrages against republican institutions, but it will not gain the love
of one single German. In its constant anxiety to protect itself against its own
citizens by means of laws and sentences of imprisonment, the Republic has
aroused sharp and humiliating criticism of all republican institutions as such.
For another reason also it is untrue to say, as certain parties
affirm today, that the Reich has ceased to be popular on account of its
overbearing conduct in regard to certain sovereign rights which the individual
states had heretofore enjoyed. Supposing the Reich had not extended its
authority over the individual states, there is no reason to believe that it
would find more favour among those states if the general obligations remained
so heavy as they now are. On the contrary, if the individual states had to pay
their respective shares of the highly increased tribute which the Reich has to
meet today in order to fulfil the provisions of the Versailles Dictate, the
hostility towards the Reich would be infinitely greater. For then not only
would it prove difficult to collect the respective contributions due to the
Reich from the federal states, but coercive methods would have to be employed
in making the collections. The Republic stands on the footing of the peace
treaties and has neither the courage nor the intention to break them. That
being so, it must observe the obligations which the peace treaties have imposed
on it. The responsibility for this situation is to be attributed solely to
those parties who preach unceasingly to the patient electoral masses on the
necessity of maintaining the autonomy of the federal states, while at the same
time they champion and demand of the Reich a policy which must necessarily lead
to the suppression of even the very last of those so-called 'sovereign' rights.
I say necessarily because the present Reich has no other possible
means of bearing the burden of charges which an insane domestic and foreign
policy has laid on it. Here still another wedge is placed on the former, to
drive it in still deeper. Every new debt which the Reich contracts, through the
criminal way in which the interests of Germany are represented vis-à-vis
foreign countries, necessitates a new and stronger blow which drives the under
wedges still deeper, That blow demands another step in the progressive
abolition of the sovereign rights of the individual states, so as not to allow
the germs of opposition to rise up into activity or even to exist.
The chief characteristic difference between the policy of the
present Reich and that of former times lies in this: The old Reich gave freedom
to its people at home and showed itself strong towards the outside world,
whereas the Republic shows itself weak towards the stranger and oppresses its
own citizens at home. In both cases one attitude determines the other. A
vigorous national State does not need to make many laws for the interior,
because of the affection and attachment of its citizens. The international
servile State can live only by coercing its citizens to render it the services
it demands. And it is a piece of impudent falsehood for the present regime to
speak of 'Free citizens'. Only the old Germany could speak in that manner. The
present Republic is a colony of slaves at the service of the stranger. At best
it has subjects, but not citizens. Hence it does not possess a national flag
but only a trade mark, introduced and protected by official decree and
legislative measures. This symbol, which is the Gessler's cap of German
Democracy, will always remain alien to the spirit of our people. On its side,
the Republic having no sense of tradition or respect for past greatness,
dragged the symbol of the past in the mud, but it will be surprised one day to
discover how superficial is the devotion of its citizens to its own symbol. The
Republic has given to itself the character of an intermezzo in German history.
And so this State is bound constantly to restrict more and more the sovereign
rights of the individual states, not only for general reasons of a financial
character but also on principle. For by enforcing a policy of financial
blackmail, to squeeze the last ounce of substance out of its people, it is
forced also to take their last rights away from them, lest the general
discontent may one day flame up into open rebellion.
We, National Socialists, would reverse this formula and
would adopt the following axiom: A strong national Reich which recognizes and
protects to the largest possible measure the rights of its citizens both within
and outside its frontiers can allow freedom to reign at home without trembling
for the safety of the State. On the other hand, a strong national Government
can intervene to a considerable degree in the liberties of the individual
subject as well as in the liberties of the constituent states without thereby
weakening the ideal of the Reich; and it can do this while recognizing its
responsibility for the ideal of the Reich, because in these particular acts and
measures the individual citizen recognizes a means of promoting the prestige of
the nation as a whole.
Of course, every State in the world has to face the
question of unification in its internal organization. And Germany is no
exception in this matter. Nowadays it is absurd to speak of 'statal
sovereignty' for the constituent states of the Reich, because that has already
become impossible on account of the ridiculously small size of so many of these
states. In the sphere of commerce as well as that of administration the
importance of the individual states has been steadily decreasing. Modern means
of communication and mechanical progress have been increasingly restricting
distance and space. What was once a State is today only a province and the
territory covered by a modern State had once the importance of a continent. The
purely technical difficulty of administering a State like Germany is not
greater than that of governing a province like Brandenburg a hundred years ago.
And today it is easier to cover the distance from Munich to Berlin than it was
to cover the distance from Munich to Starnberg a hundred years ago. In view of
the modern means of transport, the whole territory of the Reich today is
smaller than that of certain German federal states at the time of the
Napoleonic wars. To close one's eyes to the consequences of these facts means
to live in the past. There always were, there are and always will be, men who
do this. They may retard but they cannot stop the revolutions of history.
We, National Socialists, must not allow the consequences of that
truth to pass by us unnoticed. In these matters also we must not permit
ourselves to be misled by the phrases of our so-called national bourgeois
parties. I say 'phrases', because these same parodies do not seriously believe
that it is possible for them to carry out their proposals, and because they
themselves are the chief culprits and also the accomplices responsible for the
present state of affairs. Especially in Bavaria, the demands for a halt in the
process of centralization can be no more than a party move behind which there
is no serious idea. If these parties ever had to pass from the realm of
phrase-making into that of practical deeds they would present a sorry
spectacle. Every so-called 'Robbery of Sovereign Rights' from Bavaria by the
Reich has met with no practical resistance, except for some fatuous barking by
way of protest. Indeed, when anyone seriously opposed the madness that was
shown in carrying out this system of centralization he was told by those same
parties that he understood nothing of the nature and needs of the State today.
They slandered him and pronounced him anathema and persecuted him until he was
either shut up in prison or illegally deprived of the right of public speech.
In the light of these facts our followers should become all the more convinced
of the profound hypocrisy which characterizes these so-called federalist
circles. To a certain extent they use the federalist doctrine just as they use
the name of religion, merely as a means of promoting their own base party
interests.
A certain unification, especially in the field of
transport., appears logical. But we, National Socialists, feel it our duty to
oppose with all our might such a development in the modern State, especially
when the measures proposed are solely for the purpose of screening a disastrous
foreign policy and making it possible. And just because the present Reich has
threatened to take over the railways, the posts, the finances, etc., not from
the high standpoint of a national policy, but in order to have in its hands the
means and pledges for an unlimited policy of fulfilment – for that reason we,
National Socialists, must take every step that seems suitable to obstruct and,
if possible, definitely to prevent such a policy. We must fight against the
present system of amalgamating institutions that are vitally important for the
existence of our people, because this system is being adopted solely to
facilitate the payment of milliards and the transference of pledges to the
stranger, under the post-War provisions which our politicians have accepted.
For these reasons also the National Socialist Movement has to take
up a stand against such tendencies.
Moreover, we must oppose such centralization because in
domestic affairs it helps to reinforce a system of government which in all its
manifestations has brought the greatest misfortunes on the German nation. The
present Jewish-Democratic Reich, which has become a veritable curse for the
German people, is seeking to negative the force of the criticism offered by all
the federal states which have not yet become imbued with the spirit of the age,
and is trying to carry out this policy by crushing them to the point of
annihilation. In face of this we National Socialists must try to ground the
opposition of the individual states on such a basis that it will be able to
operate with a good promise of success. We must do this by transforming the
struggle against centralization into something that will be an expression of
the higher interests of the German nation as such. Therefore, while the
Bavarian Populist Party, acting from its own narrow and particularist
standpoint, fights to maintain the 'special rights' of the Bavarian State, we
ought to stand on quite a different ground in fighting for the same rights. Our
grounds ought to be those of the higher national interests in opposition to the
November Democracy.
A still further reason for opposing a centralizing process
of that kind arises from the certain conviction that in great part this
so-called nationalization does not make for unification at all and still less
for simplification. In many cases it is adopted simply as a means of removing
from the sovereign control of the individual states certain institutions which
they wish to place in the hands of the revolutionary parties. In German History
favouritism has never been of so base a character as in the democratic
republic. A great portion of this centralization today is the work of parties
which once promised that they would open the way for the promotion of talent,
meaning thereby that they would fill those posts and offices entirely with
their own partisans. Since the foundation of the Republic the Jews especially
have been obtaining positions in the economic institutions taken over by the
Reich and also positions in the national administration, so that the one and
the other have become preserves of Jewry.
For tactical reasons, this last consideration obliges us
to watch with the greatest attention every further attempt at centralization
and fight it at each step. But in doing this our standpoint must always be that
of a lofty national policy and never a pettifogging particularism.
This last observation is necessary, lest an opinion might arise among
our own followers that we do not accredit to the Reich the right of
incorporating in itself a sovereignty which is superior to that of the
constituent states. As regards this right we cannot and must not entertain the
slightest doubt. Because for us the State is nothing but a form. Its substance,
or content, is the essential thing. And that is the nation, the people. It is
clear therefore that every other interest must be subordinated to the supreme
interests of the nation. In particular we cannot accredit to any other state a
sovereign power and sovereign rights within the confines of the nation and the
Reich, which represents the nation. The absurdity which some federal states
commit by maintaining 'representations' abroad and corresponding foreign
'representations' among themselves – that must cease and will cease. Until this
happens we cannot be surprised if certain foreign countries are dubious about
the political unity of the Reich and act accordingly. The absurdity of these
'representations' is all the greater because they do harm and do not bring the
slightest advantage. If the interests of a German abroad cannot be protected by
the ambassador of the Reich, much less can they be protected by the minister
from some small federal state which appears ridiculous in the framework of the
present world order. The real truth is that these small federal states are
envisaged as points of attack for attempts at secession, which prospect is
always pleasing to a certain foreign State. We, National Socialists, must not
allow some noble caste which has become effete with age to occupy an
ambassadorial post abroad, with the idea that by engrafting one of its withered
branches in new soil the green leaves may sprout again. Already in the time of
the old Reich our diplomatic representatives abroad were such a sorry lot that
a further trial of that experience would be out of the question.
It is certain that in the future the importance of the
individual states will be transferred to the sphere of our cultural policy. The
monarch who did most to make Bavaria an important centre was not an obstinate
particularist with anti-German tendencies, but Ludwig I who was as much devoted
to the ideal of German greatness as he was to that of art. His first
consideration was to use the powers of the state to develop the cultural
position of Bavaria and not its political power. And in doing this he produced
better and more durable results than if he had followed any other line of
conduct. Up to this time Munich was a provincial residence town of only small
importance, but he transformed it into the metropolis of German art and by
doing so he made it an intellectual centre which even today holds Franconia to
Bavaria, though the Franconians are of quite a different temperament. If Munich
had remained as it had been earlier, what has happened in Saxony would have
been repeated in Bavaria, with the diAerence that Leipzig and Bavarian Nürnberg
would have become, not Bavarian but Franconian cities. It was not the cry of
"Down with Prussia" that made Munich great. What made this a city of importance
was the King who wished to present it to the German nation as an artistic jewel
that would have to be seen and appreciated, and so it has turned out in fact.
Therein lies a lesson for the future. The importance of the individual states
in the future will no longer lie in their political or statal power. I look to
them rather as important ethnical and cultural centres. But even in this
respect time will do its levelling work. Modern travelling facilities shuffle
people among one another in such a way that tribal boundaries will fade out and
even the cultural picture will gradually become more of a uniform pattern.
The army must definitely be kept clear of the influence of the
individual states. The coming National Socialist State must not fall back into
the error of the past by imposing on the army a task which is not within its
sphere and never should have been assigned to it. The German army does not
exist for the purpose of being a school in which tribal particularisms are to
be cultivated and preserved, but rather as a school for teaching all the
Germans to understand and adapt their habits to one another. Whatever tends to
have a separating influence in the life of the nation ought to be made a
unifying influence in the army. The army must raise the German boy above the
narrow horizon of his own little native province and set him within the broad
picture of the nation. The youth must learn to know, not the confines of his
own region but those of the fatherland, because it is the latter that he will
have to defend one day. It is therefore absurd to have the German youth do his
military training in his own native region. During that period he ought to
learn to know Germany. This is all the more important today, since young
Germans no longer travel on their own account as they once used to do and thus
enlarge their horizon. In view of this, is it not absurd to leave the young
Bavarian recruit at Munich, the recruit from Baden at Baden itself and the
Württemberger at Stuttgart and so on? And would it not be more reasonable to
show the Rhine and the North Sea to the Bavarian, the Alps to the native of
Hamburg and the mountains of Central Germany to the boy from East Prussia? The
character proper to each region ought to be maintained in the troops but not in
the training garrisons. We may disapprove of every attempt at unification but
not that of unifying the army. On the contrary, even though we should wish to
welcome no other kind of unification, this must be greeted with joy. In view of
the size of the present army of the Reich, it would be absurd to maintain the
federal divisions among the troops. Moreover, in the unification of the German
army which has actually been effected we see a fact which we must not renounce
but restore in the future national army.
Finally a new and triumphant idea should burst every chain
which tends to paralyse its efforts to push forward. National Socialism must
claim the right to impose its principles on the whole German nation, without
regard to what were hitherto the confines of federal states. And we must
educate the German nation in our ideas and principles. As the Churches do not
feel themselves bound or limited by political confines, so the National
Socialist Idea cannot feel itself limited to the territories of the individual
federal states that belong to our Fatherland.
The National Socialist doctrine is not handmaid to the
political interests of the single federal states. One day it must become
teacher to the whole German nation. It must determine the life of the whole
people and shape that life anew. For this reason we must imperatively demand
the right to overstep boundaries that have been traced by a political
development which we repudiate.
The more completely our ideas triumph, the more liberty
can we concede in particular affairs to our citizens at home.