In this episode, we delve into the tumultuous period of World War I and its aftermath, focusing on the role of propaganda and the internal decay within Germany. The narrative highlights the lack of effective counter-propaganda from the German side and the psychological impact of enemy propaganda on German soldiers. The episode also explores the societal and political conditions in Germany during and after the war, including the influence of Marxism, the role of the press, and the cultural decline that preceded the collapse of the German Empire.
The discussion extends to the broader implications of these events, examining the moral and cultural decay that contributed to Germany's downfall. The episode critiques the educational system, the influence of the press, and the societal shifts that led to a weakened national identity. It also touches on the rise of new political movements and the challenges faced in rebuilding a nation amidst internal and external pressures. This episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the factors leading to Germany's defeat and the subsequent political and cultural upheaval.
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File 40. Chapter seven. The revolution. In 1915, the enemy started his propaganda among our soldiers. From 1916 onwards, it steadily became more intensive. And at the beginning of 1918, it had swollen into a storm flood. One could now judge the effects of this proselytizing movement step by step. Gradually, our soldiers began to think just in the way the enemy wished them to think. On the German side, there was no counter propaganda. At that time, the army authorities under our able and resolute commander were willing and ready to take up the fight in the propaganda domain also, but, unfortunately, they did not have the necessary means to carry that intention into effect.
Moreover, the army authorities would have made a psychological mistake had they undertaken the task of mental training. To be efficacious, it had come from the home front. For only thus could it be successful among men who for nearly four years now had been performing immortal deeds of heroism and undergoing all sorts of privations for the sake of that home. But what were the people at home doing? Was their failure to act merely due to unintelligence or bad faith? In the mid summer of nineteen eighteen, after the evacuation of the southern bank of the Hearne, the German press adopted a policy which was so woefully inopportune and even criminally stupid that I used to ask myself a question which made me more and more furious day after day.
Is it really true that we have nobody who will dare to put an end to this process of spiritual sabotage, which is being carried on amongst our heroic troops? What happened in France during those days of 1914, when our armies invaded that country and were marching in triumph from one victory to another? What happened in Italy when their armies collapsed on the Isonzo Front? What happened in France again during the 1918 when the German divisions took the main French positions by storm and heavy long distance artillery bombarded Paris.
How they whipped up the flagging courage of those troops who were retreating and fanned the fires of national enthusiasm among them. How their propaganda and their marvelous aptitude in the exercise of mass influence reawakened the fighting spirit in that broken front, and hammered into the heads of the soldiers a firm belief in final victory. Meanwhile, what were our people doing in this sphere? Nothing. Or even worse than nothing. Again and again, I used to become enraged and indignant as I read the latest papers and realized the nature of the mass murder they were committing through their influence on the minds of the people and the soldiers.
More than once, I was tormented by the thought that if providence had put the conduct of German propaganda into my hands instead of into the hands of those incompetent and even criminal ignoramuses and weaklings, the outcome of the struggle might have been different. During those months, I felt for the first time that fate was dealing adversely with me and keeping me on the fighting front and in a position where any chance bullet from some nigger or other might finish me, whereas I could have done the fatherland a real service in another sphere. For I was then presumptuous enough to believe that I would have been successful in managing the propaganda business.
But I was a being without a name, one among eight millions. Hence, it was better for me to keep my mouth shut and do my duty as well as I could in the position to which I had been assigned. In the summer of nineteen fifteen, the first enemy leaflets were dropped on our trenches. They all told more or less the same story with some variations in the form of it. The story was that distress was steadily on the increase in Germany, that the war would last indefinitely, that the prospect of victory for us was becoming fainter day after day, that the people at home were yearning for peace, but that militarism and the Kaiser would not permit it, That the world, which knew this very well, was not waging war against the German people, but only against the man who was exclusively responsible, the Kaiser.
That until this enemy of world peace was removed, there could be no end to the conflict. But that when the war was over, the liberal and democratic nations would receive the Germans as colleagues in the league for world peace. This would be done the moment the Prussian militarism had been finally destroyed. To illustrate and substantiate all these statements, the leaflets very often contained letters from home, the contents of which appeared to confirm the enemy's propagandist message. Generally speaking, we only laughed at all these efforts. The leaflets were read, sent to base headquarters, then forgotten until a favorable wind once again blew a fresh contingent into the trenches.
These were mostly dropped from airplanes, which were used especially for that purpose. One feature of this propaganda was very striking. It was that in sections where Bavarian troops were stationed, every effort was made by the enemy propagandists to stir up feeling against the Prussians, assuring the soldiers that Prussia and Prussia alone was the guilty party who was responsible for bringing on and continuing the war, and that there was no hostility whatsoever towards the Bavarians, but that there could be no possibility of coming to their assistance so long as they continued to serve Prussian interests and helped to pull the Prussian chestnuts out of the fire.
This persistent propaganda began to have a real influence on our soldiers in 1915. The feeling against Prussia grew quite noticeable among the Bavarian troops, but those in authority did nothing to counteract it. This was something more than a mere crime of omission. For sooner or later, not only the Prussians were bound to have to atone severely for it, but the whole German nation, and consequently, the Bavarians themselves also. In this direction, the enemy propaganda began to achieve undoubted success from 1916 onwards.
In a similar way, letters coming directly from home had long since been exercising their effect. There was now no further necessity for the enemy to broadcast such letters in leaflet form. And also against this influence from home, nothing was done except a few supremely stupid warnings uttered by the executive government. The whole front was drenched in this poison, which thoughtless women at home sent out without suspecting for a moment that the enemy's chances of final victory were thus strengthened, or that the sufferings of their own men at the front were thus being prolonged and rendered more severe. These stupid letters written by German women eventually cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of our men.
Thus, in 1916, several distressing phenomena were already manifest. The whole front was complaining and grousing, discontented over many things and often justifiably so. While they were hungry and yet patient, and their relatives at home were in distress, in other quarters, there was feasting and revelry. Yes. Even on the front itself, everything was not as it ought to have been in this regard. Even in the early stages of the war, the soldiers were sometimes prone to complain, but such criticism was confined to internal affairs. The man who at one moment groused and grumbled ceased his murmur after a few moments and went about his duty silently as if everything were in order.
The company, which had given signs of discontent a moment earlier, hung on now to its bit of trench defending it tooth and nail as if Germany's fate depended on these few 100 yards of mud and shell holes. The glorious old army was still at its post. A sudden change in my own fortunes soon placed me in a position where I had firsthand experience of the contrast between this old army and the home front. At the September, my division was sent into the Battle of the Somme. For us, this was the first of a series of heavy engagements, and the impression created was that of a veritable inferno rather than war.
Through weeks of incessant artillery bombardment, we stood firm, at times seeding a little ground, but then taking it back again and never giving way. On 10/07/1916, I was wounded, but had the luck of being able to get back to our lines and was then ordered to be sent by ambulance train to Germany. Two years had passed since I had left home, an almost endless period in such circumstances. I could hardly imagine what Germans looked like without uniforms. In the clearing hospital at Hermeus, I was startled when I suddenly heard the voice of a German woman who was acting as nursing sister and talking with one of the wounded men lying near me. Two years.
And then this voice for the first time. The nearer our ambulance train approached the German frontier, the more restless each one of us became. On route, we recognized all these places through which we passed two years before as young volunteers, Brussels, Louvain, Liege. And finally, we thought we recognized the first German homestead with its familiar high gables and picturesque window shutters. Home. What a change. From the mud of the som battlefields to the spotless white beds in this wonderful building. One hesitated at first before entering them. It was only by slow stages that one could grow accustomed to this new world again.
But, unfortunately, there were certain other aspects also in which this new world was different. The spirit of the army at the front appeared to be out of place here. For the first time, I encountered something which up to then was unknown at the front, namely, boasting of one's own cowardice. For though we certainly heard complaining and grousing at the front, this was never in the spirit of any agitation to insubordination and certainly not an attempt to glorify one's fear. No. There at the front, a coward was a coward and nothing else. And the contempt, which his weakness aroused in the others, was quite general, just as the real hero was admired all around.
But here, in hospital, the spirit was quite different in some respects. Loud mouthed agitators were busy here in heaping ridicule on the good soldier and painting the weak kneed poltroon in glorious colors. A couple of miserable human specimens were the ringleaders in this process of defamation. One of them boasted of having intentionally injured his hand in barbed wire entanglements in order to get sent to hospital. Although his wound was only a slight one, it appeared that he had been here for a very long time and would be here interminably. Some arrangement for him seemed to be worked by some sort of swindle just as he got sent here in the ambulance train through a swindle.
This pestilential specimen actually had the audacity to parade his knavery as the manifest station of a courage which was superior to that of the brave soldier who dies a hero's death. There were many who heard this talk in silence, but there were others who expressed their assent to what the fellow said. Personally, I was disgusted at the thought that a seditious agitator of this kind should be allowed to remain in such an institution. What could be done? The hospital authorities here must have known who and what he was, and, actually, they did know, but still they did nothing about it.
As soon as I was able to walk once again, I obtained leave to visit Berlin. Bitter want was in evidence everywhere. The metropolis, with its teeming millions, was suffering from hunger. The talk that was current in the various places of refreshment and hospices visited by the soldiers was much the same as that in our hospital. The impression given was that these agitators purposely singled out such places in order to spread their views. But in Munich, conditions were far worse. File 41. After my discharge from hospital, I was sent to a reserve battalion there.
I felt as in some strange town. Anger, discontent, complaints met one's ears wherever one went. To a certain extent, this was due to the infinitely maladroit manner in which the soldiers who had returned from the front were treated by the noncommissioned officers who had never seen a day's active service, and who, on that account, were partly incapable of adopting the proper attitude towards the old soldiers. Naturally, those old soldiers displayed certain characteristics which had been developed from the experiences in the trenches. The officers of the reserve units could not understand these peculiarities, whereas the officer home from active service was at least in a position to understand them for himself.
As a result, he received more respect from the men than officers at the home headquarters. But apart from all this, the general spirit was deplorable. The art of shirking was looked upon as almost a proof of higher intelligence, and devotion to duty was considered a sign of weakness or bigotry. Government offices were staffed by Jews. Almost every clerk was a Jew, and every Jew was a clerk. I was amazed at this multitude of combatants who belong to the chosen people and could not help comparing it with their slender numbers in the fighting lines. In the business world, the situation was even worse.
Here, the Jews had actually become indispensable. Like leeches, they were slowly sucking the blood from the pores of the national body. By means of newly floated war companies, an instrument had been discovered whereby all national trade was throttled so that no business could be carried on freely. Special emphasis was laid on the necessity for unhampered centralization. Hence, as early as 1916 to '17, practically all production was under the control of Jewish finance. But against whom was the anger of the people directed? It was then that I already saw the fateful day approaching, which must finally bring the debacle, unless timely preventive measures were taken.
While jury was busily despoiling the nation and tightening the screws of its despotism, the work of inciting the people against the Prussians increased. And just as nothing was done at the front to put a stop to the venomous propaganda, so here at home, no official steps were taken against it. Nobody seemed capable of understanding that the collapse of Prussia could never bring about the rise of Bavaria. On the contrary, the collapse of the one must necessarily drag the other down with it. This kind of behavior affected me very deeply.
In it, I could see only a clever Jewish trick for diverting public attention from themselves to others. While Prussians and Bavarians were squabbling, the Jews were taking away the sustenance of both from under their very noses. While Prussians were being abused in Bavaria, the Jews organized the revolution, and with one stroke, smashed both Prussia and Bavaria. I could not tolerate this execrable squabbling among people of the same German stock and preferred to be at the front once again. Therefore, just after my arrival in Munich, I reported myself for service again.
At the March, I rejoined my old regiment at the front. Towards the end of nineteen seventeen, it seemed as if we had got over the worst phases of moral depression at the front. After the Russian collapse, the whole army recovered its courage and hope, and all were gradually becoming more and more convinced that the struggle would end in our favor. We could sing once again. The ravens were ceasing to croak. Faith in the future of the fatherland was once more in the ascendant. The Italian collapse in the 1917 had a wonderful effect, for this victory proved that it was possible to break through another front besides the Russian.
This inspiring thought now became dominant in the minds of millions at the front and encouraged them to look forward with confidence to the spring of nineteen eighteen. It was quite obvious that the enemy was in a state of depression. During this winter, the front was somewhat quieter than usual, but that was the calm before the storm. Just when preparations were being made to launch a final offensive which would bring this seemingly eternal struggle to an end, while endless columns of transports were bringing men and munitions to the front, And while the men were being trained for that final onslaught, then it was that the greatest act of treachery during the whole war was accomplished in Germany.
Germany must not win the war. At that moment, when victory seemed ready to alight on the German standards, a conspiracy was arranged for the purpose of striking at the heart of the German spring offensive with one blow from the rear and thus making victory impossible. A general strike in the munition factories was organized. If this conspiracy could achieve its purpose, the German front would have collapsed, and the wishes of the, the organ of the social democratic party, that this time victory should not take the side of the German banners would have been fulfilled.
For want of munitions, the front would be broken through within a few weeks. The offensive would be effectively stopped, and the entente saved. Then international finance would assume control over Germany, and the internal objective of the Marxist national betrayal would be achieved. That objective was the destruction of the national economic system and the establishment of international capitalistic domination in its stead. And this goal has really been reached thanks to the stupid credulity of the one side and the unspeakable treachery of the other.
The munitions strike, however, did not bring the final success that had been hoped for, namely to starve the front of ammunition. It lasted too short a time for the lack of ammunitions as such to bring disaster to the army as was originally planned, but the moral damage was much more terrible. In the first place, what was the army fighting for if the people at home did not wish it to be victorious? For whom then were these enormous sacrifices and privations being made and endured? Must the soldiers fight for victory while the home front goes on strike against it? In the second place, what effect did this move have on the enemy?
In the 1917 to 1918, dark clouds hovered in the firmament of the entente. For nearly four years, onslaught after onslaught has been made against the German giant, but they failed to bring him to the ground. He had to keep them at bay with one arm that held the defensive shield because his other arm had to be free to wield the sword against his enemies, now in the East and now in the South. But at last, these enemies were overcome, and his rear was now free for the conflict in the West. Rivers of blood had been shed for the accomplishment of that task, but now the sword was free to combine in battle with the shield on the western front.
And since the enemy had hitherto failed to break the German defense here, the Germans themselves had now to launch the attack. The enemy feared and trembled before the prospect of this German victory. At Paris and London, conferences followed one another in an ending series. Even the enemy propaganda encountered difficulties. It was no longer so easy to demonstrate that the prospect of a German victory was hopeless. A prudent silence reigned at the front, even among the troops of the entente. The insolence of their masters had suddenly subsided.
A disturbing truth began to dawn on them. Their opinion of the German soldier had changed. Hitherto, they were able to picture him as a kind of fool whose end would be destruction. But now they found themselves face to face with the soldier who had overcome their Russian ally. The policy of restricting the offensive to the east, which had been imposed on the German military authorities by the necessities of the situation, now seemed to the entente as a tactical stroke of genius. For three years, these Germans had been battering away at the Russian front without any apparent success at first. Those fruitless efforts were almost sneered at.
For it was thought that in the long run, the Russian giant would triumph through sheer force of numbers. Germany would be worn out through shedding so much blood, and facts appeared to confirm this hope. Since the September of 1914, when for the first time, interminable columns of Russian war prisoners poured into Germany after the battle of Tannenberg, it seemed as if the stream would never end, but that as soon as one army was defeated and routed, another would take its place. The supply of soldiers which the gigantic empire placed at the disposal of the tsar seemed inexhaustible.
New victims were always at hand for the holocaust of war. How long could Germany hold out in this competition? Would not the day finally have to come when after the last victory which Germans would achieve, there would still remain reserve armies in Russia to be mustered for the final battle? And what then? According to human standards, a Russian victory over Germany might be delayed, but it would have to come in the long run. File 42. All the hopes that had been based on Russia were now lost. The ally who had sacrificed the most blood on the altar of their mutual interests had come to the end of his resources and lay prostrate before his unrelenting foe.
A feeling of terror and dismay came over the entente soldiers, who had hitherto been buoyed up by blind faith. They feared the coming spring, For seeing that hitherto they had failed to break the Germans when the latter could concentrate only part of the fighting strength on the Western front, how could they count on victory now that the undivided forces of that amazing land of heroes appeared to be gathering for a mass attack in the West? The shadow of the events which had taken place in South Tyrol, the specter of general Cadorna's defeated armies were reflected in the gloomy faces of the entente troops in Flanders.
Faith and victory gave way to fear of defeat to come. Then on those cold nights, when one almost heard the tread of the German armies advancing to the great assault, and the decision was being awaited in fear and trembling. Suddenly, a lurid light was set aglow in Germany and sent its rays into the last shell hole on the enemy's front. At the very moment when the German divisions were receiving their final orders for the great offensive, a general strike broke out in Germany. At first, the world was dumbfounded. Then the enemy propaganda began activities once again and pounced on this theme at the eleventh hour.
All of a sudden, a means had come which could be utilized to revive the sinking confidence of the Entente soldiers. The probabilities of victory could now be presented as certain, and the anxious foreboding in regard to coming events could now be transformed into a feeling of resolute assurance. The regiments that had to bear the brunt of the greatest German onslaught in history could now be inspired with the conviction that the final decision in this war would not be won by the audacity of the German assault, but rather by the powers of endurance on the side of the defense.
Let the Germans now have whatever victories they liked. The revolution and not the victorious army was welcomed in the fatherland. British, French, and American newspapers began to spread this belief among their readers, while a very ably managed propaganda encouraged the morale of their troops at the front. Germany facing revolution. An allied victory inevitable. That was the best medicine to set the staggering and Tommy on their feet once again. Our rifles and machine guns could now open fire once again. But instead of effecting a panic stricken retreat, they were now met with a determined resistance that was full of confidence.
That was the result of the strike in the munitions factories. Throughout the enemy countries, faith in victory was thus revived and strengthened. And that paralyzing feeling of despair, which had hitherto made itself felt on the front, was banished. Consequently, the strike cost the lives of thousands of German soldiers, but the despicable instigators of that dastardly strike were candidates for the highest public positions in the Germany of the revolution. At first, it was apparently possible to overcome the repercussion of these events on the German soldiers. But on the enemy's side, they had a lasting effect.
Here, the resistance had lost all the character of an army fighting for a lost cause. In its place, there was now a grim determination to struggle through to victory. For according to all human rules of judgment, victory would now be assured if the Western Front could hold out against the German offensive even for only a few months. The allied parliaments recognized the possibilities of a better future and voted huge sums of money for the continuation of the propaganda which was employed for the purpose of breaking up the internal cohesion of Germany.
It was my luck that I was able to take part in the first two offensives and in the final offensive. These have left on me the most stupendous impressions of my life. Stupendous because now for the last time, the struggle lost its defensive character and assumed the character of an offensive just as it was in 1914. A sigh of relief went up from the German trenches and dugouts when finally, after three years of endurance in that inferno, the day for the settling of accounts had come. Once again, the lusty cheering of victorious battalions was heard as they hung the last crowns of the immortal laurel on the standards which they consecrated to victory.
Once again, the strains of patriotic song soared upwards to the heavens above the endless columns of marching troops. And for the last time, the lord smiled on his ungrateful children. In the midsummer of nineteen eighteen, a feeling of sultry oppression hung over the front. At home, they were quarreling. About what? We heard a great deal among various units at the front. The war was now a hopeless affair, and only the foolhardy could think of victory. It was not the people, but the capitalists and the monarchy who were interested in carrying on.
Such were the ideas that came from home and were discussed at the front. At first, this gave rise to only very slight reaction. What did universal suffrage matter to us? Is this what we had been fighting for for four years? It was a dastardly piece of robbery thus to filch from the graves of our heroes the ideals for which they had fallen. It was not the slogan, long live universal suffrage, that our troops in Flanders once faced certain death, but with the cry, a small, but by no means an unimportant difference. And the majority of those who were shouting for this suffrage were absent when it came to fighting for it.
All this political rabble was strangers to us at the front. During those days, only a fraction of these parliamentarian gentry were to be seen where honest Germans foregathered. The old soldiers who had fought at the front had little liking for those new war aims of messes, Schiedermann, Bart, Liebknecht, and others. We could not understand why, all of a sudden, the Shirkers should abrogate all executive powers to themselves without having any regard to the army. From the very beginning, I had my own definite personal views. I intensely loathed the whole gang of miserable party politicians who had betrayed the people.
I had long ago realized that the interests of the nation played only a very small part with this disreputable crew, and that what counted with them was the possibility of filling their own empty pockets. My opinion was that those people thoroughly deserved to be hanged because they were ready to sacrifice the peace and, if necessary, allow Germany to be defeated just to serve their own ends. To consider their wishes would mean to sacrifice the interests of the working classes for the benefit of a gang of thieves. To meet their wishes meant that one should agree to sacrifice Germany.
Such too was the opinion still held by the majority of the army, but the reinforcements which came from home were fast becoming worse and worse. So much so that their arrival was a source of weakness rather than of strength to our fighting forces. The young recruits in particular were for the most part useless. Sometimes, it was hard to believe that they were the sons of the same nation that sent its youth into the battles that were fought round Ypres. In August and September, the symptoms of moral disintegration increased more and more rapidly, although the enemy's offensive was not at all comparable to the frightfulness of our own former defensive battles.
In comparison with this offensive, the battles fought on the Somme and in Flanders remained in our memories as the most terrible of all horrors. At the September, my division occupied for the third time those positions which we had once taken by storm as young volunteers. What a memory. Here, we had received our baptism of fire in October and November 1914. With a burning love of the homeland in their hearts and a song on their lips, our young regiment went into action as if going to a dance. The dearest blood was given freely here in the belief that it was shed to protect the freedom and independence of the fatherland.
In July 1917, we set foot for the second time on what we regarded as sacred soil. Were not our best comrades at rest here? Some of them little more than boys. The soldiers who had rushed into death for their country's sake, their eyes glowing with enthusiastic love. The older ones among us who had been with the regiment from the beginning were deeply moved as we stood on this sacred spot where we had sworn loyalty and duty unto death. Three years ago, the regiment had taken this position by storm. Now it was called upon to defend it in a grueling struggle. With an artillery bombardment that lasted three weeks, the English prepared for their great offensive in Flanders.
There the spirits of the dead seemed to live again. The regiment dug itself into the mud, clung to its shell holes and craters, neither flinching nor wavering, but growing smaller in numbers day after day. Finally, the British launched their attack on 07/31/1917. File 43. We were relieved in the August. The regiment had dwindled down to a few companies who staggered back, mud crusted, more like phantoms than human beings. Besides a few 100 yards of shell holes, death was the only reward which the English gained. Now in the autumn of nineteen eighteen, we stood for the third time on the ground we had stormed in 1914.
The village of Comyn, which formerly had served us as a base, was now within the fighting zone. Although little had changed in the surrounding district itself, yet the men had become different somehow or other. They now talk politics. Like everywhere else, the poison from home was having its effect here also. The young drafts succumb to it completely. They had come directly from home. During the night of October, the British opened an attack with gas on the front south of Ypres. They used the yellow gas whose effect was unknown to us, at least from personal experience.
I was destined to experience it that very night. On a hill South of Veric in the evening of October 13, we were subjected for several hours to a heavy bombardment with gas bombs, which continued throughout the night with more or less intensity. About midnight, a number of us were put out of action, some forever. Towards morning, I also began to feel pain. It increased with every quarter of an hour. At about 07:00, my eyes were scorching as I staggered back and delivered the last dispatch I was destined to carry in this war. A few hours later, my eyes were like glowing coals, and all was darkness around me.
I was sent into a hospital at Pasovalk in Pomerania, and there it was that I had to hear of the revolution. For a long time, there had been something in the air which was indefinable and repulsive. People were saying that something was bound to happen within the next few weeks, although I could not imagine what this meant. In the first instance, I thought of a strike similar to the one which had taken place in spring. Unfavorable rumors were constantly coming from the navy, which was said to be in a state of ferment. But this seemed to be a fanciful creation of a few isolated young people.
It is true that at the hospital, they were all talking about the end of the war and hoping that this was not far off, but nobody thought that the decision would come immediately. I was not able to read the newspapers. In November, the general tension increased. Then one day, disaster broke in upon us suddenly and without warning. Sailors came in motor lorries and called on us to rise in revolt. A few Jewboys were the leaders in that combat for the liberty, beauty, and dignity of our national being. Not one of them had seen active service at the front. Through the medium of a hospital for venereal diseases, these three orientals had been sent back home.
Now their red rags were being hoisted here. During the last few days, I had begun to feel somewhat better. The burning pain in the eye sockets had become less severe. Gradually, I was able to distinguish the general outlines of my immediate surroundings, and it was permissible to hope that at least I would recover my sight sufficiently to be able to take up some profession later on. That I would ever be able to draw or design once again was naturally out of the question. Thus, I was on the way to recovery when the frightful hour came.
My first thought was that this outbreak of high treason was only a local affair. I tried to enforce this belief among my comrades. My Bavarian hospital mates in particular were readily responsive. Their inclinations were anything but revolutionary. I could not imagine this madness breaking out in Munich, for it seemed to me that loyalty to the house of Wittelsbach was after all stronger than the will of a few Jews. And so I could not help believing that this was merely a revolt in the navy and that it would be suppressed within the next few days. With the next few days came the most astounding information of my life.
The rumors grew more and more persistent. I was told that what I had considered to be a local affair was in reality a general revolution. In addition to this, from the front came the shameful news that they wished to capitulate. What? Was such a thing possible? On November 10, the local pastor visited the hospital for the purpose of delivering a short address, and that was how we came to know the whole story. I was in a fever of excitement as I listened to the address. The reverend old gentleman seemed to be trembling when he informed us that the house of Hohenzollern should no longer wear the imperial crown, that the fatherland had become a republic, that we should pray to the almighty not to withhold his blessing from the new order of things, and not to abandon our people in the days to come.
In delivering this message, he could not do more than briefly express appreciation of the royal house, its services to Pomerania, to Prussia, indeed to the whole of the German fatherland. And here he began to weep. A feeling of profound dismay fell on the people in that assembly, and I do not think there was a single eye that withheld its tears. As for myself, I broke down completely when the old gentleman tried to resume his story by informing us that we must now end this long war. Because the war was lost, he said, and we were at the mercy of the victor.
The fatherland would have to bear heavy burdens in the future. We were to accept the terms of the armistice and trust to the magnanimity of our former enemies. It was impossible for me to stay and listen any longer. Darkness surrounded me as I staggered and stumbled back to my ward and buried my aching head between the blankets and pillow. I had not cried since the day that I stood beside my mother's grave. Whenever fate dealt cruelly with me in my young days, the spirit of determination within me grew stronger and stronger.
During all those long years of war, when death claimed many a true friend and comrade from our ranks, to me, it would have appeared sinful to have uttered a word of complaint. Did they not die for Germany? And finally, almost in the last few days of that titanic struggle, when the waves of poison gas enveloped me and began to penetrate my eyes, The thought of becoming permanently blind unnerved me. But the voice of conscience cried out immediately, poor miserable fellow, will you start howling when there are thousands of others whose lot is a 100 times worse than yours? And so I accepted my misfortune in silence.
Realizing that this was the only thing to be done and that personal suffering was nothing when compared with the misfortune of one's country. So all had been in vain. In vain, all the sacrifices and privations. In vain, the hunger and thirst for endless months. In vain, those hours that we stuck to our posts, though the fear of death gripped our souls, and in vain the deaths of two millions who fell in discharging this duty. Think of those hundreds of thousands who set out with hearts full of faith in their fatherland and never returned.
Ought not their graves to open so that the spirits of those heroes, bespattered with mud and blood, should come home and take vengeance on those who had so despicably betrayed the greatest sacrifice which a human being can make for his country. Was it for this that the soldiers died in August and September 1914? For this that the volunteer regiments followed the old comrades in the autumn of the same year? Was it for this that those boys of 17 years of age were mingled with the earth of Flanders? Was this meant to be the fruits of the sacrifice which German mothers made for their fatherland when, with heavy hearts, they said goodbye to their sons who never returned?
Has all this been done in order to enable a gang of despicable criminals to lay their hands on the fatherland? Was this then what the German soldier struggled for through sweltering heat and blinding snowstorm, enduring hunger and thirst and cold, fatigued from sleepless nights and endless marches? Was it for this that he lived through an inferno of artillery bombardments, lay gasping and choking during gas attacks, neither flinching nor faltering, but remaining staunch to the thought of defending the fatherland against the enemy. Certainly, these heroes also deserve the epitaph.
Traveler, when you come to Germany, tell the homeland that we lie here, true to the fatherland and faithful to our duty. And at home? But was this the only sacrifice that we had to consider? Was the Germany of the past a country of little worth? Did she not owe a certain duty to her own history? Were we still worthy to partake in the glory of the past? How could we justify this act to future generations? What a gang of despicable and depraved criminals. The more I tried then to glean some definite information of the terrible events that had happened, the more my head became a fire with rage and shame.
What was all the pain I suffered in my eyes compared with this tragedy? The following days were terrible to bear, and the nights still worse. To depend on the mercy of the enemy was a precept which only fools or criminal liars could recommend. During those nights, my hatred increased, hatred for the originators of this dastardly crime. During the following days, my own fate became clear to me. I was forced now to scoff at the thought of my personal future, which hitherto had been the cause of so much worry to me. Was it not ludicrous to think of building up anything on such a foundation?
Finally, it also became clear to me that it was the inevitable that had happened, something which I had feared for a long time, though I really did not have the heart to believe it. Emperor William the second was the first German emperor to offer the hand of friendship to the Marxist leaders, not suspecting that they were scoundrels without any sense of honor. While they held the imperial hand in theirs, the other hand was already feeling for the dagger. There is no such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews.
It must be the hard and fast either or. For my part, I then decided that I would take up political work. File 44. Chapter eight. The beginning of my political activity. Towards the November, I returned to Munich. I went to the depot of my regiment, which was now in the hands of soldiers' councils. As the whole administration was quite repulsive to me, I decided to leave it as soon as I possibly could. With my faithful war comrade Ernst Schmidt, I came to Transtine and remained there until the camp was broken up. In March 1919, we were back again in Munich.
The situation there could not last as it was. It tended irresistibly to a further extension of the revolution. Eisner's death served only to hasten this development and finally led to the dictatorship of the councils or to put it more correctly, to a Jewish hegemony, which turned out to be transitory, but which was the original aim of those who had contrived the revolution. At that juncture, innumerable plans took shape in my mind. I spent whole days pondering on the problem of what could be done. But, unfortunately, every project had to give way before the hard fact that I was quite unknown, and therefore did not even have the first prerequisite necessary for effective action.
Later on, I shall explain the reasons why I could not decide to join any of the parties then in existence. As the new Soviet revolution began to run its course in Munich, my first activities drew upon me the ill will of the central council. In the early morning of 04/27/1919, I was to have been arrested, but the three fellows who came to arrest me did not have the courage to face my rifle and withdrew just as they had arrived. A few days after the liberation of Munich, I was ordered to appear before the inquiry commission, which had been set up in the second infantry regiment for the purpose of watching revolutionary activities.
That was my first incursion into the more or less political field. After another few weeks, I received orders to attend the course of lectures which were being given to members of the army. This course was meant to inculcate certain fundamental principles on which the soldier could base his political ideas. For me, the advantage of this organization was that it gave me a chance of meeting fellow soldiers who were of the same way of thinking and with whom I could discuss the actual situation. We were all more or less firmly convinced that Germany could not be saved from imminent disaster by those who had participated in the November treachery, that is to say the center and the social democrats, and also that the so called bourgeois national group could not make good the damage that had been done even if they had the best intentions.
They lacked a number of requisites without which such a task could never be successfully undertaken. The years that followed have justified the opinions which we held at that time. In our small circle, we discussed the project of forming a new party. The leading ideas which we then proposed were the same as those which were carried into effect afterwards when the German Labor Party was founded. The name of the new movement, which was to be founded, should be such that of itself, it would appeal to the mass of the people. For all our efforts would turn out vain and useless if this condition were lacking.
And that was the reason why we chose the name social revolutionary party, particularly because the social principles of our new organization were indeed revolutionary. But there was also a more fundamental reason. The attention which I had given to economic problems during my earlier years was more or less confined to considerations arising directly out of the social problem. Subsequently, this outlook broadened as I came to study the German policy of the Triple Alliance. This policy was very largely the result of an erroneous valuation of the economic situation together with a confused notion as to the basis on which the future subsistence of the German people could be guaranteed.
All these ideas were based on the principle that capital is exclusively the product of labor, and that just like labor, it was subject to all the factors which can hinder or promote human activity. Hence, from the national standpoint, the significance of capital depended on the greatness and freedom and power of the state, that is to say of the nation, and that it is this dependence alone which leads capital to promote the interests of the state and the nation from the instinct of self preservation and for the sake of its own development. On such principles, the attitude of the state towards capital would be comparatively simple and clear.
Its only object would be to make sure that capital remained subservient to the state and did not allocate to itself the right to dominate national interests. Thus, it could confine its activities within the two following limits. On the one side, to assure a vital and independent system of national economy, and on the other, to safeguard the social rights of the workers. Previously, I did not recognize with adequate clearness the difference between capital, which is purely the product of creative labor, and the existence and nature of capital, which is exclusively the result of financial speculation.
Here, I needed an impulse to set my mind thinking in this direction, but that impulse had hitherto been lacking. The requisite impulse now came from one of the men who delivered lectures in the course I have already mentioned. This was Gottfried Fader. For the first time in my life, I heard a discussion which dealt with the principles of stock exchange capital and capital which was used for loan activities. After hearing the first lecture delivered by Fader, the idea immediately came into my head that I had now found a way to one of the most essential prerequisites for the founding of a new party.
To my mind, Fader's merit consisted in the ruthless and trenchant way in which he described the double character of the capital engaged in stock exchange and loan transaction, laying bare the fact that this capital is ever and always dependent on the payment of interest. In fundamental questions, his statements were so full of common sense that those who criticized him did not deny that, his ideas were sound, but they doubted whether it be possible to put these ideas into practice. To me, this seemed the strongest point in Phaedrus' teaching, though others considered it a weak point.
It is not the business of him who lays down a theoretical program to explain the various ways in which something can be put into practice. His task is to deal with the problem as such, and therefore, he has to look to the end rather than the means. The important question is whether an idea is fundamentally right or not. The question of whether or not it may be difficult to carry it out in practice is quite another matter. When a man whose task it is to lay down the principles of a program or policy begins to busy himself with the questions as to whether it is expedient and practical, instead of confining himself to the statement of the absolute truth.
His work will cease to be a guiding star to those who are looking about for light and leading, and will become merely a recipe for everyday life. The man who lays down the program of a movement must consider only the goal. It is for the political leader to point out the way in which that goal may be reached. The thought of the former will, therefore, be determined by those truths that are everlasting, whereas the activity of the latter must always be guided by taking practical account of the circumstances under which those truths have to be carried into effect.
The greatness of the one will depend on the absolute truth of his idea considered in the abstract, whereas that of the other will depend on whether or not he correctly judges the given realities and how they may be utilized under the guidance of the truths established by the former. The test of greatness as applied to a political leader is the success of his plans and his enterprises, which means his ability to reach the goal for which he sets out. Whereas the final goal set up by the political philosopher can never be reached.
For human thought may grasp truths and picture ends, which it sees like clear crystal, though such ends can never be completely fulfilled because human nature is weak and imperfect. The more an idea is correct in the abstract, and therefore, all the more powerful, the smaller is the possibility of putting it into practice, at least as far as this latter depends on human beings. The significance of a political philosopher does not depend on the practical success of the plans he lays down, but rather on their absolute truth and the influence they exert on the progress of mankind. If it were otherwise, the founders of religions could not be considered as the greatest men who have ever lived because their moral aims will never be completely or even approximately carried out in practice.
Even that religion, which is called the religion of love, is really no more than a faint reflex of the will of its sublime founder. But its significance lies in the orientation which it endeavored to give to human civilization and human virtue and morals. This very wide difference between the functions of a political philosopher and a practical political leader is the reason why the qualifications necessary for both functions are scarcely ever found associated in the same person. This applies especially to the so called successful politician of the smaller kind whose activity is indeed hardly more than practicing the art of doing the possible as Bismarck modestly defined the art of politics in general.
If such a politician resolutely avoids great ideas, his success will be all the easier to attain. It will be attained more expeditely and frequently will be more tangible. By reason of this very fact, however, such success is doomed to futility and sometimes does not even survive the death of its author. Generally speaking, the work of politicians is without significance for the following generation because their temporary success was based on the expediency of avoiding all really great decisive problems and ideas which would be valid also for future generations.
File 45. To pursue ideals which will still be of value and significance for the future is generally not a very profitable undertaking. And he who follows such a course is only very rarely understood by the masses of the people who find beer and milk a more persuasive index of political values than far sighted plans for the future, the realization of which can only take place later on, and the advantages of which can be reaped only by posterity. Because of a certain vanity, which is always one of the blood relations of unintelligence, the general run of politicians will always eschew those schemes for the future which are really difficult to put into practice, and they will practice this avoidance so that they may not lose the immediate favor of the mob.
The importance and success of such politicians belong exclusively to the present and will be of no consequence for the future. But that does not worry small minded people. They are quite content with momentary results. The position of the constructive political philosopher is quite different. The importance of his work must always be judged from the standpoint of the future, and he is frequently described by the word or dreamer. While the ability of the politician consists in mastering the art of the possible, The founder of a political system belongs to those who are said to please the gods only because they wish for and demand the impossible.
They will always have to renounce contemporary fame. But if their ideas be immortal, posterity will grant them its acknowledgment. Within long spans of human progress, it may occasionally happen that the practical politician and political philosopher are one. The more intimate this union is, the greater will be the obstacles which the activity of the politician will have to encounter. Such a man does not labor for the purpose of satisfying demands that are obvious to every Philistine, but he reaches out towards ends which can be understood only by the few. His life is torn asunder by hatred and love.
The protest of his contemporaries, who do not understand the man, is in conflict with the recognition of posterity for whom he also works. For the greater the work which a man does for the future, the less will he be appreciated by his contemporaries. His struggle will accordingly be all the more severe, and his success all the rarer. When, in the course of centuries, such a man appears who is blessed with success. Then towards the end of his days, he may have a faint prevision of his future fame. But such great men are only the marathon runners of history. The laurels of contemporary fame are only for the brow of the dying hero.
The great protagonists are those who fight for their ideas and ideals despite the fact that they receive no recognition at the hands of their contemporaries. They are the men whose memories will be enshrined in the hearts of the future generations. It seems then as if each individual felt it his duty to make retroactive atonement for the wrong which great men have suffered at the hands of their contemporaries. Their lives and their work are then studied with touching and grateful admiration, especially in dark days of distress. Such men have the power of healing broken hearts and elevating the despairing spirit of a people.
To this group belong not only the genuinely great statesmen, but all the great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great, we have such men as Martin Luther and Richard Wagner. When I heard Gottfried Fader's first lecture on the abolition of the interest servitude, I understood immediately that here was a truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people. The absolute separation of stock exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without, at the same time, attacking capital as such.
For to do this would jeopardize the foundations of our national independence. I clearly saw what was developing in Germany, and I realized then that the stiffest fight we would have to wage would not be against the enemy nations, but against international capital. In Federer's speech, I found an effective rallying cry for our coming struggle. Here, again, later events proved how correct was the impression we then had. The fools among our bourgeois politicians do not mock at us on this point anymore, For even those politicians now see, if they would speak the truth, that international stock exchange capital was not only the chief instigating factor in bringing on the war, but that now when the war is over, it turns the peace into a hell.
The struggle against international finance capital and loan capital has become one of the most important points in the program on which the German nation has based its fight for economic freedom and independence. Regarding the objections raised by so called practical people, the following answer must suffice. All apprehensions concerning the fearful economic consequences that would follow the abolition of the servitude that results from interest capital are ill timed. For in the first place, the economic principles hitherto followed have proved quite fatal to the interests of the German people.
The attitude adopted when the question of maintaining our national existence arose vividly recalled similar advice once given by experts. The Bavarian Medical College, for example, on the question of introducing railroads. The fears expressed by that august body of experts were not realized. Those who traveled in the coaches of the new steam horse did not suffer from vertigo. Those who looked on did not become ill, and the hoardings which had been erected to conceal the new invention were eventually taken down. Only those blinds which obscure the vision of the would be experts have remained.
And that will always be. In the second place, the following must be born in mind. Any idea may be a source of danger if it be looked upon as an end in itself, when really, it is only the means to an end. For me and for all genuine national socialists, there is only one doctrine, people and fatherland. What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children, and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the creator.
All ideas and ideals, all teaching, and all knowledge must serve these ends. It is from this standpoint that everything must be examined and turned to practical uses or else discarded. Thus, a theory can never become a mere dead dogma since everything will have to serve the practical ends of everyday life. Thus, the judgment arrived at by Gottfried Federer determined me to make a fundamental study of a question with which I had hitherto not been very familiar. I began to study again, and thus it was that I first came to understand perfectly what was the substance and purpose of the life work of the Jew Karl Marx.
His capital became intelligible to me now for the first time. And in the light of it, I now exactly understood the fight of the social democrats against national economics, a fight which was to prepare the ground for the hegemony of a real international and stock exchange capital. In another direction also, this course of lectures had important consequences for me. One day, I put my name down as wishing to take part in the discussion. Another of the participants thought that he would break a lance for the Jews and entered into a lengthy defense of them.
This aroused my opposition. An overwhelming number of those who attended the lecture supported my views. The consequence of it all was that a few days later, I was assigned to a regiment then stationed at Munich and given a position there as instruction officer. At that time, the spirit of discipline was rather weak amongst those troops. It was still suffering from the aftereffects of the period when the soldiers councils were in control. Only gradually and carefully could a new spirit of military discipline and obedience be introduced in place of voluntary obedience, a term which had been used to express the ideal of military discipline under Kurt Eisner's higgledy piggledy regime.
The soldiers had to be taught to think and feel in a national and patriotic way. In these two directions lay my future line of action. I took up my work with the greatest delight and devotion. Here I was presented with an opportunity of speaking before quite a large audience. I was now able to confirm what I had hitherto merely felt, namely, that I had a talent for public speaking. My voice had become so much better that I could be well understood, at least in all parts of the small hall where the soldiers assembled. No task could have been more pleasing to me than this one.
For now, before being demobilized, I was in a position to render useful service to an institution which had been infinitely dear to my heart, namely the army. I am able to state that my talks were successful. During the course of my lectures, I have led back hundreds and even thousands of my fellow countrymen to their people and their fatherland. I nationalized these troops, and by so doing, I helped to restore general discipline. Here again, I made the acquaintance of several comrades whose thought ran along the same lines as my own, and who later became members of the first group out of which the new movement developed.
File 46. Chapter nine. The German Workers' Party. One day, I received an order from my superiors to investigate the nature of an association which was apparently political. It called itself the German Labor Party and was soon to hold a meeting at which Gottfried Federer would speak. I was ordered to attend this meeting and report on the situation. The spirit of curiosity in which the army authorities then regarded political parties can be very well understood. The revolution had granted the soldiers the right to take an active part in politics, and it was particularly those with the smallest experience who had availed themselves of this right.
But not until the center and the social democratic parties were reluctantly forced to recognize that the sympathies of the soldiers had turned away from the revolutionary parties towards the national movement and the national reawakening Did they feel obliged to withdraw from the army the right to vote and to forbid it all political activity? The fact that the center and Marxism had adopted this policy was instructive because if they had not thus curtailed the rights of the citizen as they described the political rights of the soldiers after the revolution, the government which had been established in November 1918 would have been overthrown within a few years, and the dishonor and disgrace of the nation would not have been further prolonged.
At that time, the soldiers were on the point of taking the best way to rid the nation of the vampires and valleys who served the cause of the entente in the interior of the country. But the fact that the so called national parties voted enthusiastically for the doctrine air policy of the criminals who organized the revolution in November 1918 helped also to render the army ineffective as an instrument of national restoration, and thus showed once again where men might be led by the purely abstract notions accepted by these most gullible people.
The minds of the bourgeois middle classes had become so fossilized that they sincerely believed the army could once again become what it had previously been, namely a rampart of German valor. While the center party and the Marxists intended only to extract the poisonous tooth of nationalism without which an army must always remain just a police force, but can never be in the position of a military organization capable of fighting against the outside enemy. This truth was sufficiently proved by subsequent events. Or did our national politicians believe, after all, that the development of our army could be other than national?
This belief might be possible and could be explained by the fact that during the war, they were not soldiers, but merely talkers. In other words, they were parliamentarians, and as such, they did not have the slightest idea of what was passing in the hearts of those men who remembered the greatness of their own past, and also remembered that they had once been the first soldiers in the world. I decided to attend the meeting of this party, which had hitherto been entirely unknown to me. When I arrived that evening in the guest room of the former Sternaker brewery, which has now become a place of historical significance for us, I found approximately 20 to 25 persons present, most of them belonging to the lower classes.
The theme of Faidher's lecture was already familiar to me, for I had heard it in the lecture course I have spoken of. Therefore, I could concentrate my attention on studying the society itself. The impression it made upon me was neither good nor bad. I felt that here was just another one of these many new societies which were being formed at that time. In those days, everybody felt called upon to found a new party whenever he felt displeased with the course of events and had lost confidence in all the parties already existing. Thus it was that new associations sprouted up all around to disappear just as quickly without exercising any effect or making any noise whatever.
Generally speaking, the founders of such associations did not have the slightest idea of what it means to bring together a number of people for the foundations of a party or a movement. Therefore, these associations disappeared because of their woeful lack of anything like an adequate grasp of the necessities of the situation. My opinion of the German Labour Party was not very different after I had listened to their proceedings for about two hours. I was glad when Fed Air finally came to a close. I had observed enough and was just about to leave when it was announced that anybody who wished was free to open a discussion.
Thereupon, I decided to remain, But the discussion seemed to proceed without anything of vital importance being mentioned when suddenly, a professor commenced to speak. He opened by throwing doubt on the accuracy of what Faire had said. And then after Faire had replied very effectively, the professor suddenly took up his position on what he called the basis of facts. But before this, he recommended the young party most urgently to introduce the secession of Bavaria from Prussia as one of the leading proposals in its program. In the most self assured way, this man kept on insisting that German Austria would join Bavaria and that the peace would then function much better.
He made other similarly extravagant statements. At this juncture, I felt bound to ask for permission to speak and to tell the learned gentleman what I thought. The result was that the honorable gentleman who had last spoken slipped out of his place like a whipped cur without uttering a sound. While I was speaking, the audience listened with an expression of surprise on their faces. When I was just about to say goodnight to the assembly and to leave, a man came after me quickly and introduced himself. I did not grasp the name correctly, but he placed a little book in my hand, which was obviously a political pamphlet, and asked me very earnestly to read it.
I was quite pleased, because in this way, I could come to know about this association without having to attend its tiresome meetings. Moreover, this man, who had the appearance of a workman, made a good impression on me. Thereupon, I left the hall. At that time, I was living in one of the barracks of the second Infantry Regiment. I had a little room which still bore the unmistakable traces of the revolution. During the day, I was mostly out at the quarters of light infantry number forty one or else attending meetings or lectures held at some other branch of the army. I spent only the night at the quarters where I lodged.
Since I usually woke up at about 05:00 every morning, I got into the habit of amusing myself with watching little mice which played around in my small room. I used to place a few pieces of hard bread or crust on the floor and watch the funny little beasts playing around and enjoying themselves with these delicacies. I had suffered so many privations in my own life that I well knew what hunger was, and could only too well picture to myself the pleasure these little creatures were experiencing. So on the morning after the meeting I have mentioned, it happened that about 05:00, I lay fully awake in bed watching the mice playing and vying with each other.
As I was not able to go to sleep again, I suddenly remembered the pamphlet that one of the workers had given me at the meeting. It was a small pamphlet of which this worker was the author. In his little book, he described how his mind had thrown off the shackles of the Marxist and trades union phraseology, and that he had come back to the nationalist ideals. This was the reason why he had entitled his little book, My Political Awakening. The pamphlet secured my attention for the moment, and I began to read, and I read it with interest to the end.
The process here described was similar to that which I had experienced in my own case ten years previously. Unconsciously, my own experiences began to stir again in my mind. During that day, my thoughts returned several times to what I had read, but I finally decided to give the matter no further attention. A week or so later, however, I received a postcard which informed me, to my astonishment, that I had been admitted into the German Labour Party. I was asked to answer this communication and to attend a meeting of the party committee on Wednesday next. This manner of getting members rather amazed me, and I did not know whether to be angry or laugh at it.
Hitherto I had not any idea of entering a party already in existence, but wanted to found one of my own. Such an invitation as I now had received, I looked upon as entirely out of the question for me. I was about to send a written reply when my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to attend the gathering at the date assigned so that I might expound my principles to these gentlemen in person. File 47. Wednesday came. The tavern in which the meeting was to take place was the Alta Rosenbad in the Herrenstrasse, into which apparently only an occasional guest wandered.
This was not very surprising in the year 1919 when the bills of fare even at the larger restaurants were only very modest and scanty in their pretensions, and thus not very attractive to clients. But I had never before heard of this restaurant. I went through the badly lighted guest room, where not a single guest was to be seen, and searched for the door which led to the side room, and there I was face to face with the congress. Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas lamp, I could see four young people sitting round a table, one of them the author of the pamphlet.
He greeted me cordially and welcomed me as a new member of the German Labour Party. I was somewhat taken aback on being informed that actually the national President of the party had not yet come, So I decided that I would keep back my own exposition for the time being. Finally, the president appeared. He was the man who had been chairman of the meeting held in the Sternaker Brewery when Federer spoke. My curiosity was stimulated anew, and I sat waiting for what was going to happen. Now I got at least as far as learning the names of the gentlemen who had been parties to the whole affair. The Reich National President of the Association was a certain Herr Harrer, and the President for the Munich District was Anton Drexler.
The minutes of the previous meeting were read out, and a vote of confidence in the secretary was passed. Then came the treasurer's report. The society possessed a total fund of 7 marks and 50 phoenix, a sum corresponding to 7 shillings and sixpence in English money at par, whereupon the treasurer was assured that he had the confidence of the members. This was now inserted in the minutes. Then letters of reply, which had been written by the chairman, were read, first to a letter received from Kiel, then to one from Dusseldorf, and finally to one from Berlin.
All three replies received the approval of all present. Then the incoming letters were read, one from Berlin, one from Dusseldorf, and one from Kiel. The reception of these letters seemed to cause great satisfaction. This increasing bulk of correspondence was taken as the best and most obvious sign of the growing importance of the German Labour Party. And then? Well, there followed a long discussion of the replies which would be given to these newly received letters. It was all very awful. This was the worst kind of parish pump clubism.
And was I supposed to become a member of such a club? The question of new members was then discussed. That is to say, the question of catching myself in the trap. I now began to ask questions, but I found that apart from a few general principles, there was nothing. No program, no pamphlet, nothing at all in print, no card of membership, Not even a party stamp. Nothing but obvious good faith and good intentions. I no longer felt inclined to laugh. For what else was all this but a typical sign of the most complete perplexity and deepest despair in regard to all political parties, their programs, and views, and activities?
The feeling which had induced these few young people to join in what seemed such a ridiculous enterprise was nothing but the call of the inner voice, which told them, though more intuitively than consciously, that the whole party system, as it had hitherto existed, was not the kind of force that could restore the German nation or repair the damages that had been done to the German people by those who hitherto control the internal affairs of the nation. I quickly read through the list of principles that formed the platform of the party. These principles were stated on typewritten sheets.
Here again, I found evidence of the spirit of longing and searching, but no sign whatever of a knowledge of the conflict that had to be fought. I myself had experienced the feelings which inspired those people. It was the longing for a movement which should be more than a party in the hitherto accepted meaning of that word. When I returned to my room in the barracks that evening, I had formed a definite opinion on this association, and I was facing the most difficult problem of my life. Should I join this party or refuse?
From the side of the intellect alone, every consideration urged me to refuse, but my feelings troubled me. The more I tried to prove to myself how senseless this club was on the whole, the more did my feelings incline me to favor it. During the following days, I was restless. I began to consider all the pros and cons. I had long ago decided to take an active part in politics. The fact that I could do so only through a new movement was quite clear to me, but I had hitherto lacked the impulse to take concrete action. I'm not one of those people who will begin something today and just give it up the next day for the sake of something new.
That was the main reason which made it so difficult for me to decide in joining something newly founded. For this must become the real fulfillment of everything I dreamt, or else it had better not be started at all. I knew that such a decision should bind me forever, and that there could be no turning back. For me, there could be no idle dallying, but only cause to be championed ardently. I had already an instinctive feeling against people who took up everything, but never carried anything through to the end. I loathed these jacks of all trades, and considered the activities of such people to be worse than if they were to remain entirely quiescent.
Fate herself now seemed to supply the finger post that pointed out the way. I should never have entered one of the big parties already in existence and shall explain my reasons for this later on. This ludicrous little formation with its handful of members seemed to have the unique advantage of not yet being fossilized into an organization, and still offered a chance for real personal activity on the part of the individual. Here, it might still be possible to do some effective work. And as the movement was still small, one could all be easier give it the required shape.
Here, it was still possible to determine the character of the movement, the aims to be achieved, and the road to be taken, which would have been impossible in the case of the big parties already existing. The longer I reflected on the problem, the more my opinion developed that just such a small movement would best serve as an instrument to prepare the way for the national resurgence, but that this could never be done by the political parliamentary parties, which were too firmly attached to obsolete ideas or had an interest in supporting the new regime.
What had to be proclaimed here was a new Weltanschlag and not a new election cry. It was, however, infinitely difficult to decide on putting the intention into practice. What were the qualifications which I could bring to the accomplishment of such a task? The fact that I was poor and without resources could, in my opinion, be the easiest to bear, but the fact that I was utterly unknown raised a more difficult problem. I was only one of the millions which chance allows to exist or cease to exist, whom even their next door neighbors will not consent to know. Another difficulty arose from the fact that I had not gone through the regular school curriculum.
The so called intellectuals still look down with infinite superciliousness on anyone who has not been through the prescribed schools and allowed them to pump the necessary knowledge into him. The question of what a man can do is never asked, but rather what has he learned. Educated people look upon any imbecile who is plastered with a number of academic certificates as superior to the ablest young fellow who lacks these precious documents. I could, therefore, easily imagine how this educated world would receive me, and I was wrong only insofar as I then believed men to be, for the most part, better than they proved to be in the cold light of reality. Because of their being as they are, the few exceptions stand out all the more conspicuously.
I learned more and more to distinguish between those who will always be at school and those who will one day come to know something in reality. After two days of careful brooding and reflection, I became convinced that I must take the contemplated step. It was the most fateful decision of my life. No retreat was possible. Thus, I declared myself ready to accept the membership offered to me by the German Labour Party and received a provisional certificate of membership. I was numbered seven. File 48. Chapter 10. Causes of the collar.
The depth of a fall is always measured by the difference between the level of the original position from which a body has fallen and that in which it is now found. The same holds good for nations and states. The matter of greatest importance here is the height of the original level, or rather the greatest height that has been attained before the descent began. For only the profound decline or collapse of that which was capable of reaching extraordinary heights can make a striking impression on the eye of the beholder. The collapse of the second Reich was all the more bewildering for those who could ponder over it and feel the effect of it in their hearts because the Reich had fallen from a height which can hardly be imagined in these days of misery and humiliation.
The second Reich was founded in circumstances of such dazzling splendor that the whole nation had become entranced and exalted by it. Following an unparalleled series of victories, that empire was handed over as the girdon of immortal heroism to the children and grandchildren of the heroes. Whether they were fully conscious of it does not matter. Anyhow, the Germans felt that this empire had not been brought into existence by a series of able political negotiations through parliamentary channels, but that it was different from political institutions founded elsewhere by reason of the nobler circumstances that had accompanied its establishment.
When its foundations were laid, the accompanying music was not the chatter of parliamentary debates, but the thunder and boom of war along the battlefront that encircled Paris. It was thus that an act of statesmanship was accomplished whereby the Germans, princes, as well as people, established the future Reich and restored the symbol of the imperial crown. Bismarck's state was not founded on treason and assassination by deserters and shirkers, but by the regiments that had fought at the front. This unique birth and baptism of fire sufficed of themselves to surround the second empire with an aureole of historical splendor such as few of the older states could lay claim to.
And what an ascension then began? A position of independence in regard to the outside world guaranteed the means of livelihood at home. The nation increased in numbers and in worldly wealth. The honor of the state and therewith the honor of the people as a whole were secured and protected by an army which was the most striking witness of the difference between this new Reich and the old German Confederation. But the downfall of the second empire and the German people has been so profound that they all seem to have been struck dumbfounded and rendered incapable of feeling the significance of this downfall or reflecting on it.
It seems as if people were utterly unable to picture in their minds the heights to which the empire formally attained. So visionary and unreal appears the greatness and splendor of those days in contrast to the misery of the present. Bearing this in mind, we can understand why and how people become so dazed when they try to look back to the sublime past that they forget to look for the symptoms of the great collapse, which must certainly have been present in some form or other. Naturally, this applies only to those for whom Germany was more than merely a place of abode and a source of livelihood. These are the only people who have been able to feel the present conditions as really catastrophic, whereas others have considered these conditions as the fulfillment of what they had looked forward to and hitherto silently wished?
The symptoms of future collapse were definitely to be perceived in those earlier days, although very few made any attempt to draw a practical lesson from their significance. But this is now a greater necessity than it ever was before. For just as bodily ailments can be cured only when their origin has been diagnosed, so also political disease can be treated only when it has been diagnosed. It is obvious, of course, that the external symptoms of any disease can be more readily detected than its internal causes, for these symptoms strike the eye more easily.
This is also the reason why so many people recognize only external effects and mistake them for causes. Indeed, they will sometimes try to deny the existence of such causes. And that is why the majority of people among us recognize the German collapse only in the prevailing economic distress and the results that have followed therefrom. Almost everyone has to carry his share of this burden, and that is why each one looks on the economic catastrophe as the cause of the present deplorable state of affairs. The broad masses of the people see little of the cultural, political, and moral background of this collapse.
Many of them completely lack both the necessary feeling and powers of understanding for it. That the masses of the people should thus estimate the causes of Germany's downfall is quite understandable. But the fact that intelligence sections of the community regard the German collapse primarily as an economic catastrophe and consequently think that a cure for it may be found in an economic solution seems to me to be the reason why hitherto no improvement has been brought about. No improvement can be brought about until it be understood that economics play only a second or third role, while the main part is played by political, moral, and racial factors.
Only when this is understood will it be possible to understand the causes of the present evil and consequently to find the ways and means of remedying them. Therefore, the question of why Germany really collapsed is one of the most urgent significance, especially for a political movement which aims at overcoming this disaster. In scrutinizing the past with a view to discovering the causes of the German breakup, it is necessary to be careful lest we may be unduly impressed by external results that readily strike the eye and thus ignore the less manifest causes of these results.
The most facile and, therefore, the most generally accepted way of accounting for the present misfortune is to say that it is the result of a lost war, and that this is the real cause of the present misfortune. Probably, there are many who honestly believe in this absurd explanation, but there are many more in whose mouths it is a deliberate and conscious falsehood. This applies to all those who are now feeding at the government troughs. For the prophets of the revolution again and again declared to the people that it would be immaterial to the great masses what the result of the war might be.
On the contrary, they solemnly assured the public that it was high finance which was principally interested in a victorious outcome of this gigantic struggle among the nations, but that the German people and the German workers had no interest whatsoever in such an outcome. Indeed, the apostles of world conciliation habitually asserted that far from any German downfall, the opposite was bound to take place, namely the resurgence of the German people once militarism had been crushed. Did not these self same circles sing the praises of the entente, and did they not also lay the whole blame for the sanguinary struggle on the shoulders of Germany?
Without this explanation, would they have been able to put forward the theory that a military defeat would have no political consequences for the German people? Was not the whole revolution dressed up in gala colors as blocking the victorious advance of the German banners, and that thus the German people would be assured its liberty both at home and abroad? Is that not so, you miserable lying rascals? That kind of impudence, which is typical of the Jews, was necessary in order to proclaim the defeat of the army as the cause of the German collapse. Indeed, the Berlin, that organ and mouthpiece of sedition, then wrote on this occasion that the German nation should not be permitted to bring home its banners triumphantly, and yet they attribute our collapse to the military defeat.
Of course, it would be out of the question to enter into an argument with these liars who deny at one moment what they said the moment before. I should waste no further words on them, were it not for the fact that there are many thoughtless people who repeat all this in parrot fashion without being necessarily inspired by any evil motives. But the observations I'm making here are also meant for our fighting followers, seeing that nowadays, one's spoken words are often forgotten and twisted in their meaning. The assertion that the loss of the war was the cause of the German collapse can best be answered as follows.
It is admittedly a fact that the loss of the war was of tragic importance for the future of our country, but that loss was not in itself a cause. It was rather the consequence of other causes That a disastrous ending to this life or death conflict must have involved catastrophes in its train was clearly seen by everyone of insight who could think in a straightforward manner. But, unfortunately, there were also people whose powers of understanding seemed to fail them at that critical moment, and there were other people who had first questioned that truth and then altogether denied it.
And there were people who, after their secret desire had been fulfilled, were suddenly faced with the subsequent facts that resulted from their own collaboration. Such people are responsible for the collapse and not the lost war, though they now want to attribute everything to this. As a matter of fact, the loss of the war was a result of their activities and not the result of bad leadership, as they would now like to maintain. Our enemies were not cowards. They also know how to die. From the very first day of the war, they outnumbered the German army, and the arsenals and armament factories of the whole world were at their disposal for the replenishment of military equipment.
Indeed, it is universally admitted that the German victories, which had been steadily won during four years of warfare against the whole world, were due to superior leadership, apart, of course, from the heroism of the troops. And the organization was solely due to the German military leadership. That organization and leadership of the German army was the most mighty thing that the world has ever seen. Any shortcomings which became evident were humanly unavoidable. The collapse of that army was not the cause of our present distress. It was itself the consequence of other faults.
But this consequence in its turn ushered in a further collapse, which was more visible. That such was actually the case can be shown as follows. Must a military defeat necessarily lead to such a complete overthrow of the state and nation? Whenever has this been the result of an unlucky war? As a matter of fact, are nations ever ruined by a lost war and by that alone? The answer to this question can be briefly stated by referring to the fact that military defeats are the result of internal decay, cowardice, want of character, and are a retribution for such things.
If such were not the causes, then a military defeat would lead to a national resurgence and bring the nation to a higher pitch of effort. A military defeat is not the tombstone of national life. History affords innumerable examples to confirm the truth of that statement. Unfortunately, Germany's military overthrow was not an undeserved catastrophe, but a well merited punishment, which was in the nature of an eternal retribution. This defeat was more than deserved by us for it represented the greatest external phenomenon of decomposition among a series of internal phenomena, which, although they were visible, were not recognized by the majority of the people who follow the tactics of the ostrich and see only what they want to see.
File 49. Let us examine the symptoms that were evident in Germany at the time that the German people accepted this defeat. Is it not true that in several circles, the misfortunes of the fatherland were even joyfully welcomed in the most shameful manner? Who could act in such a way without thereby meriting vengeance for his attitude? Were there not people who went even further and boasted that they had gone to the extent of weakening the front and causing a collapse? Therefore, it was not the enemy who brought this disgrace upon our shoulders, but rather our own countrymen.
If they suffered misfortune for it afterwards, was that misfortune undeserved? Was there ever a case in history where a people declared itself guilty of a war and that even against the better conscience and its better knowledge? No. And again, no. In the manner in which the German nation reacted to its defeat, we can see that the real cause of our collapse must be looked for elsewhere, and not in the purely military loss of a few positions or the failure of an offensive. For if the front as such had given way and thus brought about a national disaster, then the German nation would have accepted the defeat in quite another spirit.
They would have borne the subsequent misfortune with clenched teeth, or they would have been overwhelmed by sorrow. Regret and fury would have filled their hearts against an enemy into whose hands victory had been given by a chance event or the decree of fate. And in that case, the nation following the example of the Roman senate would have faced the defeated legions on their return and expressed their thanks for the sacrifices that had been made and would have requested them not to lose faith in the empire. Even the capitulation would have been signed under the sway of calm reason, while the heart would have beaten in the hope of the coming revenge.
That is the reception that would have been given to a military defeat, which had to be attributed only to the adverse decree of fortune, there would have been either joy making nor dancing. Cowardice would not have been boasted of, and the defeat would not have been honored. On returning from the front, the troops would not have been mocked at, and the colors would not have been dragged in the dust. But above all, that disgraceful state of affairs could never have arisen which induced a British officer, Colonel Reppington, to declare with scorn, every third German is a traitor.
No. In such a case, this plague would never have assumed the proportions of a veritable flood, which for the past five years has smothered every vestige of respect for the German nation in the outside world. This shows only too clearly how false it is to say that the loss of the war was the cause of the German breakup. No. The military defeat was itself but the consequence of a whole series of morbid symptoms and their causes, which had become active in the German nation before the war broke out. The war was the first catastrophic consequence visible to all of how traditions and national morale had been poisoned and how the instinct of self preservation had degenerated.
These were the preliminary causes which for many years had been undermining the foundations of the nation and the empire. But it remained for the Jews with their unqualified capacity for falsehood and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Leutendorf, they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the fatherland to justice. All this was inspired by the principle, which is quite true in itself, that in the big lie, there is always a certain force of credibility because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily.
And, thus, in the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie. Since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the same impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely that they are a religious community, whereas in reality, they are a race. And what a race. One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. He, Schopenhauer, called the Jew the great master of lies.
Those who do not realize the truth of that statement or do not wish to believe it will never be able to lend a hand in helping truth to prevail. We may regard it as a great stroke of fortune for the German nation that its period of lingering suffering was so suddenly curtailed and transformed into such a terrible catastrophe. For if things had gone on as they were, the nation would have more slowly, but more surely, gone to ruin. The disease would have become chronic, whereas in the acute form of the disaster, it at least showed itself clearly to the eyes of a considerable number of observers.
It was not by accident that man conquered the black plague more easily than he conquered tuberculosis. The first appeared in terrifying waves of death that shook the whole of mankind. The other advances insidiously. The first induces terror. The other, gradual indifference. The result is, however, that men oppose the first with all the energy they were capable of whilst they try to arrest tuberculosis by feeble means. Thus, man has mastered the black plague, while tuberculosis still gets the better of him. The same applies to diseases in nations. So long as these diseases are not of a catastrophic character, the population will slowly accustom itself to them and later succumb.
It is then a stroke of luck, although a bitter one, when fate decides to interfere in this slow process of decay and suddenly brings the victim face to face with the final stage of the disease. More often than not, the result of the catastrophe is that a cure is at once undertaken and carried through with rigid determination. But even in such a case, the essential preliminary condition is always the recognition of the internal causes which are given rise to the disease in question. The important question here is the differentiation of the root causes from the circumstances developing out of them.
This becomes all the more difficult the longer the germs of the disease remain in the national body and the longer they are allowed to become an integral part of that body. It may easily happen that as time goes on, it will become so difficult to recognize certain definite virulent poisons as such that they are accepted as belonging to the national being, or they are merely tolerated as a necessary evil. So the drastic attempts to locate those alien germs are not held to be necessary. During the long period of peace prior to the last war, certain evils were apparent here and there, although with one or two exceptions, very little effort was made to discover their origin.
Here again, these exceptions were first and foremost those phenomena in the economic life of the nation, which were more apparent to the individual than the evil conditions existing in a good many other spheres. There were many signs of decay which ought to have been given serious thought. As far as economics were concerned, the following may be said. The amazing increase of population in Germany before the war brought the question of providing daily bread into a more and more prominent position in all spheres of political and economic thought and action. But, unfortunately, those responsible could not make up their minds to arrive at the only correct solution and preferred to reach their objective by cheaper methods.
Repudiation of the idea of acquiring fresh territory and the substitution for it of the mad desire for the commercial conquest of the world was bound to lead eventually to unlimited and injurious industrialization. The first and most fatal result brought about in this way was the weakening of the agricultural classes, whose decline was proportionate to the increase in the proletariat of the urban areas until finally the equilibrium was completely upset. The big barrier dividing rich and poor now became apparent. Luxury and poverty lived so close to each other that the consequences were bound to be deplorable.
Want and frequent unemployment began to play havoc with the people and left discontent and embitterment behind them. The result of this was to divide the population into political classes. Discontent increased in spite of commercial prosperity. Matters finally reached that stage which brought about the general conviction that things cannot go on as they are, although no one seemed able to visualize what was really going to happen. These were typical and visible signs of the depths which the prevailing discontent had reached. Far worse than these, however, were other consequences which became apparent as a result of the industrialization of the nation.
In proportion to the extent that commerce assumed definite control of the state, money became more and more of a god whom all have to serve and bow down to. Heavenly gods became more and more old fashioned and were laid away in the corners to make room for the worship of mammon. And thus began a period of utter degeneration, which became especially pernicious because it set in at a time when the nation was more than ever in need of an exalted idea, for a critical hour was threatening. Germany should have been prepared to protect with the sword her efforts to win her own daily bread in a peaceful way.
Unfortunately, the predominance of money received support and sanction in the very quarter which ought to have been opposed to it. His majesty, the Kaiser, made a mistake when he raised representatives of the new finance capital to the ranks of the nobility. Admittedly, it may be offered as an excuse that even Bismarck failed to realize the threatening danger in this respect. In practice, however, all ideal virtues became secondary considerations to those of money. For it was clear that having once taken this road, the nobility of the sword would very soon rank second to that of finance. Financial operations succeed easier than war operations.
Hence, it was no longer any great attraction for a true hero or even a statesman to be brought into touch with the nearest Jew banker. Real merit was not interested in receiving cheap decorations, and therefore declined them with thanks. But from the standpoint of good breeding, such a development was deeply regrettable. The nobility began to lose more and more of the racial qualities that were a condition of its very existence, with the result that in many cases, the term plebeian would have been more appropriate. File 50.
A serious state of economic disruption was being brought about by the slow elimination of the personal control of vested interests and the gradual transference of the whole economic structure into the hands of joint stock companies. In this way, labor became degraded into an object of speculation in the hands of unscrupulous exploiters. The depersonalization of property ownership increased on a vast scale. Financial exchange circles began to triumph and made slow but sure progress in assuming control of the whole of national life. Before the war, the internationalization of the German economic structure had already begun by the roundabout way of share issues.
It is true that a section of the German industrialists made a determined effort to avert the danger, but in the end, they gave way before the united attacks of money grabbing capitalism, which was assisted in this fight by its faithful henchmen in the Marxist movement. The persistent war against German heavy industries was the visible start of the internationalization of German economic life as envisaged by the Marxists. This, however, could only be brought to a successful conclusion by the victory which Marxism was able to gain in the revolution.
As I write these words, success is attending the general attack on the German state railways, which are now to be turned over to international capitalists. Thus, international social democracy has once again attained one of its main objectives. The best evidence of how far this commercialization of the German nation was able to go can be plainly seen in the fact that when the war was over, one of the leading captains of German industry and commerce gave it as his opinion that commerce as such was the only force which could put Germany on its feet again. This sort of nonsense was uttered just at the time when France was restoring public education on a humanitarian basis, thus doing away with the idea that national life is dependent on commerce rather than ideal values.
The statement which Dinnis broadcast to the world at that time caused incredible confusion. It was immediately taken up and has become the leading motto of all those humbugs and babblers, the statesmen whom fate let loose on Germany after the revolution. One of the worst evidences of decadence in Germany before the war was the ever increasing habit of doing things by halves. This was one of the consequences of the insecurity that was felt all round, and it is to be attributed also to a certain timidity which resulted from one cause or another. And the latter malady was aggravated by the educational system.
German education in pre war times had an extraordinary number of weak features. It was simply and exclusively limited to the production of pure knowledge and paid little attention to the development of practical ability. Still less attention was given to the development of individual character, insofar as this is ever possible, and hardly any attention at all was paid to the development of a sense of responsibility, to strengthening the will and the powers of decision. The result of this method was to produce erudite people who had a passion for knowing everything. Before the war, we Germans were accepted and estimated accordingly.
The German was liked because good use could be made of him, but there was little esteem for him personally on account of this weakness of character. For those who can read its significance are right, there is much instruction in the fact that among all nationalities, Germans were the first to part with their national citizenship when they found themselves in a foreign country. And there is a world of meaning in the saying that was then prevalent. With the hat in the hand, one can go through the whole country. This kind of social etiquette turned out disastrous when it prescribed the exclusive forms that had to be observed in the presence of his majesty.
These forms insisted that there should be no contradiction whatsoever, but that everything should be praised which his majesty condescended to like. It was just here that the frank expression of manly dignity and not subservience was most needed. Civility in the presence of monarchs may be good enough for the professional lackey and place hunter. In fact, for all those decadent beings who are more pleased to be found moving in the high circles of royalty than among honest citizens. These exceedingly humble creatures, however, though they grovel before their lord and bread giver, invariably put on airs of boundless superciliousness towards other mortals, which was particularly impudent when they posed as the only people who had the right to be called monarchists.
This was a gross piece of impertinence, such as only despicable specimens among the newly ennobled or yet to be ennobled could be capable of. And these have always been just the people who have prepared the way for the downfall of monarchy and the monarchical principle. It could not be otherwise. For when a man is prepared to stand up for a cause, come what may, he never grovels before its representative. A man who is serious about the maintenance and welfare of an institution will not allow himself to be discouraged when the representatives of that institution show certain faults and failings, and he certainly will not run around to tell the world about it as certain false democratic friends of the monarchy have done.
But he will approach his majesty, the bearer of the crown himself, to warn him of the seriousness of a situation and persuade the monarch to act. Furthermore, he will not take up the standpoint that it must be left to his majesty to act as the latter thinks fit, even though the course which he would take must plainly lead to disaster. But the man I am thinking of will deem it his duty to protect the monarchy against the monarch himself, no matter what personal risk he may run-in doing so. If the worth of the monarchical institution be dependent on the person of the monarch himself, then it would be the worst institution imaginable.
For only in rare cases are kings found to be models of wisdom and understanding and integrity of character, though we might like to think otherwise. But this fact is unpalatable to the professional knaves and lackeys. Yet all upright men, and they are the backbone of the nation, Repudiate the nonsensical fiction that all monarchs are wise, etcetera. For such men, history is history, and truth is truth, even where monarchs are concerned. But if a nation should have the good luck to possess a great king or a great man, it ought to consider itself especially favored above all the other nations, and these may be thankful if an adverse fortune has not allotted the worst to them.
It is clear that the worth and significance of the monarchical principle cannot rest in the person of the monarch alone, unless heaven decrees that the crown should be set on the head of a brilliant hero, like Frederick the Great, or a sagacious person like William the First. This may happen once in several centuries, but hardly oftener than that. The ideal of the monarchy takes precedence of the person of the monarch inasmuch as the meaning of the institution must lie in the institution itself. Thus, the monarchy may be reckoned in the category of those whose duty it is to serve. He too is but a wheel in this machine, and as such, he is obliged to do his duty towards it.
He has to adapt himself for the fulfillment of high aims. If, therefore, there were no significance attached to the idea itself and everything merely centered around the sacred person, then it would never be possible to depose a ruler who has shown himself to be an imbecile. It is essential to insist upon this truth at the present time because recently, those phenomena have appeared again and were in no small measure responsible for the collapse of the monarchy. With a certain amount of native impudence, these persons once again talk about their king.
That is to say, the man whom they shamefully deserted a few years ago at a most critical hour. Those who refrain from participating in this chorus of lies are summarily classed as bad Germans. They who make the change are the same class of quitters who ran away in 1918 and took to wearing red badges. They thought that discretion was the better part of valor. They were indifferent about what happened to the Kaiser. They camouflaged themselves as peaceful citizens. But more often than not, they vanished altogether. All of a sudden these champions of royalty were nowhere to be found at that time.
Circumspectly, one by one, these servants and counsellors of the crown reappeared to resume their lip service to royalty, but only after others that had borne the brunt of the anti royalist attack and suppressed the revolution for them. Once again, they were all there, remembering wistfully the flesh pots of Egypt and almost bursting with devotion for the royal cause. This went on until the day came when red badges were again in the ascendant. Then this whole ramshackle assembly of royal worshipers scuttled anew like mice from the cats. If monarchs were not themselves responsible for such things, one could not help sympathizing with them.
But they must realize that with such champions, thrones can be lost that certainly never gained. File 51. All this devotion was a mistake and was the result of our whole system of education, which in this case brought about a particularly severe retribution. Such lamentable trumpery was kept up at the various courts that the monarchy was slowly becoming undermined. When finally it did begin to totter, everything was swept away. Naturally, grovelers and lickspittles are never willing to die for their masters. That monarchs never realize this, and almost on principle never really take the trouble to learn it, has always been their undoing.
One visible result of wrong educational system was the fear of shouldering responsibility and the resultant weakness in dealing with obvious and vital problems of existence. The starting point of this epidemic, however, was in our parliamentary institution where the shirking of responsibility is particularly fostered. Unfortunately, the disease slowly spread to all branches of everyday life, but particularly affected the sphere of public affairs. Responsibility was being shirked everywhere, and this led to insufficient or half hearted measures being taken, personal responsibility for each act being reduced to a minimum.
If we consider the attitude of various governments towards a whole series of really pernicious phenomena in public life, we shall at once recognize the fearful significance of this policy of half measures and the lack of courage to undertake responsibilities. I shall single out only a few from the large numbers of instances known to me. In journalistic circles, it is a pleasing custom to speak of the press as a great power within the state. As a matter of fact, its importance is immense. One cannot easily overestimate it, for the press continues the work of education even in adult life. Generally, readers of the press can be classified into three groups.
First, those who believe everything they read. Second, those who no longer believe anything. And third, those who critically examine what they read and form their judgments accordingly. Numerically, the first group is by far the strongest, being composed of the broad masses of the people. Intellectually, it forms the simplest portion of the nation. It cannot be classified according to occupation, but only into grades of intelligence. Under this category come all those who have not been born to think for themselves or who have not learned to do so, and who, partly through incompetence and partly through ignorance, believe everything that is set before them in print.
To those, we must add that type of lazy individual who, although capable of thinking for himself, out of sheer laziness, gratefully absorbs everything that others had thought over, modestly believing this to have been thoroughly done. The influence which the press has on all these people is therefore enormous, for after all, they constitute the broad masses of a nation. But somehow, they are not in a position or are not willing personally to sift what is being served up to them, so that their whole attitude towards daily problems is almost solely the result of extraneous influence.
All this can be advantageous where public enlightenment is of a serious and truthful character, but great harm is done when scoundrels and liars take a hand at this work. The second group is numerically smaller, being partly composed of those who were formerly in the first group, and after a series of bitter disappointments, are now prepared to believe nothing of what they see in print. They hate all newspapers. Either they do not read them at all, or they become exceptionally annoyed at their contents, which they hold to be nothing but a congeries of lies and misstatements.
These people are difficult to handle, for they will always be skeptical of the truth. Consequently, they are useless for any form of positive work. The third group is easily the smallest being composed of real intellectuals, whom natural aptitude and education have taught to think for themselves and who in all things try to form their own judgments, while at the same time carefully sifting what they read. They will not read any newspaper without using their own intelligence to collaborate with that of the writer, and naturally, this does not set writers an easy task.
Journalists appreciate this type of reader only with a certain amount of reservation. Hence, the trash that newspapers are capable of serving up is of little danger, much less of importance to the members of the third group of readers. In the majority of cases, these readers have learned to regard every journalist as fundamentally a rogue who sometimes speaks the truth. Most unfortunately, the value of these readers lies in their intelligence and not in their numerical strength, an unhappy state of affairs in a period where wisdom counts for nothing and majorities for everything.
Nowadays, when the voting papers of the masses are the deciding factor, the decision lies in the hands of the numerically strongest group. That is to say the first group, the crowd of simpletons and the credulous. It is an all important interest of the state and a national duty to prevent these people from falling into the hands of false, ignorant, or even evil minded teachers. Therefore, it is the duty of the state to supervise their education and prevent every form of offense in this respect. Particular attention should be paid to the press, for its influence on these people is by far the strongest and most penetrating of all since its effect is not transitory, but continual.
Its immense significance lies in the uniform and persistent repetition of its teaching. Here, if anywhere, the state should never forget that all means should converge towards the same end. It must not be led astray by the will of the wisp of so called freedom of the press, or be talked into neglecting its duty and withholding from the nation that which is good and which does good. With ruthless determination, the state must keep control of this instrument of popular education and place it at the service of the state and the nation. But what sort of was it that the German press served up for the consumption of its readers in pre war days?
Was it not the most virulent poison imaginable? Was not pacifism in its worst form inoculated into our people at a time when others were preparing slowly but surely to pounce upon Germany? Did not this self same press of ours in peace time already instill into the public mind a doubt as to the sovereign rights of the state itself, thereby already handicapping the state in choosing its means of defense? Was it not the German press that understood how to make all the nonsensical talk about Western democracy palatable to our people until an exuberant public was eventually prepared to entrust its future to the League of Nations?
Was not this press instrumental in bringing in a state of moral degradation among our people? Were not morals and public decency made to look ridiculous and classed as out of date and banal until finally our people also became modernized? By means of persistent attacks, did not the press keep on undermining the authority of the state until one blow sufficed to bring this institution tottering to the ground? Did not the press suppose with all its might every movement to give the state that which belongs to the state, and by means of constant criticism, injure the reputation of the army, sabotage general conscription, and demand refusal of military credits, etcetera, until the success of this campaign was assured.
The function of the so called liberal press was to dig the grave for the German people and Reich. No mention need be made of the lying Marxist press. To them, the spreading of falsehood is as much a vital necessity as the mouse is to a cat. Their sole task is to break the national backbone of the people, thus preparing the nation to become the slaves of international finance and its masters, the Jews. And what measures did the state take to counteract this wholesale poisoning of the public mind? None. Absolutely nothing at all.
By this policy, it was hoped to win the favor of this pest by means of flattery, by recognition of the value of the press, its importance, its educative mission, and similar nonsense. The Jews acknowledged all this with a knowing smile and returned thanks. The reason for this ignominious failure on the part of the state lay not so much in its refusal to realize the danger as in the out and out cowardly way of meeting the situation by the adoption of faulty and ineffective measures. No one had the courage to employ any energetic and radical methods. Everyone temporized in some way or other, and instead of striking at its heart, the viper was only further irritated.
The result was that not only did everything remain as it was, but the power of this institution, which should have been combated, grew greater from year to year. The defense put up by the government in those days against a mainly Jew controlled press that was slowly corrupting the nation followed no definite line of action. It had no determination behind it, and above all, no fixed objective whatsoever in view. This is where official understanding of the situation completely failed, both in estimating the importance of the struggle, choosing the means, and deciding on a definite plan.
They merely tinkered with the problem. Occasionally, when bitten, they imprisoned one or another journalistic viper for a few weeks or months, but the whole poisonous brood was allowed to carry on in peace. It must be admitted that all this was partly the result of extraordinary crafty tactics on the part of jury on the one hand and obvious officials' stupidity or naivety on the other hand. The Jews were too clever to allow a simultaneous attack to be made on the whole of their press. No. One section functioned as cover for the other. While the Marxist newspaper, in the most despicable manner possible, reviled everything that was sacred, furiously attacked the state and government, and incited certain classes of the community against each other, The bourgeois democratic papers, also when Jewish hands, knew how to camouflage themselves as model examples of objectivity.
They studiously avoided harsh language, knowing well that blockheads are capable of judging only by external appearances, and never able to penetrate to the real depth and meaning of anything. They measure the worth of an object by its exterior and not by its content. This form of human frailty was carefully studied and understood by the press. File 52. For this class of blockheads, the Frankfurt at Zeitung would be acknowledged as the essence of respectability. It always carefully avoided calling a spade a spade. It deprecated the use of every form of physical force and persistently appealed to the nobility of fighting with intellectual weapons.
But this fight, curiously enough, was most popular with the least intellectual classes. That is one of the results of our defective education, which turns the youth away from the instinctive dictates of nature, pumps into them a certain amount of knowledge without, however, being able to bring them to what is the supreme act of knowing. To this end, diligence and goodwill are of no avail if innate understanding fail. This final knowledge at which man must aim is the understanding of causes which are instinctively perceived.
Let me explain. Man must not fall into the error of thinking that he was ever meant to become lord and master of nature. A lopsided education has helped to encourage that illusion. Man must realize that a fundamental law of necessity reigns throughout the whole realm of nature and that his existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife. He will then feel that there cannot be a separate law for mankind in a world in which planets and suns follow their orbits, where moons and planets trace their destined path, where the strong are always the masters of the weak, and where those subject to such laws must obey them or be destroyed.
Man must also submit to the eternal principles of this supreme wisdom. He may try to understand them, but he can never free himself from their sway. It is just for intellectual demi monde that the Jew writes those papers which he calls his intellectual press. For them, the Frankfurt at Zeitung and Berliner Targheeblatt are written, the tone being adapted to them. And it is over these people that such papers have an influence. While studiously avoiding all forms of expression that might strike the reader as crude. The poison is injected from other vials into the hearts of the clientele. The effervescent tone and the fine phraseology lug the readers into believing that a love for knowledge and moral principle is the sole driving force that determines the policy of such papers.
Whereas, in reality, these features represent a cunning way of disarming any opposition that might be directed against the Jews and their press. They make such a parade of respectability that the imbecile readers are all the more ready to believe that the excesses which other papers indulge in are only of a mild nature and not such as to warrant legal action being taken against them. Indeed, such action might trespass on the freedom of the press. That expression being a euphemism under which such papers escape legal punishment for deceiving the public and poisoning the public mind.
Hence, the authorities are very slow indeed to take any steps against these journalistic bandits for fear of immediately all the others rush to its assistance at once. All the others rush to its assistance at once, not indeed to support its policy, but simply and solely to defend the principle of the freedom of the press and liberty of public opinion. This outcry will succeed in cowering the most stalwart for it comes from the mouth of what is called decent journalism. And so this poison was allowed to enter the national bloodstream and infect public life without the government taking any effectual measures to master the course of the disease.
The ridiculous half measures that were taken were in themselves an indication of the process of disintegration that was already threatening to break up the empire. For an institution practically surrenders its existence when it is no longer determined to defend itself with all the weapons at its command. Every half measure is the outward expression of an internal process of decay, which must lead to an external collapse sooner or later. I believe that our present generation would easily master this danger if they were rightly led. For this generation has gone through certain experiences which must have strengthened the nerves of all those who did not become nervously broken by them.
Certainly, in days to come, the Jews will raise a tremendous cry throughout their newspapers once a hand is laid on their favorite nest, once a move is made to put an end to this scandalous press, and once this instrument which shapes public opinion is brought under state control and no longer left in the hands of aliens and enemies of the people. I'm certain that this will be easier for us than it was for our fathers. The scream of the 12 in shrapnel is more penetrating than the hiss from a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers.
Therefore, let them go on with their hissing. A further example of the weak and hesitating way in which vital national problems were dealt with in pre war Germany is the following. Hand in hand with the political and moral process of infecting the nation, for many years, an equally virulent process of infection had been attacking the public health of the people. In large cities, particularly, syphilis steadily increased, and tuberculosis kept pace with it in reaping its harvest of death almost in every part of the country. Although in both cases, the effect on the nation was alarming, it seemed as if nobody was in a position to undertake any decisive measures against these scourges.
In the case of syphilis, especially, the attitude of the state and public bodies was one of absolute capitulation. To combat this state of affairs, something of far wider sweep should have been undertaken than was really done. The discovery of a remedy which is of a questionable nature and the excellent way in which it was placed on the market were only of little assistance in fighting such a scourge. Here again, the only course to adopt is to attack the disease and its causes rather than in its symptoms. But in this case, the primary cause is to be found in the manner in which love has been prostituted.
Even though this did not directly bring about the fearful disease itself, the nation must still suffer serious damage thereby. For the moral havoc resulting from this prostitution would be sufficient to bring about the destruction of the nation slowly but surely. This Judaizing of our spiritual life and mamanizing of our natural instinct for procreation will sooner or later work havoc with our whole posterity. For instead of strong, healthy children blessed with natural feelings, we shall see the miserable specimens of humanity resulting from economic calculation.
For economic considerations are becoming more and more the foundations of marriage and the sole preliminary condition of it, and love looks for an outlet elsewhere. Here, as elsewhere, one may define nature for a certain period of time, but sooner or later, she will take her inexorable revenge. And when man realizes this truth, it is often too late. Our own nobility furnishes an example of the devastating consequences that follow from a persistent refusal to recognize the primary conditions necessary for normal wedlock. Here, we are openly brought face to face with the results of those reproductive habits, which on the one hand are determined by social pressure and on the other, by financial considerations.
The one leads to inherited debility and the other to adulteration of the bloodstream for all the Jewish daughters of the department store proprietors are looked upon as eligible mates to cooperate in propagating his lordship stock, and the stock certainly looks it. All this leads to absolute degeneration. Nowadays, our bourgeois are making efforts to follow in the same path. They will come to the same journey's end. These unpleasant truths are hastily and nonchalantly brushed aside as if by doing so, the real state of affairs could also also be abolished.
But, no, it cannot be denied that the population of our great towns and cities is tending more and more to a veil of prostitution in the exercise of its amorous instincts and is thus becoming more and more contaminated by the scourge of venereal disease. On the one hand, the visible effects of this mass infection can be observed in our insane asylums. And on the other hand, alas, among the children at home. These are the doleful and tragic witnesses to the steadily increasing scourge that is poisoning our sexual life. Their sufferings are the visible results of parental vice.
There are many ways of becoming resigned to this unpleasant and terrible fact. Many people go about seeing nothing or to be more correct, not wanting to see anything. This is by far the simplest and cheapest attitude to adopt. Others cover themselves in the sacred mantle of prudery as ridiculous as it is false. They describe the whole condition of affairs as sinful and are profoundly indignant when brought face to face with a victim. They close their eyes in reverent abhorrence to this godless scourge and pray to the almighty that he, if possible after their own death, may rain down fire and brimstone as on Sodom and Gomorrah, and so once again make an outstanding example of this shameless section of humanity.
Finally, there are those who are well aware of the terrible results which this scourge will and must bring about, but they merely shrug their shoulders, fully convinced of their inability to undertake anything against this peril. Hence, matters are allowed to take their own course. Undoubtedly, all this is very convenient and simple, only it must not be overlooked that this convenient way of approaching things can have fatal consequences for our natural life. The excuse that other nations are also not faring any better does not alter the fact of our own deterioration except that the feeling of sympathy for other stricken nations makes our own suffering easier to bear.
But the important question that arises here is, which nation will be the first to take the initiative in mastering this scourge, and which nations will succumb to it. This will be the final upshot of the whole situation. The present is a period of probation for racial values. The race that fails to come through the test will simply die out, and its place will be taken by the healthier and stronger races, which will be able to endure greater hardships. As this problem primarily concerns posterity, it belongs to that category of which it is said with terrible justification that the sins of the fathers are visited on their offspring unto the tenth generation.
This is a consequence which follows on an infringement of the laws of blood and race. The sin against blood and race is the hereditary sin in this world, and it brings disaster on every nation that commits it. The attitude towards this one vital problem in pre war Germany was most regrettable. What measures were undertaken to arrest the infection of our youth in the large cities? What was done to put an end to the contamination and mammonization of sexual life among us? What was done to fight the resultant spreading of syphilis throughout the whole of our national life? The reply to this question can best be illustrated by showing what should have been done.
Instead of tackling this problem in a haphazard way, the authorities should have realized that the fortunes or misfortunes of future generations depended on its solution. But to admit this would have demanded that active measures be carried out in a ruthless manner. The primary condition would have been that the enlightened attention of the whole country should be concentrated on this terrible danger so that every individual would realize the importance of fighting against it. It would be futile to impose obligations of a definite character, which are often difficult to bear, and expect them to become generally effective unless the public be thoroughly instructed on the necessity of imposing and accepting such obligations.
This demands a widespread and systematic method of enlightenment, and all other daily problems that might distract public attention from this great central problem should be relegated to the background. File 53. In every case where there are exigencies or tasks that seem impossible to deal with successfully, public opinion must be concentrated on the one problem. Under the conviction that the solution of this problem alone is a matter of life or death. Only in this way can public interest be aroused to such a pitch as will urge people to combine in a great voluntary effort and achieve important results. This fundamental truth applies also to the individual, provided he is desirous of attaining some great end.
He must always concentrate his efforts to one definitely limited stage of his progress, which has to be completed before the next step be attempted. Those who do not endeavor to realize their aims step by step and who do not concentrate their energy in reaching the individual stages will never attain the final objective. At some stage or other, they will falter and fail. This systematic way of approaching an objective is an art in itself and always calls for the expenditure of every ounce of energy in order to conquer step after step of the road. Therefore, the most essential preliminary condition necessary for an attack on such a difficult stage of the human road is that the authorities should succeed in convincing the masses that the immediate objective, which is now being fought for, is the only one that deserves to be considered and the only one on which everything depends.
The broad masses are never able clearly to see the whole stretch of the road lying in front of them without becoming tired and thus losing faith in their ability to complete the task. To a certain extent, they will keep the objective in mind, but they are only able to survey the whole road in small stages as in the case of the traveler who knows where his journey is going to end, but who masters the endless stretch far better by attacking it in degrees. Only this way can he keep up his determination to reach the final objective. It is in this way, with the assistance of every form of propaganda, that the problem of fighting venereal disease should be placed before the public, not as a task for the nation, but as the main task.
Every possible means should be employed to bring the truth about this scourge home to the minds of the people until the whole nation has been convinced that everything depends on the solution of this problem. That is to say, a healthy future or national decay. Only after such preparatory measures, if necessary spread over a period of many years, will public attention and public resolution be fully aroused, and only then can serious and definite measures be undertaken without running the risk of not being fully understood or of being suddenly faced with a slackening of the public will.
It must be made clear to all that a serious fight against this scourge calls for vast sacrifices and an enormous amount of work. To wage war against syphilis means fighting against prostitution, against prejudice, against old established customs, against current fashion public opinion, and last but not least, against false prudery in certain circles. The first preliminary condition to be fulfilled before the state can claim a moral right to fight against all these things is that the young generation should be afforded facilities for contracting early marriages.
Late marriages have the sanction of a custom which, from whatever angle we view it, is and will remain a disgrace to humanity. Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity and cannot be removed simply by charitable or academic methods. Its restriction and final extermination presupposes the removal of a whole series of contributory circumstances. The first remedy must always be to establish such conditions as will make early marriages possible, especially for young men. For women are, after all, only passive subjects in this matter. An illustration of the extent to which people have so often been led astray nowadays is afforded by the fact that not infrequently, one hears mothers in so called better circles, openly expressing their satisfaction and having found as a husband for their daughter a man who has already sown his wild oats, etcetera.
As there is usually so little shortage in men of this type, the poor girl finds no difficulty in getting a mate of this description, and the children of this marriage are a visible result of such supposedly sensible unions. When one realizes, apart from this, that every possible effort is being made to hinder the process of procreation and that nature is being willfully cheated of her rights, there remains really only one question. Why is such an institution as marriage still in existence, and what are its functions? Is it really nothing better than prostitution?
Does our duty to posterity no longer play any part, Or do people not realize the nature of the curse they are inflicting upon themselves and their offspring by such criminally foolish neglect of one of the primary laws of nature? This is how civilized nations degenerate and gradually perish. Marriage is not an end in itself, but must serve the greater end, which is that of increasing and maintaining the human species and the race. This is its only meaning and purpose. This being admitted, then it is clear that the institution of marriage must be judged by the manner in which its allotted function is fulfilled.
Therefore, early marriages should be the rule because, thus, the young couple will still have that pristine force, which is the fountainhead of a healthy prosperity with unimpaired powers of resistance. Of course, early marriages cannot be made the rule unless a whole series of social measures are first undertaken without which early marriages cannot be even thought of. In other words, a solution of this question, which seems a small problem in itself, cannot be brought about without adopting radical measures to alter the social background. The importance of such measures ought to be studied and properly estimated, especially at a time when the so called social republic has shown itself unable to solve the housing problem and thus has made it impossible for innumerable couples to get married.
That sort of policy prepares the way for the further advance of prostitution. Another reason why early marriages are impossible is our nonsensical method of regulating the scale of salaries, which pays far too little attention to the problem of family support. Prostitution, therefore, can only be really seriously tackled if by means of a radical social reform, early marriage is made easier than hitherto. This is the first preliminary necessity for the solution of this problem. Secondly, a whole series of false notions must be eradicated from our system of bringing up and educating children, things which hitherto no one seems to have worried about.
In our present educational system, a balance will have to be established first and foremost between mental instruction and physical training. What is known as gymnasium, grammar school today, is a positive insult to the Greek institution. Our system of education entirely loses sight of the fact that in the long run, a healthy mind can exist only in a healthy body. This statement, with few exceptions, applies particularly to the broad masses of the nation. In the pre war Germany, there was a time when no one took the trouble to think over this truth. Training of the body was criminally neglected.
The one-sided training of the mind being regarded as sufficient guarantee for the nation's greatness. This mistake was destined to show its effect sooner than had been anticipated. It is not pure chance that the Bolshevik teaching flourishes in those regions whose degenerate population has been brought to the verge of starvation as, for example, in the case of Central Germany, Saxony, and the Ruhr Valley. In all these districts, there is a marked absence of any serious resistance even by the so called intellectual classes against this Jewish contagion.
And the simple reason is that the intellectual classes are themselves physically degenerate, not through privation, but through education. The exclusive intellectualism of the education in vogue among our upper classes makes them unfit for life's struggle at an epoch in which physical force and not mind is the dominating factor. Thus, they are neither capable of maintaining themselves nor of making their way in life. In nearly every case, physical disability is the forerunner of personal cowardice. The extravagant emphasis laid on purely intellectual education and the consequent neglect of physical training must necessarily lead to sexual thoughts in early youth.
Those boys whose constitutions have been trained and hardened by sports and gymnastics are less prone to sexual indulgence than those stay at homes who have been fed exclusively with mental tabulum. Sound methods of education cannot, however, afford to disregard this, and we must not forget that the expectations of a healthy young man from a woman will differ from those of a weakling who has been prematurely corrupted. Thus, in every branch of our education, the day's curriculum must be arranged so as to occupy a boy's free time in profitable development of his physical powers.
He has no right in those years to loaf about, becoming a nuisance in public streets and in cinemas. But when his day's work is done, he ought to harden his young body so that his strength may not be found wanting when the occasion arises. To prepare for this and to carry it out should be the function of our educational system and not exclusively to pump in knowledge or wisdom. Our school system must also rid itself of the notion that the training of the body is a task that should be left to the individual himself. There is no such thing as allowing freedom of choice to sin against posterity and thus against the race.
File 54. The fight against pollution of the mind must be waged simultaneously with the training of the body. Today, the whole of our public life may be compared to a hot house for the forced growth of sexual notions and incitements. A glance at the bill of fare provided by our cinemas, playhouses, and theaters suffices to prove that this is not the right food, especially for our young people. Hoardings and advertisement kiosks combined to attract the public in the most vulgar manner. Anyone who has not altogether lost contact with adolescent yearnings will realize that all this must have very grave consequences.
This seductive and sensuous atmosphere puts notions into the heads of our youth, which at their age, ought still to be unknown to them. Unfortunately, the results of this kind of education can best be seen in our contemporary youth who are prematurely grown up and therefore old before their time. The law courts from time to time throw a distressing light on the spiritual life of our 14 and 15 year old children, Who therefore will be surprised to learn that venereal disease claims its victims at this age? And is it not a frightful shame to see the number of physically weak and intellectually spoiled young men who have been introduced to the mysteries of marriage by the whores of the big cities.
No. Those who want seriously to combat prostitution must first of all assist in removing the spiritual conditions on which it thrives. They will have to clean up the moral pollution of our city culture fearlessly and without regard for the outcry that will follow. If we do not drag our youth out of the morass of their present environment, they will be engulfed by it. Those people who do not want to see these things are deliberately encouraging them and are guilty of spreading the effects of prostitution to the future, for the future belongs to our young generation.
This process of cleaning our culture will have to be applied in practically all spheres. The stage, art, literature, the cinema, the press, and advertisement posters, all must have the stains of pollution removed and be placed in the service of a national and cultural idea. The life of the people must be freed from the asphyxiating perfume of our modern eroticism and also from every unmanly and prudish form of insincerity. In all these things, the aim and the method must be determined by thoughtful consideration for the preservation of our national well-being in body and soul.
The right to personal freedom comes second in importance to the duty of maintaining the race. Only after such measures have been put into practice can a medical campaign against this scourge begin with some hope of success. But here again, half measures will be valueless. Far reaching and important decisions will have to be made. It would be doing things by halves if incurables were given the opportunity of infecting one healthy person after another. This would be that kind of humanitarianism which would allow hundreds to perish in order to save the suffering of one individual. The demand that it should be made impossible for defective people to continue to propagate defective offspring is a demand that is based on most reasonable grounds, and its proper fulfillment is the most humane task that mankind has to face.
Unhappy and undeserved suffering in millions of cases will be spared with the result that there will be a gradual improvement in national health. A determined decision to act in this manner will, at the same time, provide an obstacle against the further spread of venereal disease. It would then be a case, where necessary, of mercilessly isolating all incurables, perhaps a barbaric measure for those unfortunate, but a blessing for the present generation and for posterity. The temporary pain thus experienced in this century can and will spare future thousands of generations from suffering.
The fight against syphilis and its pacemaker, prostitution, is one of the gigantic tasks of mankind. Gigantic because it is not merely a case of solving a single problem, but the removal of a whole series of evils which are the contributory causes of this scourge. Disease of the body, in this case, is merely the result of a diseased condition of the moral, social, and racial instincts. But if for reasons of indolence or cowardice, this fight is not fought to a finish, we may imagine what conditions will be like five hundred years hence. Little of god's image will be left in human nature except to mock the creator.
But what has been done in Germany to counteract this scourge? If we think calmly over the answer, we shall find it distressing. It is true that in governmental circles, the terrible and injurious effects of this disease were well known, but the countermeasures which were officially adopted were ineffective and a hopeless failure. They tinkered with cures for the symptoms, wholly regardless of the cause of the disease. Prostitutes were medically examined and controlled as far as possible. And when signs of infection were apparent, they were sent to hospital. When outwardly cured, they were once more let loose on humanity.
It is true that protective legislation was introduced, which made sexual intercourse a punishable offense for all those not completely cured or those suffering from venereal disease. This legislation was correct in theory, but in practice, it failed completely. In the first place, in the majority of cases, women will decline to appear in court as witnesses against men who have robbed them of their health. Women would be exposed far more than men to uncharitable remarks in such cases, and one can imagine what their position would be if they had been infected by their own husbands. Should women, in that case, lay a charge, or what should they do?
In the case of the man, there is the additional fact that he frequently is unfortunate enough to run up against this danger when he is under the influence of alcohol. His condition makes it impossible for him to assess the qualities of his amorous beauty, a fact which is well known to every diseased prostitute and makes them single out men in this ideal condition for preference. The result is that the unfortunate man is not able to recollect later on who his compassionate benefactress was, which is not surprising in cities like Berlin and Munich.
Many of such cases are visitors from the provinces who, held speechless and enthralled by the magic charm of city life, become an easy prey for prostitutes. In the final analysis, who is able to say whether he has been infected or not? Are there not innumerable cases on record where an apparently cured person has a relapse and does untold harm without knowing it? Therefore, in practice, the results of these legislative measures are negative. The same applies to the control of prostitution. And finally, even medical treatment and cure are nowadays unsafe and doubtful. One thing only is certain.
The scourge has spread further and further in spite of all measures, and this alone suffices definitely to stamp and substantiate their inefficiency. Everything else that was undertaken was just as inefficient as it was absurd. The spiritual prostitution of the people was neither arrested nor was anything whatsoever undertaken in this direction. Those, however, who do not regard this subject as a serious one would do well to examine the statistical data of the spread of this disease, study its growth in the last century, and contemplate the possibilities of its further development.
The ordinary observer, unless he were particularly stupid, would experience a cold shudder if the position were made clear to him. The half hearted and wavering attitude adopted in pre war Germany towards this iniquitous condition can assuredly be taken as a visible sign of national decay. When the courage to fight for one's own health is no longer in evidence, then the right to live in this world of struggle also ceases. One of the visible signs of decay in the old Reich was the slow setback which the general cultural level experienced. But by culture, I do not mean that which we nowadays style as civilization, which on the contrary may rather be regarded as inimical to the spiritual elevation of life.
At the turn of the last century, a new element began to make its appearance in our world. It was an element which had been hitherto absolutely unknown and foreign to us. In former times, there had certainly been offenses against good taste, but these were mostly departures from the orthodox canons of art, and posterity could recognize a certain historical value in them. But the new product showed signs not only of artistic aberration, but of spiritual degeneration. Here, in the cultural sphere, the signs of the coming collapse first became manifest. The Bolshevization of art is the only cultural form of life and the only spiritual manifestation of which Bolshevism is capable.
Anyone to whom this statement may appear strange need only take a glance at those lucky states which have become Bolshevized. And to his horror, he will there recognize those morbid monstrosities which have been produced by insane and degenerate people. All those artistic aberrations which are classified under the names of cubism and dadism since the opening of the present century are manifestations of art which have come to be officially recognized by the state itself. This phenomenon made its appearance even during the short lived period of the Soviet Republic in Bavaria. At that time, one might easily have recognized how all the official posters, propagandist pictures, and newspapers, etcetera, showed signs not only of political but also of cultural decadence.
About sixty years ago, a political collapse such as we are experiencing today would have been just as inconceivable as the cultural decline which has been manifest in Cubist and Futurist pictures ever since nineteen hundred. Sixty years ago, an exhibition of so called dadistic experiences would have been an absolutely preposterous idea. The organizers of such an exhibition would then have been certified for the lunatic asylum, whereas today, they are appointed presidents of art societies. At that time, such an epidemic would never have been allowed to spread. Public opinion would not have tolerated it, and the government would not have remained silent.
For it is the duty of a government to save its people from being stampeded into such intellectual madness. But intellectual madness would have resulted from a development that followed the acceptance of this kind of art. It would have marked one of the worst changes in human history, for it would have meant that a retrogressive process had begun to take place in the human brain, The final stages of which would be unthinkable. File 55. If we study the course of our cultural life during the last twenty five years, we shall be astonished to note how far we have already gone in this process of retrogression.
Everywhere, we find the presence of those germs which give rise to protuberant growths that must sooner or later bring about the ruin of our culture. Here, we find undoubted symptoms of slow corruption, and woe to the nations that are no longer able to bring that morbid process to a halt. In almost all the various fields of German art and culture, those morbid phenomena may be observed. Here, everything seems to have passed the culminating point of its excellence and to have entered the curve of a hasty decline. At the beginning of the century, the theaters seemed already degenerating and ceasing to be cultural factors, except the court theaters, which opposed this prostitution of the national art.
With these exceptions and also a few other decent institutions, the plays produced on the stage were of such a nature that the people would have benefited by not visiting them at all. A sad symptom of decline was manifested by the fact that in the case of many art centers, the sign was posted on the entrance doors for adults only. Let it be born in mind that these precautions had to be taken in regard to institutions whose main purpose should have been to promote the education of the youth and not merely to provide amusement for sophisticated adults.
What would the great dramatists of other times have said of such measures, and above all, of the conditions which made these measures necessary? How exasperated Schiller would have been, and how Goethe would have turned away in disgust. But what are Schiller, Goethe, and Shakespeare when confronted with the heroes of our modern German literature? Old and frowsy and outmoded and finished. For it was typical of this epoch that not only were its own products bad, but that the authors of such products and their backers reviled everything that had been really great in the past.
This is a phenomenon that is very characteristic of such epochs. The more vile and miserable are the men and products of an epoch, the more they will hate and denigrate the ideal achievements of former generations. What these people would like best would be completely to destroy every vestige of the past in order to do away with that sole standard of comparison, which prevents their own daubs from being looked upon as art. Therefore, the more lamentable and wretched are the products of each new era, the more it will try to obliterate all the memorials of the past.
But any real innovation that is for the benefit of mankind can always face comparison with the best of what has gone before, and frequently, it happens that those monuments of the past guarantee the acceptance of those modern productions. There is no fear that modern productions of real worth will look pale and worthless beside the monuments of the past. What is contributed to the general treasury of human culture often fulfills a part that is necessary in order to keep the memory of old achievements alive because this memory alone is the standard whereby our own works are properly appreciated.
Only those who have nothing of value to give to the world will oppose everything that already exists and would have it destroyed at all costs. And this holds good not only for new phenomena in the cultural domain, but also in politics. The more inferior new revolutionary movements are, the more will they try to denigrate the old forms. Here again, the desire to pawn off their shoddy products as great and original achievements leads them into a blind hatred against everything which belongs to the past and which is superior to their own work. As long as the historical memory of Frederick the Great, for instance, still lives, Frederick Hebert can arouse only a problematic admiration.
The relation of the hero of Saint Soussy to the former republican of Bremen may be compared to that of the sun to the moon, for the moon can shine only after the direct rays of the sun have left the earth. Thus, we can readily understand why it is that all the new moons in human history have hated the fixed stars. In the field of politics, if fate should happen temporarily to place the ruling power in the hands of those nonentities, they are not only eager to defile and revile the past, but at the same time, they will use all means to evade criticism of their own acts. The law for the protection of the republic, which the new German state enacted, may be taken as one example of this truth.
One has good grounds to be suspicious in regard to any new idea or any doctrine or philosophy, any political or economic movement, which tries to deny everything that the past has produced or to present it as inferior and worthless. Any renovation which is really beneficial to human progress will always have to begin its constructive work at the level where the last stones of the structure have been laid. It need not blush to utilize those truths which have already been established. For all human culture, as well as man himself, is only the result of one long line of development where each generation has contributed but one stone to the building of the whole structure.
The meaning and purpose of revolutions cannot be to tear down the whole building, but to take away what has not been well fitted into it or is unsuitable, and to rebuild the free space thus caused after which the main construction of the building will be carried on. Thus alone will it be possible to talk of human progress. For, otherwise, the world would never be free of chaos since each generation would feel entitled to reject the past and destroy all the work of the past as the necessary preliminary to any new work of its own. The saddest feature of the condition in which our whole civilization found itself before the war was the fact that it was not only barren of any creative force to produce its own works of art and civilization, but that it hated, defiled, and tried to efface the memory of the superior works produced in the past.
About the end of the last century, people were less interested in producing new significant works of their own, particularly in the fields of dramatic art and literature than in defaming the best works of the past and in presenting them as inferior and antiquated, as if this period of disgraceful decadence had the slightest capacity to produce anything of superior quality. The efforts made to conceal the past from the eyes of the present afforded clear evidence of the fact that these apostles of the future acted from an evil intent.
These symptoms should have made it clear to all that it was not a question of new, the wrong cultural ideas, but of a process which was undermining the very foundations of civilization. It threw the artistic feeling which had hitherto been quite sane into utter confusion, thus, spiritually preparing the way for political Bolshevism. If the creative spirit of the Periclean age be manifested in the Parthenon, and the Bolshevist era is manifested through its cubist grimace. In this connection, attention must be drawn once again to the want of courage displayed by one section of our people, namely by those who, in virtue of their education and position, ought to have felt themselves obliged to take up a firm stand against this outrage on our culture, but they refrain from offering serious resistance and surrendered to what they considered the inevitable.
This abdication of theirs was due, however, to sheer funk, lest the apostles of Bolshevist art might raise a rumpus. For those apostles always violently attacked everyone who was not ready to recognize them as the choice spirits of artistic creation, and they tried to strangle all opposition by saying that it was the product of Philistine and backwater mines. People trembled in fear, lest they might be accused by these yahoos and swindlers of lacking artistic appreciation as if it would have been a disgrace not to be able to understand and appreciate the effusions of those mental degenerates or arrant rogues.
Those cultural disciples, however, had a very simple way of presenting their own effusions as works of the highest quality. They offered incomprehensible and manifestly crazy productions to their amazed contemporaries as what they called an inner experience. Thus, they forestalled all adverse criticism and very little cost indeed. Of course, nobody ever doubted that there could have been inner experiences like that, but some doubt ought to have arisen as to whether or not there was any justification for exposing these hallucinations of psychopaths or criminals to the same portion of human society.
The works produced by a Moritz von Schwint or a Birkeland were also externalizations of an inner experience, but these were the experiences of divinely gifted artists, not of buffoons. File 56. This situation offered a good opportunity of studying the miserable cowardliness of our so called intellectuals who shirk the duty of offering serious resistance to the poisoning of the sound instincts of our people. They left it to the people themselves to formulate their own attitude towards this impudent nonsense, lest they might be considered as understanding nothing of art.
They accepted every caricature of art until they finally lost the power of judging what is really good or bad. Taken all in all, there were superabundant symptoms to show that a diseased epoch had begun. Still another critical symptom has to be considered. In the course of the nineteenth century, our towns and cities began more and more to lose their character as centers of civilization and become more and more centers of habitation. In our great modern cities, the proletariat does not show much attachment to the place where it lives. This feeling results from the fact that their dwelling place is nothing but an accidental abode, and that feeling is also partly due to the frequent change of residence which is forced upon them by social conditions.
There is no time for the growth of any attachment to the town in which they live, but another reason lies in the cultural barrenness and superficiality of our modern cities. At the time of the German wars of liberation, our German towns and cities were not only small in number, but also very modest in size. The few that could really be called great cities were mostly the residential cities of princes. As such, they had almost always a definite cultural value and also a definite cultural aspect. Those few towns which had more than 50,000 inhabitants were, in comparison with modern cities of the same size, rich in scientific and artistic treasures.
At the time when Munich had not more than 60,000 souls, it was already well on the way to becoming one of the first German centers of art. Nowadays, almost every industrial town has a population at least as large as that without having anything of real value to call its own. They are agglomerations of tenement houses and congested dwelling barracks, and nothing else. It would be a miracle if anybody should grow sentimentally attached to such a meaningless place. Nobody can grow attached to a place which offers only just as much or as little as any other place would offer, which has no character of its own, and where obviously pains have been taken to avoid everything that might have any resemblance to an artistic appearance.
But this is not all. Even the great cities become more barren of real works of art the more they increase in population. They assume more and more a neutral atmosphere and present the same aspect, though on a larger scale, as the wretched little factory towns. Everything that our modern age has contributed to the civilization of our great cities is absolutely deficient. All our towns are living on the glory and the treasures of the past. If we take away from the Munich of today everything that was created under Ludwig the second, we should be horror stricken to see how meager has been the output of important artistic creations since that time.
One might say much the same of Berlin and most of our other great towns. But the following is the essential thing to be noticed. Our great modern cities have no outstanding monuments that dominate the general aspect of the city and could be pointed to as the symbols of a whole epoch. Yet almost every ancient town had a monument erected to its glory. It was not in private dwellings that the characteristic art of ancient cities was displayed, but in the public monuments, which were not meant to have a transitory interest, but an enduring one.
And this was because they did not represent the wealth of some individual citizen, but the greatness and importance of the community. It was under this inspiration that those monuments arose, which bound the individual inhabitants to their own town in a manner that is often almost incomprehensible to us today. What struck the eye of the individual citizen was not a number of mediocre private buildings, but imposing structures that belong to the whole community. In contradistinction to these, private dwellings were of only very secondary importance indeed. When we compare the size of those ancient public buildings with that of the private dwellings belonging to the same epoch, then we can understand the great importance which was given to the principle that those works which reflected and affected the life of the community should take precedence of all others.
Among the broken arches and vast spaces that are covered with ruins from the ancient world, the colossal riches that still arouse our wonder have not been left to us from the commercial palaces of these days, but from the temples of the gods and the public edifices that belong to the state. The community itself was the owner of these great edifices. Even in the pomp of Rome during the decadence, it was not the villas and palaces of some citizens that filled the most prominent place, but rather the temples and the baths, the stadia, the circuses, the aqueducts, the basilicas, etcetera, which belong to the state, and therefore to the people as a whole.
In medieval Germany also, the same principle held sway, although the artistic outlook was quite different. In ancient times, the theme that found its expression in the Acropolis or the Pantheon was now clothed in the forms of the Gothic Cathedral. In the medieval cities, these monumental structures towered gigantically above the swarm of smaller buildings with their framework walls of wood and brick, and they remain the dominant feature of these cities even to our own day, although they are becoming more and more obscured by the apartment barracks. They determine the character and appearance of the locality.
Cathedrals, city halls, corn exchanges, defense towers are the outward expression of an idea which has its counterpart only in the ancient world. The dimensions and quality of our public buildings today are in deplorable contrast to the edifices that represent private interests. If a similar fate should befall Berlin as befell Rome, future generations might gaze upon the ruins of some Jewish department stores or joint stock hotels, and think that these were the characteristic expressions of the culture of our time. In Berlin itself, compare the shameful disproportion between the buildings which belong to the Reich and those which have been erected for the accommodation of trade and finance.
The credits that are voted for public buildings are in most cases inadequate and really ridiculous. They are not built as structures that were meant to last, but mostly for the purpose of answering the need of the moment. No higher idea influenced those who commissioned such buildings. At the time the Berlin Schloss was built, it had a quite different significance from what the new library has for our time, seeing that one battleship alone represents an expenditure of about 60,000,000 marks, whereas less than half that sum was allotted for the building of the Reichstag, which is the most imposing structure erected for the Reich and which should have been built to last for ages.
Yet in deciding the question of internal decoration, the upper house voted against the use of stone and ordered that the wall should be covered with stucco. For once, however, the parliamentarians made an appropriate decision on that occasion, for plaster heads would be out of place between stone walls. The community as such is not the dominant characteristic of our contemporary cities, and therefore, it is not to be wondered at if the community does not find itself architecturally represented. Thus, we must eventually arrive at a veritable civic desert, which will at last be reflected in the total indifference of the individual citizen towards his own country.
This is also a sign of a cultural decay, a general break up. Our era is entirely preoccupied with little things which are to no purpose, or rather it is entirely preoccupied in the service of money. Therefore, it is not to be wondered at if, with the worship of such an idol, the sense of heroism should entirely disappear. But the present is only reaping what the past has sown. All these symptoms which preceded the final collapse of the second empire must be attributed to the lack of a definite and uniformly accepted and the general uncertainty of outlook consequent on that lack.
This uncertainty showed itself when the great questions of the time had to be considered one after another and a decisive policy adopted towards them. This lack is also accountable for the habit of doing everything by halves, beginning with the educational system, the shilly shally, the reluctance to undertake responsibilities, and finally, the cowardly tolerance of evils that were even admitted to be destructive. Visionary humanitarianisms became the fashion. In weekly submitting to these aberrations and sparing the feelings of the individual, the future of millions of human beings was sacrificed.
An examination of the religious situation before the war shows that the general process of disruption had extended to this sphere also. A great part of the nation itself had, for a long time, already ceased to have any convictions of a uniform and practical character in their ideological outlook on life. In this matter, the point of primary importance was by no means the number of people who renounced their church membership, but rather the widespread indifference. While the two Christian denominations maintained missions in Asia and Africa for the purpose of securing new adherence to the faith, These same denominations were losing millions and millions of their adherence at home in Europe.
These former adherence either gave up religion wholly as a directive force in their lives, or they adopted their own interpretation of it. The consequences of this were especially felt in the moral life of the country. In parenthesis, it may be remarked that the progress made by the missions in spreading the Christian faith abroad was only quite modest in comparison with the spread of Mohammedanism. It must be noted too that the attack on the dogmatic principles underlying ecclesiastical teaching increased steadily in violence, and yet this human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.
The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers. For the masses of the people especially, faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life. The various substitutes that have been offered have not shown any results that might warrant us in thinking that they might usefully replace the existing denominations. But if religious teaching and religious faith were once accepted by the broad masses as active forces in their lives, then the absolute authority of the doctrines of faith would be the foundation of all practical effort. There may be a few hundreds of thousands of superior men who can live wisely and intelligently without depending on the general standards that prevail in everyday life, but the millions of others cannot do so.
Now the place which general custom fills in everyday life corresponds to that of general laws in the state and dogma in religion. The purely spiritual idea is of itself a changeable thing that may be subjected to endless interpretations. It is only through dogma that it is given a precise and concrete form without which it could not become a living faith. Otherwise, the spiritual idea would never become anything more than a mere metaphysical concept or rather a philosophical opinion. Accordingly, the attack against dogma is comparable to an attack against the general laws on which the state is founded. And so this attack would finally lead to complete political anarchy if it were successful, just as the attack on religion would lead to a worthless religious nihilism.
The political leader should not estimate the worth of a religion by taking some of its shortcomings into account, but he should ask himself whether there be any practical substitute in a view which is demonstrably better. Until such a substitute be available, only fools and criminals would think of abolishing the existing religion. Undoubtedly, no small amount of blame for the present unsatisfactory religious situation must be attributed to those who have encumbered the ideal of religion with purely material accessories and have thus given rise to an utterly futile conflict between religion and science.
In this conflict, victory will very nearly always be on the side of science. Even though after a bitter struggle, while religion will suffer heavily in the eyes of those who cannot penetrate beneath the mere superficial aspects of science. But the greatest damage of all has come from the practice of debasing religion as a means that can be exploited to serve political interests, or rather commercial interests. The impudent and loud mouthed liars who do this make their profession of faith before the whole world in stentorian tones so that all poor mortals may hear.
Not that they are ready to die for it if necessary, but rather that they may live all the better. They are ready to sell their faith for any political quid pro quo. For 10 parliamentary mandates, they would ally themselves with the Marxists who are the mortal foes of all religion. And for a seat in the cabinet, they would go the length of wedlock with the devil, if the latter had still not retained some traces of decency. File, 57. If religious life in pre war Germany had a disagreeable saver for the mouths of many people, This was because Christianity had been lowered to base uses by political parties that called themselves Christian, and because of the shameful way in which they tried to identify the Catholic faith with a political party.
This substitution was fatal. It procured some worthless parliamentary mandates for the party in question, but the church suffered damage thereby. The consequences of that situation had to be borne by the whole nation. For the laxity that resulted in religious life set in at a juncture when everything was beginning to lose hold and vacillate, and the traditional foundations of custom and of morality were threatening to fall asunder. Yet all those cracks and clefts in the social organism might not have been dangerous if no grave burdens had been laid upon it, but they became disastrous when the internal solidarity of the nation was the most important factor in withstanding the storm of big events.
In the political field also, observant eyes might have noticed certain anomalies of the Reich, which foretold disaster unless some alteration and correction took place in time. The lack of orientation in German policy, both domestic and foreign, was obvious to everyone who was not purposely blind. The best thing that could be said about the practice of making compromises is that it seemed outwardly to be in harmony with Bismarck's axiom that politics is the art of the possible. But Bismarck was a slightly different man from the chancellors who followed him. This difference allowed the former to apply that formula to the very essence of his policy, while in the mouths of the others, it took on an utterly different significance.
When he uttered that phrase, Bismarck meant to say that in order to attain a definite political end, all possible means should be employed or at least that all possibilities should be tried. But his successors see in that phrase only a solemn declaration that one is not necessarily bound to have political principles or any definite political aims at all. And the political leaders of the Reich at that time had no farseeing policy. Here again, the necessary foundation was lacking, namely, a definite, And these leaders also lack that clear insight into the laws of political evolution, which is a necessary quality in political leadership.
Many people who took a gloomy view of things at that time condemned the lack of ideas and lack of orientation which were evident in directing the policy of the Reich. They recognized the inner weaknesses and futility of this policy. But such people played only a secondary role in politics. Those who had the government of the country in their hands were quite as indifferent to principles of civil wisdom laid down by thinkers like Houston, Stuart, Chamberlain, as our political leaders now are. These people are too stupid to think for themselves, and they have too much self conceit to take from others the instruction which they need.
Gave expression to a truth which has lasted since time immemorial when he said that the world is governed by only a particle of wisdom. Almost every civil servant of councilor rank might naturally be supposed to possess only an atom or so belonging to this particle. But since Germany became a republic, even this modicum is wanting, And that is why they had to promulgate the law for the defense of the republic, which prohibits the holding of such views or expressing them. It was fortunate for Oxenstena that he lived at that time and not in this wise republic of our time.
Already before the war, that institution which should have represented the strength of the Reich, the parliament, the Reichstag, was widely recognized as its weakest feature. Cowardliness and fear of shouldering responsibilities were associated together there in a perfect fashion. One of the silliest notions that one here has expressed today is that in Germany, the parliamentary institution has ceased to function since the revolution. This might easily be taken to imply that the case was different before the revolution. But in reality, the parliamentary institution never functioned except to the detriment of the country, and it functioned thus in those days when people saw nothing or did not wish to see anything.
The German downfall is to be attributed in no small degree to this institution, But that the catastrophe did not take place sooner is not to be credited to the parliament, but rather to those who oppose the influence of this institution, which during peace times was digging the grave of the German nation and the German Reich. From the immense mass of devastating evils that were due either directly or indirectly to the parliament, I shall select one of the most intimately typical of this institution, which was the most irresponsible of all time.
The evil I speak of was seen in the appalling shilly shally and weakness in conducting the internal and external affairs of the Reich. It was attributable in the first place to the action of the Reichstag and was one of the principal causes of the political collapse. Everything subject to the influence of parliament was done by halves, no matter from what aspect you may regard it. The foreign policy of the Reich in the matter of alliances was an example of shilly shally. They wish to maintain peace, but in doing so, they steered straight into war.
Their Polish policy was also carried out by half measures. It resulted neither in a German triumph nor Polish conciliation, and it made enemies of the Russians. They tried to solve the Alsace Lorraine question through half measures. Instead of crushing the head of the French hydra once and for all with a mailed fist and granting Alsace Lorraine equal rights with other German states, they did neither the one or the other. Anyhow, it was impossible for them to do otherwise, for they had among their ranks the greatest traitors to the country, such as Hervetele of the center party.
But still, the country might have been able to bear with all this provided the half measure policy had not victimized that force in which, as the last resort, the existence of the empire depended, namely the army. The crime committed by the so called German Reichstag in this regard was sufficient of itself to draw down upon it the curses of the German nation for all time. On the most miserable of pretexts, these parliamentary party henchmen filched from the hands of the nation and threw away the weapons which were needed to maintain its existence, and therewith defend the liberty and independence of our people.
If the graves on the Plains Of Flanders were to open today, the bloodstained accusers would arise hundreds and thousands of our best German youth who were driven into the arms of death by those conscienceless parliamentary ruffians who were either wrongly educated for their task or only half educated. Those youths and other millions of the killed and mutilated were lost to the fatherland simply and solely in order that a few 100 deceivers of the people might carry out their political maneuvers and their exactions or even treasonably pursue their doctrinaire theories.
By means of the Marxist and democratic press, the Jews spread the colossal falsehood about German militarism throughout the world and tried to inculcate Germany by every possible means, while at the same time, the Marxist and democratic parties refused to assent to the measures that were necessary for the adequate training of our national defense forces. The appalling crime thus committed by these people ought to have been obvious to everybody who foresaw that in case of war, the whole nation would have to be called to arms, and that because of the mean huckstering of these noble representatives of the people, as they call themselves, millions of Germans would have to face the enemy ill equipped and insufficiently trained.
But even apart from the consequences of the crude and brutal lack of conscience which these parliamentarian rascals displayed, it was quite clear that the lack of properly trained soldiers at the beginning of a war would most probably lead to the loss of such a war, and this probability was confirmed in a most terrible way during the course of the World War. Therefore, the German people lost the struggle for the freedom and independence of their country because of the half hearted and defective policy employed during times of peace in the organization and training of the defensive strength of the nation.
The number of recruits trained for the land forces was too small, but the same half heartedness was shown in regard to the navy and made this weapon of national self preservation more or less ineffective. Unfortunately, even the naval authorities themselves were contaminated with this spirit of half heartedness. The tendency to build the ship on the stocks somewhat smaller than that just launched by the British did not show much foresight and less genius. A fleet which cannot be brought to the same numerical strength as that of the probable enemy or to compensate for this inferiority by the superior fighting power of the individual ship.
It is the weight of the fighting power that counts and not any sort of traditional quality. As a matter of fact, modern technical development is so advanced and so well proportioned among the various civilized states that it must be looked on as practically impossible for one power to build vessels which would have a superior fighting quality to that of the vessels of equal size built by the other powers. But it is even less feasible to build vessels of smaller displacement, which will be superior in action to those of larger displacement. As a matter of fact, the smaller proportions of the German vessels could be maintained only at the expense of speed and armament.
The phrase used to justify this policy was in itself an evidence of the lack of logical thinking on the part of the naval authorities who were in charge of these matters in times of peace. They declared that the German guns were definitely superior to the British 30.5 centimeter as regards striking efficiency. But that was just why they should have adopted the policy of building 30.5 centimeter guns also, for it ought to have been their object not to achieve equality, but superiority in fighting strength. If that were not so, then it would have been superfluous to equip the land forces with 42 centimeter mortars.
For the German 21 centimeter mortar could be far superior to any high angle guns which the French possessed at that time, and since the fortresses could probably have been taken by means of 30.5 centimeter mortars. The army authorities unfortunately failed to do so. If they refrain from assuring superior efficiency in the artillery as in the velocity, this was because of the fundamentally false principle of risk which they adopted. The naval authorities, already in times of peace, renounced the principle of attack and thus had to follow a defensive policy from the very beginning of the war. But by this attitude, they renounced also the chance of final success, which can be achieved only by an offensive policy.
A vessel with slower speed and weaker armament will be crippled and battered by an adversary that is faster and stronger and can frequently shoot from a favorable distance. A large number of cruisers have been through bitter experiences in this matter. How wrong were the ideas prevalent among the naval authorities in times of peace was proved during the war. They were compelled to modify the armament of the old vessels and to equip the new ones with better armament whenever there was a chance to do so. If the German vessels in the battle of the Skagerrak had been of equal size, the same armament, and the same speed as the English, the British fleet would have gone down under the tempest of the German 38 centimeter shells, which hit their aims more accurately and were more effective.
Japan had followed a different kind of naval policy. There, care was principally taken to create with every single new vessel a fighting force that would be superior to those of the eventual adversaries. But because of this policy, it was afterwards possible to use the fleet for the offensive. While the army authorities refused to adopt such fundamentally erroneous principles, the navy, which unfortunately had more representatives in parliament, succumb to the spirit that ruled there. The navy was not organized on a strong basis, and it was later used in an unsystematic and irresolute way.
The immortal glory which the navy won, in spite of these drawbacks, must be entirely credited to the good work and the efficiency and incomparable heroism of officers and crews. If the former commanders in chief had been inspired with the same kind of genius, all the sacrifices would not have been in vain.
File 40. Chapter seven. The revolution. In 1915, the enemy started his propaganda among our soldiers. From 1916 onwards, it steadily became more intensive. And at the beginning of 1918, it had swollen into a storm flood. One could now judge the effects of this proselytizing movement step by step. Gradually, our soldiers began to think just in the way the enemy wished them to think. On the German side, there was no counter propaganda. At that time, the army authorities under our able and resolute commander were willing and ready to take up the fight in the propaganda domain also, but, unfortunately, they did not have the necessary means to carry that intention into effect.
Moreover, the army authorities would have made a psychological mistake had they undertaken the task of mental training. To be efficacious, it had come from the home front. For only thus could it be successful among men who for nearly four years now had been performing immortal deeds of heroism and undergoing all sorts of privations for the sake of that home. But what were the people at home doing? Was their failure to act merely due to unintelligence or bad faith? In the mid summer of nineteen eighteen, after the evacuation of the southern bank of the Hearne, the German press adopted a policy which was so woefully inopportune and even criminally stupid that I used to ask myself a question which made me more and more furious day after day.
Is it really true that we have nobody who will dare to put an end to this process of spiritual sabotage, which is being carried on amongst our heroic troops? What happened in France during those days of 1914, when our armies invaded that country and were marching in triumph from one victory to another? What happened in Italy when their armies collapsed on the Isonzo Front? What happened in France again during the 1918 when the German divisions took the main French positions by storm and heavy long distance artillery bombarded Paris.
How they whipped up the flagging courage of those troops who were retreating and fanned the fires of national enthusiasm among them. How their propaganda and their marvelous aptitude in the exercise of mass influence reawakened the fighting spirit in that broken front, and hammered into the heads of the soldiers a firm belief in final victory. Meanwhile, what were our people doing in this sphere? Nothing. Or even worse than nothing. Again and again, I used to become enraged and indignant as I read the latest papers and realized the nature of the mass murder they were committing through their influence on the minds of the people and the soldiers.
More than once, I was tormented by the thought that if providence had put the conduct of German propaganda into my hands instead of into the hands of those incompetent and even criminal ignoramuses and weaklings, the outcome of the struggle might have been different. During those months, I felt for the first time that fate was dealing adversely with me and keeping me on the fighting front and in a position where any chance bullet from some nigger or other might finish me, whereas I could have done the fatherland a real service in another sphere. For I was then presumptuous enough to believe that I would have been successful in managing the propaganda business.
But I was a being without a name, one among eight millions. Hence, it was better for me to keep my mouth shut and do my duty as well as I could in the position to which I had been assigned. In the summer of nineteen fifteen, the first enemy leaflets were dropped on our trenches. They all told more or less the same story with some variations in the form of it. The story was that distress was steadily on the increase in Germany, that the war would last indefinitely, that the prospect of victory for us was becoming fainter day after day, that the people at home were yearning for peace, but that militarism and the Kaiser would not permit it, That the world, which knew this very well, was not waging war against the German people, but only against the man who was exclusively responsible, the Kaiser.
That until this enemy of world peace was removed, there could be no end to the conflict. But that when the war was over, the liberal and democratic nations would receive the Germans as colleagues in the league for world peace. This would be done the moment the Prussian militarism had been finally destroyed. To illustrate and substantiate all these statements, the leaflets very often contained letters from home, the contents of which appeared to confirm the enemy's propagandist message. Generally speaking, we only laughed at all these efforts. The leaflets were read, sent to base headquarters, then forgotten until a favorable wind once again blew a fresh contingent into the trenches.
These were mostly dropped from airplanes, which were used especially for that purpose. One feature of this propaganda was very striking. It was that in sections where Bavarian troops were stationed, every effort was made by the enemy propagandists to stir up feeling against the Prussians, assuring the soldiers that Prussia and Prussia alone was the guilty party who was responsible for bringing on and continuing the war, and that there was no hostility whatsoever towards the Bavarians, but that there could be no possibility of coming to their assistance so long as they continued to serve Prussian interests and helped to pull the Prussian chestnuts out of the fire.
This persistent propaganda began to have a real influence on our soldiers in 1915. The feeling against Prussia grew quite noticeable among the Bavarian troops, but those in authority did nothing to counteract it. This was something more than a mere crime of omission. For sooner or later, not only the Prussians were bound to have to atone severely for it, but the whole German nation, and consequently, the Bavarians themselves also. In this direction, the enemy propaganda began to achieve undoubted success from 1916 onwards.
In a similar way, letters coming directly from home had long since been exercising their effect. There was now no further necessity for the enemy to broadcast such letters in leaflet form. And also against this influence from home, nothing was done except a few supremely stupid warnings uttered by the executive government. The whole front was drenched in this poison, which thoughtless women at home sent out without suspecting for a moment that the enemy's chances of final victory were thus strengthened, or that the sufferings of their own men at the front were thus being prolonged and rendered more severe. These stupid letters written by German women eventually cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of our men.
Thus, in 1916, several distressing phenomena were already manifest. The whole front was complaining and grousing, discontented over many things and often justifiably so. While they were hungry and yet patient, and their relatives at home were in distress, in other quarters, there was feasting and revelry. Yes. Even on the front itself, everything was not as it ought to have been in this regard. Even in the early stages of the war, the soldiers were sometimes prone to complain, but such criticism was confined to internal affairs. The man who at one moment groused and grumbled ceased his murmur after a few moments and went about his duty silently as if everything were in order.
The company, which had given signs of discontent a moment earlier, hung on now to its bit of trench defending it tooth and nail as if Germany's fate depended on these few 100 yards of mud and shell holes. The glorious old army was still at its post. A sudden change in my own fortunes soon placed me in a position where I had firsthand experience of the contrast between this old army and the home front. At the September, my division was sent into the Battle of the Somme. For us, this was the first of a series of heavy engagements, and the impression created was that of a veritable inferno rather than war.
Through weeks of incessant artillery bombardment, we stood firm, at times seeding a little ground, but then taking it back again and never giving way. On 10/07/1916, I was wounded, but had the luck of being able to get back to our lines and was then ordered to be sent by ambulance train to Germany. Two years had passed since I had left home, an almost endless period in such circumstances. I could hardly imagine what Germans looked like without uniforms. In the clearing hospital at Hermeus, I was startled when I suddenly heard the voice of a German woman who was acting as nursing sister and talking with one of the wounded men lying near me. Two years.
And then this voice for the first time. The nearer our ambulance train approached the German frontier, the more restless each one of us became. On route, we recognized all these places through which we passed two years before as young volunteers, Brussels, Louvain, Liege. And finally, we thought we recognized the first German homestead with its familiar high gables and picturesque window shutters. Home. What a change. From the mud of the som battlefields to the spotless white beds in this wonderful building. One hesitated at first before entering them. It was only by slow stages that one could grow accustomed to this new world again.
But, unfortunately, there were certain other aspects also in which this new world was different. The spirit of the army at the front appeared to be out of place here. For the first time, I encountered something which up to then was unknown at the front, namely, boasting of one's own cowardice. For though we certainly heard complaining and grousing at the front, this was never in the spirit of any agitation to insubordination and certainly not an attempt to glorify one's fear. No. There at the front, a coward was a coward and nothing else. And the contempt, which his weakness aroused in the others, was quite general, just as the real hero was admired all around.
But here, in hospital, the spirit was quite different in some respects. Loud mouthed agitators were busy here in heaping ridicule on the good soldier and painting the weak kneed poltroon in glorious colors. A couple of miserable human specimens were the ringleaders in this process of defamation. One of them boasted of having intentionally injured his hand in barbed wire entanglements in order to get sent to hospital. Although his wound was only a slight one, it appeared that he had been here for a very long time and would be here interminably. Some arrangement for him seemed to be worked by some sort of swindle just as he got sent here in the ambulance train through a swindle.
This pestilential specimen actually had the audacity to parade his knavery as the manifest station of a courage which was superior to that of the brave soldier who dies a hero's death. There were many who heard this talk in silence, but there were others who expressed their assent to what the fellow said. Personally, I was disgusted at the thought that a seditious agitator of this kind should be allowed to remain in such an institution. What could be done? The hospital authorities here must have known who and what he was, and, actually, they did know, but still they did nothing about it.
As soon as I was able to walk once again, I obtained leave to visit Berlin. Bitter want was in evidence everywhere. The metropolis, with its teeming millions, was suffering from hunger. The talk that was current in the various places of refreshment and hospices visited by the soldiers was much the same as that in our hospital. The impression given was that these agitators purposely singled out such places in order to spread their views. But in Munich, conditions were far worse. File 41. After my discharge from hospital, I was sent to a reserve battalion there.
I felt as in some strange town. Anger, discontent, complaints met one's ears wherever one went. To a certain extent, this was due to the infinitely maladroit manner in which the soldiers who had returned from the front were treated by the noncommissioned officers who had never seen a day's active service, and who, on that account, were partly incapable of adopting the proper attitude towards the old soldiers. Naturally, those old soldiers displayed certain characteristics which had been developed from the experiences in the trenches. The officers of the reserve units could not understand these peculiarities, whereas the officer home from active service was at least in a position to understand them for himself.
As a result, he received more respect from the men than officers at the home headquarters. But apart from all this, the general spirit was deplorable. The art of shirking was looked upon as almost a proof of higher intelligence, and devotion to duty was considered a sign of weakness or bigotry. Government offices were staffed by Jews. Almost every clerk was a Jew, and every Jew was a clerk. I was amazed at this multitude of combatants who belong to the chosen people and could not help comparing it with their slender numbers in the fighting lines. In the business world, the situation was even worse.
Here, the Jews had actually become indispensable. Like leeches, they were slowly sucking the blood from the pores of the national body. By means of newly floated war companies, an instrument had been discovered whereby all national trade was throttled so that no business could be carried on freely. Special emphasis was laid on the necessity for unhampered centralization. Hence, as early as 1916 to '17, practically all production was under the control of Jewish finance. But against whom was the anger of the people directed? It was then that I already saw the fateful day approaching, which must finally bring the debacle, unless timely preventive measures were taken.
While jury was busily despoiling the nation and tightening the screws of its despotism, the work of inciting the people against the Prussians increased. And just as nothing was done at the front to put a stop to the venomous propaganda, so here at home, no official steps were taken against it. Nobody seemed capable of understanding that the collapse of Prussia could never bring about the rise of Bavaria. On the contrary, the collapse of the one must necessarily drag the other down with it. This kind of behavior affected me very deeply.
In it, I could see only a clever Jewish trick for diverting public attention from themselves to others. While Prussians and Bavarians were squabbling, the Jews were taking away the sustenance of both from under their very noses. While Prussians were being abused in Bavaria, the Jews organized the revolution, and with one stroke, smashed both Prussia and Bavaria. I could not tolerate this execrable squabbling among people of the same German stock and preferred to be at the front once again. Therefore, just after my arrival in Munich, I reported myself for service again.
At the March, I rejoined my old regiment at the front. Towards the end of nineteen seventeen, it seemed as if we had got over the worst phases of moral depression at the front. After the Russian collapse, the whole army recovered its courage and hope, and all were gradually becoming more and more convinced that the struggle would end in our favor. We could sing once again. The ravens were ceasing to croak. Faith in the future of the fatherland was once more in the ascendant. The Italian collapse in the 1917 had a wonderful effect, for this victory proved that it was possible to break through another front besides the Russian.
This inspiring thought now became dominant in the minds of millions at the front and encouraged them to look forward with confidence to the spring of nineteen eighteen. It was quite obvious that the enemy was in a state of depression. During this winter, the front was somewhat quieter than usual, but that was the calm before the storm. Just when preparations were being made to launch a final offensive which would bring this seemingly eternal struggle to an end, while endless columns of transports were bringing men and munitions to the front, And while the men were being trained for that final onslaught, then it was that the greatest act of treachery during the whole war was accomplished in Germany.
Germany must not win the war. At that moment, when victory seemed ready to alight on the German standards, a conspiracy was arranged for the purpose of striking at the heart of the German spring offensive with one blow from the rear and thus making victory impossible. A general strike in the munition factories was organized. If this conspiracy could achieve its purpose, the German front would have collapsed, and the wishes of the, the organ of the social democratic party, that this time victory should not take the side of the German banners would have been fulfilled.
For want of munitions, the front would be broken through within a few weeks. The offensive would be effectively stopped, and the entente saved. Then international finance would assume control over Germany, and the internal objective of the Marxist national betrayal would be achieved. That objective was the destruction of the national economic system and the establishment of international capitalistic domination in its stead. And this goal has really been reached thanks to the stupid credulity of the one side and the unspeakable treachery of the other.
The munitions strike, however, did not bring the final success that had been hoped for, namely to starve the front of ammunition. It lasted too short a time for the lack of ammunitions as such to bring disaster to the army as was originally planned, but the moral damage was much more terrible. In the first place, what was the army fighting for if the people at home did not wish it to be victorious? For whom then were these enormous sacrifices and privations being made and endured? Must the soldiers fight for victory while the home front goes on strike against it? In the second place, what effect did this move have on the enemy?
In the 1917 to 1918, dark clouds hovered in the firmament of the entente. For nearly four years, onslaught after onslaught has been made against the German giant, but they failed to bring him to the ground. He had to keep them at bay with one arm that held the defensive shield because his other arm had to be free to wield the sword against his enemies, now in the East and now in the South. But at last, these enemies were overcome, and his rear was now free for the conflict in the West. Rivers of blood had been shed for the accomplishment of that task, but now the sword was free to combine in battle with the shield on the western front.
And since the enemy had hitherto failed to break the German defense here, the Germans themselves had now to launch the attack. The enemy feared and trembled before the prospect of this German victory. At Paris and London, conferences followed one another in an ending series. Even the enemy propaganda encountered difficulties. It was no longer so easy to demonstrate that the prospect of a German victory was hopeless. A prudent silence reigned at the front, even among the troops of the entente. The insolence of their masters had suddenly subsided.
A disturbing truth began to dawn on them. Their opinion of the German soldier had changed. Hitherto, they were able to picture him as a kind of fool whose end would be destruction. But now they found themselves face to face with the soldier who had overcome their Russian ally. The policy of restricting the offensive to the east, which had been imposed on the German military authorities by the necessities of the situation, now seemed to the entente as a tactical stroke of genius. For three years, these Germans had been battering away at the Russian front without any apparent success at first. Those fruitless efforts were almost sneered at.
For it was thought that in the long run, the Russian giant would triumph through sheer force of numbers. Germany would be worn out through shedding so much blood, and facts appeared to confirm this hope. Since the September of 1914, when for the first time, interminable columns of Russian war prisoners poured into Germany after the battle of Tannenberg, it seemed as if the stream would never end, but that as soon as one army was defeated and routed, another would take its place. The supply of soldiers which the gigantic empire placed at the disposal of the tsar seemed inexhaustible.
New victims were always at hand for the holocaust of war. How long could Germany hold out in this competition? Would not the day finally have to come when after the last victory which Germans would achieve, there would still remain reserve armies in Russia to be mustered for the final battle? And what then? According to human standards, a Russian victory over Germany might be delayed, but it would have to come in the long run. File 42. All the hopes that had been based on Russia were now lost. The ally who had sacrificed the most blood on the altar of their mutual interests had come to the end of his resources and lay prostrate before his unrelenting foe.
A feeling of terror and dismay came over the entente soldiers, who had hitherto been buoyed up by blind faith. They feared the coming spring, For seeing that hitherto they had failed to break the Germans when the latter could concentrate only part of the fighting strength on the Western front, how could they count on victory now that the undivided forces of that amazing land of heroes appeared to be gathering for a mass attack in the West? The shadow of the events which had taken place in South Tyrol, the specter of general Cadorna's defeated armies were reflected in the gloomy faces of the entente troops in Flanders.
Faith and victory gave way to fear of defeat to come. Then on those cold nights, when one almost heard the tread of the German armies advancing to the great assault, and the decision was being awaited in fear and trembling. Suddenly, a lurid light was set aglow in Germany and sent its rays into the last shell hole on the enemy's front. At the very moment when the German divisions were receiving their final orders for the great offensive, a general strike broke out in Germany. At first, the world was dumbfounded. Then the enemy propaganda began activities once again and pounced on this theme at the eleventh hour.
All of a sudden, a means had come which could be utilized to revive the sinking confidence of the Entente soldiers. The probabilities of victory could now be presented as certain, and the anxious foreboding in regard to coming events could now be transformed into a feeling of resolute assurance. The regiments that had to bear the brunt of the greatest German onslaught in history could now be inspired with the conviction that the final decision in this war would not be won by the audacity of the German assault, but rather by the powers of endurance on the side of the defense.
Let the Germans now have whatever victories they liked. The revolution and not the victorious army was welcomed in the fatherland. British, French, and American newspapers began to spread this belief among their readers, while a very ably managed propaganda encouraged the morale of their troops at the front. Germany facing revolution. An allied victory inevitable. That was the best medicine to set the staggering and Tommy on their feet once again. Our rifles and machine guns could now open fire once again. But instead of effecting a panic stricken retreat, they were now met with a determined resistance that was full of confidence.
That was the result of the strike in the munitions factories. Throughout the enemy countries, faith in victory was thus revived and strengthened. And that paralyzing feeling of despair, which had hitherto made itself felt on the front, was banished. Consequently, the strike cost the lives of thousands of German soldiers, but the despicable instigators of that dastardly strike were candidates for the highest public positions in the Germany of the revolution. At first, it was apparently possible to overcome the repercussion of these events on the German soldiers. But on the enemy's side, they had a lasting effect.
Here, the resistance had lost all the character of an army fighting for a lost cause. In its place, there was now a grim determination to struggle through to victory. For according to all human rules of judgment, victory would now be assured if the Western Front could hold out against the German offensive even for only a few months. The allied parliaments recognized the possibilities of a better future and voted huge sums of money for the continuation of the propaganda which was employed for the purpose of breaking up the internal cohesion of Germany.
It was my luck that I was able to take part in the first two offensives and in the final offensive. These have left on me the most stupendous impressions of my life. Stupendous because now for the last time, the struggle lost its defensive character and assumed the character of an offensive just as it was in 1914. A sigh of relief went up from the German trenches and dugouts when finally, after three years of endurance in that inferno, the day for the settling of accounts had come. Once again, the lusty cheering of victorious battalions was heard as they hung the last crowns of the immortal laurel on the standards which they consecrated to victory.
Once again, the strains of patriotic song soared upwards to the heavens above the endless columns of marching troops. And for the last time, the lord smiled on his ungrateful children. In the midsummer of nineteen eighteen, a feeling of sultry oppression hung over the front. At home, they were quarreling. About what? We heard a great deal among various units at the front. The war was now a hopeless affair, and only the foolhardy could think of victory. It was not the people, but the capitalists and the monarchy who were interested in carrying on.
Such were the ideas that came from home and were discussed at the front. At first, this gave rise to only very slight reaction. What did universal suffrage matter to us? Is this what we had been fighting for for four years? It was a dastardly piece of robbery thus to filch from the graves of our heroes the ideals for which they had fallen. It was not the slogan, long live universal suffrage, that our troops in Flanders once faced certain death, but with the cry, a small, but by no means an unimportant difference. And the majority of those who were shouting for this suffrage were absent when it came to fighting for it.
All this political rabble was strangers to us at the front. During those days, only a fraction of these parliamentarian gentry were to be seen where honest Germans foregathered. The old soldiers who had fought at the front had little liking for those new war aims of messes, Schiedermann, Bart, Liebknecht, and others. We could not understand why, all of a sudden, the Shirkers should abrogate all executive powers to themselves without having any regard to the army. From the very beginning, I had my own definite personal views. I intensely loathed the whole gang of miserable party politicians who had betrayed the people.
I had long ago realized that the interests of the nation played only a very small part with this disreputable crew, and that what counted with them was the possibility of filling their own empty pockets. My opinion was that those people thoroughly deserved to be hanged because they were ready to sacrifice the peace and, if necessary, allow Germany to be defeated just to serve their own ends. To consider their wishes would mean to sacrifice the interests of the working classes for the benefit of a gang of thieves. To meet their wishes meant that one should agree to sacrifice Germany.
Such too was the opinion still held by the majority of the army, but the reinforcements which came from home were fast becoming worse and worse. So much so that their arrival was a source of weakness rather than of strength to our fighting forces. The young recruits in particular were for the most part useless. Sometimes, it was hard to believe that they were the sons of the same nation that sent its youth into the battles that were fought round Ypres. In August and September, the symptoms of moral disintegration increased more and more rapidly, although the enemy's offensive was not at all comparable to the frightfulness of our own former defensive battles.
In comparison with this offensive, the battles fought on the Somme and in Flanders remained in our memories as the most terrible of all horrors. At the September, my division occupied for the third time those positions which we had once taken by storm as young volunteers. What a memory. Here, we had received our baptism of fire in October and November 1914. With a burning love of the homeland in their hearts and a song on their lips, our young regiment went into action as if going to a dance. The dearest blood was given freely here in the belief that it was shed to protect the freedom and independence of the fatherland.
In July 1917, we set foot for the second time on what we regarded as sacred soil. Were not our best comrades at rest here? Some of them little more than boys. The soldiers who had rushed into death for their country's sake, their eyes glowing with enthusiastic love. The older ones among us who had been with the regiment from the beginning were deeply moved as we stood on this sacred spot where we had sworn loyalty and duty unto death. Three years ago, the regiment had taken this position by storm. Now it was called upon to defend it in a grueling struggle. With an artillery bombardment that lasted three weeks, the English prepared for their great offensive in Flanders.
There the spirits of the dead seemed to live again. The regiment dug itself into the mud, clung to its shell holes and craters, neither flinching nor wavering, but growing smaller in numbers day after day. Finally, the British launched their attack on 07/31/1917. File 43. We were relieved in the August. The regiment had dwindled down to a few companies who staggered back, mud crusted, more like phantoms than human beings. Besides a few 100 yards of shell holes, death was the only reward which the English gained. Now in the autumn of nineteen eighteen, we stood for the third time on the ground we had stormed in 1914.
The village of Comyn, which formerly had served us as a base, was now within the fighting zone. Although little had changed in the surrounding district itself, yet the men had become different somehow or other. They now talk politics. Like everywhere else, the poison from home was having its effect here also. The young drafts succumb to it completely. They had come directly from home. During the night of October, the British opened an attack with gas on the front south of Ypres. They used the yellow gas whose effect was unknown to us, at least from personal experience.
I was destined to experience it that very night. On a hill South of Veric in the evening of October 13, we were subjected for several hours to a heavy bombardment with gas bombs, which continued throughout the night with more or less intensity. About midnight, a number of us were put out of action, some forever. Towards morning, I also began to feel pain. It increased with every quarter of an hour. At about 07:00, my eyes were scorching as I staggered back and delivered the last dispatch I was destined to carry in this war. A few hours later, my eyes were like glowing coals, and all was darkness around me.
I was sent into a hospital at Pasovalk in Pomerania, and there it was that I had to hear of the revolution. For a long time, there had been something in the air which was indefinable and repulsive. People were saying that something was bound to happen within the next few weeks, although I could not imagine what this meant. In the first instance, I thought of a strike similar to the one which had taken place in spring. Unfavorable rumors were constantly coming from the navy, which was said to be in a state of ferment. But this seemed to be a fanciful creation of a few isolated young people.
It is true that at the hospital, they were all talking about the end of the war and hoping that this was not far off, but nobody thought that the decision would come immediately. I was not able to read the newspapers. In November, the general tension increased. Then one day, disaster broke in upon us suddenly and without warning. Sailors came in motor lorries and called on us to rise in revolt. A few Jewboys were the leaders in that combat for the liberty, beauty, and dignity of our national being. Not one of them had seen active service at the front. Through the medium of a hospital for venereal diseases, these three orientals had been sent back home.
Now their red rags were being hoisted here. During the last few days, I had begun to feel somewhat better. The burning pain in the eye sockets had become less severe. Gradually, I was able to distinguish the general outlines of my immediate surroundings, and it was permissible to hope that at least I would recover my sight sufficiently to be able to take up some profession later on. That I would ever be able to draw or design once again was naturally out of the question. Thus, I was on the way to recovery when the frightful hour came.
My first thought was that this outbreak of high treason was only a local affair. I tried to enforce this belief among my comrades. My Bavarian hospital mates in particular were readily responsive. Their inclinations were anything but revolutionary. I could not imagine this madness breaking out in Munich, for it seemed to me that loyalty to the house of Wittelsbach was after all stronger than the will of a few Jews. And so I could not help believing that this was merely a revolt in the navy and that it would be suppressed within the next few days. With the next few days came the most astounding information of my life.
The rumors grew more and more persistent. I was told that what I had considered to be a local affair was in reality a general revolution. In addition to this, from the front came the shameful news that they wished to capitulate. What? Was such a thing possible? On November 10, the local pastor visited the hospital for the purpose of delivering a short address, and that was how we came to know the whole story. I was in a fever of excitement as I listened to the address. The reverend old gentleman seemed to be trembling when he informed us that the house of Hohenzollern should no longer wear the imperial crown, that the fatherland had become a republic, that we should pray to the almighty not to withhold his blessing from the new order of things, and not to abandon our people in the days to come.
In delivering this message, he could not do more than briefly express appreciation of the royal house, its services to Pomerania, to Prussia, indeed to the whole of the German fatherland. And here he began to weep. A feeling of profound dismay fell on the people in that assembly, and I do not think there was a single eye that withheld its tears. As for myself, I broke down completely when the old gentleman tried to resume his story by informing us that we must now end this long war. Because the war was lost, he said, and we were at the mercy of the victor.
The fatherland would have to bear heavy burdens in the future. We were to accept the terms of the armistice and trust to the magnanimity of our former enemies. It was impossible for me to stay and listen any longer. Darkness surrounded me as I staggered and stumbled back to my ward and buried my aching head between the blankets and pillow. I had not cried since the day that I stood beside my mother's grave. Whenever fate dealt cruelly with me in my young days, the spirit of determination within me grew stronger and stronger.
During all those long years of war, when death claimed many a true friend and comrade from our ranks, to me, it would have appeared sinful to have uttered a word of complaint. Did they not die for Germany? And finally, almost in the last few days of that titanic struggle, when the waves of poison gas enveloped me and began to penetrate my eyes, The thought of becoming permanently blind unnerved me. But the voice of conscience cried out immediately, poor miserable fellow, will you start howling when there are thousands of others whose lot is a 100 times worse than yours? And so I accepted my misfortune in silence.
Realizing that this was the only thing to be done and that personal suffering was nothing when compared with the misfortune of one's country. So all had been in vain. In vain, all the sacrifices and privations. In vain, the hunger and thirst for endless months. In vain, those hours that we stuck to our posts, though the fear of death gripped our souls, and in vain the deaths of two millions who fell in discharging this duty. Think of those hundreds of thousands who set out with hearts full of faith in their fatherland and never returned.
Ought not their graves to open so that the spirits of those heroes, bespattered with mud and blood, should come home and take vengeance on those who had so despicably betrayed the greatest sacrifice which a human being can make for his country. Was it for this that the soldiers died in August and September 1914? For this that the volunteer regiments followed the old comrades in the autumn of the same year? Was it for this that those boys of 17 years of age were mingled with the earth of Flanders? Was this meant to be the fruits of the sacrifice which German mothers made for their fatherland when, with heavy hearts, they said goodbye to their sons who never returned?
Has all this been done in order to enable a gang of despicable criminals to lay their hands on the fatherland? Was this then what the German soldier struggled for through sweltering heat and blinding snowstorm, enduring hunger and thirst and cold, fatigued from sleepless nights and endless marches? Was it for this that he lived through an inferno of artillery bombardments, lay gasping and choking during gas attacks, neither flinching nor faltering, but remaining staunch to the thought of defending the fatherland against the enemy. Certainly, these heroes also deserve the epitaph.
Traveler, when you come to Germany, tell the homeland that we lie here, true to the fatherland and faithful to our duty. And at home? But was this the only sacrifice that we had to consider? Was the Germany of the past a country of little worth? Did she not owe a certain duty to her own history? Were we still worthy to partake in the glory of the past? How could we justify this act to future generations? What a gang of despicable and depraved criminals. The more I tried then to glean some definite information of the terrible events that had happened, the more my head became a fire with rage and shame.
What was all the pain I suffered in my eyes compared with this tragedy? The following days were terrible to bear, and the nights still worse. To depend on the mercy of the enemy was a precept which only fools or criminal liars could recommend. During those nights, my hatred increased, hatred for the originators of this dastardly crime. During the following days, my own fate became clear to me. I was forced now to scoff at the thought of my personal future, which hitherto had been the cause of so much worry to me. Was it not ludicrous to think of building up anything on such a foundation?
Finally, it also became clear to me that it was the inevitable that had happened, something which I had feared for a long time, though I really did not have the heart to believe it. Emperor William the second was the first German emperor to offer the hand of friendship to the Marxist leaders, not suspecting that they were scoundrels without any sense of honor. While they held the imperial hand in theirs, the other hand was already feeling for the dagger. There is no such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews.
It must be the hard and fast either or. For my part, I then decided that I would take up political work. File 44. Chapter eight. The beginning of my political activity. Towards the November, I returned to Munich. I went to the depot of my regiment, which was now in the hands of soldiers' councils. As the whole administration was quite repulsive to me, I decided to leave it as soon as I possibly could. With my faithful war comrade Ernst Schmidt, I came to Transtine and remained there until the camp was broken up. In March 1919, we were back again in Munich.
The situation there could not last as it was. It tended irresistibly to a further extension of the revolution. Eisner's death served only to hasten this development and finally led to the dictatorship of the councils or to put it more correctly, to a Jewish hegemony, which turned out to be transitory, but which was the original aim of those who had contrived the revolution. At that juncture, innumerable plans took shape in my mind. I spent whole days pondering on the problem of what could be done. But, unfortunately, every project had to give way before the hard fact that I was quite unknown, and therefore did not even have the first prerequisite necessary for effective action.
Later on, I shall explain the reasons why I could not decide to join any of the parties then in existence. As the new Soviet revolution began to run its course in Munich, my first activities drew upon me the ill will of the central council. In the early morning of 04/27/1919, I was to have been arrested, but the three fellows who came to arrest me did not have the courage to face my rifle and withdrew just as they had arrived. A few days after the liberation of Munich, I was ordered to appear before the inquiry commission, which had been set up in the second infantry regiment for the purpose of watching revolutionary activities.
That was my first incursion into the more or less political field. After another few weeks, I received orders to attend the course of lectures which were being given to members of the army. This course was meant to inculcate certain fundamental principles on which the soldier could base his political ideas. For me, the advantage of this organization was that it gave me a chance of meeting fellow soldiers who were of the same way of thinking and with whom I could discuss the actual situation. We were all more or less firmly convinced that Germany could not be saved from imminent disaster by those who had participated in the November treachery, that is to say the center and the social democrats, and also that the so called bourgeois national group could not make good the damage that had been done even if they had the best intentions.
They lacked a number of requisites without which such a task could never be successfully undertaken. The years that followed have justified the opinions which we held at that time. In our small circle, we discussed the project of forming a new party. The leading ideas which we then proposed were the same as those which were carried into effect afterwards when the German Labor Party was founded. The name of the new movement, which was to be founded, should be such that of itself, it would appeal to the mass of the people. For all our efforts would turn out vain and useless if this condition were lacking.
And that was the reason why we chose the name social revolutionary party, particularly because the social principles of our new organization were indeed revolutionary. But there was also a more fundamental reason. The attention which I had given to economic problems during my earlier years was more or less confined to considerations arising directly out of the social problem. Subsequently, this outlook broadened as I came to study the German policy of the Triple Alliance. This policy was very largely the result of an erroneous valuation of the economic situation together with a confused notion as to the basis on which the future subsistence of the German people could be guaranteed.
All these ideas were based on the principle that capital is exclusively the product of labor, and that just like labor, it was subject to all the factors which can hinder or promote human activity. Hence, from the national standpoint, the significance of capital depended on the greatness and freedom and power of the state, that is to say of the nation, and that it is this dependence alone which leads capital to promote the interests of the state and the nation from the instinct of self preservation and for the sake of its own development. On such principles, the attitude of the state towards capital would be comparatively simple and clear.
Its only object would be to make sure that capital remained subservient to the state and did not allocate to itself the right to dominate national interests. Thus, it could confine its activities within the two following limits. On the one side, to assure a vital and independent system of national economy, and on the other, to safeguard the social rights of the workers. Previously, I did not recognize with adequate clearness the difference between capital, which is purely the product of creative labor, and the existence and nature of capital, which is exclusively the result of financial speculation.
Here, I needed an impulse to set my mind thinking in this direction, but that impulse had hitherto been lacking. The requisite impulse now came from one of the men who delivered lectures in the course I have already mentioned. This was Gottfried Fader. For the first time in my life, I heard a discussion which dealt with the principles of stock exchange capital and capital which was used for loan activities. After hearing the first lecture delivered by Fader, the idea immediately came into my head that I had now found a way to one of the most essential prerequisites for the founding of a new party.
To my mind, Fader's merit consisted in the ruthless and trenchant way in which he described the double character of the capital engaged in stock exchange and loan transaction, laying bare the fact that this capital is ever and always dependent on the payment of interest. In fundamental questions, his statements were so full of common sense that those who criticized him did not deny that, his ideas were sound, but they doubted whether it be possible to put these ideas into practice. To me, this seemed the strongest point in Phaedrus' teaching, though others considered it a weak point.
It is not the business of him who lays down a theoretical program to explain the various ways in which something can be put into practice. His task is to deal with the problem as such, and therefore, he has to look to the end rather than the means. The important question is whether an idea is fundamentally right or not. The question of whether or not it may be difficult to carry it out in practice is quite another matter. When a man whose task it is to lay down the principles of a program or policy begins to busy himself with the questions as to whether it is expedient and practical, instead of confining himself to the statement of the absolute truth.
His work will cease to be a guiding star to those who are looking about for light and leading, and will become merely a recipe for everyday life. The man who lays down the program of a movement must consider only the goal. It is for the political leader to point out the way in which that goal may be reached. The thought of the former will, therefore, be determined by those truths that are everlasting, whereas the activity of the latter must always be guided by taking practical account of the circumstances under which those truths have to be carried into effect.
The greatness of the one will depend on the absolute truth of his idea considered in the abstract, whereas that of the other will depend on whether or not he correctly judges the given realities and how they may be utilized under the guidance of the truths established by the former. The test of greatness as applied to a political leader is the success of his plans and his enterprises, which means his ability to reach the goal for which he sets out. Whereas the final goal set up by the political philosopher can never be reached.
For human thought may grasp truths and picture ends, which it sees like clear crystal, though such ends can never be completely fulfilled because human nature is weak and imperfect. The more an idea is correct in the abstract, and therefore, all the more powerful, the smaller is the possibility of putting it into practice, at least as far as this latter depends on human beings. The significance of a political philosopher does not depend on the practical success of the plans he lays down, but rather on their absolute truth and the influence they exert on the progress of mankind. If it were otherwise, the founders of religions could not be considered as the greatest men who have ever lived because their moral aims will never be completely or even approximately carried out in practice.
Even that religion, which is called the religion of love, is really no more than a faint reflex of the will of its sublime founder. But its significance lies in the orientation which it endeavored to give to human civilization and human virtue and morals. This very wide difference between the functions of a political philosopher and a practical political leader is the reason why the qualifications necessary for both functions are scarcely ever found associated in the same person. This applies especially to the so called successful politician of the smaller kind whose activity is indeed hardly more than practicing the art of doing the possible as Bismarck modestly defined the art of politics in general.
If such a politician resolutely avoids great ideas, his success will be all the easier to attain. It will be attained more expeditely and frequently will be more tangible. By reason of this very fact, however, such success is doomed to futility and sometimes does not even survive the death of its author. Generally speaking, the work of politicians is without significance for the following generation because their temporary success was based on the expediency of avoiding all really great decisive problems and ideas which would be valid also for future generations.
File 45. To pursue ideals which will still be of value and significance for the future is generally not a very profitable undertaking. And he who follows such a course is only very rarely understood by the masses of the people who find beer and milk a more persuasive index of political values than far sighted plans for the future, the realization of which can only take place later on, and the advantages of which can be reaped only by posterity. Because of a certain vanity, which is always one of the blood relations of unintelligence, the general run of politicians will always eschew those schemes for the future which are really difficult to put into practice, and they will practice this avoidance so that they may not lose the immediate favor of the mob.
The importance and success of such politicians belong exclusively to the present and will be of no consequence for the future. But that does not worry small minded people. They are quite content with momentary results. The position of the constructive political philosopher is quite different. The importance of his work must always be judged from the standpoint of the future, and he is frequently described by the word or dreamer. While the ability of the politician consists in mastering the art of the possible, The founder of a political system belongs to those who are said to please the gods only because they wish for and demand the impossible.
They will always have to renounce contemporary fame. But if their ideas be immortal, posterity will grant them its acknowledgment. Within long spans of human progress, it may occasionally happen that the practical politician and political philosopher are one. The more intimate this union is, the greater will be the obstacles which the activity of the politician will have to encounter. Such a man does not labor for the purpose of satisfying demands that are obvious to every Philistine, but he reaches out towards ends which can be understood only by the few. His life is torn asunder by hatred and love.
The protest of his contemporaries, who do not understand the man, is in conflict with the recognition of posterity for whom he also works. For the greater the work which a man does for the future, the less will he be appreciated by his contemporaries. His struggle will accordingly be all the more severe, and his success all the rarer. When, in the course of centuries, such a man appears who is blessed with success. Then towards the end of his days, he may have a faint prevision of his future fame. But such great men are only the marathon runners of history. The laurels of contemporary fame are only for the brow of the dying hero.
The great protagonists are those who fight for their ideas and ideals despite the fact that they receive no recognition at the hands of their contemporaries. They are the men whose memories will be enshrined in the hearts of the future generations. It seems then as if each individual felt it his duty to make retroactive atonement for the wrong which great men have suffered at the hands of their contemporaries. Their lives and their work are then studied with touching and grateful admiration, especially in dark days of distress. Such men have the power of healing broken hearts and elevating the despairing spirit of a people.
To this group belong not only the genuinely great statesmen, but all the great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great, we have such men as Martin Luther and Richard Wagner. When I heard Gottfried Fader's first lecture on the abolition of the interest servitude, I understood immediately that here was a truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people. The absolute separation of stock exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without, at the same time, attacking capital as such.
For to do this would jeopardize the foundations of our national independence. I clearly saw what was developing in Germany, and I realized then that the stiffest fight we would have to wage would not be against the enemy nations, but against international capital. In Federer's speech, I found an effective rallying cry for our coming struggle. Here, again, later events proved how correct was the impression we then had. The fools among our bourgeois politicians do not mock at us on this point anymore, For even those politicians now see, if they would speak the truth, that international stock exchange capital was not only the chief instigating factor in bringing on the war, but that now when the war is over, it turns the peace into a hell.
The struggle against international finance capital and loan capital has become one of the most important points in the program on which the German nation has based its fight for economic freedom and independence. Regarding the objections raised by so called practical people, the following answer must suffice. All apprehensions concerning the fearful economic consequences that would follow the abolition of the servitude that results from interest capital are ill timed. For in the first place, the economic principles hitherto followed have proved quite fatal to the interests of the German people.
The attitude adopted when the question of maintaining our national existence arose vividly recalled similar advice once given by experts. The Bavarian Medical College, for example, on the question of introducing railroads. The fears expressed by that august body of experts were not realized. Those who traveled in the coaches of the new steam horse did not suffer from vertigo. Those who looked on did not become ill, and the hoardings which had been erected to conceal the new invention were eventually taken down. Only those blinds which obscure the vision of the would be experts have remained.
And that will always be. In the second place, the following must be born in mind. Any idea may be a source of danger if it be looked upon as an end in itself, when really, it is only the means to an end. For me and for all genuine national socialists, there is only one doctrine, people and fatherland. What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children, and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the creator.
All ideas and ideals, all teaching, and all knowledge must serve these ends. It is from this standpoint that everything must be examined and turned to practical uses or else discarded. Thus, a theory can never become a mere dead dogma since everything will have to serve the practical ends of everyday life. Thus, the judgment arrived at by Gottfried Federer determined me to make a fundamental study of a question with which I had hitherto not been very familiar. I began to study again, and thus it was that I first came to understand perfectly what was the substance and purpose of the life work of the Jew Karl Marx.
His capital became intelligible to me now for the first time. And in the light of it, I now exactly understood the fight of the social democrats against national economics, a fight which was to prepare the ground for the hegemony of a real international and stock exchange capital. In another direction also, this course of lectures had important consequences for me. One day, I put my name down as wishing to take part in the discussion. Another of the participants thought that he would break a lance for the Jews and entered into a lengthy defense of them.
This aroused my opposition. An overwhelming number of those who attended the lecture supported my views. The consequence of it all was that a few days later, I was assigned to a regiment then stationed at Munich and given a position there as instruction officer. At that time, the spirit of discipline was rather weak amongst those troops. It was still suffering from the aftereffects of the period when the soldiers councils were in control. Only gradually and carefully could a new spirit of military discipline and obedience be introduced in place of voluntary obedience, a term which had been used to express the ideal of military discipline under Kurt Eisner's higgledy piggledy regime.
The soldiers had to be taught to think and feel in a national and patriotic way. In these two directions lay my future line of action. I took up my work with the greatest delight and devotion. Here I was presented with an opportunity of speaking before quite a large audience. I was now able to confirm what I had hitherto merely felt, namely, that I had a talent for public speaking. My voice had become so much better that I could be well understood, at least in all parts of the small hall where the soldiers assembled. No task could have been more pleasing to me than this one.
For now, before being demobilized, I was in a position to render useful service to an institution which had been infinitely dear to my heart, namely the army. I am able to state that my talks were successful. During the course of my lectures, I have led back hundreds and even thousands of my fellow countrymen to their people and their fatherland. I nationalized these troops, and by so doing, I helped to restore general discipline. Here again, I made the acquaintance of several comrades whose thought ran along the same lines as my own, and who later became members of the first group out of which the new movement developed.
File 46. Chapter nine. The German Workers' Party. One day, I received an order from my superiors to investigate the nature of an association which was apparently political. It called itself the German Labor Party and was soon to hold a meeting at which Gottfried Federer would speak. I was ordered to attend this meeting and report on the situation. The spirit of curiosity in which the army authorities then regarded political parties can be very well understood. The revolution had granted the soldiers the right to take an active part in politics, and it was particularly those with the smallest experience who had availed themselves of this right.
But not until the center and the social democratic parties were reluctantly forced to recognize that the sympathies of the soldiers had turned away from the revolutionary parties towards the national movement and the national reawakening Did they feel obliged to withdraw from the army the right to vote and to forbid it all political activity? The fact that the center and Marxism had adopted this policy was instructive because if they had not thus curtailed the rights of the citizen as they described the political rights of the soldiers after the revolution, the government which had been established in November 1918 would have been overthrown within a few years, and the dishonor and disgrace of the nation would not have been further prolonged.
At that time, the soldiers were on the point of taking the best way to rid the nation of the vampires and valleys who served the cause of the entente in the interior of the country. But the fact that the so called national parties voted enthusiastically for the doctrine air policy of the criminals who organized the revolution in November 1918 helped also to render the army ineffective as an instrument of national restoration, and thus showed once again where men might be led by the purely abstract notions accepted by these most gullible people.
The minds of the bourgeois middle classes had become so fossilized that they sincerely believed the army could once again become what it had previously been, namely a rampart of German valor. While the center party and the Marxists intended only to extract the poisonous tooth of nationalism without which an army must always remain just a police force, but can never be in the position of a military organization capable of fighting against the outside enemy. This truth was sufficiently proved by subsequent events. Or did our national politicians believe, after all, that the development of our army could be other than national?
This belief might be possible and could be explained by the fact that during the war, they were not soldiers, but merely talkers. In other words, they were parliamentarians, and as such, they did not have the slightest idea of what was passing in the hearts of those men who remembered the greatness of their own past, and also remembered that they had once been the first soldiers in the world. I decided to attend the meeting of this party, which had hitherto been entirely unknown to me. When I arrived that evening in the guest room of the former Sternaker brewery, which has now become a place of historical significance for us, I found approximately 20 to 25 persons present, most of them belonging to the lower classes.
The theme of Faidher's lecture was already familiar to me, for I had heard it in the lecture course I have spoken of. Therefore, I could concentrate my attention on studying the society itself. The impression it made upon me was neither good nor bad. I felt that here was just another one of these many new societies which were being formed at that time. In those days, everybody felt called upon to found a new party whenever he felt displeased with the course of events and had lost confidence in all the parties already existing. Thus it was that new associations sprouted up all around to disappear just as quickly without exercising any effect or making any noise whatever.
Generally speaking, the founders of such associations did not have the slightest idea of what it means to bring together a number of people for the foundations of a party or a movement. Therefore, these associations disappeared because of their woeful lack of anything like an adequate grasp of the necessities of the situation. My opinion of the German Labour Party was not very different after I had listened to their proceedings for about two hours. I was glad when Fed Air finally came to a close. I had observed enough and was just about to leave when it was announced that anybody who wished was free to open a discussion.
Thereupon, I decided to remain, But the discussion seemed to proceed without anything of vital importance being mentioned when suddenly, a professor commenced to speak. He opened by throwing doubt on the accuracy of what Faire had said. And then after Faire had replied very effectively, the professor suddenly took up his position on what he called the basis of facts. But before this, he recommended the young party most urgently to introduce the secession of Bavaria from Prussia as one of the leading proposals in its program. In the most self assured way, this man kept on insisting that German Austria would join Bavaria and that the peace would then function much better.
He made other similarly extravagant statements. At this juncture, I felt bound to ask for permission to speak and to tell the learned gentleman what I thought. The result was that the honorable gentleman who had last spoken slipped out of his place like a whipped cur without uttering a sound. While I was speaking, the audience listened with an expression of surprise on their faces. When I was just about to say goodnight to the assembly and to leave, a man came after me quickly and introduced himself. I did not grasp the name correctly, but he placed a little book in my hand, which was obviously a political pamphlet, and asked me very earnestly to read it.
I was quite pleased, because in this way, I could come to know about this association without having to attend its tiresome meetings. Moreover, this man, who had the appearance of a workman, made a good impression on me. Thereupon, I left the hall. At that time, I was living in one of the barracks of the second Infantry Regiment. I had a little room which still bore the unmistakable traces of the revolution. During the day, I was mostly out at the quarters of light infantry number forty one or else attending meetings or lectures held at some other branch of the army. I spent only the night at the quarters where I lodged.
Since I usually woke up at about 05:00 every morning, I got into the habit of amusing myself with watching little mice which played around in my small room. I used to place a few pieces of hard bread or crust on the floor and watch the funny little beasts playing around and enjoying themselves with these delicacies. I had suffered so many privations in my own life that I well knew what hunger was, and could only too well picture to myself the pleasure these little creatures were experiencing. So on the morning after the meeting I have mentioned, it happened that about 05:00, I lay fully awake in bed watching the mice playing and vying with each other.
As I was not able to go to sleep again, I suddenly remembered the pamphlet that one of the workers had given me at the meeting. It was a small pamphlet of which this worker was the author. In his little book, he described how his mind had thrown off the shackles of the Marxist and trades union phraseology, and that he had come back to the nationalist ideals. This was the reason why he had entitled his little book, My Political Awakening. The pamphlet secured my attention for the moment, and I began to read, and I read it with interest to the end.
The process here described was similar to that which I had experienced in my own case ten years previously. Unconsciously, my own experiences began to stir again in my mind. During that day, my thoughts returned several times to what I had read, but I finally decided to give the matter no further attention. A week or so later, however, I received a postcard which informed me, to my astonishment, that I had been admitted into the German Labour Party. I was asked to answer this communication and to attend a meeting of the party committee on Wednesday next. This manner of getting members rather amazed me, and I did not know whether to be angry or laugh at it.
Hitherto I had not any idea of entering a party already in existence, but wanted to found one of my own. Such an invitation as I now had received, I looked upon as entirely out of the question for me. I was about to send a written reply when my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to attend the gathering at the date assigned so that I might expound my principles to these gentlemen in person. File 47. Wednesday came. The tavern in which the meeting was to take place was the Alta Rosenbad in the Herrenstrasse, into which apparently only an occasional guest wandered.
This was not very surprising in the year 1919 when the bills of fare even at the larger restaurants were only very modest and scanty in their pretensions, and thus not very attractive to clients. But I had never before heard of this restaurant. I went through the badly lighted guest room, where not a single guest was to be seen, and searched for the door which led to the side room, and there I was face to face with the congress. Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas lamp, I could see four young people sitting round a table, one of them the author of the pamphlet.
He greeted me cordially and welcomed me as a new member of the German Labour Party. I was somewhat taken aback on being informed that actually the national President of the party had not yet come, So I decided that I would keep back my own exposition for the time being. Finally, the president appeared. He was the man who had been chairman of the meeting held in the Sternaker Brewery when Federer spoke. My curiosity was stimulated anew, and I sat waiting for what was going to happen. Now I got at least as far as learning the names of the gentlemen who had been parties to the whole affair. The Reich National President of the Association was a certain Herr Harrer, and the President for the Munich District was Anton Drexler.
The minutes of the previous meeting were read out, and a vote of confidence in the secretary was passed. Then came the treasurer's report. The society possessed a total fund of 7 marks and 50 phoenix, a sum corresponding to 7 shillings and sixpence in English money at par, whereupon the treasurer was assured that he had the confidence of the members. This was now inserted in the minutes. Then letters of reply, which had been written by the chairman, were read, first to a letter received from Kiel, then to one from Dusseldorf, and finally to one from Berlin.
All three replies received the approval of all present. Then the incoming letters were read, one from Berlin, one from Dusseldorf, and one from Kiel. The reception of these letters seemed to cause great satisfaction. This increasing bulk of correspondence was taken as the best and most obvious sign of the growing importance of the German Labour Party. And then? Well, there followed a long discussion of the replies which would be given to these newly received letters. It was all very awful. This was the worst kind of parish pump clubism.
And was I supposed to become a member of such a club? The question of new members was then discussed. That is to say, the question of catching myself in the trap. I now began to ask questions, but I found that apart from a few general principles, there was nothing. No program, no pamphlet, nothing at all in print, no card of membership, Not even a party stamp. Nothing but obvious good faith and good intentions. I no longer felt inclined to laugh. For what else was all this but a typical sign of the most complete perplexity and deepest despair in regard to all political parties, their programs, and views, and activities?
The feeling which had induced these few young people to join in what seemed such a ridiculous enterprise was nothing but the call of the inner voice, which told them, though more intuitively than consciously, that the whole party system, as it had hitherto existed, was not the kind of force that could restore the German nation or repair the damages that had been done to the German people by those who hitherto control the internal affairs of the nation. I quickly read through the list of principles that formed the platform of the party. These principles were stated on typewritten sheets.
Here again, I found evidence of the spirit of longing and searching, but no sign whatever of a knowledge of the conflict that had to be fought. I myself had experienced the feelings which inspired those people. It was the longing for a movement which should be more than a party in the hitherto accepted meaning of that word. When I returned to my room in the barracks that evening, I had formed a definite opinion on this association, and I was facing the most difficult problem of my life. Should I join this party or refuse?
From the side of the intellect alone, every consideration urged me to refuse, but my feelings troubled me. The more I tried to prove to myself how senseless this club was on the whole, the more did my feelings incline me to favor it. During the following days, I was restless. I began to consider all the pros and cons. I had long ago decided to take an active part in politics. The fact that I could do so only through a new movement was quite clear to me, but I had hitherto lacked the impulse to take concrete action. I'm not one of those people who will begin something today and just give it up the next day for the sake of something new.
That was the main reason which made it so difficult for me to decide in joining something newly founded. For this must become the real fulfillment of everything I dreamt, or else it had better not be started at all. I knew that such a decision should bind me forever, and that there could be no turning back. For me, there could be no idle dallying, but only cause to be championed ardently. I had already an instinctive feeling against people who took up everything, but never carried anything through to the end. I loathed these jacks of all trades, and considered the activities of such people to be worse than if they were to remain entirely quiescent.
Fate herself now seemed to supply the finger post that pointed out the way. I should never have entered one of the big parties already in existence and shall explain my reasons for this later on. This ludicrous little formation with its handful of members seemed to have the unique advantage of not yet being fossilized into an organization, and still offered a chance for real personal activity on the part of the individual. Here, it might still be possible to do some effective work. And as the movement was still small, one could all be easier give it the required shape.
Here, it was still possible to determine the character of the movement, the aims to be achieved, and the road to be taken, which would have been impossible in the case of the big parties already existing. The longer I reflected on the problem, the more my opinion developed that just such a small movement would best serve as an instrument to prepare the way for the national resurgence, but that this could never be done by the political parliamentary parties, which were too firmly attached to obsolete ideas or had an interest in supporting the new regime.
What had to be proclaimed here was a new Weltanschlag and not a new election cry. It was, however, infinitely difficult to decide on putting the intention into practice. What were the qualifications which I could bring to the accomplishment of such a task? The fact that I was poor and without resources could, in my opinion, be the easiest to bear, but the fact that I was utterly unknown raised a more difficult problem. I was only one of the millions which chance allows to exist or cease to exist, whom even their next door neighbors will not consent to know. Another difficulty arose from the fact that I had not gone through the regular school curriculum.
The so called intellectuals still look down with infinite superciliousness on anyone who has not been through the prescribed schools and allowed them to pump the necessary knowledge into him. The question of what a man can do is never asked, but rather what has he learned. Educated people look upon any imbecile who is plastered with a number of academic certificates as superior to the ablest young fellow who lacks these precious documents. I could, therefore, easily imagine how this educated world would receive me, and I was wrong only insofar as I then believed men to be, for the most part, better than they proved to be in the cold light of reality. Because of their being as they are, the few exceptions stand out all the more conspicuously.
I learned more and more to distinguish between those who will always be at school and those who will one day come to know something in reality. After two days of careful brooding and reflection, I became convinced that I must take the contemplated step. It was the most fateful decision of my life. No retreat was possible. Thus, I declared myself ready to accept the membership offered to me by the German Labour Party and received a provisional certificate of membership. I was numbered seven. File 48. Chapter 10. Causes of the collar.
The depth of a fall is always measured by the difference between the level of the original position from which a body has fallen and that in which it is now found. The same holds good for nations and states. The matter of greatest importance here is the height of the original level, or rather the greatest height that has been attained before the descent began. For only the profound decline or collapse of that which was capable of reaching extraordinary heights can make a striking impression on the eye of the beholder. The collapse of the second Reich was all the more bewildering for those who could ponder over it and feel the effect of it in their hearts because the Reich had fallen from a height which can hardly be imagined in these days of misery and humiliation.
The second Reich was founded in circumstances of such dazzling splendor that the whole nation had become entranced and exalted by it. Following an unparalleled series of victories, that empire was handed over as the girdon of immortal heroism to the children and grandchildren of the heroes. Whether they were fully conscious of it does not matter. Anyhow, the Germans felt that this empire had not been brought into existence by a series of able political negotiations through parliamentary channels, but that it was different from political institutions founded elsewhere by reason of the nobler circumstances that had accompanied its establishment.
When its foundations were laid, the accompanying music was not the chatter of parliamentary debates, but the thunder and boom of war along the battlefront that encircled Paris. It was thus that an act of statesmanship was accomplished whereby the Germans, princes, as well as people, established the future Reich and restored the symbol of the imperial crown. Bismarck's state was not founded on treason and assassination by deserters and shirkers, but by the regiments that had fought at the front. This unique birth and baptism of fire sufficed of themselves to surround the second empire with an aureole of historical splendor such as few of the older states could lay claim to.
And what an ascension then began? A position of independence in regard to the outside world guaranteed the means of livelihood at home. The nation increased in numbers and in worldly wealth. The honor of the state and therewith the honor of the people as a whole were secured and protected by an army which was the most striking witness of the difference between this new Reich and the old German Confederation. But the downfall of the second empire and the German people has been so profound that they all seem to have been struck dumbfounded and rendered incapable of feeling the significance of this downfall or reflecting on it.
It seems as if people were utterly unable to picture in their minds the heights to which the empire formally attained. So visionary and unreal appears the greatness and splendor of those days in contrast to the misery of the present. Bearing this in mind, we can understand why and how people become so dazed when they try to look back to the sublime past that they forget to look for the symptoms of the great collapse, which must certainly have been present in some form or other. Naturally, this applies only to those for whom Germany was more than merely a place of abode and a source of livelihood. These are the only people who have been able to feel the present conditions as really catastrophic, whereas others have considered these conditions as the fulfillment of what they had looked forward to and hitherto silently wished?
The symptoms of future collapse were definitely to be perceived in those earlier days, although very few made any attempt to draw a practical lesson from their significance. But this is now a greater necessity than it ever was before. For just as bodily ailments can be cured only when their origin has been diagnosed, so also political disease can be treated only when it has been diagnosed. It is obvious, of course, that the external symptoms of any disease can be more readily detected than its internal causes, for these symptoms strike the eye more easily.
This is also the reason why so many people recognize only external effects and mistake them for causes. Indeed, they will sometimes try to deny the existence of such causes. And that is why the majority of people among us recognize the German collapse only in the prevailing economic distress and the results that have followed therefrom. Almost everyone has to carry his share of this burden, and that is why each one looks on the economic catastrophe as the cause of the present deplorable state of affairs. The broad masses of the people see little of the cultural, political, and moral background of this collapse.
Many of them completely lack both the necessary feeling and powers of understanding for it. That the masses of the people should thus estimate the causes of Germany's downfall is quite understandable. But the fact that intelligence sections of the community regard the German collapse primarily as an economic catastrophe and consequently think that a cure for it may be found in an economic solution seems to me to be the reason why hitherto no improvement has been brought about. No improvement can be brought about until it be understood that economics play only a second or third role, while the main part is played by political, moral, and racial factors.
Only when this is understood will it be possible to understand the causes of the present evil and consequently to find the ways and means of remedying them. Therefore, the question of why Germany really collapsed is one of the most urgent significance, especially for a political movement which aims at overcoming this disaster. In scrutinizing the past with a view to discovering the causes of the German breakup, it is necessary to be careful lest we may be unduly impressed by external results that readily strike the eye and thus ignore the less manifest causes of these results.
The most facile and, therefore, the most generally accepted way of accounting for the present misfortune is to say that it is the result of a lost war, and that this is the real cause of the present misfortune. Probably, there are many who honestly believe in this absurd explanation, but there are many more in whose mouths it is a deliberate and conscious falsehood. This applies to all those who are now feeding at the government troughs. For the prophets of the revolution again and again declared to the people that it would be immaterial to the great masses what the result of the war might be.
On the contrary, they solemnly assured the public that it was high finance which was principally interested in a victorious outcome of this gigantic struggle among the nations, but that the German people and the German workers had no interest whatsoever in such an outcome. Indeed, the apostles of world conciliation habitually asserted that far from any German downfall, the opposite was bound to take place, namely the resurgence of the German people once militarism had been crushed. Did not these self same circles sing the praises of the entente, and did they not also lay the whole blame for the sanguinary struggle on the shoulders of Germany?
Without this explanation, would they have been able to put forward the theory that a military defeat would have no political consequences for the German people? Was not the whole revolution dressed up in gala colors as blocking the victorious advance of the German banners, and that thus the German people would be assured its liberty both at home and abroad? Is that not so, you miserable lying rascals? That kind of impudence, which is typical of the Jews, was necessary in order to proclaim the defeat of the army as the cause of the German collapse. Indeed, the Berlin, that organ and mouthpiece of sedition, then wrote on this occasion that the German nation should not be permitted to bring home its banners triumphantly, and yet they attribute our collapse to the military defeat.
Of course, it would be out of the question to enter into an argument with these liars who deny at one moment what they said the moment before. I should waste no further words on them, were it not for the fact that there are many thoughtless people who repeat all this in parrot fashion without being necessarily inspired by any evil motives. But the observations I'm making here are also meant for our fighting followers, seeing that nowadays, one's spoken words are often forgotten and twisted in their meaning. The assertion that the loss of the war was the cause of the German collapse can best be answered as follows.
It is admittedly a fact that the loss of the war was of tragic importance for the future of our country, but that loss was not in itself a cause. It was rather the consequence of other causes That a disastrous ending to this life or death conflict must have involved catastrophes in its train was clearly seen by everyone of insight who could think in a straightforward manner. But, unfortunately, there were also people whose powers of understanding seemed to fail them at that critical moment, and there were other people who had first questioned that truth and then altogether denied it.
And there were people who, after their secret desire had been fulfilled, were suddenly faced with the subsequent facts that resulted from their own collaboration. Such people are responsible for the collapse and not the lost war, though they now want to attribute everything to this. As a matter of fact, the loss of the war was a result of their activities and not the result of bad leadership, as they would now like to maintain. Our enemies were not cowards. They also know how to die. From the very first day of the war, they outnumbered the German army, and the arsenals and armament factories of the whole world were at their disposal for the replenishment of military equipment.
Indeed, it is universally admitted that the German victories, which had been steadily won during four years of warfare against the whole world, were due to superior leadership, apart, of course, from the heroism of the troops. And the organization was solely due to the German military leadership. That organization and leadership of the German army was the most mighty thing that the world has ever seen. Any shortcomings which became evident were humanly unavoidable. The collapse of that army was not the cause of our present distress. It was itself the consequence of other faults.
But this consequence in its turn ushered in a further collapse, which was more visible. That such was actually the case can be shown as follows. Must a military defeat necessarily lead to such a complete overthrow of the state and nation? Whenever has this been the result of an unlucky war? As a matter of fact, are nations ever ruined by a lost war and by that alone? The answer to this question can be briefly stated by referring to the fact that military defeats are the result of internal decay, cowardice, want of character, and are a retribution for such things.
If such were not the causes, then a military defeat would lead to a national resurgence and bring the nation to a higher pitch of effort. A military defeat is not the tombstone of national life. History affords innumerable examples to confirm the truth of that statement. Unfortunately, Germany's military overthrow was not an undeserved catastrophe, but a well merited punishment, which was in the nature of an eternal retribution. This defeat was more than deserved by us for it represented the greatest external phenomenon of decomposition among a series of internal phenomena, which, although they were visible, were not recognized by the majority of the people who follow the tactics of the ostrich and see only what they want to see.
File 49. Let us examine the symptoms that were evident in Germany at the time that the German people accepted this defeat. Is it not true that in several circles, the misfortunes of the fatherland were even joyfully welcomed in the most shameful manner? Who could act in such a way without thereby meriting vengeance for his attitude? Were there not people who went even further and boasted that they had gone to the extent of weakening the front and causing a collapse? Therefore, it was not the enemy who brought this disgrace upon our shoulders, but rather our own countrymen.
If they suffered misfortune for it afterwards, was that misfortune undeserved? Was there ever a case in history where a people declared itself guilty of a war and that even against the better conscience and its better knowledge? No. And again, no. In the manner in which the German nation reacted to its defeat, we can see that the real cause of our collapse must be looked for elsewhere, and not in the purely military loss of a few positions or the failure of an offensive. For if the front as such had given way and thus brought about a national disaster, then the German nation would have accepted the defeat in quite another spirit.
They would have borne the subsequent misfortune with clenched teeth, or they would have been overwhelmed by sorrow. Regret and fury would have filled their hearts against an enemy into whose hands victory had been given by a chance event or the decree of fate. And in that case, the nation following the example of the Roman senate would have faced the defeated legions on their return and expressed their thanks for the sacrifices that had been made and would have requested them not to lose faith in the empire. Even the capitulation would have been signed under the sway of calm reason, while the heart would have beaten in the hope of the coming revenge.
That is the reception that would have been given to a military defeat, which had to be attributed only to the adverse decree of fortune, there would have been either joy making nor dancing. Cowardice would not have been boasted of, and the defeat would not have been honored. On returning from the front, the troops would not have been mocked at, and the colors would not have been dragged in the dust. But above all, that disgraceful state of affairs could never have arisen which induced a British officer, Colonel Reppington, to declare with scorn, every third German is a traitor.
No. In such a case, this plague would never have assumed the proportions of a veritable flood, which for the past five years has smothered every vestige of respect for the German nation in the outside world. This shows only too clearly how false it is to say that the loss of the war was the cause of the German breakup. No. The military defeat was itself but the consequence of a whole series of morbid symptoms and their causes, which had become active in the German nation before the war broke out. The war was the first catastrophic consequence visible to all of how traditions and national morale had been poisoned and how the instinct of self preservation had degenerated.
These were the preliminary causes which for many years had been undermining the foundations of the nation and the empire. But it remained for the Jews with their unqualified capacity for falsehood and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Leutendorf, they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the fatherland to justice. All this was inspired by the principle, which is quite true in itself, that in the big lie, there is always a certain force of credibility because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily.
And, thus, in the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie. Since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the same impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely that they are a religious community, whereas in reality, they are a race. And what a race. One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. He, Schopenhauer, called the Jew the great master of lies.
Those who do not realize the truth of that statement or do not wish to believe it will never be able to lend a hand in helping truth to prevail. We may regard it as a great stroke of fortune for the German nation that its period of lingering suffering was so suddenly curtailed and transformed into such a terrible catastrophe. For if things had gone on as they were, the nation would have more slowly, but more surely, gone to ruin. The disease would have become chronic, whereas in the acute form of the disaster, it at least showed itself clearly to the eyes of a considerable number of observers.
It was not by accident that man conquered the black plague more easily than he conquered tuberculosis. The first appeared in terrifying waves of death that shook the whole of mankind. The other advances insidiously. The first induces terror. The other, gradual indifference. The result is, however, that men oppose the first with all the energy they were capable of whilst they try to arrest tuberculosis by feeble means. Thus, man has mastered the black plague, while tuberculosis still gets the better of him. The same applies to diseases in nations. So long as these diseases are not of a catastrophic character, the population will slowly accustom itself to them and later succumb.
It is then a stroke of luck, although a bitter one, when fate decides to interfere in this slow process of decay and suddenly brings the victim face to face with the final stage of the disease. More often than not, the result of the catastrophe is that a cure is at once undertaken and carried through with rigid determination. But even in such a case, the essential preliminary condition is always the recognition of the internal causes which are given rise to the disease in question. The important question here is the differentiation of the root causes from the circumstances developing out of them.
This becomes all the more difficult the longer the germs of the disease remain in the national body and the longer they are allowed to become an integral part of that body. It may easily happen that as time goes on, it will become so difficult to recognize certain definite virulent poisons as such that they are accepted as belonging to the national being, or they are merely tolerated as a necessary evil. So the drastic attempts to locate those alien germs are not held to be necessary. During the long period of peace prior to the last war, certain evils were apparent here and there, although with one or two exceptions, very little effort was made to discover their origin.
Here again, these exceptions were first and foremost those phenomena in the economic life of the nation, which were more apparent to the individual than the evil conditions existing in a good many other spheres. There were many signs of decay which ought to have been given serious thought. As far as economics were concerned, the following may be said. The amazing increase of population in Germany before the war brought the question of providing daily bread into a more and more prominent position in all spheres of political and economic thought and action. But, unfortunately, those responsible could not make up their minds to arrive at the only correct solution and preferred to reach their objective by cheaper methods.
Repudiation of the idea of acquiring fresh territory and the substitution for it of the mad desire for the commercial conquest of the world was bound to lead eventually to unlimited and injurious industrialization. The first and most fatal result brought about in this way was the weakening of the agricultural classes, whose decline was proportionate to the increase in the proletariat of the urban areas until finally the equilibrium was completely upset. The big barrier dividing rich and poor now became apparent. Luxury and poverty lived so close to each other that the consequences were bound to be deplorable.
Want and frequent unemployment began to play havoc with the people and left discontent and embitterment behind them. The result of this was to divide the population into political classes. Discontent increased in spite of commercial prosperity. Matters finally reached that stage which brought about the general conviction that things cannot go on as they are, although no one seemed able to visualize what was really going to happen. These were typical and visible signs of the depths which the prevailing discontent had reached. Far worse than these, however, were other consequences which became apparent as a result of the industrialization of the nation.
In proportion to the extent that commerce assumed definite control of the state, money became more and more of a god whom all have to serve and bow down to. Heavenly gods became more and more old fashioned and were laid away in the corners to make room for the worship of mammon. And thus began a period of utter degeneration, which became especially pernicious because it set in at a time when the nation was more than ever in need of an exalted idea, for a critical hour was threatening. Germany should have been prepared to protect with the sword her efforts to win her own daily bread in a peaceful way.
Unfortunately, the predominance of money received support and sanction in the very quarter which ought to have been opposed to it. His majesty, the Kaiser, made a mistake when he raised representatives of the new finance capital to the ranks of the nobility. Admittedly, it may be offered as an excuse that even Bismarck failed to realize the threatening danger in this respect. In practice, however, all ideal virtues became secondary considerations to those of money. For it was clear that having once taken this road, the nobility of the sword would very soon rank second to that of finance. Financial operations succeed easier than war operations.
Hence, it was no longer any great attraction for a true hero or even a statesman to be brought into touch with the nearest Jew banker. Real merit was not interested in receiving cheap decorations, and therefore declined them with thanks. But from the standpoint of good breeding, such a development was deeply regrettable. The nobility began to lose more and more of the racial qualities that were a condition of its very existence, with the result that in many cases, the term plebeian would have been more appropriate. File 50.
A serious state of economic disruption was being brought about by the slow elimination of the personal control of vested interests and the gradual transference of the whole economic structure into the hands of joint stock companies. In this way, labor became degraded into an object of speculation in the hands of unscrupulous exploiters. The depersonalization of property ownership increased on a vast scale. Financial exchange circles began to triumph and made slow but sure progress in assuming control of the whole of national life. Before the war, the internationalization of the German economic structure had already begun by the roundabout way of share issues.
It is true that a section of the German industrialists made a determined effort to avert the danger, but in the end, they gave way before the united attacks of money grabbing capitalism, which was assisted in this fight by its faithful henchmen in the Marxist movement. The persistent war against German heavy industries was the visible start of the internationalization of German economic life as envisaged by the Marxists. This, however, could only be brought to a successful conclusion by the victory which Marxism was able to gain in the revolution.
As I write these words, success is attending the general attack on the German state railways, which are now to be turned over to international capitalists. Thus, international social democracy has once again attained one of its main objectives. The best evidence of how far this commercialization of the German nation was able to go can be plainly seen in the fact that when the war was over, one of the leading captains of German industry and commerce gave it as his opinion that commerce as such was the only force which could put Germany on its feet again. This sort of nonsense was uttered just at the time when France was restoring public education on a humanitarian basis, thus doing away with the idea that national life is dependent on commerce rather than ideal values.
The statement which Dinnis broadcast to the world at that time caused incredible confusion. It was immediately taken up and has become the leading motto of all those humbugs and babblers, the statesmen whom fate let loose on Germany after the revolution. One of the worst evidences of decadence in Germany before the war was the ever increasing habit of doing things by halves. This was one of the consequences of the insecurity that was felt all round, and it is to be attributed also to a certain timidity which resulted from one cause or another. And the latter malady was aggravated by the educational system.
German education in pre war times had an extraordinary number of weak features. It was simply and exclusively limited to the production of pure knowledge and paid little attention to the development of practical ability. Still less attention was given to the development of individual character, insofar as this is ever possible, and hardly any attention at all was paid to the development of a sense of responsibility, to strengthening the will and the powers of decision. The result of this method was to produce erudite people who had a passion for knowing everything. Before the war, we Germans were accepted and estimated accordingly.
The German was liked because good use could be made of him, but there was little esteem for him personally on account of this weakness of character. For those who can read its significance are right, there is much instruction in the fact that among all nationalities, Germans were the first to part with their national citizenship when they found themselves in a foreign country. And there is a world of meaning in the saying that was then prevalent. With the hat in the hand, one can go through the whole country. This kind of social etiquette turned out disastrous when it prescribed the exclusive forms that had to be observed in the presence of his majesty.
These forms insisted that there should be no contradiction whatsoever, but that everything should be praised which his majesty condescended to like. It was just here that the frank expression of manly dignity and not subservience was most needed. Civility in the presence of monarchs may be good enough for the professional lackey and place hunter. In fact, for all those decadent beings who are more pleased to be found moving in the high circles of royalty than among honest citizens. These exceedingly humble creatures, however, though they grovel before their lord and bread giver, invariably put on airs of boundless superciliousness towards other mortals, which was particularly impudent when they posed as the only people who had the right to be called monarchists.
This was a gross piece of impertinence, such as only despicable specimens among the newly ennobled or yet to be ennobled could be capable of. And these have always been just the people who have prepared the way for the downfall of monarchy and the monarchical principle. It could not be otherwise. For when a man is prepared to stand up for a cause, come what may, he never grovels before its representative. A man who is serious about the maintenance and welfare of an institution will not allow himself to be discouraged when the representatives of that institution show certain faults and failings, and he certainly will not run around to tell the world about it as certain false democratic friends of the monarchy have done.
But he will approach his majesty, the bearer of the crown himself, to warn him of the seriousness of a situation and persuade the monarch to act. Furthermore, he will not take up the standpoint that it must be left to his majesty to act as the latter thinks fit, even though the course which he would take must plainly lead to disaster. But the man I am thinking of will deem it his duty to protect the monarchy against the monarch himself, no matter what personal risk he may run-in doing so. If the worth of the monarchical institution be dependent on the person of the monarch himself, then it would be the worst institution imaginable.
For only in rare cases are kings found to be models of wisdom and understanding and integrity of character, though we might like to think otherwise. But this fact is unpalatable to the professional knaves and lackeys. Yet all upright men, and they are the backbone of the nation, Repudiate the nonsensical fiction that all monarchs are wise, etcetera. For such men, history is history, and truth is truth, even where monarchs are concerned. But if a nation should have the good luck to possess a great king or a great man, it ought to consider itself especially favored above all the other nations, and these may be thankful if an adverse fortune has not allotted the worst to them.
It is clear that the worth and significance of the monarchical principle cannot rest in the person of the monarch alone, unless heaven decrees that the crown should be set on the head of a brilliant hero, like Frederick the Great, or a sagacious person like William the First. This may happen once in several centuries, but hardly oftener than that. The ideal of the monarchy takes precedence of the person of the monarch inasmuch as the meaning of the institution must lie in the institution itself. Thus, the monarchy may be reckoned in the category of those whose duty it is to serve. He too is but a wheel in this machine, and as such, he is obliged to do his duty towards it.
He has to adapt himself for the fulfillment of high aims. If, therefore, there were no significance attached to the idea itself and everything merely centered around the sacred person, then it would never be possible to depose a ruler who has shown himself to be an imbecile. It is essential to insist upon this truth at the present time because recently, those phenomena have appeared again and were in no small measure responsible for the collapse of the monarchy. With a certain amount of native impudence, these persons once again talk about their king.
That is to say, the man whom they shamefully deserted a few years ago at a most critical hour. Those who refrain from participating in this chorus of lies are summarily classed as bad Germans. They who make the change are the same class of quitters who ran away in 1918 and took to wearing red badges. They thought that discretion was the better part of valor. They were indifferent about what happened to the Kaiser. They camouflaged themselves as peaceful citizens. But more often than not, they vanished altogether. All of a sudden these champions of royalty were nowhere to be found at that time.
Circumspectly, one by one, these servants and counsellors of the crown reappeared to resume their lip service to royalty, but only after others that had borne the brunt of the anti royalist attack and suppressed the revolution for them. Once again, they were all there, remembering wistfully the flesh pots of Egypt and almost bursting with devotion for the royal cause. This went on until the day came when red badges were again in the ascendant. Then this whole ramshackle assembly of royal worshipers scuttled anew like mice from the cats. If monarchs were not themselves responsible for such things, one could not help sympathizing with them.
But they must realize that with such champions, thrones can be lost that certainly never gained. File 51. All this devotion was a mistake and was the result of our whole system of education, which in this case brought about a particularly severe retribution. Such lamentable trumpery was kept up at the various courts that the monarchy was slowly becoming undermined. When finally it did begin to totter, everything was swept away. Naturally, grovelers and lickspittles are never willing to die for their masters. That monarchs never realize this, and almost on principle never really take the trouble to learn it, has always been their undoing.
One visible result of wrong educational system was the fear of shouldering responsibility and the resultant weakness in dealing with obvious and vital problems of existence. The starting point of this epidemic, however, was in our parliamentary institution where the shirking of responsibility is particularly fostered. Unfortunately, the disease slowly spread to all branches of everyday life, but particularly affected the sphere of public affairs. Responsibility was being shirked everywhere, and this led to insufficient or half hearted measures being taken, personal responsibility for each act being reduced to a minimum.
If we consider the attitude of various governments towards a whole series of really pernicious phenomena in public life, we shall at once recognize the fearful significance of this policy of half measures and the lack of courage to undertake responsibilities. I shall single out only a few from the large numbers of instances known to me. In journalistic circles, it is a pleasing custom to speak of the press as a great power within the state. As a matter of fact, its importance is immense. One cannot easily overestimate it, for the press continues the work of education even in adult life. Generally, readers of the press can be classified into three groups.
First, those who believe everything they read. Second, those who no longer believe anything. And third, those who critically examine what they read and form their judgments accordingly. Numerically, the first group is by far the strongest, being composed of the broad masses of the people. Intellectually, it forms the simplest portion of the nation. It cannot be classified according to occupation, but only into grades of intelligence. Under this category come all those who have not been born to think for themselves or who have not learned to do so, and who, partly through incompetence and partly through ignorance, believe everything that is set before them in print.
To those, we must add that type of lazy individual who, although capable of thinking for himself, out of sheer laziness, gratefully absorbs everything that others had thought over, modestly believing this to have been thoroughly done. The influence which the press has on all these people is therefore enormous, for after all, they constitute the broad masses of a nation. But somehow, they are not in a position or are not willing personally to sift what is being served up to them, so that their whole attitude towards daily problems is almost solely the result of extraneous influence.
All this can be advantageous where public enlightenment is of a serious and truthful character, but great harm is done when scoundrels and liars take a hand at this work. The second group is numerically smaller, being partly composed of those who were formerly in the first group, and after a series of bitter disappointments, are now prepared to believe nothing of what they see in print. They hate all newspapers. Either they do not read them at all, or they become exceptionally annoyed at their contents, which they hold to be nothing but a congeries of lies and misstatements.
These people are difficult to handle, for they will always be skeptical of the truth. Consequently, they are useless for any form of positive work. The third group is easily the smallest being composed of real intellectuals, whom natural aptitude and education have taught to think for themselves and who in all things try to form their own judgments, while at the same time carefully sifting what they read. They will not read any newspaper without using their own intelligence to collaborate with that of the writer, and naturally, this does not set writers an easy task.
Journalists appreciate this type of reader only with a certain amount of reservation. Hence, the trash that newspapers are capable of serving up is of little danger, much less of importance to the members of the third group of readers. In the majority of cases, these readers have learned to regard every journalist as fundamentally a rogue who sometimes speaks the truth. Most unfortunately, the value of these readers lies in their intelligence and not in their numerical strength, an unhappy state of affairs in a period where wisdom counts for nothing and majorities for everything.
Nowadays, when the voting papers of the masses are the deciding factor, the decision lies in the hands of the numerically strongest group. That is to say the first group, the crowd of simpletons and the credulous. It is an all important interest of the state and a national duty to prevent these people from falling into the hands of false, ignorant, or even evil minded teachers. Therefore, it is the duty of the state to supervise their education and prevent every form of offense in this respect. Particular attention should be paid to the press, for its influence on these people is by far the strongest and most penetrating of all since its effect is not transitory, but continual.
Its immense significance lies in the uniform and persistent repetition of its teaching. Here, if anywhere, the state should never forget that all means should converge towards the same end. It must not be led astray by the will of the wisp of so called freedom of the press, or be talked into neglecting its duty and withholding from the nation that which is good and which does good. With ruthless determination, the state must keep control of this instrument of popular education and place it at the service of the state and the nation. But what sort of was it that the German press served up for the consumption of its readers in pre war days?
Was it not the most virulent poison imaginable? Was not pacifism in its worst form inoculated into our people at a time when others were preparing slowly but surely to pounce upon Germany? Did not this self same press of ours in peace time already instill into the public mind a doubt as to the sovereign rights of the state itself, thereby already handicapping the state in choosing its means of defense? Was it not the German press that understood how to make all the nonsensical talk about Western democracy palatable to our people until an exuberant public was eventually prepared to entrust its future to the League of Nations?
Was not this press instrumental in bringing in a state of moral degradation among our people? Were not morals and public decency made to look ridiculous and classed as out of date and banal until finally our people also became modernized? By means of persistent attacks, did not the press keep on undermining the authority of the state until one blow sufficed to bring this institution tottering to the ground? Did not the press suppose with all its might every movement to give the state that which belongs to the state, and by means of constant criticism, injure the reputation of the army, sabotage general conscription, and demand refusal of military credits, etcetera, until the success of this campaign was assured.
The function of the so called liberal press was to dig the grave for the German people and Reich. No mention need be made of the lying Marxist press. To them, the spreading of falsehood is as much a vital necessity as the mouse is to a cat. Their sole task is to break the national backbone of the people, thus preparing the nation to become the slaves of international finance and its masters, the Jews. And what measures did the state take to counteract this wholesale poisoning of the public mind? None. Absolutely nothing at all.
By this policy, it was hoped to win the favor of this pest by means of flattery, by recognition of the value of the press, its importance, its educative mission, and similar nonsense. The Jews acknowledged all this with a knowing smile and returned thanks. The reason for this ignominious failure on the part of the state lay not so much in its refusal to realize the danger as in the out and out cowardly way of meeting the situation by the adoption of faulty and ineffective measures. No one had the courage to employ any energetic and radical methods. Everyone temporized in some way or other, and instead of striking at its heart, the viper was only further irritated.
The result was that not only did everything remain as it was, but the power of this institution, which should have been combated, grew greater from year to year. The defense put up by the government in those days against a mainly Jew controlled press that was slowly corrupting the nation followed no definite line of action. It had no determination behind it, and above all, no fixed objective whatsoever in view. This is where official understanding of the situation completely failed, both in estimating the importance of the struggle, choosing the means, and deciding on a definite plan.
They merely tinkered with the problem. Occasionally, when bitten, they imprisoned one or another journalistic viper for a few weeks or months, but the whole poisonous brood was allowed to carry on in peace. It must be admitted that all this was partly the result of extraordinary crafty tactics on the part of jury on the one hand and obvious officials' stupidity or naivety on the other hand. The Jews were too clever to allow a simultaneous attack to be made on the whole of their press. No. One section functioned as cover for the other. While the Marxist newspaper, in the most despicable manner possible, reviled everything that was sacred, furiously attacked the state and government, and incited certain classes of the community against each other, The bourgeois democratic papers, also when Jewish hands, knew how to camouflage themselves as model examples of objectivity.
They studiously avoided harsh language, knowing well that blockheads are capable of judging only by external appearances, and never able to penetrate to the real depth and meaning of anything. They measure the worth of an object by its exterior and not by its content. This form of human frailty was carefully studied and understood by the press. File 52. For this class of blockheads, the Frankfurt at Zeitung would be acknowledged as the essence of respectability. It always carefully avoided calling a spade a spade. It deprecated the use of every form of physical force and persistently appealed to the nobility of fighting with intellectual weapons.
But this fight, curiously enough, was most popular with the least intellectual classes. That is one of the results of our defective education, which turns the youth away from the instinctive dictates of nature, pumps into them a certain amount of knowledge without, however, being able to bring them to what is the supreme act of knowing. To this end, diligence and goodwill are of no avail if innate understanding fail. This final knowledge at which man must aim is the understanding of causes which are instinctively perceived.
Let me explain. Man must not fall into the error of thinking that he was ever meant to become lord and master of nature. A lopsided education has helped to encourage that illusion. Man must realize that a fundamental law of necessity reigns throughout the whole realm of nature and that his existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife. He will then feel that there cannot be a separate law for mankind in a world in which planets and suns follow their orbits, where moons and planets trace their destined path, where the strong are always the masters of the weak, and where those subject to such laws must obey them or be destroyed.
Man must also submit to the eternal principles of this supreme wisdom. He may try to understand them, but he can never free himself from their sway. It is just for intellectual demi monde that the Jew writes those papers which he calls his intellectual press. For them, the Frankfurt at Zeitung and Berliner Targheeblatt are written, the tone being adapted to them. And it is over these people that such papers have an influence. While studiously avoiding all forms of expression that might strike the reader as crude. The poison is injected from other vials into the hearts of the clientele. The effervescent tone and the fine phraseology lug the readers into believing that a love for knowledge and moral principle is the sole driving force that determines the policy of such papers.
Whereas, in reality, these features represent a cunning way of disarming any opposition that might be directed against the Jews and their press. They make such a parade of respectability that the imbecile readers are all the more ready to believe that the excesses which other papers indulge in are only of a mild nature and not such as to warrant legal action being taken against them. Indeed, such action might trespass on the freedom of the press. That expression being a euphemism under which such papers escape legal punishment for deceiving the public and poisoning the public mind.
Hence, the authorities are very slow indeed to take any steps against these journalistic bandits for fear of immediately all the others rush to its assistance at once. All the others rush to its assistance at once, not indeed to support its policy, but simply and solely to defend the principle of the freedom of the press and liberty of public opinion. This outcry will succeed in cowering the most stalwart for it comes from the mouth of what is called decent journalism. And so this poison was allowed to enter the national bloodstream and infect public life without the government taking any effectual measures to master the course of the disease.
The ridiculous half measures that were taken were in themselves an indication of the process of disintegration that was already threatening to break up the empire. For an institution practically surrenders its existence when it is no longer determined to defend itself with all the weapons at its command. Every half measure is the outward expression of an internal process of decay, which must lead to an external collapse sooner or later. I believe that our present generation would easily master this danger if they were rightly led. For this generation has gone through certain experiences which must have strengthened the nerves of all those who did not become nervously broken by them.
Certainly, in days to come, the Jews will raise a tremendous cry throughout their newspapers once a hand is laid on their favorite nest, once a move is made to put an end to this scandalous press, and once this instrument which shapes public opinion is brought under state control and no longer left in the hands of aliens and enemies of the people. I'm certain that this will be easier for us than it was for our fathers. The scream of the 12 in shrapnel is more penetrating than the hiss from a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers.
Therefore, let them go on with their hissing. A further example of the weak and hesitating way in which vital national problems were dealt with in pre war Germany is the following. Hand in hand with the political and moral process of infecting the nation, for many years, an equally virulent process of infection had been attacking the public health of the people. In large cities, particularly, syphilis steadily increased, and tuberculosis kept pace with it in reaping its harvest of death almost in every part of the country. Although in both cases, the effect on the nation was alarming, it seemed as if nobody was in a position to undertake any decisive measures against these scourges.
In the case of syphilis, especially, the attitude of the state and public bodies was one of absolute capitulation. To combat this state of affairs, something of far wider sweep should have been undertaken than was really done. The discovery of a remedy which is of a questionable nature and the excellent way in which it was placed on the market were only of little assistance in fighting such a scourge. Here again, the only course to adopt is to attack the disease and its causes rather than in its symptoms. But in this case, the primary cause is to be found in the manner in which love has been prostituted.
Even though this did not directly bring about the fearful disease itself, the nation must still suffer serious damage thereby. For the moral havoc resulting from this prostitution would be sufficient to bring about the destruction of the nation slowly but surely. This Judaizing of our spiritual life and mamanizing of our natural instinct for procreation will sooner or later work havoc with our whole posterity. For instead of strong, healthy children blessed with natural feelings, we shall see the miserable specimens of humanity resulting from economic calculation.
For economic considerations are becoming more and more the foundations of marriage and the sole preliminary condition of it, and love looks for an outlet elsewhere. Here, as elsewhere, one may define nature for a certain period of time, but sooner or later, she will take her inexorable revenge. And when man realizes this truth, it is often too late. Our own nobility furnishes an example of the devastating consequences that follow from a persistent refusal to recognize the primary conditions necessary for normal wedlock. Here, we are openly brought face to face with the results of those reproductive habits, which on the one hand are determined by social pressure and on the other, by financial considerations.
The one leads to inherited debility and the other to adulteration of the bloodstream for all the Jewish daughters of the department store proprietors are looked upon as eligible mates to cooperate in propagating his lordship stock, and the stock certainly looks it. All this leads to absolute degeneration. Nowadays, our bourgeois are making efforts to follow in the same path. They will come to the same journey's end. These unpleasant truths are hastily and nonchalantly brushed aside as if by doing so, the real state of affairs could also also be abolished.
But, no, it cannot be denied that the population of our great towns and cities is tending more and more to a veil of prostitution in the exercise of its amorous instincts and is thus becoming more and more contaminated by the scourge of venereal disease. On the one hand, the visible effects of this mass infection can be observed in our insane asylums. And on the other hand, alas, among the children at home. These are the doleful and tragic witnesses to the steadily increasing scourge that is poisoning our sexual life. Their sufferings are the visible results of parental vice.
There are many ways of becoming resigned to this unpleasant and terrible fact. Many people go about seeing nothing or to be more correct, not wanting to see anything. This is by far the simplest and cheapest attitude to adopt. Others cover themselves in the sacred mantle of prudery as ridiculous as it is false. They describe the whole condition of affairs as sinful and are profoundly indignant when brought face to face with a victim. They close their eyes in reverent abhorrence to this godless scourge and pray to the almighty that he, if possible after their own death, may rain down fire and brimstone as on Sodom and Gomorrah, and so once again make an outstanding example of this shameless section of humanity.
Finally, there are those who are well aware of the terrible results which this scourge will and must bring about, but they merely shrug their shoulders, fully convinced of their inability to undertake anything against this peril. Hence, matters are allowed to take their own course. Undoubtedly, all this is very convenient and simple, only it must not be overlooked that this convenient way of approaching things can have fatal consequences for our natural life. The excuse that other nations are also not faring any better does not alter the fact of our own deterioration except that the feeling of sympathy for other stricken nations makes our own suffering easier to bear.
But the important question that arises here is, which nation will be the first to take the initiative in mastering this scourge, and which nations will succumb to it. This will be the final upshot of the whole situation. The present is a period of probation for racial values. The race that fails to come through the test will simply die out, and its place will be taken by the healthier and stronger races, which will be able to endure greater hardships. As this problem primarily concerns posterity, it belongs to that category of which it is said with terrible justification that the sins of the fathers are visited on their offspring unto the tenth generation.
This is a consequence which follows on an infringement of the laws of blood and race. The sin against blood and race is the hereditary sin in this world, and it brings disaster on every nation that commits it. The attitude towards this one vital problem in pre war Germany was most regrettable. What measures were undertaken to arrest the infection of our youth in the large cities? What was done to put an end to the contamination and mammonization of sexual life among us? What was done to fight the resultant spreading of syphilis throughout the whole of our national life? The reply to this question can best be illustrated by showing what should have been done.
Instead of tackling this problem in a haphazard way, the authorities should have realized that the fortunes or misfortunes of future generations depended on its solution. But to admit this would have demanded that active measures be carried out in a ruthless manner. The primary condition would have been that the enlightened attention of the whole country should be concentrated on this terrible danger so that every individual would realize the importance of fighting against it. It would be futile to impose obligations of a definite character, which are often difficult to bear, and expect them to become generally effective unless the public be thoroughly instructed on the necessity of imposing and accepting such obligations.
This demands a widespread and systematic method of enlightenment, and all other daily problems that might distract public attention from this great central problem should be relegated to the background. File 53. In every case where there are exigencies or tasks that seem impossible to deal with successfully, public opinion must be concentrated on the one problem. Under the conviction that the solution of this problem alone is a matter of life or death. Only in this way can public interest be aroused to such a pitch as will urge people to combine in a great voluntary effort and achieve important results. This fundamental truth applies also to the individual, provided he is desirous of attaining some great end.
He must always concentrate his efforts to one definitely limited stage of his progress, which has to be completed before the next step be attempted. Those who do not endeavor to realize their aims step by step and who do not concentrate their energy in reaching the individual stages will never attain the final objective. At some stage or other, they will falter and fail. This systematic way of approaching an objective is an art in itself and always calls for the expenditure of every ounce of energy in order to conquer step after step of the road. Therefore, the most essential preliminary condition necessary for an attack on such a difficult stage of the human road is that the authorities should succeed in convincing the masses that the immediate objective, which is now being fought for, is the only one that deserves to be considered and the only one on which everything depends.
The broad masses are never able clearly to see the whole stretch of the road lying in front of them without becoming tired and thus losing faith in their ability to complete the task. To a certain extent, they will keep the objective in mind, but they are only able to survey the whole road in small stages as in the case of the traveler who knows where his journey is going to end, but who masters the endless stretch far better by attacking it in degrees. Only this way can he keep up his determination to reach the final objective. It is in this way, with the assistance of every form of propaganda, that the problem of fighting venereal disease should be placed before the public, not as a task for the nation, but as the main task.
Every possible means should be employed to bring the truth about this scourge home to the minds of the people until the whole nation has been convinced that everything depends on the solution of this problem. That is to say, a healthy future or national decay. Only after such preparatory measures, if necessary spread over a period of many years, will public attention and public resolution be fully aroused, and only then can serious and definite measures be undertaken without running the risk of not being fully understood or of being suddenly faced with a slackening of the public will.
It must be made clear to all that a serious fight against this scourge calls for vast sacrifices and an enormous amount of work. To wage war against syphilis means fighting against prostitution, against prejudice, against old established customs, against current fashion public opinion, and last but not least, against false prudery in certain circles. The first preliminary condition to be fulfilled before the state can claim a moral right to fight against all these things is that the young generation should be afforded facilities for contracting early marriages.
Late marriages have the sanction of a custom which, from whatever angle we view it, is and will remain a disgrace to humanity. Prostitution is a disgrace to humanity and cannot be removed simply by charitable or academic methods. Its restriction and final extermination presupposes the removal of a whole series of contributory circumstances. The first remedy must always be to establish such conditions as will make early marriages possible, especially for young men. For women are, after all, only passive subjects in this matter. An illustration of the extent to which people have so often been led astray nowadays is afforded by the fact that not infrequently, one hears mothers in so called better circles, openly expressing their satisfaction and having found as a husband for their daughter a man who has already sown his wild oats, etcetera.
As there is usually so little shortage in men of this type, the poor girl finds no difficulty in getting a mate of this description, and the children of this marriage are a visible result of such supposedly sensible unions. When one realizes, apart from this, that every possible effort is being made to hinder the process of procreation and that nature is being willfully cheated of her rights, there remains really only one question. Why is such an institution as marriage still in existence, and what are its functions? Is it really nothing better than prostitution?
Does our duty to posterity no longer play any part, Or do people not realize the nature of the curse they are inflicting upon themselves and their offspring by such criminally foolish neglect of one of the primary laws of nature? This is how civilized nations degenerate and gradually perish. Marriage is not an end in itself, but must serve the greater end, which is that of increasing and maintaining the human species and the race. This is its only meaning and purpose. This being admitted, then it is clear that the institution of marriage must be judged by the manner in which its allotted function is fulfilled.
Therefore, early marriages should be the rule because, thus, the young couple will still have that pristine force, which is the fountainhead of a healthy prosperity with unimpaired powers of resistance. Of course, early marriages cannot be made the rule unless a whole series of social measures are first undertaken without which early marriages cannot be even thought of. In other words, a solution of this question, which seems a small problem in itself, cannot be brought about without adopting radical measures to alter the social background. The importance of such measures ought to be studied and properly estimated, especially at a time when the so called social republic has shown itself unable to solve the housing problem and thus has made it impossible for innumerable couples to get married.
That sort of policy prepares the way for the further advance of prostitution. Another reason why early marriages are impossible is our nonsensical method of regulating the scale of salaries, which pays far too little attention to the problem of family support. Prostitution, therefore, can only be really seriously tackled if by means of a radical social reform, early marriage is made easier than hitherto. This is the first preliminary necessity for the solution of this problem. Secondly, a whole series of false notions must be eradicated from our system of bringing up and educating children, things which hitherto no one seems to have worried about.
In our present educational system, a balance will have to be established first and foremost between mental instruction and physical training. What is known as gymnasium, grammar school today, is a positive insult to the Greek institution. Our system of education entirely loses sight of the fact that in the long run, a healthy mind can exist only in a healthy body. This statement, with few exceptions, applies particularly to the broad masses of the nation. In the pre war Germany, there was a time when no one took the trouble to think over this truth. Training of the body was criminally neglected.
The one-sided training of the mind being regarded as sufficient guarantee for the nation's greatness. This mistake was destined to show its effect sooner than had been anticipated. It is not pure chance that the Bolshevik teaching flourishes in those regions whose degenerate population has been brought to the verge of starvation as, for example, in the case of Central Germany, Saxony, and the Ruhr Valley. In all these districts, there is a marked absence of any serious resistance even by the so called intellectual classes against this Jewish contagion.
And the simple reason is that the intellectual classes are themselves physically degenerate, not through privation, but through education. The exclusive intellectualism of the education in vogue among our upper classes makes them unfit for life's struggle at an epoch in which physical force and not mind is the dominating factor. Thus, they are neither capable of maintaining themselves nor of making their way in life. In nearly every case, physical disability is the forerunner of personal cowardice. The extravagant emphasis laid on purely intellectual education and the consequent neglect of physical training must necessarily lead to sexual thoughts in early youth.
Those boys whose constitutions have been trained and hardened by sports and gymnastics are less prone to sexual indulgence than those stay at homes who have been fed exclusively with mental tabulum. Sound methods of education cannot, however, afford to disregard this, and we must not forget that the expectations of a healthy young man from a woman will differ from those of a weakling who has been prematurely corrupted. Thus, in every branch of our education, the day's curriculum must be arranged so as to occupy a boy's free time in profitable development of his physical powers.
He has no right in those years to loaf about, becoming a nuisance in public streets and in cinemas. But when his day's work is done, he ought to harden his young body so that his strength may not be found wanting when the occasion arises. To prepare for this and to carry it out should be the function of our educational system and not exclusively to pump in knowledge or wisdom. Our school system must also rid itself of the notion that the training of the body is a task that should be left to the individual himself. There is no such thing as allowing freedom of choice to sin against posterity and thus against the race.
File 54. The fight against pollution of the mind must be waged simultaneously with the training of the body. Today, the whole of our public life may be compared to a hot house for the forced growth of sexual notions and incitements. A glance at the bill of fare provided by our cinemas, playhouses, and theaters suffices to prove that this is not the right food, especially for our young people. Hoardings and advertisement kiosks combined to attract the public in the most vulgar manner. Anyone who has not altogether lost contact with adolescent yearnings will realize that all this must have very grave consequences.
This seductive and sensuous atmosphere puts notions into the heads of our youth, which at their age, ought still to be unknown to them. Unfortunately, the results of this kind of education can best be seen in our contemporary youth who are prematurely grown up and therefore old before their time. The law courts from time to time throw a distressing light on the spiritual life of our 14 and 15 year old children, Who therefore will be surprised to learn that venereal disease claims its victims at this age? And is it not a frightful shame to see the number of physically weak and intellectually spoiled young men who have been introduced to the mysteries of marriage by the whores of the big cities.
No. Those who want seriously to combat prostitution must first of all assist in removing the spiritual conditions on which it thrives. They will have to clean up the moral pollution of our city culture fearlessly and without regard for the outcry that will follow. If we do not drag our youth out of the morass of their present environment, they will be engulfed by it. Those people who do not want to see these things are deliberately encouraging them and are guilty of spreading the effects of prostitution to the future, for the future belongs to our young generation.
This process of cleaning our culture will have to be applied in practically all spheres. The stage, art, literature, the cinema, the press, and advertisement posters, all must have the stains of pollution removed and be placed in the service of a national and cultural idea. The life of the people must be freed from the asphyxiating perfume of our modern eroticism and also from every unmanly and prudish form of insincerity. In all these things, the aim and the method must be determined by thoughtful consideration for the preservation of our national well-being in body and soul.
The right to personal freedom comes second in importance to the duty of maintaining the race. Only after such measures have been put into practice can a medical campaign against this scourge begin with some hope of success. But here again, half measures will be valueless. Far reaching and important decisions will have to be made. It would be doing things by halves if incurables were given the opportunity of infecting one healthy person after another. This would be that kind of humanitarianism which would allow hundreds to perish in order to save the suffering of one individual. The demand that it should be made impossible for defective people to continue to propagate defective offspring is a demand that is based on most reasonable grounds, and its proper fulfillment is the most humane task that mankind has to face.
Unhappy and undeserved suffering in millions of cases will be spared with the result that there will be a gradual improvement in national health. A determined decision to act in this manner will, at the same time, provide an obstacle against the further spread of venereal disease. It would then be a case, where necessary, of mercilessly isolating all incurables, perhaps a barbaric measure for those unfortunate, but a blessing for the present generation and for posterity. The temporary pain thus experienced in this century can and will spare future thousands of generations from suffering.
The fight against syphilis and its pacemaker, prostitution, is one of the gigantic tasks of mankind. Gigantic because it is not merely a case of solving a single problem, but the removal of a whole series of evils which are the contributory causes of this scourge. Disease of the body, in this case, is merely the result of a diseased condition of the moral, social, and racial instincts. But if for reasons of indolence or cowardice, this fight is not fought to a finish, we may imagine what conditions will be like five hundred years hence. Little of god's image will be left in human nature except to mock the creator.
But what has been done in Germany to counteract this scourge? If we think calmly over the answer, we shall find it distressing. It is true that in governmental circles, the terrible and injurious effects of this disease were well known, but the countermeasures which were officially adopted were ineffective and a hopeless failure. They tinkered with cures for the symptoms, wholly regardless of the cause of the disease. Prostitutes were medically examined and controlled as far as possible. And when signs of infection were apparent, they were sent to hospital. When outwardly cured, they were once more let loose on humanity.
It is true that protective legislation was introduced, which made sexual intercourse a punishable offense for all those not completely cured or those suffering from venereal disease. This legislation was correct in theory, but in practice, it failed completely. In the first place, in the majority of cases, women will decline to appear in court as witnesses against men who have robbed them of their health. Women would be exposed far more than men to uncharitable remarks in such cases, and one can imagine what their position would be if they had been infected by their own husbands. Should women, in that case, lay a charge, or what should they do?
In the case of the man, there is the additional fact that he frequently is unfortunate enough to run up against this danger when he is under the influence of alcohol. His condition makes it impossible for him to assess the qualities of his amorous beauty, a fact which is well known to every diseased prostitute and makes them single out men in this ideal condition for preference. The result is that the unfortunate man is not able to recollect later on who his compassionate benefactress was, which is not surprising in cities like Berlin and Munich.
Many of such cases are visitors from the provinces who, held speechless and enthralled by the magic charm of city life, become an easy prey for prostitutes. In the final analysis, who is able to say whether he has been infected or not? Are there not innumerable cases on record where an apparently cured person has a relapse and does untold harm without knowing it? Therefore, in practice, the results of these legislative measures are negative. The same applies to the control of prostitution. And finally, even medical treatment and cure are nowadays unsafe and doubtful. One thing only is certain.
The scourge has spread further and further in spite of all measures, and this alone suffices definitely to stamp and substantiate their inefficiency. Everything else that was undertaken was just as inefficient as it was absurd. The spiritual prostitution of the people was neither arrested nor was anything whatsoever undertaken in this direction. Those, however, who do not regard this subject as a serious one would do well to examine the statistical data of the spread of this disease, study its growth in the last century, and contemplate the possibilities of its further development.
The ordinary observer, unless he were particularly stupid, would experience a cold shudder if the position were made clear to him. The half hearted and wavering attitude adopted in pre war Germany towards this iniquitous condition can assuredly be taken as a visible sign of national decay. When the courage to fight for one's own health is no longer in evidence, then the right to live in this world of struggle also ceases. One of the visible signs of decay in the old Reich was the slow setback which the general cultural level experienced. But by culture, I do not mean that which we nowadays style as civilization, which on the contrary may rather be regarded as inimical to the spiritual elevation of life.
At the turn of the last century, a new element began to make its appearance in our world. It was an element which had been hitherto absolutely unknown and foreign to us. In former times, there had certainly been offenses against good taste, but these were mostly departures from the orthodox canons of art, and posterity could recognize a certain historical value in them. But the new product showed signs not only of artistic aberration, but of spiritual degeneration. Here, in the cultural sphere, the signs of the coming collapse first became manifest. The Bolshevization of art is the only cultural form of life and the only spiritual manifestation of which Bolshevism is capable.
Anyone to whom this statement may appear strange need only take a glance at those lucky states which have become Bolshevized. And to his horror, he will there recognize those morbid monstrosities which have been produced by insane and degenerate people. All those artistic aberrations which are classified under the names of cubism and dadism since the opening of the present century are manifestations of art which have come to be officially recognized by the state itself. This phenomenon made its appearance even during the short lived period of the Soviet Republic in Bavaria. At that time, one might easily have recognized how all the official posters, propagandist pictures, and newspapers, etcetera, showed signs not only of political but also of cultural decadence.
About sixty years ago, a political collapse such as we are experiencing today would have been just as inconceivable as the cultural decline which has been manifest in Cubist and Futurist pictures ever since nineteen hundred. Sixty years ago, an exhibition of so called dadistic experiences would have been an absolutely preposterous idea. The organizers of such an exhibition would then have been certified for the lunatic asylum, whereas today, they are appointed presidents of art societies. At that time, such an epidemic would never have been allowed to spread. Public opinion would not have tolerated it, and the government would not have remained silent.
For it is the duty of a government to save its people from being stampeded into such intellectual madness. But intellectual madness would have resulted from a development that followed the acceptance of this kind of art. It would have marked one of the worst changes in human history, for it would have meant that a retrogressive process had begun to take place in the human brain, The final stages of which would be unthinkable. File 55. If we study the course of our cultural life during the last twenty five years, we shall be astonished to note how far we have already gone in this process of retrogression.
Everywhere, we find the presence of those germs which give rise to protuberant growths that must sooner or later bring about the ruin of our culture. Here, we find undoubted symptoms of slow corruption, and woe to the nations that are no longer able to bring that morbid process to a halt. In almost all the various fields of German art and culture, those morbid phenomena may be observed. Here, everything seems to have passed the culminating point of its excellence and to have entered the curve of a hasty decline. At the beginning of the century, the theaters seemed already degenerating and ceasing to be cultural factors, except the court theaters, which opposed this prostitution of the national art.
With these exceptions and also a few other decent institutions, the plays produced on the stage were of such a nature that the people would have benefited by not visiting them at all. A sad symptom of decline was manifested by the fact that in the case of many art centers, the sign was posted on the entrance doors for adults only. Let it be born in mind that these precautions had to be taken in regard to institutions whose main purpose should have been to promote the education of the youth and not merely to provide amusement for sophisticated adults.
What would the great dramatists of other times have said of such measures, and above all, of the conditions which made these measures necessary? How exasperated Schiller would have been, and how Goethe would have turned away in disgust. But what are Schiller, Goethe, and Shakespeare when confronted with the heroes of our modern German literature? Old and frowsy and outmoded and finished. For it was typical of this epoch that not only were its own products bad, but that the authors of such products and their backers reviled everything that had been really great in the past.
This is a phenomenon that is very characteristic of such epochs. The more vile and miserable are the men and products of an epoch, the more they will hate and denigrate the ideal achievements of former generations. What these people would like best would be completely to destroy every vestige of the past in order to do away with that sole standard of comparison, which prevents their own daubs from being looked upon as art. Therefore, the more lamentable and wretched are the products of each new era, the more it will try to obliterate all the memorials of the past.
But any real innovation that is for the benefit of mankind can always face comparison with the best of what has gone before, and frequently, it happens that those monuments of the past guarantee the acceptance of those modern productions. There is no fear that modern productions of real worth will look pale and worthless beside the monuments of the past. What is contributed to the general treasury of human culture often fulfills a part that is necessary in order to keep the memory of old achievements alive because this memory alone is the standard whereby our own works are properly appreciated.
Only those who have nothing of value to give to the world will oppose everything that already exists and would have it destroyed at all costs. And this holds good not only for new phenomena in the cultural domain, but also in politics. The more inferior new revolutionary movements are, the more will they try to denigrate the old forms. Here again, the desire to pawn off their shoddy products as great and original achievements leads them into a blind hatred against everything which belongs to the past and which is superior to their own work. As long as the historical memory of Frederick the Great, for instance, still lives, Frederick Hebert can arouse only a problematic admiration.
The relation of the hero of Saint Soussy to the former republican of Bremen may be compared to that of the sun to the moon, for the moon can shine only after the direct rays of the sun have left the earth. Thus, we can readily understand why it is that all the new moons in human history have hated the fixed stars. In the field of politics, if fate should happen temporarily to place the ruling power in the hands of those nonentities, they are not only eager to defile and revile the past, but at the same time, they will use all means to evade criticism of their own acts. The law for the protection of the republic, which the new German state enacted, may be taken as one example of this truth.
One has good grounds to be suspicious in regard to any new idea or any doctrine or philosophy, any political or economic movement, which tries to deny everything that the past has produced or to present it as inferior and worthless. Any renovation which is really beneficial to human progress will always have to begin its constructive work at the level where the last stones of the structure have been laid. It need not blush to utilize those truths which have already been established. For all human culture, as well as man himself, is only the result of one long line of development where each generation has contributed but one stone to the building of the whole structure.
The meaning and purpose of revolutions cannot be to tear down the whole building, but to take away what has not been well fitted into it or is unsuitable, and to rebuild the free space thus caused after which the main construction of the building will be carried on. Thus alone will it be possible to talk of human progress. For, otherwise, the world would never be free of chaos since each generation would feel entitled to reject the past and destroy all the work of the past as the necessary preliminary to any new work of its own. The saddest feature of the condition in which our whole civilization found itself before the war was the fact that it was not only barren of any creative force to produce its own works of art and civilization, but that it hated, defiled, and tried to efface the memory of the superior works produced in the past.
About the end of the last century, people were less interested in producing new significant works of their own, particularly in the fields of dramatic art and literature than in defaming the best works of the past and in presenting them as inferior and antiquated, as if this period of disgraceful decadence had the slightest capacity to produce anything of superior quality. The efforts made to conceal the past from the eyes of the present afforded clear evidence of the fact that these apostles of the future acted from an evil intent.
These symptoms should have made it clear to all that it was not a question of new, the wrong cultural ideas, but of a process which was undermining the very foundations of civilization. It threw the artistic feeling which had hitherto been quite sane into utter confusion, thus, spiritually preparing the way for political Bolshevism. If the creative spirit of the Periclean age be manifested in the Parthenon, and the Bolshevist era is manifested through its cubist grimace. In this connection, attention must be drawn once again to the want of courage displayed by one section of our people, namely by those who, in virtue of their education and position, ought to have felt themselves obliged to take up a firm stand against this outrage on our culture, but they refrain from offering serious resistance and surrendered to what they considered the inevitable.
This abdication of theirs was due, however, to sheer funk, lest the apostles of Bolshevist art might raise a rumpus. For those apostles always violently attacked everyone who was not ready to recognize them as the choice spirits of artistic creation, and they tried to strangle all opposition by saying that it was the product of Philistine and backwater mines. People trembled in fear, lest they might be accused by these yahoos and swindlers of lacking artistic appreciation as if it would have been a disgrace not to be able to understand and appreciate the effusions of those mental degenerates or arrant rogues.
Those cultural disciples, however, had a very simple way of presenting their own effusions as works of the highest quality. They offered incomprehensible and manifestly crazy productions to their amazed contemporaries as what they called an inner experience. Thus, they forestalled all adverse criticism and very little cost indeed. Of course, nobody ever doubted that there could have been inner experiences like that, but some doubt ought to have arisen as to whether or not there was any justification for exposing these hallucinations of psychopaths or criminals to the same portion of human society.
The works produced by a Moritz von Schwint or a Birkeland were also externalizations of an inner experience, but these were the experiences of divinely gifted artists, not of buffoons. File 56. This situation offered a good opportunity of studying the miserable cowardliness of our so called intellectuals who shirk the duty of offering serious resistance to the poisoning of the sound instincts of our people. They left it to the people themselves to formulate their own attitude towards this impudent nonsense, lest they might be considered as understanding nothing of art.
They accepted every caricature of art until they finally lost the power of judging what is really good or bad. Taken all in all, there were superabundant symptoms to show that a diseased epoch had begun. Still another critical symptom has to be considered. In the course of the nineteenth century, our towns and cities began more and more to lose their character as centers of civilization and become more and more centers of habitation. In our great modern cities, the proletariat does not show much attachment to the place where it lives. This feeling results from the fact that their dwelling place is nothing but an accidental abode, and that feeling is also partly due to the frequent change of residence which is forced upon them by social conditions.
There is no time for the growth of any attachment to the town in which they live, but another reason lies in the cultural barrenness and superficiality of our modern cities. At the time of the German wars of liberation, our German towns and cities were not only small in number, but also very modest in size. The few that could really be called great cities were mostly the residential cities of princes. As such, they had almost always a definite cultural value and also a definite cultural aspect. Those few towns which had more than 50,000 inhabitants were, in comparison with modern cities of the same size, rich in scientific and artistic treasures.
At the time when Munich had not more than 60,000 souls, it was already well on the way to becoming one of the first German centers of art. Nowadays, almost every industrial town has a population at least as large as that without having anything of real value to call its own. They are agglomerations of tenement houses and congested dwelling barracks, and nothing else. It would be a miracle if anybody should grow sentimentally attached to such a meaningless place. Nobody can grow attached to a place which offers only just as much or as little as any other place would offer, which has no character of its own, and where obviously pains have been taken to avoid everything that might have any resemblance to an artistic appearance.
But this is not all. Even the great cities become more barren of real works of art the more they increase in population. They assume more and more a neutral atmosphere and present the same aspect, though on a larger scale, as the wretched little factory towns. Everything that our modern age has contributed to the civilization of our great cities is absolutely deficient. All our towns are living on the glory and the treasures of the past. If we take away from the Munich of today everything that was created under Ludwig the second, we should be horror stricken to see how meager has been the output of important artistic creations since that time.
One might say much the same of Berlin and most of our other great towns. But the following is the essential thing to be noticed. Our great modern cities have no outstanding monuments that dominate the general aspect of the city and could be pointed to as the symbols of a whole epoch. Yet almost every ancient town had a monument erected to its glory. It was not in private dwellings that the characteristic art of ancient cities was displayed, but in the public monuments, which were not meant to have a transitory interest, but an enduring one.
And this was because they did not represent the wealth of some individual citizen, but the greatness and importance of the community. It was under this inspiration that those monuments arose, which bound the individual inhabitants to their own town in a manner that is often almost incomprehensible to us today. What struck the eye of the individual citizen was not a number of mediocre private buildings, but imposing structures that belong to the whole community. In contradistinction to these, private dwellings were of only very secondary importance indeed. When we compare the size of those ancient public buildings with that of the private dwellings belonging to the same epoch, then we can understand the great importance which was given to the principle that those works which reflected and affected the life of the community should take precedence of all others.
Among the broken arches and vast spaces that are covered with ruins from the ancient world, the colossal riches that still arouse our wonder have not been left to us from the commercial palaces of these days, but from the temples of the gods and the public edifices that belong to the state. The community itself was the owner of these great edifices. Even in the pomp of Rome during the decadence, it was not the villas and palaces of some citizens that filled the most prominent place, but rather the temples and the baths, the stadia, the circuses, the aqueducts, the basilicas, etcetera, which belong to the state, and therefore to the people as a whole.
In medieval Germany also, the same principle held sway, although the artistic outlook was quite different. In ancient times, the theme that found its expression in the Acropolis or the Pantheon was now clothed in the forms of the Gothic Cathedral. In the medieval cities, these monumental structures towered gigantically above the swarm of smaller buildings with their framework walls of wood and brick, and they remain the dominant feature of these cities even to our own day, although they are becoming more and more obscured by the apartment barracks. They determine the character and appearance of the locality.
Cathedrals, city halls, corn exchanges, defense towers are the outward expression of an idea which has its counterpart only in the ancient world. The dimensions and quality of our public buildings today are in deplorable contrast to the edifices that represent private interests. If a similar fate should befall Berlin as befell Rome, future generations might gaze upon the ruins of some Jewish department stores or joint stock hotels, and think that these were the characteristic expressions of the culture of our time. In Berlin itself, compare the shameful disproportion between the buildings which belong to the Reich and those which have been erected for the accommodation of trade and finance.
The credits that are voted for public buildings are in most cases inadequate and really ridiculous. They are not built as structures that were meant to last, but mostly for the purpose of answering the need of the moment. No higher idea influenced those who commissioned such buildings. At the time the Berlin Schloss was built, it had a quite different significance from what the new library has for our time, seeing that one battleship alone represents an expenditure of about 60,000,000 marks, whereas less than half that sum was allotted for the building of the Reichstag, which is the most imposing structure erected for the Reich and which should have been built to last for ages.
Yet in deciding the question of internal decoration, the upper house voted against the use of stone and ordered that the wall should be covered with stucco. For once, however, the parliamentarians made an appropriate decision on that occasion, for plaster heads would be out of place between stone walls. The community as such is not the dominant characteristic of our contemporary cities, and therefore, it is not to be wondered at if the community does not find itself architecturally represented. Thus, we must eventually arrive at a veritable civic desert, which will at last be reflected in the total indifference of the individual citizen towards his own country.
This is also a sign of a cultural decay, a general break up. Our era is entirely preoccupied with little things which are to no purpose, or rather it is entirely preoccupied in the service of money. Therefore, it is not to be wondered at if, with the worship of such an idol, the sense of heroism should entirely disappear. But the present is only reaping what the past has sown. All these symptoms which preceded the final collapse of the second empire must be attributed to the lack of a definite and uniformly accepted and the general uncertainty of outlook consequent on that lack.
This uncertainty showed itself when the great questions of the time had to be considered one after another and a decisive policy adopted towards them. This lack is also accountable for the habit of doing everything by halves, beginning with the educational system, the shilly shally, the reluctance to undertake responsibilities, and finally, the cowardly tolerance of evils that were even admitted to be destructive. Visionary humanitarianisms became the fashion. In weekly submitting to these aberrations and sparing the feelings of the individual, the future of millions of human beings was sacrificed.
An examination of the religious situation before the war shows that the general process of disruption had extended to this sphere also. A great part of the nation itself had, for a long time, already ceased to have any convictions of a uniform and practical character in their ideological outlook on life. In this matter, the point of primary importance was by no means the number of people who renounced their church membership, but rather the widespread indifference. While the two Christian denominations maintained missions in Asia and Africa for the purpose of securing new adherence to the faith, These same denominations were losing millions and millions of their adherence at home in Europe.
These former adherence either gave up religion wholly as a directive force in their lives, or they adopted their own interpretation of it. The consequences of this were especially felt in the moral life of the country. In parenthesis, it may be remarked that the progress made by the missions in spreading the Christian faith abroad was only quite modest in comparison with the spread of Mohammedanism. It must be noted too that the attack on the dogmatic principles underlying ecclesiastical teaching increased steadily in violence, and yet this human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.
The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers. For the masses of the people especially, faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life. The various substitutes that have been offered have not shown any results that might warrant us in thinking that they might usefully replace the existing denominations. But if religious teaching and religious faith were once accepted by the broad masses as active forces in their lives, then the absolute authority of the doctrines of faith would be the foundation of all practical effort. There may be a few hundreds of thousands of superior men who can live wisely and intelligently without depending on the general standards that prevail in everyday life, but the millions of others cannot do so.
Now the place which general custom fills in everyday life corresponds to that of general laws in the state and dogma in religion. The purely spiritual idea is of itself a changeable thing that may be subjected to endless interpretations. It is only through dogma that it is given a precise and concrete form without which it could not become a living faith. Otherwise, the spiritual idea would never become anything more than a mere metaphysical concept or rather a philosophical opinion. Accordingly, the attack against dogma is comparable to an attack against the general laws on which the state is founded. And so this attack would finally lead to complete political anarchy if it were successful, just as the attack on religion would lead to a worthless religious nihilism.
The political leader should not estimate the worth of a religion by taking some of its shortcomings into account, but he should ask himself whether there be any practical substitute in a view which is demonstrably better. Until such a substitute be available, only fools and criminals would think of abolishing the existing religion. Undoubtedly, no small amount of blame for the present unsatisfactory religious situation must be attributed to those who have encumbered the ideal of religion with purely material accessories and have thus given rise to an utterly futile conflict between religion and science.
In this conflict, victory will very nearly always be on the side of science. Even though after a bitter struggle, while religion will suffer heavily in the eyes of those who cannot penetrate beneath the mere superficial aspects of science. But the greatest damage of all has come from the practice of debasing religion as a means that can be exploited to serve political interests, or rather commercial interests. The impudent and loud mouthed liars who do this make their profession of faith before the whole world in stentorian tones so that all poor mortals may hear.
Not that they are ready to die for it if necessary, but rather that they may live all the better. They are ready to sell their faith for any political quid pro quo. For 10 parliamentary mandates, they would ally themselves with the Marxists who are the mortal foes of all religion. And for a seat in the cabinet, they would go the length of wedlock with the devil, if the latter had still not retained some traces of decency. File, 57. If religious life in pre war Germany had a disagreeable saver for the mouths of many people, This was because Christianity had been lowered to base uses by political parties that called themselves Christian, and because of the shameful way in which they tried to identify the Catholic faith with a political party.
This substitution was fatal. It procured some worthless parliamentary mandates for the party in question, but the church suffered damage thereby. The consequences of that situation had to be borne by the whole nation. For the laxity that resulted in religious life set in at a juncture when everything was beginning to lose hold and vacillate, and the traditional foundations of custom and of morality were threatening to fall asunder. Yet all those cracks and clefts in the social organism might not have been dangerous if no grave burdens had been laid upon it, but they became disastrous when the internal solidarity of the nation was the most important factor in withstanding the storm of big events.
In the political field also, observant eyes might have noticed certain anomalies of the Reich, which foretold disaster unless some alteration and correction took place in time. The lack of orientation in German policy, both domestic and foreign, was obvious to everyone who was not purposely blind. The best thing that could be said about the practice of making compromises is that it seemed outwardly to be in harmony with Bismarck's axiom that politics is the art of the possible. But Bismarck was a slightly different man from the chancellors who followed him. This difference allowed the former to apply that formula to the very essence of his policy, while in the mouths of the others, it took on an utterly different significance.
When he uttered that phrase, Bismarck meant to say that in order to attain a definite political end, all possible means should be employed or at least that all possibilities should be tried. But his successors see in that phrase only a solemn declaration that one is not necessarily bound to have political principles or any definite political aims at all. And the political leaders of the Reich at that time had no farseeing policy. Here again, the necessary foundation was lacking, namely, a definite, And these leaders also lack that clear insight into the laws of political evolution, which is a necessary quality in political leadership.
Many people who took a gloomy view of things at that time condemned the lack of ideas and lack of orientation which were evident in directing the policy of the Reich. They recognized the inner weaknesses and futility of this policy. But such people played only a secondary role in politics. Those who had the government of the country in their hands were quite as indifferent to principles of civil wisdom laid down by thinkers like Houston, Stuart, Chamberlain, as our political leaders now are. These people are too stupid to think for themselves, and they have too much self conceit to take from others the instruction which they need.
Gave expression to a truth which has lasted since time immemorial when he said that the world is governed by only a particle of wisdom. Almost every civil servant of councilor rank might naturally be supposed to possess only an atom or so belonging to this particle. But since Germany became a republic, even this modicum is wanting, And that is why they had to promulgate the law for the defense of the republic, which prohibits the holding of such views or expressing them. It was fortunate for Oxenstena that he lived at that time and not in this wise republic of our time.
Already before the war, that institution which should have represented the strength of the Reich, the parliament, the Reichstag, was widely recognized as its weakest feature. Cowardliness and fear of shouldering responsibilities were associated together there in a perfect fashion. One of the silliest notions that one here has expressed today is that in Germany, the parliamentary institution has ceased to function since the revolution. This might easily be taken to imply that the case was different before the revolution. But in reality, the parliamentary institution never functioned except to the detriment of the country, and it functioned thus in those days when people saw nothing or did not wish to see anything.
The German downfall is to be attributed in no small degree to this institution, But that the catastrophe did not take place sooner is not to be credited to the parliament, but rather to those who oppose the influence of this institution, which during peace times was digging the grave of the German nation and the German Reich. From the immense mass of devastating evils that were due either directly or indirectly to the parliament, I shall select one of the most intimately typical of this institution, which was the most irresponsible of all time.
The evil I speak of was seen in the appalling shilly shally and weakness in conducting the internal and external affairs of the Reich. It was attributable in the first place to the action of the Reichstag and was one of the principal causes of the political collapse. Everything subject to the influence of parliament was done by halves, no matter from what aspect you may regard it. The foreign policy of the Reich in the matter of alliances was an example of shilly shally. They wish to maintain peace, but in doing so, they steered straight into war.
Their Polish policy was also carried out by half measures. It resulted neither in a German triumph nor Polish conciliation, and it made enemies of the Russians. They tried to solve the Alsace Lorraine question through half measures. Instead of crushing the head of the French hydra once and for all with a mailed fist and granting Alsace Lorraine equal rights with other German states, they did neither the one or the other. Anyhow, it was impossible for them to do otherwise, for they had among their ranks the greatest traitors to the country, such as Hervetele of the center party.
But still, the country might have been able to bear with all this provided the half measure policy had not victimized that force in which, as the last resort, the existence of the empire depended, namely the army. The crime committed by the so called German Reichstag in this regard was sufficient of itself to draw down upon it the curses of the German nation for all time. On the most miserable of pretexts, these parliamentary party henchmen filched from the hands of the nation and threw away the weapons which were needed to maintain its existence, and therewith defend the liberty and independence of our people.
If the graves on the Plains Of Flanders were to open today, the bloodstained accusers would arise hundreds and thousands of our best German youth who were driven into the arms of death by those conscienceless parliamentary ruffians who were either wrongly educated for their task or only half educated. Those youths and other millions of the killed and mutilated were lost to the fatherland simply and solely in order that a few 100 deceivers of the people might carry out their political maneuvers and their exactions or even treasonably pursue their doctrinaire theories.
By means of the Marxist and democratic press, the Jews spread the colossal falsehood about German militarism throughout the world and tried to inculcate Germany by every possible means, while at the same time, the Marxist and democratic parties refused to assent to the measures that were necessary for the adequate training of our national defense forces. The appalling crime thus committed by these people ought to have been obvious to everybody who foresaw that in case of war, the whole nation would have to be called to arms, and that because of the mean huckstering of these noble representatives of the people, as they call themselves, millions of Germans would have to face the enemy ill equipped and insufficiently trained.
But even apart from the consequences of the crude and brutal lack of conscience which these parliamentarian rascals displayed, it was quite clear that the lack of properly trained soldiers at the beginning of a war would most probably lead to the loss of such a war, and this probability was confirmed in a most terrible way during the course of the World War. Therefore, the German people lost the struggle for the freedom and independence of their country because of the half hearted and defective policy employed during times of peace in the organization and training of the defensive strength of the nation.
The number of recruits trained for the land forces was too small, but the same half heartedness was shown in regard to the navy and made this weapon of national self preservation more or less ineffective. Unfortunately, even the naval authorities themselves were contaminated with this spirit of half heartedness. The tendency to build the ship on the stocks somewhat smaller than that just launched by the British did not show much foresight and less genius. A fleet which cannot be brought to the same numerical strength as that of the probable enemy or to compensate for this inferiority by the superior fighting power of the individual ship.
It is the weight of the fighting power that counts and not any sort of traditional quality. As a matter of fact, modern technical development is so advanced and so well proportioned among the various civilized states that it must be looked on as practically impossible for one power to build vessels which would have a superior fighting quality to that of the vessels of equal size built by the other powers. But it is even less feasible to build vessels of smaller displacement, which will be superior in action to those of larger displacement. As a matter of fact, the smaller proportions of the German vessels could be maintained only at the expense of speed and armament.
The phrase used to justify this policy was in itself an evidence of the lack of logical thinking on the part of the naval authorities who were in charge of these matters in times of peace. They declared that the German guns were definitely superior to the British 30.5 centimeter as regards striking efficiency. But that was just why they should have adopted the policy of building 30.5 centimeter guns also, for it ought to have been their object not to achieve equality, but superiority in fighting strength. If that were not so, then it would have been superfluous to equip the land forces with 42 centimeter mortars.
For the German 21 centimeter mortar could be far superior to any high angle guns which the French possessed at that time, and since the fortresses could probably have been taken by means of 30.5 centimeter mortars. The army authorities unfortunately failed to do so. If they refrain from assuring superior efficiency in the artillery as in the velocity, this was because of the fundamentally false principle of risk which they adopted. The naval authorities, already in times of peace, renounced the principle of attack and thus had to follow a defensive policy from the very beginning of the war. But by this attitude, they renounced also the chance of final success, which can be achieved only by an offensive policy.
A vessel with slower speed and weaker armament will be crippled and battered by an adversary that is faster and stronger and can frequently shoot from a favorable distance. A large number of cruisers have been through bitter experiences in this matter. How wrong were the ideas prevalent among the naval authorities in times of peace was proved during the war. They were compelled to modify the armament of the old vessels and to equip the new ones with better armament whenever there was a chance to do so. If the German vessels in the battle of the Skagerrak had been of equal size, the same armament, and the same speed as the English, the British fleet would have gone down under the tempest of the German 38 centimeter shells, which hit their aims more accurately and were more effective.
Japan had followed a different kind of naval policy. There, care was principally taken to create with every single new vessel a fighting force that would be superior to those of the eventual adversaries. But because of this policy, it was afterwards possible to use the fleet for the offensive. While the army authorities refused to adopt such fundamentally erroneous principles, the navy, which unfortunately had more representatives in parliament, succumb to the spirit that ruled there. The navy was not organized on a strong basis, and it was later used in an unsystematic and irresolute way.
The immortal glory which the navy won, in spite of these drawbacks, must be entirely credited to the good work and the efficiency and incomparable heroism of officers and crews. If the former commanders in chief had been inspired with the same kind of genius, all the sacrifices would not have been in vain.
The Rise of Propaganda in WWI
The Impact of Enemy Propaganda
The Somme and the Home Front
Return to Germany: A Changed Nation
The Munitions Strike and Its Consequences
The Final Offensives and Internal Strife
The Revolution and Its Aftermath
The Birth of Political Ambitions
Investigating the German Workers' Party
The Causes of Germany's Collapse
The Role of the Press and Public Opinion
The Fight Against Moral Decay
Cultural Decline and Its Symptoms
Parliamentary Weakness and Military Consequences
