In this episode, we delve into the intricate dynamics of political and military leadership in Germany during the early 20th century. We explore the parliamentary influences on naval construction and the internal struggles within the military, particularly focusing on the efforts of Colonel Ludendorff against parliamentary indecision. The discussion highlights the perceived failures of the Reichstag and the chancellor, Bettman Holveg, in safeguarding national interests, leading to Germany's eventual collapse. The narrative critiques the role of propaganda and the perceived manipulation by Jewish influences, contrasting it with the German government's lack of strategic communication.
The episode further examines the socio-political landscape of pre-war Germany, emphasizing the perceived superiority of the German state structure, military, and civil service. It discusses the impact of racial purity on national strength and the dangers of racial mixing, drawing comparisons between different regions and their cultural developments. The narrative also touches on the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, detailing its foundational principles, organizational strategies, and the challenges it faced in gaining public support. The episode concludes with a reflection on the movement's growth and its vision for Germany's future.
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File 58. It was probably the very parliamentarian skill displayed by the chief of the navy during the years of peace, which later became the cause of the fatal collapse since parliamentarian considerations had begun to play a more important role in the construction of the navy than fighting considerations. The irresolution, the weakness, and the failure to adopt a logically consistent policy, which is typical of the parliamentary system, contaminated the naval authorities. As I have already emphasized, the military authorities did not allow themselves to be led astray by such fundamentally erroneous ideas.
Ludendorff, who was then a colonel in the general staff, led a desperate struggle against the criminal vacillations with which the Reichstag treated the most vital problems of the nation, and in most cases, voted against them. If the fight which this officer then waged remained unsuccessful, this must be debited to the parliament and partly also to the wretched and weak attitude of the chancellor, Bettman Holveg. Yet those who are responsible for Germany's collapse do not hesitate now to lay all the blame on the shoulders of the one man who took a firm stand against the neglectful manner in which the interests of the nation were managed. But one falsehood more or less makes no difference to these congenital trick sters. Anybody who thinks of all the sacrifices which this nation has had to bear as a result of the criminal neglect of those irresponsible individuals, anybody who thinks of the number of those who died or were maimed unnecessarily, anybody who thinks of the deplorable shame and dishonor which has been heaped upon us, and of the illimitable distress into which our people are now plunged.
Anybody who realizes that in order to prepare the way to a few seats in parliament for some unscrupulous place hunters and arrivists will understand that such hirelings can be called by no other name than that of rascal and criminal. For, otherwise, those words could have no meaning. In comparison with traitors who betrayed the nation's trust, every other kind of twister may be looked upon as an honorable man. It was a peculiar feature of the situation that all the real faults of the old Germany were exposed to the public gaze only when the inner solidarity of the nation could be injured by doing so.
Then, indeed, unpleasant truths were openly proclaimed in the ears of the broad masses, while many other things were at times shamefully hushed up or their existence simply denied, especially at times when an open discussion of such problems might have led to an improvement in their regard. The higher government authorities knew little or nothing of the nature and use of propaganda in such matters. Only the Jew knew that by an able and persistent use of propaganda, heaven itself can be presented to the people as if it were hell, and vice versa, the most miserable kind of life can be presented as if it were paradise.
The Jew knew this and acted accordingly, but the German, or rather his government, did not have the slightest suspicion of it. During the war, the heaviest of penalties had to be paid for that ignorance. Over against the innumerable drawbacks which I have mentioned here and which affected German life before the war, there were many outstanding features on the positive side. If we take an impartial survey, we must admit that most of our drawbacks were in great measure prevalent also in other countries and among the other nations, and very often in a worse form than with us.
Whereas among us, there were many real advantages which the other did not have. The leading phase of Germany's superiority arose from the fact that almost alone among all the other European nations, the German nation had made the strongest effort to preserve the national character of its economic structure, and for this reason was less subject than other countries to the power of international finance. Though, indeed, there were many untoward symptoms in this regard also. And yet, this superiority was a perilous one and turned out later to be one of the chief causes of the World War. But even if we disregard this advantage of national independence in economic matters, there were certain other positive features of our social and political life which were of outstanding excellence.
These features were represented by three institutions which were constant sources of regeneration. In their respective spheres, they were models of perfection and were partly unrivaled. The first of these was the stateful form as such and the manner in which it had been developed for Germany in modern times. Of course, we must accept those monarchs who, as human beings, were subject to the failings which afflict this life and its children. If we were not so tolerant in these matters, then the case of the present generation would be hopeless.
For if we take into consideration the personal capabilities and character of the representative figures in our present regime, it would be difficult to imagine a more modest level of intelligence and moral character. If we measure the value of the German revolution by the personal worth and caliber of the individuals whom this revolution has presented to the German people since November 1918, then we may feel ashamed indeed in thinking of the judgment which posterity will pass on these people when the law for the protection of the republic can no longer silence public opinion.
Coming generations will surely decide that the intelligence and integrity of our new German leaders were in adverse ratio to their boasting and their vices. It must be admitted that the monarchy had become alien in spirit to many citizens and especially the broad masses. This resulted from the fact that the monarchs were not always surrounded by the highest intelligence, so to say, and certainly not always by persons of the most upright character. Unfortunately, many of them preferred flatterers to honest spoken men, and hence received their information from the former.
This was a source of grave danger at a time when the world was passing through a period in which many of the old conditions were changing and when this change was affecting even the traditions of the court. The average man or woman could not have felt a wave of enthusiasm surging within the breast when, for example, at the turn of the century, a princess in uniform and on horseback had the soldiers file past her on parade. Those high circles had apparently no idea of the impression which such a parade made on the minds of ordinary people. Else, such unfortunate occurrences would not have taken place.
The sentimental humanitarianism, not always very sincere, which was professed in those high circles, was often more repulsive than attractive. When, for instance, the princess x condescended to taste the products of a soup kitchen and found them excellent as usual. Such a gesture might have made an excellent impression in times long past. But on this occasion, it had the opposite effect to what was intended. For even if we take it for granted that her highness did not have the slightest idea that on the day she sampled it, the food was not quite the same as on other days, It sufficed that the people knew it.
Even the best of intentions thus became an object of ridicule or a cause of exasperation. Descriptions of the proverbial frugality practiced by the monarch, his much too early rise in the morning, and the drudgery he had to go through all day long until late at night, and especially the constantly expressed fears lest he might become undernourished. All this gave rise to ominous expression on the part of the people. Nobody was keen to know what and how much the monarch ate or drank. Nobody grudged him a full meal or the necessary amount of sleep. Everybody was pleased when the monarch, as a man and a personality, brought honor on his family and his country and fulfilled his duties as a sovereign.
All the legends which were circulated about him helped little and did much damage. File 59. These and such things, however, are only mere Bagatel. What was much worse was the feeling which spread throughout large sections of the nation, that the affairs of the individual were being taken care of from above and that he did not need to bother himself with them. As long as the government was really good, or at least moved by goodwill, no serious objections could be raised. But the country was destined to disaster when the old government, which had at least striven for the best, became replaced by a new regime which was not of the same quality.
Then the docile obedience and infantile credulity which formerly offered no resistance was bound to be one of the most fatal evils that can be imagined. But against these and other defects, there were certain qualities which undoubtedly had a positive effect. First of all, the monarchical form of government guarantees stability in the direction of public affairs and safeguards public offices from the speculative turmoil of ambitious politicians. Furthermore, the venerable tradition which this institution possesses arouses a feeling which gives weight to the monarchical authority.
Beyond this, there is the fact that the whole core of officials and the army in particular are raised above the level of political party obligations. And still another positive feature was that the supreme rulership of the state was embodied in the monarch as an individual person who could serve as the symbol of responsibility, which a monarch has to bear more seriously than any anonymous parliamentary majority. Indeed, the proverbial honesty and integrity of the German administration must be attributed chiefly to this fact. Finally, the monarchy fulfilled a high cultural function among the German people, which made amends for many of its defects.
The German residential cities have remained even to our time, centers of that artistic spirit which now threatens to disappear and is becoming more and more materialistic. The German princes gave a great deal of excellent and practical encouragement to art and science, especially during the nineteenth century. Our present age certainly has nothing of equal worth. During that process of disintegration, which was slowly extending throughout the social order, the most positive force of resistance was that offered by the army. This was the strongest source of education which the German people possessed.
For that reason, all the hatred of our enemies was directed against the paladin of our national self preservation and our liberty. The strongest testimony in favor of this unique institution is the fact that it was derided, hated, and fought against, but also feared by worthless elements all round. The fact that the international profiteers who gathered at Versailles further to exploit and plunder the nations, directed their enmity especially against the old German army, proved once again that it deserved to be regarded as the institution which protected the liberties of our people against the forces of the International Stock Exchange.
If the army had not been there to sound the alarm and stand on guard, the purposes of the Versailles representatives would have been carried out much sooner. There is only one word to express what the German people owe to this army. Everything. It was the army that still inculcated a sense of responsibility among the people when this quality had become very rare and when the habit of shirking every kind of responsibility was steadily spreading. This habit had grown up under the evil influences of parliament, which was itself the very model of irresponsibility.
The army trained the people to personal courage at a time when the virtue of timidity threatened to become an epidemic, and when the spirit of sacrificing one's personal interests for the good of the community was considered as something that amounted almost to weak mindedness. At a time when only those were estimated as intelligent who knew how to safeguard and promote their own egotistic interests. The army was the school through which individual Germans were taught not to seek the salvation of their nation in the false ideology of international fraternization between Negroes, Germans, Chinese, French, and English, etcetera, but in the strength and unity of their own national being.
The army developed the individual's powers of resolute decision, and this at a time when a spirit of indecision and skepticism governed human conduct. At a time when the wise acres were everywhere setting the fashion, it needed courage to uphold the principles that any command is better than none. This one principle represents a robust and sound style of thought of which not a trace would have been left in the other branches of life if the army had not furnished a constant rejuvenation of this fundamental force? A sufficient proof of this may be found in the appalling lack of decision which our present government authorities display.
They cannot shake off their mental and moral lethargy and decide on some definite line of action, except when they are forced to sign some new dictate for the exploitation of the German people. In that case, they decline all responsibility, while at the same time, they sign everything which the other side places before them, and they sign with all the readiness of an official stenographer. Their conduct is here explicable on the ground that in this case, they are not under the necessity of coming to a decision, for the decision is dictated to them.
The army imbued its members with a spirit of idealism and developed their readiness to sacrifice themselves for their country and its honor, while greed and materialism dominated in all other branches of life. The army united a people who were split up into classes, and in this respect had only one defect, which was the one year military service, a privilege granted to those who had passed through the high schools. It was a defect because the principle of absolute equality was thereby violated, and those who had a better education were thus placed outside the cadres to which the rest of their comrades belonged.
The reverse would have been better. Since our upper classes were really ignorant of what was going on in the body corporate of the nation and were becoming more and more estranged from the life of the people, the army would have accomplished a very beneficial mission if it had refused to discriminate in favor of the so called intellectuals, especially within its own ranks. It was a mistake that this was not done. But in this world of ours, can we find any institution that has not at least one defect? And in the army, the good features were so absolutely predominant that the few defects it had were far below the average that generally arises from human weakness.
But the greatest credit which the army of the old empire deserves is that at a time when the person of the individual counted for nothing and the majority was everything, It placed individual personal values above majority values. By insisting on its faith in personality, the army opposed that typically Jewish and democratic apotheosis of the power of numbers. The army trained what at that time was most surely needed, namely real men. In a period when men were falling prey to effeminacy and laxity, 350,000 vigorously trained young men went from the ranks of the army each year to mingle with their fellow men.
In the course of their two years training, they had lost the softness of their young days and had developed bodies as tough as steel. The young man who had been taught obedience for two years was now fitted to command. The trained soldier could be recognized already by his walk. This was the great school of the German nation, and it was not without reason that it drew upon its head all the bitter hatred of those who wanted the empire to be weak and defenseless, because they were jealous of its greatness, and were themselves possessed by a spirit of rapacity and greed.
The rest of the world recognized a fact which many Germans did not wish to see, either because they were blind to facts or because out of malice they did not wish to see it. This fact was that the German army was the most powerful weapon for the defense and freedom of the German nation and the best guarantee for the livelihood of its citizens. There was a third institution of positive worth, which has to be placed beside that of the monarchy and the army, and this was the civil service. German administration was better organized and better carried out than the administration of other countries.
There may have been objections to the bureaucratic routine of the officials, but from this point of view, the state of affairs was similar, if not worse, in other countries. But the other states did not have the wonderful solidarity which this organization possessed in Germany, nor were there civil servants of that same high level of scrupulous honesty. It is certainly better to be a trifle over bureaucratic and honest and loyal than to be over sophisticated and modern. The latter often implying an inferior type of character and also ignorance and inefficiency.
For if it be insinuated today that the German administration of the pre war period may have been excellent so far as bureaucratic technique goes, but that from the practical business point of view, it was incompetent. I can only give the following reply. What other country in the world possessed a better organized and administered business enterprise than the German state railways, for instance? It was left to the revolution to destroy this standard organization until a time came when it was taken out of the hands of the nation and socialized in the sense which the founders of the republic had given to that word, namely making it subservient to the international stock exchange capitalists who were the wire pullers of the German revolution.
The most outstanding trait in the civil service and the whole body of the civil administration was its independence of the vicissitudes of government, the political mentality of which could exercise no influence on the attitude of the German state officials. Since the revolution, this situation has been completely changed. Efficiency and capability have been replaced by the test of party adherence, and independence of character and initiative are no longer appreciated as positive qualities in a public official. They rather tell against him.
The wonderful might and power of the old empire was based on the monarchical form of government, the army, and the civil service. On these three foundations rested that great strength which is now entirely lacking, namely the authority of the state. For the authority of the state cannot be based on the babbling that goes on in parliament or in the provincial diets and not upon laws made to protect the state or upon sentences passed by the law courts to frighten those who have had the hardihood to deny the authority of the state, but only on the general confidence which the management and administration of the community establishes among the people.
This confidence is, in its turn, nothing less than the result of an unshakable inner conviction that the government and administration of a country is inspired by disinterested and honest goodwill, and on the feeling that the spirit of the law is in complete harmony with the moral convictions of the people. In the long run, systems of government are not maintained by terrorism, but on the belief of the people in the merits and sincerity of those who administer and promote the public interests. Though it be true that in the period preceding the war, certain grave evils tended to infect and corrode the inner strength of the nation, it must be remembered that the other states suffered even more than Germany from these drawbacks.
And yet those other states did not fail and break down when the time of crisis came. If we remember further that those defects in pre war Germany were outweighed by great positive qualities, we shall have to look elsewhere for the effective cause of the collapse, and elsewhere it lay. The ultimate and most profound reason of the German downfall is to be found in the fact that the racial problem was ignored and that its importance in the historic development of nations was not grasped. For the events that take place in the life of nations are not due to chance, but are the natural results of the effort to conserve and multiply the species and the race.
Even though men may not be able consciously to picture to their minds the profound motives of their conduct. File 60. Chapter 11. Nation and race. There are certain truths which stand out so openly on the roadsides of life as it were that every passerby may see them. Yet because of their very obviousness, the general run of people disregard such truths, or at least they do not make them the object of any conscious knowledge. People are so blind to some of the simplest facts in everyday life that they are highly surprised when somebody calls attention to what everybody ought to know.
Examples of the Columbus egg lie around us in hundreds of thousands, but observers like Columbus are rare. Walking about in the garden of nature, most men have the self conceit to think that they know everything. Yet almost all are blind to one of the most outstanding principles that nature employs in her work. This principle may be called the inner isolation, which characterizes each and every living species on this Earth. Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life urge of nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law.
One may call it an iron law of nature, which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stalk with the stalk, the field mouse with the field mouse, the house mouse with the house mouse, the wolf with the she wolf, etcetera. Deviations from this law take place only in exceptional circumstances. This happens especially under the compulsion of captivity or when some other obstacle makes procreative intercourse impossible between individuals of the same species.
But then nature abhors such intercourse with all her might, and her protest is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that the hybrid is either sterile or the fecundity of its descendants is limited. In most cases, hybrids and their progeny are denied the ordinary powers of resistance to disease or the natural means of defense against outer attack. Such a dispensation of nature is quite logical. Every crossing between two breeds, which are not quite equal, results in a product which holds an intermediate place between the levels of the two parents. This means that the offspring will indeed be superior to the parent which stands in the biologically lower order of being, but not so high as the higher parent.
For this reason, it must eventually succumb in any struggle against the higher species. Such mating contradicts the will of nature towards the selective improvements of life in general. The favorable preliminary to this improvement is not to meet individuals of higher and lower orders of being, but rather to allow the complete triumph of the higher order. The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel. And if he does so, it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind.
For if such a law did not direct the process of evolution, then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all. This urge for the maintenance of the unmixed breed, which is a phenomenon that prevails throughout the whole of the natural world, results not only in the sharply defined outward distinction between one species and another, but also in the internal similarity of characteristic qualities which are peculiar to each breed or species. The fox remains always a fox. The goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger.
The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etcetera, with which the individual specimens are endowed. It would be impossible to find a fox which has a kindly and protective disposition towards geese just as no cat exists which has a friendly disposition towards mice. That is why the struggle between the various species does not arise from a feeling of mutual antipathy, but from hunger and love. In both cases, nature looks on calmly and is even pleased with what happens.
The struggle for the daily livelihood leaves behind in the rock everything that is weak or diseased or wavering, while the fight of the male to possess the female gives to the strongest the right or at least the possibility to propagate its kind. And this struggle is a means of furthering the health and powers of resistance in the species. Thus, it is one of the causes underlying the process of development towards a higher quality of being. If the case were different, the progressive process would cease, and even retrogression might set in.
Since the inferior always outnumber the superior, The former would always increase more rapidly if they possess the same capacities for survival and for the procreation of their kind. And the final consequence would be that the best in quality would be forced to proceed into the background. Therefore, a corrective measure in favor of the better quality must intervene. Nature supplies this by establishing rigorous conditions of life to which the weaker will have to submit and will thereby be numerically restricted. But even that portion which survives cannot indiscriminately multiply, for here a new and rigorous selection takes place according to strength and health.
If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one. Because in such a case, all her efforts throughout hundreds of thousands of years to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile. History furnishes us with innumerable instances that prove this law. It shows with startling clarity that whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race, the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard bearers of a higher culture. In North America, where the population is prevalently Teutonic, and where those elements intermingled with the inferior race only to a very small degree, we have a quality of mankind and a civilization which are different from those of Central And South America.
In these latter countries, the immigrants, who mainly belong to the Latin races, mated with the Aborigines, sometimes to a very large extent indeed. In this case, we have a clear and decisive example of the effect produced by the mixture of races. But in North America, the Teutonic element, which has kept its racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock, has come to dominate the American continent and will remain master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood.
In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following. A, the level of the superior race becomes lowered. B, physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the eternal creator, and as a sin, this act will be avenged. Man's effort to build up something that contradicts the iron logic of nature brings him into conflict with those principles to which he himself exclusively owes his own existence.
By acting against the laws of nature, he prepares the way that leads to his ruin. Here, we meet the insolent objection, which is Jewish in its inspiration and is typical of the modern pacifist. It says, man can control even nature. There are millions who repeat by rope that piece of Jewish babble and end up by imagining that somehow they are themselves the conquerors of nature. And yet their only weapon is just a mere idea and a very preposterous idea into the bargain. Because if one accepted it, then it would be impossible even to imagine the existence of the world.
The real truth is that not only has man failed to overcome nature in any sphere whatsoever, but that at best, he has merely succeeded in getting hold of and lifting lifting a tiny corner of the enormous veil which she has spread over her eternal mysteries and secret. He never creates anything. All he can do is to discover something. He does not master nature, but has only come to be master of those living beings who have not gained the knowledge he has arrived at by penetrating into some of nature's laws and mysteries. Apart from all this, an idea can never subject to its own sway those conditions which are necessary for the existence and development of mankind.
For the idea itself has come only from man. Without man, there would be no human idea in this world. The idea as such is therefore always dependent on the existence of man and consequently is dependent on those laws which furnish the conditions of his existence. And not only that, certain ideas are even confined to certain people. This holds true with regard to those ideas in particular which have not their roots in objective scientific truth, but in the world of feeling. In other words, to use a phrase which is current today and which well and clearly expresses this truth, they reflect an inner experience.
All such ideas which have nothing to do with cold logic as such, but represent mere manifestations of feeling, such as ethical and moral conceptions, etcetera, are inextricably bound up with man's existence. It is to the creative powers of man's imagination that such ideas owe their existence. Now then, a necessary condition for the maintenance of such ideas is the existence of certain races and certain types of men. For example, anyone who sincerely wishes that the pacifist idea should prevail in this world ought to do all he is capable of doing to help the Germans conquer the world. For in case the reverse should happen, it may easily be that the last pacifist would disappear with the last German.
I say this because, unfortunately, only our people and no other people in the world fell a prey to this idea. Whether you like it or not, you would have to make up your mind to forget wars if you would achieve the pacifist ideal. Nothing less than this was the plan of the American world redeemer Woodrow Wilson. Anyhow, that was what our visionaries believed, and they thought that through his plans, their ideals would be attained. File 61. The pacifist humanitarian idea may indeed become an excellent one when the most superior type of manhood will have succeeded in subjugating the world to such an extent that this type is then sole master of the earth.
This idea could have an injurious effect only in the measure according to which its application would become difficult and finally impossible. So first of all, the fight and then pacifism. If the case were different, it would mean that mankind has already passed the zenith of its development. And accordingly, the end would not be the supremacy of some moral ideal, but degeneration into barbarism and consequent chaos. People may laugh at this statement, but our planet has been moving through the spaces of ether for millions and millions of years, uninhabited by men, and at some future date may easily begin to do so again.
If men should forget that wherever they have reached a superior level of existence, it was not the result of following the ideas of crazy visionaries, but by acknowledging and rigorously observing the iron laws of nature. All that we admire in the world today, its science, its art, its technical development and discoveries, are the products of the creative activities of a few peoples, and it may be true that their first beginnings must be attributed to one race. The maintenance of civilization is wholly dependent on such peoples. Should they perish, all that makes this earth beautiful will descend with them into the grave.
However great, for example, be the influence which the soil exerts on men, this influence will always vary according to the race in which it produces its effect. Dearth of soil may stimulate one race to the most strenuous efforts and highest achievement. While for another race, the poverty of the soil may be the cause of misery and finally of under nourishment with all its consequences. The internal characteristics of a people are always the causes which determine the nature of the effect that outer circumstances have on them.
What reduces one race to starvation trains another race to harder work. All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the originally creative race died out as a result of contamination of the blood. The most profound cause of such a decline is to be found in the fact that the people ignore the principle that all culture depends on men and not the reverse. In other words, in order to preserve a certain culture, the type of manhood that creates such a culture must be preserved. But such a preservation goes hand in hand with the inexorable law that it is the strongest and best who must triumph, and that they have the right to endure.
He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world where permanent struggle is the law of life has not the right to exist. Such a saying may sound hard, but after all, that is how the matter really stands. Yet far harder is the lot of him who believes that he can overcome nature and thus, in reality, insults her. Distress, misery, and disease are her rejoinders. Whoever ignores or despises the laws of race really deprives himself of the happiness to which he believes he can attain. For he places an obstacle in the victorious path of the superior race, And by so doing, he interferes with a prerequisite condition of all human progress.
Loaded with the burden of humanitarian sentiment, he falls back to the level of those who are unable to raise themselves in the scale of being. It would be futile to attempt to discuss the question as to what race or races were the original standard bearers of human culture and were thereby the real founders of all that we understand by the word humanity. It is much simpler to deal with this question insofar as it relates to the present time. Here, the answer is simple and clear. Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science, and technical skill which we see before our eyes today is almost exclusively the product of the Aryan creative power.
This very fact fully justifies the conclusion that it was the Aryan alone who founded a superior type of humanity. Therefore, he represents the archetype of what we understand by the term man. He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed forth, always kindling anew that fire which, in the form of knowledge, illuminated the dark night by drawing aside the veil of mystery, and thus showing man how to rise and become master over all the other beings of the earth. Should he be forced to disappear, a profound darkness will descend on the earth.
Within a few thousand years, human culture will vanish, and the world will become a desert. If we divide mankind into three categories, founders of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture, The Aryan alone can be considered as representing the first category. It was he who laid the groundwork and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture. Only the shape and color of such structures are to be attributed to the individual characteristics of the various nations. It is the Aryan who has furnished the great building stones and plans for the edifices of all human progress.
Only the way in which these plans have been executed is to be attributed to the qualities of each individual race. Within a few decades, the whole of Eastern Asia, for instance, appropriated the culture and called such a culture its own, whereas the basis of that culture was the Greek mind and Teutonic skill as we know it. Only the external form, at least to a certain degree, shows the traits of an Asiatic inspiration. It is not true, as some believe, that Japan adds European technique to a culture of her own. The truth rather is that European science and techniques are just decked out with a peculiar characteristics of Japanese civilization.
The foundations of actual life in Japan today are not those of the native Japanese culture. Although, this characterizes the external features of the country, which features strike the eye of European observers on account of their fundamental difference from us. But the real foundations of contemporary Japanese life are the enormous scientific and technical achievements of Europe and America, that is to say of Aryan peoples. Only by adopting these achievements as the foundations of their own progress can the various nations of the Orient take a place in contemporary world progress. The scientific and technical achievements of Europe and America provide the basis on which the struggle for daily livelihood is carried on in the Orient.
They provide the necessary arms and instruments for this struggle, and only the outer forms of these instruments have become gradually adapted to Japanese ways of life. If from today onwards, the Aryan influence on Japan would cease, and if we suppose that Europe and America would collapse, then the present progress of Japan in science and technique might still last for a short duration. But within a few decades, the inspiration would dry up, and native Japanese character would triumph. While the present civilization would become fossilized and fall back into the sleep from which it was aroused about seventy years ago by the impact of Aryan culture.
We may therefore draw the conclusion that just as the present Japanese development has been due to Aryan influence, so in the immemorial past, an outside influence and an outside culture brought into existence the Japanese culture of that day. This opinion is very strongly supported by the fact that the ancient civilization of Japan actually became fossilized and petrified. Such a process of senility can happen only if a people loses the racial cell which originally had been creative or if the outside influence should be withdrawn after having awakened and maintained the first cultural developments in that region.
If it be shown that a people owes the fundamental elements of its culture to foreign races, assimilating and elaborating such elements, and if subsequently that culture becomes fossilized whenever the external influence ceases, then such a race may be called the depository, but never the creator of a culture. If we subject the different peoples to a strict test from this standpoint, we shall find that scarcely any one of them has originally created the culture, but almost all have been merely the recipients of a culture created elsewhere. This development may be depicted as always happening somewhat in the following way.
Aryan tribes, often almost ridiculously small in number, subjugated foreign peoples and stimulated by the conditions of life which their new country offered them, fertility, the nature of the climate, etcetera, and profiting also by the abundance of manual labor furnished them by the inferior race, they developed intellectual and organizing faculties which had hitherto been dormant in these conquering tribes. Within the course of a few thousand years or even centuries, they gave life to cultures whose primitive traits completely corresponded to the character of the founders, though modified by adaptation to the peculiarities of the soil and the characteristics of the subjugated people.
But finally, the conquering race offended against the principles which they first had observed, namely the maintenance of their racial stock unmixed, and they began to intermingle with the subjugated people. Thus, they put an end to their own separate existence, for the original sin committed in paradise has always been followed by the expulsion of the guilty parties. After a thousand years or more, the last visible traces of those former masters may then be found in a lighter tint of the skin which the Aryan blood had bequeathed to the subjugated race, and in a fossilized culture of which those Aryans had been the original creators.
For just as the blood of the conqueror, who was a conqueror not only in body, but also in spirit, got submerged in the blood of the subject race, so the substance disappeared out of which the torch of human culture and progress was kindled. Insofar as the blood of the former ruling race has left a light nuance of color in the blood of its descendants as a token and a memory, The night of cultural life is rendered less dim and dark by a mild light radiated from the products of those who were the bearers of the original fire. Their radiance shines across the barbarism to which the subjected race has reverted and might often lead the superficial observer to believe that he sees before him an image of the present race, when really he is looking into a mirror wherein only the past is reflected.
File 62. It may happen that in the course of its history, such a people will come into contact a second time and even oftener with the original founders of their culture and may not even remember that distant association. Instinctively, the remnants of blood left from that old ruling race will be drawn towards this new phenomenon. And what had formerly been possible only under compulsion can now be successfully achieved in a voluntary way. A new cultural wave flows in and lasts until the blood of its standard bearers becomes once again adulterated by intermixture with the originally conquered race.
It will be the task of those who set themselves to the study of a universal history of civilization to investigate history from this point of view instead of allowing themselves to be smothered under the mass of external data as is only too often the case with our present historical science. This short sketch of the changes that take place among those races that are only the depositories of a culture also furnishes a picture of the development and activity and the disappearance of those who are the true founders of culture on this earth, namely, the Aryans themselves.
Just as in our daily life, the so called man of genius needs a particular occasion and sometimes indeed a special stimulus to bring his genius to light, so too when the life of the peoples, the race that has genius in it, needs the occasion and stimulus to bring that genius to expression. In the monotony and routine of everyday life, even persons of significance seem just like the others and do not rise beyond the average level of their fellow men. But as soon as such men find themselves in a special situation which disconcerts and unbalances the others.
The humble person of apparently common qualities reveals traits of genius, often to the amazement of those who have hitherto known him in the small things of everyday life. That is the reason why a prophet only seldom counts for something in his own country. War offers an excellent occasion for observing this phenomenon. In times of distress, when the others despair, apparently harmless boys suddenly spring up and become heroes, full of determination, undaunted in the presence of death, and manifesting wonderful powers of calm reflection under such circumstances.
If such an hour of trial did not come, nobody would have thought that the soul of a hero lurked in the body of that beardless youth. A special impulse is almost always necessary to bring a man of genius into the foreground. The sledgehammer of fate which strikes down the one so easily finds the counter impact of steel when it strikes the other. And after the common shell of everyday life is broken, the core that lay hidden in it is displayed to the eyes of an astonished world. This surrounding world then grows obstinate and will not believe that what had seen so like itself is really of that different quality so suddenly displayed.
This is a process which is repeated probably every time a man of outstanding significance appears. Outstanding significance appears. Though an inventor, for example, does not establish his fame until the very day that he carries through his invention, it would be a mistake to believe that the creative genius did not come alive in him until that moment. From the very hour of his birth, the spark of genius is living within the man who has been endowed with a real creative faculty. True genius is an innate quality. It can never be the result of education or training.
As I have stated already, this holds good not merely of the individual, but also of the race. Those peoples who manifest creative abilities in certain periods of their history have always been fundamentally creative. It belongs to their very nature, even though this fact may escape the eyes of the superficial observer. Here also recognition from outside is the only consequence of practical achievement. Since the rest of the world is incapable of recognizing genius as such, It can only see the visible manifestations of genius in the form of inventions, discoveries, buildings, painting, etcetera.
But even here, a long time passes before recognition is given. Just as the individual person who has been endowed with the gift of genius, or at least talent of a very high order, cannot bring that endowment to realization until he comes under the urge of special circumstances. So in the life of the nations, the creative capacities and powers frequently have to wait until certain conditions stimulate them to action. The most obvious example of this truth is furnished by that race which has been and still is the standard bearer of human progress.
I mean, the Aryan race. As soon as fate brings them face to face with special circumstances, their powers begin to develop progressively and to be manifested in tangible form. The characteristic cultures which they create under such circumstances are almost always conditioned by the soil, the climate, and the people they subjugate. The last factor, that of the character of the people, is the most decisive one. The more primitive the technical conditions under which the civilizing activity takes place, the more necessary is the existence of manual labor, which can be organized and employed so as to take the place of mechanical power.
Had it not been possible for them to employ members of the inferior race which they conquered, the Aryans would never have been in a position to take the first steps on the road which led them to a later type of culture, just as without the help of certain suitable animals which they were able to tame, they would never have come to the invention of mechanical power which has subsequently enabled them to do without these beasts. The phrase, the moor has accomplished his function, so let him now depart, has, unfortunately, a profound application.
For thousands of years, the horse has been the faithful servant of man and has helped him to lay the foundations of human progress. But now, motor power has dispensed with the use of the horse. In a few years to come, the use of the horse will cease entirely, and yet without its collaboration, man could scarcely have come to the stage of development which he has now created. For the establishment of superior types of civilization, the members of inferior races formed one of the most essential prerequisites. They alone could supply the lack of mechanical means without which no progress is possible.
It is certain that the first stages of human civilization were not based so much on the use of tame animals as on the employment of human beings who were members of an inferior race. Only after subjugated races were employed as slaves was a similar fate allotted to animals and not vice versa as some people would have us believe. At first, it was the conquered enemy who had to draw the plow, and only afterwards did the ox and horse take his place. Nobody else but pulling pacifists can consider this fact as a sign of human degradation. Such people fail to recognize that this evolution had to take place in order that man might reach that degree of civilization which these apostles now exploit in an attempt to make the world pay attention to their rigmarole.
The progress of mankind may be compared to the process of ascending an infinite ladder. One does not reach the higher level without first having climbed the lower rungs. The Arian, therefore, had to take that road which his sense of reality pointed out to him, and not that which the modern pacifist dreams of. The path of reality is, however, difficult and hard to tread, Yet it is the only one which finally leads to the goal where the others envisage mankind in their dreams. But the real truth is that those dreamers help only to lead man away from his goal rather than towards it.
It was not by mere chance that the first forms of civilization arose there where the Aryan came into contact with inferior races, subjugated them, and forced them to obey his command. The members of the inferior race became the first mechanical tools in the service of a growing civilization. Thereby, the way was clearly indicated which the Aryan had to follow. As a conqueror, he subjugated inferior races and turned their physical powers into organized channels under his own leadership, forcing them to follow his will and purpose. By imposing on them a useful, though hard, manner of employing their powers, he not only spared the lives of those whom he had conquered, but probably made their lives easier than these had been in the former state of so called freedom.
While he ruthlessly maintained his position as their master, he not only remained master, but he also maintained an advanced civilization. For this depended exclusively on his inborn abilities and, therefore, on the preservation of the Aryan race as such. As soon, however, as his subject began to rise and approach the level of their conqueror, a phase of which ascension was probably the use of his language, the barriers that had distinguished master from servant broke down. The Aryan neglected to maintain his own racial stock unmixed, and therewith lost the right to live in the paradise which he himself had created.
He became submerged in the racial mixture and gradually lost his cultural creativeness until he finally grew, not only mentally, but also physically, more like the Aborigines whom he had subjected rather than his own ancestors. For some time, he could continue to live on the capital of that culture, which still remained, but a condition of fossilization soon set in, and he sank into oblivion. That is how cultures and empires decline and yield their places to new formations. The adulteration of the blood and racial deterioration condition thereby are the only causes that account for the decline of ancient civilizations.
For it is never by war that nations are ruined, but by the loss of their powers of resistance, which are exclusively a characteristic of pure racial blood. In this world, everything that is not of sound racial stock is like chaff. Every historical event in the world is nothing more nor less than a manifestation of the instinct of racial self preservation, whether for wheel or woe. File 63. The question is to the ground reasons for the predominant importance of Arianism can be answered by pointing out that it is not so much that the Aryans are endowed with a stronger instinct for self preservation, but rather that this manifests itself in a way which is peculiar to themselves.
Considered from the subjective standpoint, the will to live is, of course, equally strong all round, and only the forms in which it is expressed are different. Among the most primitive organisms, the instinct for self preservation does not extend beyond the care of the individual ego. Egotism, as we call this passion, is so predominant that it includes even the time element, which means that the present moment is deemed the most important, and that nothing is left to the future. The animal lives only for itself, searching for food only when it feels hunger and fighting only for the preservation of its own life.
As long as the instinct for self preservation manifests itself exclusively in such a way, there is no basis for the establishment of a community, not even the most primitive form of all, that is to say the family. The society formed by the male with the female, where it goes beyond the mere conditions of mating, calls for the extension of the instinct of self preservation since the readiness to fight for one's own ego has to be extended also to the mate. The male sometimes provides food for the female, but in most cases, both parents provide food for the offspring.
Almost always, they are ready to protect and defend each other, so that here we find the first, though infinitely simple, manifestation of the spirit of sacrifice. As soon as this spirit extends beyond the narrow limits of the family, we have the conditions under which larger associations and finally even states can be formed. The lowest species of human beings give evidence of this quality only to a very small degree so that often they do not go beyond the formation of the family society. With an increasing readiness to place their immediate personal interests in the background, the capacity for organizing more extensive communities develops.
The readiness to sacrifice one's personal work can, if necessary, even one's life for others shows its most highly developed form in the Aryan race. The greatness of the Aryan is not based on his intellectual powers, but rather on his willingness to devote all his faculties to the service of the community. Here, the instinct for self preservation has reached its noblest form. For the Aryan willingly subordinates his own ego to the common wheel, And when necessity calls, he will even sacrifice his own life for the community. The constructive powers of the Aryan and that peculiar ability he has for the building up of a culture are not grounded in his intellectual gifts alone.
If that were so, they might only be destructive and could never have the ability to organize. For the latter essentially depends on the readiness of the individual to renounce his own personal opinions and interests and to lay both at the service of the human group. By serving the common wheel, he receives his reward in return. For example, he does not work directly for himself, but makes his productive work a part of the activity of the group to which he belongs, not only for his own benefit, but for the general. The spirit underlying this attitude is expressed by the word work, which to him does not at all signify a means of earning one's daily livelihood, but rather a productive activity which cannot clash with the interests of the community.
Whenever human activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for self preservation, it is called theft or usury, robbery, or burglary, etcetera. This mental attitude, which forces self interest to proceed into the background in favor of the common wheel, is the first prerequisite for any kind of really human civilization. It is out of this spirit alone that the great human achievements have sprung for which the original doers have scarcely ever received any recompense, but which turns out to be the source of abundant benefit for their descendants. It is this spirit alone which can explain why it so often happens that people can endure a harsh but honest existence which offers them no returns for their toil except a poor and modest livelihood.
But such a livelihood helps to consolidate the foundations on which the community exists. Every worker and every peasant, every inventor, state official, etcetera, who works without ever achieving fortune or prosperity for himself, is a representative of this sublime idea, even though he may never become conscious of the profound meaning of his own activity. Everything that may be said of that kind of work, which is the fundamental condition of providing food and the basic means of human progress, is true, even in a higher sense of work that is done for the protection of man and his civilization. The renunciation of one's own life for the sake of the community is the crowning significance of the idea of all sacrifice.
In this way, only is it possible to protect what has been built up by man and to assure that this will not be destroyed by the hand of man or of nature. In the German language, we have a word which admirably expresses this underlying spirit of all work. It is, which means the service of the common will before the consideration of one's own interests. The fundamental spirit out of which this kind of activity springs is the contradistinction of egotism, and we call it idealism. By this, we mean to signify the willingness of the individual to make sacrifices for the community and his fellow men.
It is of the utmost importance to insist again and again that idealism is not merely a superfluous manifestation of sentiment, but rather something which has been, is, and always will be a necessary precondition of human civilization. It is even out of this that the very idea of the word human arises. To this kind of mentality, the Aryan owes his position in the world, and the world is indebted to the Aryan mind for having developed the concept of mankind. For it is out of this spirit alone that the creative force has come, which in a unique way combined robust muscular power with a first class intellect, and thus created the monuments of human civilization.
Were it not for idealism, all the faculties of the intellect, even the most brilliant, would be nothing but intellect itself, a mere external phenomenon without inner value, and never a creative force. Since true idealism, however, is essentially the subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the interests and life of the community, and since the community on its part represents the prerequisite condition of every form of organization, this idealism accords in its innermost essence with the final purposes of nature.
This feeling alone makes men voluntarily acknowledge that strength and power are entitled to take the lead, and thus makes them a constituent particle in that order out of which the whole universe is shaped and formed. Without being conscious of it, the purest idealism is always associated with the most profound knowledge. How true this is and how little genuine idealism has to do with fantastic self dramatization will become clear the moment we ask an unspoiled child, a healthy boy, for example, to give his opinion. The very same boy who listens to the rantings of an idealistic pacifist without understanding them and even rejects them would readily sacrifice his young life for the ideal of his people.
Unconsciously, his instinct will submit to the knowledge that the preservation of the species, even at the cost of the individual life, is a primal necessity. And he will protest against the fantasies of pacifist ranters, who in reality are nothing better than cowardly egoists, even though camouflaged, who contradict the laws of human development. For it is a necessity of human evolution that the individual should be imbued with the spirit of sacrifice in favor of the common wheel, and that he should not be influenced by the morbid notions of those knaves who pretend to know better than nature and who have the impudence to criticize her decrees.
It is just at those junctures when the idealistic attitude threatens to disappear that we notice a weakening of this force, which is a necessary constituent in the founding and maintenance of the community, and is thereby a necessary condition of civilization. As soon as the spirit of egotism begins to prevail among a people, then the bonds of the social order break, and man, by seeking his own personal happiness, veritably tumbles out of heaven and falls into hell. Posterity will not remember those who pursued only their own individual interests, but it will praise those heroes who renounce their own happiness.
The Jew offers the most striking contrast to the Arian. There is probably no other people in the world to have so developed the instinct of self preservation as the so called chosen people. The best proof of this statement is found in the simple fact that this race still exists. Where can another people be found that in the course of the last two thousand years has undergone so few changes in mental outlook and character as the Jewish people, and yet what other people has taken such a constant part in the great revolutions? But even after having passed through the most gigantic catastrophes that have overwhelmed mankind, the Jews remain the same as ever.
What an infinitely tenacious will to live, to preserve one's kind, is demonstrated by that fact. File 64. The intellectual faculties of the Jew have been trained through thousands of years. Today, the Jew is looked upon as specially cunning. And in a certain sense, he has been so throughout the ages. His intellectual powers, however, are not the result of an inner evolution, but rather have been shaped by the object lessons which the Jew has received from others. The human spirit cannot climb upwards without taking successive steps.
For every step upwards, it needs the foundation of what has been constructed before, the past, which in the comprehensive sense here employed, can have been laid only in a general civilization. All thinking originates only to a very small degree in personal experience. The largest part is based on the accumulated experiences of the past. The general level of civilization provides the individual, who in most cases is not consciously aware of the fact, with such an abundance of preliminary knowledge that with this equipment, he can more easily take further steps on the road of progress. The boy of today, for example, grows up among such an overwhelming mass of technical achievement which has accumulated during the last century that he takes as granted many things which a hundred years ago were still mysteries even to the greatest minds of those times.
Yet these things that are not so much a matter of course are of enormous importance to those who would understand the progress we have made in these matters, and would carry on that progress a step further. If a man of genius belonging to the twenties of the last century were to arise from his grave today, he would find it more difficult to understand our present age than the contemporary boy of 15 years of age who may even have only an average intelligence. The man of genius, thus come back from the past, would need to provide himself with an extraordinary amount of preliminary information which our contemporary youth receive automatically, so to speak, during the time they are growing up among the products of our modern civilization.
Since the Jew, for reasons that I shall deal with immediately, never had a civilization of his own, He has always been furnished by others with a basis for his intellectual work. His intellect has always developed by the use of those cultural achievements which he has found ready to hand around him. The process has never been the reverse. For though among the Jews the instinct of self preservation has not been weaker, but has been much stronger than among other peoples. And though the impression may easily be created that the intellectual powers of the Jew are at least equal to those of other races, the Jews completely lack the most essential prerequisite of a cultural people, namely the idealistic spirit.
With the Jewish people, the readiness for sacrifice does not extend beyond the simple instinct of individual preservation. In their case, the feeling of racial solidarity which they apparently manifest is nothing but a very primitive gregarious instinct similar to that which may be found among other organisms in this world. It is a remarkable fact that this herd instinct brings individuals together for mutual protection only as long as there is a common danger which makes mutual assistance expedient or inevitable. The same pack of wolves, which a moment ago joined together in a common attack on their victim, will dissolve into individual wolves as soon as their hunger has been satisfied.
This is also sure of horses, which unite to defend themselves against any aggressor, but separate the moment the danger is over. It is much the same with the Jew. His spirit of sacrifice is only apparent. It manifests itself only so long as the existence of the individual makes this a matter of absolute necessity. But as soon as the common foe is conquered, and the danger which threatened the individual Jews is overcome, and the prey secured, then the apparent harmony disappears, and the original conditions set in again. Jews act in Concord only when a common danger threatens them or a common prey attracts them.
Where these two motives no longer exist, then the most brutal egotism appears, and these people who before had lived together in unity will turn into a swarm of rats that bitterly fight against each other. If the Jews were the only people in the world, they would be wallowing in filth and mire, and would exploit one another and try to exterminate one another in a bitter struggle, except in so far as their utter lack of the ideal of sacrifice, which shows itself in their cowardly spirit, would prevent the struggle from developing. Therefore, it would be a complete mistake to interpret the mutual help which the Jews render one another when they have to fight, or to put it more accurately, to exploit their fellow being as the expression of a certain idealistic spirit of sacrifice.
Here again, the Jew merely follows the call of his individual egotism. That is why the Jewish state, which ought to be a vital organization to serve the purpose of preserving or increasing the race, has absolutely no territorial boundaries. For the territorial delimitation of a state always demands a certain idealism of spirit on the part of the race which forms that state, and especially a proper acceptance of the idea of work. A state which is territorially delimited cannot be established or maintained unless the general attitude towards work be a positive one. If this attitude be lacking, then the necessary basis of a civilization is also lacking.
That is why the Jewish people, despite the intellectual powers with which they are apparently endowed, have not a culture, certainly not a culture of their own. The culture which the Jew enjoys today is the product of the work of others, and this product is debased in the hands of the Jew. In order to form a correct judgment of the place which the Jew holds in relation to the whole problem of human civilization, we must bear in mind the essential fact that there never has been any Jewish art, and consequently, that nothing of this kind exists today.
We must realize that especially in those two royal domains of art, namely architecture and music. The Jew has done no original creative work. When the Jew comes to producing something in the field of art, he merely something already in existence or simply steals the intellectual word of others. The Jew essentially lacks those qualities which are characteristic of those creative races that are the founders of civilization. To what extent the Jew appropriates the civilization built up by others, or rather corrupts it, to speak more accurately, is indicated by the fact that he cultivates chiefly the art which calls for the smallest amount of original invention, namely the dramatic art.
And even here, he is nothing better than a kind of juggler, or perhaps more correctly speaking, a kind of monkey imitator. For in this domain also, he lacks the creative which is necessary for the production of all really great work. Even here, therefore, he is not a creative genius, but rather a superficial imitator, who, in spite of all his retouching and tricks, cannot disguise the fact that there is no inner vitality in the shape he gives his products. At this juncture, the Jewish press comes in and renders friendly assistance by shouting hosannas above the head of even the most ordinary bungler of a Jew, until the rest of the world is stampeded into thinking that the object of so much praise must really be an artist, whereas in reality, he may be nothing more than a low class mimic.
No. The Jews have not the creative abilities which are necessary to the founding of a civilization. For in them, there is not and never has been that spirit of idealism which is an absolutely necessary element in the higher development of mankind. Therefore, the Jewish intellect will never be constructive, but always destructive. At best, it may serve as a stimulus in rare cases, but only within the meaning of the poet's lines. The power which always wills the bad, and always works the good. It is not through his help, but in spite of his help, that mankind makes any progress.
Since the Jew has never had a state which was based on territorial delimitations, and therefore, never a civilization of his own. The idea arose that we were here dealing with a people who have to be considered as nomads. That is a great and mischievous mistake. The true nomad does actually possess a definite delimited territory where he lives. It is merely that he does not cultivate it as the settled farmer does, but that he lives on the products of his herds with which he wanders over his domain. The natural reason for this mode of existence is to be found in the fact that the soil is not fertile, and that it does not give the steady produce which makes a fixed abode possible.
Outside of this natural cause, however, there is a more profound cause, namely, that no mechanical civilization is at hand to make up for the natural poverty of the region in question. There are territories where the Aryan can establish fixed settlements by means of the technical skill which he has developed in the course of more than a thousand years, even though these territories would otherwise have to be abandoned unless the Aryan were willing to wander about them in nomadic fashion, but his technical tradition and his age long experience of the use of technical means would probably make the nomadic life unbearable for him.
We ought to remember that during the first period of American colonization, numerous Aryan earned their daily livelihood as trappers and hunters, etcetera, frequently wandering about in large groups with their women and children, their mode of existence very much resembling that of ordinary nomads. The moment, however, that they grew more numerous and were able to accumulate larger resources, they cleared the land and drove out the aborigines, at the same time establishing settlements which rapidly increased all over the country.
The Aryan himself was probably at first a nomad and became a settler in the course of ages, but yet he was never of the Jewish kind. The Jew is not a nomad, for the nomad has already a definite attitude towards the concept of work, and this attitude served as the basis of a later cultural development when the necessary intellectual conditions were at hand. There is a certain amount of idealism in the general attitude of the nomad even though it be rather primitive. His whole character may, therefore, be foreign to Arian feeling, but it will never be repulsive.
But not even the slightest trace of idealism exists in the Jewish character. The Jew has never been a nomad, but always a parasite, battening on the substance of others. If he occasionally abandoned regions where he had hitherto lived, he did not do it voluntarily. He did it because from time to time, he was driven out by people who were tired of having their hospitality abused by such guests. Jewish self expansion is a parasitic phenomenon since the Jew is always looking for new pastures for his race. File 65. But this has nothing to do with nomadic life as such because the Jew does not ever think of leaving a territory which he has once occupied.
He sticks where he is with such tenacity that he can hardly be driven out even by superior physical force. He expands into new territories only when certain conditions for his existence are provided therein. But even then, unlike the nomad, he will not change his former abode. He is and remains a parasite, a sponger who, like a pernicious bacillus, spreads over wider and wider areas according as some favorable area retracts him. The effect produced by his presence is also like that of the vampire. For wherever he establishes himself, the people who grant him hospitality are bound to be bled to death sooner or later.
Thus, the Jew has at all times lived in states that have belonged to other races, and within the organization of those states, he had formed a state of his own, which is, however, hidden behind the mask of a religious community as long as external circumstances do not make it advisable for this community to declare its true nature. As soon as the Jew feels himself sufficiently established in his position to be able to hold it without a disguise, he lifts the mask and suddenly appears in the character which so many did not formally believe or wish to see, namely that of the Jew.
The life which the Jew lives as a parasite thriving on the substance of other nations and states has resulted in developing that specific character which Schopenhauer once described when he spoke of the Jew as the great master of lies. The kind of existence which he leads forces the Jew to the systematic use of falsehood just as naturally as the inhabitants of northern climates are forced to wear warm clothes. He can live among other nations and states only as long as he succeeds in persuading them that the Jews are not a distinct people, but the representatives of a religious faith who thus constitute a religious community, though this be of a peculiar character.
As a matter of fact, however, this is the first of his great falsehoods. He is obliged to conceal his own particular character and mode of life that he may be allowed to continue his existence as a parasite among the nations. The greater the intelligence of the individual Jew, the better will he succeed in deceiving others. His success in this line may even go so far that the people who grant him hospitality may be led to believe that the Jew among them is a genuine Frenchman, for instance, or Englishman, or German, or Italian who just happens to belong to a religious denomination which is different from that prevailing in these countries, Especially in circles concerned with the executive administration of the state, where the officials generally only have a minimum of historical sense, the Jew is able to impose his infamous deception with comparative ease. In these circles, independent thinking is considered a sin against the sacred rules according to which official promotion takes place.
It is therefore not surprising that even today in the Bavarian government offices, for example, there is not the slightest suspicion that the Jews form a distinct nation themselves and are not merely the adherents of a confession. Though one glance at the press, which belongs to the Jews, ought to furnish sufficient evidence to the contrary, even for those who possess only the smallest degree of intelligence. The Jewish echo, however, is not an official gazette, and therefore, not authoritative in the eyes of those government potentates.
Jewry has always been a nation of a definite racial character and never differentiated merely by the fact of belonging to a certain religion. At a very early date, urged on by the desire to make their way in the world, the Jews began to cast about for a means whereby they might distract such attention as might prove inconvenient for them. What could be more effective and at the same time more above suspicion than to borrow and utilize the idea of the religious community? Here, also, everything is copied or rather stolen. For the Jew could not possess any religious institution which had developed out of his own consciousness, seeing that he lacks every kind of idealism, which means that belief in a life beyond this terrestrial existence is foreign to him.
In the Aryan mind, no religion can ever be imagined unless it embodies the conviction that life in some form or other will continue after death. As a matter of fact, the Talmud is not a book that lays down principles according to which the individual should prepare for the life to come. It only furnishes rules for a practical and convenient life in this world. The religious teaching of the Jews is principally a collection of instructions for maintaining the Jewish blood pure and for regulating intercourse between Jews and the rest of the world. That is to say their relation with non Jews.
But the Jewish religious teaching is not concerned with moral problems. It is rather concerned with economic problems and very petty ones at that. In regard to the moral value of the religious teaching of the Jews, there exist and always have existed quite exhaustive studies, not from the Jewish side, For whatever the Jews have written on this question has naturally always been of a tendentious character, which show up the kind of religion that the Jews have in a light that makes it look very uncanny to the Aryan mind. The Jew himself is the best example of the kind of product which this religious training evolves.
His life is of this world only, and his mentality is as foreign to the true spirit of Christianity as his character was foreign to the great founder of this new creed two thousand years ago. And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When he found it necessary, he drove those enemies of the human race out of the temple of god because then, as always, they used religion as a means of advancing their commercial interests. But at that time, Christ was nailed to the cross for his attitude towards the Jews, Whereas our modern Christians enter into party politics, and when elections are being held, they debase themselves to beg for Jewish votes.
They even enter into political intrigues with the atheistic Jewish parties against the interests of their own Christian nation. On this first and fundamental lie, the purpose of which is to make people believe that jury is not a nation, but a religion, other lies are subsequently based. One of those further lies, for example, is in connection with the language spoken by the Jew. For him, language is not an instrument for the expression of his inner thoughts, but rather a means of cloaking them. When talking French, his thoughts are Jewish.
And when writing German rhymes, he only gives expression to the character of his own race. As long as the Jew has not succeeded in mastering other peoples, he is forced to speak their language whether he likes it or not. But the moment that the world would become the slave of the Jew, it would have to learn some other language, Esperanto, for example. So that by this means, the Jew could dominate all the more easily. How much the whole existence of this people is based on a permanent falsehood is proved in a unique way by the protocols of the elders of Zion, which are so violently repudiated by the Jews.
With groans and moans, the repeats again and again that these are forgeries. This alone is evidence in favor of their authenticity. What many Jews unconsciously wish to do is here clearly set forth. It is not necessary to ask out of what Jewish brain these revelations sprang, but what is a vital interest is that they disclose with an almost terrifying precision the mentality and methods of action characteristic of the Jewish people, and these writings expound in all their various directions the final aims towards which the Jews are striving. The study of real happenings, however, is the best way of judging the authenticity of those documents.
If the historical developments which have taken place within the last few centuries be studied in the light of this book, we shall understand why the Jewish press necessarily repudiates and denounces it. For the Jewish peril will be stamped out the moment the general public comes into possession of that book and understand it. In order to get to know the Jew properly, it is necessary to study the road which he has been following among the other peoples during the last few centuries. One example will suffice to give a clear insight here.
Since his career has been the same at all epochs, just as the people at whose expense he has lived have remained the same, for the purposes of making the requisite analysis, it will be best to mark his progress by stages. For the sake of simplicity, we shall indicate these stages by letters of the alphabet. The first Jews came into what was then called Germania during the period of the Roman invasion, and as usual, they came as merchants. During the turmoil caused by the great migrations of the German tribes, the Jews seemed to have disappeared.
We may therefore consider the period when the Germans formed the first political communities as the beginning of that process whereby Central And Northern Europe was again, and this time, permanently, Judaized. A development began which has always been the same or similar wherever and whenever Jews came into contact with Aryan peoples. File 66. A. As soon as the first permanent settlements had been established, the due was suddenly there. He arrived as a merchant, and in the beginning did not trouble to disguise his nationality. He still remained openly a Jew.
Partly, it may be because he knew too little of the language. It may also be that people of other races refused to mix with him, so that he could not very well adopt any other appearance than that of a foreign merchant. Because of his subtlety and cunning, and the lack of experience on the part of the people whose guest he became, it was not to his disadvantage openly to retain his Jewish character. They may even have been advantageous to him, for the foreigner was received kindly. B. Slowly but steadily, he began to take part in the economic life around him. Not as a producer, however, but only as a middleman.
His commercial cunning acquired through thousands of years of negotiation as an intermediary made him superior in this field to the Aryans who were still quite ingenuous and indeed clumsy and whose honesty was unlimited. So that after a short while, commerce seemed destined to become a Jewish monopoly. The Jew began by lending out money at the usurious interest, which is a permanent trade of his. It was he who first introduced the payment of interest on borrowed money. The danger which this innovation involved was not at first recognized.
Indeed, the innovation was welcomed because it offered momentary advantages. C. At this stage, the Jew had become firmly settled down. That is to say, he inhabited special sections of the cities and towns and had his own quarter in the marketplaces. Thus, he gradually came to form a state within a state. He came to look upon the commercial domain and all money transactions as a privilege belonging exclusively to himself, and he exploited it ruthlessly. D. At this stage, finance and trade had become his complete monopoly. Finally, his usurious rate of interest aroused opposition, and the increasing impudence which the Jew began to manifest all round stirred up popular indignation, while his display of wealth gave rise to popular envy.
The cup of his inequity became full to the brim when he included landed property among his commercial wares and degraded the soil to the level of a market commodity. Since he himself never cultivated the soil, but considered it an object to be exploited, on which the peasant may still remain, but only on condition that he submits to the most heartless exactions of his new master, public antipathy against the Jew steadily increased and finally turned into open animosity. His extortionate tyranny became so unbearable that people rebelled against his control and used physical violence against him.
They began to scrutinize this foreigner somewhat more closely, and then began to discover the repulsive traits and characteristics inherent in him until finally an abyss opened between the Jews and their hosts across which abyss there could be no further contact. In times of distress, a wave of public anger has usually arisen against the Jew. The masses have taken the law into their own hands. They have seized Jewish property and ruined the Jew in their urge to protect themselves against what they consider to be a scourge of god. Having come to know the Jew intimately through the course of centuries, in times of distress, they looked upon his presence among them as a public danger, comparable only to the plague.
E. But then the Jew began to reveal his true character. He paid court to governments with servile flattery, used his money to ingratiate himself further, and thus regularly secured for himself once again the privilege of exploiting his victim. Although public wrath flared up against this eternal profiteer and drove him out, after a few years, he reappeared in those same places and carried on as before. No persecution could force him to give up his trade of exploiting other people, and no amount of harrying succeeded in driving him out permanently. He always returned after a short time, and it was always the old story with him.
In an effort to save at least the worst from happening, legislation was passed which debarred the Jew from obtaining possession of the land. F. In proportion as the powers of kings and princes increased, the due sidled up to them. He begged for charters and privileges, which those gentlemen who were generally in financial straits gladly granted if they received adequate payment in return. However high the price he has to pay, the Jew will succeed in getting it back within a few years from operating the privilege he has acquired even with interest and compound interest.
He is a real leech who clings to the body of his unfortunate victims and cannot be removed. So that when the princes found themselves in need once again, they took the blood from his swollen veins with their own hands. This game was repeated unendingly. In the case of those who were called German princes, the part they played was quite as contemptible as that played by the Jew. They were a real scourge for their people. Their compares may be found in some of the government ministers of our time. It was due to the German princes that the German nation could not succeed in definitely freeing itself from the Jewish peril. Unfortunately, the situation did not change at a later period.
The princes finally received the reward which they had a thousandfold deserved for all the crimes committed by them against their own people. They had allied themselves with Satan, and later on, they discovered that they were in Satan's embrace. G. By permitting themselves to be entangled in the toils of the Jew, the princes prepared their own downfall. The position which they held among their people was slowly but steadily undermined, not only by their continued failure to guard the interests of their subjects, but by the positive exploitation of them.
The due calculated exactly the time when the downfall of the princes was approaching and did his best to hasten it. He intensified their financial difficulties by hindering them in the exercise of their duty towards their people, by inveigling them through the most servile flatteries into further personal display, whereby he made himself more and more indispensable to them. His astuteness, or rather his utter unscrupulousness in money affairs, enabled him to exact new income from the princes, to squeeze the money out of them, and then have it spent as quickly as possible. Every court had its court Jews, as this plague was called, who tortured the innocent victims until they were driven to despair.
While at the same time, this Jew provided the means which the princes squandered on their own pleasures. It is not to be wondered at that these ornaments of the human race became the recipients of official honors and were even admitted into the ranks of the hereditary nobility, thus contributing not only to expose that social institution to ridicule, but also to contaminate it from the inside. Naturally, the Jew could now exploit the position to which he had attained and push himself forward even more rapidly than before. Finally, he became baptized and thus entitled to all the rights and privileges which belong to the children of the nation on which he prayed.
This was a high class stroke of business for him, and he often availed himself of it to the great joy of the church, which was proud of having gained a new child in the faith, and also to the joy of Israel, which was happy at seeing the trick pulled off successfully. H. At this stage, a transformation began to take place in the world of jewelry. Up to now, they had been Jews. That is to say, they did not hitherto set any great value on pretending to be something else. And, anyhow, the distinctive characteristics which separated them from other races could not be easily overcome.
Even as late as the time of Frederick the Great, nobody looked upon the Jews as other than a foreign people, and Goethe rose up in revolt against the failure legally to prohibit marriage between Christians and Jews. Goethe was certainly no reactionary and no time server. What he said came from the voice of the blood and the voice of reason. Notwithstanding the disgraceful happenings taking place in court circles, the people recognized instinctively that the Jew was the foreign body in their own flesh, and their attitude towards him was directed by recognition of that fact.
But a change was now destined to take place. In the course of more than a thousand years, the Jew had learned to master the language of his host so thoroughly that he considered he might now lay stress on his Jewish character and emphasize the Germanism a bit more. Though it must have appeared ridiculous and absurd at first sight, he was impudent enough to call himself a Teuton, which in this case meant a German. In that way, began one of the most infamous impositions that can be imagined. The Jew did not possess the slightest traces of the German character.
He had only acquired the art of twisting the German language to his own uses, and that in a disgusting way, without having assimilated any other feature of the German character. Therefore, his command of the language was the sole ground on which he could pretend to be a German. It is not, however, by the tie of language, but exclusively by the tie of blood that the members of a race are bound together. And the Jew himself knows this better than any other, seeing that he attaches so little importance to the preservation of his own language, while at the same time, he strives his utmost to maintain his blood free from an intermixture with that of other races.
A man may acquire and use a new language without much trouble, but it is only his old ideas that he expresses through the new language. His inner nature is not modified thereby. The best proof of this is furnished by the Jew himself. He may speak a thousand tongues, and yet his Jewish nature will remain always one and the same. His distinguishing characteristics were the same when he spoke the Latin language at Ostia two thousand years ago as a merchant in grain as they are today when he tries to sell adulterated flour with the aid of his German gibberish.
He's always the same Jew. That so obvious a fact is not recognized by the average head clerk in a German government department or by an officer in the police administration is also a self evident and natural fact. Since it would be difficult to find another class of people who are so lacking in instinct and intelligence as the civil servants employed by our modern German state authorities. The reason why, at the stage I'm dealing with, the Jews so suddenly decided to transform himself into a German is not difficult to discover. He felt the power of the princes slowly crumbling, and therefore looked about to find a new social plank on which he might stand.
Furthermore, his financial domination over all spheres of economic life had become so powerful that he felt he could no longer sustain that enormous structure or add to it unless he were admitted to the full enjoyment of the rights of citizenship. He aimed at both preservation and expansion. For the higher he could climb, the more alluring became the prospect of reaching the old goal, which was promised to him in ancient times, namely world rulership, and which he now looked forward to with feverish eyes as he thought he saw it visibly approaching. Therefore, all his efforts were now directed to becoming a fully fledged citizen, endowed with all civil and political rights.
That was the reason for his emancipation from the ghetto. File 67. I. And thus, the court due slowly developed into the national due. But naturally, he still remained associated with persons in higher quarters, and he even attempted to push his way further into the inner circles of the ruling set. But at the same time, some other representatives of his race were carrying favor with the people. If we remember the crimes the Jew had committed against the masses of the people in the course of so many centuries, how repeatedly and ruthlessly he exploited them, and how he sucked out even the very marrow of their substance.
And when we further remember how they gradually came to hate him and finally considered him as a public scourge, then we may well understand how difficult the Jew must have found this final transformation. Yes. Indeed. It must tax all their powers to be able to present themselves as friends of humanity to the poor victims whom they have skinned raw. Therefore, the Jew began by making public amends for the crimes he had committed against the people in the past. He started his metamorphosis by first appearing as the benefactor of humanity.
Since his new philanthropic policy had a very concrete aim in view, he could not very well apply to himself the biblical counsel not to allow the left hand to know what the right hand is giving. He felt obliged to let as many people as possible know how deeply the sufferings of the masses grieved him, and to what excesses of personal sacrifice he was ready to go in order to help them. With this manifestation of innate modesty, so typical of the Jew, He trumpeted his virtues before the world until finally the world actually began to believe him. Those who refused to share this belief were considered to be doing him an injustice.
Thus, after a little while, he began to twist things around, so as to make it appear that it was he who had always been wronged, and vice versa. There were really some particularly foolish people who could not help pitying this poor unfortunate creature of a Jew. Attention may be called to the fact that in spite of his proclaimed readiness to make personal sacrifices, the Jew never becomes poor thereby. He has a happy knack of always making both ends meet. Occasionally, his benevolence might be compared to the manure which is not spread over the field merely for the purpose of getting rid of it, but rather with a view to future produce. Anyhow, after a comparatively short period of time, the world was given to know that the Jew had become a general benefactor and philanthropist.
What a transformation. What is looked upon as more or less natural when done by other people, here became an object of astonishment and even sometimes of admiration because it was considered so unusual in a Jew. That is why he has received more credit for his acts of benevolence than ordinary mortals. And something more. The Jew became liberal all of a sudden and began to talk enthusiastically of how human progress must be encouraged. Gradually, he assumed the air of being the herald of a new age. Yet at the same time, he continued to undermine the groundwork of that part of the economic system in which people have the most practical interest.
He bought up stock in the various national undertakings and thus pushed his influence into the circuit of national production, making this latter an object of buying and selling on the stock exchange, or rather what might be called the pawn in a financial game of chess, and thus ruining the basis on which personal proprietorship alone is possible. Only with the entrance of the Jew did that feeling of estrangement between employers and employees begin, which led at a later date to the political class struggle. Finally, the Jew gained an increasing influence in all economic undertakings by means of his predominance in the stock exchange.
If not the ownership, at least he secured control of the working power of the nation. In order to strengthen his political position, he directed his efforts towards removing the barrier of racial and civic discrimination, which had hitherto hindered his advance at every turn. With characteristic tenacity, he championed the cause of religious tolerance for this purpose. And in the Freemason organization, which had fallen completely into his hands, he found a magnificent weapon which helped him to achieve his ends. Government circles, as well as the higher sections of the political and commercial bourgeoisie, fell a prey to his plans through his manipulation of the masonic net, though they themselves did not even suspect what was happening.
Only the people as such, or rather the masses which were just becoming conscious of their own power and were beginning to use it in the fight for their rights and liberties, had hitherto escaped the grip of the Jew. At least his influence had not yet penetrated to the deeper and wider sections of the people. This was unsatisfactory to him. The most important phase of his policy was therefore to secure control over the people. The Jew realized that in his efforts to reach the position of public despot, he would need a peacemaker, and he thought he could find a peacemaker if he could whip in sufficient extensive sections of the bourgeois.
But the freemasons failed to catch the glove manufacturers and the linen weavers in the frail meshes of their net, and so it became necessary to find a grocer and with all a more effective means. Thus, another weapon beside that of the freemasonry would have to be secured. This was the press. The Jew exercised all his skill and tenacity in getting hold of it. By means of the press, he began gradually to control public life in its entirety. He began to drive it along the road which he had chosen to reach his own ends, for he was now in a position to create and direct that force, which, under the name of public opinion, is better known today than it was some decades ago.
Simultaneously, the Jew gave himself the air of thirsting after knowledge. He lauded every phase of progress, particularly those phases which led to the ruin of others. For he judges all progress and development from the standpoint of the advantages which these bring to his own people. When it brings him no such advantages, he is the deadly enemy of enlightenment and hates all culture which is real culture as such. All the knowledge which he acquires in the schools of others is exploited by him exclusively in the service of his own race.
Even more watchfully than ever before, he now stood guard over his Jewish nationality. Though bubbling over with enlightenment, progress, liberty, humanity, etcetera, His first care was to preserve the racial integrity of his own people. He occasionally bestowed one of his female members on an influential Christian, but the racial stock of his male descendants was always preserved unmixed fundamentally. He poisons the blood of others, but preserves his own blood unadulterated. The Jew scarcely ever marries a Christian girl, but the Christian takes a Jewess to wife.
The mongrels that are a result of this latter union always declare themselves on the Jewish side. Thus, a part of the higher nobility in particular became completely degenerate. The Jew was well aware of this fact and systematically used this means of disarming the intellectual leaders of the opposite race. To mask his tactics and fool his victims, he talks of the equality of all men, no matter what their race or color may be. And the simpletons began to believe him. Since his whole nature still retains too foreign an odor for the broad masses of the people to allow themselves to be caught in his snare, he uses the press to put before the public a picture of himself which is entirely untrue to life, but well designed to serve his purpose.
In the comic papers, special efforts are made to represent the Jews as an inoffensive little race, which, like all others, has its peculiarities. In spite of their manners, which may seem a bit strange, the comic papers present the Jews as fundamentally good hearted and honorable. Attempts are generally made to make them appear insignificant rather than dangerous. During this phase of his progress, the chief goal of the Jew was the victory of democracy, or rather the supreme hegemony of the parliamentary system, which embodies his concept of democracy. This institution harmonizes best with his purposes.
For thus, the personal element is eliminated, and in its place, we have the dunderheaded majority, inefficiency, and last, but by no means least, knavery. The final result must necessarily have been the overthrow of the monarchy, which had to happen sooner or later. File, '68. J. A tremendous economic development transformed the social structure of the nation. The small artisan class slowly disappeared, and the factory worker who took its place had scarcely any chance of establishing an independent existence of his own, but sank more and more to the level of a proletariat.
An essential characteristic of the factory worker is that he is scarcely ever able to provide for an independent source of livelihood, which will support him in later life. In the true sense of the word, he is disinherited. His old age is a misery to him and can hardly be called life at all. In earlier times, a similar situation had been created, which had imperatively demanded a solution, and for which a solution was found. Side by side with the peasant and the artisan, a new class was gradually developed, namely that of officials and employees, especially those employed in the various services of the state.
They also were a disinherited class in the true sense of the word, but the state found a remedy for this unhealthy situation by taking upon itself the duty of providing for the state official who could establish nothing that would be an independent means of livelihood for himself in his old age. Thus, the system of pensions and retiring allowances was introduced. Private enterprises slowly followed this example in increasing numbers so that today, every permanent non manual worker receives a pension in his later years if the firm which he has served is one that has reached or gone beyond a certain size.
It was only by virtue of the assurance given of state officials that they would be cared for in their old age that such a high degree of unselfish devotion to duty was developed, which in pre war times was one of the distinguishing characteristics of German officials. Thus, a whole class which had no personal property was saved from destitution by an intelligent system of provision and found a place in the social structure of the national community. The problem is now put before the state and nation, but this time in a much larger form. When the new industries sprang up and developed, millions of people left the countryside and the villages to take up employment in the big factories.
The conditions under which this new class found itself forced to live were worse than miserable. The more or less mechanical transformation of the methods of work hitherto in vogue among the artisans and peasants did not fit in well with the habits or mentality of this new working class. The way in which the peasants and artisans had formally worked had nothing comparable to the intensive labor of the new factory worker. In the old trades, time did not play a highly important role, but it became an essential element in the new industrial system. The formal taking over of the old working hours into the mammoth industrial enterprises had fatal results.
The actual amount of work hitherto accomplished within a certain time was comparatively small, because the modern methods of intensive production were then unknown. Therefore, though in the older system, a working day of fourteen or even fifteen hours was not unendurable, now it was beyond the possibilities of human endurance because in the new system, every minute was utilized to the extreme. The absurd transference of the old working hours to the new industrial system proved fatal in two directions. First, it ruined the health of the workers. Secondly, it destroyed their faith in a superior law of justice.
Finally, on the one hand, a miserable wage was received, and on the other, the employer held a much more lucrative position than before. Hence, a striking difference between the ways of life on the one side and on the other. In the open country, there could be no social problem because the master and the farmhand were doing the same kind of work and doing it together. They ate their food in common and sometimes even out of the same dish. But in this sphere also, the new system introduced an entirely different set of conditions between masters and men.
The division created between employer and employees seems not to have extended to all branches of life. How far this Judaizing process has been allowed to take effect among our people is illustrated by the fact that manual labor not only receives practically no recognition, but is even considered degrading. That is not a natural German attitude. It is due to the introduction of a foreign element into our lives, and that foreign element is the Jewish spirit. One of the effects of which has been to transform the high esteem in which our handicrafts once were held into a definite feeling that all physical labor is something base and unworthy.
Thus, a new social class has grown up which stands in low esteem, and the day must come when we shall have to face the question of whether the nation will be able to make this class an integral part of the social community or whether the difference of status now existing will become a permanent gulf separating this class from the others. One thing, however, is certain. This class does not include the worst elements of the community in its ranks. Rather, the contrary is the truth. It includes the most energetic parts of the nation. The sophistication which is the result of a so called civilization has not yet exercised its disintegrating and degenerating influence on this class.
The broad masses of this new lower class constituted by the manual laborers have not yet fallen a prey to the morbid weakness of pacifism. These are still robust, and if necessary, they can be brutal. While our bourgeoisie middle class paid no attention at all to this momentous problem and indifferently allowed events to take their course, the Jew seized upon the manifold possibilities which the situation offered him for the future. While on the one hand, he organized capitalistic methods of exploitation to their ultimate degree of efficiency. He carried favor with the victims of his policy and his power, and in a short while became the leader of their struggle against himself.
Against himself is here only a figurative way of speaking, for this great master of lies knows how to appear in the guise of the innocent and throw the guilt on others. Since he had the impudence to take a personal lead among the masses, they never for a moment suspected that they were falling a prey to one of the most infamous deceits ever practiced. And yet that is what it actually was. The moment this new class had arisen out of the general economic situation and taken shape as a definite body in the social order, the Jew saw clearly where he would find the necessary pacemaker for his own progressive march.
At first, he had used the bourgeois class as a battering ram against the feudal order, and now he used the worker against the bourgeois world. Just as he succeeded in obtaining civic rights by intrigues carried on under the protection of the bourgeois class, he now hoped that by joining in the struggle which the workers were waging for their own existence, he would be able to obtain full control over them. When that moment arrives, then the only objective the workers will have to fight for will be the future of the Jewish people. Without knowing it, the worker is placing himself at the service of the very power against which he believes he is fighting.
Apparently, he's made to fight against capital, and thus, he is all the more easily brought to fight for capitalist interests. Outcries are systematically raised against international capital, but in reality, it is against the structure of national economics that these slogans are directed. The idea is to demolish this structure, and on its ruins triumphantly erect the structure of the International Stock Exchange. In this line of action, the procedure of the Jew was as follows. He kowtowed to the worker, hypocritically pretended to feel pity for him and his lot, and even to be indignant at the misery and poverty which the worker had to endure.
That is the way in which the Jew endeavored to gain the confidence of the working class. He showed himself eager to study their various hardships, whether real or imaginary, and strove to awaken a yearning on the part of the workers to change the conditions under which they lived. The Jew artfully enkindled that innate yearning for social justice, which is a typical Aryan characteristic. Once that yearning became alive, it was transformed into hatred against those in more fortunate circumstances of life. The next stage was to give a precise philosophical aspect to the struggle for the elimination of social wrongs, and thus, the Marxist doctrine was invented.
By presenting his doctrine as part and parcel of a just revindication of social rights, the Jew propagated the doctrine all the more effectively. But at the same time, he provoked the opposition of decent people who refused to admit these demands, which because of the form and pseudo philosophical trimmings in which they are presented, seemed fundamentally unjust and impossible for realization. For under the cloak of purely social concepts, there are hidden aims which are of a satanic character. These aims are even expounded in the open with the clarity of unlimited impudence.
This Marxist doctrine is an individual mixture of human reason and human absurdity, but the combination is arranged in such a way that the only absurd part of it could ever be put into practice, but never the reasonable part of it. By categorically repudiating the personal worth of the individual and also the nation and its racial constituent, this doctrine destroys the fundamental basis of all civilization. For civilization essentially depends on these very factors. Such is the true essence of the Marxist, Weltanslang, so far as the word Weltanslang can be applied at all to this phantom arising from a criminal brain.
The destruction of the concept of personality and of race removes the chief obstacle which barred the way to domination of the social body by its inferior elements, which are the Jews. The very absurdity of the economic and political theories of Marxism gives the doctrine its peculiar significance. Because of its pseudo logic, intelligent people refuse to support it, while all those who are less accustomed to use their intellectual faculties or who have only a rudimentary notion of economic principles join the Marxist cause with flying banners.
The intelligence behind the movement, for even this movement needs intelligence if it is to subsist, is supplied by the Jews themselves. Naturally, of course, as a gratuitous service, which is at the same time a sacrifice on their part. Thus arose a movement which was composed exclusively of manual workers under the leadership of Jews. To all external appearances, this movement strives to ameliorate the conditions under which the workers live. But in reality, its aim is to enslave, and thereby, annihilate the non Jewish races. The propaganda which the Freemasons had carried on amongst the so called intelligentsia, whereby their pacifist teaching paralyzed the instinct for national self preservation, was now extended to the broad masses of the workers and bourgeoisie by means of the press, which was almost everywhere in Jewish hands.
To those two instruments of disintegration, a third and still more ruthless one was added, namely, the organization of brute physical force among the masses. As massed columns of attacks, the Marxist troops stormed those parts of the social order which had been left standing after the two former undermining operations had done their work. The combined activity of all these forces has been marvelously managed, and it will not be surprising if it turns out that those institutions which have always appeared as the organs of the more or less traditional authority of the state should now fall before the Marxist attack.
Among our higher and highest state officials, with very few exceptions, the Jew has found the cost complacent backers in his work of destruction. An attitude of sneaking civility towards superiors and supercilious arrogance towards inferiors are the characteristics of this class of people, as well as a grade of stupidity which is really frightening, and at the same time, a towering self conceit which has been so consistently developed to make it amusing. But these qualities are of the greatest utility to the Jew in his dealings with our authorities. Therefore, they are qualities which he appreciates most in the officials.
If I were to sketch roughly the actual struggle, which is now beginning, I should describe it somewhat thus. File 69. Not satisfied with the economic conquest of the world, but also demanding that it must come under his political control, the Jew subdivides the organized Marxist power into two parts, which correspond to the ultimate objectives that are to be fought for in this struggle, which is carried on under the direction of the Jew. To outward appearance, these seem to be two independent movements. But in reality, they constitute an indivisible unity.
The two divisions are the political movement and the trades union movement. The trades union movement has to gather in the recruits. It offers assistance and protection to the workers in the hard struggle which they have to wage for the bare means of existence, a struggle which has been occasioned by the greediness and narrow mindedness of many of the industrialists. Unless the workers be ready to surrender all claims to an existence which the dignity of human nature itself demands, and unless they are ready to submit their fate to the will of employers, who in many cases have no sense of human responsibilities and are utterly callous to human wants, then the worker must necessarily take matters into his own hands, seeing that the organized social community, that is to say the state, pays no attention to his needs.
The so called national minded bourgeoisie, blinded by its own material interests, opposes this life or death struggle of the workers and places the most difficult obstacles in their way. Not only does this bourgeoisie hinder all efforts to enact legislation which would shorten the inhumanly long hours of work, prohibit child labor, grant security, protection to women, and improve the hygienic conditions of the workshops and the dwellings of the working class. But while the bourgeoisie hinders all this, the shrewd Jew takes the cause of the oppressed into his own hands. He gradually becomes the leader of the trades union movement, which is an easy task for him because he does not genuinely intend to find remedies for the social wrong.
He pursues only one objective, namely to gather and consolidate a body of followers who will act under his commands as an armed weapon in the economic war for the destruction of national economic independence. Four, while a sound social policy has to move between the two poles of securing a decent level of public health and welfare on the one hand, and on the other, that of safeguarding the independence of the economic life of the nation, the Jew does not need to take these poles into account at all. The destruction of both is one of his main objects.
He would ruin rather than safeguard the independence of the national economic system. Therefore, as the leader of the trades union movement, he has no scruples about putting forward demands which not only go beyond the declared purpose of the movement, but could not be carried into effect without ruining the national economic structure. On the other hand, he has no interest in seeing a healthy and sturdy population develop. He would be more content to see the people degenerate into an unthinking herd, which could be reduced to total subjection. Because these are his final objectives, he can afford to put forward the most absurd claims.
He knows very well that these claims can never be realized, and that therefore nothing in the actual state of affairs could be altered by them, but that the most they can do is to arouse the spirit of unrest among the masses. That is exactly the purpose which he wishes such propaganda to serve, and not a real and honest improvement of the social conditions. The Jews will therefore remain the unquestioned leaders of the trades union movement so long as a campaign is not undertaken, which must be carried out on gigantic lines for the enlightenment of the masses so that they will be better able to understand the causes of their misery.
For the same end might be achieved if the government authorities would get rid of the Jew and his work. For as long as the masses remain so ill informed as they actually are today, and as long as the state remains as indifferent to their lot as it now is. The masses will follow whatever leader makes them the most extravagant promises in regard to economic matters. The Jew is past master at this art, and his activities are not hampered by moral considerations of any kind. Naturally, it takes him only a short time to defeat all his competitors in this field and drive them from the scene of action.
In accordance with the general brutality and rapacity of his nature, he turns the trades union movement into an organization for the exercise of physical violence. The resistance of those whose common sense has hitherto saved them from surrendering to the Jewish dictatorship is now broken down by terrorization. The success of that kind of activity is enormous. Parallel with this, the political organization advances. It operates hand in hand with the trades union movement in as much as the latter prepares the masses for the political organization and even forces them into it.
This is also the source that provides the money which the political organization needs to keep its enormous apparatus in action. The trades union organization is the organ of control of the political activity of its members and whips in the masses for all great political demonstrations. In the end, it ceases to struggle for economic interests that places its chief weapon, the refusal to continue work, which takes the form of a general strike at the disposal of the political movement. By means of a press whose contents are adapted to the level of the most ignorant breeders, the political and trades union organizations are provided with an instrument which prepares the lowest stratum of the nation for a campaign of ruthless destruction.
It is not considered part of the purpose of this press to inspire its readers with ideals which might help them to lift their minds above the sordid conditions of their daily lives, but on the contrary, it panders to their lowest instincts. Among the lazy minded and self seeking sections of the masses, this kind of speculation turns out lucrative. It is this press above all which carries on a fanatical campaign of calumny, strives to tear down everything that might be considered as a mainstay of national independence and to sabotage all cultural values as well as to destroy the autonomy of the national economic system.
It aims its attack especially against all men of character who refuse to fall into line with the Jewish efforts to obtain control over the state or who appear dangerous to the Jews merely because of their superior intelligence. For in order to incur the enmity of the Jew, it is not necessary to show any open hostility towards him. It is quite sufficient if one be considered capable of opposing the Jew sometime in the future or using his abilities and character to enhance the power and position of a nation which the Jew finds hostile to himself.
The Jewish instinct, which never fails where these problems have to be dealt with, readily discerns the true mentality of those whom the Jew meets in everyday life and those who are not of a kindred spirit with him may be sure of being listed among his enemies. Since the Jew is not the object of aggression, but the aggressor himself, He considers as his enemies not only those who attack him, but also those who may be capable of resisting him. The means which he employs to break people of this kind who may show themselves decent and upright are not the open means generally used in honorable conflict, but falsehood and calumny.
He will stop at nothing. His utterly low down conduct is so appalling that one really cannot be surprised if in the imagination of our people, the Jew is pictured as the incarnation of Satan and the symbol of evil. The ignorance of the broad masses as regards the inner character of the Jew and the lack of instinct and insight that our upper classes display are some of the reasons which explain how it is that so many people fall an easy prey to the systematic campaign of falsehood which the Jew carries on. While the upper classes, with their innate cowardliness, turn away from anyone whom the Jew thus attacks with lies and calumny, the common people are credulous of everything, whether because of their ignorance or their simple mindedness.
Government authorities wrap themselves up in a robe of silence, but more frequently, they persecute the victims of Jewish attacks in order to stop the campaign in the Jewish press. To the fatuous mind of the government official, such a line of conduct appears to belong to the policy of upholding the authority of the state and preserving public order. Gradually, the Marxist weapon in the hands of the Jew becomes a constant bogey to decent people. Sometimes, the fear of it sticks in the brain or weighs upon them as a kind of nightmare. People begin to quail before this fearful foe and therewith become his victims.
K. The Jewish domination in the state seems now so fully assured that not only can he now afford to call himself a Jew once again, but he even acknowledges freely and openly what his ideas are on racial and political questions. A section of the Jews avows itself quite openly as an alien people, But even here, there is another falsehood. When the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the new national consciousness of the Jews will be satisfied by the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Jews thereby adopt another means to dupe the simple minded Gentile.
They have not the slightest intention of building up a Jewish state in Palestine so as to live in it. What they are really aiming at is to establish a central organization for their international swindling and cheating. As a sovereign state, this cannot be controlled by any of the other states. Therefore, it can serve as a refuge for swindlers who have been found out, and at the same time, a high school for the training of other swindlers. As a sign of their growing presumption and sense of security, a certain section of them openly and impudently proclaim their Jewish nationality, while another section hypocritically pretend that they are German, French, or English as the case may be.
Their blatant behavior in their relations with other people shows how clearly they envisage their day of triumph in the near future. The black haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people. In his systematic efforts to ruin girls and women, he strives to break down the last barriers of discrimination between him and other peoples.
The Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race, which they hate, and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world can the Jew become master of any people except the bastardized people. That is why the Jew systematically endeavors to lower the racial quality of a people by permanently adulterating the blood of the individuals who make up that people.
In the field of politics, he now begins to replace the idea of democracy by introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the masses organized under the Marxist banners, He has found a weapon which makes it possible for him to discard democracy so as to subjugate and rule in a dictatorial fashion by the aid of brute force. He is systematically working in two ways to bring about this revolution. These ways are the economic and the political respectively. Aided by international influences, he forms a ring of enemies around those nations which have proved themselves too sturdy for him in withstanding attacks from within.
He would like to force them into war, and then if it should be necessary to his plans, he will unfurl the banners of revolt even while the troops are actually fighting at the front. Economically, he brings about the destruction of the state by a systematic method of sabotaging social enterprises until these become so costly that they are taken out of the hands of the state and then submitted to the control of Jewish finance. Politically, he works to withdraw from the state its means of subsistence in as much as he undermines the foundations of national resistance and defense, destroys the confidence which the people have in their government, reviles the past and its history, and drags everything national down into the gutter.
Culturally, his activity consists in art, literature, and the theater, holding the expressions of national sentiment up to scorn, overturning all concepts of the sublime and beautiful, the worthy and the good, finally dragging the people to the level of his own low mentality. Of religion, he makes a mockery. Morality and decency are described as antiquated prejudices, and thus, a systematic attack is made to undermine those last foundations on which the national being must rest if the nation is to struggle for its existence in this world.
File 70. L. Now begins the great and final revolution. As soon as the Jew is in possession of political power, he drops the last few veils which have hitherto helped to conceal his features. Out of the democratic Jew, the Jew of the people arises, the Jew of the blood, the tyrant of the peoples. In the course of a few years, he endeavors to exterminate all those who represent the national intelligence. And by thus depriving the peoples of their natural intellectual leaders, he fits them for their fate as slaves under a lasting despotism.
Russia furnishes the most terrible example of such a slavery. In that country, the Jew killed or starved 30 millions of the people in a bout of savage fanaticism and partly by the employment of inhuman torture. And he did this so that a gang of Jewish literati and financial bandits should dominate over a great people. But the final consequence is not merely that the people lose all their freedom under the domination of the Jews, but that in the end, these parasites themselves disappear. The death of the victim is followed sooner or later by that of the vampire.
If we review all the causes which contributed to bring about the downfall of the German people, we shall find that the most profound and decisive cause must be attributed to the lack of insight into the racial problem and especially in the failure to recognize the Jewish danger. It would have been easy enough to endure the defeat suffered on the battlefields in August 1918. They were nothing when compared with the military victories which our nation had achieved. Our downfall was not the result of those defeats, but we were overthrown by that force which had prepared those defeats by systematically operating for several decades to destroy those political instincts and that moral stamina, which alone enable the people to struggle for its existence and therewith secure the right to exist.
By neglecting the problem of preserving the racial foundations of our national life, the old empire abrogated the sole right which entitles a people to live on this planet. Nations that make mongrels of their people or allow their people to be turned into mongrels sin against the will of eternal providence, And, thus, their overthrow at the hands of a stronger opponent cannot be looked upon as a wrong, but on the contrary, as a restoration of justice. If a people refuses to guard and uphold the qualities with which it has been endowed by nature and which have their roots in the racial blood, then such a people has no right to complain over the loss of its earthly existence.
Everything on this earth can be made into something better. Every defeat may be made the foundation of a future victory. Every lost war may be the cause of a later resurgence. Every visitation of distress can give a new impetus to human energy. And out of every oppression, those forces can develop which bring about a new rebirth of the national soul, provided always that the racial blood is kept pure. But the loss of racial purity will wreck inner happiness forever. It degrades men for all time to come, and the physical and moral consequences can never be wiped out.
If this unique problem be studied and compared with the other problems of life, we shall easily recognize how small is their importance in comparison with this. They are all limited to time, but the problem of the maintenance or loss of the purity of the racial blood will last as long as man himself lasts. All the symptoms of decline which manifested themselves already in pre war times can be traced back to the racial problem. Whether one is dealing with questions of general law or monstrous expressiences in economic life, of phenomena which point to a cultural decline or political degeneration, whether it be a question of defects in the school system or of the evil influence which the press exerts over the adult population, always and everywhere, these phenomena are at bottom caused by a lack of consideration for the interests of the race to which one's own nation belongs or by the failure to recognize the danger that comes from allowing a foreign race to exist within the national body.
That is why all attempts at reform, all institutions for social relief, all political striving, all economic progress, and all apparent increase in the general stock of knowledge were doomed to be unproductive of any significant results. The nation, as well as the organization which enables it to exist, namely the state, were not developing in inner strength and stability, but on the contrary, were visibly losing their vitality. The false brilliance of the second empire could not disguise the inner weakness, and every attempt to invigorate it anew failed because the main and most important problem was left out of consideration.
It would be a mistake to think that the followers of the various political parties which tried to doctor the condition of the German people or even all their leaders were bad in themselves or meant wrong. Their activity, even at best, was doomed to fail merely because of the fact that they saw nothing but the symptoms of our general malady, and they tried to doctor the symptoms while they overlooked the real cause of the disease. If one makes a methodical study of the lines along which the old empire developed, one cannot help seeing, after a careful political analysis, that a process of inner degeneration had already set in even at the time when the United Empire was formed, and the German nation began to make rapid external progress.
The general situation was declining in spite of the apparent political success and in spite of the increasing economic wealth. At the elections to the Reichstag, the growing number of Marxist votes indicated that the internal breakdown and the political collapse were then rapidly approaching. All the victories of the so called bourgeois parties were fruitless, not only because they could not prevent the numerical increase in the growing mass of Marxist votes even when the bourgeois parties triumphed at the polls, but mainly because they themselves were already infected with the germs of decay.
Though quite unaware of it, the bourgeois world was infected from within with a deadly virus of Marxist ideas. The fact that they sometimes openly resisted was to be explained by the competitive strife among ambitious political leaders rather than by attributing it to any opposition in principle between adversaries who were determined to fight one another to the bitter end. During all those years, only one protagonist was fighting with steadfast perseverance. This was the due. The star of David steadily ascended as the will to national self preservation declined.
Therefore, it was not a solid national phalanx that of itself and out of its own feeling of solidarity rushed to the battlefields in August 1914, but it was rather the manifestation of the last flicker from the instinct of self preservation against the progress of the paralysis with which the pacifist and Marxist doctrine threatened our people. Even in those days, when the destinies of the nation were in the balance, the internal enemy was not recognized. Therefore, all efforts to resist the external enemy were bound to be in vain. Providence did not grant the reward to the victorious sword, but followed the eternal law of retributive justice.
A profound recognition of all this was the source of those principles and tendencies which inspire our new movement. We were convinced that only by recognizing such truths could we stop the national decline in Germany and lay a granite foundation on which the state could again be built up. A state which would not be a piece of mechanism alien to our people, constituted for economic purposes and interests, but an organism created from the soul of the people themselves. A German state in a German nation. Chapter 12. The first period of development of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Here, at the close of the volume, I shall describe the first stage in the progress of our movement and shall give a brief account of the problems we had to deal with during that period. In doing this, I have no intention of expounding the ideals which we have set up as the goal of our movement, For these ideals are so momentous in their significance that an exposition of them will need a whole volume. Therefore, I shall devote the second volume of this book to a detailed survey of the principles which form the program of our movement, and I shall attempt to draw a picture of what we mean by the word state.
When I say we in this connection, I mean to include all those hundreds of thousands who have fundamentally the same longing, though in the individual cases, they cannot find adequate words to describe the vision that hovers before their eyes. It is a characteristic feature of all great reforms that in the beginning, there is only one single protagonist to come forward on behalf of several millions of people. The final goal of a great reformation has often been the object of profound longing on the parts of hundreds of thousands for many centuries before, until finally, one among them comes forward as a herald to announce the will of that multitude and become the standard bearer of the old yearning, which he now leads to a realization in a new idea.
The fact that millions of our people yearn at heart for a radical change in our present conditions is proved by the profound discontent which exists among them. This feeling is manifested in a thousand ways. Some express it in a form of discouragement and despair. Others show it in resentment and anger and indignation. Among some, the profound discontent calls forth an attitude of indifference, while it urges others to violent manifestations of wrath. Another indication of this feeling may be seen on the one hand in the attitude of those who abstain from voting at elections, and on the other, in the large numbers of those who side with the fanatical extremists of the left wing.
To these latter people, our young movement had to appeal first of all. It was not meant to be an organization for contented and satisfied people, but was meant to gather in all those who were suffering from profound anxiety and could find no peace, those who were unhappy and discontented. It was not meant to float on the surface of the nation, but rather to push its roots deep among the masses. Looked at from the purely political point of view, the situation in 1918 was as follows. A nation had been torn into two parts. One part, which was by far the smaller of the two, contained the intellectual classes of the nation from which all those employed in physical labor were excluded.
On the surface, these intellectual classes appeared to be national minded, but that word meant nothing else to them except a very vague and feeble concept to the duty to defend what they called the interests of the state, which in turn seemed identical with those of the dynastic regime. This class tried to defend its ideas and reach its aims by carrying on the fight with the aid of intellectual weapons, which could be used only here and there, and which had only a superficial effect against the brutal measures employed by the adversaries in the face of which the intellectual weapons were of their very nature bound to fail.
With one violent blow, the class which had hitherto governed was now struck down. It trembled with fear and accepted every humiliation imposed on it by the merciless victor. Over against this class stood the broad masses of manual laborers who were organized in movements with a more or less radically Marxist tendency. These organized masses were firmly determined to break any kind of intellectual resistance by the use of brute force. They had no nationalist tendencies whatsoever and deliberately repudiated the idea of advancing the interests of the nation as such. On the contrary, they promoted the interests of the foreign oppressor.
Numerically, this class embraced the majority of the population, and what is more important, included all those elements of the nation without whose collaboration a national resurgence was not only a practical impossibility, but was even inconceivable. For already in 1918, one thing had to be clearly recognized, namely that no resurgence of the German nation could take place until we had first restored our national strength to face the outside world. For this purpose, arms are not the preliminary necessity, though our bourgeois statesmen always blathered about it being so.
What was wanted was willpower. At one time, the German people had more than sufficient military armament, and yet they were not able to defend their liberty because they lacked those energies which spring from the instinct of national self preservation and the will to hold on to one's own. The best armament is only dead and worthless material as long as the spirit is wanting, which makes men willing and determined to avail themselves of such weapons. Germany was rendered defenseless, not because she lacked arms, but because she lacked the will to keep her arms for the maintenance of her people.
Today, our left wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors. To all that kind of talk, the answer ought to be, no. The contrary is the truth. Your action in delivering up the arms was dictated by your antinational and criminal policy of abandoning the interests of the nation. And now you try to make people believe that your miserable whining is fundamentally due to the fact that you have no arms.
Just like everything else in your conduct, this is a lie and a falsification of the true reason. But the politicians of the right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came to power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms. The conservative politicians have neither right nor reason on their side when they appeal to disarmament as the cause which compelled them to adopt a policy of prudence. That is to say, cowardice. Here again, the contrary is the truth. Disarmament is the result of their lack of spirit.
Therefore, the problem of restoring Germany's power is not a question of how can we manufacture arms, but rather a question of how we can produce that spirit which enables a people to bear arms. Once this spirit prevails among a people, then it will find a thousand ways, each of which leads to the necessary armament. But a coward will not fire even a single shot when attacked, though he may be armed with 10 pistols. For him, they are of less value than a black thorn in the hands of a man of courage. The problem of reestablishing the political power of our nation is first of all a problem of restoring the instinct of national self preservation for, if no other reason, than that every preparatory step in foreign policy and every foreign judgment on the worth of a state has been proved by experience to be grounded not on the material size of the armament such a state may possess, but rather on the moral capacity for resistance which such a state has or is believed to have.
The question whether or not a nation be desirable as an ally is not so much determined by the inert mass of arms which it has at hand, but by the obvious presence of a sturdy will to national self preservation and a heroic courage which will fight through to the last breath. For an alliance is not made between arms, but between men. The British nation will therefore be considered as the most valuable ally in the world as long as it can be counted upon to show that brutality and tenacity in its government, as well as in the spirit of the broad masses, which enables it to carry through to victory any struggle that it once enters upon, no matter how long such a struggle may last, or however great the sacrifice that may be necessary, or whatever the means that have to be employed.
And all this even though the actual military equipment at hand may be utterly inadequate when compared with that of other nations. Once it is understood that the restoration of Germany is a question of reawakening the will to political self preservation, we shall see quite clearly that it will not be enough to win over those elements that are already national minded, but that the deliberately antinational masses must be converted to believe in the national ideals. A young movement that aims at reestablishing a German state with full sovereign powers will therefore have to make the task of winning over the broad masses a special objective of its plan of campaign.
Our so called national bourgeoisie are so lamentably supine, generally speaking, and their national spirit appears so feckless that we may feel sure they will offer no serious resistance against the vigorous national, foreign, or domestic policy. Even though the narrow minded German bourgeoisie should keep up a passive resistance when the hour of deliverance is at hand as they did in Bismarck's time, We shall never have to fear any active resistance on their part because of their recognized proverbial cowardice. It is quite different with the masses of our population who are imbued with ideas of internationalism.
Through the primitive roughness of their natures, they are disposed to accept the preaching of violence, while at the same time, their Jewish leaders are more brutal and ruthless. They will crush any attempt at a German revival just as they smash the German army by striking at it from the rear. Above all, these organized masses will use their numerical majority in this parliamentarian state, not only to hinder any national foreign policy, but also to prevent Germany from restoring her political power and therewith her prestige abroad.
Thus, she becomes excluded from the ranks of desirable allies. For it is not we ourselves alone who are aware of the handicap that results from the existence of 15,000,000 Marxists, democrats, pacifists, and followers of the center in our midst. But foreign nations also recognize this internal burden which we have to bear and take it into their calculations when estimating the value of a possible alliance with us. Nobody would wish to form an alliance with a state where the active portion of the population is at least passively opposed to any resolute foreign policy.
The situation is made still worse by reason of the fact that the leaders of those parties which were responsible for the national betrayal are ready to oppose any and every attempt at a revival simply because they want to retain the positions they now hold. According to the laws that govern human history, it is inconceivable that the German people could resume the place they formally held without retaliating on those who were both cause and occasion of the collapse that involved the ruin of our state. Before the judgment seat of posterity, November 1918 will not be regarded as a simple rebellion, but as high treason against the country.
Therefore, it is not possible to think of reestablishing German sovereignty and political independence without, at the same time, reconstructing a united front within the nation by a peaceful conversion of the popular will. Looked at from the standpoint of practical ways and means, it seems absurd to think of liberating Germany from foreign bondage as long as the masses of the people are not willing to support such an ideal of freedom. After carefully considering this problem from the purely military point of view, everybody, and in particular, every officer, will agree that a war cannot be waged against an outside enemy by battalions of students, but that together with the brains of the nation, the physical strength of the nation is also necessary.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the nation would be robbed of its irreplaceable assets by a national defense in which only the intellectual circles, as they are called, were engaged. The young German intellectuals who joined the volunteer regiments and fell on the battlefields of Flanders in the 1914 were bitterly missed later on. They were the dearest treasure which the nation possessed, and their loss could not be made good in the course of the war. And it is not only the struggle itself which could not be waged if the working masses of the nation did not join the storm battalions, but the necessary technical preparations could not be made without a unified will and a common front within the nation itself.
Our nation, which has to exist disarmed under the thousand eyes appointed by the Versailles peace treaty, cannot make any technical preparations for the recovery of its freedom and human independence until the whole army of spies employed within the country is cut down to those few whose inborn baseness would lead them to betray anything and everything for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver. But we can deal with such people. The millions, however, who are opposed to every kind of national revival simply because of their political opinions constitute an insurmountable obstacle.
At least the obstacle will remain insurmountable as long as the cause of their opposition, which is international Marxism, is not overcome and its teachings banished from both their hearts and heads. From whatever point of view, we may examine the possibility of recovering our independence as a state and a people. Whether we consider the problem from the standpoint of technical rearmament or from that of the actual struggle itself, the necessary prerequisite always remains the same. This prerequisite is that the broad masses of the people must first be won over to accept the principle of our national independence.
If we do not regain our external freedom, every step forward in domestic reform will at best be an augmentation of our productive powers for the benefit of those nations that look upon us as a colony to be exploited. The surplus produced by any so called improvement would only go into the hands of our international controllers, and any social betterment would at best increase the product of our labor in favor of those people. No cultural progress can be made by the German nation because such progress is too much bound up with the political independence and dignity of a people.
Therefore, as we can find a satisfactory solution for the problem of Germany's future only by winning over the broad masses of our people for the support of the national idea. This work of education must be considered the highest and most important task to be accomplished by a movement which does not strive merely to satisfy the needs of the moment, but considers itself bound to examine in the light of future results everything it decides to do or refrain from doing. As early as 1919, we were convinced that the nationalization of the masses would have to constitute the first and paramount aim of the new movement.
From the tactical standpoint, this decision laid a certain number of obligations on our shoulders. One. No social sacrifice could be considered too great in this effort to win over the masses for the national revival. In the field of national economics, whatever concessions are granted today to the employees are negligible when compared with the benefit to be reaped by the whole nation if such concessions contribute to bring back the masses of the people once more to the bosom of their own nation. Nothing but meanness and shortsightedness, which are characteristics that unfortunately are only too prevalent among our employers, could prevent people from recognizing that in the long run, no economic improvement, and therefore no rise in profits, are possible unless internal solidarity be restored among the bulk of the people who make up our nation.
If the German trades unions had defended the interests of the working classes uncompromisingly during the war, if even during the war, they had used the weapon of the strike to force the industrialists who were greedy for higher dividends to grant the demands of the workers for whom the unions acted. If at the same time, they had stood up as good Germans for the defense of the nation, as stoutly as for their own claims. And if they had given to their country what was their country's due, then the war would never have been lost. How ludicrously insignificant would all and even the greatest economic concession have been in face of the tremendous importance of such a victory.
For a movement which would restore the German worker to the German people, it is therefore absolutely necessary to understand clearly that economic sacrifices must be considered light in such cases provided, of course, that they do not go to the length of endangering the independence and stability of the national economic system. Two. The education of the masses along national lines can be carried out only indirectly by improving their social conditions. For only by such a process can the economic conditions be created which enable everybody to share in the cultural life of the nation.
Three. The nationalization of the broad masses can never be achieved by half measures. That is to say by feebly insisting on what is called the objective side of the question, but only by a ruthless and devoted insistence on the one aim which must be achieved. This means that a people cannot be made national according to the signification attached to that word by our bourgeois class today. That is to say nationalism with many reservations, but national in the vehement and extreme sense. Poison can be overcome only by a counter poison, and only the supine bourgeois mind could think that the kingdom of heaven can be attained by a compromise.
The broad masses of a nation are not made up of professors and diplomats. Since these masses have only a poor acquaintance with abstract ideas, their reactions lie more in the domain of the feelings, where the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted. They are susceptible only to a manifestation of strength, which comes definitely either from the positive or negative side. But they are never susceptible to any half hearted attitude that wavers between one pole and the other. The emotional grounds of their attitude furnish the reason for their extraordinary stability.
It is always more difficult to fight successfully against faith than against knowledge. Love is less subject to change than respect. Hatred is more lasting than mere aversion. And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria, which has urged them to action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a feckless attitude, but a determined will backed up by force when necessary.
Four. The soul of the masses can be won only if those who lead the movement for that purpose are determined not merely to carry through the positive struggle for their own aims, but are also determined to destroy the enemy that opposes them. When they see an uncompromising onslaught against an adversary, the people have at all times taken this as proof that right is on the side of the active aggressor. But if the aggressor should only go halfway and fail to push home his success by driving his opponent entirely from the scene of action, the people will look upon this as a sign that the aggressor is uncertain of the justice of his own cause, and his halfway policy may even be an acknowledgment that his cause is unjust.
The masses are but a part of nature herself. Their feeling is such that they cannot understand mutual handshakings between men who are declared enemies. Their wish is to see the stronger side win and the weaker wiped out or subjected unconditionally to the will of the stronger. The nationalization of the masses can be successfully achieved only if in the positive struggle to win the soul of the people, those who spread the international poison among them are exterminated. Five. All the great problems of our time are problems of the moment and are only the result of certain definite causes.
And among all those, there is only one that has a profoundly causal significance. This is the problem of preserving the pure racial stock among the people. Human vigor or decline depends on the blood. Nations that are not aware of the importance of their racial stock or which neglect to preserve it are like men who would try to educate the pug dog to do the work of the greyhound, not understanding that neither the speed of the greyhound nor the imitative faculties of the poodle are inborn qualities which cannot be drilled into the one or the other by any form of training.
A people that fails to preserve the purity of its racial blood thereby destroys the unity of the soul of the nation in all its manifestations. A disintegrated national character is the inevitable consequence of a process of disintegration in the blood. And the change which takes place in the spiritual and creative faculties of a people is only an effect of the change that has modified its racial substance. If we are to free the German people from all those failings and ways of acting which do not spring from their original character, We must first get rid of those foreign germs in the national body, which are the cause of its failings and false ways.
The German nation will never revive unless the racial problem is taken into account and dealt with. The racial problem furnishes the key not only to the understanding of human history, but also to the understanding of every kind of human culture. Six. By incorporating in the national community the masses of our people who are now in the international camp, we do not thereby mean to renounce the principle that the interests of the various trades and professions must be safeguarded. Divergent interests in the various branches of labor and in the trades and professions are not the same as a division between the various classes, but rather a feature inherent in the economic situation.
Vocational grouping does not clash in the least with the idea of a national community, for this means national unity in regard to all those problems that affect the life of the nation as such. To incorporate in the national community or simply the state, a stratum of the people which has now formed a social class, the standing of the higher classes must not be lowered, but that of the lower classes must be raised. The class which carries through this process is never the higher class, but rather the lower one, which is fighting for equality of rights. The bourgeoisie of today was not incorporated in the state through measures enacted by the feudal nobility, but only through its own energy and a leadership that had sprung from its own ranks.
The German worker cannot be raised from his present standing and incorporated in the German folk community by means of goody goody meetings where people talk about the brotherhood of the people, but rather by a systematic improvement in the social and cultural life of the worker until the yawning abyss between him and the other classes can be filled in. A movement which has this for its aim must try to recruit its followers mainly from the ranks of the working class. It must include members of the intellectual classes only in so far as such members have rightly understood and accepted without reserve the ideal towards which the movement is striving.
This process of transformation and reunion cannot be completed within ten or twenty years. It will take several generations as the history of such movements has shown. The most difficult obstacle to the reunion of our contemporary worker in the national folk community does not consist so much in the fact that he fights for the interests of his fellow workers, but rather in the international ideas with which he is imbued and which are of their nature at variance with the ideas of nationhood and fatherland. This hostile attitude to nation and fatherland has been inculcated by the leaders of the working class.
If they were inspired by the principle of devotion to the nation in all that concerns its political and social welfare, the trades unions would make those millions of workers most valuable members of the national community without thereby affecting their own constant struggle for their economic demands. A movement which sincerely endeavors to bring the German worker back into his folk community and rescue him from the folly of internationalism must wage a vigorous campaign against certain notions that are prevalent among the industrialists.
One of these notions is that according to the concept of the folk community, the employee is obliged to surrender all his economic rights to the employer, and further, that the workers would come into conflict with the folk community if they should attempt to defend their own just and vital interests. Those who try to propagate such a notion are deliberate liars. The idea of a folk community does not impose any obligations on the one side that are not imposed on the other. A worker certainly does something which is contrary to the spirit of folk immunity if he acts entirely on his own initiative and puts forward exaggerated demands without taking the common good into consideration or the maintenance of the national economic structure.
But an industrialist also acts against the spirit of the folk community if he adopts inhuman methods of exploitation and misuses the working forces of the nation to make millions unjustly for himself from the sweat of the workers. He has no right to call himself national and no right to talk of a folk community, for he is only an unscrupulous egoist who sows the seeds of social discontent and provokes a spirit of conflict, which sooner or later must be injurious to the interests of the country. The reservoir from which the young movement has to draw its members will, first of all, be the working masses.
Those masses must be delivered from the clutches of the international mania. Their social distress must be eliminated. They must be raised above their present cultural level, which is deplorable, and transformed into a resolute and valuable factor in the folk community, inspired by national ideas and national sentiment. If among those intellectual circles that are nationalist in their outlook, Men can be found to genuinely love the people and look forward eagerly to the future of Germany, and at the same time, have a sound grasp of the importance of a struggle whose aim is to win over the soul of the masses.
Such men are cordially welcomed in the ranks of our movement because they can serve as a valuable intellectual force in the work that has to be done. But this movement can never aim at recruiting its membership from the unthinking herd of bourgeois voters. If it did so, the movement would be burdened with a mass of people whose whole mentality would only help to paralyze the effort of our campaign to win the mass of the people. In theory, it may be very fine to say that the broad masses ought to be influenced by a combined leadership of the upper and lower social strata within the framework of one movement.
But notwithstanding all this, the fact remains that though it may be possible to exercise a psychological influence on the bourgeois classes and to arouse some enthusiasm or even awaken some understanding among them by our public demonstrations. Their traditional characteristics cannot be changed. In other words, we could not eliminate from the bourgeois classes the inefficiency and supineness, which are part of a tradition that has developed through centuries. The difference between the cultural levels of the two groups and between their respective attitudes towards social economic questions is still so great that it would turn out a hindrance to the movement the moment the first enthusiasm aroused by our demonstrations calm down.
Finally, it is not part of our program to transform the nationalist camp itself, but rather to win over those who are antinational in their outlook. It is from this viewpoint that the strategy of the whole movement must finally be decided. Seven. This one-sided but accordingly clear and definite attitude must be manifested in the propaganda of the movement. And on the other hand, this is absolutely necessary to make the propaganda itself effective. If propaganda is to be of service to the movement, it must be addressed to one side alone. For if it should vary the direction of its appeal, it will not be understood in the one camp or may be rejected by the other as merely insisting on obvious and uninteresting truisms.
For the intellectual training of the two camps that come into question here has been very different. Even the manner in which something is presented and the tone in which particular details are emphasized cannot have the same effect in those two strata that belong respectively to the opposite extremes of the social structure. If the propaganda should refrain from using primitive forms of expression, it will not appeal to the sentiments of the masses. If, on the other hand, it conforms to the crude sentiments of the masses in its words and gestures, the intellectual circles will be averse to it because of its roughness and vulgarity.
Among a 100 men who call themselves orators, there are scarcely 10 who are capable of speaking with effect before an audience of street sweepers, locksmiths, and navvies, etcetera, today, and expound the same subject with equal effect tomorrow before an audience of university professors and students. Among a thousand public speakers, there may be only one who can speak before a composite audience of locksmiths and professors in the same hall in such a way that his statements can be fully comprehended by each group, while at the same time, he effectively influences both and awakens enthusiasm on the one side as well as the other to hearty applause.
But it must be remembered that in most cases, even the most beautiful idea embodied in a sublime theory can be brought home to the public only through the medium of smaller minds. The thing that matters here is not the vision of the man of genius who created the great idea, but rather the success which his apostles achieve in shaping the expression of this idea so as to bring it home to the minds of the masses. Social democracy and the whole Marxist movement were particularly qualified to attract the great masses of the nation because of the uniformity of the public to which they addressed their appeal.
The more limited and narrow their ideas and arguments, the easier it was for the masses to grasp and assimilate them. For those ideas and arguments were well adapted to a low level of intelligence. These considerations led the new movement to adopt a clear and simple line of policy, which was as follows. In its message, as well as in its forms of expression, the propaganda must be kept on a level with the intelligence of the masses, and its value must be measured only by the actual success it achieves. At a public meeting, where the great masses are gathered together, the best speaker is not he whose way of approaching a subject is most akin to the spirit of those intellectuals who may happen to be present, but the speaker who knows how to win the hearts of the masses.
An educated man who is present and who finds fault with an address because he considers it to be on an intellectual plane that is too low, though he himself has witnessed its effect on the lower intellectual groups whose adherence has to be won, only shows himself completely incapable of rightly judging the situation and therewith proves that he can be of no use in the new movement. Only intellectuals can be of use to a movement who understand its mission and its aims so well that they have learned to judge our methods of propaganda exclusively by the success obtained and never by the impression which those methods made on the intellectuals themselves.
For our propaganda is not meant to serve as an entertainment for those people who already have a nationalist outlook, but its purpose is to win the adhesion of those who have hitherto been hostile to national ideas and who are nevertheless of our own blood and race. In general, those considerations of which I have given a brief summary in the chapter on war propaganda became the guiding rules and principles which determine the kind of propaganda we were to adopt in our campaign and the manner in which we were to put it into practice. The success that has been obtained proves that our decision was right.
Eight. The ends which any political reform movement sets out to attain can never be reached by trying to educate the public or influence those in power, but only by getting political power into its hands. Every idea that is meant to move the world has not only the right, but also the obligation of securing control of those means which will enable the idea to be carried into effect. In this world, success is the only rule of judgment whereby we can decide whether such an undertaking was right or wrong. And by the word success in this connection, I do not mean such a success as the mere conquest of power in 1918, but the successful issue whereby the common interests of the nation have been served.
A coup d'etat cannot be considered successful if, as many empty headed government lawyers in Germany now believe, the revolutionaries succeeded in getting control of the state into their hands, but only if, in comparison with the state of affairs under the old regime, the lot of the nation has been improved when the aims and intentions on which the revolution was based have been put into practice. This certainly does not apply to the German revolution as that movement was called, which brought a gang of bandits into power in the autumn of nineteen eighteen. But if the conquest of political power be a requisite preliminary for the practical realization of the ideals that inspire a reform movement, then any movement which aims at reform must, from the very first day of its activity, be considered by its leaders as a movement of the masses and not as a literary tea club or an association of Philistines who meet to play ninepins.
Nine. The nature and internal organization of the new movement make it anti parliamentarian. That is to say, it rejects in general and in its own structure all those principles according to which decisions are taken on the vote of the majority and according to which the leader is only the executor of the will and opinion of others. The movement lays down the principle that in the smallest as well as in the greatest problems, one person must have absolute authority and bear all responsibility. In our movement, the practical consequences of this principle are the following.
The president of a large group is appointed by the head of the group immediately above his in authority. He is then the responsible leader of his group. All the committees are subject to his authority and not he to theirs. There is no such thing as committees that vote, but only committees that work. This work is allotted by the responsible leader who is the president of the group. The same principle applies to the higher organizations, the district, the Kreis urban circuit, and the Gau, the region. In each case, the president is appointed from above and is invested with full authority and executive power.
Only the leader of the whole party is elected at the general meeting of the members, but he is the sole leader of the movement. All the committees are responsible to him, but he is not responsible to the committees. His decision is final, but he bears the whole responsibility of it. The members of the movement are entitled to call him to account by means of a new election, or to remove him from office if he has violated the principles of the movement or has not served its interests adequately. He is then replaced by a more capable man, who is invested with the same authority and obliged to bear the same responsibility.
One of the highest duties of the movement is to make this principle imperative not only within its own ranks, but also for the whole state. The man who becomes leader is invested with the highest and unlimited authority, but he also has to bear the last and gravest responsibility. The man who has not the courage to shoulder responsibility for his actions is not fitted to be a leader. Only a man of heroic mold can have the vocation for such a task. Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the multitude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and personal efficiency.
Because of this principle, our movement must necessarily be anti parliamentarian. And if it takes part in the parliamentary institution, it is only for the purpose of destroying this institution from within. In other words, we wish to do away with an institution which we must look upon as one of the gravest symptoms of human decline. 10. The movement steadfastly refuses to take up any stand in regard to those problems which are either outside of its sphere of political work or seem to have no fundamental importance for us.
It does not aim at bringing about religious reformation, but rather a political reorganization of our people. It looks upon the two religious denominations as equally valuable mainstays for the existence of our people, and therefore makes war on all those parties which would degrade this foundation on which the religious and moral stability of our people is based to an instrument in the service of party interests. Finally, the movement does not aim at establishing any one form of state or trying to destroy another, but rather to make those fundamental principles prevail without which no republic and no monarchy can exist for any length of time.
The movement does not consider its mission to be the establishment of a monarchy or the preservation of the republic, but rather to create a German state. The problem concerning the outer form of this state, that is to say its final shape, is not of fundamental importance. It is a problem which must be solved in the light of what seems practical and opportune at the moment. Once a nation has understood and appreciated the great problems that affect its inner existence, the question of outer formalities will never lead to any internal conflict.
11. The problem of the inner organization of the movement is not one of principle, but of expediency. The best kind of organization is not that which places a large intermediary apparatus between the leadership of the movement and the individual followers, but rather that which works successfully with the smallest possible intermediary apparatus. For it is the task of such an organization to transmit a certain idea which originated in the brain of one individual to a multitude of people and to supervise the manner in which this idea is being put into practice. Therefore, from any and every viewpoint, the organization is only a necessary evil.
At best, it is only a means of reaching certain ends. The worst happens when it becomes an end in itself. Since the world produces more mechanical than intelligent beings, it will always be easier to develop the form of an organization than its substance, that is to say the ideas which it is meant to serve. The march of any idea which strives towards practical fulfillment, and in particular, those ideas which are of a reformatory character, may be roughly sketched as follows. A creative idea takes shape in the mind of somebody who thereupon feels himself called upon to transmit this idea to the world.
He propounds his faith before others, and thereby gradually wins a certain number of followers. This direct and personal way of promulgating one's ideas among one's contemporaries is the most natural and the most ideal. But as the movement develops and secures a large number of followers, it gradually becomes impossible for the original founder of the doctrine on which the doctrine on which the movement is based to carry on his propaganda personally among his innumerable followers, and at the same time, guide the course of the movement.
According as the community of followers increases, direct communication between the head and the individual followers becomes impossible. This intercourse must then take place through an intermediary apparatus introduced into the framework of the movement. Thus, ideal conditions of intercommunication cease, and organization has to be introduced as a necessary evil. Small subsidiary groups come into existence as in the political movement, for example, where the local groups represent the germ cells out of which the organization develops later on.
But such subdivisions must not be introduced into the movement until the authority of the spiritual founder and of the school he has created are accepted without reservation. Otherwise, the movement would run the risk of becoming split up by divergent doctrines. In this connection, too much emphasis cannot be laid on the importance of having one geographic center as the chief seat of the movement. Only the existence of such a seat or center around which a magic charm such as that of Mecca or Rome is woven can supply a movement with that permanent driving force which has its sources in the internal unity of the movement and the recognition of one head as representing this unity.
When the first germinal cells of the organization are being formed, care must always be taken to insist on the importance of the place where the idea originated. The creative, moral, and practical greatness of the place whence the movement went forth and from which it is governed must be exalted to a supreme symbol, and this must be honored all the more according as the original cells of the movement become so numerous that they have to be regrouped into larger units in the structure of the organization. When the number of individual followers became so large that direct personal contact with the head of the movement was out of the question, then we had to form those first local groups.
As those groups multiplied to an extraordinary number, it was necessary to establish higher cadres into which the local groups were distributed. Examples of such cadres in the political organization are those of the region, Gao, and the district, Bezierk. Though it may be easy enough to maintain the original central authority over the lowest groups, it is much more difficult to do so in relation to the higher units of organization which have now developed. And yet we must succeed in doing this, for this is an indispensable condition if the unity of the movement is to be guaranteed and the idea of it carried into effect.
Finally, when those larger intermediary organizations have to be combined in new and still higher units, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain over them the absolute supremacy of the original seat of the movement and the school attached to it. Consequently, the mechanical forms of an organization must only be introduced if and in so far as the spiritual authority and the ideals of the central seat of the organization are shown to be firmly established. In the political sphere, it may often happen that this supremacy can be maintained only when the movement has taken over supreme political control of the nation.
Having taken all these considerations into account, the following principles were laid down for the inner structure of the movement. A, that at the beginning, all activity should be concentrated in one town, namely Munich. That a band of absolutely reliable followers should be trained and a school founded which would subsequently help to propagate the idea of the movement. That the prestige of the movement, for the sake of its subsequent extension, should first be established here through gaining as many successful and visible results as possible in this one place.
To secure name and fame for the movement and its leader, it was necessary not only to give in this one town, a striking example to shatter the belief that the Marxist doctrine was invincible, but also to show that a counter doctrine was possible. B, that local groups should not be established before the supremacy of the central authority in Munich was definitely established and acknowledged, c, that district, regional, and provincial groups should be formed only after the need for them has become evident and only after the supremacy of the central authority has been satisfactorily guaranteed, Further, that the creation of subordinate organisms must depend on whether or not those persons can be found who are qualified to undertake the leadership of them.
Here, there were only two solutions, a, that the movement should acquire the necessary funds to attract and train intelligent people who would be capable of becoming leaders. The personnel thus obtained could then be systematically employed according as the tactical situation and the necessity for efficiency demanded. This solution was the easier and the more expedite, but it demanded large financial resources for this group of leaders could work only in the movement if they could be paid a salary. B, because the movement is not in a position to employ paid officials, it must begin by depending on honorary helpers.
Naturally, this solution is slower and more difficult. It means that the leaders of the movement have to allow vast territories to lie fallow unless in these respective districts, one of the members comes forward to is capable and willing to place himself at the service of the central authority for the purpose of organizing and directing the movement in the region concerned. It may happen that in extensive regions, no such leader can be found, but that at the same time in other regions, two or three or even more persons appear whose capabilities are almost on a level.
The difficulty which this situation involves is very great and can be overcome only with the passing of the years. For the establishment of any branch of the organization, the decisive condition must always be that a person can be found who is capable of fulfilling the functions of a leader. Just as the army and all its various units of organization are useless if there are no officers, so any political organization is worthless if it has not the right kind of leaders. If an inspiring personality who has the gift of leadership cannot be found for the organization and direction of a local group, it is better for the movement to refrain from establishing such a group than to run the risk of failure after the group has been founded.
The will to be a leader is not a sufficient qualification for leadership, for the leader must have the other necessary qualities. Among these qualities, willpower and energy must be considered as more serviceable than the intellect of a genius. The most valuable association of qualities is to be found in a combination of talent, determination, and perseverance. 12. The future of a movement is determined by the devotion and even intolerance with which its members fight for their cause. They must feel convinced that their cause alone is just, and they must carry it through to success as against other similar organizations in the same field.
It is quite erroneous to believe that the strength of a movement must increase if it be combined with other movements of a similar kind. Any expansion resulting from such a combination will, of course, mean an increase in external development, which superficial observers might consider as also an increase of power. But in reality, the movement thus admits outside elements which will subsequently weaken its constitutional vigor. Though it may be said that one movement is identical in character with another, in reality, no such identity exists.
If it did exist, then practically there would not be two movements, but only one. And whatever the difference may be, even if it consists only of the measure in which the capabilities of the one set of leaders differ from those of the other, there it is. It is against the natural law of all development to couple dissimilar organisms, or the law is that the stronger must overcome the weaker, and through the struggle necessary for such a conquest, increase the constitutional vigor and effective strength of the victor. By amalgamating political organizations that are approximately alike, certain immediate advantages may be gained.
But advantages thus gained abound in the long run to become the cause of internal weaknesses, which will make their appearance later on. A movement can become great only if the unhampered development of its internal strength be safeguarded and steadfastly augmented until victory over all its competitors be secured. One may safely say that the strength of a movement and its right to existence can be developed only as long as it remains true to the principle that struggle is a necessary condition of its progress and that its maximum strength will be reached only as soon as complete victory has been won.
Therefore, a movement must not strive to obtain successes that will only be immediate and transitory, but it must show a spirit of uncompromising perseverance in carrying through a long struggle which will secure for it a long period of inner growth. All those movements which owe their expansion to a so called combination of similar organisms, which means that their external strength is due to a policy of compromise, are like plants whose growth is forced in a hothouse. They shoot up externally, but they lack that inner strength which enables the natural plant to grow into a tree that will withstand the storms of centuries.
The greatness of every powerful organization which embodies a creative idea lies in the spirit of religious devotion and intolerance with which it stands out against all others because it has an ardent faith in its own right. If an idea is right in itself and furnished with the fighting weapons I have mentioned wages war on this earth, then it is invincible, and persecution will only add to its internal strength. The greatness of Christianity did not arise from attempts to make compromises with those philosophical opinions of the ancient world, which had some resemblance to its own doctrine, but in the unrelenting and fanatical proclamation and defense of its own teaching.
The apparent advance that a movement makes by associating itself with other movements will be easily reached and surpassed by the steady increase of strength which a doctrine and its organization acquires if it remains independent and fights its own cause alone. 13. The movement ought to educate its adherence to the principle that struggle must not be considered a necessary evil, but as something to be desired in itself. Therefore, they must not be afraid of the hostility which their adversaries manifest towards them, but they must take it as a necessary condition on which their whole right to existence is based.
They must not try to avoid being hated by those who are the enemies of our people and our philosophy of life, but must welcome such hatred. Lies and calumnies are part of the method which the enemy employs to express his chagrin. The man who is not opposed and vilified and slandered in the Jewish press is not a staunch German and not a true national socialist. The best rule whereby the sincerity of his convictions, his character, and strength of will can be measured is the hostility which his name arouses among the mortal enemies of our people. The followers of the movement and, indeed, the whole nation must be reminded again and again of the fact that through the medium of his newspapers, the Jew is always spreading falsehood.
And that if he tells the truth on some occasions, it is only for the purpose of masking some greater deceit, which turns the apparent truth into a deliberate falsehood. The Jew is the great master of lies. Falsehood and duplicity are the weapons with which he fights. Every calumny and falsehood published by the Jews are tokens of honor which can be worn by our comrades. He whom they decry most is nearest to our hearts, and he whom they mortally hate is our best friend. If a comrade of ours opens a Jewish newspaper in the morning and does not find himself vilified there, then he has spent yesterday to no account.
For if he had achieved something, he would be persecuted, slandered, derided, and abused. Those who effectively combat this mortal enemy of our people, who is at the same time the enemy of all Aryan peoples and all culture, can only expect to arouse opposition on the part of this race and become the object of its slanderous attacks. When these truths become part of the flesh and blood, as it were, of our members, then the movement will be impregnable and invincible. 14. The movement must use all possible means to cultivate respect for the individual personality. It must never forget that all human values are based on personal values, and that every idea and achievement is the fruit of the creative power of one man.
We must never forget that admiration for everything that is great is not only a tribute to one creative personality, but that all those who feel such admiration become thereby united under one covenant. Nothing can take the place of the individual, especially if the individual embodies in himself not the mechanical element, but the element of cultural creativeness. No pupil can take the place of the master in completing a great picture which he has left unfinished. And just in the same way, no substitute can take the place of the great poet or thinker or the great statesman or military general, for the source of their power is in the realm of artistic creativeness.
It can never be mechanically acquired because it is an innate product of divine grace. The greatest revolutions and the greatest achievements of this world, its greatest cultural works, and the immortal creations of great statesmen are inseparably bound up with one name which stands as a symbol for them in each respective case. The failure to pay tribute to one of those great spirits signifies a neglect of that enormous source of power which lies in the remembrance of all great men and women. The Jew himself knows this best. He whose great men have always been great only in their efforts to destroy mankind and its civilization takes good care that they are worshiped as idols.
But the Jew tries to degrade the honor in which nations hold their great men and women. He stigmatizes this honor as the cult of personality. As soon as a nation has so far lost its courage as to submit to this impudent defamation on the part of the Jews, it renounces the most important source of its own inner strength. This inner force cannot arise from a policy of pandering to the masses, but only from the worship of men of genius whose lives have uplifted and ennobled the nation itself. When men's hearts are breaking and their souls are plunged into the depths of despair, their great forebears turn their eyes towards them from the dim shadows of the past.
Those forebears who knew how to triumph over anxiety and affliction, mental servitude, and physical bondage, and extend their eternal hands in a gesture of encouragement to despairing souls. Woe to the nation that is ashamed to clasp those hands. During the initial phase of our movement, our greatest handicap was the fact that none of us were known, and our names meant nothing, a fact which then seemed to some of us to make the chances of final success problematical. Our most difficult task then was to make our members firmly believe that there was a tremendous future in store for the movement and to maintain this belief as a living faith.
For at that time, only six, seven, or eight persons came to hear one of our speakers. Consider that only six or seven poor devils who were entirely unknown came together to found a movement which should succeed in doing what the great mass parties had failed to do, namely, to reconstruct the German Reich even in greater power and glory than before. We should have been very pleased if we were attacked or even ridiculed, but the most depressing fact was that nobody paid any attention to us whatever. This utter lack of interest in us caused me great mental pain at that time. When I entered the circle of those men, there was not yet any question of a party or a movement.
I have already described the impression which was made on me when I first came into contact with that small organization. Subsequently, I had time and also the occasion to study the form of this so called party, which had at first made such a woeful impression. The picture was indeed quite depressing and discouraging. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. There was only the name of a party, and the committee consisted of all the party members. Somehow or other, it seemed just the kind of thing we were about to fight against, a miniature parliament.
The voting system was employed. When the great parliament cried until they were hoarse, at least they shouted over problems of importance, Here, this small circle engaged in interminable discussions as to the form in which they might answer the letters which they were delighted to have received. Needless to say, the public knew nothing of all this. In Munich, nobody knew of the existence of such a party, not even by name, except our few members and their small circle of acquaintances. Every Wednesday, what was called a committee meeting was held in one of the cafes, and a debate was arranged for one evening each week.
In the beginning, all the members of the movement were also members of the committee. Therefore, the same persons always turned up at both meetings. The first step that had to be taken was to extend the narrow limits of this small circle, and get new members. But the principal necessity was to utilize all the means at our command for the purpose of making the movement known. We chose the following methods. We decided to hold a monthly meeting to which the public would be invited. Some of the invitations were typewritten, and some were written by hand.
For the first few meetings, we distributed them in the streets and delivered them personally at certain houses. Each one canvassed among his own acquaintances, and tried to persuade some of them to attend our meetings. The result was lamentable. I still remember how once I personally delivered 80 of these invitations, and how we waited in the evening for the crowds to come. After waiting in vain for a whole hour, the chairman finally had to open the meeting. Again, there were only seven people present, the old familiar seven.
We then changed our methods. We had the invitations written with a typewriter in a Munich stationer's shop and then multigraphed them. The result was that a few more people attended our next meeting. The number increased gradually from 11 to 13 to 17 to 23 and finally to 34. We collected some money within our own circle, each poor devil giving a small contribution. And in that way, we raised sufficient funds to be able to advertise one of our meetings in the Munich Observer, which was still an independent paper. This time, we had an astonishing success.
We had chosen the Munich Hofbrauhausgeller, which must not be confounded with the Munich Hofbrauhaus Festzal as our meeting place. It was a small hall and would accommodate scarcely more than a 130 people. To me, however, the hall seemed enormous, and we were all trembling lest this tremendous edifice would remain partly empty on the night of the meeting. At 07:00, 111 persons were present, and the meeting was opened. A Munich professor delivered the principal address, and I spoke after him. That was my first appearance in the role of public orator. The whole thing seemed a very daring adventure to Herr Harrah, who was then chairman of the party.
He was a very decent fellow, but he had an a priori conviction that although I might have quite a number of good qualities, I certainly did not have a talent for public speaking. Even later, he could not be persuaded to change his opinion, but he was mistaken. Twenty minutes had been allotted to me for my speech on this occasion, which might be looked on as our first public meeting. I talked for thirty minutes, and what I always had felt deep down in my heart without being able to put it to the test was here proved to be true. I could make a good speech.
At the end of the thirty minutes, it was quite clear that all the people in the little hall had been profoundly impressed. The enthusiasm aroused among them found its first expression in the fact that my appeal to those present brought us donations which amounted to 300 marks. That was a great relief for us. Our finances were at that time so meager that we could not afford to have our party prospectus printed or even leaflets. Now we possessed at least the nucleus of a fund from which we could pay the most urgent and necessary expenses. But the success of this first larger meeting was also important from another point of view.
I had already begun to introduce some young and fresh members into the committee. During the long period of my military service, I had come to know a large number of good comrades whom I was now able to persuade to join our party. All of them were energetic and disciplined young men who, through their years of military service, had been imbued with the principle that nothing is impossible, and that where there's a will, there's a way. The need for this fresh blood supply became evident to me after a few weeks of collaboration with the new members.
Herrara, who was then chairman of the party, was a journalist by profession, and as such, he was a man of general knowledge. But as leader of the party, he had one very serious handicap. He could not speak to the crowd. Though he did his work conscientiously, it lacked the necessary driving force, probably for the reason that he had no oratorical gifts whatsoever. Herr Drexler, at that time chairman of the Munich local group, was a simple working man. He too was not of any great importance as a speaker. Moreover, he was not a soldier. He had never done military service even during the war.
So that this man, who was feeble and diffident by nature, had missed the only school which knows how to transform diffident and weakly natures into real men. Therefore, neither of those two men were of the stuff that would have enabled them to stir up an ardent and indomitable faith in the ultimate triumph of the movement, and to brush aside with obstinate force, and if necessary, with brutal ruthlessness, all obstacles that stood in the path of the new idea. Such a task could be carried out only by men who had been trained body and soul in those military virtues which make a man, so to speak, agile as a greyhound, tough as leather, and hard as crook steel.
At that time, I was still a soldier. Physically and mentally, I had the polish of six years of service, so that in the beginning, this circle must have looked on me as quite a stranger. In common with my army comrades, I had forgotten such phrases as that will not go, or that is not possible, or we ought not to take such a risk. It is too dangerous. The whole undertaking was of its very nature dangerous. At that time, there were many parts of Germany where it would have been absolutely impossible openly to invite people to a national meeting that dared to make a direct appeal to the masses.
Those who attended such meetings were usually dispersed and driven away with broken heads. It certainly did not call for any great qualities to be able to do things in that way. The largest so called bourgeois mass meetings were accustomed to dissolve, and those in attendance would run away like rabbits when frightened by a dog as soon as a dozen communists appeared on the scene. The Reds used to pay little attention to those bourgeois organizations where only babblers talked. They recognized the inner triviality of such associations much better than the members themselves, and therefore felt that they need not be afraid of them.
On the contrary, however, they were all the more determined to use every possible means of annihilating once and for all any movement that appeared to them to be a danger to their own interests. The most effective means which they always employed in such cases were terror and brute force. The Marxist leaders, whose business consisted in deceiving and misleading the public naturally hated most of all a movement whose declared aim was to win over those masses which hitherto had been exclusively at the service of international Marxism in the Jewish and stock exchange parties.
The title alone, German Labor Party, irritated them. It could be easily foreseen that at the first opportune moment, we should have to face the opposition of the Marxist despots who were still intoxicated with their triumph in 1918. People in the small circles of our own movement at that time showed a certain amount of anxiety at the prospect of such a conflict. They wanted to refrain as much as possible from coming out into the open because they feared that they might be attacked and beaten. In their minds, they saw our first public meetings broken up and feared that the movement might thus be ruined forever.
I found it difficult to defend my own position, which was that the conflict should not be evaded, but that it should be faced openly, and that we should be armed with those weapons which are the only protection against brute force. Terror cannot be overcome by the weapons of the mind, but only by counter terror. The success of our first public meeting strengthened my own position. The members felt encouraged to arrange for a second meeting on an even larger scale. Sometime in October 1919, the second larger meeting took place in the air bell Brau Keller.
The theme of our speeches was and Versailles. There were four speakers. I talked for almost an hour, and the success was even more striking than at our first meeting. The number of people who attended had grown to more than a 130. An attempt to disturb the proceedings was immediately frustrated by my comrades. The would be disturbers were thrown down the stairs, bearing imprints of violence on their heads. A fortnight later, another meeting took place in the same hall. The number in attendance had now increased to more than 170, which meant that the room was fairly well filled.
I spoke again, and once more, the success obtained was greater than at the previous meeting. Then I proposed that a larger hall should be found. After looking around for some time, we discovered one at the other end of the town in the Deutschenreich, in the Dachaua Strasse. The first meeting at this new rendezvous had a smaller attendance than the previous meeting. There were just less than 140 present. The members of the committee began to be discouraged, and those who had always been skeptical were now convinced that this falling off in the attendance was due to the fact that we were holding the meetings at two short intervals.
There were lively discussions in which I upheld my own opinion that a city with 700,000 inhabitants ought to be able not only to stand one meeting every fortnight, but 10 meetings every week. I held that we should not be discouraged by one comparative setback, that the tactics we had chosen were correct, and that sooner or later, success would be ours if we only continued with determined perseverance to push forward on our road. The whole winter of 1919 to 1920 was one continual struggle to strengthen confidence in our ability to carry the movement through to success and to intensify this confidence until it became a burning faith that could move mountains.
Our next meeting in the small hall proved the truth of my contention. Our audience had increased to more than 200. The publicity effect and the financial success was splendid. I immediately urged that a further meeting should be held. It took place in less than a fortnight, and there were more than 270 people present. Two weeks later, we invited our followers and their friends for the seventh time to attend our meeting. The same hall was scarcely large enough for the number that came. They amounted to more than 400. During this phase, the young movement developed its inner form.
Sometimes we had more or less hefty discussions within our small circle. From various sides, it was then just the same as it is today, objections were made against the idea of calling the young movement a party. I have always considered such criticism as a demonstration of practical incapability and narrow mindedness on the part of the critic. Those objections have always been raised by men who could not differentiate between external appearances and inner strength, but tried to judge the movement by the high sounding character of the name attached to it. To this end, they ransacked the vocabulary of our ancestors with unfortunate results.
At that time, it was very difficult to make the people understand that every movement is a party as long as it has not brought its ideals to final triumph, and thus achieved its purpose. It is a party even if it give itself a thousand different names. Any person who tries to carry into practice an original idea whose realization would be for the benefit of his fellow men, will first have to look for disciples who are ready to fight for the ends he has in view. And if these ends did not go beyond the destruction of the party system, and therewith put a stop to the process of disintegration, then all those who come forward as protagonists and apostles of such an ideal are a party in themselves as long as their final goal is reached.
It is only hair splitting and playing with words when these antiquated theorists whose practical success is in reverse ratio to their wisdom presumed to think they can change the character of a movement which is at the same time a party by merely changing its name. On the contrary, it is entirely out of harmony with the spirit of the nation to keep harping on that far off and forgotten nomenclature which belongs to the ancient Germanic times and does not awaken any distinct association in our age. This habit of borrowing words from the dead past tends to mislead the people into thinking that the external trappings of its vocabulary are the important feature of a movement.
It is really a mischievous habit, but it is quite prevalent nowadays. At that time, and subsequently, I had to warn followers repeatedly against these wandering scholars who were peddling Germanic folklore and who never accomplished anything positive or practical except to cultivate their own superabundance self conceit. The new movement must guard itself against an influx of people whose only recommendation is their own statement that they've been fighting for these very same ideals during the last thirty or forty years. Now if somebody has fought for forty years to carry into effect what he calls an idea, and if these alleged efforts not only show no positive results, but have not even been able to hinder the success of the opposing party, then the story of those forty years of futile effort furnishes sufficient proof for the incompetence of such a protagonist.
People of that kind are especially dangerous because they do not want to participate in the movement as ordinary members. They talk rather of the leading positions which would be the only fitting posts for them in view of their past work, and also so that they might be enabled to carry on that work further. But woe to a young movement if the conduct of it should fall into the hands of such people. A businessman who has been in charge of a great firm for forty years and who has completely ruined it through his mismanagement is not the kind of person one would recommend for the founding of a new firm, and it is just the same with a new national movement.
Nobody of common sense would appoint to a leading post in such a movement, some Teutonic Methuselah who had been ineffectively preaching some idea for a period of forty years until himself and his idea had entered the stage of senile decay. Furthermore, only a very small percentage of such people join a new movement with the intention of serving its end unselfishly, and helping in the spread of its principles. In most cases, they come because they think that, under the aegis of the new movement, it will be possible for them to promulgate their old ideas to the misfortune of their new listeners.
Anyhow, nobody ever seems able to describe what exactly these ideas are. It is typical of such persons that they rant about ancient Teutonic heroes of the dim and distant ages, stone axes, battle spears, and shields, whereas in reality, they themselves are the woefulest paltroons imaginable. For those very same people who brandished Teutonic tin swords that have been fashioned carefully according to ancient models and wear padded bear skins with the horns of oxen mounted over their bearded faces, proclaim that all contemporary conflicts must be decided by the weapons of the mind alone, and thus they skedaddle when the first communist cudgel appears.
Posterity will have little occasion to write a new epic on these heroic gladiators. I have seen too much of that kind of people not to feel a profound contempt for their miserable play acting. To the masses of the nation, they are just an object of ridicule. But the Jew finds it to his own interest to treat these folklore comedians with respect and to prefer them to real men who are fighting to establish a German state. And yet these comedians are extremely proud of themselves, Notwithstanding their complete fecklessness, which is an established fact, they pretend to know everything better than other people.
So much so that they make themselves a veritable nuisance to all sincere and honest patriots, to whom not only the heroism of the past is worthy of honor, but who also feel bound to leave examples of their own work for the inspiration of the coming generation. Among those people, there were some whose conduct can be explained by their innate stupidity and incompetence. But there are others who have a definite ulterior purpose in view. Often, it is difficult to distinguish between the two classes. The impression which I often get, especially of those so called religious reformers whose creed is grounded on ancient Germanic customs, is that they are the missionaries and prodigies of those forces which do not wish to see a national revival taking place in Germany.
All their activities tend to turn the attention of the people away from the necessity of fighting together in a common cause against the common enemy, namely the Jew. Moreover, that kind of preaching induces the people to use up their energies, not in fighting for the common cause, but in absurd and ruinous religious controversies within their own ranks. There are definite grounds that make it absolutely necessary for the movement to be dominated by a strong central force, which is embodied in the authoritative leadership. In this way alone, it is possible to counteract the activity of such fatal elements, and that is just the reason why these folklore, Ahasuerus', are vigorously hostile to any movement whose members are firmly united under one leader and one discipline.
Those people of whom I have spoken hate such a movement because it is capable of putting a stop to their mischief. It was not without good reason that when we laid down a clearly defined program for the new movement, we excluded the word from it. The concept underlying the term cannot serve as the basis of a movement because it is too indefinite and general in its application. Therefore, if somebody called himself Fulkish, such a designation could not be taken as the hallmark of some definite party affiliation. Because the concept is so indefinite from the practical viewpoint, it gives rise to various interpretations, and thus, people can appeal to it all the more easily as a sort of personal recommendation.
Whenever such a vague concept, which is subject to so many interpretations, is admitted into a political movement, it tends to break up the discipline solidarity of the fighting forces. No such solidarity can be maintained if each individual member be allowed to define for himself what he believes and what he is willing to do. One feels it a disgrace when one notices the kind of people who float about nowadays with the Firkish symbol stuck in their buttonholes, and at the same time, to notice how many people have various ideas of their own as to the significance of that symbol.
A well known professor in Bavaria, a famous combatant who fights only with the weapons of the mind and who boasts of having marched against Berlin by shouldering the weapons of the mind, of course, believes that the word is synonymous with monarchical. But this learned authority has hitherto neglected to explain how our German monarchs of the past can be identified with what we generally mean by the term today. I'm afraid he will find himself at a loss if he is asked to give a precise answer. For it would be very difficult indeed to imagine anything less than most of those German monarchical states were.
Had they been otherwise, they would not have disappeared. Or if they were folkish, then the fact of their downfall may be taken as evidence that the forkish outlook on the world, is a false outlook. Everybody interprets this concept in his own way, But such multifarious opinions cannot be adopted as the basis of a militant political movement. I need not call attention to the absolute lack of worldly wisdom and especially the failure to understand the soul of the nation, which is displayed by these messianic precursors of the twentieth century. Sufficient attention has been called to those people by the ridicule which the left wing parties have bestowed on them.
They allow them to babble on and sneer at them. I do not set much value on the friendship of people who do not succeed in getting disliked by their enemies. Therefore, we consider the friendship of such people as not only worthless, but even dangerous to our young movement. That was the principal reason why we first called ourselves a party. We hoped that by giving ourselves such a name, we might scare away a whole host of Volkisch dreamers, and that was the reason also why we named our party the National Socialist German Labour Party.
The first term party kept away all those dreamers who live in the past and all the lovers of bombastic nomenclature, as well as those who went around beating the big drum for the folkish idea. The full name of the party kept away all those heroes whose weapon is the sword of the spirit, and all those whining poltroons who take refuge behind their so called intelligence, as if it were a kind of shield. It was only to be expected that this latter class would launch a mass attack against us after our movement had started. But, of course, it was only a pen and ink attack, for the goose quill is the only weapon which these folkish lancers wield.
We had declared one of our principles thus. We shall meet violence with violence in our own defense. Naturally, that principle disturbed the equanimity of the knights of the pen. They reproached us bitterly, not only for what they called our crude worship of the cudgel, but also because, according to them, we had no intellectual forces on our side. These charlatans did not think for a moment that a Demosthenes could be reduced to silence at a mass meeting by 50 idiots who had come there to shout him down and use their fists against his supporters.
The innate cowardice of the pen and ink charlatan prevents him from exposing himself to such a danger, for he always works in safe retirement and never dares to make a noise or come forward in public. Even today, I must warn the members of our young movement in the strongest possible terms, to guard against the danger of falling into the snare of those who call themselves silent workers. These silent workers are not only a white livered lot, but are also, and always will be, ignorant do nothings. A man who is aware of certain happenings, and knows that a certain danger threatens, and at the same time sees a certain remedy which can be employed against it, is in duty bound not to work in silence, but to come out into the open and publicly fight for the destruction of the evil and the acceptance of his own remedy.
If he does not do so, then he is neglecting his duty and shows that he is weak in character and that he fails to act either because of his timidity or indolence or incompetence. Most of these silent workers generally pretend to know God knows what. Not one of them is capable of any real achievement, but they keep on trying to fool the world with their antics. Though quite indolent, they try to create the impression that their silent work keeps them very busy. To put it briefly, they are sheer swindlers, political jobbers who feel chagrined by the honest work which others are doing.
When you find one of these folkish moths buzzing over the value of his silent work, You may be sure that you are dealing with a fellow who does no productive work at all, but steals from others the fruits of their honest labor. In addition to all this, one ought to note the arrogance and conceited impudence with which these obscure antist idlers try to tear to pieces the work of other people, criticizing it with an air of superiority, and thus playing into the hands of the mortal enemy of our people. Even the simplest follower who has the courage to stand on the table in some beer hall where his enemies are gathered, unmanfully and openly defend his position against them, achieves a thousand times more than these stinking hypocrites.
He, at least, will convert one or two people to believe in the movement. One can examine his work and test its effectiveness by its actual results. But those knavish swindlers who praise their own silent work and shelter themselves under the cloak of anonymity are just worthless drones in the truest sense of the term and are utterly useless for the purpose of our national reconstruction. In the beginning of 1920, I put forward the idea of holding our first mass meeting. On this proposal, there were differences of opinion amongst us. Some leading members of our party thought that the time was not right for such a meeting, and that the result might be detrimental.
The press of the left had begun to take notice of us, and we were lucky enough in being able gradually to arouse their wrath. We had begun to appear at other meetings and to ask questions or contradict the speakers with the natural result that we were shouted down forthwith, but still we thereby gained some of our ends. People began to know of our existence, and the better they understood us, the stronger became their aversion and their enmity. Therefore, we might expect that a large contingent from our friends from the red camp would attend our first mass meeting. I fully realized that our meeting would probably be broken up, but we had to face the fight.
If not now, then some months later. Since the first day of our foundation, we were resolved to secure the future of the movement by fighting our way forward in a spirit of blind faith and ruthless determination. I was well acquainted with the mentality of those who belong to the red camp, And I knew quite well that if we opposed them tooth and nail, not only would we make an impression on them, but that we might even win new followers for ourselves. Therefore, I felt that we must decide on a policy of active opposition.
Herr Hauer was then the chairman of our party. He did not see eye to eye with me as to the opportune time for our first mass meeting. Accordingly, he felt himself obliged to resign from the leadership of the movement as an upright and honest man. Her Anton Drexler took his place. I kept the work of organizing the propaganda in my own hands, and I listened to no compromise in carrying it out. We decided on 02/24/1920 as the date for our first great popular meeting to be held under the aegis of this movement, which was hitherto unknown. I made all the preparatory arrangements personally.
They did not take very long. The whole apparatus of our organization was set in motion for the purpose of being able to secure a rapid decision as to our policy. Within twenty four hours, we had to decide on the attitude we should take in regard to the questions of the day which would be put forward at the mass meeting. The notices which advertised the meeting had to bring these points before the public. In this direction, we were forced to depend on the use of posters and leaflets, the contents of which and the manner in which they were displayed were decided upon in accordance with the principles which I have already laid down in dealing with propaganda in general.
They were produced in a form which would appeal to the crowd. They concentrated on a few points which were repeated again and again. The text was concise and definite, an absolutely dogmatic form of expression being used. We distributed these posters and leaflets with a dogged energy, and then we patiently waited for the effect they would produce. For our principal color, we chose red as it has an exciting effect on the eye and was therefore calculated to arouse the attention of our opponents and irritate them. Thus, they would have to take notice of us whether they liked it or not, and would not forget us.
One result of our tactics was to show up clearly the close political fraternization that existed also here in Bavaria between the Marxists and the center party. The political party that held power in Bavaria, which was the Bavarian People's Party affiliated with the center party, did its best to counteract the effect which our placards were having on the red masses. Thus, they made a definite step to fetter our activities. If the police could find no other grounds for prohibiting our placards, then they might claim that we were disturbing the traffic in the streets.
And thus, the so called German National People's Party calm the anxieties of their red allies by completely prohibiting those placards which proclaimed a message that was bringing back to the bosom of their own people hundreds of thousands of workers who had been misled by international agitators and incensed against their own nation. These placards bear witness to the bitterness of the struggle in which this young movement was then engaged. Future generations will find in these placards a documentary proof of our determination and the justice of our own cause.
And these placards will also prove how the so called national officials took arbitrary action to strangle a movement that did not please them because it was nationalizing the broad masses of the people and winning them back to their own racial stock. These placards will also help to refute the theory that there was then a national government in Bavaria, and they will afford documentary confirmation of the fact that if Bavaria remained nationally minded during the years 1919, 1920, '21, '22, and '23, this was not due to a national government, but it was because the national spirit gradually gained a deeper hold on the people, and the government was forced to follow public feeling.
The government authorities themselves did everything in their power to hamper this process of recovery and make it impossible. But in this connection, two officials must be mentioned as outstanding exceptions. Ernst Perna was chief of police at the time. He had a loyal counselor, doctor Frick, who was his chief executive official. These were the only men among the higher officials who had the courage to place the interests of their country before their own interests in holding on to their jobs. Of those in responsible positions, Ernst Poner was the only one who did not pay court to the mob, but felt that his duty was towards the nation as such and was ready to risk and sacrifice everything, even his personal livelihood, to help in the restoration of the German people, whom he dearly loved.
For that reason, he was a bitter thorn in the side of the venal group of government officials. It was not the interests of the nation or the necessity of a national revival that inspired or directed their conduct. They simply truckled to the wishes of the government, so as to secure their daily bread for themselves. But they had no thought whatsoever for the national welfare that had been entrusted to their care. Above all, Perna was one of those people who, in contradistinction to the majority of our so called defenders of the authority of the State, did not fear to incur the enmity of the traitors to the country and the nation, but rather courted it as a mark of honor and honesty.
For such men, the hatred of the Jews and Marxists, and the lies and calumnies they spread, were their only source of happiness in the midst of the national misery. Perna was a man of granite loyalty. He was like one of the aesthetic characters of the classical era, and was at the same time that kind of straightforward German to whom the saying better dead than a slave is not an empty phrase, but a veritable heart's cry. In my opinion, he and his collaborator, doctor Frick, are the only men holding positions then in Bavaria who have the right to be considered as having taken an active part in the creation of a national Bavaria.
Before holding our first great mass meeting, it was necessary not only to have our propaganda material ready, but also to have the main items of our program printed. In the second volume of this book, I shall give a detailed account of the guiding principles which we then followed in drawing up our program. Here, I will only say that the program was arranged not merely to set forth the form and content of the young movement, but also with an eye to making it understood among the broad masses. The so called intellectual circles made jokes and sneered at it and then tried to criticize it.
But the effect of our program proved that the ideas which we then held were right. During those years, I saw dozens of new movements arise and disappear without leaving a trace behind. Only one movement has survived. It is the National Socialist German Labour Party. Today, I am more convinced than ever before that though they may combat us and try to paralyze our movement, and though petty fogging party ministers may forbid us the right of free speech, they cannot prevent the triumph of our ideas. When the present system of state administration and even the names of the political parties that represent it will be forgotten, The programmatic basis of the National Socialist Movement will supply the groundwork on which the future state will be built.
The meetings which we held before January 1920 had enabled us to collect the financial means that were necessary to have our first pamphlets and posters and programs printed. I shall bring the first part of this book to a close by referring to our first great mass meeting because that meeting marked the occasion on which our framework as a small party had to be broken up, and we started to become the most powerful factor of this epoch in the influence we exercised on public opinion. At that time, my chief anxiety was that we might not fill the hall and that we might have to face empty benches.
I myself was firmly convinced that if only the people would come, this day would turn out a great success for the young movement. That was my feeling as I waited impatiently for the hour to come. It had been announced that the meeting would begin at 07:30. A quarter of an hour before the opening time, I walked through the chief hall of the Hofbrauhaus on the Platz in Munich, and my heart was nearly bursting with joy. The great hall, for at that time, it seemed very big to me, was filled to overflowing. Nearly 2,000 people were present.
And above all, those people had come whom we had always wished to reach. More than half the audience consisted of persons who seemed to be communists or independents. Our first great demonstration was destined, in their view, to come to an abrupt end, but things happened otherwise. When the first speaker had finished, I got up to speak. After a few minutes, I was met with a hailstorm of interruptions, and violent encounters broke out in the body of the hall. A handful of my loyal war comrades and some other followers grappled with the disturbers and restored order in a little while.
I was able to continue my speech. After half an hour, the applause began to drown the interruptions and the hootings. Then interruptions gradually ceased, and applause took their place. When I finally came to explain the 25 points and laid them point after point before the masses gathered there and asked them to pass their own judgment on each point. One point after another was accepted with increasing enthusiasm. When the last point was reached, I had before me a hall full of people united by a new conviction, a new faith, and a new will.
Nearly four hours had passed when the hall began to clear. As the masses streamed towards the exits, crammed shoulder to shoulder, shoving and pushing, I knew that a movement was now set a foot among the German people which would never pass into oblivion. A fire was enkindled from whose glowing heat the sword would be fashioned, which would restore freedom to the German Siegfried and bring back life to the German nation. Beside the revival which I then foresaw, I also felt that the goddess of vengeance was now getting ready to redress the treason of the November 9.
The hall was emptied. The movement was on the march. The end.
File 58. It was probably the very parliamentarian skill displayed by the chief of the navy during the years of peace, which later became the cause of the fatal collapse since parliamentarian considerations had begun to play a more important role in the construction of the navy than fighting considerations. The irresolution, the weakness, and the failure to adopt a logically consistent policy, which is typical of the parliamentary system, contaminated the naval authorities. As I have already emphasized, the military authorities did not allow themselves to be led astray by such fundamentally erroneous ideas.
Ludendorff, who was then a colonel in the general staff, led a desperate struggle against the criminal vacillations with which the Reichstag treated the most vital problems of the nation, and in most cases, voted against them. If the fight which this officer then waged remained unsuccessful, this must be debited to the parliament and partly also to the wretched and weak attitude of the chancellor, Bettman Holveg. Yet those who are responsible for Germany's collapse do not hesitate now to lay all the blame on the shoulders of the one man who took a firm stand against the neglectful manner in which the interests of the nation were managed. But one falsehood more or less makes no difference to these congenital trick sters. Anybody who thinks of all the sacrifices which this nation has had to bear as a result of the criminal neglect of those irresponsible individuals, anybody who thinks of the number of those who died or were maimed unnecessarily, anybody who thinks of the deplorable shame and dishonor which has been heaped upon us, and of the illimitable distress into which our people are now plunged.
Anybody who realizes that in order to prepare the way to a few seats in parliament for some unscrupulous place hunters and arrivists will understand that such hirelings can be called by no other name than that of rascal and criminal. For, otherwise, those words could have no meaning. In comparison with traitors who betrayed the nation's trust, every other kind of twister may be looked upon as an honorable man. It was a peculiar feature of the situation that all the real faults of the old Germany were exposed to the public gaze only when the inner solidarity of the nation could be injured by doing so.
Then, indeed, unpleasant truths were openly proclaimed in the ears of the broad masses, while many other things were at times shamefully hushed up or their existence simply denied, especially at times when an open discussion of such problems might have led to an improvement in their regard. The higher government authorities knew little or nothing of the nature and use of propaganda in such matters. Only the Jew knew that by an able and persistent use of propaganda, heaven itself can be presented to the people as if it were hell, and vice versa, the most miserable kind of life can be presented as if it were paradise.
The Jew knew this and acted accordingly, but the German, or rather his government, did not have the slightest suspicion of it. During the war, the heaviest of penalties had to be paid for that ignorance. Over against the innumerable drawbacks which I have mentioned here and which affected German life before the war, there were many outstanding features on the positive side. If we take an impartial survey, we must admit that most of our drawbacks were in great measure prevalent also in other countries and among the other nations, and very often in a worse form than with us.
Whereas among us, there were many real advantages which the other did not have. The leading phase of Germany's superiority arose from the fact that almost alone among all the other European nations, the German nation had made the strongest effort to preserve the national character of its economic structure, and for this reason was less subject than other countries to the power of international finance. Though, indeed, there were many untoward symptoms in this regard also. And yet, this superiority was a perilous one and turned out later to be one of the chief causes of the World War. But even if we disregard this advantage of national independence in economic matters, there were certain other positive features of our social and political life which were of outstanding excellence.
These features were represented by three institutions which were constant sources of regeneration. In their respective spheres, they were models of perfection and were partly unrivaled. The first of these was the stateful form as such and the manner in which it had been developed for Germany in modern times. Of course, we must accept those monarchs who, as human beings, were subject to the failings which afflict this life and its children. If we were not so tolerant in these matters, then the case of the present generation would be hopeless.
For if we take into consideration the personal capabilities and character of the representative figures in our present regime, it would be difficult to imagine a more modest level of intelligence and moral character. If we measure the value of the German revolution by the personal worth and caliber of the individuals whom this revolution has presented to the German people since November 1918, then we may feel ashamed indeed in thinking of the judgment which posterity will pass on these people when the law for the protection of the republic can no longer silence public opinion.
Coming generations will surely decide that the intelligence and integrity of our new German leaders were in adverse ratio to their boasting and their vices. It must be admitted that the monarchy had become alien in spirit to many citizens and especially the broad masses. This resulted from the fact that the monarchs were not always surrounded by the highest intelligence, so to say, and certainly not always by persons of the most upright character. Unfortunately, many of them preferred flatterers to honest spoken men, and hence received their information from the former.
This was a source of grave danger at a time when the world was passing through a period in which many of the old conditions were changing and when this change was affecting even the traditions of the court. The average man or woman could not have felt a wave of enthusiasm surging within the breast when, for example, at the turn of the century, a princess in uniform and on horseback had the soldiers file past her on parade. Those high circles had apparently no idea of the impression which such a parade made on the minds of ordinary people. Else, such unfortunate occurrences would not have taken place.
The sentimental humanitarianism, not always very sincere, which was professed in those high circles, was often more repulsive than attractive. When, for instance, the princess x condescended to taste the products of a soup kitchen and found them excellent as usual. Such a gesture might have made an excellent impression in times long past. But on this occasion, it had the opposite effect to what was intended. For even if we take it for granted that her highness did not have the slightest idea that on the day she sampled it, the food was not quite the same as on other days, It sufficed that the people knew it.
Even the best of intentions thus became an object of ridicule or a cause of exasperation. Descriptions of the proverbial frugality practiced by the monarch, his much too early rise in the morning, and the drudgery he had to go through all day long until late at night, and especially the constantly expressed fears lest he might become undernourished. All this gave rise to ominous expression on the part of the people. Nobody was keen to know what and how much the monarch ate or drank. Nobody grudged him a full meal or the necessary amount of sleep. Everybody was pleased when the monarch, as a man and a personality, brought honor on his family and his country and fulfilled his duties as a sovereign.
All the legends which were circulated about him helped little and did much damage. File 59. These and such things, however, are only mere Bagatel. What was much worse was the feeling which spread throughout large sections of the nation, that the affairs of the individual were being taken care of from above and that he did not need to bother himself with them. As long as the government was really good, or at least moved by goodwill, no serious objections could be raised. But the country was destined to disaster when the old government, which had at least striven for the best, became replaced by a new regime which was not of the same quality.
Then the docile obedience and infantile credulity which formerly offered no resistance was bound to be one of the most fatal evils that can be imagined. But against these and other defects, there were certain qualities which undoubtedly had a positive effect. First of all, the monarchical form of government guarantees stability in the direction of public affairs and safeguards public offices from the speculative turmoil of ambitious politicians. Furthermore, the venerable tradition which this institution possesses arouses a feeling which gives weight to the monarchical authority.
Beyond this, there is the fact that the whole core of officials and the army in particular are raised above the level of political party obligations. And still another positive feature was that the supreme rulership of the state was embodied in the monarch as an individual person who could serve as the symbol of responsibility, which a monarch has to bear more seriously than any anonymous parliamentary majority. Indeed, the proverbial honesty and integrity of the German administration must be attributed chiefly to this fact. Finally, the monarchy fulfilled a high cultural function among the German people, which made amends for many of its defects.
The German residential cities have remained even to our time, centers of that artistic spirit which now threatens to disappear and is becoming more and more materialistic. The German princes gave a great deal of excellent and practical encouragement to art and science, especially during the nineteenth century. Our present age certainly has nothing of equal worth. During that process of disintegration, which was slowly extending throughout the social order, the most positive force of resistance was that offered by the army. This was the strongest source of education which the German people possessed.
For that reason, all the hatred of our enemies was directed against the paladin of our national self preservation and our liberty. The strongest testimony in favor of this unique institution is the fact that it was derided, hated, and fought against, but also feared by worthless elements all round. The fact that the international profiteers who gathered at Versailles further to exploit and plunder the nations, directed their enmity especially against the old German army, proved once again that it deserved to be regarded as the institution which protected the liberties of our people against the forces of the International Stock Exchange.
If the army had not been there to sound the alarm and stand on guard, the purposes of the Versailles representatives would have been carried out much sooner. There is only one word to express what the German people owe to this army. Everything. It was the army that still inculcated a sense of responsibility among the people when this quality had become very rare and when the habit of shirking every kind of responsibility was steadily spreading. This habit had grown up under the evil influences of parliament, which was itself the very model of irresponsibility.
The army trained the people to personal courage at a time when the virtue of timidity threatened to become an epidemic, and when the spirit of sacrificing one's personal interests for the good of the community was considered as something that amounted almost to weak mindedness. At a time when only those were estimated as intelligent who knew how to safeguard and promote their own egotistic interests. The army was the school through which individual Germans were taught not to seek the salvation of their nation in the false ideology of international fraternization between Negroes, Germans, Chinese, French, and English, etcetera, but in the strength and unity of their own national being.
The army developed the individual's powers of resolute decision, and this at a time when a spirit of indecision and skepticism governed human conduct. At a time when the wise acres were everywhere setting the fashion, it needed courage to uphold the principles that any command is better than none. This one principle represents a robust and sound style of thought of which not a trace would have been left in the other branches of life if the army had not furnished a constant rejuvenation of this fundamental force? A sufficient proof of this may be found in the appalling lack of decision which our present government authorities display.
They cannot shake off their mental and moral lethargy and decide on some definite line of action, except when they are forced to sign some new dictate for the exploitation of the German people. In that case, they decline all responsibility, while at the same time, they sign everything which the other side places before them, and they sign with all the readiness of an official stenographer. Their conduct is here explicable on the ground that in this case, they are not under the necessity of coming to a decision, for the decision is dictated to them.
The army imbued its members with a spirit of idealism and developed their readiness to sacrifice themselves for their country and its honor, while greed and materialism dominated in all other branches of life. The army united a people who were split up into classes, and in this respect had only one defect, which was the one year military service, a privilege granted to those who had passed through the high schools. It was a defect because the principle of absolute equality was thereby violated, and those who had a better education were thus placed outside the cadres to which the rest of their comrades belonged.
The reverse would have been better. Since our upper classes were really ignorant of what was going on in the body corporate of the nation and were becoming more and more estranged from the life of the people, the army would have accomplished a very beneficial mission if it had refused to discriminate in favor of the so called intellectuals, especially within its own ranks. It was a mistake that this was not done. But in this world of ours, can we find any institution that has not at least one defect? And in the army, the good features were so absolutely predominant that the few defects it had were far below the average that generally arises from human weakness.
But the greatest credit which the army of the old empire deserves is that at a time when the person of the individual counted for nothing and the majority was everything, It placed individual personal values above majority values. By insisting on its faith in personality, the army opposed that typically Jewish and democratic apotheosis of the power of numbers. The army trained what at that time was most surely needed, namely real men. In a period when men were falling prey to effeminacy and laxity, 350,000 vigorously trained young men went from the ranks of the army each year to mingle with their fellow men.
In the course of their two years training, they had lost the softness of their young days and had developed bodies as tough as steel. The young man who had been taught obedience for two years was now fitted to command. The trained soldier could be recognized already by his walk. This was the great school of the German nation, and it was not without reason that it drew upon its head all the bitter hatred of those who wanted the empire to be weak and defenseless, because they were jealous of its greatness, and were themselves possessed by a spirit of rapacity and greed.
The rest of the world recognized a fact which many Germans did not wish to see, either because they were blind to facts or because out of malice they did not wish to see it. This fact was that the German army was the most powerful weapon for the defense and freedom of the German nation and the best guarantee for the livelihood of its citizens. There was a third institution of positive worth, which has to be placed beside that of the monarchy and the army, and this was the civil service. German administration was better organized and better carried out than the administration of other countries.
There may have been objections to the bureaucratic routine of the officials, but from this point of view, the state of affairs was similar, if not worse, in other countries. But the other states did not have the wonderful solidarity which this organization possessed in Germany, nor were there civil servants of that same high level of scrupulous honesty. It is certainly better to be a trifle over bureaucratic and honest and loyal than to be over sophisticated and modern. The latter often implying an inferior type of character and also ignorance and inefficiency.
For if it be insinuated today that the German administration of the pre war period may have been excellent so far as bureaucratic technique goes, but that from the practical business point of view, it was incompetent. I can only give the following reply. What other country in the world possessed a better organized and administered business enterprise than the German state railways, for instance? It was left to the revolution to destroy this standard organization until a time came when it was taken out of the hands of the nation and socialized in the sense which the founders of the republic had given to that word, namely making it subservient to the international stock exchange capitalists who were the wire pullers of the German revolution.
The most outstanding trait in the civil service and the whole body of the civil administration was its independence of the vicissitudes of government, the political mentality of which could exercise no influence on the attitude of the German state officials. Since the revolution, this situation has been completely changed. Efficiency and capability have been replaced by the test of party adherence, and independence of character and initiative are no longer appreciated as positive qualities in a public official. They rather tell against him.
The wonderful might and power of the old empire was based on the monarchical form of government, the army, and the civil service. On these three foundations rested that great strength which is now entirely lacking, namely the authority of the state. For the authority of the state cannot be based on the babbling that goes on in parliament or in the provincial diets and not upon laws made to protect the state or upon sentences passed by the law courts to frighten those who have had the hardihood to deny the authority of the state, but only on the general confidence which the management and administration of the community establishes among the people.
This confidence is, in its turn, nothing less than the result of an unshakable inner conviction that the government and administration of a country is inspired by disinterested and honest goodwill, and on the feeling that the spirit of the law is in complete harmony with the moral convictions of the people. In the long run, systems of government are not maintained by terrorism, but on the belief of the people in the merits and sincerity of those who administer and promote the public interests. Though it be true that in the period preceding the war, certain grave evils tended to infect and corrode the inner strength of the nation, it must be remembered that the other states suffered even more than Germany from these drawbacks.
And yet those other states did not fail and break down when the time of crisis came. If we remember further that those defects in pre war Germany were outweighed by great positive qualities, we shall have to look elsewhere for the effective cause of the collapse, and elsewhere it lay. The ultimate and most profound reason of the German downfall is to be found in the fact that the racial problem was ignored and that its importance in the historic development of nations was not grasped. For the events that take place in the life of nations are not due to chance, but are the natural results of the effort to conserve and multiply the species and the race.
Even though men may not be able consciously to picture to their minds the profound motives of their conduct. File 60. Chapter 11. Nation and race. There are certain truths which stand out so openly on the roadsides of life as it were that every passerby may see them. Yet because of their very obviousness, the general run of people disregard such truths, or at least they do not make them the object of any conscious knowledge. People are so blind to some of the simplest facts in everyday life that they are highly surprised when somebody calls attention to what everybody ought to know.
Examples of the Columbus egg lie around us in hundreds of thousands, but observers like Columbus are rare. Walking about in the garden of nature, most men have the self conceit to think that they know everything. Yet almost all are blind to one of the most outstanding principles that nature employs in her work. This principle may be called the inner isolation, which characterizes each and every living species on this Earth. Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life urge of nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law.
One may call it an iron law of nature, which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stalk with the stalk, the field mouse with the field mouse, the house mouse with the house mouse, the wolf with the she wolf, etcetera. Deviations from this law take place only in exceptional circumstances. This happens especially under the compulsion of captivity or when some other obstacle makes procreative intercourse impossible between individuals of the same species.
But then nature abhors such intercourse with all her might, and her protest is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that the hybrid is either sterile or the fecundity of its descendants is limited. In most cases, hybrids and their progeny are denied the ordinary powers of resistance to disease or the natural means of defense against outer attack. Such a dispensation of nature is quite logical. Every crossing between two breeds, which are not quite equal, results in a product which holds an intermediate place between the levels of the two parents. This means that the offspring will indeed be superior to the parent which stands in the biologically lower order of being, but not so high as the higher parent.
For this reason, it must eventually succumb in any struggle against the higher species. Such mating contradicts the will of nature towards the selective improvements of life in general. The favorable preliminary to this improvement is not to meet individuals of higher and lower orders of being, but rather to allow the complete triumph of the higher order. The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel. And if he does so, it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind.
For if such a law did not direct the process of evolution, then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all. This urge for the maintenance of the unmixed breed, which is a phenomenon that prevails throughout the whole of the natural world, results not only in the sharply defined outward distinction between one species and another, but also in the internal similarity of characteristic qualities which are peculiar to each breed or species. The fox remains always a fox. The goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger.
The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etcetera, with which the individual specimens are endowed. It would be impossible to find a fox which has a kindly and protective disposition towards geese just as no cat exists which has a friendly disposition towards mice. That is why the struggle between the various species does not arise from a feeling of mutual antipathy, but from hunger and love. In both cases, nature looks on calmly and is even pleased with what happens.
The struggle for the daily livelihood leaves behind in the rock everything that is weak or diseased or wavering, while the fight of the male to possess the female gives to the strongest the right or at least the possibility to propagate its kind. And this struggle is a means of furthering the health and powers of resistance in the species. Thus, it is one of the causes underlying the process of development towards a higher quality of being. If the case were different, the progressive process would cease, and even retrogression might set in.
Since the inferior always outnumber the superior, The former would always increase more rapidly if they possess the same capacities for survival and for the procreation of their kind. And the final consequence would be that the best in quality would be forced to proceed into the background. Therefore, a corrective measure in favor of the better quality must intervene. Nature supplies this by establishing rigorous conditions of life to which the weaker will have to submit and will thereby be numerically restricted. But even that portion which survives cannot indiscriminately multiply, for here a new and rigorous selection takes place according to strength and health.
If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one. Because in such a case, all her efforts throughout hundreds of thousands of years to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile. History furnishes us with innumerable instances that prove this law. It shows with startling clarity that whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race, the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard bearers of a higher culture. In North America, where the population is prevalently Teutonic, and where those elements intermingled with the inferior race only to a very small degree, we have a quality of mankind and a civilization which are different from those of Central And South America.
In these latter countries, the immigrants, who mainly belong to the Latin races, mated with the Aborigines, sometimes to a very large extent indeed. In this case, we have a clear and decisive example of the effect produced by the mixture of races. But in North America, the Teutonic element, which has kept its racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock, has come to dominate the American continent and will remain master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood.
In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following. A, the level of the superior race becomes lowered. B, physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the eternal creator, and as a sin, this act will be avenged. Man's effort to build up something that contradicts the iron logic of nature brings him into conflict with those principles to which he himself exclusively owes his own existence.
By acting against the laws of nature, he prepares the way that leads to his ruin. Here, we meet the insolent objection, which is Jewish in its inspiration and is typical of the modern pacifist. It says, man can control even nature. There are millions who repeat by rope that piece of Jewish babble and end up by imagining that somehow they are themselves the conquerors of nature. And yet their only weapon is just a mere idea and a very preposterous idea into the bargain. Because if one accepted it, then it would be impossible even to imagine the existence of the world.
The real truth is that not only has man failed to overcome nature in any sphere whatsoever, but that at best, he has merely succeeded in getting hold of and lifting lifting a tiny corner of the enormous veil which she has spread over her eternal mysteries and secret. He never creates anything. All he can do is to discover something. He does not master nature, but has only come to be master of those living beings who have not gained the knowledge he has arrived at by penetrating into some of nature's laws and mysteries. Apart from all this, an idea can never subject to its own sway those conditions which are necessary for the existence and development of mankind.
For the idea itself has come only from man. Without man, there would be no human idea in this world. The idea as such is therefore always dependent on the existence of man and consequently is dependent on those laws which furnish the conditions of his existence. And not only that, certain ideas are even confined to certain people. This holds true with regard to those ideas in particular which have not their roots in objective scientific truth, but in the world of feeling. In other words, to use a phrase which is current today and which well and clearly expresses this truth, they reflect an inner experience.
All such ideas which have nothing to do with cold logic as such, but represent mere manifestations of feeling, such as ethical and moral conceptions, etcetera, are inextricably bound up with man's existence. It is to the creative powers of man's imagination that such ideas owe their existence. Now then, a necessary condition for the maintenance of such ideas is the existence of certain races and certain types of men. For example, anyone who sincerely wishes that the pacifist idea should prevail in this world ought to do all he is capable of doing to help the Germans conquer the world. For in case the reverse should happen, it may easily be that the last pacifist would disappear with the last German.
I say this because, unfortunately, only our people and no other people in the world fell a prey to this idea. Whether you like it or not, you would have to make up your mind to forget wars if you would achieve the pacifist ideal. Nothing less than this was the plan of the American world redeemer Woodrow Wilson. Anyhow, that was what our visionaries believed, and they thought that through his plans, their ideals would be attained. File 61. The pacifist humanitarian idea may indeed become an excellent one when the most superior type of manhood will have succeeded in subjugating the world to such an extent that this type is then sole master of the earth.
This idea could have an injurious effect only in the measure according to which its application would become difficult and finally impossible. So first of all, the fight and then pacifism. If the case were different, it would mean that mankind has already passed the zenith of its development. And accordingly, the end would not be the supremacy of some moral ideal, but degeneration into barbarism and consequent chaos. People may laugh at this statement, but our planet has been moving through the spaces of ether for millions and millions of years, uninhabited by men, and at some future date may easily begin to do so again.
If men should forget that wherever they have reached a superior level of existence, it was not the result of following the ideas of crazy visionaries, but by acknowledging and rigorously observing the iron laws of nature. All that we admire in the world today, its science, its art, its technical development and discoveries, are the products of the creative activities of a few peoples, and it may be true that their first beginnings must be attributed to one race. The maintenance of civilization is wholly dependent on such peoples. Should they perish, all that makes this earth beautiful will descend with them into the grave.
However great, for example, be the influence which the soil exerts on men, this influence will always vary according to the race in which it produces its effect. Dearth of soil may stimulate one race to the most strenuous efforts and highest achievement. While for another race, the poverty of the soil may be the cause of misery and finally of under nourishment with all its consequences. The internal characteristics of a people are always the causes which determine the nature of the effect that outer circumstances have on them.
What reduces one race to starvation trains another race to harder work. All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the originally creative race died out as a result of contamination of the blood. The most profound cause of such a decline is to be found in the fact that the people ignore the principle that all culture depends on men and not the reverse. In other words, in order to preserve a certain culture, the type of manhood that creates such a culture must be preserved. But such a preservation goes hand in hand with the inexorable law that it is the strongest and best who must triumph, and that they have the right to endure.
He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world where permanent struggle is the law of life has not the right to exist. Such a saying may sound hard, but after all, that is how the matter really stands. Yet far harder is the lot of him who believes that he can overcome nature and thus, in reality, insults her. Distress, misery, and disease are her rejoinders. Whoever ignores or despises the laws of race really deprives himself of the happiness to which he believes he can attain. For he places an obstacle in the victorious path of the superior race, And by so doing, he interferes with a prerequisite condition of all human progress.
Loaded with the burden of humanitarian sentiment, he falls back to the level of those who are unable to raise themselves in the scale of being. It would be futile to attempt to discuss the question as to what race or races were the original standard bearers of human culture and were thereby the real founders of all that we understand by the word humanity. It is much simpler to deal with this question insofar as it relates to the present time. Here, the answer is simple and clear. Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science, and technical skill which we see before our eyes today is almost exclusively the product of the Aryan creative power.
This very fact fully justifies the conclusion that it was the Aryan alone who founded a superior type of humanity. Therefore, he represents the archetype of what we understand by the term man. He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed forth, always kindling anew that fire which, in the form of knowledge, illuminated the dark night by drawing aside the veil of mystery, and thus showing man how to rise and become master over all the other beings of the earth. Should he be forced to disappear, a profound darkness will descend on the earth.
Within a few thousand years, human culture will vanish, and the world will become a desert. If we divide mankind into three categories, founders of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture, The Aryan alone can be considered as representing the first category. It was he who laid the groundwork and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture. Only the shape and color of such structures are to be attributed to the individual characteristics of the various nations. It is the Aryan who has furnished the great building stones and plans for the edifices of all human progress.
Only the way in which these plans have been executed is to be attributed to the qualities of each individual race. Within a few decades, the whole of Eastern Asia, for instance, appropriated the culture and called such a culture its own, whereas the basis of that culture was the Greek mind and Teutonic skill as we know it. Only the external form, at least to a certain degree, shows the traits of an Asiatic inspiration. It is not true, as some believe, that Japan adds European technique to a culture of her own. The truth rather is that European science and techniques are just decked out with a peculiar characteristics of Japanese civilization.
The foundations of actual life in Japan today are not those of the native Japanese culture. Although, this characterizes the external features of the country, which features strike the eye of European observers on account of their fundamental difference from us. But the real foundations of contemporary Japanese life are the enormous scientific and technical achievements of Europe and America, that is to say of Aryan peoples. Only by adopting these achievements as the foundations of their own progress can the various nations of the Orient take a place in contemporary world progress. The scientific and technical achievements of Europe and America provide the basis on which the struggle for daily livelihood is carried on in the Orient.
They provide the necessary arms and instruments for this struggle, and only the outer forms of these instruments have become gradually adapted to Japanese ways of life. If from today onwards, the Aryan influence on Japan would cease, and if we suppose that Europe and America would collapse, then the present progress of Japan in science and technique might still last for a short duration. But within a few decades, the inspiration would dry up, and native Japanese character would triumph. While the present civilization would become fossilized and fall back into the sleep from which it was aroused about seventy years ago by the impact of Aryan culture.
We may therefore draw the conclusion that just as the present Japanese development has been due to Aryan influence, so in the immemorial past, an outside influence and an outside culture brought into existence the Japanese culture of that day. This opinion is very strongly supported by the fact that the ancient civilization of Japan actually became fossilized and petrified. Such a process of senility can happen only if a people loses the racial cell which originally had been creative or if the outside influence should be withdrawn after having awakened and maintained the first cultural developments in that region.
If it be shown that a people owes the fundamental elements of its culture to foreign races, assimilating and elaborating such elements, and if subsequently that culture becomes fossilized whenever the external influence ceases, then such a race may be called the depository, but never the creator of a culture. If we subject the different peoples to a strict test from this standpoint, we shall find that scarcely any one of them has originally created the culture, but almost all have been merely the recipients of a culture created elsewhere. This development may be depicted as always happening somewhat in the following way.
Aryan tribes, often almost ridiculously small in number, subjugated foreign peoples and stimulated by the conditions of life which their new country offered them, fertility, the nature of the climate, etcetera, and profiting also by the abundance of manual labor furnished them by the inferior race, they developed intellectual and organizing faculties which had hitherto been dormant in these conquering tribes. Within the course of a few thousand years or even centuries, they gave life to cultures whose primitive traits completely corresponded to the character of the founders, though modified by adaptation to the peculiarities of the soil and the characteristics of the subjugated people.
But finally, the conquering race offended against the principles which they first had observed, namely the maintenance of their racial stock unmixed, and they began to intermingle with the subjugated people. Thus, they put an end to their own separate existence, for the original sin committed in paradise has always been followed by the expulsion of the guilty parties. After a thousand years or more, the last visible traces of those former masters may then be found in a lighter tint of the skin which the Aryan blood had bequeathed to the subjugated race, and in a fossilized culture of which those Aryans had been the original creators.
For just as the blood of the conqueror, who was a conqueror not only in body, but also in spirit, got submerged in the blood of the subject race, so the substance disappeared out of which the torch of human culture and progress was kindled. Insofar as the blood of the former ruling race has left a light nuance of color in the blood of its descendants as a token and a memory, The night of cultural life is rendered less dim and dark by a mild light radiated from the products of those who were the bearers of the original fire. Their radiance shines across the barbarism to which the subjected race has reverted and might often lead the superficial observer to believe that he sees before him an image of the present race, when really he is looking into a mirror wherein only the past is reflected.
File 62. It may happen that in the course of its history, such a people will come into contact a second time and even oftener with the original founders of their culture and may not even remember that distant association. Instinctively, the remnants of blood left from that old ruling race will be drawn towards this new phenomenon. And what had formerly been possible only under compulsion can now be successfully achieved in a voluntary way. A new cultural wave flows in and lasts until the blood of its standard bearers becomes once again adulterated by intermixture with the originally conquered race.
It will be the task of those who set themselves to the study of a universal history of civilization to investigate history from this point of view instead of allowing themselves to be smothered under the mass of external data as is only too often the case with our present historical science. This short sketch of the changes that take place among those races that are only the depositories of a culture also furnishes a picture of the development and activity and the disappearance of those who are the true founders of culture on this earth, namely, the Aryans themselves.
Just as in our daily life, the so called man of genius needs a particular occasion and sometimes indeed a special stimulus to bring his genius to light, so too when the life of the peoples, the race that has genius in it, needs the occasion and stimulus to bring that genius to expression. In the monotony and routine of everyday life, even persons of significance seem just like the others and do not rise beyond the average level of their fellow men. But as soon as such men find themselves in a special situation which disconcerts and unbalances the others.
The humble person of apparently common qualities reveals traits of genius, often to the amazement of those who have hitherto known him in the small things of everyday life. That is the reason why a prophet only seldom counts for something in his own country. War offers an excellent occasion for observing this phenomenon. In times of distress, when the others despair, apparently harmless boys suddenly spring up and become heroes, full of determination, undaunted in the presence of death, and manifesting wonderful powers of calm reflection under such circumstances.
If such an hour of trial did not come, nobody would have thought that the soul of a hero lurked in the body of that beardless youth. A special impulse is almost always necessary to bring a man of genius into the foreground. The sledgehammer of fate which strikes down the one so easily finds the counter impact of steel when it strikes the other. And after the common shell of everyday life is broken, the core that lay hidden in it is displayed to the eyes of an astonished world. This surrounding world then grows obstinate and will not believe that what had seen so like itself is really of that different quality so suddenly displayed.
This is a process which is repeated probably every time a man of outstanding significance appears. Outstanding significance appears. Though an inventor, for example, does not establish his fame until the very day that he carries through his invention, it would be a mistake to believe that the creative genius did not come alive in him until that moment. From the very hour of his birth, the spark of genius is living within the man who has been endowed with a real creative faculty. True genius is an innate quality. It can never be the result of education or training.
As I have stated already, this holds good not merely of the individual, but also of the race. Those peoples who manifest creative abilities in certain periods of their history have always been fundamentally creative. It belongs to their very nature, even though this fact may escape the eyes of the superficial observer. Here also recognition from outside is the only consequence of practical achievement. Since the rest of the world is incapable of recognizing genius as such, It can only see the visible manifestations of genius in the form of inventions, discoveries, buildings, painting, etcetera.
But even here, a long time passes before recognition is given. Just as the individual person who has been endowed with the gift of genius, or at least talent of a very high order, cannot bring that endowment to realization until he comes under the urge of special circumstances. So in the life of the nations, the creative capacities and powers frequently have to wait until certain conditions stimulate them to action. The most obvious example of this truth is furnished by that race which has been and still is the standard bearer of human progress.
I mean, the Aryan race. As soon as fate brings them face to face with special circumstances, their powers begin to develop progressively and to be manifested in tangible form. The characteristic cultures which they create under such circumstances are almost always conditioned by the soil, the climate, and the people they subjugate. The last factor, that of the character of the people, is the most decisive one. The more primitive the technical conditions under which the civilizing activity takes place, the more necessary is the existence of manual labor, which can be organized and employed so as to take the place of mechanical power.
Had it not been possible for them to employ members of the inferior race which they conquered, the Aryans would never have been in a position to take the first steps on the road which led them to a later type of culture, just as without the help of certain suitable animals which they were able to tame, they would never have come to the invention of mechanical power which has subsequently enabled them to do without these beasts. The phrase, the moor has accomplished his function, so let him now depart, has, unfortunately, a profound application.
For thousands of years, the horse has been the faithful servant of man and has helped him to lay the foundations of human progress. But now, motor power has dispensed with the use of the horse. In a few years to come, the use of the horse will cease entirely, and yet without its collaboration, man could scarcely have come to the stage of development which he has now created. For the establishment of superior types of civilization, the members of inferior races formed one of the most essential prerequisites. They alone could supply the lack of mechanical means without which no progress is possible.
It is certain that the first stages of human civilization were not based so much on the use of tame animals as on the employment of human beings who were members of an inferior race. Only after subjugated races were employed as slaves was a similar fate allotted to animals and not vice versa as some people would have us believe. At first, it was the conquered enemy who had to draw the plow, and only afterwards did the ox and horse take his place. Nobody else but pulling pacifists can consider this fact as a sign of human degradation. Such people fail to recognize that this evolution had to take place in order that man might reach that degree of civilization which these apostles now exploit in an attempt to make the world pay attention to their rigmarole.
The progress of mankind may be compared to the process of ascending an infinite ladder. One does not reach the higher level without first having climbed the lower rungs. The Arian, therefore, had to take that road which his sense of reality pointed out to him, and not that which the modern pacifist dreams of. The path of reality is, however, difficult and hard to tread, Yet it is the only one which finally leads to the goal where the others envisage mankind in their dreams. But the real truth is that those dreamers help only to lead man away from his goal rather than towards it.
It was not by mere chance that the first forms of civilization arose there where the Aryan came into contact with inferior races, subjugated them, and forced them to obey his command. The members of the inferior race became the first mechanical tools in the service of a growing civilization. Thereby, the way was clearly indicated which the Aryan had to follow. As a conqueror, he subjugated inferior races and turned their physical powers into organized channels under his own leadership, forcing them to follow his will and purpose. By imposing on them a useful, though hard, manner of employing their powers, he not only spared the lives of those whom he had conquered, but probably made their lives easier than these had been in the former state of so called freedom.
While he ruthlessly maintained his position as their master, he not only remained master, but he also maintained an advanced civilization. For this depended exclusively on his inborn abilities and, therefore, on the preservation of the Aryan race as such. As soon, however, as his subject began to rise and approach the level of their conqueror, a phase of which ascension was probably the use of his language, the barriers that had distinguished master from servant broke down. The Aryan neglected to maintain his own racial stock unmixed, and therewith lost the right to live in the paradise which he himself had created.
He became submerged in the racial mixture and gradually lost his cultural creativeness until he finally grew, not only mentally, but also physically, more like the Aborigines whom he had subjected rather than his own ancestors. For some time, he could continue to live on the capital of that culture, which still remained, but a condition of fossilization soon set in, and he sank into oblivion. That is how cultures and empires decline and yield their places to new formations. The adulteration of the blood and racial deterioration condition thereby are the only causes that account for the decline of ancient civilizations.
For it is never by war that nations are ruined, but by the loss of their powers of resistance, which are exclusively a characteristic of pure racial blood. In this world, everything that is not of sound racial stock is like chaff. Every historical event in the world is nothing more nor less than a manifestation of the instinct of racial self preservation, whether for wheel or woe. File 63. The question is to the ground reasons for the predominant importance of Arianism can be answered by pointing out that it is not so much that the Aryans are endowed with a stronger instinct for self preservation, but rather that this manifests itself in a way which is peculiar to themselves.
Considered from the subjective standpoint, the will to live is, of course, equally strong all round, and only the forms in which it is expressed are different. Among the most primitive organisms, the instinct for self preservation does not extend beyond the care of the individual ego. Egotism, as we call this passion, is so predominant that it includes even the time element, which means that the present moment is deemed the most important, and that nothing is left to the future. The animal lives only for itself, searching for food only when it feels hunger and fighting only for the preservation of its own life.
As long as the instinct for self preservation manifests itself exclusively in such a way, there is no basis for the establishment of a community, not even the most primitive form of all, that is to say the family. The society formed by the male with the female, where it goes beyond the mere conditions of mating, calls for the extension of the instinct of self preservation since the readiness to fight for one's own ego has to be extended also to the mate. The male sometimes provides food for the female, but in most cases, both parents provide food for the offspring.
Almost always, they are ready to protect and defend each other, so that here we find the first, though infinitely simple, manifestation of the spirit of sacrifice. As soon as this spirit extends beyond the narrow limits of the family, we have the conditions under which larger associations and finally even states can be formed. The lowest species of human beings give evidence of this quality only to a very small degree so that often they do not go beyond the formation of the family society. With an increasing readiness to place their immediate personal interests in the background, the capacity for organizing more extensive communities develops.
The readiness to sacrifice one's personal work can, if necessary, even one's life for others shows its most highly developed form in the Aryan race. The greatness of the Aryan is not based on his intellectual powers, but rather on his willingness to devote all his faculties to the service of the community. Here, the instinct for self preservation has reached its noblest form. For the Aryan willingly subordinates his own ego to the common wheel, And when necessity calls, he will even sacrifice his own life for the community. The constructive powers of the Aryan and that peculiar ability he has for the building up of a culture are not grounded in his intellectual gifts alone.
If that were so, they might only be destructive and could never have the ability to organize. For the latter essentially depends on the readiness of the individual to renounce his own personal opinions and interests and to lay both at the service of the human group. By serving the common wheel, he receives his reward in return. For example, he does not work directly for himself, but makes his productive work a part of the activity of the group to which he belongs, not only for his own benefit, but for the general. The spirit underlying this attitude is expressed by the word work, which to him does not at all signify a means of earning one's daily livelihood, but rather a productive activity which cannot clash with the interests of the community.
Whenever human activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for self preservation, it is called theft or usury, robbery, or burglary, etcetera. This mental attitude, which forces self interest to proceed into the background in favor of the common wheel, is the first prerequisite for any kind of really human civilization. It is out of this spirit alone that the great human achievements have sprung for which the original doers have scarcely ever received any recompense, but which turns out to be the source of abundant benefit for their descendants. It is this spirit alone which can explain why it so often happens that people can endure a harsh but honest existence which offers them no returns for their toil except a poor and modest livelihood.
But such a livelihood helps to consolidate the foundations on which the community exists. Every worker and every peasant, every inventor, state official, etcetera, who works without ever achieving fortune or prosperity for himself, is a representative of this sublime idea, even though he may never become conscious of the profound meaning of his own activity. Everything that may be said of that kind of work, which is the fundamental condition of providing food and the basic means of human progress, is true, even in a higher sense of work that is done for the protection of man and his civilization. The renunciation of one's own life for the sake of the community is the crowning significance of the idea of all sacrifice.
In this way, only is it possible to protect what has been built up by man and to assure that this will not be destroyed by the hand of man or of nature. In the German language, we have a word which admirably expresses this underlying spirit of all work. It is, which means the service of the common will before the consideration of one's own interests. The fundamental spirit out of which this kind of activity springs is the contradistinction of egotism, and we call it idealism. By this, we mean to signify the willingness of the individual to make sacrifices for the community and his fellow men.
It is of the utmost importance to insist again and again that idealism is not merely a superfluous manifestation of sentiment, but rather something which has been, is, and always will be a necessary precondition of human civilization. It is even out of this that the very idea of the word human arises. To this kind of mentality, the Aryan owes his position in the world, and the world is indebted to the Aryan mind for having developed the concept of mankind. For it is out of this spirit alone that the creative force has come, which in a unique way combined robust muscular power with a first class intellect, and thus created the monuments of human civilization.
Were it not for idealism, all the faculties of the intellect, even the most brilliant, would be nothing but intellect itself, a mere external phenomenon without inner value, and never a creative force. Since true idealism, however, is essentially the subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the interests and life of the community, and since the community on its part represents the prerequisite condition of every form of organization, this idealism accords in its innermost essence with the final purposes of nature.
This feeling alone makes men voluntarily acknowledge that strength and power are entitled to take the lead, and thus makes them a constituent particle in that order out of which the whole universe is shaped and formed. Without being conscious of it, the purest idealism is always associated with the most profound knowledge. How true this is and how little genuine idealism has to do with fantastic self dramatization will become clear the moment we ask an unspoiled child, a healthy boy, for example, to give his opinion. The very same boy who listens to the rantings of an idealistic pacifist without understanding them and even rejects them would readily sacrifice his young life for the ideal of his people.
Unconsciously, his instinct will submit to the knowledge that the preservation of the species, even at the cost of the individual life, is a primal necessity. And he will protest against the fantasies of pacifist ranters, who in reality are nothing better than cowardly egoists, even though camouflaged, who contradict the laws of human development. For it is a necessity of human evolution that the individual should be imbued with the spirit of sacrifice in favor of the common wheel, and that he should not be influenced by the morbid notions of those knaves who pretend to know better than nature and who have the impudence to criticize her decrees.
It is just at those junctures when the idealistic attitude threatens to disappear that we notice a weakening of this force, which is a necessary constituent in the founding and maintenance of the community, and is thereby a necessary condition of civilization. As soon as the spirit of egotism begins to prevail among a people, then the bonds of the social order break, and man, by seeking his own personal happiness, veritably tumbles out of heaven and falls into hell. Posterity will not remember those who pursued only their own individual interests, but it will praise those heroes who renounce their own happiness.
The Jew offers the most striking contrast to the Arian. There is probably no other people in the world to have so developed the instinct of self preservation as the so called chosen people. The best proof of this statement is found in the simple fact that this race still exists. Where can another people be found that in the course of the last two thousand years has undergone so few changes in mental outlook and character as the Jewish people, and yet what other people has taken such a constant part in the great revolutions? But even after having passed through the most gigantic catastrophes that have overwhelmed mankind, the Jews remain the same as ever.
What an infinitely tenacious will to live, to preserve one's kind, is demonstrated by that fact. File 64. The intellectual faculties of the Jew have been trained through thousands of years. Today, the Jew is looked upon as specially cunning. And in a certain sense, he has been so throughout the ages. His intellectual powers, however, are not the result of an inner evolution, but rather have been shaped by the object lessons which the Jew has received from others. The human spirit cannot climb upwards without taking successive steps.
For every step upwards, it needs the foundation of what has been constructed before, the past, which in the comprehensive sense here employed, can have been laid only in a general civilization. All thinking originates only to a very small degree in personal experience. The largest part is based on the accumulated experiences of the past. The general level of civilization provides the individual, who in most cases is not consciously aware of the fact, with such an abundance of preliminary knowledge that with this equipment, he can more easily take further steps on the road of progress. The boy of today, for example, grows up among such an overwhelming mass of technical achievement which has accumulated during the last century that he takes as granted many things which a hundred years ago were still mysteries even to the greatest minds of those times.
Yet these things that are not so much a matter of course are of enormous importance to those who would understand the progress we have made in these matters, and would carry on that progress a step further. If a man of genius belonging to the twenties of the last century were to arise from his grave today, he would find it more difficult to understand our present age than the contemporary boy of 15 years of age who may even have only an average intelligence. The man of genius, thus come back from the past, would need to provide himself with an extraordinary amount of preliminary information which our contemporary youth receive automatically, so to speak, during the time they are growing up among the products of our modern civilization.
Since the Jew, for reasons that I shall deal with immediately, never had a civilization of his own, He has always been furnished by others with a basis for his intellectual work. His intellect has always developed by the use of those cultural achievements which he has found ready to hand around him. The process has never been the reverse. For though among the Jews the instinct of self preservation has not been weaker, but has been much stronger than among other peoples. And though the impression may easily be created that the intellectual powers of the Jew are at least equal to those of other races, the Jews completely lack the most essential prerequisite of a cultural people, namely the idealistic spirit.
With the Jewish people, the readiness for sacrifice does not extend beyond the simple instinct of individual preservation. In their case, the feeling of racial solidarity which they apparently manifest is nothing but a very primitive gregarious instinct similar to that which may be found among other organisms in this world. It is a remarkable fact that this herd instinct brings individuals together for mutual protection only as long as there is a common danger which makes mutual assistance expedient or inevitable. The same pack of wolves, which a moment ago joined together in a common attack on their victim, will dissolve into individual wolves as soon as their hunger has been satisfied.
This is also sure of horses, which unite to defend themselves against any aggressor, but separate the moment the danger is over. It is much the same with the Jew. His spirit of sacrifice is only apparent. It manifests itself only so long as the existence of the individual makes this a matter of absolute necessity. But as soon as the common foe is conquered, and the danger which threatened the individual Jews is overcome, and the prey secured, then the apparent harmony disappears, and the original conditions set in again. Jews act in Concord only when a common danger threatens them or a common prey attracts them.
Where these two motives no longer exist, then the most brutal egotism appears, and these people who before had lived together in unity will turn into a swarm of rats that bitterly fight against each other. If the Jews were the only people in the world, they would be wallowing in filth and mire, and would exploit one another and try to exterminate one another in a bitter struggle, except in so far as their utter lack of the ideal of sacrifice, which shows itself in their cowardly spirit, would prevent the struggle from developing. Therefore, it would be a complete mistake to interpret the mutual help which the Jews render one another when they have to fight, or to put it more accurately, to exploit their fellow being as the expression of a certain idealistic spirit of sacrifice.
Here again, the Jew merely follows the call of his individual egotism. That is why the Jewish state, which ought to be a vital organization to serve the purpose of preserving or increasing the race, has absolutely no territorial boundaries. For the territorial delimitation of a state always demands a certain idealism of spirit on the part of the race which forms that state, and especially a proper acceptance of the idea of work. A state which is territorially delimited cannot be established or maintained unless the general attitude towards work be a positive one. If this attitude be lacking, then the necessary basis of a civilization is also lacking.
That is why the Jewish people, despite the intellectual powers with which they are apparently endowed, have not a culture, certainly not a culture of their own. The culture which the Jew enjoys today is the product of the work of others, and this product is debased in the hands of the Jew. In order to form a correct judgment of the place which the Jew holds in relation to the whole problem of human civilization, we must bear in mind the essential fact that there never has been any Jewish art, and consequently, that nothing of this kind exists today.
We must realize that especially in those two royal domains of art, namely architecture and music. The Jew has done no original creative work. When the Jew comes to producing something in the field of art, he merely something already in existence or simply steals the intellectual word of others. The Jew essentially lacks those qualities which are characteristic of those creative races that are the founders of civilization. To what extent the Jew appropriates the civilization built up by others, or rather corrupts it, to speak more accurately, is indicated by the fact that he cultivates chiefly the art which calls for the smallest amount of original invention, namely the dramatic art.
And even here, he is nothing better than a kind of juggler, or perhaps more correctly speaking, a kind of monkey imitator. For in this domain also, he lacks the creative which is necessary for the production of all really great work. Even here, therefore, he is not a creative genius, but rather a superficial imitator, who, in spite of all his retouching and tricks, cannot disguise the fact that there is no inner vitality in the shape he gives his products. At this juncture, the Jewish press comes in and renders friendly assistance by shouting hosannas above the head of even the most ordinary bungler of a Jew, until the rest of the world is stampeded into thinking that the object of so much praise must really be an artist, whereas in reality, he may be nothing more than a low class mimic.
No. The Jews have not the creative abilities which are necessary to the founding of a civilization. For in them, there is not and never has been that spirit of idealism which is an absolutely necessary element in the higher development of mankind. Therefore, the Jewish intellect will never be constructive, but always destructive. At best, it may serve as a stimulus in rare cases, but only within the meaning of the poet's lines. The power which always wills the bad, and always works the good. It is not through his help, but in spite of his help, that mankind makes any progress.
Since the Jew has never had a state which was based on territorial delimitations, and therefore, never a civilization of his own. The idea arose that we were here dealing with a people who have to be considered as nomads. That is a great and mischievous mistake. The true nomad does actually possess a definite delimited territory where he lives. It is merely that he does not cultivate it as the settled farmer does, but that he lives on the products of his herds with which he wanders over his domain. The natural reason for this mode of existence is to be found in the fact that the soil is not fertile, and that it does not give the steady produce which makes a fixed abode possible.
Outside of this natural cause, however, there is a more profound cause, namely, that no mechanical civilization is at hand to make up for the natural poverty of the region in question. There are territories where the Aryan can establish fixed settlements by means of the technical skill which he has developed in the course of more than a thousand years, even though these territories would otherwise have to be abandoned unless the Aryan were willing to wander about them in nomadic fashion, but his technical tradition and his age long experience of the use of technical means would probably make the nomadic life unbearable for him.
We ought to remember that during the first period of American colonization, numerous Aryan earned their daily livelihood as trappers and hunters, etcetera, frequently wandering about in large groups with their women and children, their mode of existence very much resembling that of ordinary nomads. The moment, however, that they grew more numerous and were able to accumulate larger resources, they cleared the land and drove out the aborigines, at the same time establishing settlements which rapidly increased all over the country.
The Aryan himself was probably at first a nomad and became a settler in the course of ages, but yet he was never of the Jewish kind. The Jew is not a nomad, for the nomad has already a definite attitude towards the concept of work, and this attitude served as the basis of a later cultural development when the necessary intellectual conditions were at hand. There is a certain amount of idealism in the general attitude of the nomad even though it be rather primitive. His whole character may, therefore, be foreign to Arian feeling, but it will never be repulsive.
But not even the slightest trace of idealism exists in the Jewish character. The Jew has never been a nomad, but always a parasite, battening on the substance of others. If he occasionally abandoned regions where he had hitherto lived, he did not do it voluntarily. He did it because from time to time, he was driven out by people who were tired of having their hospitality abused by such guests. Jewish self expansion is a parasitic phenomenon since the Jew is always looking for new pastures for his race. File 65. But this has nothing to do with nomadic life as such because the Jew does not ever think of leaving a territory which he has once occupied.
He sticks where he is with such tenacity that he can hardly be driven out even by superior physical force. He expands into new territories only when certain conditions for his existence are provided therein. But even then, unlike the nomad, he will not change his former abode. He is and remains a parasite, a sponger who, like a pernicious bacillus, spreads over wider and wider areas according as some favorable area retracts him. The effect produced by his presence is also like that of the vampire. For wherever he establishes himself, the people who grant him hospitality are bound to be bled to death sooner or later.
Thus, the Jew has at all times lived in states that have belonged to other races, and within the organization of those states, he had formed a state of his own, which is, however, hidden behind the mask of a religious community as long as external circumstances do not make it advisable for this community to declare its true nature. As soon as the Jew feels himself sufficiently established in his position to be able to hold it without a disguise, he lifts the mask and suddenly appears in the character which so many did not formally believe or wish to see, namely that of the Jew.
The life which the Jew lives as a parasite thriving on the substance of other nations and states has resulted in developing that specific character which Schopenhauer once described when he spoke of the Jew as the great master of lies. The kind of existence which he leads forces the Jew to the systematic use of falsehood just as naturally as the inhabitants of northern climates are forced to wear warm clothes. He can live among other nations and states only as long as he succeeds in persuading them that the Jews are not a distinct people, but the representatives of a religious faith who thus constitute a religious community, though this be of a peculiar character.
As a matter of fact, however, this is the first of his great falsehoods. He is obliged to conceal his own particular character and mode of life that he may be allowed to continue his existence as a parasite among the nations. The greater the intelligence of the individual Jew, the better will he succeed in deceiving others. His success in this line may even go so far that the people who grant him hospitality may be led to believe that the Jew among them is a genuine Frenchman, for instance, or Englishman, or German, or Italian who just happens to belong to a religious denomination which is different from that prevailing in these countries, Especially in circles concerned with the executive administration of the state, where the officials generally only have a minimum of historical sense, the Jew is able to impose his infamous deception with comparative ease. In these circles, independent thinking is considered a sin against the sacred rules according to which official promotion takes place.
It is therefore not surprising that even today in the Bavarian government offices, for example, there is not the slightest suspicion that the Jews form a distinct nation themselves and are not merely the adherents of a confession. Though one glance at the press, which belongs to the Jews, ought to furnish sufficient evidence to the contrary, even for those who possess only the smallest degree of intelligence. The Jewish echo, however, is not an official gazette, and therefore, not authoritative in the eyes of those government potentates.
Jewry has always been a nation of a definite racial character and never differentiated merely by the fact of belonging to a certain religion. At a very early date, urged on by the desire to make their way in the world, the Jews began to cast about for a means whereby they might distract such attention as might prove inconvenient for them. What could be more effective and at the same time more above suspicion than to borrow and utilize the idea of the religious community? Here, also, everything is copied or rather stolen. For the Jew could not possess any religious institution which had developed out of his own consciousness, seeing that he lacks every kind of idealism, which means that belief in a life beyond this terrestrial existence is foreign to him.
In the Aryan mind, no religion can ever be imagined unless it embodies the conviction that life in some form or other will continue after death. As a matter of fact, the Talmud is not a book that lays down principles according to which the individual should prepare for the life to come. It only furnishes rules for a practical and convenient life in this world. The religious teaching of the Jews is principally a collection of instructions for maintaining the Jewish blood pure and for regulating intercourse between Jews and the rest of the world. That is to say their relation with non Jews.
But the Jewish religious teaching is not concerned with moral problems. It is rather concerned with economic problems and very petty ones at that. In regard to the moral value of the religious teaching of the Jews, there exist and always have existed quite exhaustive studies, not from the Jewish side, For whatever the Jews have written on this question has naturally always been of a tendentious character, which show up the kind of religion that the Jews have in a light that makes it look very uncanny to the Aryan mind. The Jew himself is the best example of the kind of product which this religious training evolves.
His life is of this world only, and his mentality is as foreign to the true spirit of Christianity as his character was foreign to the great founder of this new creed two thousand years ago. And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When he found it necessary, he drove those enemies of the human race out of the temple of god because then, as always, they used religion as a means of advancing their commercial interests. But at that time, Christ was nailed to the cross for his attitude towards the Jews, Whereas our modern Christians enter into party politics, and when elections are being held, they debase themselves to beg for Jewish votes.
They even enter into political intrigues with the atheistic Jewish parties against the interests of their own Christian nation. On this first and fundamental lie, the purpose of which is to make people believe that jury is not a nation, but a religion, other lies are subsequently based. One of those further lies, for example, is in connection with the language spoken by the Jew. For him, language is not an instrument for the expression of his inner thoughts, but rather a means of cloaking them. When talking French, his thoughts are Jewish.
And when writing German rhymes, he only gives expression to the character of his own race. As long as the Jew has not succeeded in mastering other peoples, he is forced to speak their language whether he likes it or not. But the moment that the world would become the slave of the Jew, it would have to learn some other language, Esperanto, for example. So that by this means, the Jew could dominate all the more easily. How much the whole existence of this people is based on a permanent falsehood is proved in a unique way by the protocols of the elders of Zion, which are so violently repudiated by the Jews.
With groans and moans, the repeats again and again that these are forgeries. This alone is evidence in favor of their authenticity. What many Jews unconsciously wish to do is here clearly set forth. It is not necessary to ask out of what Jewish brain these revelations sprang, but what is a vital interest is that they disclose with an almost terrifying precision the mentality and methods of action characteristic of the Jewish people, and these writings expound in all their various directions the final aims towards which the Jews are striving. The study of real happenings, however, is the best way of judging the authenticity of those documents.
If the historical developments which have taken place within the last few centuries be studied in the light of this book, we shall understand why the Jewish press necessarily repudiates and denounces it. For the Jewish peril will be stamped out the moment the general public comes into possession of that book and understand it. In order to get to know the Jew properly, it is necessary to study the road which he has been following among the other peoples during the last few centuries. One example will suffice to give a clear insight here.
Since his career has been the same at all epochs, just as the people at whose expense he has lived have remained the same, for the purposes of making the requisite analysis, it will be best to mark his progress by stages. For the sake of simplicity, we shall indicate these stages by letters of the alphabet. The first Jews came into what was then called Germania during the period of the Roman invasion, and as usual, they came as merchants. During the turmoil caused by the great migrations of the German tribes, the Jews seemed to have disappeared.
We may therefore consider the period when the Germans formed the first political communities as the beginning of that process whereby Central And Northern Europe was again, and this time, permanently, Judaized. A development began which has always been the same or similar wherever and whenever Jews came into contact with Aryan peoples. File 66. A. As soon as the first permanent settlements had been established, the due was suddenly there. He arrived as a merchant, and in the beginning did not trouble to disguise his nationality. He still remained openly a Jew.
Partly, it may be because he knew too little of the language. It may also be that people of other races refused to mix with him, so that he could not very well adopt any other appearance than that of a foreign merchant. Because of his subtlety and cunning, and the lack of experience on the part of the people whose guest he became, it was not to his disadvantage openly to retain his Jewish character. They may even have been advantageous to him, for the foreigner was received kindly. B. Slowly but steadily, he began to take part in the economic life around him. Not as a producer, however, but only as a middleman.
His commercial cunning acquired through thousands of years of negotiation as an intermediary made him superior in this field to the Aryans who were still quite ingenuous and indeed clumsy and whose honesty was unlimited. So that after a short while, commerce seemed destined to become a Jewish monopoly. The Jew began by lending out money at the usurious interest, which is a permanent trade of his. It was he who first introduced the payment of interest on borrowed money. The danger which this innovation involved was not at first recognized.
Indeed, the innovation was welcomed because it offered momentary advantages. C. At this stage, the Jew had become firmly settled down. That is to say, he inhabited special sections of the cities and towns and had his own quarter in the marketplaces. Thus, he gradually came to form a state within a state. He came to look upon the commercial domain and all money transactions as a privilege belonging exclusively to himself, and he exploited it ruthlessly. D. At this stage, finance and trade had become his complete monopoly. Finally, his usurious rate of interest aroused opposition, and the increasing impudence which the Jew began to manifest all round stirred up popular indignation, while his display of wealth gave rise to popular envy.
The cup of his inequity became full to the brim when he included landed property among his commercial wares and degraded the soil to the level of a market commodity. Since he himself never cultivated the soil, but considered it an object to be exploited, on which the peasant may still remain, but only on condition that he submits to the most heartless exactions of his new master, public antipathy against the Jew steadily increased and finally turned into open animosity. His extortionate tyranny became so unbearable that people rebelled against his control and used physical violence against him.
They began to scrutinize this foreigner somewhat more closely, and then began to discover the repulsive traits and characteristics inherent in him until finally an abyss opened between the Jews and their hosts across which abyss there could be no further contact. In times of distress, a wave of public anger has usually arisen against the Jew. The masses have taken the law into their own hands. They have seized Jewish property and ruined the Jew in their urge to protect themselves against what they consider to be a scourge of god. Having come to know the Jew intimately through the course of centuries, in times of distress, they looked upon his presence among them as a public danger, comparable only to the plague.
E. But then the Jew began to reveal his true character. He paid court to governments with servile flattery, used his money to ingratiate himself further, and thus regularly secured for himself once again the privilege of exploiting his victim. Although public wrath flared up against this eternal profiteer and drove him out, after a few years, he reappeared in those same places and carried on as before. No persecution could force him to give up his trade of exploiting other people, and no amount of harrying succeeded in driving him out permanently. He always returned after a short time, and it was always the old story with him.
In an effort to save at least the worst from happening, legislation was passed which debarred the Jew from obtaining possession of the land. F. In proportion as the powers of kings and princes increased, the due sidled up to them. He begged for charters and privileges, which those gentlemen who were generally in financial straits gladly granted if they received adequate payment in return. However high the price he has to pay, the Jew will succeed in getting it back within a few years from operating the privilege he has acquired even with interest and compound interest.
He is a real leech who clings to the body of his unfortunate victims and cannot be removed. So that when the princes found themselves in need once again, they took the blood from his swollen veins with their own hands. This game was repeated unendingly. In the case of those who were called German princes, the part they played was quite as contemptible as that played by the Jew. They were a real scourge for their people. Their compares may be found in some of the government ministers of our time. It was due to the German princes that the German nation could not succeed in definitely freeing itself from the Jewish peril. Unfortunately, the situation did not change at a later period.
The princes finally received the reward which they had a thousandfold deserved for all the crimes committed by them against their own people. They had allied themselves with Satan, and later on, they discovered that they were in Satan's embrace. G. By permitting themselves to be entangled in the toils of the Jew, the princes prepared their own downfall. The position which they held among their people was slowly but steadily undermined, not only by their continued failure to guard the interests of their subjects, but by the positive exploitation of them.
The due calculated exactly the time when the downfall of the princes was approaching and did his best to hasten it. He intensified their financial difficulties by hindering them in the exercise of their duty towards their people, by inveigling them through the most servile flatteries into further personal display, whereby he made himself more and more indispensable to them. His astuteness, or rather his utter unscrupulousness in money affairs, enabled him to exact new income from the princes, to squeeze the money out of them, and then have it spent as quickly as possible. Every court had its court Jews, as this plague was called, who tortured the innocent victims until they were driven to despair.
While at the same time, this Jew provided the means which the princes squandered on their own pleasures. It is not to be wondered at that these ornaments of the human race became the recipients of official honors and were even admitted into the ranks of the hereditary nobility, thus contributing not only to expose that social institution to ridicule, but also to contaminate it from the inside. Naturally, the Jew could now exploit the position to which he had attained and push himself forward even more rapidly than before. Finally, he became baptized and thus entitled to all the rights and privileges which belong to the children of the nation on which he prayed.
This was a high class stroke of business for him, and he often availed himself of it to the great joy of the church, which was proud of having gained a new child in the faith, and also to the joy of Israel, which was happy at seeing the trick pulled off successfully. H. At this stage, a transformation began to take place in the world of jewelry. Up to now, they had been Jews. That is to say, they did not hitherto set any great value on pretending to be something else. And, anyhow, the distinctive characteristics which separated them from other races could not be easily overcome.
Even as late as the time of Frederick the Great, nobody looked upon the Jews as other than a foreign people, and Goethe rose up in revolt against the failure legally to prohibit marriage between Christians and Jews. Goethe was certainly no reactionary and no time server. What he said came from the voice of the blood and the voice of reason. Notwithstanding the disgraceful happenings taking place in court circles, the people recognized instinctively that the Jew was the foreign body in their own flesh, and their attitude towards him was directed by recognition of that fact.
But a change was now destined to take place. In the course of more than a thousand years, the Jew had learned to master the language of his host so thoroughly that he considered he might now lay stress on his Jewish character and emphasize the Germanism a bit more. Though it must have appeared ridiculous and absurd at first sight, he was impudent enough to call himself a Teuton, which in this case meant a German. In that way, began one of the most infamous impositions that can be imagined. The Jew did not possess the slightest traces of the German character.
He had only acquired the art of twisting the German language to his own uses, and that in a disgusting way, without having assimilated any other feature of the German character. Therefore, his command of the language was the sole ground on which he could pretend to be a German. It is not, however, by the tie of language, but exclusively by the tie of blood that the members of a race are bound together. And the Jew himself knows this better than any other, seeing that he attaches so little importance to the preservation of his own language, while at the same time, he strives his utmost to maintain his blood free from an intermixture with that of other races.
A man may acquire and use a new language without much trouble, but it is only his old ideas that he expresses through the new language. His inner nature is not modified thereby. The best proof of this is furnished by the Jew himself. He may speak a thousand tongues, and yet his Jewish nature will remain always one and the same. His distinguishing characteristics were the same when he spoke the Latin language at Ostia two thousand years ago as a merchant in grain as they are today when he tries to sell adulterated flour with the aid of his German gibberish.
He's always the same Jew. That so obvious a fact is not recognized by the average head clerk in a German government department or by an officer in the police administration is also a self evident and natural fact. Since it would be difficult to find another class of people who are so lacking in instinct and intelligence as the civil servants employed by our modern German state authorities. The reason why, at the stage I'm dealing with, the Jews so suddenly decided to transform himself into a German is not difficult to discover. He felt the power of the princes slowly crumbling, and therefore looked about to find a new social plank on which he might stand.
Furthermore, his financial domination over all spheres of economic life had become so powerful that he felt he could no longer sustain that enormous structure or add to it unless he were admitted to the full enjoyment of the rights of citizenship. He aimed at both preservation and expansion. For the higher he could climb, the more alluring became the prospect of reaching the old goal, which was promised to him in ancient times, namely world rulership, and which he now looked forward to with feverish eyes as he thought he saw it visibly approaching. Therefore, all his efforts were now directed to becoming a fully fledged citizen, endowed with all civil and political rights.
That was the reason for his emancipation from the ghetto. File 67. I. And thus, the court due slowly developed into the national due. But naturally, he still remained associated with persons in higher quarters, and he even attempted to push his way further into the inner circles of the ruling set. But at the same time, some other representatives of his race were carrying favor with the people. If we remember the crimes the Jew had committed against the masses of the people in the course of so many centuries, how repeatedly and ruthlessly he exploited them, and how he sucked out even the very marrow of their substance.
And when we further remember how they gradually came to hate him and finally considered him as a public scourge, then we may well understand how difficult the Jew must have found this final transformation. Yes. Indeed. It must tax all their powers to be able to present themselves as friends of humanity to the poor victims whom they have skinned raw. Therefore, the Jew began by making public amends for the crimes he had committed against the people in the past. He started his metamorphosis by first appearing as the benefactor of humanity.
Since his new philanthropic policy had a very concrete aim in view, he could not very well apply to himself the biblical counsel not to allow the left hand to know what the right hand is giving. He felt obliged to let as many people as possible know how deeply the sufferings of the masses grieved him, and to what excesses of personal sacrifice he was ready to go in order to help them. With this manifestation of innate modesty, so typical of the Jew, He trumpeted his virtues before the world until finally the world actually began to believe him. Those who refused to share this belief were considered to be doing him an injustice.
Thus, after a little while, he began to twist things around, so as to make it appear that it was he who had always been wronged, and vice versa. There were really some particularly foolish people who could not help pitying this poor unfortunate creature of a Jew. Attention may be called to the fact that in spite of his proclaimed readiness to make personal sacrifices, the Jew never becomes poor thereby. He has a happy knack of always making both ends meet. Occasionally, his benevolence might be compared to the manure which is not spread over the field merely for the purpose of getting rid of it, but rather with a view to future produce. Anyhow, after a comparatively short period of time, the world was given to know that the Jew had become a general benefactor and philanthropist.
What a transformation. What is looked upon as more or less natural when done by other people, here became an object of astonishment and even sometimes of admiration because it was considered so unusual in a Jew. That is why he has received more credit for his acts of benevolence than ordinary mortals. And something more. The Jew became liberal all of a sudden and began to talk enthusiastically of how human progress must be encouraged. Gradually, he assumed the air of being the herald of a new age. Yet at the same time, he continued to undermine the groundwork of that part of the economic system in which people have the most practical interest.
He bought up stock in the various national undertakings and thus pushed his influence into the circuit of national production, making this latter an object of buying and selling on the stock exchange, or rather what might be called the pawn in a financial game of chess, and thus ruining the basis on which personal proprietorship alone is possible. Only with the entrance of the Jew did that feeling of estrangement between employers and employees begin, which led at a later date to the political class struggle. Finally, the Jew gained an increasing influence in all economic undertakings by means of his predominance in the stock exchange.
If not the ownership, at least he secured control of the working power of the nation. In order to strengthen his political position, he directed his efforts towards removing the barrier of racial and civic discrimination, which had hitherto hindered his advance at every turn. With characteristic tenacity, he championed the cause of religious tolerance for this purpose. And in the Freemason organization, which had fallen completely into his hands, he found a magnificent weapon which helped him to achieve his ends. Government circles, as well as the higher sections of the political and commercial bourgeoisie, fell a prey to his plans through his manipulation of the masonic net, though they themselves did not even suspect what was happening.
Only the people as such, or rather the masses which were just becoming conscious of their own power and were beginning to use it in the fight for their rights and liberties, had hitherto escaped the grip of the Jew. At least his influence had not yet penetrated to the deeper and wider sections of the people. This was unsatisfactory to him. The most important phase of his policy was therefore to secure control over the people. The Jew realized that in his efforts to reach the position of public despot, he would need a peacemaker, and he thought he could find a peacemaker if he could whip in sufficient extensive sections of the bourgeois.
But the freemasons failed to catch the glove manufacturers and the linen weavers in the frail meshes of their net, and so it became necessary to find a grocer and with all a more effective means. Thus, another weapon beside that of the freemasonry would have to be secured. This was the press. The Jew exercised all his skill and tenacity in getting hold of it. By means of the press, he began gradually to control public life in its entirety. He began to drive it along the road which he had chosen to reach his own ends, for he was now in a position to create and direct that force, which, under the name of public opinion, is better known today than it was some decades ago.
Simultaneously, the Jew gave himself the air of thirsting after knowledge. He lauded every phase of progress, particularly those phases which led to the ruin of others. For he judges all progress and development from the standpoint of the advantages which these bring to his own people. When it brings him no such advantages, he is the deadly enemy of enlightenment and hates all culture which is real culture as such. All the knowledge which he acquires in the schools of others is exploited by him exclusively in the service of his own race.
Even more watchfully than ever before, he now stood guard over his Jewish nationality. Though bubbling over with enlightenment, progress, liberty, humanity, etcetera, His first care was to preserve the racial integrity of his own people. He occasionally bestowed one of his female members on an influential Christian, but the racial stock of his male descendants was always preserved unmixed fundamentally. He poisons the blood of others, but preserves his own blood unadulterated. The Jew scarcely ever marries a Christian girl, but the Christian takes a Jewess to wife.
The mongrels that are a result of this latter union always declare themselves on the Jewish side. Thus, a part of the higher nobility in particular became completely degenerate. The Jew was well aware of this fact and systematically used this means of disarming the intellectual leaders of the opposite race. To mask his tactics and fool his victims, he talks of the equality of all men, no matter what their race or color may be. And the simpletons began to believe him. Since his whole nature still retains too foreign an odor for the broad masses of the people to allow themselves to be caught in his snare, he uses the press to put before the public a picture of himself which is entirely untrue to life, but well designed to serve his purpose.
In the comic papers, special efforts are made to represent the Jews as an inoffensive little race, which, like all others, has its peculiarities. In spite of their manners, which may seem a bit strange, the comic papers present the Jews as fundamentally good hearted and honorable. Attempts are generally made to make them appear insignificant rather than dangerous. During this phase of his progress, the chief goal of the Jew was the victory of democracy, or rather the supreme hegemony of the parliamentary system, which embodies his concept of democracy. This institution harmonizes best with his purposes.
For thus, the personal element is eliminated, and in its place, we have the dunderheaded majority, inefficiency, and last, but by no means least, knavery. The final result must necessarily have been the overthrow of the monarchy, which had to happen sooner or later. File, '68. J. A tremendous economic development transformed the social structure of the nation. The small artisan class slowly disappeared, and the factory worker who took its place had scarcely any chance of establishing an independent existence of his own, but sank more and more to the level of a proletariat.
An essential characteristic of the factory worker is that he is scarcely ever able to provide for an independent source of livelihood, which will support him in later life. In the true sense of the word, he is disinherited. His old age is a misery to him and can hardly be called life at all. In earlier times, a similar situation had been created, which had imperatively demanded a solution, and for which a solution was found. Side by side with the peasant and the artisan, a new class was gradually developed, namely that of officials and employees, especially those employed in the various services of the state.
They also were a disinherited class in the true sense of the word, but the state found a remedy for this unhealthy situation by taking upon itself the duty of providing for the state official who could establish nothing that would be an independent means of livelihood for himself in his old age. Thus, the system of pensions and retiring allowances was introduced. Private enterprises slowly followed this example in increasing numbers so that today, every permanent non manual worker receives a pension in his later years if the firm which he has served is one that has reached or gone beyond a certain size.
It was only by virtue of the assurance given of state officials that they would be cared for in their old age that such a high degree of unselfish devotion to duty was developed, which in pre war times was one of the distinguishing characteristics of German officials. Thus, a whole class which had no personal property was saved from destitution by an intelligent system of provision and found a place in the social structure of the national community. The problem is now put before the state and nation, but this time in a much larger form. When the new industries sprang up and developed, millions of people left the countryside and the villages to take up employment in the big factories.
The conditions under which this new class found itself forced to live were worse than miserable. The more or less mechanical transformation of the methods of work hitherto in vogue among the artisans and peasants did not fit in well with the habits or mentality of this new working class. The way in which the peasants and artisans had formally worked had nothing comparable to the intensive labor of the new factory worker. In the old trades, time did not play a highly important role, but it became an essential element in the new industrial system. The formal taking over of the old working hours into the mammoth industrial enterprises had fatal results.
The actual amount of work hitherto accomplished within a certain time was comparatively small, because the modern methods of intensive production were then unknown. Therefore, though in the older system, a working day of fourteen or even fifteen hours was not unendurable, now it was beyond the possibilities of human endurance because in the new system, every minute was utilized to the extreme. The absurd transference of the old working hours to the new industrial system proved fatal in two directions. First, it ruined the health of the workers. Secondly, it destroyed their faith in a superior law of justice.
Finally, on the one hand, a miserable wage was received, and on the other, the employer held a much more lucrative position than before. Hence, a striking difference between the ways of life on the one side and on the other. In the open country, there could be no social problem because the master and the farmhand were doing the same kind of work and doing it together. They ate their food in common and sometimes even out of the same dish. But in this sphere also, the new system introduced an entirely different set of conditions between masters and men.
The division created between employer and employees seems not to have extended to all branches of life. How far this Judaizing process has been allowed to take effect among our people is illustrated by the fact that manual labor not only receives practically no recognition, but is even considered degrading. That is not a natural German attitude. It is due to the introduction of a foreign element into our lives, and that foreign element is the Jewish spirit. One of the effects of which has been to transform the high esteem in which our handicrafts once were held into a definite feeling that all physical labor is something base and unworthy.
Thus, a new social class has grown up which stands in low esteem, and the day must come when we shall have to face the question of whether the nation will be able to make this class an integral part of the social community or whether the difference of status now existing will become a permanent gulf separating this class from the others. One thing, however, is certain. This class does not include the worst elements of the community in its ranks. Rather, the contrary is the truth. It includes the most energetic parts of the nation. The sophistication which is the result of a so called civilization has not yet exercised its disintegrating and degenerating influence on this class.
The broad masses of this new lower class constituted by the manual laborers have not yet fallen a prey to the morbid weakness of pacifism. These are still robust, and if necessary, they can be brutal. While our bourgeoisie middle class paid no attention at all to this momentous problem and indifferently allowed events to take their course, the Jew seized upon the manifold possibilities which the situation offered him for the future. While on the one hand, he organized capitalistic methods of exploitation to their ultimate degree of efficiency. He carried favor with the victims of his policy and his power, and in a short while became the leader of their struggle against himself.
Against himself is here only a figurative way of speaking, for this great master of lies knows how to appear in the guise of the innocent and throw the guilt on others. Since he had the impudence to take a personal lead among the masses, they never for a moment suspected that they were falling a prey to one of the most infamous deceits ever practiced. And yet that is what it actually was. The moment this new class had arisen out of the general economic situation and taken shape as a definite body in the social order, the Jew saw clearly where he would find the necessary pacemaker for his own progressive march.
At first, he had used the bourgeois class as a battering ram against the feudal order, and now he used the worker against the bourgeois world. Just as he succeeded in obtaining civic rights by intrigues carried on under the protection of the bourgeois class, he now hoped that by joining in the struggle which the workers were waging for their own existence, he would be able to obtain full control over them. When that moment arrives, then the only objective the workers will have to fight for will be the future of the Jewish people. Without knowing it, the worker is placing himself at the service of the very power against which he believes he is fighting.
Apparently, he's made to fight against capital, and thus, he is all the more easily brought to fight for capitalist interests. Outcries are systematically raised against international capital, but in reality, it is against the structure of national economics that these slogans are directed. The idea is to demolish this structure, and on its ruins triumphantly erect the structure of the International Stock Exchange. In this line of action, the procedure of the Jew was as follows. He kowtowed to the worker, hypocritically pretended to feel pity for him and his lot, and even to be indignant at the misery and poverty which the worker had to endure.
That is the way in which the Jew endeavored to gain the confidence of the working class. He showed himself eager to study their various hardships, whether real or imaginary, and strove to awaken a yearning on the part of the workers to change the conditions under which they lived. The Jew artfully enkindled that innate yearning for social justice, which is a typical Aryan characteristic. Once that yearning became alive, it was transformed into hatred against those in more fortunate circumstances of life. The next stage was to give a precise philosophical aspect to the struggle for the elimination of social wrongs, and thus, the Marxist doctrine was invented.
By presenting his doctrine as part and parcel of a just revindication of social rights, the Jew propagated the doctrine all the more effectively. But at the same time, he provoked the opposition of decent people who refused to admit these demands, which because of the form and pseudo philosophical trimmings in which they are presented, seemed fundamentally unjust and impossible for realization. For under the cloak of purely social concepts, there are hidden aims which are of a satanic character. These aims are even expounded in the open with the clarity of unlimited impudence.
This Marxist doctrine is an individual mixture of human reason and human absurdity, but the combination is arranged in such a way that the only absurd part of it could ever be put into practice, but never the reasonable part of it. By categorically repudiating the personal worth of the individual and also the nation and its racial constituent, this doctrine destroys the fundamental basis of all civilization. For civilization essentially depends on these very factors. Such is the true essence of the Marxist, Weltanslang, so far as the word Weltanslang can be applied at all to this phantom arising from a criminal brain.
The destruction of the concept of personality and of race removes the chief obstacle which barred the way to domination of the social body by its inferior elements, which are the Jews. The very absurdity of the economic and political theories of Marxism gives the doctrine its peculiar significance. Because of its pseudo logic, intelligent people refuse to support it, while all those who are less accustomed to use their intellectual faculties or who have only a rudimentary notion of economic principles join the Marxist cause with flying banners.
The intelligence behind the movement, for even this movement needs intelligence if it is to subsist, is supplied by the Jews themselves. Naturally, of course, as a gratuitous service, which is at the same time a sacrifice on their part. Thus arose a movement which was composed exclusively of manual workers under the leadership of Jews. To all external appearances, this movement strives to ameliorate the conditions under which the workers live. But in reality, its aim is to enslave, and thereby, annihilate the non Jewish races. The propaganda which the Freemasons had carried on amongst the so called intelligentsia, whereby their pacifist teaching paralyzed the instinct for national self preservation, was now extended to the broad masses of the workers and bourgeoisie by means of the press, which was almost everywhere in Jewish hands.
To those two instruments of disintegration, a third and still more ruthless one was added, namely, the organization of brute physical force among the masses. As massed columns of attacks, the Marxist troops stormed those parts of the social order which had been left standing after the two former undermining operations had done their work. The combined activity of all these forces has been marvelously managed, and it will not be surprising if it turns out that those institutions which have always appeared as the organs of the more or less traditional authority of the state should now fall before the Marxist attack.
Among our higher and highest state officials, with very few exceptions, the Jew has found the cost complacent backers in his work of destruction. An attitude of sneaking civility towards superiors and supercilious arrogance towards inferiors are the characteristics of this class of people, as well as a grade of stupidity which is really frightening, and at the same time, a towering self conceit which has been so consistently developed to make it amusing. But these qualities are of the greatest utility to the Jew in his dealings with our authorities. Therefore, they are qualities which he appreciates most in the officials.
If I were to sketch roughly the actual struggle, which is now beginning, I should describe it somewhat thus. File 69. Not satisfied with the economic conquest of the world, but also demanding that it must come under his political control, the Jew subdivides the organized Marxist power into two parts, which correspond to the ultimate objectives that are to be fought for in this struggle, which is carried on under the direction of the Jew. To outward appearance, these seem to be two independent movements. But in reality, they constitute an indivisible unity.
The two divisions are the political movement and the trades union movement. The trades union movement has to gather in the recruits. It offers assistance and protection to the workers in the hard struggle which they have to wage for the bare means of existence, a struggle which has been occasioned by the greediness and narrow mindedness of many of the industrialists. Unless the workers be ready to surrender all claims to an existence which the dignity of human nature itself demands, and unless they are ready to submit their fate to the will of employers, who in many cases have no sense of human responsibilities and are utterly callous to human wants, then the worker must necessarily take matters into his own hands, seeing that the organized social community, that is to say the state, pays no attention to his needs.
The so called national minded bourgeoisie, blinded by its own material interests, opposes this life or death struggle of the workers and places the most difficult obstacles in their way. Not only does this bourgeoisie hinder all efforts to enact legislation which would shorten the inhumanly long hours of work, prohibit child labor, grant security, protection to women, and improve the hygienic conditions of the workshops and the dwellings of the working class. But while the bourgeoisie hinders all this, the shrewd Jew takes the cause of the oppressed into his own hands. He gradually becomes the leader of the trades union movement, which is an easy task for him because he does not genuinely intend to find remedies for the social wrong.
He pursues only one objective, namely to gather and consolidate a body of followers who will act under his commands as an armed weapon in the economic war for the destruction of national economic independence. Four, while a sound social policy has to move between the two poles of securing a decent level of public health and welfare on the one hand, and on the other, that of safeguarding the independence of the economic life of the nation, the Jew does not need to take these poles into account at all. The destruction of both is one of his main objects.
He would ruin rather than safeguard the independence of the national economic system. Therefore, as the leader of the trades union movement, he has no scruples about putting forward demands which not only go beyond the declared purpose of the movement, but could not be carried into effect without ruining the national economic structure. On the other hand, he has no interest in seeing a healthy and sturdy population develop. He would be more content to see the people degenerate into an unthinking herd, which could be reduced to total subjection. Because these are his final objectives, he can afford to put forward the most absurd claims.
He knows very well that these claims can never be realized, and that therefore nothing in the actual state of affairs could be altered by them, but that the most they can do is to arouse the spirit of unrest among the masses. That is exactly the purpose which he wishes such propaganda to serve, and not a real and honest improvement of the social conditions. The Jews will therefore remain the unquestioned leaders of the trades union movement so long as a campaign is not undertaken, which must be carried out on gigantic lines for the enlightenment of the masses so that they will be better able to understand the causes of their misery.
For the same end might be achieved if the government authorities would get rid of the Jew and his work. For as long as the masses remain so ill informed as they actually are today, and as long as the state remains as indifferent to their lot as it now is. The masses will follow whatever leader makes them the most extravagant promises in regard to economic matters. The Jew is past master at this art, and his activities are not hampered by moral considerations of any kind. Naturally, it takes him only a short time to defeat all his competitors in this field and drive them from the scene of action.
In accordance with the general brutality and rapacity of his nature, he turns the trades union movement into an organization for the exercise of physical violence. The resistance of those whose common sense has hitherto saved them from surrendering to the Jewish dictatorship is now broken down by terrorization. The success of that kind of activity is enormous. Parallel with this, the political organization advances. It operates hand in hand with the trades union movement in as much as the latter prepares the masses for the political organization and even forces them into it.
This is also the source that provides the money which the political organization needs to keep its enormous apparatus in action. The trades union organization is the organ of control of the political activity of its members and whips in the masses for all great political demonstrations. In the end, it ceases to struggle for economic interests that places its chief weapon, the refusal to continue work, which takes the form of a general strike at the disposal of the political movement. By means of a press whose contents are adapted to the level of the most ignorant breeders, the political and trades union organizations are provided with an instrument which prepares the lowest stratum of the nation for a campaign of ruthless destruction.
It is not considered part of the purpose of this press to inspire its readers with ideals which might help them to lift their minds above the sordid conditions of their daily lives, but on the contrary, it panders to their lowest instincts. Among the lazy minded and self seeking sections of the masses, this kind of speculation turns out lucrative. It is this press above all which carries on a fanatical campaign of calumny, strives to tear down everything that might be considered as a mainstay of national independence and to sabotage all cultural values as well as to destroy the autonomy of the national economic system.
It aims its attack especially against all men of character who refuse to fall into line with the Jewish efforts to obtain control over the state or who appear dangerous to the Jews merely because of their superior intelligence. For in order to incur the enmity of the Jew, it is not necessary to show any open hostility towards him. It is quite sufficient if one be considered capable of opposing the Jew sometime in the future or using his abilities and character to enhance the power and position of a nation which the Jew finds hostile to himself.
The Jewish instinct, which never fails where these problems have to be dealt with, readily discerns the true mentality of those whom the Jew meets in everyday life and those who are not of a kindred spirit with him may be sure of being listed among his enemies. Since the Jew is not the object of aggression, but the aggressor himself, He considers as his enemies not only those who attack him, but also those who may be capable of resisting him. The means which he employs to break people of this kind who may show themselves decent and upright are not the open means generally used in honorable conflict, but falsehood and calumny.
He will stop at nothing. His utterly low down conduct is so appalling that one really cannot be surprised if in the imagination of our people, the Jew is pictured as the incarnation of Satan and the symbol of evil. The ignorance of the broad masses as regards the inner character of the Jew and the lack of instinct and insight that our upper classes display are some of the reasons which explain how it is that so many people fall an easy prey to the systematic campaign of falsehood which the Jew carries on. While the upper classes, with their innate cowardliness, turn away from anyone whom the Jew thus attacks with lies and calumny, the common people are credulous of everything, whether because of their ignorance or their simple mindedness.
Government authorities wrap themselves up in a robe of silence, but more frequently, they persecute the victims of Jewish attacks in order to stop the campaign in the Jewish press. To the fatuous mind of the government official, such a line of conduct appears to belong to the policy of upholding the authority of the state and preserving public order. Gradually, the Marxist weapon in the hands of the Jew becomes a constant bogey to decent people. Sometimes, the fear of it sticks in the brain or weighs upon them as a kind of nightmare. People begin to quail before this fearful foe and therewith become his victims.
K. The Jewish domination in the state seems now so fully assured that not only can he now afford to call himself a Jew once again, but he even acknowledges freely and openly what his ideas are on racial and political questions. A section of the Jews avows itself quite openly as an alien people, But even here, there is another falsehood. When the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the new national consciousness of the Jews will be satisfied by the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Jews thereby adopt another means to dupe the simple minded Gentile.
They have not the slightest intention of building up a Jewish state in Palestine so as to live in it. What they are really aiming at is to establish a central organization for their international swindling and cheating. As a sovereign state, this cannot be controlled by any of the other states. Therefore, it can serve as a refuge for swindlers who have been found out, and at the same time, a high school for the training of other swindlers. As a sign of their growing presumption and sense of security, a certain section of them openly and impudently proclaim their Jewish nationality, while another section hypocritically pretend that they are German, French, or English as the case may be.
Their blatant behavior in their relations with other people shows how clearly they envisage their day of triumph in the near future. The black haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people. In his systematic efforts to ruin girls and women, he strives to break down the last barriers of discrimination between him and other peoples.
The Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race, which they hate, and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world can the Jew become master of any people except the bastardized people. That is why the Jew systematically endeavors to lower the racial quality of a people by permanently adulterating the blood of the individuals who make up that people.
In the field of politics, he now begins to replace the idea of democracy by introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the masses organized under the Marxist banners, He has found a weapon which makes it possible for him to discard democracy so as to subjugate and rule in a dictatorial fashion by the aid of brute force. He is systematically working in two ways to bring about this revolution. These ways are the economic and the political respectively. Aided by international influences, he forms a ring of enemies around those nations which have proved themselves too sturdy for him in withstanding attacks from within.
He would like to force them into war, and then if it should be necessary to his plans, he will unfurl the banners of revolt even while the troops are actually fighting at the front. Economically, he brings about the destruction of the state by a systematic method of sabotaging social enterprises until these become so costly that they are taken out of the hands of the state and then submitted to the control of Jewish finance. Politically, he works to withdraw from the state its means of subsistence in as much as he undermines the foundations of national resistance and defense, destroys the confidence which the people have in their government, reviles the past and its history, and drags everything national down into the gutter.
Culturally, his activity consists in art, literature, and the theater, holding the expressions of national sentiment up to scorn, overturning all concepts of the sublime and beautiful, the worthy and the good, finally dragging the people to the level of his own low mentality. Of religion, he makes a mockery. Morality and decency are described as antiquated prejudices, and thus, a systematic attack is made to undermine those last foundations on which the national being must rest if the nation is to struggle for its existence in this world.
File 70. L. Now begins the great and final revolution. As soon as the Jew is in possession of political power, he drops the last few veils which have hitherto helped to conceal his features. Out of the democratic Jew, the Jew of the people arises, the Jew of the blood, the tyrant of the peoples. In the course of a few years, he endeavors to exterminate all those who represent the national intelligence. And by thus depriving the peoples of their natural intellectual leaders, he fits them for their fate as slaves under a lasting despotism.
Russia furnishes the most terrible example of such a slavery. In that country, the Jew killed or starved 30 millions of the people in a bout of savage fanaticism and partly by the employment of inhuman torture. And he did this so that a gang of Jewish literati and financial bandits should dominate over a great people. But the final consequence is not merely that the people lose all their freedom under the domination of the Jews, but that in the end, these parasites themselves disappear. The death of the victim is followed sooner or later by that of the vampire.
If we review all the causes which contributed to bring about the downfall of the German people, we shall find that the most profound and decisive cause must be attributed to the lack of insight into the racial problem and especially in the failure to recognize the Jewish danger. It would have been easy enough to endure the defeat suffered on the battlefields in August 1918. They were nothing when compared with the military victories which our nation had achieved. Our downfall was not the result of those defeats, but we were overthrown by that force which had prepared those defeats by systematically operating for several decades to destroy those political instincts and that moral stamina, which alone enable the people to struggle for its existence and therewith secure the right to exist.
By neglecting the problem of preserving the racial foundations of our national life, the old empire abrogated the sole right which entitles a people to live on this planet. Nations that make mongrels of their people or allow their people to be turned into mongrels sin against the will of eternal providence, And, thus, their overthrow at the hands of a stronger opponent cannot be looked upon as a wrong, but on the contrary, as a restoration of justice. If a people refuses to guard and uphold the qualities with which it has been endowed by nature and which have their roots in the racial blood, then such a people has no right to complain over the loss of its earthly existence.
Everything on this earth can be made into something better. Every defeat may be made the foundation of a future victory. Every lost war may be the cause of a later resurgence. Every visitation of distress can give a new impetus to human energy. And out of every oppression, those forces can develop which bring about a new rebirth of the national soul, provided always that the racial blood is kept pure. But the loss of racial purity will wreck inner happiness forever. It degrades men for all time to come, and the physical and moral consequences can never be wiped out.
If this unique problem be studied and compared with the other problems of life, we shall easily recognize how small is their importance in comparison with this. They are all limited to time, but the problem of the maintenance or loss of the purity of the racial blood will last as long as man himself lasts. All the symptoms of decline which manifested themselves already in pre war times can be traced back to the racial problem. Whether one is dealing with questions of general law or monstrous expressiences in economic life, of phenomena which point to a cultural decline or political degeneration, whether it be a question of defects in the school system or of the evil influence which the press exerts over the adult population, always and everywhere, these phenomena are at bottom caused by a lack of consideration for the interests of the race to which one's own nation belongs or by the failure to recognize the danger that comes from allowing a foreign race to exist within the national body.
That is why all attempts at reform, all institutions for social relief, all political striving, all economic progress, and all apparent increase in the general stock of knowledge were doomed to be unproductive of any significant results. The nation, as well as the organization which enables it to exist, namely the state, were not developing in inner strength and stability, but on the contrary, were visibly losing their vitality. The false brilliance of the second empire could not disguise the inner weakness, and every attempt to invigorate it anew failed because the main and most important problem was left out of consideration.
It would be a mistake to think that the followers of the various political parties which tried to doctor the condition of the German people or even all their leaders were bad in themselves or meant wrong. Their activity, even at best, was doomed to fail merely because of the fact that they saw nothing but the symptoms of our general malady, and they tried to doctor the symptoms while they overlooked the real cause of the disease. If one makes a methodical study of the lines along which the old empire developed, one cannot help seeing, after a careful political analysis, that a process of inner degeneration had already set in even at the time when the United Empire was formed, and the German nation began to make rapid external progress.
The general situation was declining in spite of the apparent political success and in spite of the increasing economic wealth. At the elections to the Reichstag, the growing number of Marxist votes indicated that the internal breakdown and the political collapse were then rapidly approaching. All the victories of the so called bourgeois parties were fruitless, not only because they could not prevent the numerical increase in the growing mass of Marxist votes even when the bourgeois parties triumphed at the polls, but mainly because they themselves were already infected with the germs of decay.
Though quite unaware of it, the bourgeois world was infected from within with a deadly virus of Marxist ideas. The fact that they sometimes openly resisted was to be explained by the competitive strife among ambitious political leaders rather than by attributing it to any opposition in principle between adversaries who were determined to fight one another to the bitter end. During all those years, only one protagonist was fighting with steadfast perseverance. This was the due. The star of David steadily ascended as the will to national self preservation declined.
Therefore, it was not a solid national phalanx that of itself and out of its own feeling of solidarity rushed to the battlefields in August 1914, but it was rather the manifestation of the last flicker from the instinct of self preservation against the progress of the paralysis with which the pacifist and Marxist doctrine threatened our people. Even in those days, when the destinies of the nation were in the balance, the internal enemy was not recognized. Therefore, all efforts to resist the external enemy were bound to be in vain. Providence did not grant the reward to the victorious sword, but followed the eternal law of retributive justice.
A profound recognition of all this was the source of those principles and tendencies which inspire our new movement. We were convinced that only by recognizing such truths could we stop the national decline in Germany and lay a granite foundation on which the state could again be built up. A state which would not be a piece of mechanism alien to our people, constituted for economic purposes and interests, but an organism created from the soul of the people themselves. A German state in a German nation. Chapter 12. The first period of development of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Here, at the close of the volume, I shall describe the first stage in the progress of our movement and shall give a brief account of the problems we had to deal with during that period. In doing this, I have no intention of expounding the ideals which we have set up as the goal of our movement, For these ideals are so momentous in their significance that an exposition of them will need a whole volume. Therefore, I shall devote the second volume of this book to a detailed survey of the principles which form the program of our movement, and I shall attempt to draw a picture of what we mean by the word state.
When I say we in this connection, I mean to include all those hundreds of thousands who have fundamentally the same longing, though in the individual cases, they cannot find adequate words to describe the vision that hovers before their eyes. It is a characteristic feature of all great reforms that in the beginning, there is only one single protagonist to come forward on behalf of several millions of people. The final goal of a great reformation has often been the object of profound longing on the parts of hundreds of thousands for many centuries before, until finally, one among them comes forward as a herald to announce the will of that multitude and become the standard bearer of the old yearning, which he now leads to a realization in a new idea.
The fact that millions of our people yearn at heart for a radical change in our present conditions is proved by the profound discontent which exists among them. This feeling is manifested in a thousand ways. Some express it in a form of discouragement and despair. Others show it in resentment and anger and indignation. Among some, the profound discontent calls forth an attitude of indifference, while it urges others to violent manifestations of wrath. Another indication of this feeling may be seen on the one hand in the attitude of those who abstain from voting at elections, and on the other, in the large numbers of those who side with the fanatical extremists of the left wing.
To these latter people, our young movement had to appeal first of all. It was not meant to be an organization for contented and satisfied people, but was meant to gather in all those who were suffering from profound anxiety and could find no peace, those who were unhappy and discontented. It was not meant to float on the surface of the nation, but rather to push its roots deep among the masses. Looked at from the purely political point of view, the situation in 1918 was as follows. A nation had been torn into two parts. One part, which was by far the smaller of the two, contained the intellectual classes of the nation from which all those employed in physical labor were excluded.
On the surface, these intellectual classes appeared to be national minded, but that word meant nothing else to them except a very vague and feeble concept to the duty to defend what they called the interests of the state, which in turn seemed identical with those of the dynastic regime. This class tried to defend its ideas and reach its aims by carrying on the fight with the aid of intellectual weapons, which could be used only here and there, and which had only a superficial effect against the brutal measures employed by the adversaries in the face of which the intellectual weapons were of their very nature bound to fail.
With one violent blow, the class which had hitherto governed was now struck down. It trembled with fear and accepted every humiliation imposed on it by the merciless victor. Over against this class stood the broad masses of manual laborers who were organized in movements with a more or less radically Marxist tendency. These organized masses were firmly determined to break any kind of intellectual resistance by the use of brute force. They had no nationalist tendencies whatsoever and deliberately repudiated the idea of advancing the interests of the nation as such. On the contrary, they promoted the interests of the foreign oppressor.
Numerically, this class embraced the majority of the population, and what is more important, included all those elements of the nation without whose collaboration a national resurgence was not only a practical impossibility, but was even inconceivable. For already in 1918, one thing had to be clearly recognized, namely that no resurgence of the German nation could take place until we had first restored our national strength to face the outside world. For this purpose, arms are not the preliminary necessity, though our bourgeois statesmen always blathered about it being so.
What was wanted was willpower. At one time, the German people had more than sufficient military armament, and yet they were not able to defend their liberty because they lacked those energies which spring from the instinct of national self preservation and the will to hold on to one's own. The best armament is only dead and worthless material as long as the spirit is wanting, which makes men willing and determined to avail themselves of such weapons. Germany was rendered defenseless, not because she lacked arms, but because she lacked the will to keep her arms for the maintenance of her people.
Today, our left wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors. To all that kind of talk, the answer ought to be, no. The contrary is the truth. Your action in delivering up the arms was dictated by your antinational and criminal policy of abandoning the interests of the nation. And now you try to make people believe that your miserable whining is fundamentally due to the fact that you have no arms.
Just like everything else in your conduct, this is a lie and a falsification of the true reason. But the politicians of the right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came to power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms. The conservative politicians have neither right nor reason on their side when they appeal to disarmament as the cause which compelled them to adopt a policy of prudence. That is to say, cowardice. Here again, the contrary is the truth. Disarmament is the result of their lack of spirit.
Therefore, the problem of restoring Germany's power is not a question of how can we manufacture arms, but rather a question of how we can produce that spirit which enables a people to bear arms. Once this spirit prevails among a people, then it will find a thousand ways, each of which leads to the necessary armament. But a coward will not fire even a single shot when attacked, though he may be armed with 10 pistols. For him, they are of less value than a black thorn in the hands of a man of courage. The problem of reestablishing the political power of our nation is first of all a problem of restoring the instinct of national self preservation for, if no other reason, than that every preparatory step in foreign policy and every foreign judgment on the worth of a state has been proved by experience to be grounded not on the material size of the armament such a state may possess, but rather on the moral capacity for resistance which such a state has or is believed to have.
The question whether or not a nation be desirable as an ally is not so much determined by the inert mass of arms which it has at hand, but by the obvious presence of a sturdy will to national self preservation and a heroic courage which will fight through to the last breath. For an alliance is not made between arms, but between men. The British nation will therefore be considered as the most valuable ally in the world as long as it can be counted upon to show that brutality and tenacity in its government, as well as in the spirit of the broad masses, which enables it to carry through to victory any struggle that it once enters upon, no matter how long such a struggle may last, or however great the sacrifice that may be necessary, or whatever the means that have to be employed.
And all this even though the actual military equipment at hand may be utterly inadequate when compared with that of other nations. Once it is understood that the restoration of Germany is a question of reawakening the will to political self preservation, we shall see quite clearly that it will not be enough to win over those elements that are already national minded, but that the deliberately antinational masses must be converted to believe in the national ideals. A young movement that aims at reestablishing a German state with full sovereign powers will therefore have to make the task of winning over the broad masses a special objective of its plan of campaign.
Our so called national bourgeoisie are so lamentably supine, generally speaking, and their national spirit appears so feckless that we may feel sure they will offer no serious resistance against the vigorous national, foreign, or domestic policy. Even though the narrow minded German bourgeoisie should keep up a passive resistance when the hour of deliverance is at hand as they did in Bismarck's time, We shall never have to fear any active resistance on their part because of their recognized proverbial cowardice. It is quite different with the masses of our population who are imbued with ideas of internationalism.
Through the primitive roughness of their natures, they are disposed to accept the preaching of violence, while at the same time, their Jewish leaders are more brutal and ruthless. They will crush any attempt at a German revival just as they smash the German army by striking at it from the rear. Above all, these organized masses will use their numerical majority in this parliamentarian state, not only to hinder any national foreign policy, but also to prevent Germany from restoring her political power and therewith her prestige abroad.
Thus, she becomes excluded from the ranks of desirable allies. For it is not we ourselves alone who are aware of the handicap that results from the existence of 15,000,000 Marxists, democrats, pacifists, and followers of the center in our midst. But foreign nations also recognize this internal burden which we have to bear and take it into their calculations when estimating the value of a possible alliance with us. Nobody would wish to form an alliance with a state where the active portion of the population is at least passively opposed to any resolute foreign policy.
The situation is made still worse by reason of the fact that the leaders of those parties which were responsible for the national betrayal are ready to oppose any and every attempt at a revival simply because they want to retain the positions they now hold. According to the laws that govern human history, it is inconceivable that the German people could resume the place they formally held without retaliating on those who were both cause and occasion of the collapse that involved the ruin of our state. Before the judgment seat of posterity, November 1918 will not be regarded as a simple rebellion, but as high treason against the country.
Therefore, it is not possible to think of reestablishing German sovereignty and political independence without, at the same time, reconstructing a united front within the nation by a peaceful conversion of the popular will. Looked at from the standpoint of practical ways and means, it seems absurd to think of liberating Germany from foreign bondage as long as the masses of the people are not willing to support such an ideal of freedom. After carefully considering this problem from the purely military point of view, everybody, and in particular, every officer, will agree that a war cannot be waged against an outside enemy by battalions of students, but that together with the brains of the nation, the physical strength of the nation is also necessary.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the nation would be robbed of its irreplaceable assets by a national defense in which only the intellectual circles, as they are called, were engaged. The young German intellectuals who joined the volunteer regiments and fell on the battlefields of Flanders in the 1914 were bitterly missed later on. They were the dearest treasure which the nation possessed, and their loss could not be made good in the course of the war. And it is not only the struggle itself which could not be waged if the working masses of the nation did not join the storm battalions, but the necessary technical preparations could not be made without a unified will and a common front within the nation itself.
Our nation, which has to exist disarmed under the thousand eyes appointed by the Versailles peace treaty, cannot make any technical preparations for the recovery of its freedom and human independence until the whole army of spies employed within the country is cut down to those few whose inborn baseness would lead them to betray anything and everything for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver. But we can deal with such people. The millions, however, who are opposed to every kind of national revival simply because of their political opinions constitute an insurmountable obstacle.
At least the obstacle will remain insurmountable as long as the cause of their opposition, which is international Marxism, is not overcome and its teachings banished from both their hearts and heads. From whatever point of view, we may examine the possibility of recovering our independence as a state and a people. Whether we consider the problem from the standpoint of technical rearmament or from that of the actual struggle itself, the necessary prerequisite always remains the same. This prerequisite is that the broad masses of the people must first be won over to accept the principle of our national independence.
If we do not regain our external freedom, every step forward in domestic reform will at best be an augmentation of our productive powers for the benefit of those nations that look upon us as a colony to be exploited. The surplus produced by any so called improvement would only go into the hands of our international controllers, and any social betterment would at best increase the product of our labor in favor of those people. No cultural progress can be made by the German nation because such progress is too much bound up with the political independence and dignity of a people.
Therefore, as we can find a satisfactory solution for the problem of Germany's future only by winning over the broad masses of our people for the support of the national idea. This work of education must be considered the highest and most important task to be accomplished by a movement which does not strive merely to satisfy the needs of the moment, but considers itself bound to examine in the light of future results everything it decides to do or refrain from doing. As early as 1919, we were convinced that the nationalization of the masses would have to constitute the first and paramount aim of the new movement.
From the tactical standpoint, this decision laid a certain number of obligations on our shoulders. One. No social sacrifice could be considered too great in this effort to win over the masses for the national revival. In the field of national economics, whatever concessions are granted today to the employees are negligible when compared with the benefit to be reaped by the whole nation if such concessions contribute to bring back the masses of the people once more to the bosom of their own nation. Nothing but meanness and shortsightedness, which are characteristics that unfortunately are only too prevalent among our employers, could prevent people from recognizing that in the long run, no economic improvement, and therefore no rise in profits, are possible unless internal solidarity be restored among the bulk of the people who make up our nation.
If the German trades unions had defended the interests of the working classes uncompromisingly during the war, if even during the war, they had used the weapon of the strike to force the industrialists who were greedy for higher dividends to grant the demands of the workers for whom the unions acted. If at the same time, they had stood up as good Germans for the defense of the nation, as stoutly as for their own claims. And if they had given to their country what was their country's due, then the war would never have been lost. How ludicrously insignificant would all and even the greatest economic concession have been in face of the tremendous importance of such a victory.
For a movement which would restore the German worker to the German people, it is therefore absolutely necessary to understand clearly that economic sacrifices must be considered light in such cases provided, of course, that they do not go to the length of endangering the independence and stability of the national economic system. Two. The education of the masses along national lines can be carried out only indirectly by improving their social conditions. For only by such a process can the economic conditions be created which enable everybody to share in the cultural life of the nation.
Three. The nationalization of the broad masses can never be achieved by half measures. That is to say by feebly insisting on what is called the objective side of the question, but only by a ruthless and devoted insistence on the one aim which must be achieved. This means that a people cannot be made national according to the signification attached to that word by our bourgeois class today. That is to say nationalism with many reservations, but national in the vehement and extreme sense. Poison can be overcome only by a counter poison, and only the supine bourgeois mind could think that the kingdom of heaven can be attained by a compromise.
The broad masses of a nation are not made up of professors and diplomats. Since these masses have only a poor acquaintance with abstract ideas, their reactions lie more in the domain of the feelings, where the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted. They are susceptible only to a manifestation of strength, which comes definitely either from the positive or negative side. But they are never susceptible to any half hearted attitude that wavers between one pole and the other. The emotional grounds of their attitude furnish the reason for their extraordinary stability.
It is always more difficult to fight successfully against faith than against knowledge. Love is less subject to change than respect. Hatred is more lasting than mere aversion. And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria, which has urged them to action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a feckless attitude, but a determined will backed up by force when necessary.
Four. The soul of the masses can be won only if those who lead the movement for that purpose are determined not merely to carry through the positive struggle for their own aims, but are also determined to destroy the enemy that opposes them. When they see an uncompromising onslaught against an adversary, the people have at all times taken this as proof that right is on the side of the active aggressor. But if the aggressor should only go halfway and fail to push home his success by driving his opponent entirely from the scene of action, the people will look upon this as a sign that the aggressor is uncertain of the justice of his own cause, and his halfway policy may even be an acknowledgment that his cause is unjust.
The masses are but a part of nature herself. Their feeling is such that they cannot understand mutual handshakings between men who are declared enemies. Their wish is to see the stronger side win and the weaker wiped out or subjected unconditionally to the will of the stronger. The nationalization of the masses can be successfully achieved only if in the positive struggle to win the soul of the people, those who spread the international poison among them are exterminated. Five. All the great problems of our time are problems of the moment and are only the result of certain definite causes.
And among all those, there is only one that has a profoundly causal significance. This is the problem of preserving the pure racial stock among the people. Human vigor or decline depends on the blood. Nations that are not aware of the importance of their racial stock or which neglect to preserve it are like men who would try to educate the pug dog to do the work of the greyhound, not understanding that neither the speed of the greyhound nor the imitative faculties of the poodle are inborn qualities which cannot be drilled into the one or the other by any form of training.
A people that fails to preserve the purity of its racial blood thereby destroys the unity of the soul of the nation in all its manifestations. A disintegrated national character is the inevitable consequence of a process of disintegration in the blood. And the change which takes place in the spiritual and creative faculties of a people is only an effect of the change that has modified its racial substance. If we are to free the German people from all those failings and ways of acting which do not spring from their original character, We must first get rid of those foreign germs in the national body, which are the cause of its failings and false ways.
The German nation will never revive unless the racial problem is taken into account and dealt with. The racial problem furnishes the key not only to the understanding of human history, but also to the understanding of every kind of human culture. Six. By incorporating in the national community the masses of our people who are now in the international camp, we do not thereby mean to renounce the principle that the interests of the various trades and professions must be safeguarded. Divergent interests in the various branches of labor and in the trades and professions are not the same as a division between the various classes, but rather a feature inherent in the economic situation.
Vocational grouping does not clash in the least with the idea of a national community, for this means national unity in regard to all those problems that affect the life of the nation as such. To incorporate in the national community or simply the state, a stratum of the people which has now formed a social class, the standing of the higher classes must not be lowered, but that of the lower classes must be raised. The class which carries through this process is never the higher class, but rather the lower one, which is fighting for equality of rights. The bourgeoisie of today was not incorporated in the state through measures enacted by the feudal nobility, but only through its own energy and a leadership that had sprung from its own ranks.
The German worker cannot be raised from his present standing and incorporated in the German folk community by means of goody goody meetings where people talk about the brotherhood of the people, but rather by a systematic improvement in the social and cultural life of the worker until the yawning abyss between him and the other classes can be filled in. A movement which has this for its aim must try to recruit its followers mainly from the ranks of the working class. It must include members of the intellectual classes only in so far as such members have rightly understood and accepted without reserve the ideal towards which the movement is striving.
This process of transformation and reunion cannot be completed within ten or twenty years. It will take several generations as the history of such movements has shown. The most difficult obstacle to the reunion of our contemporary worker in the national folk community does not consist so much in the fact that he fights for the interests of his fellow workers, but rather in the international ideas with which he is imbued and which are of their nature at variance with the ideas of nationhood and fatherland. This hostile attitude to nation and fatherland has been inculcated by the leaders of the working class.
If they were inspired by the principle of devotion to the nation in all that concerns its political and social welfare, the trades unions would make those millions of workers most valuable members of the national community without thereby affecting their own constant struggle for their economic demands. A movement which sincerely endeavors to bring the German worker back into his folk community and rescue him from the folly of internationalism must wage a vigorous campaign against certain notions that are prevalent among the industrialists.
One of these notions is that according to the concept of the folk community, the employee is obliged to surrender all his economic rights to the employer, and further, that the workers would come into conflict with the folk community if they should attempt to defend their own just and vital interests. Those who try to propagate such a notion are deliberate liars. The idea of a folk community does not impose any obligations on the one side that are not imposed on the other. A worker certainly does something which is contrary to the spirit of folk immunity if he acts entirely on his own initiative and puts forward exaggerated demands without taking the common good into consideration or the maintenance of the national economic structure.
But an industrialist also acts against the spirit of the folk community if he adopts inhuman methods of exploitation and misuses the working forces of the nation to make millions unjustly for himself from the sweat of the workers. He has no right to call himself national and no right to talk of a folk community, for he is only an unscrupulous egoist who sows the seeds of social discontent and provokes a spirit of conflict, which sooner or later must be injurious to the interests of the country. The reservoir from which the young movement has to draw its members will, first of all, be the working masses.
Those masses must be delivered from the clutches of the international mania. Their social distress must be eliminated. They must be raised above their present cultural level, which is deplorable, and transformed into a resolute and valuable factor in the folk community, inspired by national ideas and national sentiment. If among those intellectual circles that are nationalist in their outlook, Men can be found to genuinely love the people and look forward eagerly to the future of Germany, and at the same time, have a sound grasp of the importance of a struggle whose aim is to win over the soul of the masses.
Such men are cordially welcomed in the ranks of our movement because they can serve as a valuable intellectual force in the work that has to be done. But this movement can never aim at recruiting its membership from the unthinking herd of bourgeois voters. If it did so, the movement would be burdened with a mass of people whose whole mentality would only help to paralyze the effort of our campaign to win the mass of the people. In theory, it may be very fine to say that the broad masses ought to be influenced by a combined leadership of the upper and lower social strata within the framework of one movement.
But notwithstanding all this, the fact remains that though it may be possible to exercise a psychological influence on the bourgeois classes and to arouse some enthusiasm or even awaken some understanding among them by our public demonstrations. Their traditional characteristics cannot be changed. In other words, we could not eliminate from the bourgeois classes the inefficiency and supineness, which are part of a tradition that has developed through centuries. The difference between the cultural levels of the two groups and between their respective attitudes towards social economic questions is still so great that it would turn out a hindrance to the movement the moment the first enthusiasm aroused by our demonstrations calm down.
Finally, it is not part of our program to transform the nationalist camp itself, but rather to win over those who are antinational in their outlook. It is from this viewpoint that the strategy of the whole movement must finally be decided. Seven. This one-sided but accordingly clear and definite attitude must be manifested in the propaganda of the movement. And on the other hand, this is absolutely necessary to make the propaganda itself effective. If propaganda is to be of service to the movement, it must be addressed to one side alone. For if it should vary the direction of its appeal, it will not be understood in the one camp or may be rejected by the other as merely insisting on obvious and uninteresting truisms.
For the intellectual training of the two camps that come into question here has been very different. Even the manner in which something is presented and the tone in which particular details are emphasized cannot have the same effect in those two strata that belong respectively to the opposite extremes of the social structure. If the propaganda should refrain from using primitive forms of expression, it will not appeal to the sentiments of the masses. If, on the other hand, it conforms to the crude sentiments of the masses in its words and gestures, the intellectual circles will be averse to it because of its roughness and vulgarity.
Among a 100 men who call themselves orators, there are scarcely 10 who are capable of speaking with effect before an audience of street sweepers, locksmiths, and navvies, etcetera, today, and expound the same subject with equal effect tomorrow before an audience of university professors and students. Among a thousand public speakers, there may be only one who can speak before a composite audience of locksmiths and professors in the same hall in such a way that his statements can be fully comprehended by each group, while at the same time, he effectively influences both and awakens enthusiasm on the one side as well as the other to hearty applause.
But it must be remembered that in most cases, even the most beautiful idea embodied in a sublime theory can be brought home to the public only through the medium of smaller minds. The thing that matters here is not the vision of the man of genius who created the great idea, but rather the success which his apostles achieve in shaping the expression of this idea so as to bring it home to the minds of the masses. Social democracy and the whole Marxist movement were particularly qualified to attract the great masses of the nation because of the uniformity of the public to which they addressed their appeal.
The more limited and narrow their ideas and arguments, the easier it was for the masses to grasp and assimilate them. For those ideas and arguments were well adapted to a low level of intelligence. These considerations led the new movement to adopt a clear and simple line of policy, which was as follows. In its message, as well as in its forms of expression, the propaganda must be kept on a level with the intelligence of the masses, and its value must be measured only by the actual success it achieves. At a public meeting, where the great masses are gathered together, the best speaker is not he whose way of approaching a subject is most akin to the spirit of those intellectuals who may happen to be present, but the speaker who knows how to win the hearts of the masses.
An educated man who is present and who finds fault with an address because he considers it to be on an intellectual plane that is too low, though he himself has witnessed its effect on the lower intellectual groups whose adherence has to be won, only shows himself completely incapable of rightly judging the situation and therewith proves that he can be of no use in the new movement. Only intellectuals can be of use to a movement who understand its mission and its aims so well that they have learned to judge our methods of propaganda exclusively by the success obtained and never by the impression which those methods made on the intellectuals themselves.
For our propaganda is not meant to serve as an entertainment for those people who already have a nationalist outlook, but its purpose is to win the adhesion of those who have hitherto been hostile to national ideas and who are nevertheless of our own blood and race. In general, those considerations of which I have given a brief summary in the chapter on war propaganda became the guiding rules and principles which determine the kind of propaganda we were to adopt in our campaign and the manner in which we were to put it into practice. The success that has been obtained proves that our decision was right.
Eight. The ends which any political reform movement sets out to attain can never be reached by trying to educate the public or influence those in power, but only by getting political power into its hands. Every idea that is meant to move the world has not only the right, but also the obligation of securing control of those means which will enable the idea to be carried into effect. In this world, success is the only rule of judgment whereby we can decide whether such an undertaking was right or wrong. And by the word success in this connection, I do not mean such a success as the mere conquest of power in 1918, but the successful issue whereby the common interests of the nation have been served.
A coup d'etat cannot be considered successful if, as many empty headed government lawyers in Germany now believe, the revolutionaries succeeded in getting control of the state into their hands, but only if, in comparison with the state of affairs under the old regime, the lot of the nation has been improved when the aims and intentions on which the revolution was based have been put into practice. This certainly does not apply to the German revolution as that movement was called, which brought a gang of bandits into power in the autumn of nineteen eighteen. But if the conquest of political power be a requisite preliminary for the practical realization of the ideals that inspire a reform movement, then any movement which aims at reform must, from the very first day of its activity, be considered by its leaders as a movement of the masses and not as a literary tea club or an association of Philistines who meet to play ninepins.
Nine. The nature and internal organization of the new movement make it anti parliamentarian. That is to say, it rejects in general and in its own structure all those principles according to which decisions are taken on the vote of the majority and according to which the leader is only the executor of the will and opinion of others. The movement lays down the principle that in the smallest as well as in the greatest problems, one person must have absolute authority and bear all responsibility. In our movement, the practical consequences of this principle are the following.
The president of a large group is appointed by the head of the group immediately above his in authority. He is then the responsible leader of his group. All the committees are subject to his authority and not he to theirs. There is no such thing as committees that vote, but only committees that work. This work is allotted by the responsible leader who is the president of the group. The same principle applies to the higher organizations, the district, the Kreis urban circuit, and the Gau, the region. In each case, the president is appointed from above and is invested with full authority and executive power.
Only the leader of the whole party is elected at the general meeting of the members, but he is the sole leader of the movement. All the committees are responsible to him, but he is not responsible to the committees. His decision is final, but he bears the whole responsibility of it. The members of the movement are entitled to call him to account by means of a new election, or to remove him from office if he has violated the principles of the movement or has not served its interests adequately. He is then replaced by a more capable man, who is invested with the same authority and obliged to bear the same responsibility.
One of the highest duties of the movement is to make this principle imperative not only within its own ranks, but also for the whole state. The man who becomes leader is invested with the highest and unlimited authority, but he also has to bear the last and gravest responsibility. The man who has not the courage to shoulder responsibility for his actions is not fitted to be a leader. Only a man of heroic mold can have the vocation for such a task. Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the multitude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and personal efficiency.
Because of this principle, our movement must necessarily be anti parliamentarian. And if it takes part in the parliamentary institution, it is only for the purpose of destroying this institution from within. In other words, we wish to do away with an institution which we must look upon as one of the gravest symptoms of human decline. 10. The movement steadfastly refuses to take up any stand in regard to those problems which are either outside of its sphere of political work or seem to have no fundamental importance for us.
It does not aim at bringing about religious reformation, but rather a political reorganization of our people. It looks upon the two religious denominations as equally valuable mainstays for the existence of our people, and therefore makes war on all those parties which would degrade this foundation on which the religious and moral stability of our people is based to an instrument in the service of party interests. Finally, the movement does not aim at establishing any one form of state or trying to destroy another, but rather to make those fundamental principles prevail without which no republic and no monarchy can exist for any length of time.
The movement does not consider its mission to be the establishment of a monarchy or the preservation of the republic, but rather to create a German state. The problem concerning the outer form of this state, that is to say its final shape, is not of fundamental importance. It is a problem which must be solved in the light of what seems practical and opportune at the moment. Once a nation has understood and appreciated the great problems that affect its inner existence, the question of outer formalities will never lead to any internal conflict.
11. The problem of the inner organization of the movement is not one of principle, but of expediency. The best kind of organization is not that which places a large intermediary apparatus between the leadership of the movement and the individual followers, but rather that which works successfully with the smallest possible intermediary apparatus. For it is the task of such an organization to transmit a certain idea which originated in the brain of one individual to a multitude of people and to supervise the manner in which this idea is being put into practice. Therefore, from any and every viewpoint, the organization is only a necessary evil.
At best, it is only a means of reaching certain ends. The worst happens when it becomes an end in itself. Since the world produces more mechanical than intelligent beings, it will always be easier to develop the form of an organization than its substance, that is to say the ideas which it is meant to serve. The march of any idea which strives towards practical fulfillment, and in particular, those ideas which are of a reformatory character, may be roughly sketched as follows. A creative idea takes shape in the mind of somebody who thereupon feels himself called upon to transmit this idea to the world.
He propounds his faith before others, and thereby gradually wins a certain number of followers. This direct and personal way of promulgating one's ideas among one's contemporaries is the most natural and the most ideal. But as the movement develops and secures a large number of followers, it gradually becomes impossible for the original founder of the doctrine on which the doctrine on which the movement is based to carry on his propaganda personally among his innumerable followers, and at the same time, guide the course of the movement.
According as the community of followers increases, direct communication between the head and the individual followers becomes impossible. This intercourse must then take place through an intermediary apparatus introduced into the framework of the movement. Thus, ideal conditions of intercommunication cease, and organization has to be introduced as a necessary evil. Small subsidiary groups come into existence as in the political movement, for example, where the local groups represent the germ cells out of which the organization develops later on.
But such subdivisions must not be introduced into the movement until the authority of the spiritual founder and of the school he has created are accepted without reservation. Otherwise, the movement would run the risk of becoming split up by divergent doctrines. In this connection, too much emphasis cannot be laid on the importance of having one geographic center as the chief seat of the movement. Only the existence of such a seat or center around which a magic charm such as that of Mecca or Rome is woven can supply a movement with that permanent driving force which has its sources in the internal unity of the movement and the recognition of one head as representing this unity.
When the first germinal cells of the organization are being formed, care must always be taken to insist on the importance of the place where the idea originated. The creative, moral, and practical greatness of the place whence the movement went forth and from which it is governed must be exalted to a supreme symbol, and this must be honored all the more according as the original cells of the movement become so numerous that they have to be regrouped into larger units in the structure of the organization. When the number of individual followers became so large that direct personal contact with the head of the movement was out of the question, then we had to form those first local groups.
As those groups multiplied to an extraordinary number, it was necessary to establish higher cadres into which the local groups were distributed. Examples of such cadres in the political organization are those of the region, Gao, and the district, Bezierk. Though it may be easy enough to maintain the original central authority over the lowest groups, it is much more difficult to do so in relation to the higher units of organization which have now developed. And yet we must succeed in doing this, for this is an indispensable condition if the unity of the movement is to be guaranteed and the idea of it carried into effect.
Finally, when those larger intermediary organizations have to be combined in new and still higher units, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain over them the absolute supremacy of the original seat of the movement and the school attached to it. Consequently, the mechanical forms of an organization must only be introduced if and in so far as the spiritual authority and the ideals of the central seat of the organization are shown to be firmly established. In the political sphere, it may often happen that this supremacy can be maintained only when the movement has taken over supreme political control of the nation.
Having taken all these considerations into account, the following principles were laid down for the inner structure of the movement. A, that at the beginning, all activity should be concentrated in one town, namely Munich. That a band of absolutely reliable followers should be trained and a school founded which would subsequently help to propagate the idea of the movement. That the prestige of the movement, for the sake of its subsequent extension, should first be established here through gaining as many successful and visible results as possible in this one place.
To secure name and fame for the movement and its leader, it was necessary not only to give in this one town, a striking example to shatter the belief that the Marxist doctrine was invincible, but also to show that a counter doctrine was possible. B, that local groups should not be established before the supremacy of the central authority in Munich was definitely established and acknowledged, c, that district, regional, and provincial groups should be formed only after the need for them has become evident and only after the supremacy of the central authority has been satisfactorily guaranteed, Further, that the creation of subordinate organisms must depend on whether or not those persons can be found who are qualified to undertake the leadership of them.
Here, there were only two solutions, a, that the movement should acquire the necessary funds to attract and train intelligent people who would be capable of becoming leaders. The personnel thus obtained could then be systematically employed according as the tactical situation and the necessity for efficiency demanded. This solution was the easier and the more expedite, but it demanded large financial resources for this group of leaders could work only in the movement if they could be paid a salary. B, because the movement is not in a position to employ paid officials, it must begin by depending on honorary helpers.
Naturally, this solution is slower and more difficult. It means that the leaders of the movement have to allow vast territories to lie fallow unless in these respective districts, one of the members comes forward to is capable and willing to place himself at the service of the central authority for the purpose of organizing and directing the movement in the region concerned. It may happen that in extensive regions, no such leader can be found, but that at the same time in other regions, two or three or even more persons appear whose capabilities are almost on a level.
The difficulty which this situation involves is very great and can be overcome only with the passing of the years. For the establishment of any branch of the organization, the decisive condition must always be that a person can be found who is capable of fulfilling the functions of a leader. Just as the army and all its various units of organization are useless if there are no officers, so any political organization is worthless if it has not the right kind of leaders. If an inspiring personality who has the gift of leadership cannot be found for the organization and direction of a local group, it is better for the movement to refrain from establishing such a group than to run the risk of failure after the group has been founded.
The will to be a leader is not a sufficient qualification for leadership, for the leader must have the other necessary qualities. Among these qualities, willpower and energy must be considered as more serviceable than the intellect of a genius. The most valuable association of qualities is to be found in a combination of talent, determination, and perseverance. 12. The future of a movement is determined by the devotion and even intolerance with which its members fight for their cause. They must feel convinced that their cause alone is just, and they must carry it through to success as against other similar organizations in the same field.
It is quite erroneous to believe that the strength of a movement must increase if it be combined with other movements of a similar kind. Any expansion resulting from such a combination will, of course, mean an increase in external development, which superficial observers might consider as also an increase of power. But in reality, the movement thus admits outside elements which will subsequently weaken its constitutional vigor. Though it may be said that one movement is identical in character with another, in reality, no such identity exists.
If it did exist, then practically there would not be two movements, but only one. And whatever the difference may be, even if it consists only of the measure in which the capabilities of the one set of leaders differ from those of the other, there it is. It is against the natural law of all development to couple dissimilar organisms, or the law is that the stronger must overcome the weaker, and through the struggle necessary for such a conquest, increase the constitutional vigor and effective strength of the victor. By amalgamating political organizations that are approximately alike, certain immediate advantages may be gained.
But advantages thus gained abound in the long run to become the cause of internal weaknesses, which will make their appearance later on. A movement can become great only if the unhampered development of its internal strength be safeguarded and steadfastly augmented until victory over all its competitors be secured. One may safely say that the strength of a movement and its right to existence can be developed only as long as it remains true to the principle that struggle is a necessary condition of its progress and that its maximum strength will be reached only as soon as complete victory has been won.
Therefore, a movement must not strive to obtain successes that will only be immediate and transitory, but it must show a spirit of uncompromising perseverance in carrying through a long struggle which will secure for it a long period of inner growth. All those movements which owe their expansion to a so called combination of similar organisms, which means that their external strength is due to a policy of compromise, are like plants whose growth is forced in a hothouse. They shoot up externally, but they lack that inner strength which enables the natural plant to grow into a tree that will withstand the storms of centuries.
The greatness of every powerful organization which embodies a creative idea lies in the spirit of religious devotion and intolerance with which it stands out against all others because it has an ardent faith in its own right. If an idea is right in itself and furnished with the fighting weapons I have mentioned wages war on this earth, then it is invincible, and persecution will only add to its internal strength. The greatness of Christianity did not arise from attempts to make compromises with those philosophical opinions of the ancient world, which had some resemblance to its own doctrine, but in the unrelenting and fanatical proclamation and defense of its own teaching.
The apparent advance that a movement makes by associating itself with other movements will be easily reached and surpassed by the steady increase of strength which a doctrine and its organization acquires if it remains independent and fights its own cause alone. 13. The movement ought to educate its adherence to the principle that struggle must not be considered a necessary evil, but as something to be desired in itself. Therefore, they must not be afraid of the hostility which their adversaries manifest towards them, but they must take it as a necessary condition on which their whole right to existence is based.
They must not try to avoid being hated by those who are the enemies of our people and our philosophy of life, but must welcome such hatred. Lies and calumnies are part of the method which the enemy employs to express his chagrin. The man who is not opposed and vilified and slandered in the Jewish press is not a staunch German and not a true national socialist. The best rule whereby the sincerity of his convictions, his character, and strength of will can be measured is the hostility which his name arouses among the mortal enemies of our people. The followers of the movement and, indeed, the whole nation must be reminded again and again of the fact that through the medium of his newspapers, the Jew is always spreading falsehood.
And that if he tells the truth on some occasions, it is only for the purpose of masking some greater deceit, which turns the apparent truth into a deliberate falsehood. The Jew is the great master of lies. Falsehood and duplicity are the weapons with which he fights. Every calumny and falsehood published by the Jews are tokens of honor which can be worn by our comrades. He whom they decry most is nearest to our hearts, and he whom they mortally hate is our best friend. If a comrade of ours opens a Jewish newspaper in the morning and does not find himself vilified there, then he has spent yesterday to no account.
For if he had achieved something, he would be persecuted, slandered, derided, and abused. Those who effectively combat this mortal enemy of our people, who is at the same time the enemy of all Aryan peoples and all culture, can only expect to arouse opposition on the part of this race and become the object of its slanderous attacks. When these truths become part of the flesh and blood, as it were, of our members, then the movement will be impregnable and invincible. 14. The movement must use all possible means to cultivate respect for the individual personality. It must never forget that all human values are based on personal values, and that every idea and achievement is the fruit of the creative power of one man.
We must never forget that admiration for everything that is great is not only a tribute to one creative personality, but that all those who feel such admiration become thereby united under one covenant. Nothing can take the place of the individual, especially if the individual embodies in himself not the mechanical element, but the element of cultural creativeness. No pupil can take the place of the master in completing a great picture which he has left unfinished. And just in the same way, no substitute can take the place of the great poet or thinker or the great statesman or military general, for the source of their power is in the realm of artistic creativeness.
It can never be mechanically acquired because it is an innate product of divine grace. The greatest revolutions and the greatest achievements of this world, its greatest cultural works, and the immortal creations of great statesmen are inseparably bound up with one name which stands as a symbol for them in each respective case. The failure to pay tribute to one of those great spirits signifies a neglect of that enormous source of power which lies in the remembrance of all great men and women. The Jew himself knows this best. He whose great men have always been great only in their efforts to destroy mankind and its civilization takes good care that they are worshiped as idols.
But the Jew tries to degrade the honor in which nations hold their great men and women. He stigmatizes this honor as the cult of personality. As soon as a nation has so far lost its courage as to submit to this impudent defamation on the part of the Jews, it renounces the most important source of its own inner strength. This inner force cannot arise from a policy of pandering to the masses, but only from the worship of men of genius whose lives have uplifted and ennobled the nation itself. When men's hearts are breaking and their souls are plunged into the depths of despair, their great forebears turn their eyes towards them from the dim shadows of the past.
Those forebears who knew how to triumph over anxiety and affliction, mental servitude, and physical bondage, and extend their eternal hands in a gesture of encouragement to despairing souls. Woe to the nation that is ashamed to clasp those hands. During the initial phase of our movement, our greatest handicap was the fact that none of us were known, and our names meant nothing, a fact which then seemed to some of us to make the chances of final success problematical. Our most difficult task then was to make our members firmly believe that there was a tremendous future in store for the movement and to maintain this belief as a living faith.
For at that time, only six, seven, or eight persons came to hear one of our speakers. Consider that only six or seven poor devils who were entirely unknown came together to found a movement which should succeed in doing what the great mass parties had failed to do, namely, to reconstruct the German Reich even in greater power and glory than before. We should have been very pleased if we were attacked or even ridiculed, but the most depressing fact was that nobody paid any attention to us whatever. This utter lack of interest in us caused me great mental pain at that time. When I entered the circle of those men, there was not yet any question of a party or a movement.
I have already described the impression which was made on me when I first came into contact with that small organization. Subsequently, I had time and also the occasion to study the form of this so called party, which had at first made such a woeful impression. The picture was indeed quite depressing and discouraging. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. There was only the name of a party, and the committee consisted of all the party members. Somehow or other, it seemed just the kind of thing we were about to fight against, a miniature parliament.
The voting system was employed. When the great parliament cried until they were hoarse, at least they shouted over problems of importance, Here, this small circle engaged in interminable discussions as to the form in which they might answer the letters which they were delighted to have received. Needless to say, the public knew nothing of all this. In Munich, nobody knew of the existence of such a party, not even by name, except our few members and their small circle of acquaintances. Every Wednesday, what was called a committee meeting was held in one of the cafes, and a debate was arranged for one evening each week.
In the beginning, all the members of the movement were also members of the committee. Therefore, the same persons always turned up at both meetings. The first step that had to be taken was to extend the narrow limits of this small circle, and get new members. But the principal necessity was to utilize all the means at our command for the purpose of making the movement known. We chose the following methods. We decided to hold a monthly meeting to which the public would be invited. Some of the invitations were typewritten, and some were written by hand.
For the first few meetings, we distributed them in the streets and delivered them personally at certain houses. Each one canvassed among his own acquaintances, and tried to persuade some of them to attend our meetings. The result was lamentable. I still remember how once I personally delivered 80 of these invitations, and how we waited in the evening for the crowds to come. After waiting in vain for a whole hour, the chairman finally had to open the meeting. Again, there were only seven people present, the old familiar seven.
We then changed our methods. We had the invitations written with a typewriter in a Munich stationer's shop and then multigraphed them. The result was that a few more people attended our next meeting. The number increased gradually from 11 to 13 to 17 to 23 and finally to 34. We collected some money within our own circle, each poor devil giving a small contribution. And in that way, we raised sufficient funds to be able to advertise one of our meetings in the Munich Observer, which was still an independent paper. This time, we had an astonishing success.
We had chosen the Munich Hofbrauhausgeller, which must not be confounded with the Munich Hofbrauhaus Festzal as our meeting place. It was a small hall and would accommodate scarcely more than a 130 people. To me, however, the hall seemed enormous, and we were all trembling lest this tremendous edifice would remain partly empty on the night of the meeting. At 07:00, 111 persons were present, and the meeting was opened. A Munich professor delivered the principal address, and I spoke after him. That was my first appearance in the role of public orator. The whole thing seemed a very daring adventure to Herr Harrah, who was then chairman of the party.
He was a very decent fellow, but he had an a priori conviction that although I might have quite a number of good qualities, I certainly did not have a talent for public speaking. Even later, he could not be persuaded to change his opinion, but he was mistaken. Twenty minutes had been allotted to me for my speech on this occasion, which might be looked on as our first public meeting. I talked for thirty minutes, and what I always had felt deep down in my heart without being able to put it to the test was here proved to be true. I could make a good speech.
At the end of the thirty minutes, it was quite clear that all the people in the little hall had been profoundly impressed. The enthusiasm aroused among them found its first expression in the fact that my appeal to those present brought us donations which amounted to 300 marks. That was a great relief for us. Our finances were at that time so meager that we could not afford to have our party prospectus printed or even leaflets. Now we possessed at least the nucleus of a fund from which we could pay the most urgent and necessary expenses. But the success of this first larger meeting was also important from another point of view.
I had already begun to introduce some young and fresh members into the committee. During the long period of my military service, I had come to know a large number of good comrades whom I was now able to persuade to join our party. All of them were energetic and disciplined young men who, through their years of military service, had been imbued with the principle that nothing is impossible, and that where there's a will, there's a way. The need for this fresh blood supply became evident to me after a few weeks of collaboration with the new members.
Herrara, who was then chairman of the party, was a journalist by profession, and as such, he was a man of general knowledge. But as leader of the party, he had one very serious handicap. He could not speak to the crowd. Though he did his work conscientiously, it lacked the necessary driving force, probably for the reason that he had no oratorical gifts whatsoever. Herr Drexler, at that time chairman of the Munich local group, was a simple working man. He too was not of any great importance as a speaker. Moreover, he was not a soldier. He had never done military service even during the war.
So that this man, who was feeble and diffident by nature, had missed the only school which knows how to transform diffident and weakly natures into real men. Therefore, neither of those two men were of the stuff that would have enabled them to stir up an ardent and indomitable faith in the ultimate triumph of the movement, and to brush aside with obstinate force, and if necessary, with brutal ruthlessness, all obstacles that stood in the path of the new idea. Such a task could be carried out only by men who had been trained body and soul in those military virtues which make a man, so to speak, agile as a greyhound, tough as leather, and hard as crook steel.
At that time, I was still a soldier. Physically and mentally, I had the polish of six years of service, so that in the beginning, this circle must have looked on me as quite a stranger. In common with my army comrades, I had forgotten such phrases as that will not go, or that is not possible, or we ought not to take such a risk. It is too dangerous. The whole undertaking was of its very nature dangerous. At that time, there were many parts of Germany where it would have been absolutely impossible openly to invite people to a national meeting that dared to make a direct appeal to the masses.
Those who attended such meetings were usually dispersed and driven away with broken heads. It certainly did not call for any great qualities to be able to do things in that way. The largest so called bourgeois mass meetings were accustomed to dissolve, and those in attendance would run away like rabbits when frightened by a dog as soon as a dozen communists appeared on the scene. The Reds used to pay little attention to those bourgeois organizations where only babblers talked. They recognized the inner triviality of such associations much better than the members themselves, and therefore felt that they need not be afraid of them.
On the contrary, however, they were all the more determined to use every possible means of annihilating once and for all any movement that appeared to them to be a danger to their own interests. The most effective means which they always employed in such cases were terror and brute force. The Marxist leaders, whose business consisted in deceiving and misleading the public naturally hated most of all a movement whose declared aim was to win over those masses which hitherto had been exclusively at the service of international Marxism in the Jewish and stock exchange parties.
The title alone, German Labor Party, irritated them. It could be easily foreseen that at the first opportune moment, we should have to face the opposition of the Marxist despots who were still intoxicated with their triumph in 1918. People in the small circles of our own movement at that time showed a certain amount of anxiety at the prospect of such a conflict. They wanted to refrain as much as possible from coming out into the open because they feared that they might be attacked and beaten. In their minds, they saw our first public meetings broken up and feared that the movement might thus be ruined forever.
I found it difficult to defend my own position, which was that the conflict should not be evaded, but that it should be faced openly, and that we should be armed with those weapons which are the only protection against brute force. Terror cannot be overcome by the weapons of the mind, but only by counter terror. The success of our first public meeting strengthened my own position. The members felt encouraged to arrange for a second meeting on an even larger scale. Sometime in October 1919, the second larger meeting took place in the air bell Brau Keller.
The theme of our speeches was and Versailles. There were four speakers. I talked for almost an hour, and the success was even more striking than at our first meeting. The number of people who attended had grown to more than a 130. An attempt to disturb the proceedings was immediately frustrated by my comrades. The would be disturbers were thrown down the stairs, bearing imprints of violence on their heads. A fortnight later, another meeting took place in the same hall. The number in attendance had now increased to more than 170, which meant that the room was fairly well filled.
I spoke again, and once more, the success obtained was greater than at the previous meeting. Then I proposed that a larger hall should be found. After looking around for some time, we discovered one at the other end of the town in the Deutschenreich, in the Dachaua Strasse. The first meeting at this new rendezvous had a smaller attendance than the previous meeting. There were just less than 140 present. The members of the committee began to be discouraged, and those who had always been skeptical were now convinced that this falling off in the attendance was due to the fact that we were holding the meetings at two short intervals.
There were lively discussions in which I upheld my own opinion that a city with 700,000 inhabitants ought to be able not only to stand one meeting every fortnight, but 10 meetings every week. I held that we should not be discouraged by one comparative setback, that the tactics we had chosen were correct, and that sooner or later, success would be ours if we only continued with determined perseverance to push forward on our road. The whole winter of 1919 to 1920 was one continual struggle to strengthen confidence in our ability to carry the movement through to success and to intensify this confidence until it became a burning faith that could move mountains.
Our next meeting in the small hall proved the truth of my contention. Our audience had increased to more than 200. The publicity effect and the financial success was splendid. I immediately urged that a further meeting should be held. It took place in less than a fortnight, and there were more than 270 people present. Two weeks later, we invited our followers and their friends for the seventh time to attend our meeting. The same hall was scarcely large enough for the number that came. They amounted to more than 400. During this phase, the young movement developed its inner form.
Sometimes we had more or less hefty discussions within our small circle. From various sides, it was then just the same as it is today, objections were made against the idea of calling the young movement a party. I have always considered such criticism as a demonstration of practical incapability and narrow mindedness on the part of the critic. Those objections have always been raised by men who could not differentiate between external appearances and inner strength, but tried to judge the movement by the high sounding character of the name attached to it. To this end, they ransacked the vocabulary of our ancestors with unfortunate results.
At that time, it was very difficult to make the people understand that every movement is a party as long as it has not brought its ideals to final triumph, and thus achieved its purpose. It is a party even if it give itself a thousand different names. Any person who tries to carry into practice an original idea whose realization would be for the benefit of his fellow men, will first have to look for disciples who are ready to fight for the ends he has in view. And if these ends did not go beyond the destruction of the party system, and therewith put a stop to the process of disintegration, then all those who come forward as protagonists and apostles of such an ideal are a party in themselves as long as their final goal is reached.
It is only hair splitting and playing with words when these antiquated theorists whose practical success is in reverse ratio to their wisdom presumed to think they can change the character of a movement which is at the same time a party by merely changing its name. On the contrary, it is entirely out of harmony with the spirit of the nation to keep harping on that far off and forgotten nomenclature which belongs to the ancient Germanic times and does not awaken any distinct association in our age. This habit of borrowing words from the dead past tends to mislead the people into thinking that the external trappings of its vocabulary are the important feature of a movement.
It is really a mischievous habit, but it is quite prevalent nowadays. At that time, and subsequently, I had to warn followers repeatedly against these wandering scholars who were peddling Germanic folklore and who never accomplished anything positive or practical except to cultivate their own superabundance self conceit. The new movement must guard itself against an influx of people whose only recommendation is their own statement that they've been fighting for these very same ideals during the last thirty or forty years. Now if somebody has fought for forty years to carry into effect what he calls an idea, and if these alleged efforts not only show no positive results, but have not even been able to hinder the success of the opposing party, then the story of those forty years of futile effort furnishes sufficient proof for the incompetence of such a protagonist.
People of that kind are especially dangerous because they do not want to participate in the movement as ordinary members. They talk rather of the leading positions which would be the only fitting posts for them in view of their past work, and also so that they might be enabled to carry on that work further. But woe to a young movement if the conduct of it should fall into the hands of such people. A businessman who has been in charge of a great firm for forty years and who has completely ruined it through his mismanagement is not the kind of person one would recommend for the founding of a new firm, and it is just the same with a new national movement.
Nobody of common sense would appoint to a leading post in such a movement, some Teutonic Methuselah who had been ineffectively preaching some idea for a period of forty years until himself and his idea had entered the stage of senile decay. Furthermore, only a very small percentage of such people join a new movement with the intention of serving its end unselfishly, and helping in the spread of its principles. In most cases, they come because they think that, under the aegis of the new movement, it will be possible for them to promulgate their old ideas to the misfortune of their new listeners.
Anyhow, nobody ever seems able to describe what exactly these ideas are. It is typical of such persons that they rant about ancient Teutonic heroes of the dim and distant ages, stone axes, battle spears, and shields, whereas in reality, they themselves are the woefulest paltroons imaginable. For those very same people who brandished Teutonic tin swords that have been fashioned carefully according to ancient models and wear padded bear skins with the horns of oxen mounted over their bearded faces, proclaim that all contemporary conflicts must be decided by the weapons of the mind alone, and thus they skedaddle when the first communist cudgel appears.
Posterity will have little occasion to write a new epic on these heroic gladiators. I have seen too much of that kind of people not to feel a profound contempt for their miserable play acting. To the masses of the nation, they are just an object of ridicule. But the Jew finds it to his own interest to treat these folklore comedians with respect and to prefer them to real men who are fighting to establish a German state. And yet these comedians are extremely proud of themselves, Notwithstanding their complete fecklessness, which is an established fact, they pretend to know everything better than other people.
So much so that they make themselves a veritable nuisance to all sincere and honest patriots, to whom not only the heroism of the past is worthy of honor, but who also feel bound to leave examples of their own work for the inspiration of the coming generation. Among those people, there were some whose conduct can be explained by their innate stupidity and incompetence. But there are others who have a definite ulterior purpose in view. Often, it is difficult to distinguish between the two classes. The impression which I often get, especially of those so called religious reformers whose creed is grounded on ancient Germanic customs, is that they are the missionaries and prodigies of those forces which do not wish to see a national revival taking place in Germany.
All their activities tend to turn the attention of the people away from the necessity of fighting together in a common cause against the common enemy, namely the Jew. Moreover, that kind of preaching induces the people to use up their energies, not in fighting for the common cause, but in absurd and ruinous religious controversies within their own ranks. There are definite grounds that make it absolutely necessary for the movement to be dominated by a strong central force, which is embodied in the authoritative leadership. In this way alone, it is possible to counteract the activity of such fatal elements, and that is just the reason why these folklore, Ahasuerus', are vigorously hostile to any movement whose members are firmly united under one leader and one discipline.
Those people of whom I have spoken hate such a movement because it is capable of putting a stop to their mischief. It was not without good reason that when we laid down a clearly defined program for the new movement, we excluded the word from it. The concept underlying the term cannot serve as the basis of a movement because it is too indefinite and general in its application. Therefore, if somebody called himself Fulkish, such a designation could not be taken as the hallmark of some definite party affiliation. Because the concept is so indefinite from the practical viewpoint, it gives rise to various interpretations, and thus, people can appeal to it all the more easily as a sort of personal recommendation.
Whenever such a vague concept, which is subject to so many interpretations, is admitted into a political movement, it tends to break up the discipline solidarity of the fighting forces. No such solidarity can be maintained if each individual member be allowed to define for himself what he believes and what he is willing to do. One feels it a disgrace when one notices the kind of people who float about nowadays with the Firkish symbol stuck in their buttonholes, and at the same time, to notice how many people have various ideas of their own as to the significance of that symbol.
A well known professor in Bavaria, a famous combatant who fights only with the weapons of the mind and who boasts of having marched against Berlin by shouldering the weapons of the mind, of course, believes that the word is synonymous with monarchical. But this learned authority has hitherto neglected to explain how our German monarchs of the past can be identified with what we generally mean by the term today. I'm afraid he will find himself at a loss if he is asked to give a precise answer. For it would be very difficult indeed to imagine anything less than most of those German monarchical states were.
Had they been otherwise, they would not have disappeared. Or if they were folkish, then the fact of their downfall may be taken as evidence that the forkish outlook on the world, is a false outlook. Everybody interprets this concept in his own way, But such multifarious opinions cannot be adopted as the basis of a militant political movement. I need not call attention to the absolute lack of worldly wisdom and especially the failure to understand the soul of the nation, which is displayed by these messianic precursors of the twentieth century. Sufficient attention has been called to those people by the ridicule which the left wing parties have bestowed on them.
They allow them to babble on and sneer at them. I do not set much value on the friendship of people who do not succeed in getting disliked by their enemies. Therefore, we consider the friendship of such people as not only worthless, but even dangerous to our young movement. That was the principal reason why we first called ourselves a party. We hoped that by giving ourselves such a name, we might scare away a whole host of Volkisch dreamers, and that was the reason also why we named our party the National Socialist German Labour Party.
The first term party kept away all those dreamers who live in the past and all the lovers of bombastic nomenclature, as well as those who went around beating the big drum for the folkish idea. The full name of the party kept away all those heroes whose weapon is the sword of the spirit, and all those whining poltroons who take refuge behind their so called intelligence, as if it were a kind of shield. It was only to be expected that this latter class would launch a mass attack against us after our movement had started. But, of course, it was only a pen and ink attack, for the goose quill is the only weapon which these folkish lancers wield.
We had declared one of our principles thus. We shall meet violence with violence in our own defense. Naturally, that principle disturbed the equanimity of the knights of the pen. They reproached us bitterly, not only for what they called our crude worship of the cudgel, but also because, according to them, we had no intellectual forces on our side. These charlatans did not think for a moment that a Demosthenes could be reduced to silence at a mass meeting by 50 idiots who had come there to shout him down and use their fists against his supporters.
The innate cowardice of the pen and ink charlatan prevents him from exposing himself to such a danger, for he always works in safe retirement and never dares to make a noise or come forward in public. Even today, I must warn the members of our young movement in the strongest possible terms, to guard against the danger of falling into the snare of those who call themselves silent workers. These silent workers are not only a white livered lot, but are also, and always will be, ignorant do nothings. A man who is aware of certain happenings, and knows that a certain danger threatens, and at the same time sees a certain remedy which can be employed against it, is in duty bound not to work in silence, but to come out into the open and publicly fight for the destruction of the evil and the acceptance of his own remedy.
If he does not do so, then he is neglecting his duty and shows that he is weak in character and that he fails to act either because of his timidity or indolence or incompetence. Most of these silent workers generally pretend to know God knows what. Not one of them is capable of any real achievement, but they keep on trying to fool the world with their antics. Though quite indolent, they try to create the impression that their silent work keeps them very busy. To put it briefly, they are sheer swindlers, political jobbers who feel chagrined by the honest work which others are doing.
When you find one of these folkish moths buzzing over the value of his silent work, You may be sure that you are dealing with a fellow who does no productive work at all, but steals from others the fruits of their honest labor. In addition to all this, one ought to note the arrogance and conceited impudence with which these obscure antist idlers try to tear to pieces the work of other people, criticizing it with an air of superiority, and thus playing into the hands of the mortal enemy of our people. Even the simplest follower who has the courage to stand on the table in some beer hall where his enemies are gathered, unmanfully and openly defend his position against them, achieves a thousand times more than these stinking hypocrites.
He, at least, will convert one or two people to believe in the movement. One can examine his work and test its effectiveness by its actual results. But those knavish swindlers who praise their own silent work and shelter themselves under the cloak of anonymity are just worthless drones in the truest sense of the term and are utterly useless for the purpose of our national reconstruction. In the beginning of 1920, I put forward the idea of holding our first mass meeting. On this proposal, there were differences of opinion amongst us. Some leading members of our party thought that the time was not right for such a meeting, and that the result might be detrimental.
The press of the left had begun to take notice of us, and we were lucky enough in being able gradually to arouse their wrath. We had begun to appear at other meetings and to ask questions or contradict the speakers with the natural result that we were shouted down forthwith, but still we thereby gained some of our ends. People began to know of our existence, and the better they understood us, the stronger became their aversion and their enmity. Therefore, we might expect that a large contingent from our friends from the red camp would attend our first mass meeting. I fully realized that our meeting would probably be broken up, but we had to face the fight.
If not now, then some months later. Since the first day of our foundation, we were resolved to secure the future of the movement by fighting our way forward in a spirit of blind faith and ruthless determination. I was well acquainted with the mentality of those who belong to the red camp, And I knew quite well that if we opposed them tooth and nail, not only would we make an impression on them, but that we might even win new followers for ourselves. Therefore, I felt that we must decide on a policy of active opposition.
Herr Hauer was then the chairman of our party. He did not see eye to eye with me as to the opportune time for our first mass meeting. Accordingly, he felt himself obliged to resign from the leadership of the movement as an upright and honest man. Her Anton Drexler took his place. I kept the work of organizing the propaganda in my own hands, and I listened to no compromise in carrying it out. We decided on 02/24/1920 as the date for our first great popular meeting to be held under the aegis of this movement, which was hitherto unknown. I made all the preparatory arrangements personally.
They did not take very long. The whole apparatus of our organization was set in motion for the purpose of being able to secure a rapid decision as to our policy. Within twenty four hours, we had to decide on the attitude we should take in regard to the questions of the day which would be put forward at the mass meeting. The notices which advertised the meeting had to bring these points before the public. In this direction, we were forced to depend on the use of posters and leaflets, the contents of which and the manner in which they were displayed were decided upon in accordance with the principles which I have already laid down in dealing with propaganda in general.
They were produced in a form which would appeal to the crowd. They concentrated on a few points which were repeated again and again. The text was concise and definite, an absolutely dogmatic form of expression being used. We distributed these posters and leaflets with a dogged energy, and then we patiently waited for the effect they would produce. For our principal color, we chose red as it has an exciting effect on the eye and was therefore calculated to arouse the attention of our opponents and irritate them. Thus, they would have to take notice of us whether they liked it or not, and would not forget us.
One result of our tactics was to show up clearly the close political fraternization that existed also here in Bavaria between the Marxists and the center party. The political party that held power in Bavaria, which was the Bavarian People's Party affiliated with the center party, did its best to counteract the effect which our placards were having on the red masses. Thus, they made a definite step to fetter our activities. If the police could find no other grounds for prohibiting our placards, then they might claim that we were disturbing the traffic in the streets.
And thus, the so called German National People's Party calm the anxieties of their red allies by completely prohibiting those placards which proclaimed a message that was bringing back to the bosom of their own people hundreds of thousands of workers who had been misled by international agitators and incensed against their own nation. These placards bear witness to the bitterness of the struggle in which this young movement was then engaged. Future generations will find in these placards a documentary proof of our determination and the justice of our own cause.
And these placards will also prove how the so called national officials took arbitrary action to strangle a movement that did not please them because it was nationalizing the broad masses of the people and winning them back to their own racial stock. These placards will also help to refute the theory that there was then a national government in Bavaria, and they will afford documentary confirmation of the fact that if Bavaria remained nationally minded during the years 1919, 1920, '21, '22, and '23, this was not due to a national government, but it was because the national spirit gradually gained a deeper hold on the people, and the government was forced to follow public feeling.
The government authorities themselves did everything in their power to hamper this process of recovery and make it impossible. But in this connection, two officials must be mentioned as outstanding exceptions. Ernst Perna was chief of police at the time. He had a loyal counselor, doctor Frick, who was his chief executive official. These were the only men among the higher officials who had the courage to place the interests of their country before their own interests in holding on to their jobs. Of those in responsible positions, Ernst Poner was the only one who did not pay court to the mob, but felt that his duty was towards the nation as such and was ready to risk and sacrifice everything, even his personal livelihood, to help in the restoration of the German people, whom he dearly loved.
For that reason, he was a bitter thorn in the side of the venal group of government officials. It was not the interests of the nation or the necessity of a national revival that inspired or directed their conduct. They simply truckled to the wishes of the government, so as to secure their daily bread for themselves. But they had no thought whatsoever for the national welfare that had been entrusted to their care. Above all, Perna was one of those people who, in contradistinction to the majority of our so called defenders of the authority of the State, did not fear to incur the enmity of the traitors to the country and the nation, but rather courted it as a mark of honor and honesty.
For such men, the hatred of the Jews and Marxists, and the lies and calumnies they spread, were their only source of happiness in the midst of the national misery. Perna was a man of granite loyalty. He was like one of the aesthetic characters of the classical era, and was at the same time that kind of straightforward German to whom the saying better dead than a slave is not an empty phrase, but a veritable heart's cry. In my opinion, he and his collaborator, doctor Frick, are the only men holding positions then in Bavaria who have the right to be considered as having taken an active part in the creation of a national Bavaria.
Before holding our first great mass meeting, it was necessary not only to have our propaganda material ready, but also to have the main items of our program printed. In the second volume of this book, I shall give a detailed account of the guiding principles which we then followed in drawing up our program. Here, I will only say that the program was arranged not merely to set forth the form and content of the young movement, but also with an eye to making it understood among the broad masses. The so called intellectual circles made jokes and sneered at it and then tried to criticize it.
But the effect of our program proved that the ideas which we then held were right. During those years, I saw dozens of new movements arise and disappear without leaving a trace behind. Only one movement has survived. It is the National Socialist German Labour Party. Today, I am more convinced than ever before that though they may combat us and try to paralyze our movement, and though petty fogging party ministers may forbid us the right of free speech, they cannot prevent the triumph of our ideas. When the present system of state administration and even the names of the political parties that represent it will be forgotten, The programmatic basis of the National Socialist Movement will supply the groundwork on which the future state will be built.
The meetings which we held before January 1920 had enabled us to collect the financial means that were necessary to have our first pamphlets and posters and programs printed. I shall bring the first part of this book to a close by referring to our first great mass meeting because that meeting marked the occasion on which our framework as a small party had to be broken up, and we started to become the most powerful factor of this epoch in the influence we exercised on public opinion. At that time, my chief anxiety was that we might not fill the hall and that we might have to face empty benches.
I myself was firmly convinced that if only the people would come, this day would turn out a great success for the young movement. That was my feeling as I waited impatiently for the hour to come. It had been announced that the meeting would begin at 07:30. A quarter of an hour before the opening time, I walked through the chief hall of the Hofbrauhaus on the Platz in Munich, and my heart was nearly bursting with joy. The great hall, for at that time, it seemed very big to me, was filled to overflowing. Nearly 2,000 people were present.
And above all, those people had come whom we had always wished to reach. More than half the audience consisted of persons who seemed to be communists or independents. Our first great demonstration was destined, in their view, to come to an abrupt end, but things happened otherwise. When the first speaker had finished, I got up to speak. After a few minutes, I was met with a hailstorm of interruptions, and violent encounters broke out in the body of the hall. A handful of my loyal war comrades and some other followers grappled with the disturbers and restored order in a little while.
I was able to continue my speech. After half an hour, the applause began to drown the interruptions and the hootings. Then interruptions gradually ceased, and applause took their place. When I finally came to explain the 25 points and laid them point after point before the masses gathered there and asked them to pass their own judgment on each point. One point after another was accepted with increasing enthusiasm. When the last point was reached, I had before me a hall full of people united by a new conviction, a new faith, and a new will.
Nearly four hours had passed when the hall began to clear. As the masses streamed towards the exits, crammed shoulder to shoulder, shoving and pushing, I knew that a movement was now set a foot among the German people which would never pass into oblivion. A fire was enkindled from whose glowing heat the sword would be fashioned, which would restore freedom to the German Siegfried and bring back life to the German nation. Beside the revival which I then foresaw, I also felt that the goddess of vengeance was now getting ready to redress the treason of the November 9.
The hall was emptied. The movement was on the march. The end.
The Role of Parliamentarianism in Naval Collapse
Propaganda and National Superiority
Monarchy and Military Influence
The Army as a Source of National Strength
Civil Service and State Authority
Racial Issues and National Decline
Nation and Race: The Laws of Nature
Pacifism and the Aryan Race
Cultural Foundations and Racial Purity
The Decline of Civilizations
Aryan Instincts and Community Service
Jewish Influence and Cultural Appropriation
Historical Jewish Influence in Germany
Jewish Political Strategies
The Final Revolution and Jewish Power
Development of the National Socialist Party
Leadership and Organization Principles
Early Challenges and Growth of the Movement
