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Here at the close of this 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 setup 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 programme 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 million people. The final goal of a great reformation has often been the object of profound longing on the part of hundreds of thousands for centuries past, until finally one among them comes forward as a herald to announce the will of that multitude and become the champion of the old desire, which he now sets about triumphantly realising in the form of a new ideal. The fact that millions of our people yearn 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 their discouragement and despair; others show it in resentment, anger and indignation. In some this profound discontent calls forth an attitude of indifference, while it urges others to violent manifestations of wrath.
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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. It was to the latter that our young Movement had to appeal first of all. It was not to be an organisation 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 national life, but rather to push its roots deep down among the people. Looked at from the purely political point of view, the situation in 1918 was as follows: A nation had been torn asunder. One part, which was by far the smaller of the two, comprised the intellectual classes of the nation, from which all those employed in physical labour were excluded. On the surface, these intellectual classes appeared to be national-minded, but that word meant nothing to them except a very vague and feeble concept of 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 realise its aims by carrying on the fight with the aid of intellectual weapons, which, insufficient and superficial enough in the face of the brutal methods adopted by the adversary, 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 labourers who were organised in movements with a more or less radically Marxist tendency. These organised 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 oppression. 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.
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Even in 1918 one thing had to be clearly recognised, namely, that no resurgence of the German nation could take place until we had first re-established our national strength in relation to the outside world. For this purpose arms were not the preliminary necessity, though our bourgeois ‘statesmen’ always blathered about it being so; what was wanted was will-power. At one time the German people had more than sufficient armaments, and yet that did not suffice for the defence of its liberty, because it lacked that energy which springs from the instinct of national self-preservation and the will to hold 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 defenceless, not because she lacked arms, but because she lacked the will to keep her arms for the further preservation of her people. To-day our left-wing politicians, in particular, are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious, but in reality treacherous, foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany. 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 anti-national and criminal policy of abandoning the interests of the nation. 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 facts.’ The politicians of the right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into 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 cite disarmament as the cause which compelled them to adopt a policy of prudence (that is to say, of cowardice).
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The truth is that disarmament is the result of their pusillanimity. Therefore, the problem of restoring Germany’s power is not a question of how we can manufacture arms, but rather a question of how we can foster 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 acquisition of arms. A coward will not fire even a single shot when attacked, though he may be armed with ten pistols; to him they are of less value than a blackthorn in the hands of a man of courage. The problem of re-establishing the political power of our nation is first of all a problem of restoring the instinct of national self-preservation, if for no other reason than that every preparatory step in foreign policy and every weighing up by foreign Powers of the military value of a State has been proved by experience to be grounded not on the total amount of armaments 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 determined not so much by the inert mass of arms which it has at hand, but by the obvious presence of an enthusiastic will to national self-preservation and a heroic courage which will fight 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 on till victory any struggle upon which it once enters, no matter how long such a struggle pray last, no matter how great the sacrifice that may be necessary and no matter what the means that have to be employed—and all this even though the actual military equipment at hand may be utterly inadequate as 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 anti-national masses must be converted to believe in the national ideals.
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A young movement that aims at re-establishing 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 a 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 acknowledged and 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 idea 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 smashed the German Army by striking at it from the rear. Above all, these organised 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 prestige abroad and so establishing her desirability as an ally. For it is not we ourselves alone who are aware of the handicap that results from the existence of fifteen million Marxists, democrats, pacifists and followers of the Centre in our midst; foreign nations also recognise 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 betrayal of the nation are ready to oppose any and every attempt at a revival, simply because they want to retain the positions they now hold.
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According to the laws that govern human history, it is inconceivable that the German people could resume the place they formerly 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 re-establishing German sovereignty and political independence without at the same time reconstructing a united front within the nation. 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. 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 irreplaceable assets, if the national defence were composed only of the intellectual circles, as they are called. The young German intellectuals who joined the volunteer regiments and fell on the, battlefields of Flanders in the autumn of 1914 were bitterly missed later on. They were the most valuable treasure which the nation possessed and their loss could not be made good in the course of the war. It is not only the struggle itself which could not be waged if the working classes of the nation did not join the storm battalions, but the necessary technical preparations could not be made without a united will and a common front within the nation itself. Our nation which has to exist disarmed under tie 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 thirty pieces of silver.
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We can deal with such people, but the millions, who are opposed to the 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 minds. From whatever point of view we may examine the possibility of recovering our independence as a State and as a nation, 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 be at best 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 economic revival would only go into the hands of our international supervisors, and any social betterment would at best increase our output, to the advantage of those persons. 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. Since, therefore, 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 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 to refrain from doing. As early as 1919 we were convinced that to make the masses national-minded would have to constitute the first and paramount aim of the new movement. From the tactical standpoint, this decision brought with it a certain number of obligations.
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(1) No social sacrifice could be considered too great in this effort to win over the masses for the national revival. Whatever economic concessions are granted to-day to 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 an appreciation of their own nationality. Nothing but meanness and short-sightedness, which are characteristics that are unfortunately only too prevalent among our employers, could prevent people from recognising that in the long run no economic improvement and therefore no rise, in profits are possible unless the internalvölkischsolidarity of our nation be restored. If the German trade-unions had defended the interests of the working-classes uncompromisingly during the War;
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 negligible in such cases, provided, of course, that they do not go the length of endangering the independence and stability of the national economic system.
(2) The education of the masses along national lines can be carried out only indirectly, by improving 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.
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(3) The making of the broad masses national-minded 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 fanatically one-sided insistence on the aim which must be achieved. This means that a people cannot be made ‘national’ in the sense of that word as accepted by our bourgeois class to-day—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 but little acquaintance with abstract ideas, their reactions lie more in the domain of the feelings, which determine their positive or their negative attitude as the case may be. They are susceptible only to a manifestation of strength which comes definitely either from the positive or the 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. None of the tremendous revolutions which this world has witnessed, have been brought about by a scientific revelation, which has moved the masses, but always by an ardour which has inspired them, and often by a kind of hysteria which has urged them to action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must find the key that will open the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is weakness, but determination and strength.
(4) The soul of the masses can be won only if those who lead the movement 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.
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When they see an uncompromising onslaught against an adversary, the people have at all times taken this as a proof that right is on the side of the aggressor. But if the aggressor should go only half-way 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, that his half-way 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. It is possible to succeed in making the masses national-minded, only if, positive though the struggle to win the soul of the people may be, those who spread the international poison among them are exterminated.
(5) All the great problems of our time are problems of the moment and are only the results of certain definite causes, and among all these there is only one that has a profoundly causal significance. This is the problem of preserving the pure racial stock among the people. Human vigour 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 pugdog 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 outcome of the change that has modified its racial substance. If we are to free the German people from all those non-characteristic failings and traits we must first get rid of alien causes of these traits and failings.
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The German nation will never revive unless the racial problem, and with it, the Jewish question, 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.
(6) By incorporating in the national community the broad masses of our people (who are now in the international camp) we do not mean to renounce the principle that the interests of the various trades and professions must be safeguarded. Divergent interests in the various branches of labour and in the trades and professions are not the same as a division between the various classes, but rather a natural feature inherent in our economic life. Vocational grouping does not clash in the least with the idea of a national community, for it 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 in the State, a stratum of the people which has now formed a social class, the standing of the upper classes must not be lowered, but that of the lower classes must be raised. The class which carries through this process is never the upper class, but rather the lower one which is fighting for equality of rights. The bourgeoisie of to-day was not incorporated in the State through measures enacted by the feudal nobility, but only through its own energy and leaders who had sprung from its own ranks. The German worker cannot be raised from his present status 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 gulf between him and the other classes can be bridged. 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.
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The most difficult obstacle to the inclusion 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 influence of his international leaders and their anti-national and non-patriotic attitude which he has accepted. If they were inspired by the principle of devotion to the nation in all that concerns its political and social welfare, the trade-unions would make those millions of workers most valuable members of the national community, irrespective of their own individual struggle on behalf of economic interests. A movement which sincerely endeavours 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 justified and vital interests. Those who try to propagate such a notion are deliberate liars. The folk-community imposes obligations not only on the one side, but also on the other. A worker certainly does something which is contrary to the spirit of the folk-community, if he acts entirely on his own initiative and puts forward exaggerated demands, without taking the common weal or the maintenance of the national economic structure into consideration. But an industrialist also acts against the spirit of the folk-community, if he adopts inhumane methods of exploitation and misuses the working capacity of the nation and, by sweating the workers, amasses million for himself. He has no right to call himself ‘national’ and no right to talk of a folk-community, for he is only an unscrupulous egotist who sows the seeds of social discontent and provokes future conflicts which are bound to prove injurious to the interests of the country.
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The reservoir from which the young movement has to draw its members will be first of all the working classes. These classes 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 who genuinely love their 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 will be cordially welcomed in the ranks of the movement. They can serve as a valuable intellectual support in the work that is 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 paralyse the efforts of the campaign to win over the broad masses. 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 the 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 public demonstrations, it is impossible to eliminate those characteristics, or rather faults, which have grown and developed in the course of centuries. The difference between the cultural levels of the two groups and between their respective attitudes towards economic questions is still so great that it would turn out a hindrance to the movement the moment the first enthusiasm aroused by demonstrations calmed down. Finally, it is not part of our programme to transform the nationalist camp itself, but, rather to win over those who are anti-national in their outlook. It is this point of view which must finally determine the tactics of the whole movement.
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(7) This one-sided, but, consequently, clear and definite attitude must be manifested in the propaganda of the movement; and, on the other hand, this clarity is absolutely necessary in order 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 and may be rejected by the other as obvious and uninteresting, for the intellectual background of the two camps that come into question is very different. Even the manner in which something is presented and the tone in which particular details are emphasised cannot have the same effect on 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 sentiment 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 crudity and vulgarity. Among a hundred men who call themselves orators, there are scarcely ten who are capable of speaking with effect to an audience of street-sweepers, mechanics, navvies, etc., to-day and of expounding the same subject with equal effect to-morrow to an audience of university professors and students. Among a thousand public speakers there may be only one who can address a mixed audience of mechanics 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 to such an extent that they are carried away by a common enthusiasm. It must always be remembered that in most cases even the most beautiful idea embodied in a sublime theory can be brought home to the public only by men of middling ability. The thing that matters here is not the vision of the man of genius who created the great ideal, but rather what his apostles tell the broad masses, how they do this and with what degree of success. 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.
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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 the following clear and simple line of policy. In its message as well as in its forms of expression the propaganda had to be kept on a level with the intelligence of the masses, and its value had to be measured only by the actual success it achieved. 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 thereby proves that he can be of no use in the new movement. Only those intellectuals can be of use to a movement who understand its mission and its aims so well that they have learned to judge the methods of propaganda exclusively by the success obtained and never by the impression which those methods, make on them personally. Propaganda is not meant to serve as an entertainment for those people who already have a nationalist outlook; its purpose is to win the adhesion of those who have hitherto been hostile to the nation, but 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 determined the kind of propaganda we were to adopt in our campaign and the method by which we were to carry it out. The success that has been obtained proves that our decision was right.
(8) 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. It is not only the right, but the duty, of the protagonists of any world shattering ideal to secure control of such means as will enable them to realise that idea.
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In this world, success is the standard 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 acquisition of power in 1918, but the beneficial results of such an acquisition of power. Acoup d’etatcannot, therefore, he considered successful if, as many empty-headed critics in Germany now, believe, the revolutionaries succeeded in seizing control of the State, 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 the coup was called, which was effected by a gang of bandits in the autumn of 1918. But if the acquisition of political power be a requisite preliminary for the practical realisation 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.
(9) The nature and internal organisation of the new movement make it anti-parliamentarian. That is to say, it rejects in general, and in its own structure, the principle according to which decisions are to be 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 the movement the practical consequences of this principle are as follows: The president of a local 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.
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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 organisations—theBezirk(district), theKreis(urban circuit) and theGau(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 for 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 valid not only within its own ranks, but also for the whole State. The man who becomes leader is invested with supreme and unlimited authority, but he also has to bear the final and heaviest 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 mould can have the vocation for such a task. Human progress and human culture are not founded by the multitude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and personal efficiency. To cultivate these and give them their due, is one of the conditions necessary for the regaining of the prestige and power of our nation. Because of this principle, the movement must necessarily be anti-parliamentarian: and if it takes part in a parliamentary institution it must be 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.
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(10) The movement steadfastly refuses to take up any stand in regard to problems which are either outside of its sphere of political work or seem to have no fundamental importance for it. It does not aim at bringing about a religious reformation, but rather a political re-organisation of our people. It looks upon the two religious denominations as equally valuable mainstays for the existence of our people, and therefore it makes war on all those parties which would degrade the foundation on which the religious and moral stability of our people is based, by exploiting it in the service of party interests. Finally, the movement does not aim at re-establishing any one form of State or trying to destroy another, but rather at making 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 the creation of a Germanic State. The problem of the external 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. Once a nation has understood and appreciated the great problems that affect its inner existence, the question of formalities will never lead to internal conflict.
(11) The problem of the inner organisation of the movement is not one of principle, but of expediency. The best kind of organisation is not that which places a large intermediary apparatus between the leadership of the movement and the individual followers, but rather that which functions with the smallest possible intermediary apparatus. For it is the task of such an organisation 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. From any and every point of view, therefore, the organisation is only a necessary evil. At best it is only a means to an end, at the worst, an end in itself.
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Since the world produces more mechanically-minded beings than idealists, it will always be easier to develop the form of an organisation than its substance, that is to say, the ideals which it is meant to serve. The march of any ideal which strives towards practical fulfilment, and in particular those ideals 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 to others and thereby gradually gains 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 best, 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 movement is based, to carry on his propaganda personally among his many followers and at the same time to 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 organisation 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 organisation develops later. 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 centre as the chief seat of the movement.
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Only the existence of such a seat, or centre, around which a magic spell such as that of Mecca or Rome is woven, can supply a movement, with that permanent driving force which has its source in the internal unity of the movement, and the recognition of one head as representing this unity. When the first germ-cells of the organisation are being formed, care must always be taken not only to insist on the importance of the place where the idea originated, but to invest it with a sublime significance. The creative, moral and practical significance of the place whence the movement went forth and from which it is governed must be stressed in the same measure in which the original cells of the movement become so numerous that they have to be regrouped into larger units in the structure of the organisation. When, the number of individual followers becomes so large that direct personal, contact with the head of the movement is out of the question, we have to form those first local groups. As these groups multiply it becomes necessary to establish higher cadres in which the local groups are organised. Examples of such cadres in the political organisation are those of the region (Gau) and the district (Bezirk). 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 organisation which have now developed. Yet we must succeed in doing so, for this is an indispensable condition if the unity of the movement is to be guaranteed and its ideal realised. Finally, when those larger intermediary organisations have to be combined in new and still higher units, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the absolute supremacy of the original seat of the movement and its school of thought. Consequently, the mechanical forms of an organisation must only be introduced if, and in so far as, the spiritual authority and the ideas of the central seat of the organisation are shown to be firmly established. In the case of a political structure, this authority can frequently be guaranteed only by the exercise of power.
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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 group of absolutely reliable followers should be trained and a school founded which would subsequently help to propagate the ideal of the Movement. That the necessary authority for later should be established by gaining many and visible successes in this particular 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 counterdoctrine 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 not only after the need for them had become evident, but after the supremacy of the central authority has been satisfactorily guaranteed. Further, that the creation of subordinate units should depend on whether or not persons could be found who were qualified to undertake the leadership thereof.
Here there are two alternatives:(a) That the movement should have 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 is the easier and the more expeditious, but it necessitates large financial resources, for this group of leaders can work for the Movement only if they are paid a salary.
(b) Because the Movement, owing to lack of funds, is not in a position to employ paid officials it must begin by depending on voluntary helpers. Naturally this solution is slower and more difficult.
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It means that the leaders of the Movement have to allow large districts to remain uncanvassed, unless in these respective districts a member comes forward who is capable and willing to place himself at the service of the central authority for the purpose of organising 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 passage of time. The necessary condition for the establishment of any branch of the organisation 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 organisation are useless if there are no officers, so any political organisation is worthless, if it has not the right kind of leaders. If an inspiring personality who has the gift of leadership cannot be mound for the organisation 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. A necessary qualification for leadership is the possession, not only of will-power, but of efficiency, and will-power and energy must be considered as more important than the intellect of a genius. The most valuable association of qualities is 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 organisations in the same field. It is quite erroneous to believe that the strength of a movement must increase if it is to be combined with other movements of a similar kind.
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Any expansion resulting from such a combination will of course mean an increase in external development, which superficial, observers might consider to be also an increase of power; but in reality the movement thus admits outside elements which will subsequently weaken its constitutional vigour. 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 in practice there would not be two movements, but only one. No matter what the difference may be, even if it consists only in the measure in which the capabilities of the one set of leaders differ from those of the other, it is still there. It is against the natural law of all development to couple dissimilar organisms; for the law is that the stronger must overcome the weaker and, through the struggle necessary for such a conquest, increase the constitutional vigour and effective strength of the victor. By amalgamating political organisations that are approximately alike, certain immediate advantages may be gained, but advantages thus gained are bound 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 rivals is 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 it has exceeded the maximum limit of its strength at that moment in which complete victory, is within its grasp. Therefore, a movement must not strive to obtain successes that will be only immediate and transitory, but it must show a spirit of uncompromising perseverance in carrying on 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 hot-house. They shoot up rapidly, but they lack that inner strength which enables the natural plant to grow into a tree that will withstand the storms of centuries.
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The greatness of every powerful organisation which embodies a creative ideal 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 cause. If an ideal 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 defence 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 organisation acquires if it remains independent and fights its own cause alone.
(13) The movement ought to educate its adherents on the principle that struggle must not be considered a necessary evil, but as something desirable 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 own right to existence is based. They must not try to avoid being hated by those who are the enemies of our people and ourWeltanschauung, but must welcome such hatred. Lies and calumnies are part of the method which the enemy employs to express his hatred. The man who is not opposed, vilified and slandered in the Jewish press is not a staunch German and not a true National Socialist. The best standard 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. If he tells the truth on certain occasions, it is only for the purpose of masking some greater deception, which turns the apparent truth into a deliberate falsehood.
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The Jew is past master in the art of lying. Falsehood and duplicity are the weapons with which he fights. Every calumny and falsehood published by the Jews are honourable scars borne 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 wasted the previous day, 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 an 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 unshakable and invincible.
(14) The Movement must use every 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 creative ability. 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, the great statesman or the great general, for their activity lies in the realm of artistic creative ability which can never be mechanically acquired, because it is an innate and divine gift. 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.
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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 is well aware of this. He, whose great men have always been great only in their efforts to destroy mankind and its civilisation, takes good care that they are worshipped as idols. The Jew tries to belittle the respect in which nations hold their own great men and women. He stigmatises this respect 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 Jew, 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, with its uplifting and ennobling influence, to any 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 a German Reich, having even greater power and glory than before. We should have been very pleased if we had been attacked or even ridiculed, but the most depressing fact was that nobody paid any attention to us whatsoever. This utter lack of interest in us caused me great mental distress at that time. When I entered the circle of these 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 organisation. Subsequently, I had time and opportunity, to study the impossible form of this so-called party. The picture was indeed depressing and discouraging. It was a party only in name and absolutely devoid of significance. 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.
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The voting system was employed. When the members of the great parliaments cried until they were hoarse, at least they shouted over problems of importance, but 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 own few members and their small circle of acquaintances. Every Wednesday, what was called a committee meeting was held in one of the cafés, 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, above all, it was necessary to utilise all the means at our command for the purpose of making the movement known. We chose the following methods. We attempted to hold a ‘meeting’ every month, and later, every fortnight. 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 I personally once delivered eighty 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 persons present, the old familiar seven. We then changed our methods. We had the invitations typewritten and multi-graphed at a Munich stationer’s shop. The result was that a few more people attended our next meeting. The number increased, gradually from eleven to, thirteen, to seventeen, to twenty-three and finally to thirty-four.
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We collected some money within our own circle, each poor soul giving a small contribution, and in that way we raised sufficient funds to be able to advertise one of our meetings in theMünchener Beobachter, which was then an independent paper. This time we had an astonishing success. We had chosen the Munich Hofbräuhaus Keller (which must not be confounded with the Munich Hofbräuhaus-Festsaal) as our meeting-place. It was a small hall and would accommodate scarcely more than one hundred and thirty persons. 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 seven o’clock one hundred and eleven 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 Harrer, who was then chairman of the Party. He was a very decent fellow, but he had ana prioriconviction that, though 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. Things turned out differently. Twenty minutes had been allotted to me for my speech on this occasion, which might be looked upon as our first public meeting. I spoke 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 three hundred marks. That was a great relief to us. Our finances were at that time so meagre that we could not afford to have our party programme, or even leaflets, printed. Now we possessed at least the nucleus of a fund from which we could meet the most urgent and necessary expenses.
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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 conviction that nothing is impossible and that where there’s a will there’s a way. The need for this fresh blood became evident to me after a few weeks of collaboration with the new members. Herr Harrer, who was then chairman of the Party, was a journalist by profession, and as such, he was a well-educated man, 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 he, who was feeble and diffident by nature, had missed the only school which can transform diffident and weakly natures into real men. Therefore neither of those two men were of the stuff that would have enabled them to have 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 ideal. 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 Krupp 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 can’t be done,” or “That is not possible,” or “We ought not to take such a risk; it is too dangerous.”
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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 to invite people openly 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 scuttle away like rabbits frightened by a dog, as soon as a dozen communists appeared on the scene. The Reds used to pay little attention to those bourgeois organisations where only babblers talked. They recognised 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 other hand, 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 dangerous. The most effective means which they always employed in such cases were terrorism 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 had hitherto been exclusively at the service of international Marxism in the Jewish and Stock Exchange parties. The mere title, ‘German Labour Party,’ irritated them. It could easily be 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 circle 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 for ever.
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I found it difficult to defend my own opinion, 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. Terrorism 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 a somewhat larger scale. Some time in October 1919 the second larger meeting took place in the Eberlbräukeller. The theme of our speeches was ‘Brest-Litovsk and Versailles.’ There were four speakers. I spoke for almost an hour, and my success was even more striking than at our first meeting. The number of people who attended had increased to over one hundred and thirty. An attempt to disturb the proceedings was immediately frustrated by my comrades. The would-be disturbers were thrown down the stairs, with bruised heads. A fortnight later, another meeting took place in the same hall. The number in attendance had now increased to more than one hundred and seventy, 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 theDeutsches Reichin the Dachauer Strasse. The first meeting at this new rendezvous had a smaller attendance than the previous meeting. There were just about one hundred and forty present. The members of the committee began to be discouraged, and those who had always been sceptical were now convinced that this falling-off in the attendance was due to the fact that we were holding the meetings at too short intervals. There were lively, discussions, in which I upheld my own opinion that a city of seven hundred thousand inhabitants ought to be able not only to stand one meeting every fortnight, but ten meetings every week. I held that we should not be discouraged by one set-back, 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. This whole winter of 1919–20 was one continual struggle to strengthen confidence in our ability to carry the Movement on to success, and, to intensify this confidence, until it became a burning faith that could move mountains.
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Our next meeting in the same hall proved the truth of my contention. Our audience had increased to more than two hundred. The publicity effect and the financial success were splendid. I immediately urged that a further meeting should be held. It took pace in less than a fortnight, and there were more than two hundred and seventy 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 four hundred. During this phase the young Movement developed its inner form. Some times we had more or less heated discussions within our small circle. On various sides—it was then just the same as it is to-day—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. Such objections have always been raised by men who cannot differentiate between external appearances and inner strength, but try to judge a movement by the high-sounding character of the name attached to it and to this end they ransack 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 realised its ideas and thus achieved its purpose. It is a party no matter by what name it chooses to call itself. Any person who tries to carry into practice an original idea whose realisation 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. Even if these aims were merely to destroy the existing party system, and thereby to 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 not reached.
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It is only hair-splitting and playing with words if these antiquatedvölkischtheorists, whose practical success is in inverse ratio to their wisdom, presume to think they can change the character of a movement, which is at the same time a party, by merely changing its name. If there is anything which is non-völkischit is this messing about with old Germanic expressions, in particular, which neither suit the present time nor conjure up a definite picture. 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 a mischievous habit; but it is very prevalent nowadays. At that time, and subsequently, I had to warn followers repeatedly against these wanderingvölkischscholars who never accomplished anything positive or practical, except to cultivate their own superabundant self-conceit. The new Movement must guard against an influx of people whose only recommendation is their own statement that they have been fighting for these same ideals for the last thirty or forty years. Now, if somebody has fought for forty years to carry into effect what he calls an ideal, 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, in view of their past work and also of their intended activities in the future, are the only positions they are fitted to fill, but woe to a young movement if the conduct of it should fall into the hands of such people. A business man who has been in charge of a great firm for forty years and who has completely ruined it through mismanagement is not the kind of person one would recommend as the founder of a new firm, nor would avölkisch-minded Methuselah who, for the space of forty years, has been preaching a great ideal, until it has lost all meaning and vitality, be a suitable leader of a fresh young movement. Furthermore, only a very small percentage of such people join a new movement with the intention of serving its ends unselfishly and helping in the spread of its principles.
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In most cases they come because they think that, under the aegis of the 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 make out 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 woefullest poltroons imaginable. For they are the very same people who brandish 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 skedaddle at the very sight of a communist cudgel. Posterity will have little occasion to write a new epic on these heroic gladiators. I have seen too much of that kind of person 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 thesevölkischcomedians with respect and to prefer them to real men who are fighting to establish a German State. Yet such people 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 honour, but who also feel bound to leave examples of their own work for the inspiration of the coming generation. Among these people there are 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 protégés of those forces which do not wish to see a national revival taking place in Germany.
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All their activities tend to turn the attention of, the people away from the necessity of fighting together for a common cause against the common enemy, namely, the Jew. More ever, 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. These 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 is it possible to counteract the activity of such fatal elements, and that is just the reason why thesevölkischAhasueruses 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 programme for the new movement we excluded the wordvölkischfrom it. The concept underlying the termvölkischcannot serve as the basis of a movement, because it is too indefinite and general in its application. Therefore, if somebody calls himselfvölkischthis cannot be taken as a sign of party membership. Because this concept is practically indefinable it gives rise to various interpretations and thus people can use 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 disciplined solidarity of the fighting forces. No such solidarity can be maintained if each individual member is 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 trot about nowadays with thevölkischsymbol stuck in their buttonholes, and at the same time realises how many people have various ideas of their own as to the significance of that symbol.
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A well-known professor in Bavaria, a famous combatant who fights only with the weapons of the mind and who boasts of having laid siege to Berlin (with the weapons of the mind, of course), believes that the wordvölkischis 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 wordvölkischto-day. I am 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 lessvölkischthan were most of those German monarchical states. Had they been otherwise they would not have disappeared; or if they werevölkisch, then the fact of their downfall world have to be taken as evidence that thevölkisch Weltanschauungis false. 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 failure to understand the soul of the nation, which is displayed by thesevölkischJohn-the-Baptists of the twentieth century. Sufficient attention has been called to these people by the ridicule which the left-wing parties have heaped 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 themselves disliked by their enemies. Therefore, we considered 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 ofvölkischdreamers, and that was also the reason 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 lovers of bombastic nomenclature, as well as those who went around beating the big drum for thevölkischidea.
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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 massed 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 thesevölkischheroes wield. We had declared one of our principles thus, “We shall meet violence with violence in our own defence.” 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 fifty 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 ‘peace and quiet’ and never dares to make a noise or come forward in public. Even to-day 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 claim to work in ‘peace and quiet,’ for they are not only a whitelivered 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 ‘peace and quiet,’ but to come 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, his indolence or his incompetence. Most of those who work in ‘peace and quiet,’ 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.
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Though quite indolent, they try to create the impression that their peaceful, quiet 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 thesevölkischmoths talking of the value of ‘peace and quiet,’ 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 labour. In addition to all this one ought to note the arrogance and conceited impudence with which these obscurantist idlers try to tear to pieces the work of other people, criticising 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, and manfully and openly defend his position against them, achieves a thousand times more than these slinking hypocrites. He will convert at least one or two people to believe in the movement. We can examine his work and test its effectiveness by its actual results, but those cowardly swindlers, who praise their own work done in ‘peace and quiet’ and shelter under the cloak of anonymity, are just worth less drones, in the truest sense of the term, and are utterly useless for the purpose of our national reconstruction. At 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 ripe 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 to be 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 something. 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 of our ‘friends’ from the Red camp would attend our first mass meeting.
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I fully realised that there was a great probability that our meeting would be broken up, but we had to face the fight, if not now, then some months later. It was up to us from the very first to immortalise the Movement by defending it in a spirit of blind faith and ruthless determination. I was well acquainted with the mentality of all those who belonged 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 we might even win new followers for ourselves. Therefore, I felt that we must be prepared to offer such resistance. Herr Harrer was then 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 as an upright and honest man to resign from the leadership of the Movement. Herr Anton Drexler took his place. I kept the work of organising the propaganda in my own hands and carried it out uncompromisingly. We decided on February 24th, 1920, as the date for the first great popular meeting to be held under the auspices 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 organisation was such that we were able to make rapid decisions. Within the space of twenty-four hours, we had to be able to arrange mass meetings at which our attitude on current problems was made known. The holding of these meetings was announced by means of posters and leaflets, the contents of which was 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.
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For our principal colour we chose red, as it has an exciting effect on the eye and was 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. During the period which followed, the close bond of union between the Marxists and the Centre party (in Bavaria as elsewhere) was clearly revealed by the strenuous efforts made by the Bavarian People’s Party, which was omnipotent here to counteract the effect which our placards were having on the ‘Red’ masses. If the police could find no other grounds for prohibiting the display of our placards, then they might claim that we were disturbing the traffic in the streets. Thus the so-called German National People’s Party calmed the anxieties of their ‘Red’ allies by completely prohibiting those placards which proclaimed a message that was bringing back hundreds of thousands of workers who had been misled by international agitators and worked up against their own nation to the bosom of their own people. These placards bear witness to the bitterness of the struggle in which the young Movement was then engaged. Future generations will find in these placards documentary evidence of our determination and the justice of our own cause. They will also prove how the so-called national officials took arbitrary action to strangle a movement that did not please them, because it was making the broad masses of the people national-minded 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 national-minded during the years 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1923, this was not due to a national government, but 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 Pöhner was Chief of Police at the time. He had a loyal counsellor in Dr. Frick, who was his chief executive officer.
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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 Pöhner 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, as their employer, but they had no thought whatsoever for the national welfare for which they were responsible. Above all, Pöhner was one of those people who, in contradiction 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 mark of honour. For such men the hatred of the Jews and Marxists, and the lies and calumnies they spread concerning them, was their only source of happiness in the midst of the national misery. Pöhner was a man of absolute honesty, classic simplicity and German straightforwardness for whom the saying “Better dead than a slave” is not an empty phrase, but the essence of his being. In my opinion, he and his collaborator, Dr. Frick, were the only men then holding positions 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 programme 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 programme. Here I will only say that, the programme was arranged not merely to set forth the form and scope of the young Movement, but also with an eye to making it understood by the broad masses.
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The so-called intellectual circles made jokes and sneered at it and then tried to criticise it, but the effect of our programme 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 had survived; it is the National Socialist German Labour Party. To-day I am more convinced than ever before that, though they may combat us and try to paralyse our Movement, and though pettifogging party ministers may forbid us the right of free speech, they cannot prevent the triumph of our ideals. 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 our programme 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 the Party shed its fetters as a small association and exercised for the first time a definite influence on public opinion which is the most powerful factor of our age. 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 so that it was with a feeling of tense excitement that I waited impatiently for the evening to come. It had been announced that the meeting would begin at 7.30 p.m. A quarter of an hour before the opening time I entered theFestsaalof the Hofbräuhaus in the Platz in Munich and my heart nearly burst with joy. The great hall—for at that time it seemed very big to me—was filled to overflowing. Nearly two thousand persons 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.
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But they were mistaken. 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 gradually restored a semblance of order. I was able to continue my speech. After half an hour the applause began to drown the interruptions and the cat-calls. Then I turned to the question of our programme, which I proceeded to elucidate for the first time. Then interruptions gradually ceased and applause took their place. When I finally came to explain the twenty-five points and laid them, point by point, before the masses gathered there and asked them to pass their own judgment on each point, one 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 resolve. 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 afoot among the German people which would never fade into oblivion. A fire had been kindled 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 wrongs of November 9th 1918. The hall was emptied. The Movement was on the march.
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On February 24th 1920, the first great mass meeting under the auspices of, the new movement took place. In the Hofbräuhaus-Festsaal in Munich the twenty-five theses which constituted the programme of our new Party were expounded to an audience of nearly two thousand people and each thesis was enthusiastically received. Thus we brought to the knowledge of the public the first principles and lines of action along which was to be conducted the new struggle for the abolition of a confused mass of obsolete ideas and opinions which had obscure and often pernicious tendencies. A new force was to make its appearance among the timid and cowardly bourgeoisie. This force was destined to impede the triumphant advance of the Marxists and bring the chariot of Fate to a standstill just as it seemed about to reach its goal. It was evident that this new movement could gain the public significance and support which are necessary prerequisites in such a gigantic struggle only if it succeeded from the very outset in awakening a sacred conviction in the hearts of its followers. It was not a case of introducing a new electoral-slogan into the political field, but that an entirely newWeltanschauungof radical significance had to be established. One must try to recall from what a feeble jumble of opinions the so-called party programmes are usually ‘cooked’ and brushed up or remodelled from time to time. If we want to gain an insight into these programmatic monstrosities we must carefully investigate the motives which inspire the average bourgeois ‘programme committee.’ They are always influenced by one and the same preoccupation when they introduce something new into their programme or modify something already contained in it, namely, the results of the next election. The moment these artists in parliamentary government have the first glimmering of a suspicion that their beloved public may be ready to kick up its heels and escape from the harness of the old party wagon they begin to paint the shafts in new colours.
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On such occasions the party astrologists and horoscope readers, the so-called ‘shrewd and experienced men,’ come forward. For the most part they are old parliamentary hands whose political schooling has furnished them with ample experience. They can remember former occasions when the masses showed signs of losing patience and they now sense the imminence of a similar situation. Resorting to their old prescription, they form a ‘committee.’ They go around among their beloved public and listen to what is being said. They carefully digest newspaper articles and gradually begin to sense what the broad masses really want, what they abhor and what they hope for. Every section of the working community and every class of employee is carefully studied and their secret wishes weighed and considered. Even the malicious slogans of a dangerous opposition are now suddenly looked upon as worthy of consideration, and to the astonishment of those who originally coined and circulated them, appear innocently and as a matter of course in the official vocabulary of the older parties. So the committees meet to revise the old programme and draw up a new one, for these people change their convictions just as the soldier changes his shirt in war-time when the old one is lousy. In the new programme, everyone gets everything he wants. The farmer is assured that the interests of agriculture will be safeguarded, the industrialist is assured of protection for his products, the consumer is assured that his interests will be protected in regards to market prices. Teachers are given higher salaries and civil servants will have better pensions. Widows and orphans will receive generous assistance from the State. Trade will be promoted. Tariffs will be lowered and even taxes, though they cannot be entirely abolished, will be almost done away with. It sometimes happens that one section of the public is forgotten or that one of the demands mooted by the public has not reached the ears of the party.
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In such a case what can still be pushed on to the programme, is hastily added, until finally it is felt that there are good grounds for hoping that the whole host of Philistines, including their wives, will have their anxieties laid to rest and will beam with satisfaction once again. And so, internally armed with faith in the goodness of God and the impenetrable stupidity of the electorate, the struggle for what is called ‘the reconstruction of the Reich’ can now begin. When the election day is over and the parliamentarians have held their last public meeting for the next five years, when they can leave their job of getting the populace to toe the line and can now devote themselves to higher and more pleasing tasks, then the programme committee is dissolved. The struggle for the progressive reorganisation of public affairs becomes once again a business of earning one’s daily bread, which for the parliamentarian, merely means drawing his salary. Morning after morning, the honourable member wends his way to the House, and though he may not enter the Chamber itself, he gets at least as far as the lobby, where there is the register of members attending the meeting. His onerous service on behalf of his constituents consists in entering his name and he receives in return a small indemnity as the well-earned reward of his unceasing and exhausting labours. After the lapse of four years, or if any crisis arises in which parliament seems faced with the danger of dissolution, these gentlemen are suddenly fired with the desire for action. Just as the grub-worm cannot help growing into a cockchafer, these parliamentarian worms leave the great House of Puppets and on new wings flutter out among the beloved public. They address the electors once again, give an account of the enormous labours they have accomplished and emphasise the malicious obstinacy of their opponents. They do not always meet with grateful applause, for occasionally the unintelligent masses throw rude and unfriendly remarks in their faces. When this spirit of public ingratitude reaches a certain pitch, there is only one way of saving the situation. The prestige of the party must be burnished up once again.
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The programme has to be amended, the committee is called into existence once more, and so the swindle begins anew. Once we understand the impenetrable stupidity of our public, we cannot be surprised that such tactics prove successful. Led by the press and blinded once again by the alluring appearance of the new programme, the bourgeois, as well as the proletarian herds of voters, faithfully return to the fold and re-elect their old deceivers. The ‘people’s man’ and labour candidate now change back again into the parliamentarian grub and become fat and rotund as they batten on the leaves that grow on the tree of public life to be retransformed into the glittering butterfly after another four years have passed. Scarcely anything can be so depressing as to watch this process in sober reality and to be forced to observe this repeatedly recurring fraud. On a spiritual training ground of that kind it is not possible for the bourgeois forces to develop the strength which is necessary to carry on the fight against the organised might of Marxism. Indeed, they have never seriously thought of doing so. Despite the admitted limitations or mental inferiority of the white race’s parliamentary ‘medicine-men,’ they cannot seriously imagine that they can use Western Democracy as a weapon to fight against an ideology whose supporters regard democracy and all its ramifications merely as a means of paralysing their opponents and gaining for themselves a free hand to put their own methods into action. Certain groups of Marxists are, for the time being, using all their ingenuity to create the impression that they are inseparably attached to the principles of democracy. It may be well to recall the fact that, when a crisis arose, these same gentlemen snapped their fingers at the principle of decision by majority vote, as that principle is understood by Western Democracy. Such was the case in those days when the bourgeois parliamentarians believed that the security of the Reich was guaranteed by the monumental short-sightedness of the overwhelming majority, whereas the Marxists, backed by a mob of loafers, deserters, political place-hunters and Jewish would-be literary men, simply seized the reins of government. This was a terrible blow to democracy.
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Only those credulous parliamentary wizards who represented bourgeois democracy could have believed that the brutal determination of those whose interest it is to spread the Marxist world-pest, of which they are the carriers, could for a moment, now, or in the future, be held in check by the magical formulas of western parliamentarianism. Marxism will march shoulder to shoulder with democracy until it succeeds indirectly in securing for its own criminal purposes, even the support of the intelligentsia of the nation whom Marxism has set out to exterminate. But, if the Marxists should one day come to believe that there was a danger that from this witch’s cauldron of our parliamentary democracy a majority might be concocted, which, if merely by reason of its numerical weight, would be in a position to legislate and thus to constitute a serious threat to Marxism, then the whole parliamentarian hocus-pocus would be at an end. Instead of appealing to the democratic conscience, the leaders of the Red International would immediately send forth a furious rallying-cry to the proletarian masses and the ensuing fight would not take place in the sedate atmosphere of parliament, but in the factories and in the streets. Then democracy would be annihilated forthwith, and what the intellectual prowess of the apostles who represented the people in parliament had failed to accomplish, would now be successfully carried out by dint of the crow-bar and the sledge-hammer of the exasperated proletarian masses just as in the autumn of 1918. At one fell swoop they would make the bourgeois world see the madness of thinking that the Jewish drive towards world-conquest can be effectually opposed by means of Western Democracy. As I have said, only a very credulous soul could think of binding himself to observe the rules of the game when he has to face a player for whom those rules are nothing but a pretext for bluff or for serving his own interests, so that he will discard them when they prove no longer useful for his purpose. All the parties that profess so-called bourgeois principles look upon political life as being in reality a struggle for seats in parliament. The moment their principles and convictions are of no further use in that struggle they throw them overboard, as if they were sand ballast, and the programmes are constructed in such a way that they can be dealt with in like manner.
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But such a practice has a correspondingly weakening effect on the strength of the parties concerned. They lack the great magnetic force which alone attracts the broad masses, for the masses always respond to the compelling force which emanates from absolute faith in the ideas put forward, combined with an indomitable zest to fight for and defend them. At a time when the one side, armed with all the weapons of itsWeltanschauung, no matter how criminal, makes an attack against the established order, the other side will be able to resist only if its resistance takes the form of a new faith. In our case, this is a political faith which exchanges the slogans of weak and cowardly defence for the battle-cry of a courageous and ruthless attack. Our present Movement is accused, especially by the so-called national bourgeois cabinet ministers (the Bavarian representatives of the Centre, for example) of heading towards a revolution. We have only one answer to give to those political pygmies, namely, ‘We are trying to remedy that which you, in your criminal stupidity, have failed to accomplish. By your parliamentarian jobbing you have helped to drag the nation into ruin, but we, by our aggressive policy, are setting up a newWeltanschauungwhich we shall defend with indomitable devotion. Thus we are building the steps on which our nation once again may ascend to the temple of freedom.’ Thus during the first stages of founding our Movement we had to take special care that our militant group, which fought for the establishment of a new and exalted political faith, should not degenerate into a society for the promotion of parliamentarian interests. The first preventive measure was to lay down a programme which of itself would tend towards developing a certain moral greatness that would scare away all the petty and weakling spirits who make up the bulk of our present party politicians. Those fatal defects which finally led to Germany’s downfall afford the clearest proof of how right we were in considering it absolutely necessary to set up programmatic aims which were sharply, and distinctly defined. Because we recognised the defects above mentioned, we realised that a new conception of the State had to be established, which in itself became a part of our new conception of life.
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In the first volume of this book I have already dealt with the termvölkisch, and I said then that this term has not a sufficiently precise meaning to furnish the kernel around which a closely consolidated militant community could be formed. All kinds of persons, with all kinds of divergent, opinions, are, at the present time, playing their own game under the mottovölkisch. Before I come to deal with the purposes and aims of the National Socialist German Labour Party I want to establish a clear understanding of what is meant by the conceptvölkischand herewith explain its relation to our party movement. The wordvölkischdoes not express any clearly specified idea. It may be interpreted in several ways and in practical application it is just as general as the word ‘religious,’ for instance. It is difficult to attach any precise meaning to this latter word, either as a theoretical concept or as a guiding principle in practical life. The word ‘religious’ acquires a precise meaning only when it is associated with a distinct and definite form through which the concept is put into practice. To say that a person is ‘deeply religious’ may be very fine phraseology, but generally speaking, it tells us little or nothing. There may be some few people who are content with such a vague description and there may even be some to whom the word conveys a more or less definite picture of the inner quality of a person thus described. But, since the bulk of the people are not philosophers or saints, such a vague religious idea will mean to the individual merely that he is justified in thinking and acting according to his own bent. It will not lead to that practical faith into which inner religious yearning is transformed only when it leaves the sphere of general metaphysical ideas and is moulded to a well-defined belief. Such a belief is certainly not an end in itself, but the means to an end. Yet it is means without which the end could never be reached at all. This end, however, is not merely something ideal, for at bottom it is eminently practical.
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We must always bear in mind the fact that, generally speaking, the highest ideals are always the outcome of some profound vital need, just as the nobility of beauty lies essentially in its practical value. By helping to lift the human being above the level of mere animal existence, faith really contributes to consolidate and safeguard his very existence. Take from humanity as it exists to-day the religious beliefs which it generally holds and which have been consolidated through our education, so that they serve as moral standards in practical life, and abolish religious teaching without replacing it by anything of equal value and the foundations of human existence would be seriously shaken. We may safely say that man does not live merely to serve higher ideals, but that these ideals, in their turn, furnish the necessary conditions for his existence as a human being. Thus the circle is completed. Of course, the word ‘religious’ implies certain ideals and beliefs that are fundamental. Among these we may reckon the belief in the immortality of the soul, its future existence in eternity, the belief in the existence of a Higher Being, and so on. But all these ideas, no matter how firmly the individual believes in them, may be critically analysed by any person and accepted or rejected accordingly, until the emotional concept or yearning has been transformed into an active force that is governed by a clearly defined doctrinal faith. Such a faith constitutes the militant feature which clears the way for the recognition of fundamental religious ideals. Without a clearly defined belief, religious feeling would not only be worthless for the purposes of human existence, but might even contribute towards general disorganisation, on account of its vague and multifarious tendencies. What I have said about the word ‘religious’ can also be applied to the termvölkisch. This word also implies certain fundamental ideas. Though these ideas are very important indeed, they assume such vague and indefinite forms that they cannot be estimated as having a greater value than mere opinions, until they become constituent elements in the structure of a political party.
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The ideals set forth in aWeltanschauungand the demands arising from them cannot be realised by mere sentiment and inner longing any more than freedom can be won by universal yearning for it. Only when the idealistic longing for independence is organised in such a way that it can fight for its ideal with military force, only then can the urgent wish of a people become a vital reality. AnyWeltanschauung, though a thousand-fold right and supremely beneficial to humanity, will be of no practical assistance in moulding the life of a people as long as its principles have not yet become the rallying-point of a militant movement which, in its turn, will remain a mere party until its activities have led to the victory of its ideals and its party doctrines form the new fundamental principles of a new national community. If an abstract conception of a general nature is to serve as the basis of a future development, then the first prerequisite is to form a clear understanding of the nature, character and scope of this conception, since only on such a basis can a movement be founded which can draw the necessary fighting strength from the infernal homogeneity of its principles and convictions. A political programme must be constructed on a basis of general ideas and a generalWeltanschauungmust receive the stamp of a definite political faith. Since this faith must be directed towards ends that have to be attained in the world of practical reality, not only must it serve the general ideal as such, but it must also take into consideration the existing means that have to be employed for the triumph of the ideal. Here the practical wisdom, of the statesman must come to the assistance of the ideal, correct in the abstract, as evolved by the author of the political programme. In this way an eternal ideal, which has everlasting significance as a guiding star to mankind, must be adapted to the exigencies of human frailty so that its practical effect may not be frustrated at the very outset through those shortcomings which are general to mankind. The exponent of truth must here go hand in hand with him who has a practical knowledge of the mind of the people, so that from the realm of eternal verities and ideals what is suited to the capacities of human nature may be selected and given practical form.
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To take abstract and general conceptions, derived from aWeltanschauungwhich is based on a solid foundation of truth and from them to mould a militant community whose members have the same political faith (a community which is precisely defined, rigidly organised, of and mind and one will) is the most important task of all, far the possibility of successfully carrying out the idea is dependent on the successful fulfilment of this task. Out of the army of millions who feel, more or less clearly, the truth of these ideas, and may even understand them to some extent, one man must arise. This man must have the gift of being able to formulate from the vague ideas held by the masses, principles that will be as clear-cut and firm as granite and he must be able to fight for these principles as the only true ones, until a solid rock of common faith and common will emerges above the troubled waters of vagrant ideas. The general justification for such action lies in the necessity for it and the action of the individual will be justified by his success. If we try to penetrate the inner meaning of the wordvölkischwe arrive at the following conclusion. The current political conception of the world is that the State, though it possesses a creative force which can build up civilisations, has nothing in common with the concept of race as the foundation of the State. The State is considered rather as something which has resulted from economic necessity or is, at best, the natural outcome of political urge for power. Such a conception together with all its logical consequences, not only ignores the primordial racial forces that underlie the State, but it also leads to a minimization of the importance of the individual. If it be denied that races differ from one another in their cultural creative ability, then this same erroneous notion must necessarily influence our estimation of the value of the individual. The assumption that all races are alike leads to the assumption that nations and individuals are equal to one another. Therefore, international Marxism is merely the adoption by the Jew, Karl Marx, of a general conception of life, which had existed long before his day, as a definite profession of political faith. If it had not already existed as a widely diffused infection, the amazing political progress of the Marxist teaching would never have been possible.
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In reality what distinguished Karl Marx from the millions who were affected in the same way was that, in a world already in a state of gradual decomposition, he used the unerring instinct of the prophetic genius to detect the essential poisons, so as to extract them and concentrate them, with the art of an alchemist, in a solution which would bring about the rapid destruction of the independent nations of the earth. All this was done in the service of his race. Thus the Marxian doctrine is the concentrated extract of the mentality which underlies the generalWeltanschauungto-day. For this reason alone it is out of the question and even ridiculous to think that what is called our bourgeois world can put up any effective fight against Marxism, for this bourgeois world is permeated with all those same poisons, and itsWeltanschauungin general differs from Marxism only in degree and in the character of the persons who hold it. The bourgeois world is Marxist, but believes in the possibility of a certain group of people—that is to say, the bourgeoisie—being able to dominate the world, while Marxism itself systematically aims at delivering the world into the hands of the Jews. Over against all this, thevölkisch Weltanschauungrecognises that the primordial racial elements are of the greatest significance for mankind. In principle, the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind. Thevölkischprinciple does not admit that one race is equal to another, but by recognising that they are different, separates mankind into races of superior and inferior quality. On the basis of this recognition it feels bound, in conformity with the Eternal Will that dominates the universe, to postulate the victory of the better and stronger and the subordination of the inferior and weaker thus subscribing to Nature’s fundamental aristocratic principle and it believes that this law holds good even down to the last individual organism. It selects individual values from the mass and thus operates as an organising principle, whereas Marxism acts as a disintegrating solvent. Thevölkischbelief holds that humanity must have its ideals, because ideals are a necessary condition of human existence itself.
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But, on the other hand, it denies that an ethical ideal has the right to prevail if it endangers the existence of a race that is the champion of a higher ethical ideal, for in a world composed of mongrels and Negroids all ideals of human beauty and nobility and all hopes of an idealised future for humanity would be lost for ever. On this planet of ours human culture and civilisation are indissolubly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he were to be exterminated or become extinct, then the dark shroud of a new barbaric era would enfold the earth. To undermine the existence of human culture by exterminating its custodians would be an execrable crime in the eyes of those who subscribe to thevölkisch Weltanschauung. Whoever dares to raise his hand against the highest image of God, sins against the bountiful Creator of this marvel and contributes to the expulsion from Paradise. Hence thevölkisch Weltanschauungis in profound accord with Nature’s most sacred will, because it restores the free play of the forces which, through reciprocal education, will produce a higher type, until finally the best portion of mankind will possess the earth and will be free to work in spheres which lie not only within, but without the limits of that earth. We all feel that in the distant future man may be faced with problems which can be solved only by a superior race of human beings, which is master over all the other peoples and has at its disposal the means and resources of the whole world. It is evident that such a general definition of what is implied by the termvölkisch Weltanschauungmay easily be interpreted in a thousand different ways. As a matter of fact, there is scarcely one of our recently founded political parties which does not in some manner have recourse to this conception; but the very fact of its independent existence, despite the many others, goes to prove its infinite variety. Thus the Marxist conception, directed by a central organisation endowed with supreme authority, is opposed by a medley of opinions which are not ideologically impressive in face of the solid phalanx presented by the enemy.
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Victory cannot be achieved with such weak weapons. Only when the internationalWeltanschauungpolitically directed by organised Marxism is confronted by avölkisch Weltanschauungequally well-organised and equally well-directed will the one side do battle with the other on an equal footing and victory be on the side of eternal truth. The organisation and mobilisation of aWeltanschauungcan never be carried out except on a basis of its clear definition. The function which dogma fulfils in religious beliefs comparable to the function which party principles fulfil in a political party which is in the process of being built up. It is, therefore, essential to forge an instrument which, like the Marxist party organisation which clears the way for internationalism, can be used in fighting for this ideal. This is the aim which the National Socialist German Labour Party pursues. That a definite formulation of the idea völkisch in connection with a party movement is a prerequisite for the triumph of thevölkisch Weltanschauungis strikingly proved by a fact which is admitted, however indirectly, even by those who oppose such an amalgamation of the völkisch idea with party principles. The very people who never tire of insisting again and again that thevölkisch Weltanschauungcan never be the exclusive property of any individual, because it lies dormant or ‘lives’ in myriads of hearts, only confirm by their own statement the simple fact that the general presence of such ideas in the hearts of millions of men has not proved sufficient to prevent the victory of the opposing ideas, which are, admittedly, championed on the recognised party political lines. If that were not so, the German people ought already to have gained a sweeping victory instead of finding themselves on the brink of the abyss. The international ideology achieved success because it was championed by a militantly organised party. The reason for the failure hitherto sustained by the opposite ideology is that it lacked a united front to fight for its cause. It is not by allowing the right of free interpretation of its general principles, but only in the limited and, consequently, concentrated form of a political organisation that aWeltanschauungcan sustain a struggle and triumph.
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Therefore, I considered it my special duty to extract from the extensive but unformulated material of a generalWeltanschauungthe essential ideas and give them a more or less dogmatic form. Because of their precise and clear meaning, these ideas are suited to the purpose of uniting in a common front all those who are ready to accept them as principles. In other words, the National Socialist German Labour Party extracts the essential principles from the general conception of thevölkisch Weltanschauung. On these principles it establishes a political doctrine which takes into account the practical realities of the day, the character of the times, the available human material and all its deficiencies. Through this political doctrine it is possible to bring great masses of the people into a systematic organisation which is the main preliminary that is necessary for the final triumph of this ideal.
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As early as 1920–1921, certain circles belonging to the effete bourgeois class accused our Movement again and again of taking up a negative attitude towards the modern State. For that reason the motley gang of camp-followers attached to the various political parties, representing a heterogeneous conglomeration of political views, assumed the right of utilising all available means to suppress the protagonists of this young Movement which, was preaching a new political gospel. Our opponents deliberately ignored the fact that the bourgeois class itself stood for no uniform opinion as to what the State really meant and that the bourgeoisie did not and could not give any uniform definition of this institution. Those whose duty it is to explain what is meant when we speak of the State hold chairs in state universities, often in the department of constitutional law, and consider it their highest duty to find explanations and justifications for the more or less fortunate existence of that particular form of State which provides them with their daily bread. The more absurd such a form of State is, the more obscure, artificial and incomprehensible are the definitions which are advanced to explain the purpose of its existence. What, for instance, could a professor at a royal and imperial university write about the meaning and purpose of a State in a country whose constitution represented the greatest monstrosity of the twentieth century? That would be a difficult undertaking indeed, in view of the fact that the contemporary professor of constitutional law is obliged not so much to serve the cause of truth as to serve a definite purpose, and this purpose is to defend at all costs the existence of that monstrous human mechanism which we now call the State. Nobody need be surprised if concrete facts are evaded as far as, possible when the problem of the State is under discussion and if professors adopt the tactics of concealing themselves in a morass of abstract values, duties and purposes which are described as ‘ethical’ and ‘moral.’
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Generally speaking, these various theorists may be classed in three groups:
1. Those who held that the State is a more or less voluntary association of men under governmental authority. This is numerically the largest group. In its ranks are to be found those who worship our present principle of legalized authority. In their eyes the will of the people plays no part whatever in the whole affair. For them, the fact that the State exists is sufficient reason to consider it sacred and inviolable. In order to champion this aberration of the human brain one would have to have a sort of canine adoration for what is called the authority of the State. In the minds of these people the means is quickly and easily substituted for the end. The State no longer exists for the purpose of serving men, but men exist for the purpose of revering the authority of the State, which is vested in its functionaries, even down to the most inferior official. In order to prevent this placid and ecstatic adoration from changing into something that might become in any way disturbing, the authority of the State is limited simply to the task of preserving law and order. Thus it is no longer either a means or an end. The State must see that how and order are preserved and, in their turn, law and order must make the existence of the State possible. All life must move between these two poles. In Bavaria, this view is upheld by the artful politicians of the Bavarian Centre, which is called the ‘Bavarian People’s Party.’ In Austria, the black-and-yellow Legitimists adopt a similar attitude. In the Reich, unfortunately, the so-called conservative elements often hold the same view.
2. The second group is numerically somewhat smaller. It includes those who would make the existence of the State dependent on certain conditions. They insist that not only should there be a uniform system of government, but also, if possible, uniformity of language, if only for technical reasons of administration.
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The authority of the State is no longer, the sole and exclusive end for which the State exists, but it must also promote the good of its subjects. Ideas of ‘freedom,’ mostly, based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of that word, enter into the concept of the State as it exists in the minds of this group. The form of government is no longer considered inviolable simply because it exists. It must submit to the test of practical efficiency. Its venerable age no longer protects it from criticism in the light of modern exigencies. Moreover, in their view, the first duty laid upon the State is to guarantee the economic well-being of the individual citizen. Hence it is judged from the practical standpoint and according to general principles based on the idea of economic returns. The chief representatives of this theory of the State are to be found among the average German bourgeoisie, especially our liberal democrats.
3. The third group is numerically the smallest. In the State they see a means for the realisation of aims (generally vague in conception) dictated by a policy of power, on the part of a united people speaking the same language. They want a common language not only because they hope that thereby the State will be furnished with a solid basis for the extension of its power beyond its own frontiers, but also because they think—though falling into a fundamental error by so doing—that such a common language would facilitate the carrying out of a definite process of nationalisation. During the last century it was lamentable for those who had to witness it, to notice how in these circles I have just mentioned the word ‘Germanisation’ was frivolously played with, though often with the very best of intentions. I well remember how, in the days of my youth, this very term used to give rise to notions which were false to an incredible degree. Even in Pan-German circles one heard the opinion expressed that the Austrian Germans might very well succeed in Germanising the Austrian Slavs, if only the government were ready to co-operate.
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Those people did not understand that a policy of Germanisation can be carried out only as regards territory and not as regards human beings. What was generally understood by this term was the enforced adoption of the German language, but it is almost inconceivable that people should imagine that a Negro or a Chinaman, for example, can become German simply by learning the German language, by being willing to speak it for the rest of their lives and even to vote in favour of some German political party. Our bourgeois nationalists could never clearly see that such a process of Germanisation is in reality de-Germanisation, for even if all the outstanding and, visible differences between the various peoples could be bridged over and finally eliminated by the use of a common language, this would give rise to a process of bastardisation which in this case would not signify Germanisation, but the annihilation of the German element. In the course of history it has happened only too often that a conquering race succeeded by force in compelling the people whom they had subjected to speak their tongue, with the result that after a thousand years their language was spoken by another people and thus the conqueror finally turned out to be the conquered. What makes a people or, to be more correct, a race, is not language but blood. It would therefore be justifiable to speak of Germanisation only if that process could change the blood of the people who were subjected to it, which is obviously impossible. A change would be possible only by a mixture of blood, but in this case the quality of the superior race would be debased. The final result of such a mixture would be that precisely those qualities were destroyed which had enabled the conquering race to achieve victory over an inferior people. It is especially cultural creative ability which disappears when a superior race intermixes with an inferior one, even though all the resultant mongrel race speaks the language of the race that had once been superior. For a certain time there will be a conflict between the different mentalities and it may be that a nation which is in a state of progressive degeneration will at the last moment rally its cultural creative powers and once again produce striking cultural masterpieces. These are, however, produced only by individuals belonging to the superior race or by hybrids of the first crossing, in whom the superior blood has remained dominant and seeks to assert itself, but never by the last descendants of such hybrids.
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These are always in a state of cultural retrogression. We must consider it fortunate that a Germanisation of Austria according to the plan of Joseph II did not succeed. Probably the result would have been that the Austrian State would have survived, but at the same time the use of a common language would have debased the racial quality of the German element. In the course of centuries a certain herd instinct might have been developed, but the herd itself would have deteriorated in quality. It is possible that a constitutional State would have been established, but a culturally creative people would have been lost to the world. For the German nation it was better that this process of intermixture did not take place, although it was not renounced for any high-minded reasons, but simply through the short-sighted pettiness of the Habsburgs. If it had taken place, the German people could now scarcely be looked upon as a cultural factor. Not only in Austria, however, but also in Germany, these so-called national circles were, and still are, under the influence of similar erroneous ideas. The much favoured policy with regard to Poland which provided for the Germanisation of the eastern provinces was, unfortunately, practically always based on the same false reasoning. Here again it was believed that the Polish people could be Germanised by being compelled to use the German language. The result would have been fatal, for people of an alien race by expressing their alien ideas in the German language would have debased the dignity and nobility of our nation by their own inferiority. It is revolting to think how much damage is indirectly done to German prestige to-day owing to the fact that the German patois of Jews entering the United States enables them to be classed as Germans, because of the ignorance of Americans with regard to things German. Here nobody would dream of accepting the fact that these lousy emigrants from the East generally speak
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German as proof of their German origin and nationality. What has been beneficially Germanised in the course of history was the land which our ancestors conquered with the sword and colonised with German tillers of the soil. Inasmuch as they introduced foreign blood into our national body in carrying out this colonisation, they helped to bring about the lamentable disintegration of our racial character, a process which has resulted in our German hyper-individualism, though this latter characteristic is, unfortunately, frequently praised even now. In the third group also, there are people who, to a certain degree, consider the State as an end in itself. Hence they consider its preservation as one of the highest aims of human existence. Summing up, we arrive at the following conclusion: A common feature of all these views is, that they are not grounded on a recognition of the profound truth that the capacity for creating cultural values is essentially based on the racial element. In accordance with this fact, the paramount purpose of the State to preserve and improve the race, an indispensable condition of all progress in human civilisation. Thus the Jew, Karl Marx, was able to utilise and exploit these false concepts and ideas on the nature and purpose of the State. By eliminating from the concept of the State all thought of the obligation which the State has towards the race, without finding any other formula that might be universally accepted, the bourgeois teaching prepared the way for that doctrine which rejects the State as such. That is why the bourgeois struggle against Marxian internationalism is doomed to fail in this particular. The bourgeois classes have already sacrificed the basic principles which alone could furnish a solid footing for their ideas. Their crafty opponent has perceived the defects in their structure and advances to the assault with those weapons which they themselves have unwittingly placed in his hands. Therefore any new movement which is based on thevölkisch Weltanschauungwill first of all have to put forward a clear and logical definition of the nature and purpose of the State.
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The fundamental principle is that the State is not an end in itself, but the means to an end. It is the preliminary condition for the development of a higher form of human civilisation, but not the reason for such a development, for which a culturally creative race is alone responsible. There may be hundreds of excellent States on this earth and yet if the Aryan, who is the creator and custodian of civilisation, should disappear, all culture corresponding to the spiritual needs of the superior nations to-day would also disappear. We may go still further and say that the fact that States have been created by human beings does not exclude the possibility that the human race may become extinct, if the superior intellectual faculties and powers of adaptation were to be lost because the race possessing these faculties and powers had disappeared. If, for instance, the surface of the globe were to be shaken to-day by some seismic convulsion and if new Himalayas were to emerge from the waves of the sea, this one catastrophe alone might annihilate human civilisation. No State could continue to exist. All order would be shattered, and all vestiges of cultural products which had been evolved in the course of thousands of years would disappear. Nothing would be left but one tremendous field of death and destruction submerged in floods of water and mud. If, however, only a few people were to survive this terrible havoc, and if these people belonged to a definite race that had the innate power to build up a civilisation, when the commotion had passed, the earth would again bear witness to the creative power of the human spirit, even though a span of a thousand years might intervene. Only with the extermination of the last race that possesses the gift of cultural creativeness, and indeed only if all the individuals of that race also disappeared, would the earth definitely be turned into a desert. On the other hand, modem history furnishes examples to show that States which are of racial origin cannot, if the representatives of that race lack creative genius, preserve them from disaster and destruction. Just as many varieties of prehistoric animals had to give way to others and leave no trace behind them, so man will also have to give way, if he loses that definite intellectual faculty which enables him to find the weapons that are necessary for him to preserve his own existence.
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It is not the State as such that brings about a certain definite advance in cultural progress. The State can only protect the race that is the cause of such progress. The State as such may well exist without undergoing any change for hundreds of years, though the cultural faculties and the general life of the people, which is shaped by these faculties, may have suffered profound changes, by reason of the fact that the State did not prevent a mixing of races from taking place. The present State, for instance, may continue to exist in a mere mechanical form, but the poison of miscegenation permeating the national body is bringing about a cultural decadence which is already manifesting itself in various symptoms of a detrimental character. Thus the indispensable prerequisite for the existence of a superior type of human beings is not the State, but the race, which is alone capable of producing that higher type. This capacity is always there, though it will lie dormant unless external circumstances awaken it to action. Nations, or rather races, which are endowed with the faculty of cultural creativeness possess this faculty in a latent form during periods when external circumstances are unfavourable for the time being. They therefore do not allow the faculty to express itself effectively. It is, therefore, outrageously unjust to speak of the pre-Christian Germans as uncivilised barbarians, for such they never were. But the severity of the climate that prevailed in the northern regions which they inhabited, imposed conditions of life which hampered a free development of their creative faculties. If they had come to the fairer climate of the South, with no previous culture whatsoever, and if they had acquired the necessary human material— that is to say, men of an inferior race—to serve them as tools in performing necessary labours, the cultural faculty dormant in them would have blossomed forth in splendour as happened in the case of the Greeks, for example.
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But this primordial creative faculty in cultural things was not solely due to their northern climate. Neither the Laplanders nor the Eskimos would have become creators of a culture if they had been transplanted to the South. This wonderful creative faculty is a special gift bestowed on the Aryan, whether it lies dormant in him or becomes active, according as adverse conditions and surroundings prevent the active expression of that faculty or favourable circumstances permit it. From these facts the following conclusions may be drawn: The State is only a means to an end. Its end and its purpose are to preserve and promote a community of human beings who are physically as well as spiritually kindred. Above all, it must preserve the existence of the race, thereby providing the indispensable condition for the free development of all the forces dormant in this race. A great part of these faculties will always have to be employed in the first place to preserve the physical existence of the race, and only the remaining portion will be free to work in the field of intellectual progress. But, as a matter of fact, the one is always, the fundamental prerequisite for the other. Those States which do not serve this purpose have no justification for their existence. They are monstrosities. The fact that they do exist is no more of a justification than the successful raids carried out by a band of pirates can be considered a justification of piracy. We National Socialists, who are fighting for a newWeltanschauung, must never take our stand on the famous ‘basis of facts’, if these be mistaken facts. If we did so, we should cease to be the protagonists of a new and great idea and would become slaves in the service of the fallacy which is dominant to-day. We must make a clear-cut distinction between the vessel and its contents. The State is only the vessel and the race is what it contains. The vessel can have significance only if it preserves and safeguards the contents. Otherwise it is worthless.
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Hence, the supreme purpose of the völkisch State is to guard and preserve those racial elements which, through their work in the cultural field, create that beauty and dignity which are characteristic of a higher mankind. As Aryans, we can consider the State only as the living organism of a people, an organism which does not merely preserve the existence of a people, but functions in such a way as to lead that people to a position of supreme liberty by the progressive development of its intellectual and cultural faculties. What they want to impose upon us as a State to-day is, in most cases, nothing but a monstrosity, the product of a profound human abet ration which brings untold suffering in its train. We National Socialists know that in holding these views we are taking up a revolutionary stand in the world of to-day and that we are branded as revolutionaries. Despite this, our views and our conduct will not be determined by the approbation or disapprobation of our contemporaries, but only by our duty in following a truth which we have acknowledged. In doing this we, have reason to believe that posterity will have a clearer insight and will not only understand the work we are doing to-day, but will also ratify it as the right work and will extol it accordingly. On these principles, we National Socialists base our standards of value in appraising a State. This value will be relative when viewed from the particular standpoint of the individual nation, but it will be absolute, when considered from the standpoint of humanity as a whole. In other words; this means that the excellence of a State can never be judged by the level of its culture or the degree of importance which the outside world attaches to its power, but that its excellence must be judged by the degree to which its constitution serves the race in question. A State may be considered as a model example if it adequately serves not only the vital needs of the race it represents, but if by its very existence it actually ensures the preservation of this same race, no matter what general cultural significance this constitution may have within the framework of the world.
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For it is not the task of the State to create human capabilities, but only to assure free scope for the exercise of capabilities that already exist. On the other hand, a State may be called bad if, in spite of the existence of a high cultural level, it dooms to destruction the representatives of that culture by breaking up their racial compositeness. For the practical effect of such a policy would be to destroy those conditions that are indispensable for the ulterior existence of that culture, which the State did not create, but which is the fruit of the creative power inherent in the race whose existence is assured by being united in the living organism of the State. Once again, let me emphasise the fact that the State itself is not the substance but the form. Therefore, the cultural level of a people is not the standard by which we can judge the value of the State in which that people lives. It is evident that a people endowed with high creative powers in the cultural sphere is of more worth than a tribe of Negroes, and yet the constitutional organism of the former, if judged from the standpoint of efficiency, may be worse than that of the Negroes. Not even the best of States and state institutions can cultivate in a people faculties which they lack and which they never possessed, but a bad State may gradually destroy the faculties which once existed. This it can do by allowing or favouring the suppression of those who are the champions of a racial culture. The worth of a State can, therefore, be determined only by asking how far it actually succeeds in promoting the well-being of a definite race and not by the role which it plays in the world at large. Its relative worth can be estimated readily and accurately, but it is difficult to judge its absolute worth, because the latter is conditioned not only by the State, but also by the quality and cultural level of the people that belong to the individual State in question. Therefore, when we speak of the high mission of the State we must not forget that the high mission belongs to the people and that the business of the State is to use its organising powers for the purpose of furnishing the necessary conditions which allow this people freely to develop its creative faculties.
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Again, if we ask what kind of constitution we Germans need, we must first have a clear notion as to the people which it is destined to embrace and what purpose it must serve. Unfortunately, German national life is not based on a uniform racial nucleus,. The process of welding the original elements together has not gone so far as to warrant us in saying that a new race has emerged. On the contrary, the poison which has invaded the national body, especially since the Thirty Years’ War, has destroyed the uniform constitution not only of our blood, but also of our national soul. The open frontiers of our native country, the association with non-German foreign elements in the territories that lie all along those frontiers, and especially the strong influx of foreign blood into the interior of the Reich itself, has prevented any complete assimilation of those various elements, because the influx has continued steadily. Out of this melting-pot no new race has arisen. The heterogeneous elements continue to exist side by side, and the result is that, especially in times of crisis, when the herd usually flocks together, the Germans disperse in all directions. The fundamental racial elements are not only different in different districts, but there are also various elements within these various districts. Beside the Nordic type we find the East-European type, beside the Eastern there is the Dinaric, the Western type intermingling with both, and hybrids among them all. That is a grave drawback to us. Through it the Germans lack that strong herd instinct which arises from unity of blood and saves nations from ruin in dangerous and critical times, because on such occasions small differences disappear, and a united herd faces the enemy. What we understand by the word hyper-individualism is explained by the fact that our primordial racial elements have existed side by side without ever consolidating. In times of peace such a situation may offer some advantages but taken all in all, it has prevented us from becoming the masters of the world.
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If, in its historical development, the German people had possessed that united herd instinct by which other peoples have so much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be mistress of the globe to-day. World history would have taken another course and no man can tell if what many benighted pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining and crying, might not have been achieved in this way, namely, a peace which would not be based upon the waving of olive branches and tearful misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed with the power to master the world and administer it in the service of a higher civilisation. The fact that our people were not a national entity based on unity of blood has been the source of untold misery for us. To many petty German potentates it gave residential capital cities; but the German people as a whole was deprived of its right to rulership. Even to-day our nation still suffers from this lack of inner unity, but what has been the cause of our past and present misfortunes may turn out a blessing for us in the future. Though on the one hand it may be a drawback that our racial elements were not welded together, so that no homogeneous national body could develop, on the other hand, it was fortunate that, since at least a part of our best blood was thus kept pure, its racial quality was not debased. A complete assimilation of all our racial elements would certainly have brought about a homogeneous national organism, but, as has been proved in the case of every racial mixture, it would have been less capable of creating a civilisation than would its best original elements. One benefit resulting from the fact that there was no all-round assimilation is the fact that even now we have large groups of German Nordic people within our national organism, and that their blood has not been mixed with the blood of other races. We must look upon this as our most valuable asset for the sake of the future. During that dark period of absolute ignorance in regard to all racial laws, when each individual was considered to be on a par with every other, there could be no clear appreciation of the difference between the various fundamental racial characteristics.
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We know to-day that a complete assimilation of all the various elements which constitute the nation might have resulted in giving us a larger share of external power. On the other hand, the highest of human aims would not have been attained, because the only kind of people, which Fate has obviously chosen to bring about this perfection, would have been lost in the general mixture of races which would have resulted from such a racial amalgamation. Nevertheless, what has been prevented by a friendly Destiny, without any assistance on our part, must now be reconsidered and utilised in the light of our new knowledge. He who talks of the German people as having a mission to fulfil on this earth must know that this mission cannot be fulfilled except by the building up of a State whose highest purpose is to preserve and promote those nobler elements of our race, and of the whole of mankind, which have remained unimpaired. Thus, for the first time a high inner purpose is accredited to the State. In contrast to the ridiculous thesis that the State should do no more than act as the guardian of public law and order, so that everybody can peacefully dupe everybody else, it is given a very high mission indeed in preserving and encouraging the highest types of humanity which a beneficent Creator has bestowed on this earth. Out of a dead mechanism which claims to be an end in itself a living organism shall arise which has to serve one purpose exclusively, and that a purpose which belongs to a higher order of ideas. As a State, the German Reich shall include all Germans, Its task is not only to gather in and foster the most valuable sections of our people, but to lead them slowly and surely to a dominant position in the world. Thus a period of stagnation is superseded by a period of effort. And here, and in every other sphere, the proverb holds good, that to rest is to rust, and furthermore the proverb, that victory will always be won by him who attacks. The higher the final goal which we strive to reach, and the less it be understood at the time by the broad masses, the more magnificent will be our success.
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That is the lesson which history teaches, and the achievement will be all the more significant, if the end is conceived in the right way and the fight carried through with unswerving persistence. Many of the officials who direct the affairs of State nowadays may find it easier to work for the maintenance of the present order than to fight for a new one. They will find it more comfortable to look upon the State as a mechanism, whose purpose is its own preservation, and to say that ‘their lives belong to the State,’ as if anything that grew from the inner life of the nation can logically serve anything but the national life, and as if man could have any finer task than to serve his fellow beings. Naturally, it is easier, as I have said, to consider the authority of the State as nothing but the formal mechanism of an organisation, rather than as the sovereign incarnation of a people’s instinct for self-preservation on this earth. For these weak minds the State (and the authority of the State) is nothing but an aim in itself, while for us it is an effective weapon in the great and eternal struggle for existence, a weapon to which everyone must yield, not because it is a mere formal mechanism, but because it is the main expression of our common will to exist. Therefore, in the fight for our new idea, which conforms completely to the primal meaning of life, we shall find only a small number of comrades in a social order which has become decrepit not only physically, but mentally. From these circles only a few exceptional people will join our ranks, only those few old people whose hearts have remained young and whose courage is still vigorous, but not those who consider it their duty to maintain the status quo. Against us we have the innumerable army of all those who are lazy-minded and indifferent rather than evil, and those whose self-interest leads them to uphold the present state of affairs. In the apparent hopelessness of our great struggle lie the magnitude of our task and the possibilities of success. A battle-cry, which from the very start will scare off all the petty spirits, or at least discourage them, will become a rallying signal for all those that are of the real fighting mettle.
447
Moreover, it must be clearly recognised that if a highly energetic and active body of men emerges from a nation and unites in the fight for one goal, thereby ultimately rising above the inert masses of the people, this small percentage will become masters of the whole. World history is made by minorities, if these numerical minorities possess in themselves the will, energy and initiative of the majority. What seems an obstacle to many persons is really a preliminary condition of our victory. Just because our task is so great and because so many difficulties have to be overcome, the probability is that only the best kind of protagonist will join our ranks. This selection is the guarantee of our success. Nature generally takes certain measures to correct the effect which racial inter-breeding produces. She is not much in favour of the mongrel. The earlier products of inter-breeding have to suffer bitterly, especially the third, fourth and fifth generations. Not only are they deprived of the higher qualities that belonged to the parents who participated in the first crossing, but they also lack definite will-power and vigorous vital energies, owing to the lack of harmony in the quality of their blood. At all critical moments in which a person of pure racial blood makes correct decisions, that is to say, decisions that are coherent and uniform, the person of mixed blood will become confused and take half-measures. Hence we see that a person of mixed blood is not only relatively inferior to a person of pure blood, but is also doomed to become extinct more rapidly. In innumerable cases where the pure race holds its ground, the mongrel breaks down. Therein we see the corrective measures adopted by Nature; she restricts the possibilities of procreation, thus impeding the fertility of cross-breeds and dooming them to extinction. For instance, if an individual member of a race should mingle his blood with the member of a superior race, the first result would be a lowering of the racial level, and furthermore, the issue of this mixed marriage would be weaker than those of the people around them who had maintained their blood unadulterated.
448
Where no new blood from the superior race enters the racial stream of the mongrels, and where these mongrels continue to cross-breed among themselves, the latter will either die out because they have insufficient powers of resistance, which is Nature’s wise provision, or in the course of many thousands of years they will form a new mongrel race in which the original elements will become so wholly mixed through this millennial crossing that traces of the original elements will be no longer recognizable. In this way, a new people would be evolved possessing a certain resistance capacity of the herd type; but its, intellectual value and its cultural significance would be essentially inferior to those of the superior race participating in the original inter-breeding. But even in this last case, the mongrel product would succumb in the mutual struggle for existence with a higher racial group that had maintained its blood unmixed. The herd solidarity which this mongrel race had developed in the course of thousands of years would not be equal to the struggle, and this is because it would lack elasticity and constructive capacity to prevail over a race of homogeneous blood that was mentally and culturally superior. Hence, we may lay down the following principle as well-founded. Every racial mixture leads of necessity sooner or later to the downfall of the mongrel product, as long as a section of the superior race participating in the cross-breeding remains intact and preserves some sort of racial homogeneity. The threat to the mongrels ceases only with the bastardization of the last members of the superior race who are of unmixed blood. This principle is the source of a slow but constant regeneration whereby all the poison which has invaded the racial body is gradually eliminated as long as there remains a fundamental stock of pure racial elements and there is no further inter-breeding. Such a process may set in automatically among those people where a strong racial instinct has remained. Among such people we may count those elements which, for some particular cause such as coercion, have been thrown out of the normal way of reproduction along strict racial lines. As soon as this compulsion ceases, that part of the race which has remained intact will tend to marry with its own kind and thus impede further intermingling.
449
Then the mongrels recede quite naturally into the background unless their numbers have increased so much as to be able to withstand all serious resistance from those elements which have preserved the purity of their race. When men have lost their natural instincts and ignore the obligations imposed on them by Nature, then there is no hope that Nature will repair the damage that has been caused, until recognition of their own obligations has replaced their lost instincts. Then the task of making good what has been lost will have to be accomplished by Nature. But there is a serious danger that those who have once become blind in this respect will continue more aid more to break down racial barriers and finally lose the last remnants of what is best in them. What then remains is nothing but a uniform pulpy mass, which seems to be the dream of our fine Utopians, but that pulpy mass would soon banish all ideals from the world. Certainly a great herd could thus be formed. One can breed a herd of animals, but from a mixture of this kind, men such as have created and founded civilisations would not be produced. The mission of humanity might then be considered at an end. Those who do not wish that the earth should fall into such a condition must realise that it is the task of the Germanic States in particular to see to it that the process of bastardization is brought to a stop. Our contemporary generation of weaklings will naturally decry such a policy and whine and complain about it as an encroachment on the most sacred of human rights. But there is only one right that is sacrosanct and that right is at the same time a most sacred duty, namely, to protect racial purity so that the best types of human beings may be preserved and thus render possible a more noble development of humanity itself. A völkisch State ought, in the first place, to raise matrimony above the level of continual racial adulteration. The State should consecrate it as an institution for the procreation of creatures made in the likeness of God Himself and not of monsters that are a mixture of man and ape.
450
The protest which is put forward in the name of humanity does not befit the mouth of a generation that makes it possible for the most depraved degenerates to propagate their kind, thereby imposing unspeakable suffering on their own products and on their contemporaries, while, on the other hand, contraceptives, are permitted and sold in every drug store and even by street hawkers, so that babies should not be born to the healthiest of our people. In this present State of ours, whose function it is to be the guardian of law and order, our national bourgeoisie looks upon it as a crime to make procreation impossible for syphilitics and those who suffer from tuberculosis or hereditary diseases, and also for cripples and imbeciles. But the practical prevention of procreation among millions of our very best people is not considered an evil, nor does it offend against the moral code of this hypocritical class, but rather suits their short-sightedness and mental lethargy, for otherwise they would have to rack their brains to find an answer to the question of how to create conditions for the feeding and maintaining of those yet unborn beings who will be the healthy representatives of our nation and will, in their turn, have to perform the same task for the generation that is to follow them. How devoid of ideals and how ignoble is the whole contemporary system! No effort is being made to perfect the breed for the future, but things are simply allowed to slide. The fact that the churches join in condoning this sin against the image of God, even though they continue to emphasise the dignity of that image, is quite in keeping with their present activities. They talk about the Spirit, but they allow man, as the embodiment of the Spirit, to degenerate to the proletarian level. Then they gape with amazement when they realise how small is the influence of the Christian Faith in their own country and how depraved and ungodly is this riff-raff which is physically degenerate and therefore morally degenerate also. To balance this state of affairs they try to convert the Hottentots, the Zulus and the Kaffirs and to bestow on them the blessings of the Church. While our European people, God be praised and thanked, are left to become the victims of moral depravity, the pious missionary goes out to Central Africa and establishes mission-stations for Negroes. Finally, sound and healthy though primitive and backward people will be transformed, in the name of our ‘higher civilisation,’ into a motley of lazy and brutalized mongrels.
451
It would better accord with noble human aspirations if our two Christian denominations would cease to bother the Negroes with their preaching, which the Negroes do not want and do not understand. It would be better if they left this work alone and if, in its stead, they tried to teach people in Europe, kindly and seriously, that it is much more pleasing to God if a couple that is not of healthy stock were to show lovingkindness to some poor orphan and become a father and mother to him, rather than give life to a sickly child that will be a cause of suffering and unhappiness to all. In this field the völkisch State will have to repair the damage that has been caused by the fact that the problem is at present neglected by all the various parties concerned. It will be the task of the völkisch State to make the race the nucleus of the life of the community. It must make sure that the purity of the racial strain will be preserved. It must proclaim the truth that the child is the most valuable possession a nation can have. It must see to it that only those who are healthy beget children; that there is only one infamy, namely, for parents that are ill or show hereditary defects to bring children into the world and that in such cases it is a matter of honour to refrain from doing so. But, on the other hand, it must be considered as reprehensible to refrain from giving healthy children to the nation. In this matter, the State must assert itself as the trustee of a millennial future, in the face of which the egotistic desires of the individual count for nothing and will have to give way before the ruling of the State. In order to fulfil this duty in a practical manner the State will have to avail itself of modem medical discoveries. It must proclaim as unfit for procreation all those who are afflicted with some identifiable hereditary disease or are the carriers of it, and practical measures must be adopted to have such people rendered sterile.
452
On the other hand, provision must be made for the normally fertile woman so that she will not be restricted in child-bearing through the financial and economic conditions obtaining under a regime which makes the having of children a curse to parents. The State will have to abolish the cowardly and even criminal indifference with which the problem of social amenities for large families is treated, and it will have to be the supreme protector of this greatest blessing of which a people can boast. Its attention and care must be directed towards the child rather than the adult. Those who are physically or mentally unhealthy and unfit must not perpetuate their own suffering in the bodies of their children. From the educational point of view there is here a huge task for the völkisch State to accomplish, but in a future era this work will appear greater and more significant than the victorious wars of our present bourgeois epoch. Through education the State must teach individuals that illness is not a disgrace, but an unfortunate accident which is to be pitied, yet that it is a crime and a disgrace to make this affliction worse by passing on disease and defects to innocent creatures, out of mere egotism. The State must also teach the people that it is an expression of a really noble nature and that it is a humanitarian act worthy of admiration if a person who innocently suffers from hereditary disease refrains from having a child of his own, but gives his love and affection to some unknown child who, through its health, promises to become a healthy member of a healthy community. In accomplishing such an educational task the State integrates its practical function by this activity in the moral sphere. It must act on this principle without paying any attention to the question of whether its conduct will be understood or misconstrued, blamed or praised. If, throughout a period of not more than six hundred years, all physically degenerate or mentally defective persons were sterilized, humanity would not only be delivered from an immense misfortune, but also restored to a state of general health such as we at present can hardly imagine.
453
If the fecundity of the healthy portion of the nation were encouraged in a conscientious and methodical way, we should have at least the beginnings of a race from which all those germs would be eliminated which are to-day the cause of our moral and physical decadence, If a people and a State take this course to develop that nucleus of the nation which is most valuable from the racial standpoint and thus increase its fecundity, the people as a whole will subsequently enjoy the blessings which go with pure breeding. To achieve this, the State should first of all not leave the colonisation of newly acquired territory to a haphazard policy, but should have it carried out in accordance with definite principles. Specially competent committees ought to issue certificates to individuals entitling them to engage in colonisation work, and these certificates should guarantee the racial purity of the individuals in question. In this way frontier colonies could gradually be founded whose inhabitants would be of the purest racial stock, and hence would possess the best qualities of the race. Such colonies would be a valuable asset to the whole nation. Their development would be a source of joy, confidence and pride to each citizen of the nation, because they would contain the nucleus which would ultimately bring about a great development of the nation and indeed of mankind itself. TheWeltanschauungwhich bases the State on the racial idea must finally succeed in bringing about a nobler era, in which men will no longer pay exclusive attention to breeding and rearing pedigree dogs, horses and cats, but will endeavour to improve the breed of the human race itself, That will be an era of self-restraint and renunciation for one class of people, while the others will give their gifts and make their sacrifices joyfully. That such a mentality may be possible cannot be denied in a world where hundreds and thousands accept the principle of celibacy of their own free will, without being obliged or pledged to do so by anything except an ecclesiastical precept. Why should it not be possible to induce people to make this sacrifice if, instead of such a precept, they were simply told that they ought to put an end to the original sin of racial corruption which is steadily being committed from one generation to another.
454
Further, they ought to be made to realise that it is their bounden duty to give to the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself made in His own image. Naturally, our wretched army of contemporary Philistines will not understand these things. They will ridicule them or shrug their round shoulders and groan out their everlasting excuses, “Of course, it is a fine thing, but the pity is that it cannot be carried out.” And we reply, “With you indeed it cannot be done, for your world is incapable of such an idea. You know only one anxiety and that is for your own personal existence. You have but one God, and that is your money. “We do not turn to you, however, for help, but to the great army of those who are too poor to consider their personal existence as the highest good on earth. They do not place their trust in money, but in other gods, into whose hands they confide their lives. “Above all we turn to the vast army of our German youth. They are coming to maturity in a great epoch, and they will fight against the evils which were the outcome of the laziness and indifference of their fathers.” Either the German youth will one day create a new State founded on the racial idea or they will be the last witnesses of the complete breakdown and death of the bourgeois world. If a generation suffers from defects which it recognises and even admits and is nevertheless quite pleased with itself, as the bourgeois world is to-day, resorting to the cheap excuse that nothing can be done to remedy the situation, then such a generation is doomed to disaster. A marked characteristic of our bourgeois world is that it can no longer deny the evil conditions that exist. It has to admit that there is much which is foul and wrong; but it is unable to make up its mind to fight against that evil, which would mean putting forth the energy to mobilise the forces of sixty or seventy million people and thus oppose the menace. The bourgeois classes do just the opposite. When such an effort is made elsewhere they only indulge in silly comment and try from a safe distance to show that such an enterprise is theoretically impossible and doomed to failure. No arguments are too stupid to be employed in defence of their own pettifogging opinions and their moral attitude.
455
If, for instance, a whole continent wages war against alcoholic poisoning, so as to free an entire people from this devastating vice, the only reaction of our European bourgeois is to gape, shake his head and ridicule the movement with a superior sneer—a state of mind which is particularly effective in a society that is so ridiculous. But if all this proves of no avail and in some corner of the world the time-honoured, inviolable routine is attacked, and attacked to some effect, then as has been said, at least the effect must be belittled, even if bourgeois moral principles have to be invoked against a movement, the object of which is to suppress a great moral evil. We must not permit ourselves any illusions on this point. The contemporary bourgeois world has become unfit to perform any such noble task for the sake of humanity, simply because it is of inferior quality and at the same time evil, not so much because it is bent on evil, but because of an all-pervading indolence and its consequences. That is why those political societies which call themselves bourgeois parties are nothing but associations to promote the interests of certain professional groups and classes: Their highest aim is to defend their own egotistic interests as best they can. It is obvious that such a guild, consisting of bourgeois politicians, may be considered fit for anything rather than a struggle, especially when the adversaries are not cautious shopkeepers but the proletarian masses, goaded to extremity and out to win at any cost. If we consider it the first duty of the State to serve and promote the general welfare of the people, by preserving and encouraging the development of the best racial elements, the logical consequence is that this task cannot be limited to measures concerning the birth of the infant members of the race and nation, but that the State will also have to adopt educational means for making each citizen a worthy factor in the further propagation of the race. Just as, in general, racial quality is the preliminary condition for the mental efficiency of any given human material, the training, of the individual will first of all have to be directed towards the development of sound bodily health, for the general rule is that a strong and healthy mind is found only in a strong and healthy body. The fact that men of genius are sometimes not robust in health and stature, and are even of a sickly constitution, is no proof of the falsity of the principle I have enunciated.
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These cases are only exceptions which, as everywhere else, prove the rule. But when the bulk of a nation is composed of physical degenerates it is rare for a great man to arise from such a miserable motley, and in any case his activities would never meet with great success. A degenerate mob will either be incapable of understanding him at all or their will-power will be so feeble that they cannot follow the soaring flight of such an eagle. The State that is grounded on the racial principle and is alive to the significance of this truth will first of all have to base its educational work not on the mere imparting of knowledge, but rather on physical training and the development of healthy bodies. The cultivation of the intellectual faculties occupies only second place, and here again it is character which has to be developed first of all, namely, strength of will and the ability to make decisions. The educational system ought to foster a spirit of readiness to accept responsibilities gladly. Formal instruction in the sciences must be considered last in importance. Accordingly, the State which is grounded on the racial idea must start with the principle that a person whose formal education in the sciences is relatively small, but who is physically sound and robust, of a steadfast and honest character, ready and able to make decisions and endowed with strength of will, is a more useful member of the national community than a weakling who is scholarly and refined. A nation composed of learned men who are physically degenerate, or weak-willed and timid pacifists, is not capable of ensuring even its own existence on this earth. In the bitter struggle which decides the destiny of man, it is very rare that an individual has succumbed because he lacked learning. Those who fail are they who try to ignore these consequences and are too faint-hearted to put them into effect. There must be a certain balance between mind and body. A degenerate body is not more beautiful because it houses a radiant spirit.
457
We should not be acting justly if we were to bestow the highest intellectual training on those who are physically deformed and crippled, who lack decision and are weak-willed and cowardly. What has made the Greek ideal of beauty immortal is the wonderful union of splendid physical beauty with nobility of mind and spirit. Moltke’s saying, that, in the long run, fortune favours only the efficient, certainly holds good for the relationship between body and spirit. A mind which is sound generally dwells in a body that is sound. Accordingly, in the völkisch State physical training is not a matter for the individual alone, nor is it a duty which first devolves on the parents and is only secondarily a matter of public interest. It is necessary for the preservation of the people, who are represented and protected by the State. As regards purely formal education the State even now interferes with the individual’s right of self-determination and insists upon the right of the community by subjecting the child to an obligatory system of training, without regard to the views of the parents. In a similar way and to a higher degree the new völkisch State will one day make its authority prevail, over the ignorance and incomprehension of individuals in problems appertaining to the safety of the nation. It must organise its educational work in such a way that the bodies of the young will lie systematically trained from infancy onwards, so as to be tempered and hardened for the demands to be made on them in later years. Above all, the State must see to it that a generation of book-worms is not developed. The work of education and hygiene has to begin with the young mother. Painstaking efforts carried on for several decades have succeeded in abolishing septic infection in childbirth and in reducing puerperal fever to a relatively small number of cases. It ought to be possible to give nurses and mothers a thorough course of instruction and to institute a system of training the child from early infancy onwards which may serve as an excellent basis for its future development.
458
The völkisch State ought to allow much more time for physical training in schools. It is nonsense to burden young brains with a load of material of which, as experience shows, they retain only a small part, and mostly not the essentials, but only what is of secondary importance, because the young mind is incapable of sifting the right kind of learning from among all that is crammed into it. To-day, even in the curriculum of the high schools, only two short hours in the week are reserved for gymnastics; and, worse still, it is left to the pupils to decide whether or not they want to take part. This shows a grave disproportion between this branch of education and purely intellectual instruction. Not a single day should be allowed to pass on which the young pupil does not have one hour of physical training in the morning and one in the evening, and every sort of sport and gymnastics should be included. There is one kind of sport which should be especially encouraged, although many people who call themselves völkisch consider it brutal and vulgar, namely, boxing. It is incredible how many false notions prevail among the ‘cultured’ classes. The fact that the young man learns, how to fence and then spends his time in duelling is considered quite natural and respectable. But boxing—that is brutal! Why? There is no other sport which equals this in developing the militant spirit, none that demands such a power of rapid decision or gives the body the flexibility of fine steel. It is no more vulgar for two young people to settle their differences with their fists rather than with sharp-pointed pieces of steel. One who is attacked and defends himself with his fists surely does not act in less manly a fashion than one who runs off and yells for the assistance of a policeman. But, above all, a healthy youth has to learn to endure hard knocks. This principle may appear savage to our contemporary champions who fight only with the weapons of the intellect, but it is not the purpose of the völkisch State to raise a colony of aesthetic pacifists and physical degenerates.
459
This State does not consider that the human ideal is to be found in the honourable Philistine or the maidenly spinster, but in a bold prototype of manly virtues and in women capable of bringing men into the world. Generally speaking, the function of sport is not only to make the individual strong, alert and daring, but also to harden the body and train it to endure adverse conditions. If our intellectual upper classes had not been trained exclusively in the art of gentlemanly behaviour and if, on the contrary, they had learned boxing, it would never have been possible for bullies, deserters and other such canaille to carry through a German revolution. For the success of this revolution was not due to the courageous, energetic and audacious activities of its authors, but to the lamentable cowardice and irresolution of those who ruled the German State at that time and were responsible for it. Our educated leaders had received only an ‘intellectual’ training and therefore found themselves defenceless when their adversaries used crow-bars instead of intellectual weapons. All this could happen only because our superior scholastic system did not train men to be real men, but merely to be civil servants, engineers, technicians, chemists, litterateurs, jurists and, finally, professors, lest intellectualism die out. Our leaders in the purely intellectual sphere have always been brilliant, but when it came to taking resolute action in practical affairs our leaders have been beneath criticism. Of course, education cannot make a courageous man out of one who is temperamentally a coward, but a man who naturally possesses a certain degree of courage will not be able to develop that quality if his defective education has made him inferior to others from the very start as regards physical strength and prowess. The Army offers the best example of the fact that the knowledge of his physical ability develops a man’s courage and militant spirit. Outstanding heroes were not the rule in the Army, but men of average courage. The excellent schooling which the German soldier received before the War imbued the members of the whole gigantic organism with a degree of confidence in their own superiority such as even our opponents never thought possible.
460
All the immortal examples of dauntless courage and daring which the German armies gave during the late summer and autumn of 1914, as they advanced from triumph to triumph, were the result of that training which had been pursued systematically. During the long years of peace before the last war men who were almost physical weaklings were made capable of incredible deeds, and thus a self-confidence was developed which did not fail them even in the most terrible battles. It is our German people, which is now in a state of collapse and helpless to defend itself against the kicks dealt it by the rest of the world, that has need of the power that is the outcome of self-confidence. But this confidence in oneself must be instilled into our children from their very early years. The whole system of education and training must be directed towards fostering in the child the conviction that he is unquestionably a match for anybody and everybody. The individual has to regain his own physical strength and prowess in order to believe in the invincibility of the nation to which he belongs. What has formerly led the German armies to victory was the sum total of the confidence which each individual had in himself, and which all of them had in their leaders. What will restore the national strength of the German people is the conviction that they will be able to regain their liberty, but this conviction can only be the final product of this same feeling in millions of individuals. And here again we must have no illusions. The collapse of our people was overwhelming, and the efforts who put an end to so much misery must be superhuman. It would be a bitter and grave error to believe that our people could be made strong again simply by means of our present bourgeois training in good order and obedience. That will not suffice if we are to break up the present order of things, which now sanctions the acknowledgment of our defeat, and cast the broken chains of our slavery in the faces of our opponents. Only by a superabundance of national energy and a passionate this it for liberty can we recover what has been lost. Again, the manner of clothing the young should be such as harmonises with this purpose.
461
It is really lamentable to see how our young people have fallen victims to a fashion mania which perverts the meaning of the old adage that clothes make the man. Especially in regard to young people, clothes should have their place in educational training. The boy who walks about in summer-time wearing long baggy trousers and clad up to the neck is hampered by his clothes from feeling any inclination towards strenuous physical exercise. Ambition and, to speak quite frankly, even vanity must be appealed to. I do not mean such vanity as leads people to want to wear fine clothes, which not everybody can afford, but rather the vanity which makes a person want to develop a fine physique which everybody can try to do. This is also of value in later years. The young girl must get to know her mate. If the beauty of the body were not completely forced into the background to-day through our stupid manner of dressing, it would not be possible for thousands of our girls to be led astray by Jewish mongrels, with their repulsive crooked waddle. It is also in the interests of the nation that those of beautiful physique should mate in order that they may play their part in providing the nation with fresh beauty. Since we have at present no form of military training and since, consequently, the only institution which, in peace-time at least, partly made up for the lack of physical training in our education is now lacking, what I have suggested is all the more necessary in our time. The success of our old military training not only showed itself in the education of the individual, but also in the influence which it exercised over the mutual relationship between the sexes. The young girl preferred the soldier to one who was not a soldier. The völkisch State must not confine its control of physical training to the official school period, but must demand that, after leaving school, and while his adolescent body is still developing, the boy continues this training, for on such proper physical development, success in after-life largely depends. It is stupid to think that the right of the State to supervise the education of its young citizens suddenly comes to an end the moment they leave school and recommences only with military service.
462
This right is a duty, and as such it must continue uninterruptedly. The present State, which does not interest itself in developing healthy men, has criminally neglected its duty. It leaves our contemporary youth to be, corrupted on the streets and in the brothels, instead of keeping hold of the reins and continuing the physical training of these young people up to the time when they are grown into healthy young men and women. For the present, it is a matter of indifference what form the State chooses for carrying on this training. The essential thing is that it should be developed and that the most suitable ways of doing so should be investigated. The völkisch State will have to consider the physical training of the youth after the school period just as much a public duty as his intellectual training, and this training will have to be carried out through public institutions. On general lines it can be a preparation for subsequent service in the Army, and then it will no longer be the task of the Army to teach the young recruit the most elementary drill regulations. In fact, the Army will no longer have to deal with recruits in the present sense of the word, but will rather have to transform into a soldier the youth whose bodily prowess has already been fully developed. In the völkisch State the Army will no longer be obliged to teach boys how to walk and stand erect, but it will be the final and supreme school of patriotic education. In the Army the young recruit will learn the art of bearing arms and .at the same time he will be equipped for his other duties in later life. The supreme aim of military education must always be to achieve that which was attributed to the old Army as its highest merit, namely, that through his military schooling the boy must be transformed into a man, that he must not only learn to obey, but also acquire the fundamentals that will enable him one day to command. He must learn to remain silent, not only when he is justly rebuked, but also when he is unjustly rebuked. Furthermore, in the consciousness of his own strength and on the basis of thatesprit de corpswhich inspires him and his comrades, he must become convinced that he belongs to a nation which is invincible.
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After he has completed his military training two certificates shall be handed to the soldier. The one will be his diploma as a citizen of the State, a juridical document which will enable him to take part in public affairs. The second will be an attestation of his physical health, which guarantees his fitness for marriage. The völkisch State will have to direct the education of girls just as that of boys and according to the same fundamental principles. Here again, special importance must be assigned to physical training, and only after that must the importance of spiritual and mental training be taken into account. In the education of the girl the final goal always to be kept in mind is that she is one day to be a mother. In the second place, the völkisch State must busy itself with the all-round training of character. Of course, the essential traits of the individual character are already there before any education takes place. A person who is fundamentally egotistic will always remain fundamentally egotistic, and the idealist will always remain fundamentally an idealist. Besides those, however, who already possess a definite stamp of character there are millions of people with characters that are indefinite and vague. The born delinquent will always remain a delinquent, but numerous people who show only a certain tendency to commit criminal acts may become useful members of the community if rightly trained; whereas, on the other hand, weak and unstable characters may easily become evil elements if the system of education is bad. During the War it was often lamented that our people could be so little reticent. This failing made it very difficult to keep even highly important secrets from the knowledge of the enemy. But let us put the question: What did the German educational system do in pre-war times to teach Germans to be discreet?
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Did it not very often happen in school-days that the little tell-tale was preferred to his companions who kept their mouths shut? Is it not true that then, as well as now, complaining about others was considered praiseworthy ‘candour,’ while silent discretion was taken as obstinacy? Has any attempt ever been made to teach the young that discretion is a precious and manly virtue? No, for such matters are trifles in the eyes of our education authorities. But these trifles cost our State innumerable millions in legal expenses, for ninety per cent of all the processes for defamation and similar charges arise only from a lack of discretion. Remarks that are made without any sense of responsibility are thoughtlessly repeated from mouth to mouth, and our economic welfare is continually damaged because important methods of production are carelessly disclosed. Secret preparations for our national defence are rendered illusory because our people have never learned the duty of silence. They repeat everything they happen to hear. In time of war such talkative habits may even cause the loss of battles and may therefore contribute essentially for the unsuccessful outcome of a campaign. Here, as in other matters, we may rest assured that adults cannot do what they have not learnt to do in youth. A teacher must not try to discover the wild tricks of the boys by encouraging the evil practice of tale-bearing. Young people form a sort of state among themselves and face adults with a certain solidarity. That is quite natural. The ties which unite the ten-year-old boys to one another are stronger and more natural than their relationship to adults. A boy who tells on his comrades commits an act of treason and shows a bent of character which is, to speak bluntly, similar to that of a man who commit; high treason. Such a boy must not be classed as ‘good,’ ‘reliable,’ and so on, but rather as one with undesirable traits of character.
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It may be rather convenient for the teacher to make use of such unworthy tendencies in order to help him in his own work, but by such an attitude the germ of a moral habit is sown in young hearts and may one day have fatal consequences. It has happened more often than once that a young informer developed into a scoundrel. This is only one example among many. The deliberate training of fine and noble traits of character in our schools to-day is almost negative. In the future much more emphasis will have to be laid on this side of our educational work. Loyalty, self-sacrifice, and discretion are virtues which a great nation must possess, and the teaching and development of these in the schools is a more important matter than many other things now included in the curriculum. To make the children give up habits of complaining, whining and howling when they are hurt, etc., also belongs to this part of their training. If the educational system fails to teach the child at an early age to endure pain and injury without complaining we cannot be surprised, if at a later age, when the boy has grown to manhood and is, for example, in the trenches, the postal service is used for nothing but to send home letters full of grumbles and complaints. If our youths, during their years in the primary schools, had had their minds crammed with a little less knowledge and if, instead, they had been better taught how to be masters of themselves, it would have served us well during the years 1915–1918. In its educational system the völkisch State will have to attach the highest importance to the development of character, hand-in-hand with physical training. Many more defects which our rational organism betrays at present could be ameliorated, if not completely eliminated, by education of the right kind. Extreme importance should be attached to the training of will-power and young people should be trained to make firm decisions and to accept responsibility. In the training of our old Army the principle was in vogue that any order is always better than no order.
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Applied to our youth this principle ought to take the form that any answer is better than no answer. The fear of replying, because one fears to be wrong, ought to be considered more humiliating than giving thee wrong reply. On this simple and primitive basis, our youth should be trained to have the courage to act. It has been often lamented that in November and December 1918 all the authorities lost their heads and that, from the monarch down to the last divisional commander, nobody had sufficient mettle to make a decision on his own responsibility. That terrible fact constitutes a grave charge against our educational system, because what was revealed on a colossal scale in that moment of catastrophe was only what happens on a smaller scale everywhere among us. It is the lack of will-power, and not the lack of arms, which renders us incapable of offering any serious resistance to-day. This defect is found everywhere among our people and prevents decisive action wherever risks have to be taken, as if any great action can be taken without involving risk. Quite unsuspectingly, a German general found a formula for this lamentable lack of the will-to-act when he said, “I act only when I can count on a fifty-one per cent chance of success.” In that ‘fifty-one per cent chance’ we find the very key to the German collapse. The man who demands from Fate a guarantee of his success deliberately denies the significance of heroic action, for this significance consists in the very fact that, in the definite knowledge that the situation in question is fraught with mortal danger, an action is undertaken which may lead to success. A patient suffering from cancer, who knows that his death is certain if he does not undergo an operation, needs no assurance of a fifty-one per cent chance of a cure before facing the operation, and if the operation promise only a fraction of a one per cent probability of success; a man of courage would risk it and he who does not take the risk has no right to whine. Taking all in all, cowardly lack of will-power and inability to form resolutions are mainly the outcome of the fundamentally wrong training which our young people receive.
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The disastrous effects become evident in later life and reach their peak in the lack of civilian courage which our leading statesmen display. The cowardice which leads nowadays to the shirking of every kind of responsibility springs from the same source. Here again it is the fault of the education given to our young people. This drawback permeates all sections of public life and finds its consummation in the institutions of government that function under the parliamentary regime. Even in the schools, unfortunately, more value is attached to ‘confession and full repentance’ and ‘contrite abjuration,’ on the part of little sinners than to a simple and frank avowal. But this latter seems to-day, in the eyes of many a teacher, to savour of a spirit of utter incorrigibility and depravity, and, though it may seem incredible, many a boy is told that the gallows is waiting for him, because he has shown certain traits which might be of inestimable value to the nation its a whole. Just as the völkisch State must one day give its attention to training the will-power and capacity for decision among the youth, so too it must cultivate in the hearts of the younger generation from early childhood onwards a readiness to accept responsibility, and the courage to make open and frank avowal. If it recognises the full significance of this necessity, finally—after a century of educative work—it will succeed in building up a nation which will no longer be subject to those defects that have contributed so disastrously to bring about our present overthrow. The formal imparting of knowledge, which constitutes the chief work of our educational system to-day, will be taken over by the völkisch State with only few modifications. These modifications must be made in three branches. First of all, the brains of young people must not be generally burdened with subjects of which ninety-five per cent is useless to them and is therefore forgotten again. The curriculum of the primary and central schools presents an odd mixture at the present time. In many branches of study the subject matter to be learned has become so enormous that only a very small fraction of it can be remembered later on, and indeed only a very small fraction of this whole mass of knowledge can be used.
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On the other hand, what is learned is insufficient for anybody who wishes to specialise in any certain branch for the purpose of earning his daily bread. Take, for example, the average civil servant who has passed through the Gymnasium or High School, and ask him, at the age of thirty or forty, how much he has retained of the knowledge that was crammed into him with so much pains. How much is retained of all that was stuffed into his brain? He will certainly answer, “Well, the sole purpose of all I swotted up in those days was not to provide me with a great stock of knowledge from which I could draw in later years; but it served to develop the understanding, the memory, and above all it helped to strengthen the thinking power of the brain.” That is partly true. And yet it is somewhat dangerous to submerge a young brain in a flood of impressions, which it can hardly master and the single elements of which it cannot discern or appreciate at their true value. It is mostly the essential part of this knowledge, and not the incidental, that is forgotten and sacrificed. Thus the principal purpose of this copious instruction is frustrated, for that purpose cannot be to make the brain capable of learning by simply offering it an enormous and varied amount of subjects for acquisition, but rather to furnish the individual with that stock of knowledge, which he will need in later life and which he can use for the good of the community. This aim, however, is rendered illusory if, because of the superabundance of subjects that have been crammed into his head in childhood, a person is able to remember nothing, or at least not the essential portion, of all this in later life. There is no reason why millions of people should learn two or three languages during their school years, when only a very small fraction will have the opportunity to use these languages in later life and when most of them will therefore forget these languages completely. To take one instance, out of one hundred thousand students who learn French there are probably not two thousand who will be in a position to make use of this accomplishment in later life, while ninety-eight thousand will never have a chance to utilise in practice what they have learned in youth.
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They have spent thousands of hours on a subject which will afterwards be of no value or importance to them. The argument that these, subjects form part of a general education is invalid. It would be sound if all these people were able to use this learning in after-life. But, as matters stand, ninety-eight thousand are tortured to no purpose and waste valuable time, for the sake of the two thousand to whom the language will be of any use. In the case of that language which I have chosen as an example it cannot be said that the learning of it educates the student in logical thinking or sharpens his mental acumen, as the learning of Latin, for instance, might be said to do. It would, therefore, be much better to teach young students only the general outline or, better, the inner structure of such a language, that is to say, to allow them to discern the characteristic features of the language, or perhaps to make them acquainted with the rudiments of its grammar, its pronunciation, its syntax, style, etc. That would be sufficient for average students, because it would provide a clearer view of the whole and could be more easily remembered and would be more practical than the present-day attempt to cram into their heads detailed knowledge of the whole language, which they can never master and which they will readily forget. If this method were adopted, then we should avoid the danger that, out of the superabundance of matter taught, only some fragments will remain in the memory, for the children would then have to learn what is worth while, and the selection between the useful and the useless would thus have been made beforehand. As regards the majority of students, the knowledge and understanding of the rudiments of a language would be quite sufficient for the rest of their lives, and those who really do need this language subsequently would thus have a foundation on which to build, should they, choose to make a more thorough study of it.
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By adopting such a curriculum the necessary amount of time would be gained for physical exercises, as well as for a more intense training in the various educational fields that have already been mentioned. A reform of particular importance is that which ought to take place in the present methods of teaching history. Scarcely any other people is made to study as much history as the Germans, and scarcely any other people makes such bad use of its historical knowledge. If politics are history in the making, then our way of teaching history stands condemned by the way we have conducted our politics. But, there would be no point in bewailing the lamentable results of our political conduct, unless we are now determined to give our people a better political education. In ninety-nine out of one hundred cases the results of our present teaching of history are deplorable. Usually only a few dates, years of birth and names, remain in the memory, while a knowledge of the main and clearly defined lines of historical development is completely lacking. The essential features which are of real significance are not taught. It is left to the more or less bright intelligence of the individual to discover the inner motivating urge amid the mass of dates and chronological succession of events. You may object as strongly as you like to this unpleasant statement, but read with attention the speeches which our parliamentarians make during one single session on the problems connected with, let us say, foreign policy. Remember that these gentlemen are, or claim to be, the elite of the German nation and that at least a great number of them have sat on the benches of our secondary schools and that many of them have passed through our universities. Then you will realise how defective the historical education of these men has been. If these gentlemen had never studied history at all, but had possessed a sound instinct for public affairs, things would have gone better, and the nation would have benefited greatly thereby. The subject matter of our history teaching must be curtailed. The chief value of that teaching is to make the principal lines of historical development understood.
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The more our historical teaching is limited to this task, the more we may hope that it will turn out subsequently to be of advantage to the individual and, through the individual, to the community as a whole, for history must not be studied merely with a view to knowing what happened in the past, but as a guide for the future, and to teach us what policy would be the best to follow for the preservation of our own people. That is the real end, and the teaching of history is only a means to attain this end. But here again the means has superseded the end in our contemporary education. The goal is completely forgotten. Do not retort that a profound study of history demands a detailed knowledge of all these dates because otherwise we could not fix the great lines of development. That task falls to the professional historians, but the average man is not a professor of history. For him history has only one mission, and that is to provide him with that amount of historical knowledge which is necessary in order to enable him to form an independent opinion on the political affairs of his own country. The man who wants to become a professor of history can devote himself to all the details later on. Naturally he will have to occupy himself even with the smallest details. Of course our present teaching of history is not adequate to all this, Its scope is too vast for the average student and too limited for the student who wishes to be a historical expert. Finally, it is the business of the völkisch State to arrange for the writing of a world history in which the racial problem will occupy a dominant position. To sum up: The völkisch State must reconstruct our system of general instruction in such a way that it will embrace only what is essential. Beyond this it will have to make provision for more advanced teaching in the various subjects for those who want to specialise in them. It will suffice for the average individual to be acquainted with the fundamentals of the various subjects to serve as the basis of what may be called an all-round education.
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He ought to study exhaustively and in detail only that subject in which he intends to work during the rest of his life. General instruction in all subjects should be obligatory, and specialisation should be left to the choice of the individual. In this way the scholastic programme would be shortened, and thus several school hours would be gained which could be utilised for physical exercise and character training in will-power, the capacity for making practical judgments, decisions, etc. The little account taken by our school training to-day, especially in the central schools, of the callings that have to be followed in after-life is demonstrated by the fact that men who are destined for the same calling in life are educated in three different kinds of schools. What is of decisive importance is general education and not specialised teaching. When special knowledge is needed it cannot be given in the curriculum of our central schools as they are to-day. The völkisch State will, therefore, one day have to abolish such half-measures. The second modification in the curriculum which the völkisch State will have to make is the following: It is a characteristic of our materialistic epoch that our scientific education shows a growing emphasis on what is real and practical, on such subjects as, for instance, applied mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. Of course, they are necessary in an age that is dominated by industrial technology and chemistry, and of which they are, externally at least, a most significant factor of everyday life, but it is dangerous to base the general education of the nation on a knowledge of, these subjects to the exclusion of all others. General education should, on the contrary, be on cultural lines. It ought to be founded more on classical studies and should aim at providing only the groundwork for specialised instruction later on in the various practical sciences. Otherwise we should sacrifice those forces that are more important for the preservation of the nation than any technical knowledge. In the history department the study of ancient history should not be omitted.
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Roman history, along general lines, is, and will remain, the best teacher, not only for our own time, but also for the future, and the ideal of Hellenic culture should be preserved for us in all its marvellous beauty. The differences between the various peoples should not prevent us from recognising the community of race which unites them, on a higher plane. The conflict of our time is one that is being waged around great objectives. A civilisation is fighting for its existence. It is a civilisation that is the product of thousands of years of historical development, and the Greek as well as the German forms part of it. A clear-cut division must be made between general education and specialised subjects. To-day the latter threaten more and more to become debased in the service of Mammon. To counterbalance this tendency, general culture should be preserved, at least in its ideal forms. The principle should be repeatedly emphasised, that industrial and technical progress, trade and commerce, can flourish only as long as a folk-community inspired by ideals provides the requisite basis. That condition is not created by a spirit of materialistic egotism, but by a spirit of self-denial and the joy of giving oneself in the service of others. The system of education which obtains to-day sees its principal object in cramming into young people that knowledge which wall help them to make their way in life. This principle is expressed in the following terms, “The young man must one day become a useful member of human society.” That phrase refers to his ability to gain an honest livelihood. The superficial training in the duties of good citizenship, which he acquires merely incidentally, has very weak foundations. The State in itself represents only a vessel, and therefore it is difficult to train people to look upon this vessel as the ideal which they will have to serve and towards which they must feel responsible. A vessel can be too easily broker. But, as we have seen, people to-day have no clear-cut concept of what the term State’ implies. Therefore, there is nothing but the usual stereotyped ‘patriotic training.
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In the old Germany this mainly took the form of an adulation (which was often rather stupid and usually boring) of petty potentates who were so numerous that it became necessary to omit all mention of the really great men whom Germany has produced. The result was that the broad masses acquired a very inadequate knowledge of German history. Here, too, the great lines of development were missing. It is evident that by such methods no real national enthusiasm could be aroused. Our educational system proved incapable of selecting from the general mass of our historical personages the names of a few personalities which the German people could be proud to look upon as their own. Thus the whole nation might have been united by the ties of a common knowledge of this common heritage. The really important figures in German history were not presented to the present generation. The attention of the whole nation was not concentrated on them for the purpose of awakening a common national spirit. From the various subjects that were taught, those who had charge of our training seemed incapable of selecting what redounded most to the national honour and of lifting that above the common objective level, in order to inflame the national pride in the light of such brilliant examples. At that time such a course would have been looked upon as rank chauvinism, which did not then have a very pleasant savour. Pettifogging dynastic patriotism was more acceptable and more easily tolerated than the glowing fire of a supreme national pride. The former could always be pressed into service, whereas the latter might one day become a dominating force. Monarchist patriotism terminated in associations of veterans, whereas passionate national patriotism might have opened a road whose goal would have been difficult to determine. This national passion is like a thoroughbred which will not tolerate any sort of rider in the saddle. No wonder that most people preferred to shirk such a danger. Nobody seemed to think it possible that one day a war might come which would put the mettle of this kind of patriotism to the test, in artillery bombardments and waves of attacks with poison gas.
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But when it did come our lack of this patriotic passion was avenged in a terrible way. None were very enthusiastic about dying for their imperial and royal sovereigns, whilst on the other hand, the ‘nation’ was not recognised by the greater number of the soldiers. Since the Revolution has taken place in Germany and monarchist patriotism has become a thing of the past, the purpose of teaching history has merely been to add to the stock of objective knowledge. The present State has no use for patriotic enthusiasm, but it will never obtain what it really desires, for it dynastic patriotism failed to produce a supreme power of resistance at a time when the principle of nationalism dominated, it will be still less possible to arouse republican enthusiasm. There can be no doubt that the German people would not have stood on the field of battle for four and a half years and fought to the battle slogan, ‘For the Republic’ least of all those who created this grand institution. In reality this Republic has been allowed to exist undisturbed only by virtue of its readiness in assuring all and sundry of its willingness to pay tribute and reparations to the foreigner and to put its signature to any kind of territorial renunciation. The rest of the world approves of it, just as a weakling is always more pleasing to those who want to bend him to their own will than is a man of mettle. But the fact that the enemy like this form of government is the worst kind of condemnation. They love the German Republic and tolerate its existence because no better instrument could be found to help them to keep our people in slavery. It is to this fact alone that this magnanimous institution owes its survival. That is why it can dispense with, any real system of national education and can feel satisfied when the heroes who belong to the Reich Banner organisation shout their hurrahs, but in reality these same heroes would scamper away like rabbits if called upon to defend that banner with their blood. The völkisch State will have to fight for its existence. It will neither gain nor secure this existence by signing documents like the Dawes Plan, but for its existence and defence it will need precisely those things with which our present system believes it can dispense.
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The more worthy its form and its inner national character, the greater will be the envy and opposition of its adversaries. The best defence will not be in the arms it possesses, but in its citizens. It is not fortresses that will protect it, but the living wall of its men and women, filled with an ardent love for their country and a passionate spirit of national patriotism. Therefore, the third point which will have to be considered in relation to our educational system is the following: The völkisch State must realise that the sciences may also be made a means of promoting a spirit of pride in the nation. Not only the history of the world, but the history of civilisation as a whole, must be taught in the light of this principle. An inventor must appear great not only as an inventor but also, and even more so, as a member of the nation. The admiration aroused by the contemplation of a great achievement must be, transformed into a feeling of pride and satisfaction that a man of one’s own race has been chosen to accomplish it. But out of the abundance of great names in German history the greatest will have to be selected and presented to our younger generation in such a way as to become solid pillars of strength to support the national spirit. The subject matter ought to be systematically organised from the standpoint of this principle, and the teaching should be so orientated that the boy or girl, after leaving school, will not be a semi-pacifist, a democrat or something else of that kind, but a whole-hearted German. In order that this national feeling be sincere from the very beginning, and not a mere pretence, the following fundamental and inflexible principle should be impressed on the young brain while it is yet malleable: The man who loves his nation can prove the sincerity of this sentiment only by being ready to make sacrifices for the nation’s welfare. There is no such thing as a national sentiment which is directed towards personal interests, and there is no such thing as a nationalism that embraces only certain classes.
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Hurrahing proves nothing and does not confer the right to call oneself national if behind that shout there is no sincere preoccupation for the conservation of the nation’s well-being. One can be proud of one’s people only if there is no class left of which one need be ashamed. When one half of a nation is sunk in misery and worn cut by hardship and distress, or even depraved or degenerate, that nation presents such an unattractive picture that nobody can feel proud to belong to it. It is only when a nation is sound in all its members, physically and morally, that the joy of belonging to it can grow and swell to that supreme feeling which we call national pride. But this pride, in its highest form, can be felt only by those who know the greatness of their nation. The spirit of nationalism and a feeling for social justice must be fused into one sentiment in the hearts of the youth. Then a day will come when a nation of citizens will arise which will be welded together through a common love and a common pride that shall be invincible and indestructible for ever. The dread of chauvinism, which is a symptom of our time, is a sign of its impotence. Since our epoch not only lacks everything in the nature of exuberant energy, but even finds such a manifestation disagreeable, Fate will never select it for the accomplishment of any great deeds. For the greatest changes that have taken place on this earth would have been inconceivable if they had not been inspired by ardent and even hysterical passions, but only by the bourgeois virtues of peacefulness and order. One thing is certain, namely, that our world is facing a great revolution. The only question is whether the outcome will be propitious for the Aryan portion of mankind or whether the everlasting Jew will profit by it. By educating the younger generation along the right lines, the völkisch State will have to see to it that a generation of men will arise fit to play its part in this supreme and final combat that will decide the destiny of the world. That nation will conquer which is the first to take this road. The whole organisation of education and training which the völkisch State is to build up must regard as its crowning task the work of instilling into the hearts and minds of the youth entrusted to it the racial instinct and understanding of the racial idea.
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No boy or girl must leave school without having attained a clear insight into the meaning of racial purity and the importance of maintaining our racial blood unadulterated. Thus the first indispensable condition for the preservation of our race will have been established and the future cultural progress of our people assured, for all physical and mental training would be in vain unless it benefits an entity which is ready and determined to carry on its own existence and to maintain its own characteristic qualities. If it were otherwise, something would result which we Germans have cause to regret already, without perhaps having hitherto recognised the extent of the tragic calamity. Even in future we should be doomed to remain mere manure for civilisation, and that not in the banal sense of the contemporary bourgeois mind, which sees in a lost fellow-member of our people only a lost citizen, but in a sense which we should have to recognise in sorrow, namely, that our, racial blood would be destined to disappear. By continually mixing with other races we might lift them from their former lower level of civilisation to a higher plane, but we ourselves should descend for ever from the heights we had reached. Finally, from the racial standpoint, this training must also find its culmination in military service. The term of military service is to be a final stage in the educational training which the average German receives. While the völkisch State attaches, the greatest importance to physical and mental training, it has also to consider, as no less important, the task of selecting men for the service of the state itself. This important matter is passed over lightly at the present time. Generally, the children of parents who are for the time being in higher situations are, in their turn, considered worthy of a higher education. Here talent plays a subordinate part, but talent can be estimated only relatively. Though in general culture he may be inferior to the city child, a peasant boy may be more talented than the son of a family that has occupied high positions for many generations.
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But the superior culture of the city child has in itself nothing to do with a greater or lesser degree of talent, for this culture has its roots in the more copious mass of impressions which arise from the more varied education and the surroundings among which this child lives. If the intelligent son of peasant parents were educated from childhood in similar surroundings, his intellectual accomplishments would be quite otherwise. In our day there is only one sphere where the circumstances in which a person has been born mean less than his innate gifts. That is the sphere of art. Here, where a person cannot just ‘learn,’ but must have innate gifts that later on may undergo a more or less happy development (in the sense of a wise development of what is already there), money and parental property are of no account. This is definite proof that genius is not necessarily connected with the higher social strata or with wealth. Not rarely the greatest artists come from poor families, and many a boy from a country village has eventually become a celebrated artist. It does not say much for the mental acumen of our time that this truth is not recognised and acted upon to the advantage of our whole intellectual life. The opinion is advanced that this principle, though undoubtedly valid in the field of art, has not the same validity in regard to what are called the applied sciences. It is true that a man can be trained to a certain amount of mechanical dexterity, just as a poodle can be taught incredible tricks by a clever master, but such training does not bring the animal to use his intelligence in order to carry out those tricks. The same holds good in regard to man. It is possible to teach men, irrespective of talent, to go through certain scientific exercises, but in such cases the results are quite as automatic and mechanical as in the case of the animal. It would even be possible to force a person of mediocre intelligence, by means of an intensive course of intellectual drilling, to acquire more than the average amount of knowledge; but that knowledge would remain sterile.
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The result would be a man who might be a walking dictionary of knowledge, but who would fail miserably on every critical occasion in life and at every juncture where vital decisions had to be taken. Such people need to be drilled specially for every new and even most insignificant task and will never be capable, of contributing in the least to the general progress of mankind. Knowledge that is merely drilled into people can at best qualify them to fill government positions under our present regime. It goes without saying that, among the sum total of individuals who make up a nation, gifted people are always to be found in every sphere of life. It is also quite natural that the value of knowledge will be the, greater the more vitally the dead mass of learning is animated by the innate talent of the individual who possesses it. Creative work in this field can be done only through the marriage of knowledge and talent. One example will suffice to show how much our contemporary world is at fault in this matter. From time to time our illustrated papers publish, for the edification of the German Philistine, the news that in some quarter or other of the globe, and for the first time in that locality, a Negro has become a lawyer, a teacher, a pastor, or even a grand opera singer or something else of that kind. While the bourgeois blockhead stares with amazed admiration at the paragraph that tells him how marvellous are the achievements of our modern educational technique, the more cunning Jew sees in this fact a new proof to be utilised for the spreading of the theory with which he wants to infect the public, namely, that all men are equal. It does not dawn on the murky bourgeois mind that the fact which is published for him is a sin against reason itself, that it is an act of criminal insanity to train a being who is only an anthropoid by birth until the pretence can be made that he has been turned into a lawyer; while, on the other hand, millions who belong to the most civilised races have to remain in positions which are unworthy of their cultural level.
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The bourgeois mind does not realise that it is a sin against the will of the eternal Creator to allow hundreds of thousands of highly gifted people to remain floundering in the swamp of proletarian misery, while Hottentots and Zulus are drilled to fill positions in the intellectual professions. For here we have the product only of a drilling technique, just as in the case of the performing dog. If the same amount of care and effort were applied among intelligent races, each individual would become a thousand times more capable in such matters. This state of affairs would become intolerable if a day should dawn when it is no longer a matter of exceptional cases, but the situation is already intolerable where talent and natural gifts are not taken as decisive factors in qualifying for the right to a higher education. It is indeed intolerable to think that year after year hundreds of thousands of young people without a vestige of talent are deemed worthy of a higher education, while other hundreds of thousands who possess high natural gifts have to go without any sort of higher schooling at all. The practical loss thus suffered by the nation is incalculable. If the number of important discoveries which have been made in North America, in particular, has grown considerably in recent years, one of the reasons is that the number of gifted persons belonging to the lowest social classes who were given a higher education in that country is proportionately much larger than in Europe. A stock of knowledge packed into the brain will not suffice for the making of discoveries. What counts here is only that knowledge which is illuminated by natural talent, but with us at the present time no value is placed on such gifts. Only good school reports count. Here is another educative work that is waiting for the völkisch State to accomplish. It will not be its task to assure a dominant influence to a certain social class already existing, but it will be its duty to attract the most competent brains in the total mass of the nation and promote them to place and honour. It is not merely the duty of the State to give to the average child a certain amount of education in the primary school, but it is also its duty to make it possible for talent to develop, and above all, it must open the doors of the colleges and universities to talent of every sort, no matter in what social circles it may appear.
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This is an imperative necessity, for thus alone will it be possible to develop a talented body of public leaders from among the class which has acquired sterile learning. There is still another reason why the State should provide for this situation. Our intellectual class, particularly in Germany, is so shut up in itself and fossilised that it lacks living contact with the classes beneath it. Two evil consequences result from this. Firstly, the intellectual class neither understands nor sympathises with the broad masses. It has been so long cut off from all connection with them that it cannot understand their psychology. It has become estranged from the people. Secondly, the intellectual class lacks the necessary will-power, for this faculty is always weaker in cultivated circles, which live in seclusion, than among the primitive masses of the people. God knows, we Germans have never been lacking in abundant scientific culture, but we have always had a considerable lack of will-power and of the capacity for making decisions. For example, the more ‘intellectual’ our statesmen have been, the more lacking they have been, for the most part, in practical achievement. Our political preparation and our technical equipment for the World War were defective, certainly not because the brains governing the nation were too little educated, but because the men who directed our public affairs were overeducated, filled to overflowing with knowledge and intelligence, yet without any sound instinct and simply without energy, or any spirit of daring. It was our nation’s tragedy to have to fight for its existence under a Chancellor who was a dilly-dallying philosopher. If, instead of a Bethmann-Hollweg, we had had a more robust man of the people as our leader, the heroic blood of the common grenadier would not have been shed in vain. The exaggeratedly intellectual material out of which our leaders were made, proved to be the best ally of the scoundrels who carried out the November Revolution. These intellectuals safeguarded the national wealth in a miserly fashion; instead of conscripting it to its limits they created the conditions under which others won success.
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Here, the Catholic Church presents an instructive example. Clerical celibacy forces the Church to recruit its priests not from their own ranks, but progressively from the masses of the people. Yet there are not many who recognise the significance of celibacy in this relation. Therein lies the cause of the inexhaustible vigour which characterises that ancient institution. By unceasingly recruiting the ecclesiastical dignitaries from the lower classes of the people, the Church is enabled not only to maintain the contact of instinctive understanding with the masses of the population, but also to assure itself of always being able to draw upon that fund of energy which is present only among the lower classes. Hence the surprising youthfulness of that gigantic organism, its mental flexibility and its iron resolution. It will be the task of the völkisch State so to organise and administer its educational system that the existing intellectual-class will be constantly furnished with a supply of fresh blood from beneath. From the bulk of the nation the State must sift out with careful scrutiny those persons who are endowed with natural talents and see to it that they are employed in the service of the community, for neither the State itself nor the various departments of State exist to furnish revenues for members of a special class, but to fulfil the tasks allotted to them. This will be possible, however, only if the State trains individuals especially for these offices. Such individuals must have the necessary fundamental capability and will-power. The principle does not hold good only in regard to the, civil service, but also in regard to all those who are to take part in the intellectual and moral leadership of the people, no matter in what sphere they may be employed. The greatness of a people is partly dependent on the condition that it must succeed in training the best brains for those branches of the public service for which they show a special natural aptitude and in placing them in the offices where they can do their best work for the good of the community. If two nations of equal strength and quality engage in a mutual conflict, that nation will come out victorious which has entrusted its intellectual and moral leadership to its best talents and that nation will go under whose government represents only a common food trough for privileged groups or classes irrespective of the innate talents of its individual members.
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Of course, such a reform seems impossible in the world as it is to-day. The objection will at once be raised, that it is too much to expect from the favourite son of a highly-placed civil servant, for instance, that he shall work with his hands simply because somebody else, whose parents belong to the working-class, seems more capable of filling a job in the civil service. That argument may be valid as long as manual work is looked upon as it is looked upon to-day. Hence the völkisch State will have to take up an attitude towards the appreciation of manual labour which will be fundamentally different from that which now exists. If necessary, it will have to organise a persistent system of teaching which will aim at abolishing the stupid present-day habit of looking down on manual labour as an occupation of which to be ashamed. The individual will have to be valued, not by the class of work he does, but by the way in which he does it and by its usefulness to the community. This statement may sound monstrous in an epoch when the most brainless column-writer on a newspaper staff is more esteemed than the most expert mechanic, merely because the former pushes a pen. But, as I have said, this false valuation does not correspond to the true nature of things. It has been artificially introduced, and there was a time when it did not exist at all. The present unnatural state of affairs is one of those general morbid phenomena that have arisen from our materialistic epoch. Fundamentally, every kind of work has a double value; the one material, the other ideal. The material value depends on the importance of the work in the life of the community. The greater the number of the population who benefit from the work, directly or indirectly, the higher will be its material value. This evaluation is expressed in the material recompense which the individual receives for his labour. In contradiction to this purely material value there is the ideal value. Here the work performed is not judged by its material importance, but by the degree to which it answers a necessity.
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Certainly the material utility of an invention may be greater than that of the service rendered by an ordinary workman; but it is also certain that the community needs each of those small daily services just as much as the greater services. From the material point of view a distinction can be made in the evaluation of different kinds of work according to their utility to the community, and this; distinction is expressed by differentiation in the scale of recompense; but on the ideal or abstract plane all workmen become equal the moment each strives to do his best in his own field, no matter what that field may be. It is on this that a man’s value must be estimated, and not on the amount of recompense received. In a sensibly governed State care must be taken that each individual is given the kind of work which corresponds to his capabilities. In other words, people will be trained for the positions indicated by their natural endowments; but these endowments or faculties are innate and cannot be acquired by any amount of training, being a gift of Nature and not the reward of effort. Therefore, the way in which men are generally esteemed by their fellow-citizens must not be according to the kind of work they do, because that has been more or less assigned to the individual. Seeing that the kind of work on which the individual is employed is determined by his circumstances and the training which he has, in consequence, received from the community. He will have to be judged by the way in which he performs the work entrusted to him by the community, for the work which the individual performs is not the purpose of his existence, but only a means of livelihood. His real purpose in life is to better himself and raise himself to a higher level as a human being; but this he can only do in and through the community, whose cultural life he shares and this community must always exist on the foundations of a State. He must contribute to the conservation of those foundations.
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Nature determines the form of this contribution. It is the duty of the individual to return to the community, zealously and honestly, what the community has given him. He who does this deserves the highest respect and esteem. Material remuneration may be given to him whose work has a corresponding utility for the community; but the ideal recompense must lie in the esteem to which everyone has a claim who serves his nation with whatever powers Nature has bestowed upon him and which have been developed by the training he has received from the national community. Then it will no longer be dishonourable to be an honest craftsman, but it will be a source of disgrace to be an inefficient State official, wasting God’s day and filching one’s daily bread from an honest public. Then it will be looked upon as quite natural that positions should not be given to persons who, of their very nature, are incapable of filling them. Furthermore, this personal efficiency will be the sole criterion of the right to take part on an equal juridical footing in general civic affairs. The present epoch is working out its own ruin. It introduces universal suffrage and chatters about equal rights, but can find no foundation for this equality. It considers the material wage as the expression of a man’s value and thus destroys the basis of the noblest kind of equality that can exist, for equality cannot and does not depend on the work a man does, but only on the manner in which each one does the particular work allotted to him. Thus alone will the mere accident of birth be set aside in determining the worth of a man and thus only does the individual become the creator of his own social worth. At the present time, when whole groups of people estimate each other’s value only by the size of the salaries which they respectively receive, there can be no understanding of all this, but that is no reason why we should cease to champion these ideas. On the contrary, in an epoch which is inwardly diseased and decaying anyone who would heal it must have the courage first to probe to the real roots of the disease.
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The National Socialist Movement must take that duty on its shoulders, it must act over the heads of the small bourgeoisie and rally together and coordinate all those elements within the community which are fit to become the protagonists of a newWeltanschauung. Of course the objection will be made that in general it is difficult to differentiate between the material and ideal values of work and that the lower prestige which is attached to manual labour is due to the fact that smaller wages are paid for that kind of work. It will be said that the lower wage is, in its turn, the reason why the manual worker has less chance to participate in the culture of the nation, so that the ideal side of human culture is less open to him although it may have nothing to do with his daily activities. It may be added that reluctance to do physical work is justified by the fact that, on account of his low wages the cultural level of the manual labourer must naturally be low, and that this in turn is a justification for the lower estimation in which manual labour is generally held. There is a good deal of truth in all this, but that is the very reason why we ought to see that in future there should not be such a wide difference in the scale of remuneration. We will not entertain the argument that under such condition: poorer work would be done. It would be the saddest symptom of decadence if finer intellectual work could be obtained only through the stimulus of higher payment. If that point of view had ruled the world up to now, humanity would never have come into its great scientific and cultural heritage, for the greatest inventions, the greatest discoveries, the most profoundly revolutionary scientific work, and the most magnificent monuments of human culture, were not given to the world from greed of gain. On the contrary only too often the fact that they were given to the world meant a renunciation of the worldly pleasures that wealth can purchase. It may be that money has become the one power that governs life to-day, yet a time will come when men will again bow to higher gods. Much that we have to-day owes its existence to the desire for money and property, but there is very little among all this which would leave the world poorer by its absence.
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It is also one of the aims of our Movement to hold out the prospect of a time when the individual will be given what he needs for the purposes of his life and it will be a time in which, on the other hand, the principle will be upheld that man does not live for material enjoyment alone. This principle will find expression in a wisely limited scale of wages and salaries which will enable everyone, including the humblest workman who fulfils his duties conscientiously, to live an honourable and decent life both as a man and as a citizen. Let it not be said that this is merely a visionary ideal, that this world would never tolerate it in practice and that of itself it is impossible to attain. Even we are not so simple as to believe that there will ever be an age in which there will be no drawbacks, but that does not release us from the obligation to fight for the removal of the defects which we have recognised, to overcome the shortcomings and to strive towards the ideal. In any case, the hard reality of the facts to be faced will always place only too many limits on our aspirations. But that is precisely why man must strive again and again to serve the ultimate aim. No failures must induce him to renounce his intentions, just as we cannot spurn the sway of justice because mistakes creep into the administration of the law, and just as we cannot despise medical science because, in spite of it, there will always be disease. Man should take care not to have too low an estimate of the power of an ideal. If there are some who feel disheartened over present conditions, and if they happen to have served as soldiers, I would remind them of the time when their heroism was the most convincing example of the power inherent in ideal motives. It was not preoccupation about their daily bread that led men to sacrifice their lives, but love of their country, the faith which they had in its greatness, and the common struggle to uphold the honour of the nation. Only after the German people had abandoned these ideals in favour of the material promises offered by the Revolution, only after they had exchanged their arms for the rucksack, only then—instead of entering an earthly paradise —did they think into the purgatory of universal contempt and universal want. That is why we must confront the calculators of the materialistic Republic with faith in an ideal Reich.
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The institution that is now erroneously called the State generally classifies people in two groups—citizens and aliens. Citizens are all those who possess full civic rights, either by reason of their birth or by an act of naturalization. Aliens are those who enjoy the same rights in some other State. Between these two categories there are certain beings who resemble a sort of meteoric phenomena. They are people who have no citizenship in any State and consequently no civic-rights anywhere. In most cases, a person acquires civic rights nowadays by being born within the frontiers of a State. The race or nationality to which he may belong plays no role whatsoever. The child of a Negro who once lived in one of the German protectorates and now takes up his residence in Germany automatically becomes a ‘German citizen’ in the eyes of the world. In the same way the child of any Jew, Pole, African or Asian may automatically become a German citizen. Besides nationality that is acquired through the fact of having been born within the confines of a State, there exists another kind of nationality which can be acquired later. This process is subject to various preliminary requirements. For example, one condition is that, if possible, the applicant must not be a burglar or a pimp. His political attitude must be such as to give no cause for uneasiness; in other words, he must be a harmless simpleton in politics. It is required that he shall not be a burden to the State of which he wishes to become a citizen. In this realistic epoch of ours this last condition naturally only means that he must not be a financial burden.
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If the affairs of the candidate are such that it appears likely he will turn out to be a good taxpayer, that is a very important consideration and will help him to obtain civic rights all the more rapidly. The question of race plays no part at all. The whole process of acquiring civic rights is not very different from that of being admitted to membership of an automobile club, for instance: A person files his application; it is examined; it is sanctioned, and one day the man receives a card which informs him that he has become a citizen. The information is given in an amusing way. An applicant who has hitherto been a Zulu or a Kaffir is informed, “By these presents you have now become a German citizen.” The President of the State can perform this piece of magic. What God Himself could not do is achieved by some Theophrastus Paracelsus of a civil servant. A stroke of the pen, and a Mongolian slave is forthwith turned into a real ‘German’. Not only is no question asked regarding the race to which the new citizen belonged; even the matter of his physical health is not inquired into. His flesh may be corrupt with syphilis; but he will still be welcome in the State as it exists to-day, as long as he is not likely to become a financial burden or a political menace. In this way, year after year, those organisms which we call States absorb poisonous matter which they can hardly ever overcome. Another point of distinction between a citizen and an alien is that the former is admitted to all public offices, that he may possibly have to do military service and that in return, he is permitted to take a passive or active part at public elections. Those are his chief privileges, for in regard to personal rights and personal liberty the alien enjoys the same amount of protection as the citizen, and frequently even more. Anyhow that is what happens in our present German Republic. I fully realise that nobody likes to hear these things, but it would be difficult to find anything more illogical or more insane than our contemporary laws in regard to State citizenship.
493
At present there exists one State which is making at least a feeble attempt to follow a sounder principle in this respect. It is not, however, in our model German Republic, but in the U.S.A. that efforts are being made to conform at least partly to the dictates of common sense. By refusing to allow immigrants to enter the country if they are in a bad state of health, and by excluding certain races from the right to become naturalised as citizens, they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to ground the völkisch State. The völkisch State will classify its population in three groups, namely, citizens, subjects of the State, and aliens. The principle is that birth within the confines of the State gives only the status of a subject. It does not carry with it the right to fill any position under the State or to participate in political life, such as taking an active or passive part in elections. Another principle is that the race and nationality of every subject of the State will have to be proved. A subject is at any time free to cease being a subject and to become a citizen of that country to which he belongs in virtue of his nationality. The only difference between an alien and a subject of the State is that the former is a citizen of another country. A boy of German nationality who is a subject of the German State is bound to complete the period of school education which is obligatory for every German. Thereby he submits to the system of training which will make him, race-conscious and make him realise that he is a member of the folk-community. Then he has to fulfil all those requirements laid down by the State in regard to physical training after he has left school, and finally he enters the Army. The training in the Army is of a general kind. It must be given to each individual German and will render him competent to fulfil the physical and mental requirements of military service.
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The rights of citizenship will be conferred on every young man, whose health and character have been certified as good, after having completed his period of military service. This act of admission to the dignity of citizenship will be a solemn ceremony, and the diploma conferring the rights of citizenship will be preserved by the young man as a most precious testimonial throughout his whole life. It entitles him to exercise all the rights of a citizen and to enjoy all the privileges attached thereto, for the State must draw a sharp line of distinction between those who, as members of the nation, are the foundation and the support of its existence and greatness, and those who are domiciled in the State simply because they earn their livelihood there. On the occasion of receiving a diploma of citizenship the new citizen must take a solemn oath of loyalty to the national community and the State. This diploma must be a bond which unites all the various classes and sections of the nation. It must be regarded as a greater honour to be a citizen of this Reich, even as a street-sweeper, than to be the king of a foreign State. The citizen has privileges which are not accorded to the alien. He is the master in the Reich, but this high honour brings with it obligations. Those who are without personal honour or character, who are common criminals, or traitors to the Fatherland, can at any time be deprived of the rights of citizenship. Thereby they revert to the status of mere subjects of the State. The German girl is a subject of the State, but becomes a citizen when she marries. At the same time those women who earn their livelihood independently have the right to acquire citizenship, if they are German subjects.
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If the principal duty of the national socialist völkisch State be to educate and promote the existence of those who constitute the material out of which the State is formed, it will not be sufficient to promote those racial elements as such, educate them and finally train them for practical life. The State must also adapt its own organisation to meet the exigencies of this task. It would be absurd to appraise a man’s worth by the race to which he belongs, and at the same time to make war against the Marxist principle that all men are equal, without being determined to pursue our own principle to its logical conclusion. If we admit the significance of blood, that is to say, if we recognise the race as the fundamental element on which all life is based, we shall have to apply to the individual the logical consequences of this principle. In general I must estimate the worth of nations differently, on the basis of the different races from which they spring, and I must also differentiate in estimating the, worth of the individual within his own race. The principle that one people is not the same as another, applies also to the individual members of a national community, just as no one man, for instance, is equal to another, because the constituent elements belonging to the same blood vary in a thousand subtle details, though they are fundamentally of the same quality. The first consequence of recognition of this fact is, if I may use such an expression, somewhat crude, being an attempt to help and promote those elements within the folk-community which are of particular value from the racial point of view and to encourage them to increase and multiply. This task is comparatively simple because it can be recognised and carried out almost mechanically. It is much more difficult to select from among the whole bulk of the people those who actually possess the highest intellectual and spiritual characteristics and to assign them to that sphere of influence which not only corresponds to their outstanding talents, but in which their activities will be of benefit to the nation.
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Selection according to capacity and efficiency cannot be effected in a mechanical way. It is a work which can be accomplished only through the permanent struggle of everyday life itself. AWeltanschauungwhich repudiates the democratic principle of the rule of the masses and aims at giving this world to the best people—that is, to the highest quality of mankind—must also apply that same aristocratic postulate to the individuals within the folk-community. It must take care that the positions of leadership and highest influence are given to the best men. Hence it is not based on the idea of the majority, but on that of personality. Anyone who believes that the völkisch National Socialist State should distinguish itself from the other States only mechanically, as it were, through the better construction of its economic life—thanks to a better equilibrium between poverty and riches, or to the extension to broader masses of the power to determine the economic process, or to a fairer wage-system, or to the elimination of vast differences in the scale of salaries—understands only the superficial feature, of our Movement and has not the least idea of what we man when we speak of ourWeltanschauung. All these features just mentioned could not guarantee us a lasting existence and certainly would be no warranty of greatness. A nation that could content itself with external reforms, would not have the slightest chance of success in the general struggle for life among the nations of the world. A movement that confined its mission to such adjustments, however right and equitable, would effect no far-reaching or profound reform of the existing order. The whole effect of such measures would be limited to externals. They would not furnish the nation with that moral armament which alone will enable it effectively to overcome the weaknesses from which we are suffering to-day. In order to elucidate this point of view it may be worth while to glance once again at the real origins and causes of the cultural evolution of mankind. The first step which visibly raised mankind above the animal world was that which led to the first invention.
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The invention itself owes its origin to the ruses and stratagems which man employed to assist him in the struggle for existence against, other creatures and often to provide him with the only means he could adopt to achieve success in this struggle. Those first very crude inventions do not reveal the individual personality, for the subsequent observer, that is to say, the modern observer, recognises them only as collective phenomena. Certain tricks and skilful tactics which can be observed among animals strike the eye of the observer as established facts which may be seen everywhere and man is no longer in a position to discover or explain their primary cause and so he contents himself with calling such phenomena instinctive. In our case, this term has no meaning, because everyone who believes in the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite, beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time. It was then repeated again and again, and the practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconsciousness of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as ‘instinct.’ This is more easily understood and more easy to believe in the case of man. His first skilled tactics in the struggle against the rest of the animals undoubtedly originated with individuals possessing special capabilities. There can be no doubt that personality was then the sole factor in all decisions and achievements which were afterwards taken over by the whole of humanity as a matter of course. An exact exemplification of this may be found in those fundamental military principles which have now become the basis of all strategy in war. Originally, they sprang from the brain of a single individual and in the course of many years, maybe even thousands of years, they were accepted all around as a matter of course and thus gained universal validity. Man supplemented his first discovery by making a second. Among other things he learned how to master other living beings and make then serve him in his struggle for existence, and thus began the real inventive activity of mankind, as it is now evident to its.
500
Those material inventions, beginning with the use of stones as weapons, which led to the domestication of animals and the production of fire by artificial means, down to the many marvellous inventions of our own day, reveal more clearly the individual as the originator, the nearer we come to our own time and the more important and revolutionary the inventions become. All the material inventions which we see around us have been produced by the creative powers and capabilities of individuals, and all these inventions help man to raise himself higher and higher above the animal world and to separate himself from that world in an absolutely definite way. Hence, they serve fundamentally to promote the continued progress of the human species. What the most primitive artifice once did for man in his struggle for existence, as he went hunting in the primeval forest, is being done for him to-day in the form of marvellous scientific inventions which help him to wage the present-day struggle for life and forge weapons for future struggles. Ultimately, all human thought and all human inventions help man in his life-struggle on this planet, even though the so-called practical utility of an invention, a discovery or a profound scientific theory, may not be evident at first sight. Everything contributes to raise man higher and higher above the level of all the other creatures that surround him, thereby strengthening and consolidating his position, so that he develops more and more in every direction as the ruling being on this earth. Hence, all inventions are the result of the creative faculty of the individual and all such individuals, whether they have willed it or not, are, in a greater or lesser degree, benefactors of mankind. Through their work millions, and indeed billions, of human beings have been provided with means which facilitate their struggle for existence. If then we see the inventive minds to which we owe the origin of the material civilisation of our day, as individuals who supplement one another and continue the work their predecessors have begun, the same is true in regard to the practical application of those inventions and discoveries. For all the various methods of production are in their turn inventions also and consequently dependent on the creative faculty of the individual.
501
Even the purely theoretical work, which cannot be measured by a definite rule and is preliminary to all subsequent technical discoveries, is exclusively the product of the individual brain. Humanity in bulk does not turn out inventions, nor does the majority organise and think, but only the individual man. Accordingly, a human community is well organised only when it facilitates to the highest possible degree individual creative forces and utilises their work for the benefit of the community. The most valuable factor of an invention, whether it be in the world of material realities or in the world of abstract ideas, is the personality of the inventor himself. The first and supreme duty of an organised folk-community is to place the inventor in a position where he can be of the greatest benefit to all. Indeed, the very purpose of the organisation is to put this principle into practice. Only by so doing can it ward off the curse of mechanisation and become a living thing. In itself it must personify the effort to place men of brains above the multitude and to make the latter obey the former. Therefore, not only does the organisation possess no right to prevent men of brains from rising above the multitude but, on the contrary, it must use its organising powers to enable and promote their progress as far as it possibly can. It must set out from the principle that the blessings of mankind never came from the masses, but from the creative brains of individuals, who are therefore the real benefactors of humanity. It is in the interest of all to ensure men of creative brains a decisive influence and facilitate their work. This common interest is surely not served by allowing the multitude to rule, for it is not capable of thinking nor is it efficient and in no circumstances whatsoever can it be said to be gifted. Only those should rule who have the natural temperament and gifts of leadership.
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Such men of brains are selected mainly, as I have already said, through the hard struggle for existence itself. In this struggle there are many who break down and collapse and thereby show that they are not called upon by Destiny to fill the highest positions, and only very few are left who can be classed among the elect. In the realm of thought and of artistic creation, and even in the economic field, this same process of selection takes place even to-day, although— especially in the economic field—its operation is heavily handicapped. This same principle of selection holds good in the administration of the State and in that force which is represented by the organised military defence of the nation. The idea of personality, of the authority of the individual over his subordinates and of the responsibility of the individual towards the persons who are placed over him dominates in every sphere of life. It is only in political life that this very natural principle has been completely ignored. Though all human civilisation has resulted exclusively from the creative activity of the individual, the principle that it is ‘the majority which counts,’ persists throughout the entire, national community and more especially as regards its administration, whence the poison gradually filters into all branches of national life, thus causing a veritable decomposition. The destructive activities of Judaism in different parts of the national body can be ascribed fundamentally to the persistent Jewish efforts at undermining the importance of personality among the nations that are their hosts and, in place of personality, substituting the domination of the masses. The constructive principle of Aryan humanity is thus displaced by the destructive principle of the Jews. They are the ferment of decomposition’ among nations and races and, in a broad sense, the wreckers of human civilisation. Marxism represents the most striking phase of the Jewish endeavour to eliminate the dominant significance of personality in every sphere of human life and to replace it by the numerical power of the masses. In politics the parliamentary form of government is the expression of this effort. We can observe the fatal effects of it everywhere, from the smallest parish council upwards to the highest government circles in the Reich.
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In the field of economics we have the trade-union movement, which serves not the real interests of the employees, but the destructive aims of international Jewry. In the same degree in which the principle of personality is excluded from the economic life of the nation, and the influence and activities of the masses substituted in its stead, national economy, which should be for the service and benefit of the community as a whole, will gradually deteriorate in creative capacity. The works committees which, instead of caring for the interests of the employees, strive to influence the process of production, serve the same destructive purpose. They damage production as a whole and consequently injure the individual engaged in industry, for in the long run it is impossible to satisfy popular demands merely by high-sounding theoretical phrases. These can be satisfied only by supplying goods to meet the individual needs of daily life and by so doing, creating the conviction that, through the productive collaboration of its members, the folk-community serves the interests of the individual. Even if, on the basis of its mass-theory, Marxism should prove itself capable of taking over and developing the present economic system, this would not be of vital significance. The question as to whether the Marxist doctrine be right or wrong cannot be decided by any test which would show that it can administer for futurity what already exists to-day. It need only be asked whether it has the creative power to build up, according to its own principles, a civilisation which would be a counterpart of what already exists. Even if Marxism were a thousand-fold capable of taking over the economic system as we now have it, and of maintaining it in operation under Marxist direction, such an achievement would prove nothing. This is because, on the basis of its own principles, Marxism would never be able to create anything which could supplant what exists to-day. Marxism itself has furnished the proof that it cannot do this. Not only has it been unable to create a cultural or economic system of its own anywhere; but it was not even able to develop, according to its own principles, the civilisation and economic system it found ready to hand.
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It has had to make compromises, by way of a return to the principle of personality, nor can it dispense with that principle in its own organisation. Thevölkisch Weltanschauungdiffers fundamentally from the Marxist by reason of the fact that the former recognises the significance of race and therefore also of personal worth and has made these the pillars of its structure. These are the most important factors of thisWeltanschauung. If the National Socialist Movement should fail to understand the fundamental importance of this essential principle, if it should content itself with patching up the present State from without and adopt the majority principle, it would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground. For that reason it would not have the right to call itself aWeltanschauung. If the social programme of the movement consisted in eliminating personality and putting the multitude in its place, then National Socialism would be corrupted with the poison of Marxism, just as our bourgeois parties are. ThevölkischState must ensure the welfare of its citizens by recognising the importance of the individual in all circumstances and by preparing the way for the maximum of productive efficiency in all the various branches of economic life, thus securing to the individual the highest possible share in the general output. Hence, thevölkischState must mercilessly eliminate from all the leading circles in the government of the country the parliamentarian principle, according to which decisive power through the majority vote is invested in the multitude. Personal responsibility must be substituted in its stead. Thus we arrive at the following conclusion; The best constitution and the best form of government is that which, as a matter of course, renders it possible for the best brains to reach a position of dominant importance and influence in the community. Just as in the field of economics men of outstanding ability cannot be selected from above, but must come to the fore by virtue of their own efforts, and just as there is an unceasing educative process that leads from the smallest shop to the largest undertaking, and just as life itself provides the necessary tests, so in the political field it is not possible to ‘discover’ political talent at short notice.
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Genius of an extraordinary stamp precludes consideration of the claims of the average man. In its organisation, the State must be established on the principle of personality, starting from the smallest cell and ascending to the supreme man in the government of the country. There are no decisions made by the majority vote, but only by responsible persons, and the word ‘council’ is once more restored to its original meaning. Every man in a position of responsibility will have counsellors at his side, but the decision is made by that individual alone. The principle which made the former Prussian Army an admirable instrument of the German nation will have to become the basis of our state constitution, that is to say, full authority over his subordinates must be invested in each leader and he must be responsible to those above him. Even then we shall not be able to do without those corporations which at present we call parliaments, but they will be real councils, in the sense that they, will have to give advice. The responsibility can and must be borne by one individual, who alone will be vested with authority and the right to command. Parliaments as such are necessary, because they alone furnish the opportunity for leaders, who will subsequently be entrusted with positions of special responsibility, to rise gradually to authority. The following is an outline of the picture which the organisation will present. From the municipal administration up to the government of the Reich, thevölkischState will not have any body of representatives which makes its decisions by a majority vote. It will have only advisory bodies to assist the chosen leader for the time being and he will distribute among them the various duties they are to perform. In certain fields they may, if necessary, have to assume full responsibility, such as the leader or president of each corporation possesses on a larger scale. In principle thevölkischState must forbid the custom of taking advice on certain political problems (economics, for instance) from parsons who are entirely incompetent, because they lack special training and practical experience in such matters.
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Consequently, the State must divide its representative bodies into a political chamber and a corporative chamber that represents the respective trades and professions. To assure effective co-operation between those two bodies, a selected body, or senate will be placed ever them. No vote will be taken in the chambers or in the senate. They are to be organisations for work and not voting machines. The individual members will have consultative votes, but no right of decision will be attached thereto. The right of decision belongs exclusively to the president, who must be entirely responsible for the matter under discussion. This principle of combining absolute authority with absolute responsibility will gradually cause a selected group of leaders to emerge—a thing which is impossible in our present epoch of irresponsible parliamentarianism. The political construction of the nation will thereby be brought into harmony with those laws to which the nation already owes its greatness in the economic and cultural spheres. Regarding the possibility of putting these principles into practice, I should like to call attention to the fact that the principle of parliamentarian democracy, whereby decisions are enacted through the majority vote, has not always ruled the world. On the contrary, we find it prevalent only during short periods of history and these have always been periods of decline in nations and States. One must not believe, however, that such a radical change could be effected by measures of a purely theoretical character, operating from above downwards. The change I have been describing could not be limited to transforming the constitution of a State, but would have to include the various fields of legislation and civic existence as a whole. Such a revolution can be brought about only by means of a movement which is itself organised on the lines of these principles and thus bears, the germ of the future State in its own organism.
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Therefore, it is well for the National Socialist Movement to make itself completely familiar with these principles to-day and actually to put them into practice within its own organisation, so that not only will it be in a position to serve as a guide for the future State, but will have so far completed its own constitution that it can be placed at the disposal of the State itself.
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Thevölkischstate, which I have tried to sketch in general outline, will not yet become a reality by virtue of the simple fact that we know the conditions indispensable for its existence. It does not suffice to know what aspect such a State would present. The problem of its foundation is far more important. The parties which exist at present and which draw their, profits from the State, as it now is, cannot be expected to bring about a radical change in the regime or to change their attitude on their own initiative. This is rendered all the more impossible because those who now have the direction of affairs in their hands are all of them Jews. The trend of development which we are now experiencing would, if allowed to go on unchecked, lead to the realisation of the pan-Jewish prophecy that the Jews will one day devour the other nations and become lords of the earth. In contrast to the millions of ‘bourgeois’ and ‘proletarian’ Germans, who are stumbling to their ruin, mostly through timidity, indolence and stupidity, the Jew pursues his way persistently and keeps his eye always fixed on his future goal. Any party that is led by him fights for no other interests than his, and his interests certainly have nothing in common with those of the Aryan nations. If we would transform our ideal picture of thevölkischState into a reality we shall have to keep independent of the forces that now control public life and seek for new forces that will be ready and capable of taking up the fight for such an ideal. For a fight it will have to be, since the first task will not be to build up the idea of thevölkischState, but rather to wipe out the Jewish State which now exists. As so often happens in the course of history, the main difficulty is not to establish a new order of things, but to clear the ground for its establishment.
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Prejudices and egotistic interests join together in forming a common front against the new idea and in trying by every means to prevent its triumph, because it is disagreeable to them or threatens their existence. That is why the protagonist of the new idea is, unfortunately, in spite of his desire for constructive work, compelled to wage a destructive battle first, in order to abolish the existing state of affairs. A doctrine whose principles are radically new and of essential importance must adopt the sharp probe of criticism as its weapon, though this may prove disagreeable to the individual followers. It is evidence of a very superficial insight into historical developments if the supporters of the so-called pseudo-völkischmovement emphasise again and again that they will, in no circumstances, adopt the use of negative criticism, but will engage only in constructive work. That is nothing but puerile chatter and is typical of all the rubbish talked by the adherents of thisvölkischcraze. It is another proof that the history of our own times, has made no impression on their minds. Marxism, too, has had its aims to pursue and converted and won over to the new movement simply by being shown that something new is necessary. On the contrary, what may easily happen is that two different situations will exist side by side and that aWeltanschauungis transformed into a party, above which level it will not be able to raise itself afterwards, for aWeltanschauungis intolerant and cannot permit another to exist side by side with it. It imperiously demands its own recognition as unique and exclusive, and insists upon a complete reformation of public life in all its branches, in accordance with its views. It can never allow the previous state of affairs to continue in existence alongside it. The same holds true of religions. Christianity was, not content with erecting an altar of its own. It had first to destroy the pagan altars. It was only by virtue of this passionate intolerance that an apodictic faith could grow up, and intolerance is an indispensable condition for the growth of such a faith. It may be objected here that in these phenomena which we find throughout the history of the world we have to recognise mostly a specifically Jewish mode of thought and that such fanaticism and intolerance are typical symptoms of the Jewish mentality.
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This may be true a thousand times over and we may regret that it is so and note with a feeling of uneasiness that this phenomenon has hitherto been unknown in the history of mankind—but the hard fact remains that such is the situation to-day. It is not the business of the men who wish to liberate our German nation from the conditions is in which it now exists to burden their brains with thinking how excellent it would be if this or that had never occurred. They must strive to find ways and means of abolishing what actually exists. A philosophy of life which is inspired by a fanatical spirit of intolerance can only be set aside by a doctrine that is advanced in an equally ardent spirit and fought for with as determined a will and which is itself a new idea, pure and absolutely sincere. Each one of us to-day may regret the fact that the advent of Christianity was the first occasion on which spiritual terror was introduced into the much freer ancient world, but the fact cannot be denied that ever since then, the world has been pervaded and dominated by this kind of coercion and that violence is broken only by violence and terrorism by terrorism. Only then can a new regime be created by means of constructive work. Political parties are prone to make compromises, but aWeltanschauungnever does this. A political party even reckons with opponents, but aWeltanschauungproclaims its own infallibility. In the beginning, political parties have nearly always the intention of securing exclusive and despotic domination for themselves. They always show a slight tendency to becomeWeltanschauungen, but the limited nature of their programme is in itself enough to rob them of that heroic spirit which aWeltanschauungdemands. The spirit of conciliation, which animates their will, attracts those petty and chicken-hearted people who are not fit to take part in any crusade. That is the reason why they mostly become stuck in their miserable pettiness very early on the march.
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They give up fighting for their ideology and, by way of what they call ‘positive collaboration,’ they try as quickly as possible to wedge themselves into some tiny place at the trough of the existent regime and to stick there as long as possible. Their whole effort ends at that, and if they should get shouldered away from the common manger by competitors with more brutal manners, then their only idea is to force themselves in again, by force or chicanery, among the herd of all the others who have similar appetites, to get back into the front row, and finally—even at the expense of their most sacred convictions—to regale themselves anew at that beloved spot where they find their fodder. They are the jackals of politics. AWeltanschauungwill never of itself willingly give ground to another. Therefore it can never agree to collaborate in any order of things that it condemns. On the contrary, it feels obliged to employ every available means in the fight against the old order and the whole world of ideas belonging to that order and to prepare the way for its destruction. These purely destructive tactics, the danger of which is so readily perceived by the enemy that he forms a united front against them for his common defence, and also the constructive tactics, which must be aggressive in order to carry the new world of ideas to success—both these phases of the struggle call for a body of resolute fighters. Any newWeltanschauungwill be successful in establishing its ideas only if the most courageous and active elements of its epoch and its people are enrolled under its standards and grouped firmly together in a powerful fighting organisation. To achieve this purpose it is absolutely necessary to select from the general ideology a certain number of ideas which will appeal to such individuals, and which, once they are expressed in a precise and clear-cut form, will serve as articles of faith for a new association of men. While the programme of the ordinary political party is nothing but the recipe for achieving favourable results at the next general election, the programme of aWeltanschauungrepresents a declaration of war against an existing order of things, against present conditions, in short, against the establishedWeltanschauung.
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It is not necessary, however, that every individual fighter for such a new doctrine need have a full grasp of the ultimate ideas and plans of those who are the leaders of the movement. It is only necessary that each should have a clear notion of the fundamental ideas and that he should thoroughly assimilated a few of the most fundamental principles, so that he will be convinced of the necessity of carrying the movement and its doctrines to success. The individual soldier is not initiated into the secrets of high strategical plans, but he is trained to submit to a rigid discipline, to be passionately convinced of the justice and inner might of his cause and to devote himself to it without reserve. So, too, the individual follower of a movement must be made acquainted with its far-reaching purpose, and realise that it is inspired by a powerful will and that it has a great future before it. Supposing that each soldier in an army were a general, if only as regards his training and capacity, that army would not be an efficient fighting instrument. Similarly, a political movement would not be very efficient in fighting for aWeltanschauungif it were made up exclusively of intellectuals. We need the private soldier too. Without him no discipline can be established. By its very nature, an organisation can exist only if leaders of high intellectual ability are served by a large mass of men who are emotionally devoted to the cause. To maintain discipline in a company of two hundred men who are equally intelligent and capable would turn out more difficult in the, long run than to maintain discipline in a company of one hundred and ninety less gifted men and ten who have had a higher education. The Social Democrats have profited by recognising this truth. They took the broad masses of our people who had just completed military service and learned to submit to discipline, and they subjected this mass of men to the discipline of the Social Democratic organisation, which was no less rigid than the discipline through which the young men had passed in the course of their military training.
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The Social Democratic organisation consisted of an army divided into officers and men. The German worker who had completed his military service became the private soldier in that army, and the Jewish intelligentsia were its officers. The German trade-union functionaries may be compared to its noncommissioned officers. The fact, which was always looked upon with dismay by our middle classes, that only the so-called uneducated classes joined the Marxists was the very ground on which this party achieved its success. For while the bourgeois parties—because they consisted mostly of intellectuals, were only a feckless band of undisciplined individuals—the Marxist leaders have formed out of much less intelligent human material an army of party combatants who obey their Jewish masters just as blindly as they formerly obeyed their German officers. The German middle classes, who never bothered their heads about psychological problems, because they felt themselves superior to such matters, did not think it necessary to reflect on the profound significance of this fact and the hidden danger involved in it. Indeed, they believed that a political movement which draws its followers exclusively from intellectual circles must, for that very reason, be of greater importance and have better chances of success, and even a better chance of taking over the government of the country than a party made up of the ignorant masses. They completely failed to realise the fact that the strength of a political party never consists in the intelligence and independent spirit of the rank and file of its members, but rather in the spirit of willing obedience with which they follow their intellectual leaders. What is of decisive importance is the leadership itself. When two bodies of troops are arrayed in mortal combat, victory will not fall to that side in which every soldier has an expert knowledge of the rules of strategy, but rather to that side which has the best leaders and, at the same time, the best disciplined, most blindly obedient and best drilled troops. That is a fundamental fact which we must always bear in mind when we examine the possibility of transforming aWeltanschauunginto a practical reality.
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If we agree that in order to carry aWeltanschauunginto practical effect it must be incorporated in a fighting movement, then the logical consequence is that the programme of such a movement must take account of the human material at its disposal. Just as the ultimate aims and fundamental principles must be made absolutely definite and intelligible, so the propaganda programme must be well drawn up and must be inspired by a keen sense of its psychological appeal to the minds of those without whose help the noblest ideals will be doomed to remain forever in the realm of visions. If the idea of thevölkischState, which is at present an obscure ideal, is one day to attain a clear and definite success, from its vague and vast mass of thought it will have to put forward certain definite principles which of their very nature and content are calculated to attract a broad mass of adherents. In other words, such a group of people as can guarantee that these principles will be fought for. That group of people is the German working-class. That is why the programme of the new Movement was condensed into a few fundamental postulates, twenty-five in all. They are meant first of all to give the ordinary man a rough idea of what the Movement is aiming at. They are, so to speak, a profession of faith which, on the one hand, is meant to win adherents for the Movement and, on the other, they are meant to unite such adherents together in a covenant to which all have subscribed. In this connection we must never lose sight of the following fact: What we call the programme of the Movement is absolutely right as far as its ultimate aims are concerned, but as regards the manner in which that programme is formulated certain psychological considerations had to be taken into account. Hence, in the course of time, the opinion may well arise that certain principles should be expressed differently and might be better formulated, but any attempt at a different formulation has a fatal effect in most cases, for something that ought to be fixed and unshakable thereby becomes the subject of discussion. As soon as one single point is removed from the sphere of dogmatic certainly, the discussion will not simply result in a new and better formulation which will have greater consistency, but may easily lead to endless debates and general confusion.
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In such cases, the question must always be carefully considered as to whether a new and more adequate formulation is to be preferred, though it may cause a controversy within the Movement, or whether it may not be better to retain the old formula which, though probably not the best, represents an organism enclosed in itself, solid and internally homogeneous. Every test shows that the second of these alternatives is preferable, for, since in these changes one is dealing only with external forms, such corrections will always appear desirable and possible, but the deciding factor is that people in general think superficially, and therefore the great danger is that in what is merely an external formulation of the programme people will see an essential aim of the movement. In that way the will and the combative force at the service of the ideal are weakened and the energies that ought to be directed towards the outer world are dissipated in programmatic discussions within the ranks of the Movement. For a doctrine that is actually right in its main features it is less dangerous to retain a formulation which may no longer be quite adequate, instead of trying to improve it and thereby allowing a fundamental principle of the Movement, which had hitherto been considered as solid as granite, to become the subject of a general discussion which may have unfortunate consequences. This is particularly to be avoided as long as a Movement is still fighting for victory, for would it be possible to inspire people with blind faith in the truth of a doctrine if doubt and uncertainty are encouraged by continual alterations in its external formulation? The essentials of a doctrine must never be looked for in its external formulas, but always in its inner meaning, and this is unchangeable. One could only wish that for the sake of this inner meaning a movement could exclude everything that tends towards disintegration and uncertainty in order to preserve the unified force that is necessary for its triumph. Here again the Catholic Church has a lesson to teach us. Though sometimes, and often quite unnecessarily, its dogmatic system is in conflict with the exact sciences and with scientific discoveries, it is not disposed to sacrifice one syllable of its teachings.
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It has rightly recognised that its powers of resistance would be weakened by introducing greater or lesser doctrinal adaptations to cope with temporary scientific discoveries, which are in reality always vacillating, but that they gain strength from the fact that it holds fast to its fixed and established dogmas which alone can give to the whole system the character of a faith. That is the reason why it stands firmer to-day than ever before. We may prophesy that, as a fixed star amid fleeting phenomena, it will continue to attract increasing numbers of people who will be the more blindly attached to it the more rapid the rhythm of changing phenomena around it. Therefore, whoever really and seriously desires that thevölkisch Weltanschauungshould triumph must realise that this triumph can be assured only through a militant movement and that this movement must found its strength only on the granite firmness of an impregnable and well-defined programme. In regard to its formulas it must never make concessions to the spirit of the time, but must maintain the form that has once and for all been decided upon as the right one—in any case, until victory has crowned its efforts. Before this goal has been reached any attempt to open a discussion on the appropriateness of this or that point, in the programme might tend to disintegrate the solidarity and fighting strength of the movement, according to the measure in which its followers might take part in such an internal dispute. Some ‘improvement’ introduced to-day might be subjected to a critical examination to-morrow, in order to substitute for it something better the day after. Once the barrier has been broken down, the way is opened and we know only the beginning, but we do not know to what shoreless sea it may lead. This important principle had to be acknowledged in practice by the members of the National Socialist Movement from the outset. In its programme of twenty-five points the National Socialist German Labour Party has been furnished with a basis that must remain unshakable. The members of the Movement, both present and future, must never feel themselves called upon to undertake a critical revision of these postulates, but rather feel themselves obliged to put them into practice as they stand.
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Otherwise, the next generation would, in its turn, and with an equal right, expend its energy in such purely formal work within the Party, instead of winning new adherents for the Movement and thus adding to its power. For the majority of our followers the essence of the Movement will consist not so much in the letter of our theses as in the meaning that we attribute to them. The new Movement owes its name to these considerations, and later on its programme was drawn up in conformity with them. They are the basis of our propaganda. In order to carry thevölkischideal to victory, a popular party had to be founded, a party that did not consist of intellectual leaders only, but also of manual labourers. Any attempt to carry these theories into effect without the aid of a militant organisation would be doomed to failure to-day, as it has failed in the past and must fail in the future. That is why it is not only the right, but also the duty, of the Movement to consider itself as the champion and representative of these ideas. Just as the fundamental principles of the National Socialist Movement are based on thevölkischidea,völkischideas are National Socialist. If National Socialism would triumph it will have to hold firm to this fact unreservedly, and here again it is not only its right, but also its duty, to emphasise most rigidly that any attempt to represent thevölkischidea outside of the National Socialist German Labour Party is futile and, in most cases, even fraudulent. If the reproach should be raised against our Movement that it has ‘monopolised’ thevölkischidea, there is only one answer to give. Not only have we monopolised thevölkischidea but, to all practical intents and purposes, we have created it, for what hitherto existed under this name was not in the least capable of influencing the destiny of our people, since all those ideas lacked a political and coherent formulation. In most cases, they were nothing but isolated and incoherent notions which were more or less right. Quite frequently these were in open contradiction to one another and in no case was there any internal cohesion among them.
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Even if this internal cohesion existed it would have been much too weak to form the basis of any movement. Only the National Socialist Movement proved capable of fulfilling this task. All kinds of associations and groups, big as well as small, now claim the titlevölkisch. This is one result of the work which National Socialism has done. Without this work, not one of all these parties would have thought of adopting the wordvölkischat all. That expression would have meant nothing to them and especially their leaders would have had nothing to do with such an idea. Not until the work of the National Socialist German Labour Party had given this idea a pregnant meaning did it appear in the mouths of all kinds of people. Above all, our Party has, by the success of its propaganda, shown the force of thevölkischidea—so much so that the others, in an effort to gain proselytes, find themselves forced to copy our example, at least in words. Just as heretofore they exploited everything to serve their petty electoral purposes, to-day they use the wordvölkischonly as an external and hollowsounding phrase for the purpose of counteracting the force of the impression which the National Socialist Party makes on the members of the other parties. Only the desire to maintain their existence and the fear that our Movement may prevail, because it is based on aWeltanschauungthat is of universal importance, and because they feel that the exclusive character of our movement betokens danger for them only for these reasons do they use words which they repudiated eight years ago, derided seven years ago, branded as stupid six years ago, combated five years ago, hated four years ago, derided three years ago and finally, two years ago, annexed and incorporated in their present political vocabulary, employing them as slogans in their struggle. For this reason, it is necessary even now, not to cease to call attention to the fact that not one of those parties has the slightest idea of what the German nation needs. The most striking proof of this is provided by the superficial way in which they use the wordvölkisch. Not less dangerous are those who run about as pseudo-adherents of thevölkischideal formulating fantastic schemes which are mostly based on nothing else than a fixed idea which, in itself, might be right.
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But because it is an isolated notion, is of no use whatsoever for the formation of a great homogeneous fighting association and could by no means serve as the basis of its organisation. Those people who concoct a programme which consists partly of their own ideas and partly of ideas filched from others, about which they have read somewhere, are often more dangerous than the outspoken enemies of thevölkischidea. At best they are sterile theorists, but more frequently they are mischievous agitators. They believe that they can mask their intellectual vanity, the futility of their efforts and their lack of ability, by sporting flowing beards and indulging in ancient Germanic gestures. In the face of all these futile attempts, it is, therefore, worth while to recall the time when the new National Socialist Movement began its fight.
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The echoes of our first great meeting, in theFestsaalof the Hofbräuhaus on February 24th, 1920, had not yet died away when we began preparations for our next meeting. Up to that time we had had to consider carefully the advisability of holding a small meeting every month, or at most every fortnight, in a city like Munich; but now it was decided that we should hold a mass meeting every week. I need not say that on each occasion we anxiously asked ourselves again and again: Will the people come and will they listen? Personally, I was firmly convinced that if once they came they would remain to listen. During that period the hall of the Hofbräuhaus in Munich acquired for us National Socialists a sort of mystic significance. Every week there was a meeting, almost always in that hall, and each time the hall was better filled than on the former occasion, and our public more attentive. Starting with the theme, ‘Responsibility for the War,’ about which nobody cared at that time, and passing on to the discussion of the peace treaties, we dealt with almost everything that served to stimulate the minds of our hearers and make them interested in our ideas. We drew attention to the peace treaties. What the new Movement prophesied again and again before those great masses of people has been fulfilled in almost every detail. To-day it is easy to talk and write about these things, but in those days, to criticise the Peace Treaty of Versailles at a public mass meeting attended not by the small bourgeoisie, but by proletarians who had been worked up by agitators, amounted to an attack on the Republic and an evidence of reactionary, if not of monarchist, tendencies.
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The moment one uttered the first criticism of the Versailles Treaty one could expect an immediate reply, which became almost stereotyped, ‘And what about Brest Litovsk?’ ‘Brest Litovsk!’ And then the crowd would murmur and the murmur would gradually swell to a roar, until the speaker would have to give up his attempt to persuade them. We felt that we were knocking our heads against a brick wall, so thoroughly did we despair of such a public. They neither wanted to be told nor to admit that Versailles was a scandal and a disgrace and that the dictate signified an act of highway robbery against our people. The disruptive work done by the Marxists and the poisonous propaganda of the enemy had robbed these people of their reason. Nor had we the right to complain, for the guilt on the German side was enormous. What had the German bourgeoisie done to call a halt to this terrible campaign of disintegration, to oppose it and open a way to a recognition of the truth by giving, a better and more thorough explanation of the situation than that given by the Marxists? Nothing at all. At that time I never saw those who are now the great apostles of the people. Perhaps they spoke to select groups, at tea-parties of their own little coteries, but where they ought to have been, where the wolves were at work, they never dared to appear, unless they found an opportunity of yelling in concert with the wolves. As for myself, I then saw clearly that for the small group which first composed our Movement the question of war-guilt had to be cleared up, and cleared up in the light of historical truth. A preliminary condition for the future success of our Movement was that it should bring knowledge of the meaning of the peace treaties to the minds of the masses. In the opinion of the masses, the peace treaties then signified a democratic success. Therefore, it was necessary to take the opposite side and impress ourselves on the minds of the people as the enemies of the peace treaties, so that later on, when the naked truth of this despicable swindle should be disclosed in all its hideousness, the people would recall the attitude which we then took up and would give us their confidence. Even at that time I adopted the attitude that if public opinion went astray on important and fundamental questions, it was necessary to oppose it, regardless of popularity, hatred or the bitterness of the fight.
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The National Socialist German Labour Party ought not to be the servant, but rather the master, of public opinion. It must not serve the masses, but dominate them. In the case of every movement, especially during its struggling stages, there is naturally a temptation to conform to the tactics of an opponent and use the same battle cries, when his tactics have succeeded in leading the people to crazy conclusions, or to adopt a mistaken attitude towards the questions at issue. This temptation is particularly strong when motives can be found, though they are entirely illusory, that seem to point towards the same ends at which the young movement is aiming. Human poltroonery will then all the more readily adopt those arguments which give it a semblance of justification, ‘from its own point of view,’ for participating in the criminal policy which the adversary is following. On several occasions, I have experienced such crises, in which the greatest energy had to be employed to prevent the ship of our Movement from being drawn into a general current which had been started artificially, and indeed from sailing with it. The last occasion was when our accursed press, to which the existence of the German nation is unimportant, succeeded in bringing into prominence the question of South Tyrol which is bound to prove fatal to the interests of the German people. Without considering what interests they were serving several so-called ‘national’ men, parties and leagues, joined in the general cry, simply for fear of public opinion which had been excited by the Jews, and foolishly contributed to help in the struggle against a system which we Germans ought, particularly in these days, to consider as the one ray of light in this distracted world. While the international Jew is slowly but surely strangling us, our so-called patriots vociferate against a man and his system which have had the courage to liberate themselves from the shackles of Jewish freemasonry, at least in one quarter of the globe, and to set the forces of national resistance against the international world poison.
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But weak characters were tempted to set their sails according to the direction of the wind and to capitulate before the storm of public opinion—for it was truly a capitulation. Even if people are so much in the habit of lying and so morally base that they do not admit it even to themselves, the truth remains that only cowardice and fear of the public feeling aroused by the Jews induced certain people to join in the hue and cry. All the other reasons put forward were only the miserable excuses of paltry culprits who were conscious of their own crime. Then it was necessary to grasp the rudder with an iron hand and turn the Movement about, so as to save it from a course that would have set it on the rocks. Certainly, to attempt such a change of course was not a popular manoeuvre at that time, when public opinion had been fanned by every conceivable means and its trend was in one direction only. Such a decision almost always brings disaster on those who dare to take it. In the course of history not a few men have been stoned for an act for which posterity has afterwards had reason to thank them on its knees. But a movement must count on posterity and not on the plaudits of the moment. It may well be that at such times certain individuals have to endure hours of anguish, but they should not forget that the moment of liberation will come and that a movement which purposes to reshape the world must serve the future and not the passing hour. In this connection it may be asserted that the greatest and most enduring successes in history are mostly those which were least understood at the beginning, because they were in direct opposition to public opinion and the views and wishes of the time. We had experience of this when we made our own first public appearance. It can be said in all truth that we did not court public favour, but made an onslaught on the follies of our people. In those days what happened almost always was that I presented myself before an assembly of men who believed the opposite of what I wished to say and who wanted the opposite of what I believed in.
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Then I had to spend a couple of hours in convincing two or three thousand people that the opinions they had hitherto held were false, in destroying the foundations of their views with one blow after another and finally in persuading them to take their stand on the grounds of our own convictions and ourWeltanschauung. I learned something that was important at that time, namely, to snatch from the hands of the enemy the weapons which he was using in his reply. I soon noticed that our adversaries, especially in the persons of those who led the discussion against us, were furnished with a definite repertoire of arguments out of which they took points against bur claims which they were constantly repeating. The uniform character of this mode of procedure pointed to a systematic and uniform training and so we were able to recognise the incredible way in which the enemy’s propagandists had been disciplined and I am proud to-day that I discovered a means not only of making this propaganda ineffective, but of beating the authors of it at their own game. Two years later I was master of this art. In every speech which I made it was important to get a clear idea beforehand of the probable form and matter of the counter-arguments we had to expect in the discussion, so that in the course of my own speech these could be dealt with and refuted. To this end it was necessary to mention all the possible objections and show their inconsistency; it was all the easier to win over an honest listener by expunging from his memory the arguments which had been impressed upon it, so that, I anticipated his replies. What he had learned was refuted without having been mentioned by him and that made him all the more attentive to what I had to say. That was the reason why, after my first lecture on ‘The Peace Treaty of Versailles,’ which I delivered to the troops while I was still a political instructor in my regiment, I made an alteration in the title and subject and henceforth spoke on, ‘The Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles.’ I did so because, during the discussion which followed my first lecture, I quickly ascertained that in reality people knew nothing about the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and that able party propaganda had succeeded in presenting that treaty as one of the most scandalous acts of violence in the history of the world.
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As a result of the persistency with which this falsehood was repeated again and again to the masses of the people, millions of Germans saw in the Treaty of Versailles a just retribution for the crime we had committed at Brest-Litovsk. Thus they considered all opposition to Versailles as unjust and in many cases there was an honest moral dislike of such a proceeding. This was also the reason why the shameless and monstrous word ‘reparations’ came into common use in Germany. This hypocritical falsehood appeared to millions of our exasperated fellow-countrymen as the merit of a higher justice. It is a terrible thought, but the fact was so. The best proof of this was the propaganda which I initiated against Versailles by explaining the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. I compared the two treaties, point by point, and showed how in truth the one treaty was immensely humane, in contradiction to the inhuman barbarity of the other. The effect was very striking. When I used to speak on this theme before an assembly of two thousand persons, I often saw three thousand six hundred hostile eyes fixed on me, yet three hours later I had in front of me a crowd swayed by righteous indignation and fury. A great lie had been uprooted from the hearts and brains of thousands of individuals and a truth had been implanted in its place. The two lectures that ‘On the Causes of the World War’ and the other on ‘The Peace Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles’, I then considered as the most important, of all. Therefore, I repeated them dozens of times, always giving them a new intonation, until, on those points at least, there reigned a definitely clear and unanimous opinion among those from whom our Movement recruited its first members. Furthermore, these gatherings, had for me the advantage that I slowly became a platform orator at mass meetings, and they gave me practice in the pathos and gesture required in large halls that held thousands of people. Apart from the small circles already mentioned, I could not discover that the slightest effort was being made by any party to explain things to the people in this way.
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Not one of those parties was then active which talk to-day as if it were they who had brought about the change in public opinion. If a political leader, calling himself a nationalist, pronounced a discourse somewhere or other on this theme it was only to circles which were, for the most part already of his own conviction and among whom the most that was done was to confirm them in their opinions. But that was not what was needed then. What was needed was to win over through propaganda and explanation those who, by education and conviction, belonged to the enemy camp. The one-page circular was also adopted by us to help in this propaganda. While still a soldier I had written a circular in which I contrasted the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with that of Versailles. That circular was printed and distributed in large numbers. Later on I used it for the Party, and also with good success. Our first meetings were distinguished by the fact that there were tables covered with leaflets, papers, and pamphlets of every kind, but we relied principally on the spoken word. And, indeed this is the only means capable of producing really great revolutions, which fact can be explained on general psychological grounds. In the first volume I have already stated that all the formidable events which have changed the aspect of the world were carried through, not by the written, but by the spoken word. On that point there was a long discussion in a certain section of the press, during the course of which our shrewd bourgeois people strongly opposed my thesis, but the reason for this attitude confounded the sceptics. The bourgeois intelligentsia protested against my attitude simply because they themselves did not have either the force or the ability to influence the masses through the spoken word, for they always relied exclusively on the help of writers and did not enter the arena themselves as orators for the purpose of arousing the people. This habit necessarily led to that condition of affairs which is characteristic of the bourgeoisie to-day, namely, the loss of the psychological instinct to work up and influence the masses.
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An orator receives continuous guidance from the people whom he is addressing. This helps him to correct the trend of his speech, for he can always gauge, by the faces of his hearers, how far they follow and understand him, and whether his words are producing the desired effect. The writer, on the other hand, does not know his reader at all. Therefore, from the outset, he does not address himself to a definite group of persons which he has before him, but must write in a general way. Hence, to a certain extent he must fail in psychological finesse and flexibility. Therefore, in general it may be said that a brilliant orator writes better than a brilliant writer can speak, unless the latter has continual practice in public speaking. One must also remember that of itself the multitude is mentally inert. It clings to its old habits and is not naturally prone to read something which does not conform to its own pre-established beliefs or does not contain what it hopes to find there. Therefore, a piece of writing which has a particular tendency is for the most part read only by those who are in sympathy with it. Only a leaflet or a placard, on account of its brevity can hope to arouse a momentary interest in those whose opinions differ from it. The picture, in all its forms, including the film has better prospects. Here less intelligence is required on the part of the audience, it need only gaze, or at most read short captions or titles, and so it comes about that many people are more ready to accept a pictorial presentation than to read a long written description. A pictorial representation will convey to people much more quickly (one might almost say, immediately) an idea, to grasp which would require long and arduous effort if they were forced to read about it. The most important consideration, however, is that one never knows into what hands a piece of written material may fall and yet the form in which its subject is presented must remain the same. In general, the effect is greater when the form of treatment corresponds to the mental level of the reader and suits his nature. Therefore, a book which is meant for the broad masses of the people must try from the very start to gain its effects through a style and level of ideas which would be quite different from those of a book intended to be read by the higher intellectual classes.
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Only through this capacity for adaptability does the force of the written word approach that of direct speech. The orator may deal with the same subject as a book deals with, but if he has the genius of a great and popular orator he will scarcely ever repeat the same argument or the same material in the same form on two consecutive occasions. He will always follow the lead of the great masses in such a way that from the living emotion of his hearers the apt word which he needs will be suggested to him and in its turn this will go straight to the hearts of his hearers. Should he make even a slight mistake he has the living correction before him. As I have already said, he can read the play of expression on the faces of his hearers, firstly to see if they understand what he says, secondly, to see if they take in the whole of his argument and, thirdly, to see in how far he has succeeded in convincing them of the justice of what he has, said. Should he observe, firstly, that his hearers do not understand him, he will make his explanation so elementary and clear that they will be able to grasp it, even to the last individual. Secondly, if he feels that they are not capable of following him he will make one idea follow another carefully and slowly until the most slow-witted hearer no, longer lags behind. Thirdly, as soon as he has the feeling that they do not seem convinced that he is right in the way he has put things to them he will repeat his argument over and over again, always giving fresh illustrations and he himself will state their unspoken objection. He will repeat these objections, dissecting them and refuting them, until the last group of the opposition shows him by its behaviour and play of expression that it has capitulated before his exposition of the case. Not infrequently it is a case of overcoming ingrained prejudices which are mostly unconscious and founded on sentiment rather than on reason. It is a thousand times more difficult to overcome, this barrier of instinctive aversion, emotional hatred and prejudice than to correct opinions which are founded on defective or erroneous knowledge. False ideas and ignorance may be set aside by means of instruction, but emotional resistance never can.
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Nothing but an appeal to these hidden forces will be effective here, and that appeal, can be made by scarcely any writer. Only the orator can hope to make it. A very striking proof of this is found in the fact that, though we had a bourgeois press which, in many cases, was well written and produced and had a circulation of millions of copies, it could not prevent the broad masses from becoming the implacable enemies of the bourgeois class. The deluge of papers and books published by intellectual circles year after year passed over the minds of millions of the lower social strata as water runs off a duck’s back. This proves that one of two things must be true: either that the matter offered in the bourgeois press was worthless or that it is impossible to reach the hearts of the broad masses by means of the written word alone. Of course, the latter is essentially true when the written material betrays as little psychological insight as hitherto. It is useless to object here, as certain big Berlin papers of German Nationalist tendencies have attempted to do, that this statement is refuted by the fact that the Marxists have exercised their greatest influence through their writings and especially through their principal book, published by Karl Marx. Seldom has a more superficial attempt been made to support an argument based on a false assumption. What gave Marxism its amazing influence over the broad masses was not that formal printed work which sets forth the Jewish system of ideas, but the tremendous oral propaganda carried on for years among the masses. Out of one hundred thousand German workers scarcely one hundred know Marx’s book. It has been studied much more in intellectual circles and especially by the Jews than by the genuine followers of the movement who come from the lower classes. That work was not written for the masses, but exclusively for the intellects behind the Jewish machine for conquering the world. The engine was heated with quite different fuel, namely, the press. What differentiates the bourgeois press from the Marxist press is that the latter is written by agitators, whereas the bourgeois press would like to carry on agitation by means of professional writers.
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The Social Democratic editor of some local ‘rag’, who almost always comes directly from the meeting to the editorial offices of his paper, knows his job to his finger-tips, but the bourgeois scribbler who wishes to appeal to the broad masses, feels faint if their stench but reach his delicate nostrils and so he is naturally powerless to touch them by his writings. What won over millions of work-people to the Marxist cause was not theex cathedrastyle of the Marxist writers, but the strenuous propaganda work done by tens of thousands of indefatigable agitators, from the ardent agitator down to the insignificant trade-union official, the trusty employee and the heckler. Furthermore, there were the hundreds of thousands of meetings where these orators, standing on tables in smoky public houses, hammered their ideas into the heads of the masses, thus acquiring an admirable psychological knowledge of the human material they had to deal with, and in this way they were enabled to select the best weapons for their assault on the citadel of public opinion. In addition to all this there were the gigantic mass-demonstrations with processions in which a hundred thousand persons took part. All this was calculated to give the petty-hearted individual the proud conviction that, though a poor worm he was at the same time an integral part of the great dragon before whose devastating breath the hated bourgeois world would one day be consumed in fire and flame, and the dictatorship of the proletariat would celebrate its final victory. This kind of propaganda influenced men in such a way as to give them a taste for reading the Social Democratic press and prepare their minds for its teaching. That press, in its turn, was a vehicle of the spoken, rather than of the written, word. Whereas in the bourgeois camp professors and learned writers, theorists and authors of, all kinds, made attempts at speaking, in the Marxist camp real speakers often made attempts at writing. This applies especially to the Jew who, on account of his dialectical skill and cunning in distorting the truth, assumes even as an author rather the guise of an eloquent agitator than of a creative writer.
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For this reason the bourgeois press (quite apart from the fact that it is dominated by the Jew and has, therefore, no interest in enlightening the broad masses) is not capable of exercising the slightest influence on the opinions held by the great masses of our people. It is difficult to eradicate emotional prejudices, psychological bias, feelings, etc., and to put others in their place. Success depends here on conditions and influences which cannot be gauged. Only the orator who is gifted with the most sensitive insight can estimate all this. Even the time of day at which the speech is delivered has a decisive influence on its effectiveness. The same speech, made by the same orator and on the same theme, will have very different results according as it is delivered at ten o’clock in the forenoon, at three in the afternoon, or in the evening. When I first engaged in public speaking I arranged for meetings to take place in the forenoon and I remember particularly a demonstration that we held in the Münchner-Kindl-Keller as a protest against the oppression of German minorities. That was the biggest hall then in Munich and the risk appeared very great. In order to make the hour of the meeting suitable for all the members of our Movement and the other people who might come, I fixed it for ten o’clock on a Sunday morning. The result was depressing, but it was very instructive. The hall was filled. The impression was profound, but the general atmosphere was chilly. Nobody got warmed up and I myself, as the speaker of the occasion, felt profoundly unhappy at the thought that I could not establish the slightest contact with my audience. I do not think I spoke worse than on other occasions, but the effect seemed absolutely negative. I left the hall in a very depressed frame of mind, but also feeling that I had gained a new experience. Later on I tried the same kind of experiment, but always with the same results. That was not to be wondered at. If one goes to a theatre to see a matinee performance and, then attends an evening performance of the same play, one is astounded at the difference in the impression created. A sensitive person and one who is capable of analysing his own reactions, will readily acknowledge that the impression created by the matinee performance is by no means as vivid as that gained at the evening performance.
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The same is true of cinema productions. This latter point is important; for one may say of the theatre that perhaps in the afternoon the actor does not make the same effort as in the evening, but surely it cannot be said that the cinema is different in the afternoon from what it is at nine o’clock in the evening. In this case, the time of day exercises a distinct influence, just as a room exercises a distinct influence on me. There are rooms which leave one cold, for reasons which are difficult to explain. There are rooms which steadfastly prevent the creation of an atmosphere of any sort. Moreover, certain memories and traditions which are present as pictures in the human mind may have a determining influence on the impression produced. Thus a performance of Parsifal at Bayreuth will have an effect quite different from that which the same opera produces in any other part of the world. The mysterious charm of the House on the ‘Festival Heights’ in the old city of the Margrave can neither be equalled nor conjured up by external surroundings in any other place. In all these cases one is dealing with the problem of influencing the freedom of the human will, and that is true especially of meetings where there are men whose wills are opposed to the speaker and who must be brought round to a new way of thinking. In the morning and during the day it seems that the rower of the human will rebels most strongly against any attempt to impose upon it the will or opinion of another. On the other hand, in the evening it easily succumbs to the domination of a stronger will, because actually in such assemblies there is a contest between two opposing forces. The superior oratorical art of a man who has the compelling character of an apostle will succeed better in bringing round to a new way of thinking those who have, in the course of nature, been subjected to a weakening of their forces of resistance rather than in converting those who are in full possession of their volitional and intellectual faculties.
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The mysterious artificial dimness of the Catholic churches, the burning candles, the incense, the thurible, etc. also serve this purpose. In this struggle between the orator and the opponent whom he must convert to his cause, the former gradually acquires an awareness of the psychological fitness of his propaganda weapons, which the writer seldom possesses. Generally speaking, the effect of the writer’s work helps rather to conserve, reinforce and deepen the foundations of opinions already formed. All really great historical revolutions were not produced by the written word; at most, they were accompanied by it. It is out of the question to think that the French Revolution could have been carried into effect by philosophising theories had it not been for an army of agitators headed by demagogues of a pronounced type who inflamed popular passion that had been already aroused, until that volcanic eruption finally broke out which convulsed the whole of Europe. The same is true of the greatest revolutionary movement of our own day, namely, the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, which was not the outcome of Lenin’s writings, but of the oratorical activities of innumerable agitators, great and small, who stirred up hatred. The masses of illiterate Russians were not fired to communist revolutionary enthusiasm by reading the theories of Karl Marx, but by the promises of paradise made to the people by thousands of agitators in the service of a single idea. It has always been so, and it always will be so. It is typical of our pig-headed intellectuals, who live apart from the practical world, to think that a writer must of necessity be superior in intelligence to an orator. This point of view was once effectively illustrated by a critique, published in a certain national paper which I have already mentioned, where it was stated that one is often disillusioned by reading the speech of an acknowledged great orator in print. That reminded me of another article which fell into my hands during the War. It dealt with the speeches of Lloyd George, who was then Minister of Munitions, and examined them in a painstaking way under the microscope of criticism.
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The writer made the brilliant statement that these speeches showed inferior intelligence and learning and that, moreover, they were banal and commonplace productions. I happened to get hold of some of these speeches, published in pamphlet form, and had to laugh at the fact that an ordinary German quill-driver did not in the least understand these psychological masterpieces in the art of influencing the masses. This man criticised these speeches solely according to the impression they made on his own arrogant mind, whereas the one aim of the great British demagogue was to produce the maximum effect upon his audiences and, in the widest sense, on the lower classes throughout the length and breadth of, Britain. Looked at from this point of view, that British statesman’s speeches were most wonderful achievements, precisely because they showed an astounding knowledge of the mentality of the broad masses of the people. For that reason their effect was really overwhelming. Compare with them the futile stammerings of a Bethmann-Hollweg. On the surface the latter’s speeches were undoubtedly more intellectual, but they actually proved the man’s inability to speak to his own people, whom he did not understand. Nevertheless to the stupid average brain of the German writer, who had, of course amassed a great deal of learning, it seemed only natural to judge the speeches of the British statesman—which were made for the purpose of influencing the masses—by the impression which they made on his own mind, fossilised as it was by learning and to compare them to the brilliant but futile talk of the German statesman, which of course had a greater appeal for him. That the genius of Lloyd George was not only equal, but a thousand-fold superior to that of a Bethmann-Hollweg, is proved by the fact that he found for his speeches that form and expression which opened the hearts of his people to him and made that people carry out his will absolutely. The primitive quality of these speeches, the originality of his expressions, his choice of clear and simple illustration, prove the superior political capacity of the British spokesman.
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One must never judge the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which it leaves on the mind of a university professor, but by the effect it produces on the public, and this is the sole criterion of the orator’s genius. The astonishing development of our Movement, which was created out of nothing a few years ago and is to-day singled out for persecution by all the internal and external enemies of our nation, must be attributed to the constant recognition and practical application of those principles. However important the literature of the Movement may be, it is, nevertheless, at present more important as a means of providing leaders of the upper, as well as of the lower grades, with a uniform course of instruction, than for the purpose of converting antagonistic masses. It was only in very rare cases that a convinced and devoted Social Democrat or Communist was induced to gain an insight into ourWeltanschauungor to study a criticism of his own by procuring and reading one of our pamphlets or even one of our books. Even a newspaper is rarely read if it does not bear the stamp of party opinions. Moreover, the reading of newspapers helps little, because the general picture given by a single number of a newspaper is so confused and produces such a fragmentary impression that it really does not influence the occasional reader. Where a man has to count his pennies, it cannot be assumed that, exclusively for the purpose of being objectively informed, he will become a regular reader or subscriber to a paper which opposes his views. Scarcely one man in ten thousand will do this. Only after he has already joined a movement will he regularly read the party organ of that movement, more especially for the purpose of keeping himself informed of what is happening in the movement. It is quite different with the ‘spoken’ leaflet. Especially if it be distributed gratis it will be taken up by one person or another, all the more willingly if its display title refers to a question about which everybody is talking at the moment. Perhaps someone after having read through such a leaflet more or less carefully, will have his eyes opened to the existence of new points of view, a new mental attitude, and even a new movement.
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But, at best, this will only serve as a slight impulse and will not establish a firm conviction, because the leaflet can do no more than arouse interest and attract attention, and can only be effective if the reader subsequently gains more definite and thorough information, the only road to which is via the mass meeting. Mass meetings are also necessary for the reason that, in attending them, the individual who, about to join the new movement, feels himself alone and is easily scared of acting singularly acquires for the first time the feeling of a great community, which has a strengthening and encouraging effect on most people. The same man will, as a member of a company or battalion, surrounded by his companions, march with a lighter heart to the attack than if he had to march alone. In the crowd he feels himself in some way sheltered, though in reality there are a thousand arguments against such a feeling. Mass demonstrations on a grand scale not only reinforce the will of the individual, but they draw him still closer to the movement and help to create anesprit de corps. The man who appears as the first representative of a new doctrine in his place of business or in his factory is bound to have to face obstacles and has need of that strength which comes from the consciousness that he is a member of a great community, and only a mass demonstration can impress upon him the greatness of this community. If, on leaving the shop or mammoth factory, in which he feels very small indeed, he enters a cast assembly for the first time and sees around him thousands upon thousands of men who hold the same opinions;
The will, the yearning and indeed the strength of thousands of people are in each individual. A man who enters such a meeting in doubt and hesitation leaves it inwardly fortified; he has become a member of a community.
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The National Socialist Movement should never forget this, and it should never allow itself to be influenced by those bourgeois blockhead, who think they know everything, but who have foolishly gambled away a great State, together with their own existence and the supremacy of their own class. They are extraordinarily clever, they can do everything, and they know everything, but there was one thing which they failed to do, namely, to save the German people from falling into the clutches of Marxism. In that they failed miserably and their present high opinion of their prowess is mere conceit, for their pride and their stupidity are fruits of the same tree. If these people try to disparage the importance of the spoken word to-day, they do it only because they realise—God be praised—how futile all their own speechifying has been.
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