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Nazi-Sozi – Questions and
Answers
Dr. Joseph Goebbels
10 Commandments for National-Socialists
Your country is the mainspring of your life; remember this always!
1. Germany is your Fatherland; love it above all, and more in deeds than in
words.
2. Germany’s enemies are your enemies; hate them with all your heart.
3. Every national comrade, even the lowliest, is part of Germany; love him as
you love yourself.
4. Demand only duties for yourself; then Germany will also regain rights and
privileges.
5. Be proud of Germany; you have a right to take pride in a Fatherland for
which millions gave their lives.
6. He who abuses Germany abuses you and your deceased; repay him with your
fists!
7. Repay like with like and then some. If you are denied your just rights,
remember: you can secure them again only through your own political movement.
8. Do not be a hooligan anti-Semite--but beware of the Berliner Tageblatt! (1)
9. Live your life in such a way that one day you will not need to stand
ashamed before a new Germany.
10. Have faith in the future; only thus will you win it.
(1) The Berliner Tageblatt was one of Germany’s
foremost newspapers, and entirely in Jewish hands. Proprietor: Lachmann-Mosse.
Politics—No Thank You
“No, no! Keep away from me with politics. That’s nothing more than swindle
and deception anyhow. After the Revolution it was still possible to ensnare
foolish people with all these empty phrases, but those times are over. I no
longer believe in any of that stuff. I do my work and pay no attention to
politics any more. And that’s all there is to it!”
“Forgive my saying so, but then our mutual enemy--by whatever name you want
to call him: Capitalism, the Jews, Parliament, Democracy or Marxism--has
achieved what he wanted!”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“He has ensured that the German people are not interested in politics. They
can slave away and work their fingers to the bone--and the Jews make their
politics for them.”
“You’re relentless. But I ask you: whom can I trust in this day and age? Name
just one party, of the left or the right, that hasn’t stuffed us full of
empty phrases and promises ever since 1918, and name one that ever had even
the slightest intention of fulfilling even a fraction of those promises.”
“You’re right. All the parties have lied to and cheated the people. Not a one
was honest and even tried to put into practice what they promised us in
theory. They only knew their people at election time. But do Germany’s political
parties, and the disappointment at their betrayals, need to be synonymous
with despair of our future? If the parties are no good, then let’s leave the
parties and go against them!”
“Oh no! It’s too late for that now. We no longer have the courage, the faith
or the determination to proclaim a new Germany’s will to live--not under the
conditions we are faced with today.”
“You would do well to say I, not we. We have the courage, the faith and the
determination to do it. And you? How do you imagine the future?”
The Economy and Politics
“There is one factor in which I still see a spark of hope. Our economy. I
believe that the indestructible industriousness of the German people will
triumph in the end. Work and the economy are what decide our fate. We must
work more and do less talking!”
“Very good! I suggest that you go to our 3 million unemployed and preach to
them, like some voice crying in the wilderness: ‘We must work more and do
less talking!’ Maybe then someone will show you the folly of your platitudes
a bit more clearly than I can and want to right now.”
“‘The economy is what decides our fate!’ Walther Rathenau
(1) said the same thing when he made the first large-scale attempts to fit
the German production process into the international syndicate concept of
American high finance. You believe in the economy. But what is the economy,
if not a national life factor on direct interaction with politics? Name just
one people in all of history that established or even maintained a productive
economy without having a healthy, purposeful political system! And vice
versa, name just one people with a clear and instinctively confident system
of politics which did not find a way, by means of these politics, to
establish an economy that assured the continued existence of the people!
“Your opinion is utter nonsense, of a kind such as only mercenary Jewish
scoundrels or notoriously bourgeois Germans could possibly suggest. Not the
economy is the fate of a people--politics are! Healthy politics create the
necessary economy. A healthy economy without the firm foundation of a strong
political system is completely unthinkable.
“In such a case, however, politics are something quite different from that
which today’s so-called German statesmen practice.”
(1) Rathenau, Walter (1867-1915) Weimar politician
and industrialist of Jewish extraction. His support of the policy of fulfilment,
ie, compliance with the terms of the Treaty of
Versailles, made him extremely unpopular with nationalistic and anti-Semitic
groups.
The Nature of Politics
“Politics may be defined as responsible activity in the service of the
people, with the goal of creating for these people such conditions as enable
them to preserve and defend their existence in this our harsh world, to
multiply, and to ensure liberty and a living for themselves and their
descendants.”
Youth and Politics
“And that is the political idea you want to practice with your movement? With
greenhorns who have barely got a whiff of life? With riots and insurrections?
With street-fighting and the intimidation of anyone who thinks differently
than you? With this unscrupulous fight against the State and its natural
foundations?”
“Yes indeed! We want to practice these politics because no-one else does.
Neither the experienced, mature leaders of the people, who can’t complain
enough about us green-horns today, not the well-bred bourgeois forces of
education and the intelligentsia, nor the timid,
sickly pale stay-at-home would-be politicians! Neither the ‘State’ nor those
who make the ‘politics’ of the State.
“But you must permit me some minor corrections: if we practice our politics
with the ‘greenhorns’--youth, German youth is what we call them among
ourselves--then we do so in the proud and happy awareness that Germany’s
youth has found the path leading out of the poison of our present times and
to a new Germany. Whether or not this youth has got little more than a whiff
of life is of no matter to us. Certainly, you’ve seen much of life: but you
haven’t a clue about politics. I know 18-year-old lads in our SA(2) who could put you to shame at every turn. Our
politics are not based on riots, but where riots are necessary,
we are not so cowardly as to avoid them. The average citizen scolds against
the riots until he is hoarse, perhaps because no-one bothers to riot for his
nation any more. And we resort to intimidation wherever we ourselves meet up
with it. In that case we don’t run for the police like the veteran’s
associations and rifle clubs, and we don’t huddle behind the curtains
trembling in fear like cowards, waiting submissively for whatever fate has
decreed for us. Instead, we go out into the streets and meet intimidation
head-on. And that is when we turn the theoretical concept of opposition to
the middle-class one-class State into practice!”
(2) SA, abbreviation for “Sturmabteilung” (Storm
Detachments). Its rival counterpart was the SS (“Schutzstaffel,”
Companies of the Guard). Together, they comprised the elite defense force of the NSDAP. “They formed a great reservoir
for the unemployed youths of the country in which it was trained in Nazi
principles in discipline and in the fighting spirit.” (Greenwood, The German
Revolution, Wayne: Landpost, 1992, p. 111)
The Class Struggle
“That means that you’ve become a party supporting the class struggle! You
called yourself the Workers’ Party! That was the first step. You called
yourself Socialist. That was the second. Now you’re talking about a
middle-class one-class State. That’s the third and last step.
“Is there even anything left now to set you apart from Marxism?”
“Really, there’s nothing more hypocritical than a well-fed citizen protesting
against the working class idea of class struggle.
“You made it through the winter all snug and comfortable. Your very person is
provocative of class struggle. What gives you the right to puff yourself up,
all swelled with the pride of national responsibility, against the struggle
of the working class? For almost 60 years, has the middle-class State really
been anything other than an organized one-class State which, out of
compelling historical necessity, itself gave rise to the working class
concept of class struggle? Didn’t you pay the price of this one-class State
on November 9, 1918? And aren’t you at this very moment busily exploiting the
people’s despair of the insanity of Marxism in order to re-establish the same
old reactionary middle-class nonsense as before?
“Aren’t you well-fed citizens ashamed to fight against the class struggle of
the undernourished, hollow-cheeked, unemployed, hungry working class?
“Yes, we call ourselves the Worker’s Party! That’s the first step. The first
step away from the middle-class State! We call ourselves the Worker’s Party
because we want to make work free, because for us, productive work is the
driving force of history, because work means more to us than possessions,
education, niveau, and a middle-class background
do!
“That’s why we call ourselves the Worker’s Party!
Social and Socialist
“Yes, we call ourselves Socialist. That’s the second step. The second step
away from the middle-class State. We call ourselves Socialist in protest
against the lie of social middle-class pity. We don’t want pity, and we don’t
want social-mindedness. We don’t care a hoot for that which you call ‘social
welfare legislation.’ That’s barely enough to keep body and soul together.
“We want the rights to which nature and the law entitle us.
“We want our full share of what Heaven gave us, and of the returns from our
physical and mental labors.
“And that’s Socialism!
The One-Class State
“And now we speak of the middle-class one-class State. Why? Because this
middle-class State has turned into a complete one-class State. Because this
is a system under which value is no longer placed on achievement and will,
but rather only on education, wealth, and tradition. We speak of a
middle-class State because this State has taken a nation’s greatest good--the
love of nation and people--and has perverted it into venal love of
possessions, thereby excluding 17 million German-feeling and German-thinking workers.
What the middle class wanted is irrelevant. What it achieved is what’s
important. If it wanted a strong Germany, what did it achieve? An
international slave colony, which the blows of the rebels drove to the brink
of destruction on November 9, 1918!
“And that’s the truth. We protest against the concept of the class struggle.
Our entire movement is one grand protest against the class struggle which has
eliminated our people from history. But we face the facts: if 17 million
workers on the left consider the class struggle as their last hope, then only
because the right has taught them so in practice, for 60 years. And where
would we get the moral justification for going up against the middle-class
concept of class struggle, if the middle-class State were not first torn down
to its foundations and replaced with a new, Socialist structuring of German
society.”
Muscle and Intellect
“And who is to help you tear down the old system and build up the new?”
“For that we rely on the healthy instincts of the German workers. The day
will come when even the last of them will see the light. Someday, both muscle
and intellect will rise up together in protest; and then it will be our turn
to bring charges and to judge.”
“We will do everything in our power to see to it that that time comes soon. “
“Then the workers of muscle and of intellect will find each other. Then it
will become clear who truly loves his country, beyond party and social class.
And then, the working youth of the future will build the Third Germany. “
“That inexperienced youth will then have the say. And wisdom and experience
will go the way of chaff in the wind. “
“Then we will take Germany’s fate into our own hands. We will solve the
problem of Socialism, radically and once and for all, unhampered by concerns
for tradition, education and wealth, niveau and
social class, and taking into consideration only the future of the working
German people. “
Nationalist and Socialist
“Then we will prove that nationalism is more than a comfortable moral
theology of middle-class wealth and Capitalist profit. The cesspool of
corruption and depravity will then yield to new nationalism as a radical form
of national self-defense, and to new Socialism as
the most conscious creation of its requisite preconditions.”
Despair of Marxism
“You speak of Socialism! But after a 60-year struggle for Socialism which has
resulted in the complete undoing of the ideal of the State, is the German
worker not justified in despairing of Socialism and the future of his social
class?”
“Never! Consider:
1. He has not fought for 60 years for Socialism, but for Marxism.
And Marxism, with its destructive theories of peoples and races, is the
exact opposite of Socialism.
2. Marxism was never the German worker’s ideal of the State. He accepted this
jumble of Jewish ideas only because there were no other choices open to him
in his struggle for the freedom of his class.
3. Marxism is the graveyard not only for national peoples but also particularly
for the one class that fights whole-heartedly for its realization: the
working class.
“It is therefore not the worker’s right to give up on Socialism, but
rather his duty to give up on Marxism. The sooner he does so, the
better for him. The clock is about to strike midnight.”
Anti-Semitism
“You make a big fuss about being opposed to the Jews. Today, in the 20th
century, isn’t anti-Semitism passé? Aren’t the Jews human beings too? Aren’t
there also white Jews? Isn’t it a bad sign for us that we 60 million Germans
are afraid of two million Jews?”
“Careful! Try to think logically:
1. If we were only anti-Semitic, then yes, that would indeed be passé. But we
are also Socialist. We can’t have one without the other: Socialism, that is,
the freedom of the German workers, and thus of the German nation,
can only be achieved in opposition to the Jews, and because we want
Germany’s liberty, and Socialism, we are anti-Semitic.
2. Granted, the Jews are human beings too. None of us has ever doubted
that. But by the same token, fleas are animals
too--just not very agreeable ones. And since fleas are not agreeable animals,
we do not have a moral obligation to protect them and to let them thrive so
that they will bite and torment us, but rather must put them out of commission.
“The same goes for the Jews.
3. Certainly there are also white Jews. And there
are more of them every day. But that’s no argument in their favor, but rather against them. The very fact
that we call scoundrels among us white Jews is proof that being a
Jew is something inferior; otherwise one would call deceitful Jews yellow
Christians! That there are so many white Jews proves that the subversive
Jewish spirit has already contaminated large numbers of our people. It’s just
one more admonition for us to take up the fight against the Jewish world
plague in every possible way.
4. It’s not a bad sign for us, but rather for you, that 60
million Germans fear two million Jews. We don’t fear these two
million, we fight against them. But you are too cowardly for this fight and
only ever beat around the bush.
“If those 60 million would combat the Jews as we do, they would no longer
need to fear them; it would be the Jews’ turn to be afraid.”
Monarchy or Republic?
“Now you’ll have to come clean. Are you monarchists or republicans?”
Neither one nor the other. Because:
1. The question of the organizational structure of a State is a very minor
one today. A people wasting away under the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles has other things to worry about than the question
of monarchy versus republic.
2. The people will be able to settle this question once and for all only when
they have their liberty.
“But in principle, we say:
“A good republic is better than a bad monarchy, and a good
monarchy is better than a bad republic. Both forms of government have their
merits and their disadvantages. Weighing them against each other is the
concern of a people facing the rest of the world in liberty.”
A Flag of Black, White and Red, or of Black, Red and Gold?
“Now, be honest: are you for black-white-red or for black-red-gold? (3)
“Neither, nor. Because:
1. It makes no difference to us whether the demise of the Republic of Scheidemann and Stressmann (4)
comes under the black-white-red or black-red-gold. Maybe black, red and gold would
be better, that way at least this Republic would die in a shroud of its own
colours.
2. The question of a common flag can only be settled when the German people
have united in a common idea and a common will. The movement that will
achieve this national unity shall also give its colours to the entire people,
as a unifying symbol. We are confident that we will be that movement.”
(3) The flag colours--black, white and red versus black,
red and gold--refer to some rather tortuous winding of German political
history: Rencontre-Lexikon. Editions Rencontre Lausanne, n.d., p.
21: “As of 1815, the activities of student fraternities had turned the colors black, red and gold into the symbol for Germany
striving for unity. Following the Revolution in 1848, the German Bundestag
temporarily declared these as the national colors.
But in 1867, the North German Confederation chose black, white and red as
national colors--a combination of the colors of Prussia and the Hanseatic
towns. These colors were retained by the German
Empire of 1871-1919....In 1919, the Weimar Constitution introduced black, red
and gold as the Reich’s national flag. By a decree of Jan. 1, 1922, however,
black, white and red, together with a black, red and gold jack,
was retained as merchant flag. Under National-Socialism, the black, white and
red were the sole colors of the Reich.
(4) The “Republic of Scheidemann and Stresemann” refers to the Weimar Republic, whose leading
politicians included Philipp Scheidemann
and Gustav Stresemann:
Scheidemann, Phillip (1865-1939), Social-Democrat.
Nov. 1918, proclaimed the Weimar Republic; became German Chancellor the
following year but resigned his office after signing the Treaty of
Versailles. He was succeeded by Otto Bauer (cf. relevant note).
Stresemann, Gustav (1878-1929), German liberal
statesman, one of the preeminent politicians of the
Weimar Republic; German Chancellor (1923). In 1924 he ratified the Dawes
(1924) Plan for reparation payment (cf. note for Dawes Colony), and, in 1929,
its replacement, the Young Plan, whose terms greatly worsened the direct
impact of the reparations debt for the German people.
“Under Stresemann, who had
entered politics by way of the industrial federations, whose party was the
avowed party of Big Business, and who surrounded himself with industrialists,
bankers and economists, business leaders seemed destined to become the new
ruling class.” (Greenwood, op. cit., p. 69) The Stresemann
regime was thus the exact antithesis of the National-Socialist ideals here
set forth by Goebbles.
Stresemann was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1926)
Our Platform
“Every party has a platform. What is yours? If you want to win the German
worker over to your side, what do you offer him?”
“If we were bigshots of Jews, we would now spell
out a long list of promises. Nothing is easier than that. Telling the truth
is what’s difficult. It is even more difficult to listen to and understand
it. We tell it nevertheless, knowing that it alone shows the way to
salvation:
1. Certainly, every party has its platform. But no party has ever put its
platform into effect. None could, nor will they be able to in the future,
because all platforms set out to date have been unworkable.
2. Our platform is concise: the liberty of the working German
people. The way to achieve it is clear and simple: the liberation of
the German worker, and his reintegration into the national framework.
“We will do anything it takes to achieve this goal. We won’t back away
from social revolution if the liberty of the nation requires it. We do not
fear to burst the chains imposed on this nation, if that is what is needed to
secure the necessities of life for the German work force.
3. We promise the German worker only this: that we will fight with him
to the last breath for his rights, regardless of what this fight costs and
what may come after. We offer the greatest good that anyone can conceivably
offer a people and its repressed social class:
“The fight for freedom and bread!”
Our Demands
“And what does the German worker have to do in return?”
“Nothing in the world is free, and so the worker should bear in mind:
1. If he wants to be free, he must make sacrifices to this end. No-one can
make him free--he has to do it himself. And since freedom is the ultimate, he
must stake his utmost: life itself.
2. A goal always stands in direct proportion to the energy expended in
attaining it. Only liars promise Heaven in return for a party membership
card.
“But we say: liberty is everything. And for that reason, it demands
everything from us: a long, bitter struggle filled with hardship and worry
and arduousness and hunger and danger, and a constant sacrificing of health,
pleasure, happiness and contentment.
“That’s what the German worker must provide.
“But at the end of it all, the best possible reward
beckons: a free Germany of productive labor.”
The Middle Class
“Aren’t Marxists perhaps right after all when they say that the NSDAP is just
a petty middle-class movement whose leadership consists of failed officers,
students and doctors? How is a worker to believe that these could possibly
liberate him? You won’t be able to convince him that workers can only
be liberated by workers.
“That’s a lot of nonsense all in one breath. Listen:
1. The NSDAP is not a petty middle-class movement, but rather, on the
contrary, a protest against the bourgeoisification
of Socialism in a social democracy. Not our leaders are petty
middle-classers--but such as Schiedeman, Leinert, Noske and Bauer (5)
are; although by now they’ve become members of the upper class.
2. Name just one failed officer, student or doctor in the NSDAP’s leadership! You see, my friend, if an officer,
student or doctor is at the head of Marxism--and I could name a hundred, just
like that--then he’s ‘a leader of the working class,’ but if he’s at the head
of the NSDAP, he’s a ‘failure.’
3. You ask, how could they possibly liberate
the workers? If your question is to be justified, then the workers will first
of all have to rid the labor movement of that horde
of Jewish literati who call themselves leaders of the working class and in
actual fact misuse the labor movement for their own
despicable aims. And then they should look around them and take a good look
at the ‘workers’ who alone can bring about their liberation: the ‘workers’
Scheidemann, Wels, Noske, Bauer and who-they-all-are. They’ve all turned
into fat, well-fed members of the upper class. Their struggle against the
middle class was motivated only by envy, and when they themselves were
admitted to the upper classes, both their envy and their struggle ended.
“The spearhead of the German workforce consists, besides of German workers,
also of seceders from the middle class--that type
of renegade who has mentally overcome the middle class and who is driven in
his struggle not by envy, but by the hatred of a class which has brought
Germany to the brink of disaster, and who does not join the working class to
gain personal advantages, but rather has found his way to the mainspring of
the people’s creative power out of a deep and responsible inner need.
“He will join the German worker in a bond of friendship. Intellect and muscle
together will give rise to the miracle of the future: the Third Reich.”
(5) Leinert, Noske
and Bauer--politicians of the Weimar Republic.
Noske, Gustav (1868-1946), Social-Democrat, founder
of the Weimar Republic’s army.
Bauer, Otto (1882-1938), Austrian politician of Jewish extraction,
Social-Democratic spokesman for “Austor-Marxism.”
He succeeded Phillipp Scheidemann
as German Chancellor (cf. note 4).
“THE MIDDLE CLASS”
Proletariat and Working Class
“So if I understand you correctly, the NSDAP is a proletarian party under
bourgeois leadership?”
“I see; you can only think in terms of concepts from a time quickly becoming
extinct. The Germany that we want represents an overcoming of all
these old, antiquated concepts. We are neither bourgeois nor proletarian.
The concepts of the bourgeoisie is dead, and that of
the proletarian will never rise again. We neither want that which is coming
to an end today in the form of a middle-class world, nor that which the Jews
and their servants strive for as Marxist-proletarian future.
“We want a Germany of the working class. What does that mean? It means
that we want a Germany in which work and achievement are the highest moral
and political standards. That’s why we are a Worker’s Party in the truest
sense of the term. Once we have gained the power of the State, Germany will
be a nation of labor, a working-class
State.”
“Those are grand words. But tell me what’s behind them! Or do you intend to
use empty phrases to gloss over unthought-out
half-ideas?”
“Not at all, my friend. Don’t misunderstand me. The Germany of the future
will be reorganized to its very foundations. It is wrong to believe that the
middle class could effect this management, considering that it is at the same
time the pillar of the State against which this arrangement will be directed,
namely the middle-class Germany of today. That does of course not mean that
members of the middle class cannot help to build the new Germany. But the
historical role of the middle class is at an end and will have to yield to
the creative force of a younger, healthier class.
“It will be replaced by the younger class of--we don’t say ‘of the proletariat,’
because that is a slander on German workers--of the working class.
This working class includes everything that works for Germany and towards her
future: muscle and intellect.
“Muscle will be guided by intellect, and intellect will ensure the consistent
support lent to it by the creative power of force in order to build up its
new German State. This inter-reliance of intellect and muscle will perforce
unite the workers of both sides. For as long as the Jews make up the German
worker’s leadership, they will use the misrepresentations of the
International to blur the dividing line.
“German intellect presiding over German muscle results in the only maxim
leading to freedom:
“German workers of intellect and of muscle, unite!”
International and National
“In other words: you want to counter the International of Marxism with the
nationalism of German Socialism?”
“Exactly! Finally we’ve begun to understand each other!”
“But you do have to grant me one question: if you’ve recognized that the
enemy--whether we call him the Jews, Capitalism, or whatever--thinks and
feels internationally, then surely he can’t be combated in any but an
international way. And the result of such a fight will be the International
of Socialism, which shatters once and for all the International of Capitalism?”
“I can see, my friend: I can talk until I’m blue in the face, and it’s all
the same in the end. We just can’t come clear with each other. Try to think
logically:
1. Of course we have recognized clearly that the enemy is taking up international
residence on the backs of the European nations. There are barely any national
kinds of capital left in Germany: the railways, mines, factories, money,
gold, the National Bank--everything has been converted into stock papers,
which repose in the safes of Jewish banks in London and New York. But papers
in and of themselves are worthless--they don’t roll on railway tracks, they
don’t yield any coal, don’t produce any bread or goods and don’t create or
maintain value. They only serve to skim off the interest. If we had a real
German State, it would declare all German stock stashed in Jewish banks null
and void, it would treat them as the scraps of paper they are, and would
proclaim a government of national labor in
Germany. Since we don’t have such a State, we must instead put up with the
blessings of the Dawes Colony (6). There’s no national wealth and no national
capital, that is, wealth and capital belonging to the people, to the nation;
instead, everything is under the management of an international syndicate of
banks. National capital does not work for us on the international
scene; rather, hyenas of international finance work with it
internationally.
2. The fight against this world power does of course have to be fought
internationally, and it would be very short-sighted indeed of us if we were
not to support, in all countries, each and every movement which fights on the
same front line as we do. But the goal of this fight is never, by no
means, a World Republic of Socialism--there has never been any such thing and
there never will be; it exists only in the minds of Jewish traitors to the
working class, and of mislead German workers. The true goal is the
establishment of new nationalistic Socialist states. We also place little or
no stock in a united international struggle of nations against the
International of finance. There are far too many barriers to such
international communication and cooperation. The International of Capital
would also not be so foolish as to enslave all peoples and nations in the
same way, at the same time--it all happens step by step and one by one, and
no nation thinks to equate its situation with that of a previous case, as
each believes that it can still save itself by means of compliance and
relenting, until it’s too late for that nation, too, and it has been
swallowed up in its turn by the Moloch of
Capitalism.
“And further, my friend, we don’t have time to wait for all the others. We’re
on the brink of our last, final collapse, and in this situation it’s nothing
short of a crime to count on the help of others who have never helped us yet
and probably won’t help us in the future.
“What counts for us is the maxim: God helps those who help themselves!
3. If you keep talking about an International of Socialism, you only prove
that you’ve failed to understand even the most basic natural foundations of
nation and people. No great conception of a State--and Socialism is certainly
one--has ever led to an International. The guiding principle of history is
not blending, but diversity and difference. That has always been so, always
will be. Fighting is what shapes peoples and nations, and anyone who
refuses to fight is doomed.
“You may say, that is terrible--that’s the way it is; we have to come
to terms with it, and to fight. History is shaped by eternal laws of
nature, not by placatory Marxist phrases.
“Nature loves diversity, not uniformity. It does not want a homogenous
porridge of mankind--it wants mankind composed of many different peoples and
races, among which the strongest will ever hold its own against the weak.
“We have recognized this fact, and are willing to act accordingly in order to
help our German nation forge the weapons it needs in the struggle for
existence on this Earth, so that it can assert itself in this world of
struggle and of triumph of the stronger over the weaker.
“That’s what we call being nationalistc!”
(6) Under the leadership of American financier Charles Dawes, an
international committee of experts worked out a WW1 reparations payment plan
for Germany according to the maxim “business, not politics.” Germany’s
political debts were to be converted to economic obligations and settled
along purely economic lines. The Dawes Plan decreed the following:
1. Industry will accept a first debt of 5 billion gold marks at terms of 5%
interest and 1% annual payment.
2. The State Railway will be converted into a joint-stock company, with a
capital of 15 billion of which 11 billion is immediately committed to
reparations payment and is subject to the same interest and terms as the
economic debts.
3. The Reich’s income from duties and indirect taxes will serve as security
for the reparations payments.
4. The National Bank will be converted into a Federal Reserve bank,
independent of the government.
This meant that until 1928, Germany would pay an annual 1,750 billion gold
mark in reparations, and after 1928, payment would only have been possible if
Germany had increased its exports tenfold. This would have meant unbearable
competition for the victorious nations, and the destruction of their own
economies. In February of 1928, the Dawes Plan was replaced by the more
workable Young Plan.
Dawes, Charles Gates (1865-1951), U.S. politician and financier. The Dawes
Plan won him the 1925 Nobel prize for peace.
INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL
Production and Nationalization
“That’s all well and good. But all this has been only talk. Now, the pivotal
point: how do you envision the solution to the social problem?”
“To get to the bottom of this question: what is the nature of the social
problem? Seventeen million workers are unconditionally at the mercy of
Capitalism, which has complete control over all methods of production; they
are thus forced to sell their own, their only capital--their power of
work--at the lowest possible price. And for this reason, they rightly feel
cast out from a society (by whatever name: people, state, or nation) which
silently tolerates the situation. Under such conditions, the security of the
people breaks down, and they become divided into two factions--one which
wants to see this state protected, and one which wants to go up against it. Through
such internal division, this nation is eliminated as power of consequence in
the grand scale of history.
“The solution to the social problem is therefore nothing more or less
than the social reintegration of a part of the population, its decisive
involvement in all matters of political and economic importance, and, in this
way, the reintegration of our nation into the grand course of history.
“Towards this end, we demand:
1. Everything that nature has given the people: land, rivers,
mountains, forests, the natural resources both above and below the ground,
the air--all this in principle belongs to the people as a whole. If anyone
owns these, he is in effect the trustee of the people’s property, and must
consider himself accountable to the State and the nation. If he manages the
possessions entrusted to him poorly or in a manner detrimental to the good of
the whole, then the State has the right to terminate his ownership and to
give his possessions back to the people as a whole.
2. As far as human strength, talent, inventiveness, enterprise and ingenuity
are concerned, production remains the province of the individual. The
State guarantees that every productive person, whether his means of output be muscle or intellect, is given the largest possible
share in the goods and profits arising from production.
3. Production, which is essentially complete and thus requires
no further strength, talent, inventiveness, enterprise or ingenuity
(transportation and communication, trusts, syndicates, etc.) is returned to
the State.
“With this, the sequence of production comes full circle, and once again
incorporates each and every worker responsibly into its cycle.
“By putting this system into effect, we free productivity from the shackles
of wage slavery. The result will be a free people with a free economy, in a
free country: the national community.”
Parliament
and Political Parties
“And that required a new party? Why didn’t you just take this platform to
some existing parliamentary party? Surely it would have been willing to
support it!”
“Ha!--You might be right. Certainly any political party would have supported
it, if it could have gained a million votes that way. But we don’t set much
store by votes and parliament. We don’t just want to ‘support’ our platform
in the Reichstag--we want to put it into effect. That is where we’re
different from all the other parties. The others advocate platforms, talk, debate, take a vote, and collect their parliamentary
allowances. But we want to turn our platform into reality.
“We don’t believe the eyewash of parliament and parties. That’s just a big
business association for the exploitation of the strength and labor of the German people.
“A parliament is like a drone bee in the German hive.
“Public funds and public welfare are misused. Behind it all are the Jews, who
move their chessmen, have them talk, vote and collect their parliamentary
allowances--and they themselves hold the reins of government.
“If they want anything from us, then we’re ‘the free and sovereign people, making
our will known through our elected representatives’: but if we want anything
from parliament, then we’re just rabble. The sum of it all is what’s called democracy.
“No, friend. We’ve never expected to gain anything that way, nor will we ever
place our hopes on parliamentary action. On the contrary: we long for the day
when the German people will shake off this un-German system.”
“And then? What do you expect to replace that system with? There has to be
some form of government! If you don’t want Parliament, you have to come
up with something better.
“What will it be?”
Dictatorship and the Corporate State
“It’s a long-established fact of history that any young, purposeful party
which has deposed a corrupt, internally rotten system has claimed the State
and its instruments of power as its own for such time as it took to
establish, by means of a dictatorship guided by self-confident responsibility,
the preconditions that were requisite for the complete conquest of the State,
and its infusion with the new ideas. It will be no different in our case.
Once we have captured the State, that State is ours. We and we alone
will be its responsible representatives. Even if today, in the battle against
a corrupt system, we are, and must be, a party--not, of course, in the
sense of a parliamentary party--the second in which
that system collapses, we shall be the State. And then we will remodel
that State according to our own principles.
“We want to liberate Germany, that’s all.
“A large part of German people have already become so materialistic and
cowardly that their good can only be achieved against their will.”
“That’s all well and good. But even you will have to admit that dictatorship
can’t be a permanent state of affairs. Something has to come after!”
“Of course it does! And we’ve thought about that, too, and made our
intentions known: by no means do we want to exclude the people from power. We
only want to achieve and consolidate those conditions which alone will allow
our people to ensure their continued existence on this planet. Once those
conditions are achieved and consolidated, our work is done. Then we will have
the National-Socialist State we want.
“The party parliament of democracy will be replaced by the economic parliament(7)
of the National-Socialist State. Its members will be elected by the entire
working German people in accordance with the principles of universal
suffrage. But in such an election the people will not stratify themselves
according to parliamentary-democratic parties, but rather according to the
professional guilds (8) making up the national community. Thoroughly
organized professional guilds ensure that every working German receives the rights
to which he is entitled by virtue of his will, his work, and his
responsibility within the State. The economic parliament looks after economic
policy only--not politics of the State.
“Its partner in government is the Senate. It is composed of some 200
individuals, whom the dictator selects from all ranks and professional guilds
and who assist in the affairs of State. These 200 will represent the elite of
the entire nation. They support the government with both advice and action
and are appointed for life. In the case of a members’ death, the others elect
a replacement.
“The Chancellor will be elected from among the Senate. He bears full
responsibility for every aspect of the Reich’s domestic and foreign politics
and is prepared to sacrifice even his life, if necessary, for the sake of
these political affairs.
“The Chancellor chooses his own ministers and staff.
He takes full responsibility for their actions as well, and it therefore goes
without saying that he can appoint and dismiss them at will.
“Whether the head of this system of government is a president or a monarch
will then be irrelevant. The Chancellor is the one who matters,
and you can be sure that we’ll see to it that he’s a man of courage and
integrity.”
(7)Greenwood, op. cit., p. 206, comments: “The instrument by means of which
all these desirable objects {nationalization of businesses, etc.} are to be
brought about is the corporative organization. Nazi ideals of the Corporate
State are still very ill-defined in matters of detail. It is of course
visualized as an organ of economic self-government under the supervision of
the State and the Nazi movement...The guilds of the Middle Ages also serve to
some extent as a model.” “Economic self-government” is the key word here. The
economic parliament seems to have been intended as a sort of guild-based
domestic policy organ, while the Senate was to have acted as its
international counterpart.
(8) Professional guilds were groups of people united by common vocations and
professional interests. Historically, guilds were medieval associations of
merchants or craftsmen; they were formed for mutual aid and protection or to
maintain craft standards. Revival of the guild system was attempted by
various ideological and political movements of the 19th and 20th century--among
them National-Socialism, whose ideology of professional rather than
parliamentary stratification of society the guild system would have
complemented perfectly.
War and Pacifism
“You’re always the trouble-makers. You don’t want peace and order, you want
conflict. War will be the last pearl of your wisdom!”
“Now you sound as if you’re about to cry! You talk of peace. What we’re given
today--is that peace?! Is it peace when millions are out in the streets, out
of work, without food? Is it peace when young children have to starve to
death, when our people are reduced to beggary, when this once thriving
Germany of ours is being made to resemble a desert? What we’ve experienced
since 1918 has been a war without end, and this war
is growing more vicious and brutal with each passing day. Have a look at the
quotations of the international stock exchange--those are the war reports
from the headquarters of the economic war, and see, German workers and their
families are the dead and dying of that war!
“That’s your peace. It’s the peace of the graveyard! Your order is the rigid
order of death. No indeed, good friend, we don’t want that. We will call to
arms in opposition to it. We will call upon the people to rid themselves of
their tormentors and to break the chains that the Jews have put on us.
“Only the fight for true peace can led beyond
the death of a people and its nation. The eternal principle of nature is not
justice, it’s strength. And that is why we want to
toughen our nation, so that it may survive in the battle of life.
“Pacifism does not ensure peace. On the contrary! History shows us that those
peoples and nations that were no longer ready and willing to defend their
existence, with force if necessary, have always come to a humiliating end. We
will protect our people from that fate. They shall grow strong in will and
spirit; they shall not be humiliated like a pariah among nations.
“We want our rights, and these rights are liberty, bread and living space!
If we are denied these rights, we will fight for them.
“This fight for liberty, bread, and living space (9) is everybody’s
business, the highest citizen as well as the lowliest. It’s a matter for the
entire nation.
“The united power of 80 million Germans determined to survive will go a longer
way towards ensuring peace than any lie about human rights.”
(9) Lebensraum, translated as living space, was perhaps the most misunderstood
Bermamn slogan during WW2. This term was pounced on
by British as well as Soviet propagandists and became an effective tool for
motivating the troops for the campaign of terror against Germany.
The author is actually referring to the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty,
which he mentions on page 12. Germany, by the dictates of the treaty, had a
large amount of its territory taken away. By far the most painful and
portentous loss was that of the Posen area, West Prussia and Danzig (the Polish Corridor), which chopped Germany in
two and put the Polish border just 100 miles from Berlin. Besides the areas
in Europe, vast German territories in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean, were likewise taken away. The millions of German residents
in these former German administrative areas, furthermore, were subjected to
harsh treatment by the new governments.
Also, Germany suffered 1,900,000 military deaths in World War 1 and 763,000
more died as a result of the starvation blockade, which was even extended
after 1918.
To envisage what psychological effects these losses had on the German nation,
we need only recall the costly and frantic military efforts undertaken by
Great Britain just to recover the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.
Scarcely 2,000 inhabitants were involved.
Germany’s Freedom
“And what will be the end result of all this?”
“The end result will be the freedom of the German people on German soil.
This freedom will ensure bread and life for every working German. It
bears within itself those moral and spiritual strengths with which we will
shape this new country.
“We want to achieve more by means of this freedom than just a new system. We
want to achieve the new man who, within the conditions of the better
world view that we will have attained, can progress into the future.
“This future will be ours, or it will not be at all.
“Liberalism will die so that Socialism may live.
“Marxism will die so that Nationalism may live.
“And then we will shape the new Germany--the nationalistic, Socialist Third
Reich!”
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