Economically he brings about the destruction of the State by a systematic method of sabotaging social enterprises until these become so costly that they are taken out of the hands of the State and then submitted to the control of Jewish finance. Politically he works to withdraw from the State its means of susbsistence, inasmuch as he undermines the foundations of national resistance and defence, destroys the confidence which the people have in their Government, reviles the past and its history and drags everything national down into the gutter.
Culturally his activity consists in bowdlerizing art, literature and the theatre, holding the expressions of national sentiment up to scorn, overturning all concepts of the sublime and beautiful, the worthy and the good, finally dragging the people to the level of his own low mentality.
Of religion he makes a mockery. Morality and decency are described as antiquated prejudices and thus a systematic attack is made to undermine those last foundations on which the national being must rest if the nation is to struggle for its existence in this world.
(l) Now begins the great and final revolution. As soon as the Jew is in possession of political power he drops the last few veils which have hitherto helped to conceal his features. Out of the democratic Jew, the Jew of the People, arises the "Jew of the Blood", the tyrant of the peoples. In the course of a few years he endeavours to exterminate all those who represent the national intelligence. And by thus depriving the peoples of their natural intellectual leaders he fits them for their fate as slaves under a lasting despotism.
Russia furnishes the most terrible example of such a slavery. In that country the Jew killed or starved thirty millions of the people, in a bout of savage fanaticism and partly by the employment of inhuman torture. And he did this so that a gang of Jewish literati and financial bandits should dominate over a great people.
But the final consequence is not merely that the people lose all their freedom under the domination of the Jews, but that in the end these parasites themselves disappear. The death of the victim is followed sooner or later by that of the vampire.
If we review all the causes which contributed to bring about the downfall of the German people we shall find that the most profound and decisive cause must be attributed to the lack of insight into the racial problem and especially in the failure to recognize the Jewish danger.
It would have been easy enough to endure the defeats suffered on the battlefields in August 1918. They were nothing when compared with the military victories which our nation had achieved. Our downfall was not the result of those defeats; but we were overthrown by that force which had prepared those defeats by systematically operating for several decades to destroy those political instincts and that moral stamina which alone enable a people to struggle for its existence and therewith secure the right to exist.
By neglecting the problem of preserving the racial foundations of our national life, the old Empire abrogated the sole right which ent.i.tles a people to live on this planet. Nations that make mongrels of their people, or allow their people to be turned into mongrels, sin against the Will of Eternal Providence. And thus their overthrow at the hands of a stronger opponent cannot be looked upon as a wrong but, on the contrary, as a restoration of justice. If a people refuses to guard and uphold the qualities with which it has been endowed by Nature and which have their roots in the racial blood, then such a people has no right to complain over the loss of its earthly existence.
Everything on this earth can be made into something better. Every defeat may be made the foundation of a future victory. Every lost war may be the cause of a later resurgence. Every visitation of distress can give a new impetus to human energy. And out of every oppression those forces can develop which bring about a new re-birth of the national soul - provided always that the racial blood is kept pure.
But the loss of racial purity will wreck inner happiness for ever. It degrades men for all time to come. And the physical and moral consequences can never be wiped out.
If this unique problem be studied and compared with the other problems of life we shall easily recognize how small is their importance in comparison with this. They are all limited to time; but the problem of the maintenance or loss of the purity of the racial blood will last as long as man himself lasts.
All the symptoms of decline which manifested themselves already in pre-war times can be traced back to the racial problem.
Whether one is dealing with questions of general law, or monstrous excrescences in economic life, of phenomena which point to a cultural decline or political degeneration, whether it be a question of defects in the school-system or of the evil influence which the Press exerts over the adult population - always and everywhere these phenomena are at bottom caused by a lack of consideration for the interests of the race to which one"s own nation belongs, or by the failure to recognize the danger that comes from allowing a foreign race to exist within the national body.
That is why all attempts at reform, all inst.i.tutions for social relief, all political striving, all economic progress and all apparent increase in the general stock of knowledge, were doomed to be unproductive of any significant results. The nation, as well as the organization which enables it to exist - namely, the State - were not developing in inner strength and stability, but, on the contrary, were visibly losing their vitality. The false brilliance of the Second Empire could not disguise the inner weakness. And every attempt to invigorate it anew failed because the main and most important problem was left out of consideration.
It would be a mistake to think that the followers of the various political parties which tried to doctor the condition of the German people, or even all their leaders, were bad in themselves or meant wrong. Their activity even at best was doomed to fail, merely because of the fact that they saw nothing but the symptoms of our general malady and they tried to doctor the symptoms while they overlooked the real cause of the disease. If one makes a methodical study of the lines along which the old Empire developed one cannot help seeing, after a careful political a.n.a.lysis, that a process of inner degeneration had already set in even at the time when the united Empire was formed and the German nation began to make rapid external progress. The general situation was declining, in spite of the apparent political success and in spite of the increasing economic wealth. At the elections to the Reichstag the growing number of Marxist votes indicated that the internal breakdown and the political collapse were then rapidly approaching. All the victories of the so-called bourgeois parties were fruitless, not only because they could not prevent the numerical increase in the growing ma.s.s of Marxist votes, even when the bourgeois parties triumphed at the polls, but mainly because they themselves were already infected with the germs of decay. Though quite unaware of it, the bourgeois world was infected from within with the deadly virus of Marxist ideas. The fact that they sometimes openly resisted was to be explained by the compet.i.tive strife among ambitious political leaders, rather than by attributing it to any opposition in principle between adversaries who were determined to fight one another to the bitter end. During all those years only one protagonist was fighting with steadfast perseverance. This was the Jew. The Star of David steadily ascended as the will to national self-preservation declined.
Therefore it was not a solid national phalanx that, of itself and out of its own feeling of solidarity, rushed to the battlefields in August 1914. But it was rather the manifestation of the last flicker from the instinct of national self-preservation against the progress of the paralysis with which the pacifist and Marxist doctrine threatened our people. Even in those days when the destinies of the nation were in the balance the internal enemy was not recognized; therefore all efforts to resist the external enemy were bound to be in vain. Providence did not grant the reward to the victorious sword, but followed the eternal law of retributive justice. A profound recognition of all this was the source of those principles and tendencies which inspire our new movement. We were convinced that only by recognizing such truths could we stop the national decline in Germany and lay a granite foundation on which the State could again be built up, a State which would not be a piece of mechanism alien to our people, const.i.tuted for economic purposes and interests, but an organism created from the soul of the people themselves.
A GERMAN STATE IN A GERMAN NATION.
Chapter Twelve:.
Here at the close of the volume I shall describe the first stage in the progress of our movement and shall give a brief account of the problems we had to deal with during that period. In doing this I have no intention of expounding the ideals which we have set up as the goal of our movement; for these ideals are so momentous in their significance that an exposition of them will need a whole volume. Therefore I shall devote the second volume of this book to a detailed survey of the principles which form the 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 millions of people. The final goal of a great reformation has often been the object of profound longing on the parts of hundreds of thousands for many centuries before, until finally one among them comes forward as a herald to announce the will of that mult.i.tude and become the standard-bearer of the old yearning, which he now leads to a realization in a new idea.
The fact that millions of our people yearn at heart for a radical change in our present conditions is proved by the profound discontent which exists among them. This feeling is manifested in a thousand ways. Some express it in a form of discouragement and despair. Others show it in resentment and anger and indignation. Among some the profound discontent calls forth an att.i.tude of indifference, while it urges others to violent manifestations of wrath. Another indication of this feeling may be seen on the one hand in the att.i.tude of those who abstain from voting at elections and, on the other, in the large numbers of those who side with the fanatical extremists of the left wing.
To these latter people our young movement had to appeal first of all. It was not meant to be an organization for contented and satisfied people, but was meant to gather in all those who were suffering from profound anxiety and could find no peace, those who were unhappy and discontented. It was not meant to float on the surface of the nation but rather to push its roots deep among the ma.s.ses.
Looked at from the purely political point of view, the situation in 1918 was as follows: A nation had been torn into two parts. One part, which was by far the smaller of the two, contained the intellectual cla.s.ses of the nation from which all those employed in physical labour were excluded. On the surface these intellectual cla.s.ses appeared to be national-minded, but that word meant nothing else 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 cla.s.s tried to defend its ideas and reach its aims by carrying on the fight with the aid of intellectual weapons, which could be used only here and there and which had only a superficial effect against the brutal measures employed by the adversaries, in the face of which the intellectual weapons were of their very nature bound to fail. With one violent blow the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s stood the broad ma.s.ses of manual labourers who were organized in movements with a more or less radically Marxist tendency. These organized ma.s.ses were firmly determined to break any kind of intellectual resistance by the use of brute force. They had no nationalist tendencies whatsoever and deliberately repudiated the idea of advancing the interests of the nation as such. On the contrary, they promoted the interests of the foreign oppressor. Numerically this cla.s.s embraced the majority of the population and, what is more important, included all those elements of the nation without whose collaboration a national resurgence was not only a practical impossibility but was even inconceivable.
For already in 1918 one thing had to be clearly recognized; namely, that no resurgence of the German nation could take place until we had first restored our national strength to face the outside world. For this purpose arms are not the preliminary necessity, though our bourgeois "statesmen" always blathered about it being so; what was wanted was will-power. At one time the German people had more than sufficient military armament. And yet they were not able to defend their liberty because they lacked those energies which spring from the instinct of national self-preservation and the will to hold on to one"s own. The best armament is only dead and worthless material as long as the spirit is wanting which makes men willing and determined to avail themselves of such weapons. Germany was rendered defenceless not because she lacked arms, but because she lacked the will to keep her arms for the maintenance of her people.
To-day our Left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors. To all that kind of talk the answer ought to be: No, the contrary is the truth. Your action in delivering up the arms was dictated by your anti-national and criminal policy of abandoning the interests of the nation. And now you try to make people believe that your miserable whining is fundamentally due to the fact that you have no arms. Just like everything else in your conduct, this is a lie and a falsification of the true reason.
But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came 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 appeal to disarmament as the cause which compelled them to adopt a policy of prudence (that is to say, cowardice). Here, again, the contrary is the truth. Disarmament is the result of their lack of spirit.
Therefore the problem of restoring Germany"s power is not a question of how can we manufacture arms but rather a question of how we can produce that spirit which enables a people to bear arms. Once this spirit prevails among a people then it will find a thousand ways, each of which leads to the necessary armament. But a coward will not fire even a single shot when attacked though he may be armed with ten pistols. For 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 for if no other reason than that every preparatory step in foreign policy and every foreign judgment on the worth of a State has been proved by experience to be grounded not on the material size of the armament such a State may possess but rather on the moral capacity for resistance which such a State has or is believed to have. The question whether or not a nation be desirable as an ally is not so much determined by the inert ma.s.s of arms which it has at hand but by the obvious presence of a st.u.r.dy will to national self-preservation and a heroic courage which will fight through to the last breath. For an alliance is not made between arms but between men.
The British nation will therefore be considered as the most valuable ally in the world as long as it can be counted upon to show that brutality and tenacity in its government, as well as in the spirit of the broad ma.s.ses, which enables it to carry through to victory any struggle that it once enters upon, no matter how long such a struggle may last, or however great the sacrifice that may be necessary or whatever the means that have to be employed; and all this even though the actual military equipment at hand may be utterly inadequate when compared with that of other nations.
Once it is understood that the restoration of Germany is a question of reawakening the will to political self-preservation we shall see quite clearly that it will not be enough to win over those elements that are already national-minded but that the deliberately anti-national ma.s.ses must be converted to believe in the national ideals.
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 ma.s.ses 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 f.e.c.kless, 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 pa.s.sive resistance when the hour of deliverance is at hand, as they did in Bismarck"s time, we shall never have to fear any active resistance on their part, because of their recognized proverbial cowardice.
It is quite different with the ma.s.ses of our population, who are imbued with ideas of internationalism. Through the primitive roughness of their natures they are disposed to accept the preaching of violence, while at the same time their Jewish leaders are more brutal and ruthless. They will crush any attempt at a German revival, just as they smashed the German Army by striking at it from the rear. Above all, these organized ma.s.ses will use their numerical majority in this Parliamentarian State not only to hinder any national foreign policy, but also to prevent Germany from restoring her political power and therewith her prestige abroad. Thus she becomes excluded from the ranks of desirable allies. For it is not we ourselves alone who are aware of the handicap that results from the existence of fifteen million Marxists, democrats, pacifists and followers of the Centre, in our midst, but foreign nations also recognize this internal burden which we have to bear and take it into their calculations when estimating the value of a possible alliance with us. n.o.body would wish to form an alliance with a State where the active portion of the population is at least pa.s.sively opposed to any resolute foreign policy.
The situation is made still worse by reason of the fact that the leaders of those parties which were responsible for the national betrayal are ready to oppose any and every attempt at a revival, simply because they want to retain the positions they now hold. According to the laws that govern human history it is inconceivable that the German people could resume the place they 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, by a peaceful conversion of the popular will.
Looked at from the standpoint of practical ways and means, it seems absurd to think of liberating Germany from foreign bondage as long as the ma.s.ses of the people are not willing to support such an ideal of freedom. After carefully considering this problem from the purely military point of view, everybody, and in particular every officer, will agree that a war cannot be waged against an outside enemy by battalions of students; but that, together with the brains of the nation, the physical strength of the nation is also necessary. Furthermore it must be remembered that the nation would be robbed of its irreplaceable a.s.sets by a national defence in which only the intellectual circles, as they are called, were engaged. The young German intellectuals who joined the volunteer regiments and fell on the battlefields of Flanders in the autumn of 1914 were bitterly missed later on. They were the dearest treasure which the nation possessed and their loss could not be made good in the course of the war. And it is not only the struggle itself which could not be waged if the working ma.s.ses of the nation did not join the storm battalions, but the necessary technical preparations could not be made without a unified will and a common front within the nation itself. Our nation which has to exist disarmed, under the thousand eyes appointed by the Versailles Peace Treaty, cannot make any technical preparations for the recovery of its freedom and human independence until the whole army of spies employed within the country is cut down to those few whose inborn baseness would lead them to betray anything and everything for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver. But we can deal with such people. The millions, however, who are opposed to every kind of national revival simply because of their political opinions, const.i.tute an insurmountable obstacle. At least the obstacle will remain insurmountable as long as the cause of their opposition, which is international Marxism, is not overcome and its teachings banished from both their hearts and heads.
From whatever point of view we may examine the possibility of recovering our independence as a State and a people, whether we consider the problem from the standpoint of technical rearmament or from that of the actual struggle itself, the necessary pre-requisite always remains the same. This pre-requisite is that the broad ma.s.ses of the people must first be won over to accept the principle of our national independence.
If we do not regain our external freedom every step forward in domestic reform will at best be an augmentation of our productive powers for the benefit of those nations that look upon us as a colony to be exploited. The surplus produced by any so-called improvement would only go into the hands of our international controllers and any social betterment would at best increase the product of our labour in favour of those people. No cultural progress can be made by the German nation, because such progress is too much bound up with the political independence and dignity of a people.
Therefore, as we can find a satisfactory solution for the problem of Germany"s future only by winning over the broad ma.s.ses of our people for the support of the national idea, this work of education must be considered the highest and most important task to be accomplished by a movement which does not strive merely to satisfy the needs of the moment but considers itself bound to examine in the light of future results everything it decides to do or refrain from doing.
As early as 1919 we were convinced that the nationalization of the ma.s.ses would have to const.i.tute the first and paramount aim of the new movement. From the tactical standpoint, this decision laid a certain number of obligations on our shoulders.
(1) No social sacrifice could be considered too great in this effort to win over the ma.s.ses for the national revival.
In the field of national economics, whatever concessions are granted to-day to the employees are negligible when compared with the benefit to be reaped by the whole nation if such concessions contribute to bring back the ma.s.ses of the people once more to the bosom of their own nation. Nothing but meanness and shortsightedness, which are characteristics that unfortunately are only too prevalent among our employers, could prevent people from recognizing that in the long run no economic improvement and therefore no rise in profits are possible unless internal solidarity be restored among the bulk of the people who make up our nation.
If the German trades unions had defended the interests of the working-cla.s.ses uncompromisingly during the War; if even during the War they had used the weapon of the strike to force the industrialists - who were greedy for higher dividends - to grant the demands of the workers for whom the unions acted; if at the same time they had stood up as good Germans for the defence of the nation as stoutly as for their own claims, and if they had given to their country what was their country"s due - then the War would never have been lost. How ludicrously insignificant would all, and even the greatest, economic concession have been in face of the tremendous importance of such a victory.
For a movement which would restore the German worker to the German people it is therefore absolutely necessary to understand clearly that economic sacrifices must be considered light in such cases, provided of course that they do not go the length of endangering the independence and stability of the national economic system.
(2) The education of the ma.s.ses along national lines can be carried out only indirectly, by improving their social conditions; for only by such a process can the economic conditions be created which enable everybody to share in the cultural life of the nation.
(3) The nationalization of the broad ma.s.ses can never be achieved by half-measures - that is to say, by feebly insisting on what is called the objective side of the question - but only by a ruthless and devoted insistence on the one aim which must be achieved. This means that a people cannot be made "national" according to the signification attached to that word by our bourgeois cla.s.s 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 ma.s.ses of a nation are not made up of professors and diplomats. Since these ma.s.ses have only a poor acquaintance with abstract ideas, their reactions lie more in the domain of the feelings, where the roots of their positive as well as their negative att.i.tudes are implanted. They are susceptible only to a manifestation of strength which comes definitely either from the positive or negative side, but they are never susceptible to any half-hearted att.i.tude that wavers between one pole and the other. The emotional grounds of their att.i.tude furnish the reason for their extraordinary stability. It is always more difficult to fight successfully against Faith than against knowledge. Love is less subject to change than respect. Hatred is more lasting than mere aversion. And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the ma.s.ses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them to action.
Whoever wishes to win over the ma.s.ses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a f.e.c.kless att.i.tude, but a determined will, backed up by force, when necessary.
(4) The soul of the ma.s.ses can be won only if those who lead the movement for that purpose are determined not merely to carry through the positive struggle for their own aims but are also determined to destroy the enemy that opposes them.
When they see an uncompromising onslaught against an adversary the people have at all times taken this as a proof that right is on the side of the active 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 his half-way policy may even be an acknowledgment that his cause is unjust.
The ma.s.ses are but a part of Nature herself. Their feeling is such that they cannot understand mutual hand-shakings between men who are declared enemies. Their wish is to see the stronger side win and the weaker wiped out or subjected unconditionally to the will of the stronger.
The nationalization of the ma.s.ses can be successfully achieved only if, in the positive struggle to win the soul of the people, those who spread the international poison among them are exterminated.
(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 those there is only one that has a profoundly causal significance. This is the problem of preserving the pure racial stock among the people. Human 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 pug-dog to do the work of the greyhound, not understanding that neither the speed of the greyhound nor the imitative faculties of the poodle are inborn qualities which cannot be drilled into the one or the other by any form of training. A people that fails to preserve the purity of its racial blood thereby destroys the unity of the soul of the nation in all its manifestations. A disintegrated national character is the inevitable consequence of a process of disintegration in the blood. And the change which takes place in the spiritual and creative faculties of a people is only an effect of the change that has modified its racial substance.
If we are to free the German people from all those failings and ways of acting which do not spring from their original character, we must first get rid of those foreign germs in the national body which are the cause of its failings and false ways.
The German nation will never revive unless the racial problem is taken into account and dealt with. The racial problem furnishes the key not only to the understanding of human history but also to the understanding of every kind of human culture.
(6) By incorporating in the national community the ma.s.ses of our people who are now in the international camp we do not thereby mean to renounce the principle that the interests of the various trades and professions must be safeguarded. Divergent interests in the various branches of labour and in the trades and professions are not the same as a division between the various cla.s.ses, but rather a feature inherent in the economic situation. Vocational grouping does not clash in the least with the idea of a national community, for this means national unity in regard to all those problems that affect the life of the nation as such.
To incorporate in the national community, or simply the State, a stratum of the people which has now formed a social cla.s.s the standing of the higher cla.s.ses must not be lowered but that of the lower cla.s.ses must be raised. The cla.s.s which carries through this process is never the higher cla.s.s 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 n.o.bility but only through its own energy and a leadership that had sprung from its own ranks.
The German worker cannot be raised from his present standing and incorporated in the German folk-community by means of goody-goody meetings where people talk about the brotherhood of the people, but rather by a systematic improvement in the social and cultural life of the worker until the yawning abyss between him and the other cla.s.ses can be filled in. A movement which has this for its aim must try to recruit its followers mainly from the ranks of the working cla.s.s. It must include members of the intellectual cla.s.ses only in so far as such members have rightly understood and accepted without reserve the ideal towards which the movement is striving. This process of transformation and reunion cannot be completed within ten or twenty years. It will take several generations, as the history of such movements has shown.
The most difficult obstacle to the reunion of our contemporary worker in the national folk-community does not consist so much in the fact that he fights for the interests of his fellow-workers, but rather in the international ideas with which he is imbued and which are of their nature at variance with the ideas of nationhood and fatherland. This hostile att.i.tude to nation and fatherland has been inculcated by the leaders of the working cla.s.s. If they were inspired by the principle of devotion to the nation in all that concerns its political and social welfare, the trades unions would make those millions of workers most valuable members of the national community, without thereby affecting their own constant struggle for their economic demands.
A movement which sincerely 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 just and vital interests. Those who try to propagate such a notion are deliberate liars. The idea of a folk-community does not impose any obligations on the one side that are not imposed on the other.
A worker certainly does something which is contrary to the spirit of folk-community if he acts entirely on his own initiative and puts forward exaggerated demands without taking the common good into consideration or the maintenance of the national economic structure. But an industrialist also acts against the spirit of the folk-community if he adopts inhuman methods of exploitation and misuses the working forces of the nation to make millions unjustly for himself from the sweat of the workers. He has no right to call himself "national" and no right to talk of a folk-community, for he is only an unscrupulous egoist who sows the seeds of social discontent and provokes a spirit of conflict which sooner or later must be injurious to the interests of the country.
The reservoir from which the young movement has to draw its members will first of all be the working ma.s.ses. Those ma.s.ses 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 the people and look forward eagerly to the future of Germany, and at the same time have a sound grasp of the importance of a struggle whose aim is to win over the soul of the ma.s.ses, such men are cordially welcomed in the ranks of our movement, because they can serve as a valuable intellectual force in the work that has to be done. But this movement can never aim at recruiting its membership from the unthinking herd of bourgeois voters. If it did so the movement would be burdened with a ma.s.s of people whose whole mentality would only help to paralyse the effort of our campaign to win the ma.s.s of the people. In theory it may be very fine to say that the broad ma.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses and to arouse some enthusiasm or even awaken some understanding among them by our public demonstrations, their traditional characteristics cannot be changed. In other words, we could not eliminate from the bourgeois cla.s.ses the inefficiency and supineness which are part of a tradition that has developed through centuries. The difference between the cultural levels of the two groups and between their respective att.i.tudes towards social-economic questions is still so great that it would turn out a hindrance to the movement the moment the first enthusiasm aroused by our demonstrations 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 from this viewpoint that the strategy of the whole movement must finally be decided.
(7) This one-sided but accordingly clear and definite att.i.tude must be manifested in the propaganda of the movement; and, on the other hand, this is absolutely necessary to make the propaganda itself effective.
If propaganda is to be of service to the movement it must be addressed to one side alone; for if it should vary the direction of its appeal it will not be understood in the one camp or may be rejected by the other, as merely insisting on obvious and uninteresting truisms; for the intellectual training of the two camps that come into question here has been very different.
Even the manner in which something is presented and the tone in which particular details are emphasized cannot have the same effect in those two strata that belong respectively to the opposite extremes of the social structure. If the propaganda should refrain from using primitive forms of expression it will not appeal to the sentiments of the ma.s.ses. If, on the other hand, it conforms to the crude sentiments of the ma.s.ses in its words and gestures the intellectual circles will be averse to it because of its roughness and vulgarity. Among a hundred men who call themselves orators there are scarcely ten who are capable of speaking with effect before an audience of street-sweepers, locksmiths and navvies, etc., to-day and expound the same subject with equal effect to-morrow before an audience of university professors and students. Among a thousand public speakers there may be only one who can speak before a composite audience of locksmiths and professors in the same hall in such a way that his statements can be fully comprehended by each group while at the same time he effectively influences both and awakens enthusiasm, on the one side as well as on the other, to hearty applause. But it must be remembered that in most cases even the most beautiful idea embodied in a sublime theory can be brought home to the public only through the medium of smaller minds. The thing that matters here is not the vision of the man of genius who created the great idea but rather the success which his apostles achieve in shaping the expression of this idea so as to bring it home to the minds of the ma.s.ses.
Social-Democracy and the whole Marxist movement were particularly qualified to attract the great ma.s.ses of the nation, because of the uniformity of the public to which they addressed their appeal. The more limited and narrow their ideas and arguments, the easier it was for the ma.s.ses to grasp and a.s.similate them; for those ideas and arguments were well adapted to a low level of intelligence.
These considerations led the new movement to adopt a clear and simple line of policy, which was as follows: In its message as well as in its forms of expression the propaganda must be kept on a level with the intelligence of the ma.s.ses, and its value must be measured only by the actual success it achieves.
At a public meeting where the great ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses.
An educated man who is present and who finds fault with an address because he considers it to be on an intellectual plane that is too low, though he himself has witnessed its effect on the lower intellectual groups whose adherence has to be won, only shows himself completely incapable of rightly judging the situation and therewith proves that he can be of no use in the new movement. Only intellectuals can be of use to a movement who understand its mission and its aims so well that they have learned to judge our methods of propaganda exclusively by the success obtained and never by the impression which those methods made on the intellectuals themselves. For our propaganda is not meant to serve as an entertainment for those people who already have a nationalist outlook, but its purpose is to win the adhesion of those who have hitherto been hostile to national ideas and who are nevertheless of our own blood and race.
In general, those considerations of which I have given a brief summary in the chapter on "War Propaganda" became the guiding rules and principles which determined the kind of propaganda we were to adopt in our campaign and the manner in which we were to put it into practice. The success that has been obtained proves that our decision was right.
(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. Every idea that is meant to move the world has not only the right but also the obligation of securing control of those means which will enable the idea to be carried into effect. In this world success is the only rule of judgment whereby we can decide whether such an undertaking was right or wrong. And by the word "success" in this connection I do not mean such a success as the mere conquest of power in 1918 but the successful issue whereby the common interests of the nation have been served. A coup d"etat cannot be considered successful if, as many empty-headed government lawyers in Germany now believe, the revolutionaries succeeded in getting control of the State into their hands but only if, in comparison with the state of affairs under the old regime, the lot of the nation has been improved when the aims and intentions on which the revolution was based have been put into practice. This certainly does not apply to the German Revolution, as that movement was called, which brought a gang of bandits into power in the autumn of 1918.
But if the conquest of political power be a requisite preliminary for the practical realization of the ideals that inspire a reform movement, then any movement which aims at reform must, from the very first day of its activity, be considered by its leaders as a movement of the ma.s.ses and not as a literary tea club or an a.s.sociation of philistines who meet to play ninepins.
(9) The nature and internal organization of the new movement make it anti-parliamentarian. That is to say, it rejects in general and in its own structure all those principles according to which decisions are 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 our movement the practical consequences of this principle are the following: The president of a large group is appointed by the head of the group immediately above his in authority. He is then the responsible leader of his group. All the committees are subject to his authority and not he to theirs. There is no such thing as committees that vote but only committees that work. This work is allotted by the responsible leader, who is the president of the group. The same principle applies to the higher organizations - the Bezirk (district), the Kreis (urban circuit) and the Gau (the region). In each case the president is appointed from above and is invested with full authority and executive power. Only the leader of the whole party is elected at the general meeting of the members. But he is the sole leader of the movement. All the committees are responsible to him, but he is not responsible to the committees. His decision is final, but he bears the whole responsibility of it. The members of the movement are ent.i.tled to call him to account by means of a new election, or to remove him from office if he has violated the principles of the movement or has not served its interests adequately. He is then replaced by a more capable man. who is invested with the same authority and obliged to bear the same responsibility.
One of the highest duties of the movement is to make this principle imperative not only within its own ranks but also for the whole State.
The man who becomes leader is invested with the highest and unlimited authority, but he also has to bear the last and gravest responsibility.
The man who has not the courage to shoulder responsibility for his actions is not fitted to be a leader. Only a man of heroic mould can have the vocation for such a task.
Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the mult.i.tude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and personal efficiency.
Because of this principle, our movement must necessarily be anti-parliamentarian, and if it takes part in the parliamentary inst.i.tution it is only for the purpose of destroying this inst.i.tution from within; in other words, we wish to do away with an inst.i.tution which we must look upon as one of the gravest symptoms of human decline.
(10) The movement steadfastly refuses to take up any stand in regard to those problems which are either outside of its sphere of political work or seem to have no fundamental importance for us. It does not aim at bringing about a religious reformation, but rather a political reorganization of our people. It looks upon the two religious denominations as equally valuable mainstays for the existence of our people, and therefore it makes war on all those parties which would degrade this foundation, on which the religious and moral stability of our people is based, to an instrument in the service of party interests.
Finally, the movement does not aim at establishing any one form of State or trying to destroy another, but rather to make those fundamental principles prevail without which no republic and no monarchy can exist for any length of time. The movement does not consider its mission to be the establishment of a monarchy or the preservation of the Republic but rather to create a German State.
The problem concerning the outer form of this State, that is to say, its final shape, is not of fundamental importance. It is a problem which must be solved in the light of what seems practical and opportune at the moment.
Once a nation has understood and appreciated the great problems that affect its inner existence, the question of outer formalities will never lead to any internal conflict.
(11) The problem of the inner organization of the movement is not one of principle but of expediency.
The best kind of organization is not that which places a large intermediary apparatus between the leadership of the movement and the individual followers but rather that which works successfully with the smallest possible intermediary apparatus. For it is the task of such an organization to transmit a certain idea which originated in the brain of one individual to a mult.i.tude of people and to supervise the manner in which this idea is being put into practice.
Therefore, from any and every viewpoint, the organization is only a necessary evil. At best it is only a means of reaching certain ends. The worst happens when it becomes an end in itself.
Since the world produces more mechanical than intelligent beings, it will always be easier to develop the form of an organization than its substance; that is to say, the ideas which it is meant to serve.
The march of any idea which strives towards practical fulfilment, and in particular those ideas which are of a reformatory character, may be roughly sketched as follows: A creative idea takes shape in the mind of somebody who thereupon feels himself called upon to transmit this idea to the world. He propounds his faith before others and thereby gradually wins a certain number of followers. This direct and personal way of promulgating one"s ideas among one"s contemporaries is the most natural and the most ideal. But as the movement develops and secures a large number of followers it gradually becomes impossible for the original founder of the doctrine on which the movement is based to carry on his propaganda personally among his innumerable followers and at the same time guide the course of the movement.
According as the community of followers increases, direct communication between the head and the individual followers becomes impossible. This intercourse must then take place through an intermediary apparatus introduced into the framework of the movement. Thus ideal conditions of inter-communication cease, and organization has to be introduced as a necessary evil. Small subsidiary groups come into existence, as in the political movement, for example, where the local groups represent the germ-cells out of which the organization develops later on.
But such sub-divisions 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. Only the existence of such a seat or centre, around which a magic charm such as that of Mecca or Rome is woven, can supply a movement with that permanent driving force which has its sources in the internal unity of the movement and the recognition of one head as representing this unity.
When the first germinal cells of the organization are being formed care must always be taken to insist on the importance of the place where the idea originated. The creative, moral and practical greatness of the place whence the movement went forth and from which it is governed must be exalted to a supreme symbol, and this must be honoured all the more according as the original cells of the movement become so numerous that they have to be regrouped into larger units in the structure of the organization.
When the number of individual followers became so large that direct personal contact with the head of the movement was out of the question, then we had to form those first local groups. As those groups multiplied to an extraordinary number it was necessary to establish higher cadres into which the local groups were distributed. Examples of such cadres in the political organization are those of the region (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 organization which have now developed. And yet we must succeed in doing this, for this is an indispensable condition if the unity of the movement is to be guaranteed and the idea of it carried into effect.
Finally, when those larger intermediary organizations have to be combined in new and still higher units it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain over them the absolute supremacy of the original seat of the movement and the school attached to it.