Ðåôåðàò Êóðñîâàÿ Êîíñïåêò
Wir fordern,” Der Angriff, Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit - ðàçäåë Èíôîðìàòèêà, The Source: “Wir Fordern,” Der Angriff, Aufsätze Aus...
|
The source: “Wir fordern,” Der Angriff, Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 18-19.
Isidor
by Joseph Goebbels
My name is Hase [Hase, German for rabbit, but also an ignoramus]. I live in the forest and don’t know anything about anything. I keep out of everything. I am, one might say, politically neutral. When it is to my advantage, I can believe anything, though the facts are best. The facts are mostly wonderful. I am of the opinion that the far right and the far left must be banned. The center, of course, is out of the question. As I said, that’s my opinion. I am a realist. That is comfortable, it has few dangers, and one can make a living.
But assume I didn’t live in the forest any more, but in China. Some kind of fortune or misfortune has brought me there. Let’s assume that. Now that would be terribly unpleasant. For in China, as is well known, everyone is Chinese, even the emperor. I would stand out. My name is Hase, and I look like a German. One would be able to recognize me immediately. Why, even the children would stand stock still in the street and call out “That’s Hase.”
But I would know what to do. I would grow a long pigtail and stop looking like a German. I would give up my honorable name Schmidt and rename myself “Wukiutschu.” That’s what I’d do. And if someone still called me “Hase,” I would be very angry.
Let’s assume, then, that I live in Shanghai and my father still lives in the forest. I wouldn’t say anything about the forest to anyone. Just the opposite! I would behave as if we had lived for generations in Shanghai, no matter how much others wanted to doubt it. And then, let’s assume that by accident the police chief of Shanghai dies. And that all the Chinese shout “Wukiutschu should be our leader!”
I would then somehow be the police chief of Shanghai. It’s nice to be the police chief. One has the power to do what one wants. That is, if others let one get away with it. But they must! If they were dumb enough to say “Wukiutschu should lead us!” then they have to be satisfied with me. And if someone weren’t satisfied, I’d take action, since there are always malcontents. I would therefore decree:
“It is forbidden to be dissatisfied!”
Wukiutschu
And I would rule. I know that it wouldn’t be as simple as it looks. For people would come and say:
“What does Wukiutschu want? He isn’t even one of our people. Wukiutschu is really named Hase and lives in the forest. He has sneaked in here. We’ve been here on Chinese soil a thousand years and more. Our fathers made this land livable and defended it with their lives. Back then Wukiutschu still lived in the forest, but now he behaves as if he had always lived here. Down with him! China for the Chinese!”
That would naturally be most unpleasant for me. For if one cut my pigtail off, any child could see that these people were right. But that wouldn’t happen. I would be the police chief after all, and as such have a right to respect. So I’d make another decree:
“Whoever calls me Hase is inciting class warfare. I forbid it, under penalty of imprisonment.”
Wukiutschu
Then I would have peace. I would rest in the glory of my office. I’d be fanned by Chinese coolies, receive ocean flyers, and attend every banquet. My pigtail would grow longer and longer, and I would soon forget that I once was named Hase. And the malcontents would die, and then the world would be content.
Only then would life be beautiful and dignified.
I am the pathfinder for that. One only has to know nothing like me in order to believe it firmly and unshakably.
But, as we said, this is all supposition.
For the Chinese would never be dumb enough to believe that I was Wukiutschu and to name me police chief.
Such stupid people don’t exist.
It is all nothing but a fairy tale.
I am not Chinese and I don’t live in Shanghai. My name isn’t Wukiutschu, but Hase.
I live in the forest and don’t know anything.
The source: “Heil Moskau!” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 236-238.
Hail Moscow!
by Joseph Goebbels
Following the celebration of the ten year anniversary of the Russian Revolution, three young Berlin communists from the Köpernick district committed suicide after they had taken a touching farewell from their comrades. They explained calmly that they had lost faith in the future of the International.
It is said of Ernst Thälmann, the communist leader, that during the Hamburg uprising he laid stone drunk in his own vomit. In Berlin-Wedding a few weeks ago, Ruth Fischer spoke at a meeting of the KPD opposition, calling for a fight against the Third International. When a representative of the KPD began to speak he was shouted down by his former comrades and thrown out the door. The affair ended in a general melee.
The tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution was recently celebrated in Moscow. As the honored guests from the entire world who had gathered to praise Moscow’s principles watched, the opposition to the workers’ and peasants’ state stormed the gathering and took over the university. The end of the story: twelve leading Bolshevists, nearly all Jews of the old guard, were expelled from the Communist Party.
What does this all mean?
Things are becoming clear all over. The smoke of rhetoric is vanishing, and all that remains is a miserable remnant of fantasies that absolutely no one confuses with reality. The German proletariat is one hope poorer, perhaps its last one. Marx’s game is over. Nature is in charge once again, and it has made the eternal laws pitilessly and unmistakably clear: the laws of personality, struggle, and race.
Did things have to turn out this way?
Yes, a thousand times yes.
There was no other possible outcome. We have it prophesied a hundred times. If the Jews speak, the people must beware. The Jew is rootless, a ferment of decomposition. Whether he lives as a capitalist or a Bolshevist, his nature remains the same: Ahasver, the eternal destroyer. His gospel is chaos, and where he succeeds in fomenting revolution, he rises to the top. He brought the worker’s movement to its present deplorable state: a mixture of phrases, cowardice, terror and class hatred. What does the cause of the proletariat have to do with pacifism, protection of the republic, the elimination of personality and the destruction of national dignity and honor? Where is it written that utopias, wishes, programs and books rule the world instead of strength and the facts? Why do you demonstrate here for the national freedom of the oppressed colonial peoples, yet forget that Germany is a province of high finance? Why shout “China for the Chinese,” yet stand by in cowardice as the Jews sell Germany piece by piece and turn it over to the world dictatorship? You cry “Reaction” when one speaks of a lost fatherland. You smell treason when one names things by their right names. You retreat stubbornly and silently to your own troubles, and find that nothing remains but desperation and suicide.
Do not say that the First, Second or Third International is responsible! Found a new one, a Fourth! It will betray you just as its three predecessors did.
The International itself is in error. It is thought out, not lived. The Jew preaches it to you because it is his last chance to hold power. It has destroyed nations and peoples. It sets citizen against citizen, destroys and poisons the community, sows mistrust between the peoples. Above it all is the triumphant mocking laughter of your enemy, of our enemy: The eternal Jew!
You stand over hecatombs of corpses. The scent of blood surrounds you. Children beg, mothers weep, nations perish! What have you gained: Nothing but chaos, hopeless, hunger, and desperation!
It that the way you want things to remain?
Stand up and demand a Germany that belongs to you, one that is free of the chains of the oppressor. This is the historic mission of the German working class.
Freedom and prosperity!
This is the war cry against the rotting world of capitalism!
Away with the empty rhetoric! Risk looking cold reality in the face.
Hold out your hand, German working men! The day of freedom is coming, if only you want it!
Adolf Hitler is showing you the way!
The source: I take the text from Joseph Goebbels, Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 71-73.
Why Do We Want to Join the Reichstag?
by Joseph Goebbels
We are an anti-parliamentarian party that for good reasons rejects the Weimar constitution and its republican institutions. We oppose a fake democracy that treats the intelligent and the foolish, the industrious and the lazy, in the same way. We see in the present system of majorities and organized irresponsibility the main cause of our steadily increasing miseries. So why do we want to be in the Reichstag?
We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem. It does not concern us. Any way of bringing about the revolution is fine by us.
If we succeed in getting sixty or seventy of our party’s agitators and organizers elected to the various parliaments, the state itself will pay for our fighting organization. That is amusing and entertaining enough to be worth trying. Will we be corrupted by joining parliament? Not likely. Do you believe that once we march into the meeting of the illustrious parliamentarians we will propose a toast to Philipp Scheidemann? Do you think us such miserable revolutionaries that you fear that the thick red carpets and the well upholstered sleeping halls will make us forget our historical mission?
He who enters parliament perishes! Well, that is true if he enters parliament to become a parliamentarian. But if he enters with a tough and driving will to carry on an uncompromising battle against the growing corruption of our public life, he will not become a parliamentarian, rather will remain what he is: a revolutionary.
Mussolini entered parliament. Shortly afterward, he marched on Rome with his Black Shirts. The communists also sit in the Reichstag. No one is naive enough to believe that they want to work seriously and positively. One more thing: If we do not succeed in making our dangerous men immune to legal prosecution, they will all find themselves behind bars sooner or later. Will that happen if they possess parliamentary immunity? Certainly. When democracy is near its end it will resort openly to the terror of capitalistic dictatorship that it ordinarily uses covertly. But that will not happen for some time, and in the meanwhile the fighters for our faith will enjoy parliamentary immunity long enough to broaden our fighting front such that shutting them up will not be as easy as democracy would like it to be.
Another thing. Our party’s agitators pay 600 to 800 marks a month [in travel costs] to strengthen the Republic. Is it not proper for the Republic to cover these costs by providing them with railroad passes? Who of you thinks that we should throw our own small change to the Jewish Dawes railroad when the Republic longs to help us out?
Is it the beginning of a compromise? Do you really think that we who have stood before you a hundred or a thousand times preaching faith in a new Germany, who have smilingly faced death dozens of times from the red mob, who have joined you in battling every form of resistance whether of official or nonofficial nature, who have bent before no command or terror, do you really think that we would lay down our weapons in exchange for a railroad pass?
If we only wanted to become representatives, we would not be National Socialists, rather I suppose German National Party members or Social Democrats. They have the most seats at their disposal and one does not need to risk one’s life to compete with their leading lights. We do not have the stomach for that.
We do not beg for votes. We demand conviction, devotion, passion! A vote is only a tool for us as well as for you. We will march into the marble halls of parliament, bringing with us the revolutionary will of the broad masses from which we came, called by fate and forming fate. We do not want to join this pile of manure. We are coming to shovel it out.
Do not believe that parliament is our goal. We have shown the enemy our nature from the podiums of our mass meetings and in the enormous demonstrations of our brown army. We will show it as well in the leaden atmosphere of parliament.
We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we.
You are not among your friends any longer! You will not enjoy having us among you!
The source: “Mich willst du wählen?” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 74-76.
And You Really Want to Vote for Me?
by Joseph Goebbels
A citizen second class, with four convictions and eight pending cases? What a dreamer!
In an essay I wrote that each National Socialist should obey the states attorney “when there isn’t any way around it,” regardless of whether it was right or wrong. For that a court in Elberfeld fined me a hundred marks for inciting resistance against the states attorney.
When Hans Hustert, in jail for trying to kill Scheidemann [Chancellor in 1922], had his teeth ruined by lousy prison food, I started a collection so that this fiend could get his teeth fixed. A court in Munich fined me 50 marks for an illegal collection.
As one of my wounded comrades was going to be trephined by the Jewish doctor Levi, I organized a collection to bring this poor worker to a German doctor. A court in Munich fined me 150 marks, once again for an illegal collection.
At a mass meeting of the NSDAP, I suggested keeping an editor of Der Tag under close watch, since he had called a Hitler meeting a monkey house. The filthy fink Carlotto Graetz, who slandered the front soldier Adolf Hitler in the worst ways and tried to connect him with pimps and prostitutes, I called a Jewish pig, in order to force him to bring suit. He didn’t sue, but I got six weeks in prison anyway because of “incitement to violence without result.”
A case is pending against me because I am supposed to have called police chief Dr. Weiss “Isidor,” though his name is Bernhard.
A second case is pending because I caricatured the above named Bernhard Weiss as Nero in Der Angriff, with the caption “Bernhard only plays thankless roles.”
Then there is a third case, because the Angriff printed a cartoon of Bernhard Weiss behind the mask of a donkey, “clearly recognizable,” with the text that “In the state of emergency, any ass can govern.”
A fourth case is pending to force me to say who Orje is [Orje was the star of an Angriff satirical column].
A fifth pending case alleges that I drove over the leg of a poor worker. Now that was a year ago. I’ve never driven a car in my life, and on the day in question wasn’t even in Berlin. But the state’s attorney thinks that the car had the number I A 2637, and I’m just the type to do something like that. My reply that I don’t know how to drive and have never had a license only made the charge more serious.
I informed a red bigwig, who by irrelevant heckling was trying to break up a meeting, that he was at a NSDAP meeting, and that if he didn’t shut up we would forgive the S.A. if, under the law, they threw him out. That led to a sixth pending case, for “incitement to violence.”
Then I am supposed to have said that the [Weimar] Republic is only a junk shop, in which the bidders, auctioneers, and politicians bitched. That led to the seventh case, for “endangering the Republic.”
The eighth case resulted because I said the day would come when the goal-conscious, decisive minority would march against this state of cowardly majorities, to put an end by force to usury and exploitation. This one was for “attempted treason.” (! !)
As I learn from reliable sources, four new cases are in the works. What they concern I don’t yet know. But that doesn’t make much difference. I only need to open my mouth or use my pen to give a state’s attorney of the Republic a month’s work.
I have never gotten a golden toothpick from Barmat [a Jew involved in a major financial scandal].
I don’t wear a silk bathrobe from him.
During the great inflation I didn’t get any guilders or dollars from him.
I have never trampled on the German people or their honor. But I have always fought those cowards who left our common fatherland in need.
The subway system will not give me a villa costing 120,000 marks in the foreseeable future.
No one has my signed photograph on his desk.
Under the conditions existing since 1918, I therefore have no chance of getting anything done.
And you really want to vote for me?
The source: “Kütemeyer,” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 256-259. The illustration is the book’s dust jacket.
Kütemeyer
by Joseph Goebbels
One day, he walked into the office and asked if there was something he could do. He was unemployed, and he and his wife could barely survive on the dole. He would gladly give his services to the party. He was quiet and shy. He sat down where he was told, saying little at all about his volunteer activity. After four months of diligent labor, the files, which as the result of band and persecutions had fallen into complete chaos, were back in order. He was the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night. About all he said was “good morning” and “good evening.” If I happened to walk into his department, he jumped up, stood straight, shook my hand, and was as nervous as a child.
“He had been a brave soldier at the front during the war. After the war he was a merchant until he was ruined by inflation. He worked on a farm, but lost his position because of his political convictions. He returned to the city, one of the army of three million unneeded German workers.
The night before the Hitler meeting he joined comrades in hanging posters. He was out until dawn, returning dead tired to his apartment. He loyal wife forced him to sleep for three hours. Then he was back to work.
His heart is bursting. His pale, haggard face is flushed with excitement, for tonight he will see and hear his Führer for the first time. At five he reports for box office duty at the Sport Palace. As he leaves the office, he asks a comrade: “I wonder who we will bury next?”
As I inspected things around 6:30, I saw him at the counter. I do not ever recall hearing him laugh before, but now he did. His face beamed with joy. He yelled something to me, but I could not understand him.
At 8:15 the supervisor said: “Kütemeyer, you have not yet heard Hitler. Add things up a minute and get into the hall!” He added the money up. To the penny. 420.40 marks. He got the receipt, then left. He was in the back row, since the hall was filled to overflowing. He stood by the doorway, with tears in his eyes, joining the over 16,000 who rose to sing “Germany, Germany above all, and in time of need more than ever.”
Who can blame him for being reluctant to return to the reality of his everyday life? He engaged in lively discussion for two hours with his comrades. Then he headed home to join his wife, who had left immediately after the meeting.
He was attacked on a street corner. He defended himself. But he was outnumbered 20-1, and they beat him down. His face was smashed into a bloody Ecce Homo, his nose broken, the eyes bloodied, the lips torn. He staggered to a quiet spot on the riverbank, hoping to escape the bloodthirsty mob and perhaps to meet one of his comrades who were also being chased through the streets.
A taxi drove through the rain. Filled with red scoundrels. Grinning, the driver stepped on the gas. He was like a wounded animal. A pale man with a bloody face. Go get him! A few blows to the head with a club rendered him unconscious. Throw him over the bank, into the canal! Is he dead already, or is he dying?
Someone heard a loud cry for help as the taxi sped away. A German was drowning in the cold, cold water. He was only a worker. Who cares? One of three million.
The corpse was found at 6 a.m. They found a party membership card and propaganda leaflet in his pocket. That was all. No money, no dagger, no pistol. Only a piece of paper with Hitler’s name on it. The party official who went to the morgue could hardly identify him, so badly was his face beaten in.
His wife woke at 4 a.m. She thought she heard her husband shout “Mother, mother!” It was the hour that he died.
“Suicide! An accident! Drunk! Drowned!” That is what the newspapers said.
The police talked about a regrettable misstep on the riverbank. A fatally injured man falls over a meter high barrier. A man of the Jewish race is at the head of the police. The deceased is nothing but a German worker.
The hats are off and the flags are lowered! But only for a moment! Tighten the chinstraps, and begin our revenge on the destroyers of our people. Work, comrades, work!
This dead man has a right to demand that of us.
The source: “Deutsche, kauft nur bei Juden!” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 331-333
Germans, Buy only from the Jew!
by Joseph Goebbels
Why? Because the Jew sells cheap, but shoddy merchandise, whereas the German sets a proper price for good merchandise. Because the Jew cheats you, whereas the German treats you fairly and honestly. Because you can buy all sorts of trash from the Jew, but the German sells mostly only quality goods.
The Jew is your blood brother, the German the enemy of your people. The Jew provides for you by the sweat of his brow, the German is a lazy good-for-nothing. The Jew stood alongside you at the front for four years, shoulder to shoulder, and risked his life for Germany’s fame and greatness, but the German skulked about in the rear echelon. The Jew died so that Germany could live. Where can you find a Jew who did not lose everything he had in the war and revolution, and where a German who did not grow rich and arrogant? Isn’t it true that the German nailed Jesus to the cross and the Jew transformed his teaching of love into reality?
Buy only in Jewish department stores. What does the small German merchant matter to you? He should go to Palestine and sell his wares there. He does not belong with us in Germany! We are tired of this constant chattering about dying small businesses. It is so comfortable and cozy in the Jewish department store. Every kind of cheap trash is available. Such palaces are found on every street corner. Their lights shine in the dark night, the Christmas trees sparkle in the show windows, the angels swing over a sea of Kitsch, the children laugh and clap their hands, and the benevolent Jewish merchant stands in the background rubbing his hands with glee. Where can you find such a generous and energetic German merchant? What do you mean by saying that the German also wants to make a living? Why? Who does he think he is? He should go on relief like the rest of us. Why should some Germans have it better than the rest of us? That after all is the right of the Jews in Germany. Why do we have a republic if not to benefit the Jews?
Six hundred small businesses have gone bankrupt due to Jewish department stores this Christmas season in Berlin alone! Are there still that many Germans around? Quiet — by next year there will be fewer. There is not much left to go bankrupt in Germany any longer. That is how it should be. Germany for the Jews! That is what we fought and bled for. We’ll spend our last penny to that end.
Set out the Christmas tree. Daughters of Zion, rejoice! The good Germans are forging their own chains from their hard-earned coins. The Jewish financier will use them to impose eternal slavery on Germans. Who would not want to help advance world Jewry’s great benevolent work? Why do we have a neck, if not to bear a yoke? Germany has been for sale for ten years. Who does not want to help? Does anyone ask if the toy under the Christmas tree came from the Jew Tietz or the German Müller? The Jew will grow fat from the coins you give him, the German will starve. So what? Let the light shine on the Jews, let the Germans dwell in darkness. That is what the Lord of the Jews wants, as does his lackey Finance Minister Hilferding. Property is theft, as long as it does not belong to the Jew. Not a penny for the nobility, everything for the bank and stock exchange and department store swindlers!
Christmas is the festival of love. Why should we not love the poor Jews, even make them fat? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you! When was the Jew not our enemy? When did he not hate and persecute and slander and spit on us? Who would be inhuman enough to demand that we should treat him according to the law he applies to us: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
The child whose birthday we will soon celebrate came into the world to bring love. But Christ the man learned that one cannot always get by with love. When he saw the Jewish moneychangers in the temple, he took a whip and drove them out of the temple.
Germans, buy only from Jews! Let your fellow citizens starve, and go to the Jewish department stores, especially at Christmas. The greater the injustice you do to your own people, the sooner the day will come when a man comes to take up the whip and drive the moneychangers from the temple of our fatherland.
The source: “Der Jude,” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 322-324.
Advice for a Dictator
We oppose the Jews because we affirm the German people. The Jew is our greatest misfortune.
It is not true that we eat Jews for breakfast.
It is true that slowly but surely, he is stealing all that we have.
Things would be different if we behaved as Germans.
Open Letter from Adolf Hitler to the Reich Chancellor
The Politics of Illusion from Matthias Erzberger to Heinrich Brüning
Since as you yourself grant in your speech, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that the economic crisis is at least in part the result of the mistakes of previous governments.
We National Socialists had nothing to do with these governments; in fact we always rejected and fought their mistakes that have finally been recognized.
Political grounds also provide no reason for this attack against the National Socialist movement or me personally. Even if an objective analysis of my opposition had found no justification for our actions, at the very least a sense of political justice — which a statesman cannot lack — would have to conclude that there were other movements and parties within Germany besides the National Socialist Party that at least in part attack the present system and your government very sharply. Although it has a different worldview, the Communist Party, for example, attacks not only the current system, but even the state, indeed the whole order, and with consciously chosen illegal methods.
Under the current crisis of the German people burdened by a new emergency decree, fighting against parties could be justified only, Mr. Reich Chancellor, if you had taken a position against all of those forces that oppose you and your government.
The value of a law is neither in the time it took to develop, nor in its outward length, but rather exclusively in its ultimate intellectual content. The lightning of a genius has always illuminated the world more brightly than a thousand smoking torches of regulations and laws.
I know that before the revolutions of 1848 governments thought that they had the right to act and their peoples had the duty to remain silent. But even in the Germany of that era there was strong agreement that alongside of the right of the government to act was the of the governed to have an opinion. Alongside the duty of the governed to obey a government, there is a duty on the part of government to respond graciously to objections from the governed.
Particularly since the Revolution of 1918, the German people believes that it has the right to criticize, and to criticize openly, since it was maintained that the lack of free speech was one reason for the downfall of the old system.
The constitution of the new Reich, therefore, does not say: All power comes from the government, but rather that all power comes from the people.
But you, Mr. Reich Chancellor, now jealously assert that no one in Germany has the right to act except the government. That necessarily means restrictions on the ability of the opposition to criticize and speak freely.
If today’s Germany had an Oliver Cromwell, a George Washington, or an Otto von Bismarck, at the moment all three would have to be satisfied by informing the nation of their opposition to the current government only through speaking or writing. And even if these three could only speak today, Mr. Reich Chancellor, one surely could not say that the content of their speeches would be worth less that the content of government decrees!
Such an underestimation of the speech does help me to understand the modest intellectual force of recent German rhetoric from official sources, while the frequency of such rhetorical efforts earns my grudging admiration.
Why do government offices keep using an instrument that they seem to think of so little value, or even hold in contempt? That may, however, explain why they do it so poorly.
Success is the only Measure
The government. Mr. Reich Chancellor, can act. It can realize thoughts and ideas through laws. It can prove the correctness of its ideas through deeds. It watches jealously to ensure that no one else asserts this ability. What do we have left to us, Mr. Reich Chancellor, aside from speech if we want to express to the people our opinions about the destructiveness of your plans, about the mistakes at their core, and about the disasters that will result?
One can, of course, used naked police force to deny the opposition the ability to speak and write. That can only be justified, however, if success against the speaker and in favor of the holder of power results not only in successfully banning a meeting or newspaper, but rather in successfully leading a nation.
The correctness of incorrectness of an intellectual message, whether written or spoken, is in the end determined only by the results. Reich Chancellor Bismarck condemned his critics to respectful silence by the proclamation of a New German Reich that earned international respect and had growing domestic prosperity.
Currently, however, the critical speakers, not the governments of the System, have been proven right.
If those in high office see our speaking as disobedient, than save us the talk and give us power!
Mr. Reich Chancellor, we are ready to act at any time.
Have we ever been unwilling to accept responsibility?
*
It is well known, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that you reject the possibility of the National Socialist movement and the national opposition taking over the government. The is not easy to justify.
First, it is untrue that I as leader of the National Socialist movement affirm that the party intends to follow legal methods while my subordinates are of a different opinion.
Disarming decent people has never prevented attacks by less pleasant sorts, and they have never given up their weapons, but rather only decent citizens.
It is a fateful illusion, Mr. Reich Chancellor, to expect that this method will hinder violent acts by communist murderers. The opposite will occur. If you extend the ban on weapons to disarm German households, just as my S.A. is unarmed, Marxist terror will soon move from the streets into homes.
The bandit had never worried about regulations on disarmament. Mr. Reich Chancellor; if you tell him that decent people no longer have weapons at home, you give the bandit license to go into what should be each individual’s castle.
I prophesy, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that this part of the emergency decree will lead to an enormous increase in terror and public insecurity!
Mr. Reich Chancellor, if one considers the last emergency decree, one cannot escape the depressing conviction that it will hold the German people captive to the illusions of the past thirteen years. Realizing that, one cannot escape the obligation to speak.
The National Socialist movement is convinced, more than any other movement, that that a people that wishes to escape its miserable situation can do so only if it is ready to make heavy sacrifices. It considers these sacrifices to be useful and justified only if they are combined with a new faith. The present government has done everything possible psychologically to make our crisis of confidence eternal. It entirely lacks the basic psychological understanding that a system may continue to exist under the constitution because of the fears of the guilty parties, but has long since lost the support of the people. One cannot govern for two years, piling one disappointment upon another, and appeal in the third year to the same faithful trust that one had at the beginning. The System press, of course, will greet each new emergency decree with loud approval, just as paid applauders in the theatre make the most noise for the most miserable performances. They just don’t impress the audience. The people wants no part it any longer. Yet there is no way out that is not based on the faithful trust of the masses. The splintering of our national body will not be alleviated by attempting to bring together conflicting worldviews by laws. The part of the German people that still believes in Marxism shrinks every day; the part that believes in us grows every day. No one believes in the center.
Faith in Germany!
Since all of today’s government measures lack a deep connection to the spirit of a worldview, they also lack the psychological force and thereby the elan that is the fundamental requirement for laws to be effective. One cannot call on “civic discipline” forever, one cannot always seek refuge in legal paragraphs. No, one day the demands of the real lawgivers must become the demands of the nation.
The nation, however, will follow such a demand only if it is motivated by a clear and unified will. Doctrinaire calls and formal demands for calm, peace, and order will not over the long term replace a spirit of inner unity. The breakdown of such a spirit, however, can never be alleviated by an emergency decree, but rather only through final victory over the political-moral decay that today dominates Germany.
In your speech, Mr. Reich Chancellor, you attempted to attack the National Socialist movement, thereby hindering our victory. The practical results, together with your emergency decree to “alleviate” our crisis, will in the end only help to bring about the real salvation of the German nation.
Although that was not the intention, this emergency decree will help my party to victory, and therefore put an end to the illusions of the present System.
Berlin, 13 December 1931
German workers
That is how the lying socialist party hacks fight capitalism! They take help wherever they find it!
The campaign of lies against the evil Nazis takes enormous sums of cash.
Lie: War!
For years, the Red traitors have said that National Socialism means war, and Jewish scribblers work feverishly to make nervous souls anxious with these fairy tales.
Each motorcycle, or the owner of one, is registered and has accepted messenger duties.
Bicycle companies have been organized.
All members are organized in specific groups. All those who know how to use hand grenades are organized in one group, those with military experience with machine guns in another, etc.
5. Nearly everyone (about 60 men who attended the last meeting) enthusiastically and voluntarily said that they were ready for ‘the life and death battle.’
6. All covered trucks from consumer cooperatives, production facilities, and other factories and concerns where the Reichsbanner is in the majority have been registered and fit into the big ‘plan.’
In June 1929, before the Young Plan, Germany had 720,000 unemployed.
Today, after two years of the Young Plan, the unemployment rate is far above 6 million.
It has increased by almost a factor of ten in 2 1/2 years.
Paragraph 1
The statement in Paragraph 17 of the Bank Law, under which that part of the Reich bank notes in circulation which are backed by hard German money, Reich notes, or gold in bars of foreign coins, may not fall below a third, is suspended until 31 December 1923.
Paragraph 2
This law takes effect on the day following publication.
Berlin, 9 May 1921. The Reich President: signed, Ebert
The shamelessness with which the Red sensationalist newspapers carry on their campaign of lies is proven to us by an issue of Vorwärts dated 15 October 1931. Under the question “Do you want that again?” Vorwärts printed a picture of an old 500 million mark note from the inflation period. However, good old honest Vorwärts was rather careless. The 500 million mark note was printed on 1 September 1923, at which point the Reich Minister of Finance was the Social Democrat Hilferding!
Wherever one looks, lies and slander!
Why does the SPD slander the Nazis as politicians of catastrophe?
To divert the masses from its own outrageous policies of deceiving the people and betraying the workers, which have led the German people into the greatest catastrophe in generations. The Red party hacks are using lies and slander against the awakening German people, united in the NSDAP. Fear and a guilty conscience drives them to one new lie after another. With the large sums of money that the Red sensationalist newspapers get from Jewish high finance, they are conducting a huge propaganda campaign.
As the Mitteilungsblatt der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Hessen revealed in December 1930, in the 4th quarter of 1930, after the September election, the SPD party leadership distributed
That was seven years ago.
And today?
Black-Red Scoundrels
The Democrats in 1925
The democratic Jewish press, of course, did not hold back in piling filth nd insults on an honorable old officer. A few examples of the work of those Galician press reptiles:
Jews for Hindenburg
19 April 1925
“For black marketers to loaf about
And for patriots to starve,
To unite the whole world again
Against one foe,
To make the rich grow richer
And for children to die of hunger,
All that you can count on —
Just vote for Hindenburg!”
And seven years later?
This riff-raff fought Hindenburg with French cash.
And now?
The Reason behind the Black-Red Coalition
The reason that the Black-Red coalition supporting Hindenburg’s re-election is the absolute and total bankruptcy, the obvious failures of the System parties, in every area of foreign and domestic policy.
With his signature, Hindenburg has supported the Young Plan that destroyed the German economy, and supported the reparations-paying policies of the System parties.
The top picture shows “a meeting in the Reichstag restaurant,” the bottom a disabled war veteran.
Hindenburg approved and signed Reich Chancellor Brüning’s emergency decrees that reduced the support of German workers to the barest minimum, and plunged disabled war veterans into the bitterest poverty and misery.
Hindenburg tolerated and approved the crippling of the German freedom movement through political emergency decrees that eliminated freedom of the press and opinion.
Hindenburg banned old soldiers and his former comrades from wearing their honorable brown and field-gray uniforms, which particularly affected the national freedom movement.
Hindenburg tolerated and protected the terror and slander of Marxist government offices against the men who, despite hatred and bloody terror, made his election possible seven years ago.
As long as there are still millions of people in Germany who hold to the Marxist insanity of class struggle, the German people will be unable to find its way to unity.
As long as there are governments in Germany that tolerate the treasonous and subversive activities of Bolshevists in Moscow’s pay, there is no possibility of a united German people.
As long as Germany lacks a people, all the talk of unity is in vain.
One can never build a united people by talking about unity.
A united people can only be built though action. Through eliminating the doctrine of class struggle and excluding those who preach it.
A united German people can only develop in a National Socialist state of national honor and social justice.
And only in a National Socialist state characterized by a people’s community can that which we all long for develop:
a new German people!
Everything else is empty talk,
is an illusion!!
The Great Danger
The great danger is that in all this talk about unity, the real danger that threatens the German people in Bolshevism, is underestimated. As the result of the great betrayal of the workers by Social Democratic party hacks, and the total failure of the System, Bolshevism has become a grave danger to the future of the German people.
Led by Jewish puppet-masters and cunning journalists, the KPD has lured some of the workers betrayed by the SPD with its promises. The KPD uses its boundless agitation against any kind or ordered state to turn the commune of its supporters into enemies of the state. Using insane agitation of hatred and murder, the KPD’s leadership wants to create a murderous atmosphere that makes any discussion between National Socialists and Communists impossible. They want to prevent their supporters from learning the truth about Communism and its leaders.
The System tolerates communist rabble-rousing against the state, just as it tolerates murderous communist rabble-rousing against National Socialists.
The System alone bears the guilt for the rise of the Bolshevist danger, for its toleration has paved the way for communism
As long as such an intolerable situation exists in Germany, all the talk about unity is nothing but a dangerous illusion. If this System remains in control the bolshevist danger will continue to grow enormously, until one day catastrophe will fall on Germany. It will be a catastrophe of incredible scope.
Bolshevism in Germany means nothing other than
world war!
Even worse, a world war
on German soil!
That is no empty threat to scare good, prosperous citizens, but rather a grave danger that threatens Germany’s ruination.
One need only recall Germany’s current situation.
Germany is open on all sites, sitting defenseless in the center of Europe. Three large national states surround Germany, bound together by military treaties:
France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia
This world war would take place on German soil. Quite simply, a Bolshevist Germany is the only state that would have no means to defend itself against the invasion of foreign armies.
Bolshevism in Germany and a world war on German soil. World war with all the most modern methods — that would mean the total destruction of Germany, after which there would
no longer be a German people!
It would mean chaos, destruction, defeat!
One cannot eliminate this threatening danger with empty words about the necessity of unity. The danger can be combated only by the National Socialist freedom movement.
This danger can be eliminated only be creating a new,
Achieving freedom for the German people,
Achieving its proper place among the peoples,
Hitler, of course, volunteered immediately at the beginning of the war and served in the Bavarian army from the start to the finish. Since he was in Munich at the time, this required the permission of the King of Bavaria. His service at the front was interrupted only by two wounds.
“Hitler — A Shirker”
The party that, along with the USPD that had again joined its ranks, just after the revolution proclaimed it an honor to have been a shirker, or even a deserter, invented the lie shortly before the Reich presidential election that Hitler had shirked his duty. At Fournes in particular, he had always been “far from the action.” A temporary ban was imposed on that SPD pamphlet. In the subsequent court proceeding, the judge had to rule that the claim was untrue, based on an impressive number of sworn statements by witnesses, either on paper or directly before the court.
Here are excerpts from the sworn statements:
“... I want to stress that, when during the attack on the axe-shaped piece of forest (later called the Bavarian Forest), I left the cover of the forest near Wytschaete to better observe the attack, Hitler and another courier from the regimental staff, the volunteer Bachmann, placed themselves in front of me to protect me from machine gun fire with their own bodes.”
Signed: Engelhardt, Major General (retired), former commander of the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16 (List).
“... I can only give former Corporal Hitler the greatest praise for his extraordinary accomplishments. Fournes was a village behind the regiment’s battle line. It served as a recovery area for battalion relieved from the front, and also served as the seat of the regimental staff during calmer periods. The village was within the danger zone, and was frequently under rather heavy fire. During battle, the regimental headquarters was moved about 3/4 of an hour forward to Fournelles, and orders had to be carried to the front line. The path was often under enemy machine gun and artillery fire. I can never remember a single time when Hitler was absent from his post. Hitler may wear the medals he earned with pride...”
Signed: Satny, Colonel (retired), former commander of the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16 (List).
“Mr. Hitler, as corporal, was a courier for the regimental staff, and was not only always willing to carry out hard tasks, but did so with distinction. I stress that the List Regiment, as might be expected from its history, was at the toughest parts of the front, fighting in frequent major battles...”
Signed: Baligand, Colonel (retired), last commander of the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16 (List).
“... At particularly dangerous points I often was asked for volunteers, and at such times Hitler regularly volunteered, and without hesitation...”
Signed: Bruno Horn, Lieutenant with the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16 (List).
“... Hitler never hesitated in the least in carrying out even the most difficult order, and very often took on the most dangerous duties for his comrades.
Couriers for the regimental staff had to be among the most reliable people, because serving as a regimental courier during battles and skirmishes required iron nerves and a cool head. Hitler always did his duty, and even after his severe thigh wound, and volunteered to be sent back to his regiment from the reserve battalion immediately after his release from the hospital...”
Signed: Max Amann, former sergeant with the the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16 (List).
“... I often met Corporal Adolf Hitler as he served as courier to and from the front. Anyone who understands the duties of a courier — and any soldier who has served at the front does — knows what it means, day after day and night after night to move through artillery fire and machine gun fire from the rear...”
Signed: Joseph Lohr, officer candidate with the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16 (List).
“... It is true that Hitler was nearly blinded by a courier mission during a heavy gas attack, even though he was wearing a gas mask...”
Signed: Jakob Weiß, NCO with the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16 (List).
“... Hitler received the Iron Cross, First Class, during the spring or summer of 1918 for his outstanding service as a courier during the great offensive of 1918, an in particular for his personal capture of a French officer and about 15 men, whom he suddenly encountered during a mission, and as a result of his quick thinking and decisive action, captured.
Hitler was seen by his fellow couriers, and many others in the regiment, as one of the best and bravest soldiers.”
Signed: Ernst Schmidt, with the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16 (List) from November 1914 until October 1918.
The most sensational moment of the trial came during the testimony of Hitler’s regimental comrade Michel Schlehuber, a Social Democrat and union member for 35 years, who was called as a witness by the opposing side:
“I have known Hitler since the departure for the front of the Bavarian R.-F.-R. 16. I came to know Hitler as a good soldier and faultless comrade. I never saw Hitler attempt to avoid any duty or danger.
I was part of the division from first to last, and never heard anything then or afterwards bad about Hitler. I was astonished when I later read unfavorable things about Hitler’s service as a soldier in the newspapers.
I disagree entirely with Hitler on political matters, and give this testimony only because I highly respect Hitler as a war comrade.”
Signed: Michael Schlehuber
“Hitler Cannot Keep His Promises!”
Hitler promises nothing, and has never promised anything.He has begun a number of his speeches by saying that he is not in the happy position of the speakers of other parties who, for example, speak only to farmers, and can therefore promise higher prices for their products, or only to city-dwellers, and therefore promise lower food prices, or promise higher pay to civil servants, or higher pay to workers, or lower wages to employers, or tax reductions to everyone. He speaks in his meetings to those of all classes and occupations of the German people, and he knows that promises made by others cannot be kept, since they contradict each other. As he said: “I plan only one thing for the new state: work, work, and more work, for we have become a poor people! However, everyone who wants to work should be able to work, and each should know why he is working — he should benefit from the results of his labor.”
Hitler Will Make All Working Women Unemployed!”
This has been a particularly effective election lie, based on the falsification of a statement by a National Socialist speaker. Of course Hitler does not intend to suddenly throw working women onto the street. He knows that, from an economic standpoint, it makes no difference whether several million more men or several million more women are unemployed. He knows that it would harm the economy and state apparatus if trained, experienced women, who may be better qualified than men, suddenly were laid off. He knows that, under current economic conditions, men cannot suddenly take care of women who were formerly employed. He knows that families with many children, or injured war veterans receiving a starvation pension, cannot do without the usually small income of the woman, if they are not to join the enormous number of people today who commit suicide as a last resort.
Hitler will not play around with measures like the 4-pfenning emergency decree [In December 1931, the Brüning government decided to issue a four pfennig coin to encourage lower prices. It did not go over well.], but rather will attack the root of the problem.That means bringing the army of the unemployed, and each individual, back into the productive process.
“Hitler is Just a Dilettante”
That is said by the same citizens, and the same “national” newspapers who once saw the former saddle-maker Friedrich Ebert as a worthy president of the German Reich, and who could not say enough about his “significance as a statesman.”And by the same ones who held Hindenburg for a great genius able to master all areas, even though he himself said in his memoirs that he had never read a book that was not on military matters.
A former imperial ambassador, certainly no political novice, said this about Hitler:
“I had two opportunities to speak for a long time with Hitler. I will never be able to forget these conversations.
I hold Hitler to be a political thinker of extraordinary stature. He naturally understands things that require hard work for others.
His fine sense of foreign policy is surprising, which allows him to make the right decision instinctively...”
Burg Rotenburg, Wieslock-Land, Baden, 10 March 1932.
Signed: Franz von Reichenau, Imperial Ambassador (retired), Privy Councilor
One might ask who showed the greater political wisdom: Hindenburg, who when he signed the Young Plan said that it would benefit Germany in every way, or Hitler, who rejected the plan and predicted precisely the consequences it would have for Germany. Or the abilities shown by an entirely unknown man, without resources, in the face of resistance and persecution, who took a group of seven men and made it into the best-organized political movement in Germany, which today has over 11 million supporters, nearly a third of all voting Germans, while the Hindenburg Front includes 16 (!) parties attempting to block Hitler’s victory.
It might also be noted the Italian bourgeoisie once had equally “serious reservations” about the “dilettante” Mussolini. Mussolini had this to say during the 1930 Reichstag election: “Hitler is a great leader, a great organizer.”’
The accomplishments of the National Socialist government were recognized by those who had previously distrusted National Socialist governments. The best proof of that is the unprecedented increase in votes for National Socialism in areas with National Socialist governments.
Since the National Socialists took over the government in Coburg, its votes increased from 5143(already the absolute majority)to 8,345, in Thuringia from 90,236 to 333,000, in Braunschweig from 67,900 to 124,360.
That is the answer of voters who had the opportunity to observe and evaluate National Socialist governments.
Does Hitler Have Enough Trained People to Fill All the Important Positions?
Hitler does not intend to fill all positions with members of his own party.He has often said — and to parties and organizations that want to make their “claims” — that he will use all leading experts, men who really understand their fields, regardless of the party to which they belong. Men who have proved themselves will stay in their positions.
Hitler does not want to subject the German people to further experiments. We have had enough of the experiments of the Hindenburg parties, which brought us inflation, poverty, and economic collapse!
Historical Overview
Hitler is released on 20 December.
At the end of 1931, the Hitler movement has 806,000 members, a month later 862,000, a month after that 920,000. By the day of the election, it will probably have about a million members, and countless millions of voters.
The once poor worker without any means, and the later German front soldier, has build the largest political movement Germany has ever had in just 13 years. The opponents have no methods to use against this man any longer except lies and slanders! Just as this man has always won in the past, despite all the lies, he will win the victory this time, too!
For who else is there in Germany who has built anything similar from nothing, and in the face of the resistance of the other parties, of high finance, of capital, of the press, of public opinion, of the bureaucracy, of lies, terror, and bloody persecution?
This person is no child of patronage, but rather one who from his boyhood, in the best sense of the word, has been a self-made man!
The source: Wirtschaftliches Sofortprogramm der N.S.D.A.P. (Munich: Eher Verlag, 1932).
Unemployment causes poverty, employment creates prosperity.
Just as the individual sinks into poverty when he no longer has a job, so also must a whole people sink into poverty when it does not use its productive strength and tolerates a political-economic system that hinders people’s comrades who are willing and able to work to support themselves.
Capital does not create jobs, but rather jobs create capital.
The “brilliant” capitalist economists maintain that we cannot work because we lack the means. That is nonsense. The less we work, the less must be our means, and the greater the unproductive waste and destruction of our national resources. The more we work, the greater our capital, and therefore the greater the results of our labor.
Creating jobs requires refocusing the German economy on the domestic market.
The results of previous economic policy have proven that all the efforts to increase our exports resulted not in increased jobs, but only in increased unemployment. We therefore have to seek increased sales where they are to be found, in the domestic market. Therefore, we need to increase protection for domestic production (see section F 1), since otherwise the dumping prices of foreign competitors will make selling our own products on the domestic market impossible.
Focusing on the domestic market requires an increase in agricultural production.
Although our industrial production capacity is far greater than necessary to meet German demand, our agriculture today is not in a position to produce what the German people needs. Within a few years, however, German soil can be improved and its cultivation intensified so that Germany can be independent of foreign foodstuffs (see Section C).
Benefits and costs of the work
The increase in production in a-e above totals around 2 billion marks.
The costs are estimated at about 8.5 billion marks, excluding land redistribution costs, by the German Society for Land Reclamation. Assuming an additional 1.5 billion marks for land redistribution, dams, and dikes, total costs would be about 10 billion marks, resulting in an annual increase in productivity of at least two billion marks.
D. Worker Housing
Foreign trade
The current situation
Since the middle of last year, foreign countries began systematically to strangle German exports. The result has been a decline in German exports of about 35%, more than a third, in the first four months of 1932 as against the previous year, while German imports declined about 8% during the same period. This attack by foreign nations on the German economy has worsened our condition significantly. It is time to take defensive measures to rescue our economy.
Eliminating corruption
Civil servants may not participate in any way in companies with which their offices have business relations.
Doctors may have no connections to pharmaceutical factories and other concerns that manufacture medications or health products.
The death penalty for black marketers and profiteers.
I. Agriculture
Settling the East
For reasons of both population and national need, we require the fastest possible program of settlements in the East.
Goal: Establishing independent German agriculture in the threatened East.
Requirements: Fundamental improvements in agriculture in general, multiple years of taxation exemption for the settlers, cheap loans and the creation of markets by improving transportation routes, and making them less expensive.
K. Industry
Easier financing
Companies that have contracts must be guaranteed the necessary credit to carry out those contracts. See section E 2.
L. Craftsmen, commerce, and retail
Department stores and consumer societies
Immediate help is necessary. New department stores, low-priced shops, and chain stores may not be opened. The reorganization of the entire department store system following the National Socialist party program is essential. Tax preferences for user groups (consumer societies) are to be eliminated.
Cooperatives
All cooperatives that support the independent middle class will be protected and encouraged. Cooperatives that endanger the independent middle class will be combated through taxation and other means.
Publicly-owned concerns
Publicly-owned concerns are to be reduced to the absolute minimum necessary. Such concerns will be prohibited immediately from accept private orders, unless there is a compelling public interest or some other requirement (See other assistance measures under the lowering of interest, bank controls, etc.)
Social insurance
National Socialism will do all it can to maintain the social insurance system, which has been driven to collapse by the present System. The only way to rescue social insurance is by creating jobs.
Care of the elderly
We will make immediate preparations to carry out point 15 of the party platform: “We demand a generous expansion of support for the aged.”
Paying of new pensions, of course, can happen only after the newly insured have made contributions over a number of years. Maintenance of benefits for those injured by war and for miners is to be guaranteed.
Modern Political Propaganda
Communism with the Mask Off
Article 1
Everything is possible in this war, save that we capitulate and bow to the power of the enemy. Anyone who speaks or even thinks in such a way is a cowardly traitor, and must be expelled in disgrace and shame from the fighting and working German community.
Article 2
We are fighting for our lives. If we win, we will be able to repair the damage and the pain this war has caused in a relatively short time by applying our full strength. If we lose, it will mean the end of our nation and our history.
Article 3
This war is a defensive war. It was forced upon us by our enemies, who wish to destroy the possibility of life and growth for our nation. If they succeed, our present generation will have lost everything that countless German generations have won over millennia of struggle by hard work and sacrifice. Our nation’s history will end in shame and disgrace.
Article 4
This war brings countless dangers and risks, as does any war. Each must remember that every danger and risk can be overcome if a great nation like Germany with a capable and determined leadership uses all its strength and every resource to deal with it.
Article 5
We will certainly win this war if all Germans think of the community and act as do the best sons of our people. But if all ignored the community, as do the lazy, the cowardly, and the hesitant, we would have long since lost it. The war will be won or lost according to the strength of our community.
Article 6
Each German proves his community sense by conscientiously fulfilling his duties to the nation, just as he makes a claim on the community. Even in times of peace, each is dependent on the help and support of the community, and must therefore also be willing to share its burdens and duties. How much more is that true during war!
Article 7
Any advice from the enemy is an attack on our war morale. The enemy wants to win as much as we do. Everything he says and does is intended to lead us astray and deceive us. He who listens to the enemy, no matter how sanctimonious the reasons he may give, puts his people in the gravest danger. Ignorance may not protect him from the penalty he deserves.
Article 8
Silence is an important command from the war leadership. Few know the war’s secrets. These are weapons in our nation’s struggle for existence, and may not be revealed to the enemy. It would be unfair and destructive of the general welfare to spread rumors that force the government to speak about matters important or even decisive in the war. This can only help the enemy and harm our nation.
Article 11
An old trick of warfare is to split a people from its government, leaving it leaderless and therefore defenseless. This is the only trick with which the enemy could defeat us. Anyone who falls prey to the enemy’s trick is either stupid or a traitor. He endangers the victory for which our soldiers risk their lives, and for which our heroes have died. He stabs the fighting front in the back. No penalty is too severe for him.
Article 12
Beware of those seemingly intelligent people who seek to win your confidence with clever words, then undermine your confidence with a flood of phrases and rumors. Listen carefully to what they say, and you will soon see that they are cowardly, not intelligent. They may know better, but they cannot do better. Were they the latter, instead of criticizing they would be filling an important position at home or at the front, contributing by their actions to speeding our victory.
Article 13
He who speaks about the war and its prospects should always speak as if the enemy were listening. In many cases, he actually is. Each thoughtless word from our side gives him new hope and courage, and therefore prolongs the war. Annoyance or anger about this or that inconvenience of the war sometimes has justification, but in view of the great battle we stand in the midst of, most problems are of minor significance,
Article 14
We are helping those who need it as much as possible. If real help is impossible during the war, those affected should know that it will come after victory. Victory is the prerequisite for a national reconstruction that will repair all the damage of the war. The more one sacrifices for the war, the more fanatically one believes in victory. Therefore we must work and fight. That alone gives sacrifices, even the hardest ones, their meaning.
Article 15
Each must, therefore, follow to the letter all the laws and regulations related to the war. Who violates them from neglect or forgetfulness does just as much damage as if he did so intentionally. Each must take the war with the seriousness it deserves.
Article 16
Anything grows dull with time, even the impact of the war. We must therefore constantly guard against becoming lackadaisical in fulfilling our war duties. Our behavior today will be admired in a few decades by our children and grandchildren. They will not experience the spiritual pain that this long war has brought us. Rather, they will see the war only as the greatest heroic event in the history of our nation. Do not forget that in the midst of the everyday problems of the war.
Article 17
Everything comes to an end eventually, even war. We must be sure that its end is a happy one. We can best ensure that by remaining calm and steadfast. The nation with the most of these virtues will win.
Article 18
Nothing is more stupid than to believe that the leadership has it better than the people. The individual may have a heavy material burden to carry. But the heaviest burden is that of responsibility, with its never-ending cares. One should not be unfair and should not make unreasonable judgments about matters he does not understand.
Article 21
The soldier dies at the front while fulfilling his duty. He has the right to demand that those at home who sabotage or harm the war effort receive the death penalty. The front has the right to be supported by high morale at home. Anyone whose actions at home rob the front of this assurance deserves a harsh penalty. The soldier at the front demands it.
Article 22
Whether at home or at the front, discipline is the most important virtue. We can master the war’s enormous problems only through iron resolve. A weakness in discipline weakens morale and violates all the laws of war. Any loosening of our people’s unity in war is a crime against the community. Our people’s greatest chance of victory is in firm resolve and hard determination.
Article 23
No one has the right to complain about limitations on his personal freedom caused by the war. What significance do these have in view of the fact that countless men, even woman and children, have died!
Article 24
The war demands our full devotion for itself and its duties. All that still remains from can only be viewed as a gift subject to recall. We must always realize that sooner or later we may have to give it up. We are fighting this war not to maintain, but to restore peace. In war more than ever, one must use what one is defending.
Article 25
Nothing is too valuable to be sacrificed for freedom. All we possess we won as a free people. Without our freedom, it would have no purpose, meaning or endurance. It is better for a nation to be impoverished but free rather than to seem prosperous, but end a war as slaves. A free people can rebuild everything it lost in defending its freedom. An enslaved people will lose that which survived the war, and also the ability to gain it back again.
Article 26
The duty of the individual during war extends to sacrificing his life for the life of his nation. In view of such great and final sacrifice, surely one must demand that each be ready to give up his goods and property if that is necessary for victory and the security of his nation! Only such willingness to sacrifice transforms a collection of individuals into a people, and in a higher sense, a nation.
Article 27
The goal of our government and military leadership is a German nation that can live freely in all important areas. Our generation must secure this through battle and hard work. It cannot be postponed until later. Either we do it, or it will never be done.
Article 28
Our generation has not only particular burdens, but also particular honor. If we win, and we can and must win, we will be the most famous generation in the history of Germany. If we lose, our names will be cursed through the centuries by the generations that must bear the frightful cost of our failure.
– Êîíåö ðàáîòû –
Èñïîëüçóåìûå òåãè: Wir, fordern, der, Angriff, Aufs, tze, aus, der, Kampfzeit0.077
Åñëè Âàì íóæíî äîïîëíèòåëüíûé ìàòåðèàë íà ýòó òåìó, èëè Âû íå íàøëè òî, ÷òî èñêàëè, ðåêîìåíäóåì âîñïîëüçîâàòüñÿ ïîèñêîì ïî íàøåé áàçå ðàáîò: Wir fordern,” Der Angriff, Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit
Åñëè ýòîò ìàòåðèàë îêàçàëñÿ ïîëåçíûì äëÿ Âàñ, Âû ìîæåòå ñîõðàíèòü åãî íà ñâîþ ñòðàíè÷êó â ñîöèàëüíûõ ñåòÿõ:
Òâèòíóòü |
Íîâîñòè è èíôî äëÿ ñòóäåíòîâ