Immortal German Culture

by Joseph Goebbels

Were one to imagine Western culture without its contributions from Germany and Italy, much would be missing. As obvious as this may be, one has to repeat it now and again to give a short but persuasive reply to the enemy’s arrogant talk. They love to pretend to be the protectors and defenders of an art and culture that they themselves have not created, or to which they made at best a modest contribution that could vanish without much harm to the cultural edifice. The art treasures they possess were mostly stolen by their armies in Europe or the rest of the world. They have hardly any cultural achievements of their own, and those that they do have stem from the spiritual consciousness of that part of the world that they today are trying to destroy. Cities such as Nuremberg and Munich or Florence and Venice contain more eternal manifestations of Western culture than the entire North American continent. What musicians do the English have to compare with Beethoven or Richard Wagner, and what artists can the Americans present to match Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci? They talk of human culture. We have it, and remain today its guardians, wardens, and protectors.

We have to remember that to properly understand and appreciate the gigantic struggle the Axis powers are engaged in. We are fighting for the basic values that Europe has created in its thousands of years of history. Even more, we are fighting for the very source of these values, both in the past and for the future. The very roots of Europe are threatened. The nations that made the greatest contribution to the West are fighting for their material and spiritual existence. Were they to surrender, our continent would lose everything. The very roots of its growth, that have borne so much fruit over two millennia, would be cut off.

It is stupid, and easy to refute, when our enemies maintain that they are fighting only the present leadership of the Axis powers, not their peoples. That is what they have always said, but forgotten when the time came to act, as for example in 1918 and 1919. Second, these regimes are the natural expression of their peoples’ modern political thinking. They have no other reasonable form of government. The claim that their autocratic structure takes the life from art, even makes its further progress impossible, is easily refuted both theoretically and practically. These regimes are not nearly as autocratic as they are accused of being. They actually have stronger democratic traits than the traditional democracies, and besides the history of culture shows that everywhere and at every time art does not ask under which political system it lives. Churches and secular buildings were built over the centuries by tyrannical popes and kings. The best of Europe’s paintings come from ages filled with the noise of the battlefield. Demonic noble families promoted the highest flowering of the visual arts, while their citizens lived in fear.

Even ignoring the past, the present refutes the stupid and base claims our enemies use to conceal their actions, which oppose or destroy culture. It is a rape of sound understanding to justify the crazed attacks of English or American terror planes on German or Italian cities on cultural grounds. German or Italian cultural centers that were built over centuries are reduced to soot and ashes in a brief hour. This is far more than an attempt to terrorize our population, much less to attack our armaments production. This is evidence of an historical inferiority complex that wants to destroy what the enemy is incapable of producing himself, and has never created in the past. European humanity must blush in shame that a 20-year-old American, Canadian, or Australian terror flyer can destroy a painting by Albrecht Dürer or Titian, that he can destroy the work of the most honored names in history, though he and millions of his countrymen have not even heard of them. There can be no apology for such behavior. It is a cold, cynical, calculating attack by the spoiled child of Europe. These upstarts from the New World turn against the Old World because it is richer in soul and spirit. Its eternal artistic accomplishments stand against skyscrapers, cars, and refrigerators.

Is it not interesting that the English leadership has destroyed dozens of German theaters, while England itself does not have even a single serious theater? And the Americans are not even worth mentioning. They lay waste to Europe’s cities and its cultural landmarks, since there is nothing to compare them to in Chicago or San Francisco. Their bombing terror will destroy that part of European art and culture that they cannot buy.

We know what they are up to. This war is about more than our daily bread, our living space, and our peace. More than ever before we have to defend our most valuable possessions, the things that make life worth living, without which human life is meaningless, like the lives of our enemies from the steppes of the east.

War is indeed a great destroyer, but it also contains constructive elements that suddenly appear in the midst of its destructive work. It robs us of our senses, yet also gives them back. Never before have our continent’s people been able to see so clearly where Europe stands and what we must do. Times of comfortable peace may make the lure of material comfort seem all too satisfying. War wipes it all away. It drives away dullness and indifference, and returns us to the roots and sources of our strength, teaching that man does not live by bread alone. Never have the German people had such a drive toward intellectual and spiritual things as they do today. I am not speaking of the less pleasant manifestations of war, which are always there. But one should look to our theaters, concert halls, museums, and art exhibitions. Day and night, summer and winter, tens and hundreds of thousands of Germans sit or stand there astonished at so much beauty. We have become richer, more fulfilled, and better as a result of the war.

It would be a mistake to explain this development exclusively on material grounds. The German people are not spending their money on art because there is no other way to spend it, as is sometimes said. The path to art is the path to their hearts. The present with its pain and misery drive us to the consoling certainties of our people, and where are they more visible than in art? We see in it the answer to the destructive fury of our enemies. We learn today to appreciate what they cannot understand, since it is threatened. It is of no importance if this occasionally occurs in primitive ways, or as some know-it-alls call it, Kitsch. Over time things will work themselves out. We were all beginners once, and what pleased us as children often does not please us once we are mature. A large part of our people still is in its childhood years in this regard, which leaves room for systematic education and development. Despite all our rich and glorious past, we are a people at its beginning. Everything is open before us. We need only to reach out.

It would be more than serious if today’s artists did not want to understand that. Never have they had a more eager public than they have today. One must recall the past to know what that means. New pictures, sculptures, plays, novels, symphonies, and operas are no longer of interest only to intellectual critics in the newspapers, as was once often the case. Today they must withstand the eye and ear of the people. Even more, they have to endure comparison with the great works of the past, which the popular consciousness today has begun to understand, and which provide the standards for the new fans of art. Goethe’s maxim is truer today than it ever was: artists must create, not talk. The age offers each the opportunity to test his talents. In contrast to the past, each has an equal chance. No one can complain that he had no chance to speak, as long as he has something to say. Let him reach for the pen, the brush, the chisel, and the compass and speak with the instruments of his art and his calling to an age that is waiting for enlightenment.

It is almost a miracle that in the midst of this gigantic battle, art is able to exist, almost untouched by the storms of our people’s gigantic and fateful struggle. Were any proof needed of National Socialism’s support for the arts, this is that proof. That does not mean that artists can ignore what is going on around them. There may be an artist here or there who believes that since his art does not concern the war, the elementary laws of war have no application to him. He must be reminded of his duty, perhaps rather firmly. His work, even if not related to the war, is not an end in itself. He is still working for his people, which is enduring the heaviest burdens and deepest sorrows. It has a right to expect the artist to recognize that, particularly since he enjoys creative freedom in the mist of war that he never had in times of normal and unmolested peace.

In this fourth year of the war, I have the honor to open in the Führer’s name the 7th Great German Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich.

The beautiful and impressive exhibition is not independent of its age. Its form is influenced by it. It contributes to the war at the front. Our artists here give the best evidence of their energy and their creative fanaticism.

As in the past war years, the Führer cannot be with us. But his spirit is even more with us. This cultural monument, the building, and the exhibition, are his work. It was built in peace, maintained and expanded in war, and points to a happy and blessed peace. Its splendor today gives us a sign of what will be when the victory comes, in which we believe more today than ever before.

I greet the Führer in this great age, of which he is the creator. The scaffolding is still there and only the expert can see what its creator has in mind. But we can all believe in it.

We do that with all the strength of our hearts.

 

The Führer as a Speaker

by Dr. Joseph Goebbels

There are two fundamentally different kinds of speakers: those who use reasoning, and those who speak from the heart. They reach two different sorts of people, those who understand through reason, and those who understand through the heart. Speakers who aim for the reason are generally found in parliaments, those who speak from the heart speak to the people.

The speaker who uses reason, if he is to be effective, must command a wide range of statistical and factual material. He must be a master of dialectic as the pianist is master of the keyboard. With ice cold logic, he develops his line of thinking and draws irrefutable conclusions. He is most effective with people who work primarily or exclusively with reason. Big and compelling successes are denied him. He does not understand how to fire up the masses for a great cause. He is limited to educational discourse. Since he is cold, he leaves his listeners cold. At best he persuades people, but never mobilizes them and sets them marching regardless of their own ideas or the element of personal risk involved.

The speaker from the heart is different. He may have the skills of the master of reasoning. They are, however, only tools he uses as a true rhetorical virtuoso. He has abilities not found in the reasoning speaker. He combines clear diction with simple argumentation, and instinct tells him what to say and how to say it. Language is united with ideas. He knows the secret corners and aspects of the mass soul and knows how to reach and touch them. His speeches are masterpieces of declamation. He outlines people and conditions; he inscribes his theses on the tablet of the age; with deep and noble passion he explains the pillars of his world view. His voice reaches out from the depths of his blood into the depths of the souls of his listeners. He brings to expression the secrets of the human soul. He rouses the tired and lazy, fires up the indifferent and the doubting, turns cowards into men and weaklings into heroes.

These rhetorical geniuses are the drummers of fate. They begin their work alone in dark and dismal historical epochs and suddenly and unexpectedly find themselves in the spotlight of new developments. They are the speakers that make history.

As any great man, a gifted speaker has his individual style. He can only speak as he is. His words are written into his body. He speaks his own language, whether in posters or letters, essays, addresses or speeches.

There are many examples in history that prove that great speakers resemble each other only in their effects. The nature of their appeals to people, their appeals to the heart, vary with the time, the nation, and the character of the epoch. Caesar spoke differently to his legions than Frederick the Great did to his army, Napoleon differently to his guard than Bismarck did to the members of the Prussian Parliament. Each used language that his hearers understood and used words and thoughts that reached their emotions and found an echo in their hearts.The daemon of their era gave each the ability to speak in a way that raised them above his century as one of the eternal proclaimers of great ideas, one of those who makes history and transforms nations.

The various races seem to have differing abilities in this realm. Some seem too reserved to practice the art, others seem practically predestined to it. One speaks of Latin eloquence, for example. The wealth of average and important speakers in the Roman peoples is also some proof of this. It also seems true that rhetorical ability in these nations finds a public that understands it and gives it the widest possibility of success.

In the past, our German people was not particularly gifted in this regard. We had more than enough statesmen and soldiers, philosophers and scientists, musicians and poets, builders and engineers, geniuses of planning and organization. But we always lacked those with rhetorical gifts. No one after Fichte’s classic speeches to the German people was able to reach the people’s hearts, until Bismarck. When Bismarck departed, no one followed until the collapse after the World War brought forth a new preacher. In between we had at best serviceable speakers, suitable for everyday or parliamentary use or service on boards of directors, but who encountered only icy reserve when they spoke to the people.

This was probably the result of the times. There were no great ideas, no powerful projects. Rhetoric sank into a morass of self-satisfaction. The only apparent exception, Marxism, was secretly allied with them and its speakers represented a materialism that could never release the spark of true genius.

But revolutions bring forth true speakers, and true speakers make revolutions! One should not overestimate the role of written or printed words in revolutions, but the secret magic of the spoken word reaches directly the emotions and the hearts of people. It reaches the eye and the ear, and the electrifying force of the masses seized by the human voice sweeps with it the wavering and the doubting.

What would happen to a statesmanly genius who fate had for some reason placed in an inferior position if he lacked the power of speech and the explosive force of the word! It gives him the ability to make ideas from ideals and realities from ideas. With its help, he gathers people to his flag who are ready to fight with him; driven by it, men risk their health and their lives to bring a new world to victory. An organization comes from the propaganda of the word, a movement from the organization, and that movement conquers the state. The important thing is not whether an idea is right; the decisive thing is whether one can present it effectively to the masses so that they become its adherents. Theories remain theories when living men to not give them expression. Living people in difficult times follow only an appeal that reaches their hearts because it comes from the heart.

It is difficult to place the Führer within these categories. His ability to reach the masses is unique and remarkable, fitting no organizational scheme or dogma. It would be ridiculous to think he attended some sort of speaker school; he is a rhetorical genius who developed his own abilities with no help from anyone else. One cannot imagine that the Führer ever spoke differently than he does today, or that he will ever speak differently. He speaks his heart, and therefore reaches the hearts of those who hear him. He has the amazing gift of sensing what is in the air. He has the ability to express things so clearly, logically and directly that listeners are convinced that that is what they have always thought themselves. That is the true secret of the effectiveness of Adolf Hitler’s speeches. The Führer is neither a speaker from reason nor from the heart. He uses both, depending on the needs of the moment. The essential characteristics of his speeches to the people are: clear organization, irrefutable logical reasoning, simplicity and clarity of expression, razor-sharp dialectic, a developed and sure instinct for the masses and their feelings, an electrifying emotional appeal that is used sparingly, and the ability to reach out to the souls of the people in a way that never goes unanswered.

Long ago when he was still far from power, the Führer spoke to a meeting filled primarily with his political opponents. From the beginning, he was rejected. For two hours he struggled with the stubbornness of his audience, addressing all their problems and objections until at the end there was only thundering agreement, jubilation and enthusiasm. As he concluded, someone yelled from the highest row: “Hitler is Columbus!”

That got to the heart of it. He had stood the egg on its end. He clarified the confused and mysterious nature of the age. He showed his hearers in a clear and simply way that the man in the street had long sensed, but had not found the courage to express. Hitler said what everyone thought and felt! More than that, he had the civil courage in the face of nearly everyone else to express with iron logic what had to be done.

The Führer is the first person in Germany to use speech to make history. As he began, it was all he had. He had only a strong heart and his pure word. Using them, he reached the deepest depths of the souls of his people. He did not speak like everyone else. He could not be compared with them. He understood the cares and worries of the little man and spoke about them, but they were for him only brush strokes on the dreadful painting of Germany’s collapse. He did more than simply talk about them, he was not a mere reporter like the others. He took the events of the day and gave them a larger national significance that put them in context. He appealed to the good, not the bad instincts of the masses. His speaking was a magnet that drew to him whomever in the people who still had iron in his blood.

Stupid and empty-headed bourgeois people for a time were pleased to disparage him as a “drummer.” They made themselves ridiculous, but did not realize it. Since they entirely lacked rhetorical ability, they thought his was a lesser form of leadership. They strove for power without realizing that Marxism had taken power from them by force, and would give up that power only as the result of force. They formed groups when they needed a national movement. They attempted putsches when revolution was in the air. They held the masses in contempt because they did not want to lead them. The masses bow only to him who puts them under his uncompromising command. They obey only him who knows how to give orders. They have a fine instinct for determining if something is really meant, or only said.

It is perhaps a classic proof of the inner strength of the German people that it heard the appeal of a man who went his own way, in opposition to the state and society, the press and public opinion, apparently against all reason and good sense. It is also a classic proof for the outstanding rhetorical brilliance of the Führer that his word alone was enough to transform an entire period, to defeat an apparently strong state and to bring in a new era.

An historic figure who has such impact must command all the skills of the spoken word. That is the case with the Führer. He speaks as confidently before workers as before scientists. His words strike deep into the hearts of farmers and city-dwellers. When he speaks to children, they are deeply moved. The magic of his voice reaches men’s secret feelings. He translates historical philosophy into the language of the people. He has the ability to call up long forgotten history and make those who hear him feel as if they had always known about it. There is no element of superiority in his speaking, the kind of thing one sees in the speeches of the educated.

His words always focus on the central ideas of our people, our nation, and our race. He can express things in a thousand different ways. The listener never feels that he has heard it before. The masses hear the same major ideas of our national renaissance in ever new forms. There is nothing doctrinaire in his style. If he makes an assertion, it is proven by a multitude of examples. The examples are not taken only from the experiences of a particular area or class, thus leaving everyone else untouched. They come from everywhere in the nation, such that each is spoken to. They are chosen with such care that even the blindest opponent must in the end grant that, unlike the parliamentary speakers, this man believes what he says.

Ordinary life is presented in a way that grips the hearers. The problems of the day are not explained only with the difficult tools of a worldview, but with wit and bitting irony. His humor triumphs; one cries with one eye and laughs with the other. Every tone of daily life is touched upon.

A sure sign of a good speech is that it not only sounds good, but reads well. The Führer’s speeches are stylistic masterpieces, whether he improvizes at the podium, speaks from brief notes, or speaks from a manuscript at an important international occasion. If one is not in his immediate vicinity, he cannot tell if the speech is a written speech delivered extemporaneously, or an extemporaneous speech delivered as if it were written out. His speeches are always ready to be printed. The picture would not be complete if we did not point out that the Führer is a master of rhetorical discussion. The last time the public had an opportunity to see him in action was his reckoning with the Social Democrats in the Reichstag in 1933, when he responded to the then Representative Wels. One had the feeling that a cat was playing with a mouse. Marxism was driven from one corner into another. Wherever he sought cover, he faced destruction. With breathtaking precision, one rhetorical blow after another fell on him. Without a manuscript or notes, the Führer gave a major, long-desired attack on Social Democratic parliamentarians who here received their coup de grace. How often in the past he had defeated them when they dared to show up in our meetings. Back then they had the ability to turn shameful defeats into brilliant victories in their newspapers the next day. Now the whole nation saw then fall into his hands. It was a debacle.

Judges and states attorney had learned to respect his rhetorical offensives. They asked the accused or the witness Hitler naive sounding questions or tried to lead him onto thin ice with innocent sounding questions. The 1924 trial on the uprising of 8-9 November 1923 turned into a triumphant success for the accused, since the Führer overcame the mountains of files, hostility, and misunderstanding through the shining strength of his obvious truthfulness and the power of his gripping eloquence. The Republic probably regretted that Leipzig Reichswehr trial in 1930, in which it tried to destroy the Führer and his movement. They gave him a platform from which the whole people heard his rhetorical effectiveness. One recalls today with a shudder that a Jewish-Communist attorney fired questions at him for nine hours straight, but recalls with satisfaction that Jewish Bolshevism found an opponent whose words and ideas wrestled it to the ground.

We saw and experienced the Führer as a speaker at the Party Rally of Freedom in 1935. He spoke fifteen times within a period of seven days. Not once did he repeat a thought or a phrase. Everything was new, fresh, young, vital, and compelling. He spoke in one way to officials, another to the S.A. and S.S. men, one way to the youth and another to the women. In his major speech on culture, he explained the deepest secrets of the arts, and his speech to the Wehrmacht was understood by the last soldier in the last battalion. The entire life of the German people was spanned by his speeches. He is a proclaimer of the word who can express its thousand-fold nature through the grace of God.

The Führer it at his best, however, before a small audience. Here he is able to reach each individual member of the audience. His speaking carries away the listener, who never loses interest because he always feels spoken to directly. He may speak about a random theme with an expertise that astonishes the specialists, or in speaking about everyday matters suddenly raise them to universal significance.

On such occasions the Führer can be more intimate and precise than a public speech permits. He can go into the heart of things with irrefutable logic. Only one who has heard him in such a setting can understand his full brilliance as a speaker.

One can say that his speeches to his people and the world have an audience unprecedented in world history. They are words that inspire the heart and have a lasting impact in forming a new international epoch, There is probably no educated person in the world who has not heard the sound of his voice and who, whether he understood the words or not, felt that his heart was spoken to by magical words. Our people is fortunate to know the voice the world hears, a voice that puts words into thoughts and uses those thoughts to move an era. This man is a man with the courage to say yes and no, without qualifying them with an if or a but. Millions of people are suffering from bitter sorrow, great troubles, and terrible need. They see hardly a star of hope through the dark clouds that cover Europe’s sky. No one is able to dispel the despair they face. But in Germany, God chose one from countless millions to speak our pain!

 

What Does America Really Want?

by Joseph Goebbels

The American press has the noble right to complain about Europe. It makes vigorous use of this right, particularly when Germany is involved. National Socialist Germany is a thorn in its eye.

The Third Reich has been the target of its mockery, hatred, lies, and slander since 30 January 1933, especially from that part controlled by the Jews. The American press takes particular pleasure in criticizing Germany on grounds of humanitarianism, civilization, human rights, and culture. It has every right to do so. Its humanity is shown in most vivid form by lynchings. Its civilization is shown in economic and political scandals that stink to high heaven. Its human rights are displayed by eleven or twelve million unemployed, who apparently chose to be so. And its culture exists only because it is always borrowing from the older European nations. Such a nation is certainly justified in sneering at ancient Europe, whose nations and peoples looked back on centuries, even millennia, of cultural achievements long before America was even discovered.

The American press replies to our complaints by saying that it has nothing against Germany, only against National Socialism. That is a poor excuse. National Socialism today is Germany’s guiding political idea and worldview. The entire German nation affirms it. To criticize National Socialism today therefore means to criticize the entire German people.

It will not do to say that National Socialism is a dictatorship, and that there are still many in Germany who, inwardly at least, reject it. That simply is not the case. It is a fantasy that exists only in the minds of democratic politicians and journalists, but has nothing to do with the facts. There is no doubt about it: the public campaign against Germany is a conscious and intentional provocation aimed at the German Reich and the German people.

Generally, it does not make any difference to us. We Germans do not depend on the love or grace of other nations; we live from our own national strength. The time is long past when Germany expected its salvation from abroad. Such international help was always lacking when it was most needed during the postwar period. It appeared only when international money and stock capital believed that it could earn vast profits that could be earned nowhere else by helping Germany.

We could simply say that America is far away, with a big ocean separating us. What do we care about what they think, write, or say about us? That was fine as long as America’s highly developed hate campaign against Germany kept within certain bounds. But when it infects even official circles rather than merely newspapers and radio stations it becomes more serious.

This campaign reached unbelievable heights after 10 November 1938. American public opinion, influenced by the Jews, is trying to interfere to an intolerable degree in German domestic politics. They think that can use methods against Germany that are normally unheard of in relations between civilized nations.

We know very well who the instigators and beneficiaries are. They are mostly Jews, or people who are in their service and who are totally dependent on them.

For example, it is not surprising that the New York press attacks Germany so strongly. Over two million Jews live in New York and public, and especially economic life, there is entirely under their control.

The German press so far has generally responded to this filthy and dispicable campaign of hatred only sporadically and in a restrained manner. Only after official personages in the United States got involved did we think it necessary to say something. For example, the American Interior Secretary Ickes publicly declared on 19 December 1938 that no American could accept a medal from the hands of a brutal dictator that with the same hand robbed and tortured thousands of people, that saw a day when it committed no new crime against humanity as a day wasted. Put simply, that is not a style of speaking that is customary in relations between states.

The American Undersecretary of Secretary of State Welles responded to German protests by saying that Ickes’s statement represented the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the American public. One does not know what to say. What does he mean! Was the American president ever personally attacked in the German press, or America’s leading men slandered? We have been very restrained, even though we certainly had every reason to discuss this or that matter of American domestic policy.

Such things are not our concern. American statesmen, not us, determine American domestic policy. We are concerned only with Germany’s affairs. We also have no reason or intention of smuggling German political ideas into America. The very opposite, since the methods that we use are purely German. They are only valid in Germany. But we do believe that just as we respect the internal affairs of other countries and avoid polemics against them, they should treat us in the same way.

One cannot say that that is true of the United States of North America at present. Nearly the whole press, radio, and film industry support the worldwide campaign against Germany.

Senator Pitman put the matter bluntly on 22 December 1938: “The American people do not like Germany’s government.”

We happen to think that the American people have nothing to do with the matter. If they do not like Germany, it is because of the hate campaign. This campaign is conducted by certain international scoundrels who lack conscience and scruples. They are doing it both for foreign and alll too transparent domestic reasons.

The Lima Conference is behind the anti-German campaign. North America hopes to encourage South American hostility against Germany, and really against Europe as a whole. They do not like German competition in the South American market. The enormous North American armaments industry is also calling up images of a coming war against the totalitarian governments for business reasons.

We have no intention of answering the criticisms that the American Jewish press raises against Germany by looking at America’s domestic affairs. It is enough to observe that although Germany is the poorest country in the world in terms of foreign currency reserves and raw materials, it has not only abolished unemployment, but has a labor shortage. North America, meanwhile has between eleven and twelve million unemployed, even though it is rich in foreign currency reserves and raw materials. Most of the American press ignores this situation. It cannot deny it, of course. It claims that German success is contemptible, since it used methods of hate and contempt.

This is entirely backward. The seven million Germans who got jobs after National Socialism took power in Germany are not interested in the methods that gave them jobs. It reminds one of the familiar joke. Two workers are halfheartedly trying to remove a paving stone. A passerby watches for a while, then grabs a pickax and yanks the stone out. One worker says to the other: “Well, sure, if you use force...”

The American press uses the same argument. It cannot deny National Socialism’s successes. It can only say: “Well, sure, if you use force...” It thinks the German people had to make too great a sacrifice for these successes.

The German people sees things differently. It knows that certain restrictions in some areas were necessary for national reconstruction. The American public is practically drowning in wealth, prosperity, foreign currency, gold bars, and raw materials. It can hardly imagine how an intelligent, hardworking, and courageous people can get along without all those advantages.

However that may be, future developments concern us.

No one but Germany has the right to judge Germany’s domestic affairs. No one has the right to turn one people against another, to incite discord and promote ignorance that lead to international crises.

Mr. Eden, the ambassador of international world democracy, found the right audience a few weeks ago in New York when he attacked National Socialism. The most prominent representatives of American international industry, economics, and finance were gathered. Mr. Eden would have done better to tell the eleven or twelve million unemployed where they could find jobs. He seems to have realized that his hate tirade might have found a less friendly reception there than it did from the audience to which he did speak.

Jewry applauds whenever Germany is attacked. Jewry hates National Socialism for reasons that do not need to be mentioned. Jewry is our enemy, it should be our enemy, it must be our enemy. The question is whether the American people want to make the Jews happy by engaging in fruitless conflict with the German Reich and the German people. That we do protest against. That is neither necessary nor helpful.

We have nothing against the American people. We know and respect their political views and internal affairs, even if we might do things differently. We believe we have the right to expect the same of American public opinion about Germany. We also fail to see the benefits of such controversy. What good will it do America? Does it think it can starve Germany using the same methods as those of the World War?

Every economic action has two sides. It affects not only its target, but also the side that uses it. American cotton farmers, sitting on piles of unsold cotton, know this well.

It is time to recommend peace and good sense. American public opinion is going the wrong way. It would benefit by returning to the old, tested practices of international courtesy and good manners, and by treating Germany in the way normal among civilized nations.

We do not expect our appeal to have a great impact on American attitudes. Still, we think it our duty to speak plainly.

Given the influence of the Jews on parts of American public opinion, we again stress the shortsightedness and uselessness of such methods, and ask the world this question: “What does America really want?”