by Joseph Goebbels
The hard and pitiless battle for Sevastapol, as well as the recent broad offensive operations of the German army, have reopened a lively debate, above all in the neutral press. Similar to that of the past winter, it is on the issue of the so-called Russian soul. The spiritual as well as the territorial boundaries between Asia and Europe have always interested Western Europeans. It is not to be denied that the ethnic mixture that we called Russia before 1917 and the Soviet Union thereafter has been a riddle to our part of the world. That had nothing to do with tsarism then or Bolshevism today. It simply has to do with the fact that the various peoples joined together in this monster of a nation are not a people [Volk] in our sense of the word.
The many sides of the Russian soul which appears so complex and contradictory to us are in reality nothing but the reflection of the various peoples who are a part of it. It would be a mistake to evaluate it by the standards of Western Europe. What we call Russia has always been a collective mass. Only a small portion of it has made history. Earlier it was the tsarist upper class, today the Bolshevist-Jewish ruling clique. The broad masses of peasants and workers were only tools, having themselves no part in historical events.
The peoples of the Soviet Union live at a level of brutish primitiveness that we can hardly imagine. An exhibition called “The Soviet Paradise” has recently visited Berlin and other large cities, trying to show the nature of life in the Soviet Union through original materials. Normal and naive people can hardly believe it. One often saw groups of civilians discussing the matter heatedly, who then had to be told by a few wounded veterans of the Eastern Front that reality in the so-called workers’ and peasants’ paradise was even worse than what was presented. It is significant that the campaign against the Soviet Union has not brought back any fond memories of communism. None of our soldiers has seen any evidence of an agreement between the theory and practice of Bolshevism. None has returned from the East as a communist. The veil has been removed. Bolshevism is not a danger for us any longer.
It still seems astonishing that the Soviet army has put up resistance against our troops that they have not encountered in previous campaigns. They fight with a stolid, almost bestial determination, and sometimes show a contempt of death that is more than remarkable. Participants in the Battle of Sevastopol relate stories of the resistance of the Soviet troops that need explanation if they are not to unsettle a large part of the public.
The Russians throughout their history have always shown a particularly stubborn and tough manner of defense, while never being particularly gifted at offense. Their national character has a defensive nature. They are stolid and animalistic. They are accustomed to a hard and impoverished existence, and therefore do not hold on to life all that strongly. The average person has less worth than a bicycle. A rapid birthrate quickly replaces any losses. They have a type of primitive toughness that one cannot call bravery. It is entirely different. Bravery is a kind of spiritual courage. The toughness with which the Bolshevists defended their bunkers in Sevastapol was more a bestial drive, and nothing could be more mistaken than to assume that it was the result of Bolshevist views or education. The Russians were always like that, and will likely always remain so. It is also easier to throw a life away when there is no promise to it than when, even at the moment of danger, a distant paradise still seems to beckon.
One does not need to speak of the enormous danger that the armed uprising of such stolid millions is for Germany and all of Europe. For attacking soldiers, the motive of the defenders is not particularly relevant. The methods the Bolshevist commissars use to drive their troops to the last measure of resistance are not really all that important for the course of battle. It is however important to know it to prevent false impressions. Bolshevism is a master at exploiting the Slavic national soul. Only in Russia was this dreadful experiment possible. It required the primitive and bestial dullness of the peoples forming the Soviet Union, as well as their limited social and economic expectations. Its methods were then implemented with a consistency that amazed the observer.
Our first images of Bolshevism were not exaggerated, but understated. They were cast into the shadows by reality. We will not even mention the so-called social achievements of the Soviet system, which in comparison with ours can provoke only laughter or shock. It has hardly a matter of taste, however, to be astonished by the fact that Bolshevist propaganda largely succeeded in sealing the masses of Russian workers and peasants off from the world and persuading them by stupid repetition that they were living in a paradise on earth. Independent judgment requires the opportunity to compare. That is ruled out for them. The workers and peasants of the Soviet Union are like the man imprisoned in a dark dungeon for 25 years, who may easily be persuaded that a kerosene lantern is the sun.
The political commissar has a function in such a system that is absolutely incomprehensible for us. He wields the whip, both among the masses and in the army. He has full power over life and death, and his own head is on the line as well. The stolid masses are at his disposal. They are forced to choose between accepting it all or facing jail at the least or bestial death at the worst. There is nothing like an intelligentsia remaining to put up any resistance. The system has the resources to eliminate it at the earliest stages. The whole country is covered by a spy system that misuses children to spy on their parents. What choice do the stolid and hopeless masses have but to obey with the fatalism that lies within their racial soul, to give themselves up to their fate? What choice does a soldier in a bunker have when the commissar is standing there with a drawn pistol, and systematic Jewish propaganda has persuaded him that becoming a prisoner means not only death, but gruesome torture?
That really has nothing to do with bravery as we understand it. Even this system, when it faces the final test, will bend before the superior force of manly combativeness. The Bolshevists had a great advantage in their defensive positions, yet they capitulated after 25 days. In the end, their system lacks the free personal will that springs from the individual fighting spirit. It overcomes difficulty and danger not through terror and threats, but through individual bravery. Certainly international Jewry with its organized stolid and malleable human material is a dangerous enemy. Once it is used up, there will be no threat left for us to face. We would have to doubt the quality of our race, the goodness of our soldiers, and the fighting power of our worldview and principles if we even for a moment doubted that we can break this danger.
It is a part of the fate of the German race that at critical points it must defend itself against the threat from the East. It is especially dangerous today, bound as it is to the ruthless infernal goals of Jewish intellectualism. Without doubt it was a near fatal threat not only to Germany, but to all of occidental culture, when Jewry transformed the physical capacities of the East into a monstrous and armed Soviet military, aimed at Germany and all of Europe. The red commissar is defending his world tby holding together his attack on us. We must destroy his system if we want to live free from danger in the future.
This explanation goes beyond the realm of Philistine discussions of the so-called Russian soul. The old measures are inadequate to things of such an enormous spiritual and philosophical scale. The gigantic battle on the Eastern Front is shaking a world that must fall if we are to have any kind of a national future. The bestial brutality with which the enemy is waging war is proof of the enormity of the danger facing us. Everything is truly at stake. One cannot imagine the consequences if that system were to be implemented here. It would introduce Europe’s total domination by international Jewry. Our people would be subjected to the stolid brutality of a primitive race and would lose its most valuable aspects. London could only welcome such a thing. They have an opponent they are unable to defeat by their own strength, as the development of the war shows.
One therefore understands why we Germans have limited patience for intellectual discussions of a so-called Russian national soul, which must be thoroughly investigated in order to uncover its presumed secrets. There are no mysteries here, only facts. We are battling a world power that threatens our national life. The war is hard reality for us, not a philosophical question. We see its ghastly origins, and our soldiers are fighting for our holiest possessions. We do not underestimate our opponent. Still, we are as always persuaded that here too the higher race will triumph over the lower one, regardless of what infernal means it uses to escape its deserved fate.
We know well that Europe would be lost if the Axis powers did not defend it. We have given our part of the world renewed youth. The attack from the East against its life and culture will fail, because we will meet its stolid power with an offensive resistance that draws its strength from the intelligence of the leadership and the vitality of Europe’s young races.
As so often before, this time, too, the surging nomads of the East will be driven back to their steppes. That is the purpose of our battle against the Soviet Union.
Background: Goebbels began a weekly newspaper called Das Reich in 1940. He generally wrote the lead article each week, in which he took special pride. This essay is dated 9 August 1942. It presents the standard Nazi view of the U.S. as a land with no culture. For a good discussion of Goebbels’ wartime essays, see Bramsted’s book Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda.
The source: “Aus Gottes eigenem Land,” Das eherne Herz (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1943), pp. 421-427.
God’s Country
by Joseph Goebbels
One is never sure which of two characteristics is more prominent in the American national character and therefore of the greater significance: naivete or a superiority complex. When for example they say things about our region, our surprise at their ignorance is surpassed only by annoyance at their stupid insolence. The less they know about a matter, the more confidently they speak. They really believe that Europeans are eagerly waiting to hear from them and follow their advice. They took our strategic decision not to discuss their shallow culture before the war as a sign of admiration. Their greatest technical accomplishments are refrigerators and radios. They cannot believe that there are cultural values that are the result of centuries of historical development, which cannot simply be bought. It was no bad joke when, after the war, they bought the ruins of German castles and moved them stone by stone to the U.S.A. They really thought that they had purchased a piece of national history embodied in stone, and were naive enough to think that mocking laughter from Europe was respect for the wealth that enabled them to buy what their own tradition and culture lacked.
A book by Scottish author Eric Linklater titled “Juan in America” has just appeared in German translation. With few words but deadly irony, it holds the mirror up to the Yankees. One must read this book, which takes place in the postwar period, to rightly understand the Americans. Recently the American press claimed that Americans were of the opinion that General Rommel learned his military techniques, admired throughout the world, from the Americans. General Lee used his cavalry in the same way Rommel used his tanks. One does not know whether to be astonished or contemptuous at this naive and stupid idea. In any event, it is genuinely American, and one can give odds of 10:1 that most Americans are firmly convinced that it is so.
Only in the U.S.A. could the wife of the president receive a thousand dollar honorarium at a charity gathering, and take the money without bothering to see if the gathering for the benefit of those injured in the war would thereby run a deficit. The New York newspapers recently reported this. Mrs. Roosevelt even appears for a healthy fee as a fashion model, showing the latest furs to an admiring public. She writes a column for a large number of U.S.A. newspapers titled “My Day,” in which she tells how she spent the previous day, what she wore, which cocktail parties she attended, whom she met, and what she plans to do the next day.
We really have the wrong image of America. Hollywood films are mostly to blame, since they present the life style of the upper ten thousand, which most Americans themselves experience though films. American observers waver between unlimited admiration and deep contempt. Superficial observers admire it, real experts always hold it in contempt. There is certainly much that is at first glance impressive in this new part of the world still in its adolescence. The height of the skyscrapers is, however, no measure of the level of culture. This land that wants to protect intellectual freedom in the ancient cultures of Europe and Asia itself has no permanent theater or opera. A private concern like New York’s Metropolitan Opera survives in peacetime only on German and Italian operas, and had to close its doors for financial reasons once the war began.
The U.S.A. has no poets, no painters, no architects or composers of world stature. Whatever culture it has is borrowed from Europe. The land lacks its own language, culture, and civilization. It has borrowed everything, generally debasing it by Americanizing it, never improving it. Americanization is a kind of kitschification that gives every cultural value an American stamp, turning a mature language into slang, the waltz into jazz, a work of literature into a crime story.
If the Americans lacked money, they would probably be the most despised people in the world. Superiority is nowhere as annoying as with them. They naturally build the best airplanes and tanks, and by the hundreds of thousands. They have the best generals and soldiers, and their defeats are only proof of their intelligence in destroying the bravery of their enemies. Their president is a demigod, though he led the nation into an economic catastrophe from which he saw no way out other than war. They promised Europe a savior in 1917 and sent them a Wilson in 1919. They will repeat this great betrayal today if we do not prevent it. In short, it is a nation still a long way from being a nation, and a people that lacks the most important prerequisite for being a people, a clear style of life.
According to official American statistics, there are 190 Protestant and 430 Catholic churches in New York, but 1000 synagogues. What else should one expect of a city with a Jewish mayor who recently attempted at a reception for foreign journalists to explain European problems in the jargon of the gangsters! The Jews have given their stamp not only to this city, but the whole of public life. The president is surrounded by Jewish advisors and his wife clears the way for her Jewish friends to enter the administration and war office. One feels the need to wash one’s hands after reading American newspapers. They are filled with intellectual filth, daily printing such stories as an announcement that a number of prisoners have formed “Fighters, Inc.,” and offered their services to the president. They were ready to fight in the ranks of the Allies against aggression. Mr. Roosevelt happily accepted their offer.
Can anyone name a single country in Europe where the public would accept such a thing? There was not a word of protest in the U.S.A. The same president recently told a press conference that a surprisingly large number of young people were unsuited for service in the army and the marines because they could not read or write. Is it any surprise that a cunning and demagogic leadership can do what it wants with a nation of such an educational level? At a time when U.S. forces experience one defeat after another and its ships sail the world’s oceans only at the risk of death, they naively announce that they are producing a million victory medals for American soldiers to wear as a sign of their worth when they occupy Germany. American officers are studying at Southern University such matters as civil administration, the laws of war, and related matters. Their task is to return to good order the territories now occupied by the Axis powers.
So far, not a single U.S.A. soldier has set foot on foreign soil, but many have been chased back to U.S. soil in disgrace. After a siege of two or three weeks, an army of 60,000 men with munitions and food sufficient for six months gave up, leaving all of 600 dead behind. That does not bother its brilliant leadership in the least. Of course, it does not have a citizenry able to defend itself against such silly illusions. Everything is junk and make-believe. Everything is sensational. Public opinion can be kneaded like dough. It is a paradise for cunning Jews and businessmen who terrorize the people while flying the flag of democracy and citing Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. Only in the U.S.A. is it possible for criminals to become world famous gangsters, the guests of mayors and police chiefs, who give interviews for journalists from newspapers with circulations in the millions in which they give their opinions on the questions of the day.
We would not say anything if the U.S.A. were aware of its intellectual and moral defects and was trying to grow up. But it is too much when it behaves in an impudent manner toward a part of the earth with a few thousands years of glorious history behind it, attempting to teach it moral and intellectual lessons, whether out of innocence or a complete lack of genuine culture and learning. We can forgive the mistakes of youth, but this degree of arrogance gets on one’s nerves.
We therefore have no appreciation for the Americanism that can be found in certain of our circles. We fail to see why we as the leading musical nation in the world should borrow even a single note from the U.S.A. We have a level of culture and civilization that is denied to most Americans. One who understands this can hardly have much sympathy for what they understand as culture and civilization. Although we affirm the technical achievements of our age, we see behind them an intellectual strength that grows from the roots of our people. Machines are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. As much as we appreciate the achievements of modern civilization and use them to improve life, we know that they are not the sole meaning of life. There are national values that are the result of centuries of history and tradition. They cannot be purchased, only built by the labor of generations.
In any event, we prefer not to be buried in America. In the midst of the confusions of the day, we still have the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood and gold from floss. We are not impressed by American big talk and orgies of numbers. We know well enough that the trees do not grow as high as heaven on the other side of the Atlantic either. As far as God’s country goes, Europeans discovered it and give it life even today. Were it left to its own resources, it would soon return once more to desert and prairie, as wide and as empty as the souls of its people.
Don’t Be Too Fair!
by Joseph Goebbels
We Germans are still a young nation, with the virtues and weaknesses as well as the advantages and disadvantages of youth. Our national sense is a recent development, and still under attack. We identified too long with our tribal origins for our sense of nationhood to be self-evident. In England a statement like “My country — right or wrong!” is an incontestable principle of public life, but it is still difficult for us Germans.
We have a highly developed individual sense of justice, indeed we suffer from a kind of super-objectivity that mostly benefits our worst enemies and harms our own interests. An appeal to our decency always works, and we do not think too much about whether it is honestly intended or only exploits our good nature. Were one to leave the German people without clear leadership for a few years, it would soon return to being a colorful conglomerate of individuals. Nothing is more characteristic of our national character than that many millions of German-Americans maintain their social connections in bowling clubs, singing groups, and homeland associations, but soon lose their patriotic feelings.
National Socialism gave us Germans a kind of national consciousness for the first time. It gave at least a part of today’s generation a sense of what it means to be a people. But that feeling is still so young and fragile that we must always guard it.
Our enemies know that better than we do, and use it in their propaganda. One can hardly imagine another nation falling prey to such a grotesque bluff as we fell for in 1918. We could not imagine that our enemies did not have the same ideas and concepts as we do. We believed their phrases of world brotherhood, and it took years before we saw through the swindle. And we Germans are not the kind of people with long memories. Indeed, we love to extend our sympathies to other nations that do not even want it. Even Versailles did not keep us from thinking the French were our friends within a few years, and not even this war, instigated not only in London but in Paris and directed against our very existence, has had an impact on our friendly attitudes toward the French.
One cannot imagine what our people would do with a government that practices swindles on such a scale as Mr. Churchill’s in England. Yet there are people among us who see some sort of political style in it. It does not concern them in the least that it is directed entirely against us and that it is the real cause of the troubles and concerns of the war. We are so afraid of doing an injustice to others that we prefer when uncertain to do ourselves an injustice. One really cannot maintain that the German leadership has made many mistakes in this war. By and large we have always analyzed the situation accurately. Still there are those among us who work to forget everything we have predicted that came to pass and with the same energy remember those cases, and repeat them incessantly, in which we supposedly made a mistake.
No one will say that is fair. It is even more distressing, however, when these same people grant a kind of super-correctness to the enemy that is entirely out of place. They find any sign of self-interest on our side objectionable, while viewing the most primitive demagogy on the other side as originality. It really does not take all that much intelligence to see through Mr. Churchill’s tricks. He certainly has demagogic abilities of the highest order. But that is all he has. We find it an insult to compare him with the Führer. One cannot imagine that the English would grant the Führer any trace of justice at all, even though all that he is and has accomplished is the result of his own efforts, though he lives a life of almost legendary simplicity, and has shaken the entire world with his ideas. The English are saving their sentimentality for after the war, when it will not cost them anything.
We are different. If one of our newspapers says something crude about a statesman on the enemy side (the kind of expressions, by the way, that are common every day even in the serious British papers), the German sense of justice is suddenly awakened and our Michel feels the need to protect this statesman, to point out his good sides, and to defend his weaknesses.
We Germans must still learn to hate. We do not incline to chauvinism, and when one wants to heat up our national soul he must proceed carefully. There are supposedly even German soldiers who, after marching 1000 kilometers through the horror and spiritual desolation of the Eastern wilderness discover somewhere an atlas in a village school. They ponder it and ask doubtfully if perhaps there may not be something to Bolshevism after all.
The English destroyed a whole valuable ancient culture in India, and never even thought about studying its history and values. They are English, after all. They think that the world was created for the English, while we think that we Germans were created to serve the world. That is the difference between us. It is certainly the case that the British standpoint is better suited for practical political life, and that we are always at a disadvantage. Many of us would hardly want to have those English characteristics, but that does not stop us from admiring the English. The English find it obvious that one speaks English with them. We would hardly expect a foreigner to speak German. We break our heads learning French or English and look for Americans to explain the mysteries of slang to us so as not to inconvenience them by speaking proper English.
Are these traits appreciated? Not at all! These German traits are held in contempt rather than admiration. Certain people who spent six months in England before the war thought it their duty upon returning home to add an English accent to their speech. They wanted English clothing, ate English, drank five o’clock tea instead of coffee, did not use their umbrella even when it rained, regardless of the grins of their fellow countrymen, and sneered at the homeland from which they came but which they tried to forget as soon as they encountered a different world.
We Germans still have a lot to learn if we finally want to come out ahead spiritually and socially. Some of us, particularly those proud of their good education and breeding, suffer a sudden inferiority complex abroad. They behave as if they always need to apologize, looking like someone attending a formal dinner for the first time who is not sure which utensil to use for the fish. We are wholly free of such an inferiority complex, and can therefore speak about it openly. When before the war some English or American journalist came to us and impudently asked whether we understood English, we did not feel distressed and embarrassed, but rather told the boor in German that even if we could speak English, we would not speak it with him, and showed him the door. He usually got the idea.
We do not want to be misunderstood. We certainly do not underestimate the enemy. The best way to avoid that is to know him and study him. We realize that England is not a nation of devils. They have admirable characteristics. But we will not speak of them as long as they see no good in us. And there is a war on. We hate them from the bottom of our souls because they threaten our very life, because they oppose our national existence out of envy, jealousy, and ill-concealed national pride.
Why are we fairer to them than they are to us? We are fighting the war according to purely pragmatic principles. We do not want a second catastrophe along the lines of 1918. We depend not on the grace of our enemy, but rather on military might. That has nothing to do with objectivity. We easily reject the charge that we are prejudiced. We are not interested in a purely objective decision when our very existence, our very life is at stake. We are on our side, prejudiced, stubborn and selfish in this regard. Do not tell us that is not German. It may be that the opposite is German, but if so it is a bad and dangerous side of our national character that we must fight. Should we be so objective and fair that in the end we do ourselves an injustice? Even Klopstock assailed this German national weakness when he told our people not to be too fair, for our enemies are not noble enough to see how lovely a mistake that is.
Lovely or not, it is a mistake. Over our history it has done us more damage than we can bear. Our present situation is indeed a consequence of it. At vital moments in our history, we have lacked sufficient national egotism to enable us to rise above objectivity and fairness to give full service to our national interest, undeterred by any false sentimentality. If the German people suddenly became leaderless today, they probably would wander around the world as so often in the past spreading morals, culture, civilization, and education, but entirely forgetting to bring food and fuel along. The German people are the heart of humanity, and our mission today is to give it a broad foundation for its existence. That is an ideal, but a realistic one worthy of the greatest sacrifices.
If we once again stood with empty hands at the end of the war, we should be ashamed before the mothers who lost their sons, the children who lost the fathers, and the women who lost their husbands. We therefore warn against any danger we see, and particularly against those with roots in our national character. The bourgeois era with its false and lying idea of humanitarianism is over. We are in the middle of a hard century. It will be won not by good nature, but by manliness and strength. The world is divided by love and hate. To be on firm ground, one must know whom to love and whom to hate.
There is only one thing that is objectively incontestable for us: We must win. That must guide us!