against all who attempt to resist constitutional authorities in the hour of the greatest test of nerves.”
Mr. Reich Chancellor! The charge of illusions does not apply to the national opposition, least of all the National Socialist party or me, but above all the present System.
Illusions from Erzberger to Brüning
When the November Revolution of 1918 broke out, the flag of illusion was raised high, and has waved above all governmental actions, whether domestic or foreign, ever since. Your faction leader and party comrade Mattias Erzberger was one of Germany’s armistice negotiators in the Forest of Compiegne. On 11 November 1918 he spoke the following memorable and statesmanlike words: “We must accept everything. We have to accept it all. That is the fastest way to get them to forgive us.” That was an illusion. It was an illusion with dreadful and terrible consequences, just as terrible as the illusions of the naval units and battleship crews who thought that when they raised their treasonous red flags English ships would do the same.
All the programs of that time, all the promises whether from official government offices or party leaders were, to put it mildly, illusions. The promise of a coming life of “beauty, freedom, and dignity” was just as tragic an illusion as the promises of coming social happiness, social welfare, and upward mobility. They, too, were lies.
There was the illusion of promised reductions in prices, the illusion of “reducing bureaucracy” in government, the illusion of “abolishing secret diplomacy,” the illusion of “true democratic equality!” Our whole people back then chased only after illusions, Mr. Reich Chancellor. I was one of the few who even in those years dared to attack these illusions openly in public meetings!
Fear of Its Record
The present System does not dare to release to the public its declarations and promises from its founding days, since they consist wholly of illusions. You are welcome, however, to publish my speeches from these years, and my later ones as well. They would provide support and justification for me today, just as they supported my attacks on your party and its Marxist allies back then.
It was an illusion to give up our naval fleet in the hopes it would be returned to us,
an illusion to give up our merchant fleet in the hopes of getting it back,
an illusion to disarm in the belief that France would do the same.
It was an illusion to expect help from the conscience of the world, from the League of Nations, or from some other conference.
It was an illusion to sign the Peace Treaty, thinking it was nothing but a formal document, not the intentional destruction of the German people and its economy by France — something already evident back then.
It was an illusion to believe that by signing the war guilt lie, one would be treated leniently, even be “forgiven,” when in reality throughout world history every unprincipled act carries within it its own reward.
It was an illusion, Mr. Reich Chancellor, which your party comrade Matthias Erzberger proposed to the Allies a reparations payment of a hundred million gold marks, and the German government actually believed that it could fulfill that, then morally stoned anyone who called this nonsense nonsense.
It was further an illusion during the Ruhr battle to believe that one could intimidate an occupying army by a subsidized general strike, and an even greater illusion to think that one would be able to negotiate more effectively in the future without building an active front in the hinterland.