The people is concerned not with the extent of an emergency decree or the period to which it applies — and rightly so. It is not interested in whether or not it took long hours of the day and into the night to develop, but rather it is interested only in the effect it has in dealing with the specified issues.
Through speeches and the press, one attempts to prove the necessity of the new ordinance as a way to alleviate these crises in our public life.
Brüning’s Failures
Mr. Reich Chancellor, I now wish to present my views to the German public, just as I did before the Young Plan was signed.
Instead of the hoped for results, the opposite of each of these five points will occur. The future will prove it.
There is no reason, Mr. Reich Chancellor, for me to support my opinions any further to a System that is convinced that it is the model of reason, and that calls the opposition “dreamers and wishful thinkers.” I have even less reason to provide a thorough analysis, since I learned some months ago how willing the so-called “reasonable thinking” of the present government is from time to time to borrow from the opposition’s “garden of daydreams and wishful thinking,” presenting to an astonished public what it once said were poisoned fruits, but now are innocuous examples of the “new results of expert thinking.”
I will restrict myself, therefore, Mr. Reich Chancellor, to a thorough refutation of the last part of the emergency decree.
Even the organization shows here that the government is captive to an illusion, namely the crazy belief that the economy could be put back in order before political life. Such a view is emphasized by various statements of our government to foreign countries in which painful questions about the no longer deniable growth of the National Socialist movement are answered by references to the “world economic crisis.” A little thought would lead the government to a different conclusion. If that opinion were really correct, the Economic Party [Brüning was a member of that party] would really have to be in our place! The fact that the opposite is true proves only
that the people have long understood what the governing parties still to not understand. Without a national-political “recovery” within the German people, there will be no economic recovery.
Mr. Reich Chancellor, I assume that you seriously believe that the political appendix to the emergency decree is a suitable means for the “recovery” of the German people, and that one can best entrust such a “recovery” to the police.
I assume, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that you have that opinion, but I further assume that some of your colleagues involved in this major historic law have other possibilities in mind, for example to silence the National Socialist movement and in a larger sense the nationalist opposition, or perhaps even to destroy it. If one takes away a man’s shirt, and his pants, and removes his membership badge, he has ceased to be a National Socialist! It was always remarkable how one-sidedly politically significant German politicians saw the world. That comes about because instead of dealing with the deeper nature of a movement, one pays heed only to the familiar reporters from the Mosse and Ulstein publishing houses, to the editorial staffs of Germania and Vorwärts, seeing them as the political experts who know what the German people should do!
Bloody Terror and Brüning’s Emergency Decree
Mr. Reich Chancellor, you think Germany’s domestic peace is threatened. We National Socialists have said for many years that such peace must end if a party consciously preaches Marxist class struggle and incites the worst gutter scum to act as Cheka murderers against human society. We have been unable for years to understand why Marxist newspapers carry almost open calls for the murder of others and hardly a state attorney dares to intervene only because their targets are called Fascists — or in other words, National Socialists. Still, these murders and assaults were kept within relatively narrow boundaries. Mr. Reich Chancellor, it is only since you issued emergency decrees to “protect” domestic order from violence and terror did terror unfortunately reach unbearable levels. In practice, your all your emergency decrees have not withstood reality. The most miserable failure is in the “calming of public life.” Instead of letting a movement from our people into the visible flow of politics, one kept it away from the spotlight and driven it into the darkness. That followed the brilliant method of the well-known philosopher Vogel, who assumed what what he did not see no longer existed.
The efforts to restrict or eliminate political movements made in recent years have led to enormous bitterness and an worsening of the situation.
Do you believe, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that by taking away from an adult man the symbols of his political viewpoint you also eliminate that viewpoint? You make him more fanatical, since he feels himself the victim of misused public force. Just as France was unable to hinder the growth of Germany’s national strength, so little, Mr. Reich Chancellor, will you be able through analogous methods to stop the growth of this force within our own national body.
All the restrictions of the so-called uniform ban, the ban on membership badges, etc., only increase the anger against the present System, and from all sides. A quick look at history will persuade you, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that such suppressive measures have always had the opposite effect. And you, Mr. Reich Chancellor, will have a hard time refuting the lesson of history in this matter.
This decree will hardly eliminate the Communist Party from our people — the opposite, in fact. You promote it. And as for the National Socialist movement, I assure you, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that this movement will live and rule Germany long after this decree has been forgotten.
Brüning is a Bad Psychologist
I see how little the psychological effects of such measures are understood when I consider the time at which the new emergency decree was issued.
One chose the time before Christmas, since one could refer to the holy peace of Christmas and forbid opposition political activity for a long time. Today, naturally, when one bans all meetings, government parties are not affected. No independent person in Germany will even think of defending this decree! It would only be possible to speak against it. What a brilliant idea to use Christmas peace as an indirect shield for this infamous emergency decree! Despite it all, Mr. Reich Chancellor, you have given yourself over to yet another psychological illusion. If the constitutional guarantee of free assembly had been maintained, many a one would have been able to express his discontent. It displays dubious talents as a statesman to close off all means of releasing pressure so that the steam pressure builds up!
Just as it was psychologically wrong to announce the emergency decree at that time since it robbed millions of Germans of even the most modest Christmas joy, so, too, the psychological effects are unfortunate.
You are convinced, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that it will make a major contribution to calming people down if one, for example, bands ten thousand National Socialist Christmas parties, robbing hundreds of thousands of impoverished German children of their Christmas presents!
You are convinced, Mr. Reich Chancellor, that it will contribute to political peace and the calming down of public life if one carries this ban so far as,for example, to ban a symphony concert by a prominent Bavarian orchestra only because it is sponsored by the National Socialist movement!Or do symphonies by Brahms, Brückner, and Mozart endanger the republic?
History will demonstrate whether the hopes of strangling a movement with such methods are realistic, or whether they belong in the kingdom of illusions.
Disarming Decent Citizens
Finally, Mr. Reich Chancellor, you hope to eliminate terror from public life by the new regulations on weapons.