IN
THE WINTER of 1919 and even more in the spring and summer
of 1920, the young party was forced to take a position on
a question which even during the War rose to an immense importance.
In the first volume, in my brief account of the symptoms of
the threatening German collapse that were visible to me personally,
I have pointed to the special type of propaganda which was
carried on by the English as well as the French for the purpose
of tearing open the old deft between North and South. In spring,
1915, there appeared the first systematic agitational leaflets
attacking Prussia, as solely responsible for the War. By 1916,
this system had been brought to full perfection as adroit
as it was treacherous. And after a short time the agitation
of the South German against the North German, calculated on
the lowest instincts, began to bear fruit. It is a reproach
that must be raised against the authorities of that time,
in the government as well as the army command - or rather
the Bavarian staff offices - a reproach which these last cannot
shake off, that in their damnable blindness and disregard
of duty they did not proceed against this with the necessary
determination. Nothing was done! On the contrary, various
quarters did not seem to take it so much amiss, and they were
small-minded enough to believe that such a propaganda would
not only put a bar in the path of the development of the German
people toward unity, but that it would inevitably and automatically
bring a strengthening of the federative forces. Scarcely ever
in history has a malicious omission brought more evil consequences.
The weakening these men thought they were administering to
Prussia struck the whole of Germany. And its consequence was
the acceleration of the collapse, which, however, not only
shattered Germany herself, but primarily, in point of fact,
the individual states themselves.
In
the city where the artificially fanned hatred against Prussia
raged most violently, the revolution was first to break out
against the hereditary royal house.
Yet
it would be false to believe that the manufacture of this
anti-Prussian mood is attributable solely to hostile war propaganda
and that the people affected by it had no grounds of justification.
The incredible way in which our war economy was organized,
a positively insane centralization that held the whole German
Reich territory in tutelage and pillaged it to the limit,
was one of the main reasons for the rise of this anti-Prussian
sentiment. For the average little man, the war societies,
which happened to have their central offices in Berlin, and
Berlin itself, were synonymous with Prussia. It scarcely
dawned on the individual at that time that the organizers
of this institute of robbery, known as 'war societies,' were
neither Berliners nor Prussians, in fact, were not Germans
at all. He saw only the great faults and the constant encroachments
of this hated institution in the capital and then naturally
transferred his whole hatred to the capital and Prussia simultaneously,
all the more so since in certain quarters not only nothing
was done about this, but such an interpretation was even secretly
and smirkingly welcomed.
The
Jew was far too shrewd not to realize in those days that the
infamous campaign of pillage that he was then organizing against
the German people, under the cloak of the war societies, would,
nay, must, arouse resistance. But as long as it did not spring
at his throat, he had no need to fear it. But in order to
prevent an explosion of the masses driven to despair and indignation
In this direction, there could be no better prescription than
to cause their rage to flare up elsewhere, thus using it up.
Let
Bavaria fight against Prussia and Prussia against Bavaria
as much as they wanted, the more the better! The hottest struggle
between the two meant the securest peace for the Jew. In this
way, the general attention was entirely diverted from the
international maggot of nations. And if the danger seemed
to arise that thoughtful elements, of which there were many
in Bavaria, as elsewhere, called for understanding, reflection,
and restraint and so the embittered struggle threatened to
die down, the Jew in Berlin needed only to stage a new provocation
and wait for the result. Instantly all the beneficiaries of
the conflict between North and South flung themselves on every
such occurrence, and kept on blowing until the flame of indignation
had again burst into a roaring blaze.
It
was an adroit, subtle game that the Jew then played, constantly
occupying and distracting the individual German tribes and
meanwhile pillaging them the more thoroughly.
Then
came the revolution.
If
up to the year 1918, or rather up to November of this year,
the average man, and especially the little-educated petit
bourgeois and worker, especially in Bavaria, could not yet
correctly estimate the real course and the inevitable consequences
of the quarrel of German tribes among themselves, the section
calling themselves 'national' should at least have had to
recognize it on the day of the outbreak of the revolution.
For no sooner had the action succeeded than in Bavaria the
leader and organizer of the revolution became the defender
of 'Bavarian' interests. The international Jew Kurt Eisner
began to play Bavaria against Prussia. It goes without
saying, however, that this Oriental who spent his time as
a newspaper journaille running all over Germany, was
unquestionably the last man fitted to defend Bavarian interests,
and that to him, in particular, Bavaria was a matter of the
utmost indifference possible on God's earth.
In
giving the revolutionary uprising in Bavaria a thoroughly
conscious edge against the rest of the Reich, Kurt Eisner
did not in the least act from Bavarian motives, out solely
as the servant of the Jews. He used the existing instincts
and dislikes of the Bavarian people, to help him break up
Germany the more easily. The shattered Reich would have easily
fallen a prey to Bolshevism.
After
his death the tactics applied by him were at first continued.
The Marxists, who had always covered the individual states
and their princes in Germany with the bloodiest scorn, now
came out as an 'Independent Party' and suddenly appealed
to those feelings and instincts which had their strongest
roots in princely houses and individual states.
The
fight of the Bavarian Republic of Councils against the approaching
contingents of liberation was dressed up by propaganda as
mainly a 'struggle of the Bavarian workers' against 'Prussian
militarism.' Only from this can it be understood why in Munich,
quite unlike the other German territories, the overthrow of
the Republic of Councils did not bring the great masses to
their senses, but rather led to an even greater bitterness
and rancor against Prussia.
The
skill with which the Bolshevistic agitators were able to represent
the elimination of the Republic of Councils as a 'Prussian
militaristic' victory against the 'anti-militaristic' and
'anti-Prussian' Bavarian people, bore rich fruit. While Kurt
Eisner, on the occasion of the elections to the legislative
Bavarian Provincial Diet in Munich, still could summon not
even ten thousand supporters, and the Communist Party actually
remained under three thousand, after the collapse of the Republic
both parties together had risen to nearly a hundred thousand
voters.
As
early as this period my personal fight against the insane
incitement of German tribes against each other began.
I
believe that in all my life I have undertaken no more unpopular
cause than my resistance at that time to the anti-Prussian
agitation. In Munich, even during the Soviet period, the
first mass meetings had taken place, in which hatred against
the rest of Germany and in particular against Prussia was
lashed to such a white heat that it not only involved a risk
of his life for a North German to attend such a meeting, but
the conclusion of such rallies as a rule ended quite openly
with mad cries of: 'Away from Prussia!'-'Down with Prussia!
'-'War against Prussia! ' a mood which a particularly brilliant
representative of Bavarian sovereign interests in the German
Reichstag summed up in the battle-cry: 'Rather die Bavarian
than rot Prussian!'
You
need to have lived through the meetings of that time to understand
what it meant for me when, surrounded by a handful of friends,
I for the first time, at a meeting in the Löwenbräukeller
in Munich; offered resistance against this madness. It was
war comrades who then supported me, and perhaps you can imagine
how we felt when a mob - by far the greatest part of which
had been deserters and slackers, hanging around the reserve
posts or at home while we were defending the fatherland -
lost all reason and bellowed at us and threatened to strike
us down. For me, to be sure, these incidents had the virtue
that the squad of my loyal followers came to feel really attached
to me, and was soon sworn to live or die by my side.
These
struggles, which were repeated again and again and dragged
out through the entire year of 1919, seemed to become even
sharper right at the beginning of 1920. There were meetings
- I particularly remember one in the Wagner-Saal in the Sonnen-Strasse
in Munich - in which my group, which had meanwhile grown stronger,
had to withstand grave clashes, which not seldom ended in
dozens of my supporters being mishandled, struck down, trampled
under foot, and finally, more dead than alive, thrown out
of the halls.
The
struggle which I had first taken up as an individual, supported
only by my war comrades, was now continued by the young movement
as, I might also say, a sacred mission.
Today
I am still proud to be able to say that in those days - dependent
almost entirely on our Bavarian adherents - we nevertheless
slowly but surely put an end to this mixture of stupidity
and treason. I say stupidity and treason because, though fully
convinced that the mass of followers were really nothing but
good-natured fools, such simplicity cannot be attributed to
the organizers and instigators. I regarded them, and today
still regard them, as traitors bought and paid for by France.
In one case, the Dorten case, history has already given its
verdict.
What
made the affair especially dangerous at that time was the
skill with which the true tendencies were concealed, by shoving
federalistic intentions into the foreground as the sole motive
for this activity. But it is obvious that stirring up hatred
against Prussia has nothing to do with federalism. And a 'federative
activity' which attempts to dissolve or split up another federal
state makes a weird impression. An honorable federalist, for
whom quotations of Bismarck's conception of the Reich are
more than lying phrases, would hardly in the same breath want
to separate portions from the Prussian state created or rather
completed by Bismarck, let alone publicly support such separatist
endeavors. How they would have yelled in Munich if a conservative
Prussian party had favored the separation of Franconia from
Bavaria, or actually demanded and promoted it by public action.
In all this one could only feel sorry for the honest, federalist-minded
souls who had not seen through this foul swindle; for they,
first and foremost, were the cheated parties. By thus compromising
the federative idea, its own supporters were digging its grave.
It is impossible to preach a federalistic form for
the Reich, at the same time deprecating, reviling, and
befouling the most essential section of such a state structure,
namely, Prussia, and in short, making it, if possible, impossible
as a federal state. What made this all the more incredible
was that the fight of these so-called federalists was directed
precisely against that Prussia which can least be brought
into connection with the November democracy. For it was not
against the fathers of the Weimar Constitution, who
themselves incidentally were for the most part South Germans
or Jews, that the vilifications and attacks of these so-called
'federalists' were directed, but against the representatives
of the old conservative Prussia, hence the antipodes
of the Weimar Constitution. It must not surprise us that they
took special care not to attack the Jew, and perhaps this
furnishes the key to the solution of the whole riddle.
Just
as before the revolution the Jew knew how to divert attention
from his war societies, or rather from himself, and was able
to turn the masses, especially of the Bavarian people, against
Prussia, after the revolution he had somehow to cover his
new and ten times bigger campaign of pillage. And again he
succeeded, in this case in inciting the so-called 'national
elements' of Germany against one another: conservative-minded
Bavaria against equally conservative-thinking Prussia.
And again he managed it in the shrewdest way; he, who alone
held the strings of the Reich's destinies, provoked such brutal
and tactless excesses that the blood of those affected could
not but be brought to the boiling point each time anew. Yet
never against the Jew, but always against the German brother.
It was not the Berlin of four million hard-working, producing
people that the Bavarian saw, but the rotten decaying Berlin
of the foulest West End! But it was not against this West
End that his hatred turned, but against the 'Prussian' city.
Often
it could really drive you to despair.
This
aptitude of the Jew for diverting public attention from himself
and occupying it elsewhere, can be studied again today.
In
1918 there could be no question of a systematic anti-Semitism.
I still remember the difficulties one encountered if one so
much as uttered the word Jew. Either one was stupidly gaped
at, or one experienced the most violent resistance. Our first
attempts to show the public the real enemy then seemed almost
hopeless, and only very slowly did things begin to take a
better turn. Bad as the organizational set-up of the Watch
and Ward League (Schulz- und Trutzbund) was, it
nonetheless had great merit in having reopened the
Jewish question as such. At all events, in the winter
of 1918-19, something like anti-Semitism began slowly
to take root. Later, to be sure, the National Socialist movement
drove the Jewish question to the fore in quite a different
way. Above all, it succeeded in lifting this problem out of
the narrow, limited circle of bourgeois and petit bourgeois
strata and transforming it into the driving impulse of a great
people's movement. But scarcely had it succeeded in giving
the German people its great, unifying idea of struggle in
this question than the Jew commenced to counter-attack. He
seized upon his old weapon. With miraculous speed he threw
the torch of discord into the folkish movement and sowed dissension.
As things then stood, the only possibility of occupying the
public attention with other questions and withholding a concentrated
attack from the Jews lay in raising the Ultramontane question,
and in the resulting clash between Catholicism and
Protestantism. These men can never atone for the wrong
they did our people in hurling this question into their midst.
In any case the Jew reached his desired goal: Catholics and
Protestants wage a merry war with one another, and the mortal
enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom laughs up his
sleeve.
Just
as formerly they were able to busy public opinion for years
with the struggle between federalism and centralization, thus
wearing it down with exhaustion, while the Jew sold the freedom
of the nation and betrayed our fatherland to international
high finance, now again he succeeds in causing the two German
denominations to assail one another, while the foundations
of both are corroded and undermined by the poison of the international
world Jew.
Bear
in mind the devastations which Jewish bastardization visits
on our nation each day, and consider that this blood poisoning
can be removed from our national body only after centuries,
if at all; consider further how racial disintegration drags
down and often destroys the last Aryan values of our German
people, so that our strength as a culture-bearing nation is
visibly more and more involved in a regression and we run
the risk, in our big cities at least, of reaching the point
where southern Italy is today. This contamination of our blood,
blindly ignored by hundreds of thousands of our people, is
carried on systematically by the Jew today. Systematically
these black parasites of the nation defile our inexperienced
young blond girls and thereby destroy something which can
no longer be replaced in this world. Both, yes, both Christian
denominations look on indifferently at this desecration and
destruction of a noble and unique living creature, given to
the earth by God's grace. The significance of this for the
future of the earth does not lie in whether the Protestants
defeat the Catholics or the Catholics the Protestants, but
in whether the Aryan man is preserved for the earth or dies
out. Nevertheless, the two denominations do not fight today
against the destroyer of this man, but strive mutually to
annihilate one another. The folkish-minded man, in particular,
has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making
people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and
actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated.
For
God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities.
Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's
creation, the divine will. Therefore, let every man be active,
each in his own denomination if you please, and let every
man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone
who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines
of his religious community and tries to butt into the other.
For in Germany to attack the special characteristics of a
denomination, within the religious schism we already have
with us, necessarily leads to a war of annihilation between
the two denominations. Our conditions permit here of no comparison
say with France or Spain, let alone Italy. In all three countries,
for example, a fight can be preached against clericalism or
Ultramontanism, without running the risk that in this endeavor
the French, Spanish, or Italian people as such will fall apart.
In Germany, however, this may not be done, for here it is
certain that the Protestants would also participate in such
a movement. And thus the resistance, which would elsewhere
be carried on only by Catholics against encroachments of a
political nature by their own high clergy, immediately assumes
the character of an attack of Protestantism against
Catholicism. What is tolerated from members of the
same denomination, even when it is unjust, is at once sharply
rejected at the outset, as soon as the assailant belongs to
another creed. This goes so far that even men, who themselves
would be perfectly willing to correct a visible abuse within
their own religious community, at once change their minds
and turn their resistance outward as soon as such a correction
is recommended, let alone demanded, by a source not belonging
to their community. They regard this as an unjustified and
impermissible, nay, indecent attempt to mix in matters which
do not concern the party in question. Such attempts are not
pardoned even if they are justified by the higher right of
the interests of the national community, since today religious
sentiments still go deeper than all considerations of national
and political expediency. And this is in no way changed by
driving the two denominations into an embittered mutual war,
but could only change if, through compatibility on both sides,
the nation is given a future which by its greatness would
gradually have a conciliatory effect in this province as elsewhere.
I
do not hesitate to declare that I regard the men who today
draw the folkish movement into the crisis of religious quarrels
as worse enemies of my people than any international Communist.
For to convert the latter is the mission of the National Socialist
movement. But anyone in its own ranks who leads it away from
its true mission is acting damnably. Whether consciously or
unconsciously is immaterial, he is a fighter for Jewish interests.
For it is to the Jewish interest today to make the folkish
movement bleed to death in a religious struggle at the moment
when it is beginning to become a danger for the Jew. And I
expressly emphasize the words bleed to death; for only a man
without historical education can imagine that with this movement
today a problem can be solved which has defied centuries and
great statesmen.
For
the rest, the facts speak for themselves. The gentlemen who
in 1924 suddenly discovered that the highest mission of the
folkish movement was the struggle against 'Ultramontanism'
did not break Ultramontanism, but tore apart the folkish movement.
I must also lodge protest against any immature mind in the
ranks of the folkish movement imagining that he can do what
even a Bismarck could not do. It will always be the highest
duty of the top leadership of the National Socialist movement
to offer the sharpest opposition to any attempt to drive the
National Socialist movement into such struggles, and immediately
to remove the propagandists of such an intention from the
ranks of the movement. And actually, by autumn, 1923, we succeeded
entirely in this. In the ranks of the movement, the most
devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout
Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with
his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which
both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had,
on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem
one another. And yet, in these very years, the movement carried
on the bitterest fight against the Center, though never on
religious, but exclusively on national, racial, and economico-political
grounds. The results spoke in our favor, just as today they
testify against the know-it-alls.
In
recent years things have sometimes gone so far that folkish
circles in the God-forsaken blindness of their denominational
squabbles did not even recognize the madness of their actions
from the fact that atheistic Marxist newspapers suddenly,
when convenient, became advocates of religious communities,
and tried to compromise one or the other by bandying back
and forth remarks that were sometimes really too stupid, and
thus stir up the fire to the extreme.
Especially
with a people like the Germans, who have so often demonstrated
in their history that they were capable of waging wars down
to the last drop of blood for phantoms, any such battle cry
will be mortally dangerous. In this way our people has always
been diverted from the real practical questions of its existence.
While we devoured each other in religious squabbles, the rest
of the world was distributed. And while the folkish movement
considers whether the Ultramontane peril is greater than the
Jewish peril or vice versa, the Jew destroys the racial foundations
of our existence and thus destroys our people for all time.
As far as this variety of 'folkish' warriors are concerned,
I can only wish the National Socialist movement and the German
people with all my heart: Lord, protect them from such friends
and they will settle with their enemies by themselves.
*...............*...............*
The
struggle between federalism and centralization so shrewdly
propagated by the Jews in 1919-20-21 and afterward, forced
the National Socialist movement, though absolutely rejecting
it, to take a position on its essential problems.
Should
Germany be a federated or a unified state, and what
for practical purposes must be understood by the two? To me
the second seems the more important question, because it is
not only fundamental to the understanding of the whole problem,
but also because it is clarifying and possesses a conciliatory
character.
What
is a federated state?
By
a federated state we understand a league of sovereign states
which band together of their own free will, on the strength
of their sovereignty; ceding to the totality that share of
their particular sovereign rights which makes possible and
guarantees the existence of the common federation.
In
practice this theoretical formulation does not apply entirely
to any of the federated states existing on earth today. Least
of all to the American Union, where, as far as the overwhelming
part of the individual states are concerned, there can be
no question of any original sovereignty, but, on the contrary,
many of them were sketched into the total area of the Union
in the course of time, so to speak. Hence in the individual
states of the American Union we have mostly to do with smaller
and larger territories, formed for technical, administrative
reasons, and, often marked out with a ruler, states which
previously had not and could not have possessed any state
sovereignty of their own. For it was not these states that
had formed the Union, on the contrary it was the Union which
formed a great part of such so-called states. The very extensive
special rights granted, or rather assigned, to the individual
territories are not only in keeping with the whole character
of this federation of states, but above all with the size
of its area, its spatial dimensions which approach the scope
of a continent. And so, as far as the states of the American
Union are concerned, we cannot speak of their state sovereignty,
but only of their constitutionally established and guaranteed
rights, or better, perhaps, privileges.
The
above formulation is not fully and entirely applicable to
Germany either. Although in Germany without doubt the individual
states did exist first and in the form of states, and the
Reich was formed out of them. But the very formation of the
Reich did not take place on the basis of the free will or
equal participation of the single states, but through the
workings of the hegemony of one state among them, Prussia.
The great difference between the German states, from the purely
territorial standpoint, permits no comparison with the formation
of the American Union, for instance. The difference in size
between the smallest of the former federated states and the
larger ones, let alone the largest, shows the non-similarity
of their achievements, and else the inequality of their share
in the founding of the Reich, the forming of the federated
state. Actually, in most of these states there could be no
question of a real sovereignty, except if state sovereignty
was taken only as an official phrase. In reality, not only
the past, but the present as well, had put an end to any number
of these so-called 'sovereign states' and thus clearly demonstrated
the weakness of these 'sovereign' formations.
I
shall not state here how each of these states was historically
formed, but I do want to say that in practically no case do
they coincide with tribal boundaries. They are purely political
phenomena, and their roots for the most part go back to the
gloomiest epoch of the German Reich's impotence and of the
national fragmentation which conditioned it and itself in
turn was conditioned by it.
All
this, in part at least, was taken into account by the constitution
of the old Reich, in so far as it did not grant the individual
states the same representation in the Bundesrat, but set up
gradations corresponding to size and actual importance, as
well as the achievement of the individual states in the formation
of the Reich.
The
sovereign rights waived by the single states to make possible
the formation of the Reich were only in the smallest part
surrendered of their own free will; in the greatest part they
were either practically non-existent to begin with or were
simply taken away under the pressure of superior Prussian
power. At the same time, Bismarck did not act on the principle
of giving to the Reich everything that could in any way be
taken away from the individual states; his principle was to
demand of the individual states only what the Reich absolutely
needed. A principle as moderate as it was wise, which on the
one hand took the highest consideration of custom and tradition,
and on the other hand thereby assured the new Reich a great
measure of love and joyful collaboration at the very outset.
It is absolutely wrong, however, to attribute this decision
of Bismarck to his conviction that the Reich thus possessed
sufficient sovereign rights for all time. Bismarck had no
such conviction; on the contrary, he only wanted to put off
till the future what at the moment would have been hard to
accomplish and to endure. He put his hope in the gradual compromises
brought about by time and the pressure of development as such,
which in the long run he credited with more strength than
any attempt to break the momentary resistance of the individual
states at once. Thus, he best demonstrated and proved the
greatness of his statesmanship. For in reality the sovereignty
of the Reich steadily grew at the expense of the sovereignty
of the individual states. Time fulfilled Bismarck's expectations.
With
the German collapse and the destruction of the German state
form, this development was necessarily accelerated. For since
the existence of the individual German states was attributable
less to tribal foundations than to purely political causes,
the significance of these individual states inevitably shriveled
into nothing once the most essential embodiment of the political
development of these states, the monarchic state form and
their dynasties, had been excluded. A considerable number
of these 'state formations' lost all internal stability, to
such an extent that they voluntarily renounced any further
existence and for reasons of pure expediency fused with others
or merged with larger ones of their own free will: the most
striking proof of the extraordinary weakness of these little
formations and the small respect they enjoyed even among their
own citizens.
And
so, if the elimination of the monarchic state form and its
representatives in itself administered a strong blow to the
Reich's character as a federated state, this was even more
true of the assumption of the obligations resulting from the
'peace' treaty.
It
was natural and self-evident that the financial sovereignty
previously vested in the provinces should be lost to the Reich
at the moment when the Reich due to the lost War was subjected
to a financial obligation which would never have been met
by individual contributions of the provinces. Also the further
steps, which led to the taking over of the postal service
and railroads by the Reich, were necessary effects of the
enslavement of our people, gradually initiated by the peace
treaties. The Reich was forced to take firm possession of
more and more capital, in order to be able to meet the obligations
which arose in consequence of further extortions.
Insane
as the forms frequently were, in which the centralization
was accomplished, the process in itself was logical and natural.
Those to blame were the parties and the men who had not done
everything in their power to end the War victoriously. Those
to blame, especially in Bavaria, were the parties which in
pursuit of selfish aims of their own, had during the War wrung
from the principle of the Reich concessions which after its
loss they had to restore ten times over. Avenging history!
Seldom, however, has the punishment of Heaven come so swiftly
after the crime as in this case. The same parties, which only
a few years previous had placed the interests of their individual
states - and this especially in Bavaria - above the interest
of the Reich, were now compelled to look on as, beneath the
pressure of events, the interest of the Reich throttled the
existence of the individual states. All through their own
complicity.
It
is an unequaled hypocrisy to bemoan to the masses of voters
(for only toward them is the agitation of our present-day
parties directed) the loss of the sovereign rights of the
individual provinces, while all these parties without exception
outbid one another in a policy of fulfillment which in its
ultimate consequences could not but lead to deep-seated changes
inside Germany. Bismarck's Germany was free and unbound on
the outside. This Reich did not possess financial obligations
of so burdensome, and at the same time unproductive, a nature
as the present Dawes-Germany has to bear. But internally as
well, its competence was limited to a few matters and those
absolutely necessary. Thus it could very well dispense with
a financial sovereignty of its own, and live from the contributions
of the provinces; and it goes without saying that, on the
one hand, the continued possession of their own sovereign
rights, and, on the other hand, comparatively small financial
contributions to the Reich, were very conducive to satisfaction
with the Reich in the provinces. However, it is incorrect,
dishonest in fact, to make propaganda today with the assertion
that the present lack of satisfaction with the Reich can be
attributed solely to the financial bondage of the provinces
to the Reich. No, that is not the real state of affairs. The
diminished satisfaction with the Reich idea is not attributable
to the loss of sovereign rights on the part of the provinces,
but is rather the result of the deplorable way in which the
German people is at present represented by its state.
Despite all the Reichsbanner rallies and celebrations
in honor of the constitution, the present Reich has remained
alien to the heart of the people in all strata, and republican
protective laws may deter people from transgressing against
republican institutions, but can never win the love of so
much as a single German. In this excessive concern with
protecting the Republic against its own citizens by means
of penal laws and imprisonment lies the most annihilating
criticism and disparagement of the whole institution itself.
I
say inevitably because the present Reich retains no
other possibility of meeting the burdens imposed by its notorious
domestic and foreign policy. Here again one wedge drives the
next, and every new debt that the Reich heaps upon itself
by its criminal handling of German interests abroad, must
be balanced at home by a stronger downward pressure which
in turn requires the gradual elimination of all sovereign
rights of the individual states, in order to prevent germ
cells of resistance from arising or merely persisting in them.
Altogether,
a characteristic difference must be noted between the present
Reich policy and that of former days: The old Reich gave
internal freedom and demonstrated strength on the outside,
while the Republic shows weakness outside and represses its
citizens internally. In both cases one conditions the
other: The powerful national state needs fewer laws within
in consequence of the greater love and attachment of its citizens;
the international slave state can only hold its subjects to
their slave labor by force. For it is one of the present
régime's most shameless impertinences to speak of 'free citizens.'
Only the old Germany possessed such citizens. The Republic
is a slave colony of foreign countries and has no citizens,
but at best subjects. It therefore possesses no national
flag but only a trade-mark, introduced and protected
by official decrees and legal measures. This symbol, regarded
by everyone as the Gessler's hat of German democracy, will
therefore always remain inwardly alien to our people. The
Republic which, without any feeling for tradition and without
much respect for the greatness of the past, trod its symbols
in the mire, will some day be amazed how superficially its
subjects are attached to its own symbols. It has given to
itself the character of an intermezzo in German history.
And
so today this state, for the sake of its own existence, is
obliged to curtail the sovereign rights of the individual
provinces more and more, not only out of general material
considerations, but from ideal considerations as well. For
in draining its citizens of their last drop of blood by its
policy of financial extortion, it must inevitably withdraw
their last rights if it does not want the general discontent
to break out into open rebellion some day.
By
inverting the above proposition, the following rule, basic
for us National Socialists, is derived. A powerful national
Reich, which takes into account and protects the outward interests
of its citizens to the highest extent, can offer freedom within,
without having to fear for the stability of the state. On
the other hand, a powerful national government can undertake
and accept responsibility for great limitations on the freedom
of the individual as well as the provinces, without damage
to the Reich idea if in such measures the individual citizen
recognizes a means toward the greatness of his nation.
Certainly
all the states in the world are moving toward a certain unification
in their inner organization. And in this Germany will be no
exception. Today it is an absurdity to speak of a 'state sovereignty'
of individual provinces, which in reality the absurd size
of these formations in itself fails to provide. The techniques
of communication as well as administration steadily diminish
the importance of the individual states. Modern communications,
modern technology, make distance and space shrink more and
more. A state of former days today represents only a province'
and the states of the present formerly seemed like continents.
The difficulty, from the purely technical point of view, of
administering a state like Germany is no greater than the
difficulty in directing a province like Brandenburg a hundred
and twenty years ago. It is today easier to span the distance
from Munich to Berlin than that from Munich to Starnberg a
hundred years ago. And the whole Reich territory of today
is smaller in relation to current communications technique
than any medium German federated state at the time of the
Napoleonic Wars. Anyone who disregards consequences resulting
from undeniable facts cannot help but remain behind the times.
At all times there have been men who do this, and in the future
there will be too. But they can scarcely impede the wheel
of history, and never bring it to a standstill.
We
National Socialists must never blindly disregard the consequences
of these truths. Here again we must not let ourselves be taken
in by the phrases of our so-called national bourgeois parties.
I use the term phrases because these parties themselves do
not believe seriously in the possibility of carrying out their
intentions, and because in the second place they themselves
are the accomplices mainly responsible for the present development.
Especially in Bavaria, the cry for the elimination of centralization
is really nothing more than a party machination without any
serious thought behind it. Every time that these parties should
really have made something serious out of their phrases, they
all of them fell down miserably. Every so-called 'theft of
sovereign rights' from the Bavarian state by the Reich was
accepted practically without resistance except for a repulsive
yelping. Indeed, if anyone really dared to put up serious
opposition to this insane system, he was outlawed and damned
and persecuted for 'contempt of the existing state' by these
very parties, and in the end was silenced either by imprisonment
or illegally forbidden to speak. This more than anything
should show our supporters the inner hypocrisy of these so-called
federalistic circles. The federative state idea, like religion
in part, is only an instrument for their often unclean party
interests.
*...............*...............*
Natural
as a certain unification may seem, particularly in the field
of communications, for us National Socialists there nevertheless
remains an obligation to take an energetic position against
such a development in the present-day state, at times when
the measures only serve the purpose of masking and making
possible a catastrophic foreign policy. Precisely because
the present Reich did not undertake the nationalization of
the railroads, postal service, finances, etc., out of higher
considerations of national policy, but only in order to lay
hands on the financial means and securities for such a policy
of unlimited fulfillment, we National Socialists must
do everything that seems in any way calculated to impede and
if possible prevent the execution of such a policy. And to
this belongs the struggle against the present centralization
of vitally important institutions of our people, which is
undertaken only in order to raise the billions of marks and
the collateral for our post-War foreign policy.
And
for this reason the National Socialist movement has taken
a position against such attempts.
The
second reason which can induce us to offer resistance to such
a centralization is that it might stabilize the power of a
system of internal government which in all its effects has
brought the gravest disaster upon the German people. The
present Jewish-Democratic Reich, which has become a true curse
for the German nation, seeks to make the criticism of the
individual states, all of which are not yet imbued with this
new spirit, ineffectual, by reducing them to total insignificance.
In the face of this, we National Socialists have every reason
to attempt to give to the opposition of these individual states,
not only the foundation of a state power promising success,
but in general to make their struggle against centralization
into an expression of a higher, national and universal German
interest. And so, while the Bavarian People's Party endeavors
to preserve special rights for the Bavarian State out of small-hearted,
particularistic motives, we must use this special position
in the service of a higher national interest in opposition
to the present November democracy.
The
third reason that can also determine us to fight against the
current centralization is the conviction that a great part
of the so-called nationalization is in reality no unification,
and in no event a simplification, but that in many cases it
is only a matter of removing institutions from the sovereign
rights of the provinces, in order to open their gates to the
interests of the revolutionary parties. Never in German history
has there been a more shameless policy of favoritism than
under the democratic Republic. A large part of the present
frenzy for centralization falls to the account of those parties
which once promised to clear the road to ability, but when
it came to filling offices and posts solely considered party
membership. Since the founding of the Republic, particularly
Jews in incredible numbers poured into the economic concerns
and administrative apparatuses snatched up by the Reich, so
that today both have become a domain of Jewish activity.
This
third consideration above all must obligate us on tactical
grounds to examine sharply any further measure on the road
to centralization and if necessary to take a position against
it. But in this our motives must always be higher motives
of national policy and never petty particularistic ones.
This
last remark is necessary lest the opinion arise among our
supporters that we National Socialists would not grant the
Reich as such the right to embody a higher sovereignty than
that of the individual states. Concerning this right, there
must and can be no doubt among us. Since for us the state
as such is only a form, but the essential is its content,
the nation, the people, it is clear that everything else must
be subordinated to its sovereign interests. In particular
we cannot grant to any individual state within the nation
and the state representing it state sovereignty and sovereignty
in point of political power. The mischief of individual
federated states maintaining so-called missions abroad and
among each other must cease and will some day cease. As long
as such things are possible, we must not be surprised if foreign
countries still doubt the stability of our Reich structure
and act accordingly. The mischief of these missions is all
the greater as not the least benefit can be attributed to
them along with the harm. The interests of a German abroad,
which cannot be protected by the ambassador of the Reich,
can much less be looked after by the envoy of a petty state
that looks ridiculous in the setting of the present world
order. In these petty federated states we can really see nothing
but points of attack for separatist endeavors inside and outside
of the German Reich, endeavors such as one state still
particularly welcomes. And we National Socialists can have
no sympathy with some noble family, grown feeble with age,
providing new soil for a withered scion by clothing him in
an ambassadorial post. Our diplomatic missions abroad were
so miserable even at the time of the old Reich that further
additions to the experience then gained are highly superfluous.
In
future the significance of the individual provinces will unquestionably
be shifted more to the field of cultural policy. The monarch
who did the most for the importance of Bavaria was not some
stubborn anti-German particularist, but Ludwig I, a man of
pan-German mind and artistic sensibilities. By using the forces
of the state primarily for the development of Bavaria's cultural
position and not for the strengthening of her political power,
he built better and more enduringly than would otherwise have
been possible. By pushing Munich from the level of an insignificant
provincial capital into the format of a great German art metropolis,
he created a spiritual center which even today is strong enough
to bind the essentially different Franks to this state. Supposing
that Munich had remained what it formerly was, the same process
that took place in Saxony would have been repeated in Bavaria,
only with the difference that Nuremberg, the Bavarian Leipzig,
would have become not a Bavarian but a Frankish city. It was
not the 'Down with Prussia' shouters that made Munich great;
this city was given its importance by the King who in it wished
to bestow upon the German nation an art treasure which would
have to be seen and respected, and which was seen and respected.
And therein lies a lesson for the future. The importance
of the individual states will in the future no longer lie
in the fields of state power and policy; I see it either in
the tribal field or the field of cultural policy. But
even here time will have a leveling effect. The ease of modern
transportation so scatters people around that slowly and steadily
the tribal boundaries are effaced and thus even the cultural
picture gradually begins to even out.
Moreover,
a young victorious idea will have to reject any fetter which
might paralyze its activity in pushing forward its conceptions.
National Socialism as a matter of principle, must lay claim
to the right to force its principles on the whole German nation
without consideration of previous federated state boundaries,
and to educate it in its ideas and conceptions. Just as the
churches do not feel bound and limited by political boundaries,
no more does the National Socialist idea feel limited by the
individual state territories of our fatherland.
The
National Socialist doctrine is not the servant of individual
federated states, but shall someday become the master of the
German nation. It must determine and reorder the life of a
people, and must, therefore, imperiously claim the right to
pass over boundaries drawn by a development we have rejected.
The
more complete the victory of its idea will be, the greater
may be the particular liberties it offers internally.
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