Volume
Two: The National Socialist
Movement
CHAPTER
2
THE
STATE
By
1920 to 1921, time and again the circles of the present outlived
bourgeois world held it up to our young movement that our attitude
toward the present-day state was negative, which made the political
crooks of all tendencies feel justified in undertaking to suppress
the young prophet of a new world view with all possible means.
Of course they purposely forgot that the present bourgeois world
itself can no longer form any unified picture of the state
concept, that there neither is nor can be any uniform definition
of it. For the explainers usually sit in our state universities
in the form of political law professors, whose highest task
it must be to find explanations and interpretations for the
more or less unfortunate existence of their momentary source
of bread. The more impossible the nature of such a state is,
the more opaque, artificial, and unintelligible are the definitions
regarding the purpose of its existence. What, for example, could
a royal and imperial university professor formerly write about
the sense and purpose of the state in a country whose state
existence embodied the greatest monstrosity of the twentieth
century? A grave task if we consider that for the present day
teacher of political law there is less obligation to truth than
bondage to a definite purpose. And the purpose is: preservation
at any price of the current monstrosity of human mechanism,
now called state. We have no call to be surprised if in the
discussion of this problem practical criteria are avoided as
much as possible, and instead the professors dig themselves
into a hodgepodge of 'ethical,' 'moral,' and other ideal values,
tasks and aims.
(a)
The troop of those who regard the state simply as a more
or less voluntary grouping of people under a governmental power.
This
group is the most numerous. In its ranks are found particularly
the worshipers of our present-day principle of legitimacy, in
whose eyes the will of the people plays no role in this whole
matter. According to these saints, a sacred inviolability is
based on the mere fact of the state's existence. To protect
this madness of human brains, a positively dog-like veneration
of so-called state authority is needed. In the minds
of such people a means becomes an ultimate end in the twinkling
of an eye. The state no longer exists to serve men; men exist
in order to worship a state authority which embraces even the
most humble spirit, provided he is in any sense an official.
Lest this condition of silent, ecstatic veneration turn into
one of unrest, the state authority for its part exists only
to maintain peace and order. It, too, is now an end and no longer
a means. State authority must provide for peace and order, and
peace and order in turn must conversely make possible the existence
of state authority. Within these two poles all life must now
revolve.
(b)
The second group of people is somewhat smaller in number, since
among it must be reckoned those who at least attach a few conditions
to the existence of the state. They desire not only uniform
but also, if possible, uniform language - if only for
general technical reasons of administration. State authority
is no longer the sole and exclusive purpose of the state, but
to it is added the promotion of the subjects' welfare. Ideas
of 'freedom,' mostly of a misunderstood nature, inject themselves
into the state conceptions of these circles. The form of government
no longer seems inviolable by the mere fact of its existence,
but is examined as to its expediency. The sanctity of age offers
no protection against the criticism of the present. Furthermore,
it is a conception which expects that the state above all will
beneficially shape the economic life of the individual, and
which therefore judges on the basis of practical criteria and
general economic conceptions of the profitable. We find the
main representatives of these views in the circles of our normal
German bourgeoisie, especially in those of our liberal democracy.
(c)
The third group is numerically the weakest.
It
regards the state as a means for the realization of usually
very unclearly conceived aims of a state-people linguistically
stamped and united. The will for a uniform state language is
here expressed, not only in the hope of giving this state a
foundation capable of supporting an outward increase of power,
but not less in the opinion - basically erroneous, incidentally
- that this will make it possible to carry through a nationalization
in a definite direction.
In
the last hundred years it has been a true misery to observe
how these circles, sometimes in the best good faith, played
with the word 'Germanize.' I myself still remember how
in my youth this very term led to incredibly false conceptions.
Even in Pan-German circles the opinion could then be heard that
the Austrian-Germans with the promotion and aid of the government,
might well succeed in a Germanization of the Austrian
Slavs; these circles never even began to realize that Germanization
can only be applied to soil and never to people.
For what was generally understood under this word was only the
forced outward acceptance of the German language. But it is
a scarcely conceivable fallacy of thought to believe that a
Negro or a Chinese, let us say, will turn into a German
because he learns German and is willing to speak the German
language in the future and perhaps even give his vote to a German
political party. That any such Germanization is in reality a
de-Germanization never became clear to our bourgeois national
world. For if today, by forcing a universal language on them,
obvious differences between different peoples are bridged over
and finally effaced, this means the beginning of a bastardization,
and hence in our case not a Germanization but a destruction
of the Germanic element. Only too frequently does it occur in
history that conquering people's outward instruments of power
succeed in forcing their language on oppressed peoples, but
that after a thousand years their language is spoken by another
people, and the victors thereby actually become the vanquished.
Since
nationality or rather race does not happen to lie in language
but in the blood, we would only be justified in speaking of
a Germanization if by such a process we succeeded in transforming
the blood of the subjected people. But this is impossible. Unless
a blood mixture brings about a change, which, however, means
the lowering of the level of the higher race. The final result
of such a process would consequently be the destruction of precisely
those qualities which had formerly made the conquering people
capable of victory. Especially the cultural force would vanish
through a mating with the lesser race, even if the resulting
mongrels spoke the language of the earlier, higher race a thousand
times over. For a time, a certain struggle will take place between
the different mentalities, and it may be that the steadily sinking
people, in a last quiver of life, so to speak, will bring to
light surprising cultural values. But these are only individual
elements belonging to the higher race, or perhaps bastards in
whom, after the first crossing, the better blood still predominates
and tries to struggle through; but never final products of a
mixture. In them a culturally backward movement will always
manifest itself.
Today
it must be regarded as a good fortune that a Germanization as
intended by Joseph II in Austria was not carried out. Its result
would probably have been the preservation of the Austrian state,
but also the lowering of the racial level of the German nation
induced by a linguistic union. In the course of the centuries
a certain herd instinct would doubtless have crystallized out,
but the herd itself would have become inferior. A state-people
would perhaps have been born, but a culture-people would have
been lost.
For
the German nation it was better that such a process of mixture
did not take place, even if this was not due to a noble insight,
but to the shortsighted narrowness of the Habsburgs. If it had
turned out differently, the German people could scarcely be
regarded as a cultural factor.
Not
only in Austria, but in Germany as well, so-called national
circles were moved by similar false ideas. The Polish policy,
demanded by so many, involving a Germanization of the East,
was unfortunately based on the same false inference. Here again
it was thought that a Germanization of the Polish element could
be brought about by a purely linguistic integration with the
German element. Here again the result would have been catastrophic;
a people of alien race expressing its alien ideas in the German
language, compromising the lofty dignity of our own nationality
by their own inferiority.
How
terrible is the damage indirectly done to our Germanism today
by the fact that, due to the ignorance of many Americans, the
German-jabbering Jews, when they set foot on American soil,
are booked to our German account. Surely no one will call the
purely external fact that most of this lice-ridden migration
from the East speaks German a proof of their German origin and
nationality.
What
has been profitably Germanized in history is the soil which
our ancestors acquired by the sword and settled with German
peasants. In so far as they directed foreign blood into our
national body in this process, they contributed to that catastrophic
splintering of our inner being which is expressed in German
super-individualism - a phenomenon, I am sorry to say, which
is praised in many quarters.
Also
in this third group, the state in a certain sense still passes
as an end in itself, and the preservation of the state, consequently,
as the highest task of human existence.
In
summing up we can state the following: All these views have
their deepest root, not in the knowledge that the forces which
create culture and values are based essentially on racial elements
and that the state must, therefore, in the light of reason,
regard its highest task as the preservation and intensification
of the race, this fundamental condition of all human cultural
development.
It
was the Jew, Karl Marx, who was able to draw the extreme inference
from those false conceptions and views concerning the nature
and purpose of a state: by detaching the state concept from
racial obligations without being able to arrive at any other
equally acknowledged formulation, the bourgeois world even paved
the way for a doctrine which denies the state as such.
Even
in this field, therefore, the struggle of the bourgeois world
against the Marxist international must fail completely. It long
since sacrificed the foundations which would have been indispensably
necessary for the support of its own ideological world. Their
shrewd foe recognized the weaknesses of their own structure
and is now storming it with the weapons which they themselves,
even if involuntarily, provided.
It
is, therefore, the first obligation of a new movement, standing
on the ground of a folkish world view, to make sure that its
conception of the nature and purpose of the state attains a
uniform and clear character.
Thus
the basic realization is: that the state represents no end,
but a means. It is, to be sure, the premise for the formation
of a higher human culture, but not its cause, which lies exclusively
in the existence of a race capable of culture. Hundreds
of exemplary states might exist on earth, but if the Aryan culture-bearer
died out, there would be no culture corresponding to the spiritual
level of the highest peoples of today. We can go even farther
and say that the fact of human state formation would not in
the least exclude the possibility of the destruction of the
human race, provided that superior intellectual ability and
elasticity would be lost due to the absence of their racial
bearers.
If
today, for example, the surface of the earth were upset by some
tectonic event and a new Himalaya rose from the ocean floods,
by one single cruel catastrophe the culture of humanity would
be destroyed. No state would exist any longer, the bands of
all order would be dissolved, the documents of millennial development
would be shattered - a single great field of corpses covered
by water and mud. But if from this chaos of horror even a few
men of a certain race capable of culture had been preserved,
the earth, upon settling, if only after thousands of years,
would again get proofs of human creative power. Only the destruction
of the last race capable of culture and its individual members
would desolate the earth for good. Conversely, we can see even
by examples from the present that state formations in their
tribal beginnings can, if their racial supporters lack sufficient
genius, not preserve them from destruction. Just as great animal
species of prehistoric times had to give way to others and vanish
without trace, man must also give way if he lacks a definite
spiritual force which alone enables him to find the necessary
weapons for his self-preservation.
The
state in itself does not create a specific cultural level;
it can only preserve the race which conditions this level. Otherwise
the state as such may continue to exist unchanged for centuries
while, in consequence of a racial mixture which it has not prevented,
the cultural capacity of a people and the general aspect of
its life conditioned by it have long since suffered a profound
change. The present-day state, for example, may very well simulate
its existence as a formal mechanism for a certain length of
time, but the racial poisoning of our national body creates
a cultural decline which even now is terrifyingly manifest.
Thus,
the precondition for the existence of a higher humanity is not
the state, but the nation possessing the necessary ability.
This
ability will fundamentally always be present and must only be
aroused to practical realization by certain outward conditions.
Culturally and creatively gifted nations, or rather races, bear
these useful qualities latent within them, even if at the moment
unfavorable outward conditions do not permit a realization of
these latent tendencies. Hence it is an unbelievable offense
to represent the Germanic peoples of the pre-Christian era as
'cultureless,' as barbarians. That they never were. Only the
harshness of their northern homeland forced them into circumstances
which thwarted the development of their creative forces. If,
without any ancient world, they had come to the more favorable
regions of the south, and if the material provided by lower
peoples had given them their first technical implements, the
culture-creating ability slumbering within them would have grown
into radiant bloom just as happened, for example, with the Greeks.
But this primeval culture-creating force itself arises in turn
not from the northern climate alone. The Laplander, brought
to the south, would be no more culture-creating than the Eskimo.
For this glorious creative ability was given only to the Aryan,
whether he bears it dormant within himself or gives it to awakening
life, depending whether favorable circumstances permit this
or an inhospitable Nature prevents it.
From
this the following realization results:
The
state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation
and advancement of a community of physically and psychically
homogeneous creatures. This preservation itself comprises first
of all existence as a race and thereby permits the free development
of all the forces dormant in this race. Of them a part will
always primarily serve the preservation of physical life, and
only the remaining part the promotion of a further spiritual
development. Actually the one always creates the precondition
for the other.
States
which do not serve this purpose are misbegotten, monstrosities
in fact. The fact of their existence changes this no more than
the success of a gang of bandits can justify robbery.
We
National Socialists as champions of a new philosophy of life
must never base ourselves on so-called 'accepted facts' - and
false ones at that. If we did, we would not be the champions
of a new great idea, but the coolies of the present-day lie.
We must distinguish in the sharpest way between the state as
a vessel and the race as its content. This vessel has meaning
only if it can preserve and protect the content; otherwise it
is useless.
Thus,
the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for the preservation
of those original racial elements which bestow culture and create
the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, as Aryans, can
conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality
which not only assures the preservation of this nationality,
but by the development of its spiritual and ideal abilities
leads it to the highest freedom.
But
what they try to palm off on us as a state today is usually
nothing but a monstrosity born of deepest human error, with
untold misery as a consequence.
We
National Socialists know that with this conception we stand
as revolutionaries in the world of today and are also branded
as such. But our thoughts and actions must in no way be determined
by the approval or disapproval of our time, but by the binding
obligation to a truth which we have recognized. Then we may
be convinced that the higher insight of posterity will not only
understand our actions of today, but will also confirm their
correctness and exalt them.
*...............*...............*
From
this, we National Socialists derive a standard for the evaluation
of a state. This value will be relative from the standpoint
of the individual nationality, absolute from that of humanity
as such. This means, in other words:
The
quality of a state cannot be evaluated according to the cultural
level or the power of this state in the frame of the outside
world, but solely and exclusively by the degree of this institution's
virtue for the nationality involved in each special case.
A
state can be designated as exemplary if it is not only compatible
with the living conditions of the nationality it is intended
to represent, but if in practice it keeps this nationality alive
by its own very existence - quite regardless of the importance
of this state formation within the framework of the outside
world. For the function of the state is not to create abilities,
but only to open the road for those forces which are present.
Thus, conversely, a state can be designated as bad if, despite
a high cultural level, it dooms the bearer of this culture in
his racial composition. For thus it destroys to all intents
and purposes the premise for the survival of this culture which
it did not create, but which is the fruit of a culture-creating
nationality safeguarded by a living integration through the
state. The state does not represent the content, but a form.
A people's cultural level at any time does not, therefore,
provide a standard for measuring the quality of the state
in which it lives. It is easily understandable that a people
highly endowed with culture offers a more valuable picture than
a Negro tribe; nevertheless, the state organism of the former,
viewed according to its fulfillment of purpose, can be inferior
to that of the Negro. Though the best state and the best state
form are not able to extract from a people abilities which are
simply lacking and never did exist, a bad state is assuredly
able to kill originally existing abilities by permitting or
even promoting the destruction of the racial culture-bearer.
Hence
our judgment concerning the quality of a state can primarily
be determined only by the relative utility it possesses for
a definite nationality, and in no event by the intrinsic importance
attributable to it in the world.
This
relative judgment can be passed quickly and easily, but the
judgment concerning absolute value only with great difficulty,
since this absolute judgment is no longer determined merely
by the state, but by the quality and level of the nationality
in question.
If,
therefore, we speak of a higher mission of the state, we must
not forget that the higher mission lies essentially in the nationality
whose free development the state must merely make possible by
the organic force of its being.
Hence,
if we propound the question of how the state which we Germans
need should be constituted, we must first clearly understand
what kind of people it is to contain and what purpose it is
to serve.
Our
German nationality, unfortunately, is no longer based on a unified
racial nucleus. The blending process of the various original
components has advanced so far that we might speak of a new
race. On the contrary, the poisonings of the blood which have
befallen our people, especially since the Thirty Years' War,
have led not only to a decomposition of our blood, but also
of our soul. The open borders of our fatherland, the association
with un-German foreign bodies along these frontier districts,
but above all the strong and continuous influx of foreign blood
into the interior of the Reich itself, due to its continuous
renewal, leaves no time for an absolute blending. No new race
is distilled out, the racial constituents remain side by side,
with the result that, especially in critical moments in which
otherwise a herd habitually gathers together, the German people
scatters to all the four winds. Not only are the basic racial
elements scattered territorially, but on a small scale within
the same territory. Beside Nordic men Easterners, beside Easterners
Dinarics, beside both of these Westerners, and mixtures in between.
On the one hand, this is a great disadvantage: the German people
lack that sure herd instinct which is based on unity of the
blood and, especially in moments of threatening danger, preserves
nations from destruction in so far as all petty inner differences
in such peoples vanish at once on such occasions and the solid
front of a unified herd confronts the common enemy. This coexistence
of unblended basic racial elements of the most varying kind
accounts for what is termed hyper-individualism in Germany.
In peaceful periods it may sometimes do good services, but taking
all things together, it has robbed us of world domination. If
the German people in its historic development had possessed
that herd unity which other peoples enjoyed, the German Reich
today would doubtless be mistress of the globe. World history
would have taken a different course, and no one can distinguish
whether in this way we would not have obtained what so many
blinded pacifists today hope to gain by begging, whining, and
whimpering: a peace, supported not by the palm branches of
tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based on the victorious
sword of a master people, putting the world into the service
of a higher culture.
The
fact of the non-existence of a nationality of unified blood
has brought us untold misery. It has given capital cities to
many small German potentates, but deprived the German people
of the master's right.
Today
our people are still suffering from this inner division; but
what brought us misfortune in the past and present can be our
blessing for the future. For detrimental as it was on the one
hand that a complete blending of our original racial components
did not take place, and that the formation of a unified national
body was thus prevented, it was equally fortunate on the other
hand that in this way at least a part of our best blood was
preserved pure and escaped racial degeneration.
Assuredly,
if there had been a complete blending of our original racial
elements, a unified national body would have arisen; however,
as every racial cross-breeding proves, it would have been endowed
with a smaller cultural capacity than the highest of the original
components originally possessed. This is the blessing of the
absence of complete blending: that today in our German national
body we still possess great unmixed stocks of Nordic-Germanic
people whom we may consider the most precious treasure for our
future. In the confused period of ignorance of al} racial laws,
when a man appeared to be simply a man, with full equality -
clarity may have been lacking with regard to the different value
of the various original elements. Today we know that a complete
intermixture of the components of our people might, in consequence
of the unity thus produced, have given us outward power, but
that the highest goal of mankind would have been unattainable,
since the sole bearer, whom Fate had clearly chosen for this
completion, would have perished in the general racial porridge
of the unified people.
But
what, through none of our doing, a kind Fate prevented, we must
today examine and evaluate from the standpoint of the knowledge
we have now acquired.
Anyone
who speaks of a mission of the German people on earth, must
know that it can exist only in the formation of a state which
sees its highest task in the preservation and promotion of the
most noble elements of our nationality, indeed of all mankind,
which still remain main intact.
Thus,
for the first time the state achieves a lofty inner goal. Compared
to the absurd catchword about safeguarding law and order, thus
laying a peaceable groundwork for mutual swindles, the task
of preserving and advancing the highest humanity, given to this
earth by the benevolence of the Almighty, seems a truly high
mission.
From
a dead mechanism which only lays claim to existence for its
own sake, there must be formed a living organism with the exclusive
aim of serving a higher idea.
The
German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has the
task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable
stocks of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and
surely of raising them to a dominant position.
*...............*...............*
Thus,
a condition which is fundamentally one of paralysis is replaced
by a period of struggle, but as everywhere and always in this
world, here, too, the saying remains valid that 'he who rests
- rusts,' and, furthermore, that victory lies eternally and
exclusively in attack. The greater the goal we have in mind
in our struggle, and the smaller the understanding of the broad
masses for it may be at the moment, all the more gigantic, as
the experience of world history shows, will be the success -
and the significance of this success if the goal is correctly
comprehended and the struggle is carried through with unswerving
perseverance.
Of
course it may be more soothing for many of our present official
helmsmen of the state to work for the preservation of an existing
condition than having to fight for a new one. They will find
it much easier to regard the state as a mechanism which exists
simply in order to keep itself alive, since in turn their lives
'belong to the state' - as they are accustomed to put
it. As though something which sprang from the nationality could
logically serve anything else than the nationality or man could
work for anything else than man. Of course, as I have said
before, it is easier to see in state authority the mere formal
mechanism of an organization than the sovereign embodiment of
a nationality's instinct of self-preservation on earth.
For in the one case the state, as well as state authority, is
for these weak minds a purpose in itself, while in the other,
it is only a mighty weapon in the service of the great, eternal
life struggle for existence, a weapon to which everyone must
submit because it is not formal and mechanical, but the expression
of a common will for preserving life.
Hence,
in the struggle for our new conception, which is entirely in
keeping with the primal meaning of things, we shall find few
fellow warriors in a society which not only is physically senile
but, sad to say, usually, mentally as well. Only exceptions,
old men with young hearts and fresh minds, will come to us from
those classes, never those who see the ultimate meaning of their
life task in the preservation of an existing condition.
We
are confronted by the endless army, not so much of the deliberately
bad as of the mentally lazy and indifferent, including those
with a stake in the preservation of the present condition. But
precisely in this apparent hopelessness of our gigantic struggle
lies the greatness of our task and also the possibility of our
success. The battle-cry which either scares away the small spirits
at the very start, or soon makes them despair, will be the signal
for the assemblage of real fighting natures. And this we must
see clearly: If in a people a certain amount of the highest
energy and active force seems concentrated upon one goal and
hence is definitively removed from the inertia of the broad
masses, this small percentage has risen to be master over the
entire number. World history is made by minorities when this
minority of number embodies the majority of will and determination.
What,
therefore, may appear as a difficulty today is in reality the
premise for our victory. Precisely in the greatness and the
difficulties of our task lies the probability that only the
best fighters will step forward to struggle for it. And in this
selection lies the guaranty of success.
*...............*...............*
In
general, Nature herself usually makes certain corrective decisions
with regard to the racial purity of earthly creatures She has
little love for bastards. Especially the first products of such
crossbreeding, say in the third, fourth, and fifth generation,
suffer bitterly. Not only is the value of the originally highest
element of the crossbreeding taken from them, but with their
lack of blood unity they lack also unity of will-power and determination
live. In all critical moments in which the racially unified
being makes correct, that is, unified decisions, the racially
divided one will become uncertain; that is, he will arrive at
half measures. Taken together, this means not only a certain
inferiority of the racially divided being compared with the
racially unified one, but in practice also the possibility of
a more rapid decline. In innumerable cases where race holds
up, the bastard breaks down. In this, we must see the correction
of Nature. But often she goes even further. She limits the possibility
of propagation. Thereby she prevents the fertility of continued
crossings altogether and thus causes them to die out.
If,
for example, an individual specimen of a certain race were to
enter into a union with a racially lower specimen, the result
would at first be a lowering of the standard in itself; but,
in addition, there would be a weakening of the offspring as
compared to the environment that had remained racially unmixed.
If an influx of further blood from the highest race were prevented
entirely, the bastards, if they continued mutually to cross,
would either die out because their power of resistance had been
wisely diminished by Nature, or in the course of many millenniums
a new mixture would form in which the original individual elements
would be completely blended by the thousandfold crossing and
therefore no longer recognizable. Thus a new nationality would
have formed with a certain herd resistance, but, compared to
the highest race participating in the first crossing, seriously
reduced in spiritual and cultural stature. But in this last
case, moreover, the hybrid product would succumb in the mutual
struggle for existence as long as a higher racial entity, which
has remained unmixed, is still present as an opponent. All the
herd-solidarity of this new people, formed in the course of
thousands of years, would, in consequence of the general lowering
of the racial level and the resultant diminution of spiritual
elasticity and creative ability, not suffice victoriously to
withstand the struggle with an equally unified, but spiritually
and culturally superior race.
Hence
we can establish the following valid statement:
Every
racial crossing leads inevitably sooner or later to the decline
of the hybrid product as long as the higher element of this
crossing is itself still existent in any kind of racial unity.
The danger for the hybrid product is eliminated only at the
moment when the last higher racial element is bastardized.
This
is a basis for a natural, even though slow, process of regeneration,
which gradually eliminates racial poisonings as long as a basic
stock of racially pure elements is still present and a further
bastardization does not take place.
Such
a process can begin of its own accord in creatures with a strong
racial instinct, who have only been thrown off the track of
normal, racially pure reproduction by special circumstances
or some special compulsion. As soon as this condition of compulsion
is ended, the part which has still remained pure will at once
strive again for mating among equals, thus calling a halt to
further mixture. The results of bastardization spontaneously
recede to the background, unless their number has increased
so infinitely that serious resistance on the part of those who
have remained racially pure is out of the question.
Man,
once he has lost his instinct and fails to recognize the obligation
imposed upon him by Nature, is on the whole not justified in
hoping for such a correction on the part of Nature as long as
he has not replaced his lost instinct by perceptive knowledge;
this knowledge must then perform the required work of compensation.
Yet the danger is very great that the man who has once grown
blind will keep tearing down the racial barriers more and more,
until at length even the last remnant of his best part is lost.
Then in reality there remains nothing but a unified mash, such
as the famous world reformers of our days idealize; but in a
short time it would expel all ideals from this world. Indeed:
a great herd could be formed in this way; a herd beast can
be brewed from all sorts of ingredients, but a man who will
be a culture-bearer, or even better, a culture-founder and culture-creator,
never arises from such a mixture. The mission of humanity
could then be looked upon as finished.
Anyone
who does not want the earth to move toward this condition must
convert himself to the conception that it is the function above
all of the Germanic states first and foremost to call a fundamental
halt to any further bastardization.
The
generation of our present notorious weaklings will obviously
cry out against this, and moan and complain about assaults on
the holiest human rights. No, there is only one holiest human
right, and this right is at the same time the holiest obligation,
to wit: to see to it that the blood is preserved pure and, by
preserving the best humanity, to create the possibility of a
nobler development of these beings.
A
folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from
the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it
the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce
images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man
and ape.
The
protest against this on so-called humane grounds is particularly
ill-suited to an era which on the one hand gives every depraved
degenerate the possibility of propagating, but which burdens
the products themselves, as well as their contemporaries, with
untold suffering, while on the other hand every drug store and
our very street peddlers offer the means for the prevention
of births for sale even to the healthiest parents. In this present-day
state of law and order in the eyes of its representatives, this
brave, bourgeois-national society, the prevention of the procreative
faculty in sufferers from syphilis, tuberculosis, hereditary
diseases, cripples, and cretins is a crime, while the actual
suppression of the procreative faculty in millions of the very
best people is not regarded as anything bad and does not offend
against the morals of this hypocritical society, but is rather
a benefit to its short-sighted mental laziness. For otherwise
these people would at least be forced to rack their brains about
providing a basis for the sustenance and preservation of those
beings who, as healthy bearers of our nationality, should one
day serve the same function with regard to the coming generation.
How
boundlessly unideal and ignoble is this whole system! People
no longer bother to breed the best for posterity, but let things
slide along as best they can. If our churches also sin against
the image of the Lord, whose importance they still so highly
emphasize, it is entirely because of the line of their present
activity which speaks always of the spirit and lets its bearer,
the man, degenerate into a depraved proletarian. Afterwards,
of course, they make foolish faces and are full of amazement
at the small effect of the Christian faith in their own country,
at the terrible 'godlessness,' at this physically botched and
hence spiritually degenerate rabble, and try with the Church's
Blessing, to make up for it by success with the Hottentots and
Zulu Kaffirs While our European peoples, thank the Lord, fall
into a condition of physical and moral leprosy, the pious missionary
wanders off to Central Africa and sets up Negro missions until
there, too, our 'higher culture' turns healthy, though primitive
and inferior, human beings into a rotten brood of bastards.
It
would be more in keeping with the intention of the noblest man
in this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying
Negroes with missions which they neither desire nor understand,
would kindly, but in all seriousness, teach our European humanity
that where parents are not healthy it is a deed pleasing to
God to take pity on a poor little healthy orphan child and give
him father and mother, than themselves to give birth to a sick
child who will only bring unhappiness and suffering on himself
and the rest of the world.
The
folkish state must make up for what everyone else today has
neglected in this field. It must set race in the center of
all life. It must take care to keep it pure. It must declare
the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. It
must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there
is only one disgrace: despite one's own sickness and deficiencies
to bring children into the world, and one highest honor: to
renounce doing so. And conversely it must be considered reprehensible:
to withhold healthy children from the nation. Here the state
must act as the guardian of a millennial future in the face
of which the wishes and the selfishness of the individual must
appear as nothing and submit. It must put the most modern medical
means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit
for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have
inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on, and put this
into actual practice. Conversely, it must take care that the
fertility of the healthy woman is not limited by the financial
irresponsibility of a state régime which turns the blessing
of children into a curse for the parents. It must put an end
to that lazy, nay criminal, indifference with which the social
premises for a fecund family are treated today, and must instead
feel itself to be the highest guardian of this most precious
blessing of a people. Its concern belongs more to the child
than to the adult.
Those
who are physically and mentally unhealthy and unworthy must
not perpetuate their suffering in the body of their children.
In this the folkish state must perform the most gigantic educational
task. And some day this will seem to be a greater deed than
the most victorious wars of our present bourgeois era. By education
it must teach the individual that it is no disgrace, but only
a misfortune deserving of pity, to be sick and weakly, but that
it is a crime and hence at the same time a disgrace to dishonor
one's misfortune by one's own egotism in burdening innocent
creatures with it; that by comparison it bespeaks a nobility
of highest idealism and the most admirable humanity if the innocently
sick, renouncing a child of his own, bestows his love and tenderness
upon a poor, unknown young scion of his own nationality, who
with his health promises to become some day a powerful member
of a powerful community. And in this educational work the state
must perform the purely intellectual complement of its practical
activity. It must act in this sense without regard to understanding
or lack of understanding, approval or disapproval.
A
prevention of the faculty and opportunity to procreate on the
part of the physically degenerate and mentally sick, over a
period of only six hundred years, would not only free humanity
from an immeasurable misfortune' but would lead to a recovery
which today seems scarcely conceivable. If the fertility of
the healthiest bearers of the nationality is thus consciously
and systematically promoted, the result will be a race which
at least will have eliminated the germs of our present physical
and hence spiritual decay.
For
once a people and a state have started on this path, attention
will automatically be directed on increasing the racially most
valuable nucleus of the people and its fertility, in order ultimately
to let the entire nationality partake of the blessing of a highly
bred racial stock.
The
way to do this is above all for the state not to leave the settlement
of newly acquired territories to chance, but to subject it to
special norms. Specially constituted racial commissions must
issue settlement certificates to individuals. For this, however,
definite racial purity must be established. It will thus gradually
become possible to found border colonies whose inhabitants are
exclusively bearers of the highest racial purity and hence of
the highest racial efficiency. This will make them a precious
national treasure to the entire nation; their growth must fill
every single national comrade with pride and confidence, for
in them lies the germ for a final, great future development
of our own people, nay - of humanity.
In
the folkish state finally, the folkish philosophy of life must
succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer
are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating
man himself, an age in which the one knowingly and silently
renounces, the other joyfully sacrifices and gives.
That
this is possible may not be denied in a world where hundreds
and hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily submit to celibacy,
obligated and bound by nothing except the injunction of the
Church.
Should
the same renunciation not be possible if this injunction is
replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the constant
and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give
the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created?
Of
course, the miserable army of our present-day shopkeepers will
never understand this. They will laugh at it or shrug their
crooked shoulders and moan forth their eternal excuse: 'That
would be very nice in itself, but it can't be done!' True, it
can no longer be done with you, your world isn't fit for it!
You know but one concern: your personal life, and one
God: your money! But we are not addressing ourselves to
you, we are appealing to the great army of those who are so
poor that their personal life cannot mean the highest happiness
in the world; to those who do not see the ruling principle of
their existence in gold, but in other gods. Above all we appeal
to the mighty army of our German youth. They are growing up
at a great turning point and the evils brought about by the
inertia and indifference of their fathers will force them into
struggle. Some day the German youth will either be the builder
of a new folkish state, or they will be the last witness of
total collapse, the end of the bourgeois world.
For
if a generation suffers from faults which it recognizes, even
admits, but nevertheless, as occurs today in our bourgeois world,
contents itself with the cheap excuse that there is nothing
to be done about it - such a society is doomed. The characteristic
thing about our bourgeois world is precisely that it can no
longer deny the ailments as such. It must admit that much is
rotten and bad, but it no longer finds the determination to
rebel against the evil, to muster the force of a people of sixty
or seventy millions with embittered energy, and oppose it to
the danger. On the contrary: if this is done elsewhere, silly
comments are made about it, and they attempt from a distance
at least to prove the theoretical impossibility of the method
and declare success to be inconceivable. And no reason is too
absurd to serve as a prop for their own dwarfishness and mental
attitude. If, for example, a whole continent finally declares
war on alcoholic poisoning, in order to redeem a people from
the clutches of this devastating vice, our European bourgeois
world has no other comment for it than a meaningless staring
and head-shaking, a supercilious ridicule - which is particularly
suited to this most ridiculous of all societies. But if all
this is to no avail, and if somewhere in the world the sublime,
inviolable old routine is opposed, and even with success, then,
as said before, the success at least must be doubted and deprecated;
and here they do not even shun to raise bourgeois-moral arguments
against a struggle which strives to abolish the greatest immorality.
No,
we must none of us make any mistake about all of this: our present
bourgeoisie has become worthless for every exalted task of mankind,
simply because it is without quality and no good; and what makes
it no good is not so much in my opinion any deliberate
malice as an incredible indolence and everything that springs
from it. And therefore those political clubs which carry on
under the collective concept of 'bourgeois parties' have long
ceased to be anything else but associations representing the
interests of certain professional groups and classes, and their
highest task has ceased to be anything but the best possible
selfish defense of their interests. It is obvious that such
a political 'bourgeois' guild is good for anything sooner than
struggle; especially if the opposing side does not consist of
cautious pepper sacks [small tradesmen], but of proletarian
masses, incited to extremes and determined to do their worst.
*...............*...............*
If
as the first task of the state in the service and for the welfare
of its nationality we recognize the preservation, care, and
development of the best racial elements, it is natural that
this care must not only extend to the birth of every little
national and racial comrade, but that it must educate the young
offspring to become a valuable link in the chain of future reproduction.
And
as in general the precondition for spiritual achievement lies
in the racial quality of the human material at hand, education
in particular must first of all consider and promote physical
health; for taken in the mass, a healthy, forceful spirit will
be found only in a healthy and forceful body. The fact that
geniuses are sometimes physically not very fit, or actually
sick, is no argument against this. Here we have to do with exceptions
which - as everywhere - only confirm the rule. But if the mass
of a people consists of physical degenerates, from this swamp
a really great spirit will very seldom arise. In any case his
activity will not meet with great success. The degenerate rabble
will either not understand him at all, or it will be so weakened
in will that it can no longer follow the lofty flight of such
an eagle.
Realizing
this, the folkish state must not adjust its entire educational
work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to
the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental
abilities is only secondary. And here again, first must be taken
by the development of character, especially the promotion of
willpower and determination, combined with the training of joy
in responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling.
Here
the folkish state must proceed from the assumption that a
man of little scientific education but physically healthy, with
a good, firm character, imbued with the joy of determination
and willpower, is more valuable for the national community than
a clever weakling. A people of scholars, if they are physically
degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm
the heavens, indeed they will not even be able to safeguard
their existence on this earth. In the hard struggle of destiny
the man who knows least seldom succumbs, but always he who from
his knowledge draws the weakest consequences and is most lamentable
in transforming them into action. Here too, finally, a certain
harmony must be present. A decayed body is not made the least
more aesthetic by a brilliant mind, indeed the highest intellectual
training could not be justified if its bearers were at the same
time physically degenerate and crippled, weak-willed, wavering
and cowardly individuals. What makes the Greek ideal of beauty
a model is the wonderful combination of the most magnificent
physical beauty with brilliant mind and noblest soul.
If
Moltke's saying, 'In the long run only the able man has luck,'
is anywhere applicable, it is surely to the relation between
body and mind; the mind, too, if it is healthy, will as a rule
and in the long run dwell only in the healthy body.
Physical
training in the folkish state, therefore, is not an affair of
the individual, and not even a matter which primarily regards
the parents and only secondly or thirdly interests the community;
it is a requirement for the self-preservation of the nationality,
represented and protected by the state. Just as the state, as
far as purely scientific education is concerned, even today
interferes with the individual's right of self-determination
and upholds the right of the totality toward him by subjecting
the child to compulsory education without asking whether the
parents want it or not - in far greater measure the folkish
state must some day enforce its authority against the individual's
ignorance or lack of understanding in questions regarding the
preservation of the nationality. It must so organize its educational
work that the young bodies are treated expediently in their
earliest childhood and obtain the necessary steeling for later
life. It must above all prevent the rearing of a generation
of hothouse plants.
This
work of care and education must begin with the young mother.
Just as it became possible in the course of careful work over
a period of decades to achieve antiseptic cleanliness in childbirth
and reduce puerperal fever to a few cases, it must and will
be possible, by a thorough training of nurses and mothers themselves,
to achieve a treatment of the child in his first years that
will serve as an excellent basis for future development.
The
school as such in a folkish state must create infinitely more
free time for physical training. It is not permissible to burden
young brains with a ballast only a fraction of which they retain,
as experience shows, not to mention the fact that as a rule
it is unnecessary trifles that stick instead of essentials,
since the young child cannot undertake a sensible sifting of
the material that has been funneled into him. If today, even
in the curriculum of the secondary schools, gymnastics gets
barely two hours a week and participation in it is not even
obligatory, but is left open to the individual, that is a gross
incongruity compared to the purely mental training. Not a day
should go by in which the young man does not receive one hour's
physical training in the morning and one in the afternoon, covering
every type of sport and gymnastics. And here one sport in particular
must not be forgotten, which in the eyes of many 'folkish' minded
people is considered vulgar and undignified: boxing. It is incredible
what false opinions are widespread in 'educated' circles. It
is regarded as natural and honorable that a young man should
learn to fence and proceed to fight duels right and left, but
if he boxes, it is supposed to be vulgar! Why? There is no sport
that so much as this one promotes the spirit of attack, demands
lightning decisions, and trains the body in steel dexterity.
It is no more vulgar for two young men to fight out a difference
of opinion with their fists than with a piece of whetted iron.
It is not less noble if a man who has been attacked defends
himself against his assailant with his fists, instead of running
away and yelling for a policeman. But above all, the young,
healthy body must also learn to suffer blows. Of course this
may seem wild to the eyes of our present spiritual fighters.
But it is not the function of the folkish state to breed a colony
of peaceful aesthetes and physical degenerates. Not in the respectable
shopkeeper or virtuous old maid does it see its ideal of humanity,
but in the defiant embodiment of manly strength and in women
who are able to bring men into the world.
And
so sport does not exist only to make the individual strong,
agile and bold; it should also toughen him and teach him to
bear hardships.
If
our entire intellectual upper crust had not been brought up
so exclusively on upper-class etiquette; if instead they had
learned boxing thoroughly, a German revolution of pimps, deserters,
and such-like rabble would never have been possible; for what
gave this revolution success was not the bold, courageous energy
of the revolutionaries, but the cowardly, wretched indecision
of those who led the state and were responsible for it. The
fact is that our whole intellectual leadership had received
only 'intellectual' education and hence could not help but be
defenseless the moment not intellectual weapons but the crowbar
went into action on the opposing side. All this was possible
only because as a matter of principle especially our higher
educational system did not train men, but officials, engineers,
technicians, chemists, jurists, journalists, and to keep these
intellectuals from dying out, professors.
Our
intellectual leadership always performed brilliant feats, while
our leadership in the matter of willpower usually remained beneath
all criticism.
Certainly
it will not be possible to turn a man of basically cowardly
disposition into a courageous man by education, but just as
certainly a man who in himself is not cowardly will be paralyzed
in the development of his qualities if due to deficiencies in
his education he is from the very start inferior to his neighbor
in physical strength and dexterity. To what extent the conviction
of physical ability promotes a man's sense of courage, even
arouses his spirit of attack, can best be judged by the example
of the army. Here, too, essentially, we have to deal not solely
with heroes but with the broad average. But the superior training
of the German soldier in peacetime inoculated the whole gigantic
organism with that suggestive faith in its own superiority to
an extent which even our foes had not considered possible. For
the immortal offensive spirit and offensive courage achieved
in the long months of midsummer and autumn 1914 by the forward-sweeping
German armies was the result of that untiring training which
in the long, long years of peace obtained the most incredible
achievement often out of frail bodies, and thus cultivated that
self-confidence which was not lost even in the terror of the
greatest battles.
Particularly
our German people which today lies broken and defenseless, exposed
to the kicks of all the world, needs that suggestive force that
lies in self-confidence. This self-confidence must be inculcated
in the young national comrade from childhood on. His whole education
and training must be so ordered as to give him the conviction
that he is absolutely superior to others. Through his physical
strength and dexterity, he must recover his faith in the invincibility
of his whole people. For what formerly led the German army to
victory was the sum of the confidence which each individual
had in himself and all together in their leadership. What will
raise the German people up again is confidence in the possibility
of regaining its freedom. And this conviction can only be the
final product of the same feeling in millions of individuals.
Immense
was the collapse of our people, and the exertion needed to end
this misery some day will have to be just as immense. Anyone
who thinks that our present bourgeois education for peace and
order will give our people the strength some day to smash the
present world order, which means our doom, and to hurl the links
of our slavery into the face of our enemies, is bitterly mistaken.
Only by super-abundance of national willpower, thirst for freedom,
and highest passion, will we compensate for what we formerly
lacked.
*...............*...............*
The
clothing of our youth should also be adapted to this purpose.
It is truly miserable to behold how our youth even now is subjected
to a fashion madness which helps to reverse the sense of the
old saying: 'Clothes make the man' into something truly catastrophic.
Especially
in the youth, dress must be put into the service of education.
The boy who in summer runs around in long stovepipe trousers,
and covered up to the neck, loses through his clothing alone
a stimulus for his physical training. For we must exploit ambition
and, we may as well calmly admit it, vanity as well. Not vanity
about fine clothes which everyone cannot buy, but vanity about
a beautiful, well-formed body which everyone can help to build.
This
is also expedient for later life. The girl should get to know
her beau. If physical beauty were today not forced entirely
into the background by our foppish fashions, the seduction of
hundreds of thousands of girls by bow-legged, repulsive Jewish
bastards would not be possible. This, too, is in the interest
of the nation: that the most beautiful bodies should find one
another, and so help to give the nation new beauty.
Today,
of course, all this is more necessary than ever, because there
is no military training, and so the sole institution is excluded
which in peacetime compensated at least in part for what was
neglected by the rest of our educational system. And there,
too, success was to be sought, not only in the training of the
individual as such, but in the influence it exerted on the relations
between the two sexes. The young girl preferred the soldier
to the non-soldier.
The
folkish state must not only carry through and supervise physical
training in the official school years; in the post-school period
as well it must make sure that, as long as a boy is in process
of physical development, this development turns out to his benefit.
It is an absurdity to believe that with the end of the school
period the state's right to supervise its young citizens suddenly
ceases, but returns at the military age. This right is a duty
and as such is equally present at all times. Only the present-day
state having no interest in healthy people has neglected this
duty in a criminal fashion. It lets present-day youth go to
the dogs on the streets and in brothels, instead of taking them
in hand and continuing their physical education until the day
when they grow up into a healthy man and a healthy woman.
In
what form the state carries on this training is beside the point
today; the important thing is that it should do so and seek
the ways and means that serve this purpose. The folkish state
will have to look on post-school physical training as well as
intellectual education as a state function, and foster them
through state institutions. This education in its broad outlines
can serve as a preparation for future military service. The
army will not have to teach the young men the fundamentals of
the most elementary drill-book as hitherto, and it will not
get recruits of the present type; no, it will only have to transform
a young man who has already received flawless physical preparation
into a soldier.
In
the folkish state, therefore, the army will no longer have to
teach the individual how to walk and to stand; it will be the
last and highest school of patriotic education. In the army
the young recruit will receive the necessary training in arms,
and at the same time he will receive a further moulding for
any other future career. But in the forefront of military training
will stand what has to be regarded as the highest merit of the
old army: in this school the boy must be transformed into a
man; in this school he must not only learn to obey, but must
thereby acquire a basis for commanding later. He must learn
to be silent not only when he is justly blamed but must
also learn, when necessary, to bear injustice in silence.
Furthermore,
reinforced by faith in his own strength, filled with the force
of a commonly experienced esprit de corps, he must become
convinced of the invincibility of his nationality.
After
the conclusion of his military service, two documents should
be issued: His citizen's diploma, a legal document which
admits him to public activity, and his health certificate, confirming
his physical health for marriage.
*...............*...............*
Analogous
to the education of the boy, the folkish state can conduct the
education of the girl from the same viewpoint. There, too, the
chief emphasis must be laid on physical training, and only subsequently
on the promotion of spiritual and finally intellectual values.
The goal of female education must invariably be the future mother.
*...............*...............*
Only
secondarily must the folkish state promote the development
of the character in every way.
Assuredly
the most essential features of character are fundamentally preformed
in the individual: the man of egotistic nature is and remains
so forever, just as the idealist in the bottom of his heart
will always be an idealist. But between the fully distinct characters
there are millions that seem vague and unclear. The born criminal
is and remains a criminal; but numerous people in whom is only
a certain tendency toward the criminal can by sound education
still become valuable members of a national community; while
conversely, through bad education, wavering characters can turn
into really bad elements.
How
often, during the War, did we hear the complaint that our people
were so little able to be silent! How hard this made
it to withhold even important secrets from the knowledge of
our enemies! But ask yourself this question: What, before the
War, did German education do to teach the individual silence?
Even in school, sad to say, wasn't the little informer sometimes
preferred to his more silent schoolmates? Was not and is not
informing regarded as praiseworthy 'frankness,' discretion as
reprehensible obstinacy? Was any effort whatever made to represent
discretion as a manly and precious virtue? No, for in the eyes
of our present school system these are trifles. But these trifles
cost the state countless millions in court costs, for ninety
per cent of all slander and similar suits have arisen only through
lack of discretion. Irresponsibly dropped remarks are gossiped
along just as frivolously, our national economy is constantly
harmed by the frivolous revelation of important manufacturing
processes, etc.; in fact, all our secret preparations for national
defense are rendered illusory since the people simply have not
learned how to be silent but pass everything on. This talkativeness
can lead to the loss of battles and thus contribute materially
to the unfavorable issue of the conflict. Here, again, we must
realize that mature age cannot do what has not been practiced
in youth. And this is the place to say that a teacher, for instance,
must on principle not try to obtain knowledge of silly children's
tricks by cultivating loathsome tattle-tales. Youth has its
own state, it has a certain closed solidarity toward the grown-up,
and this is perfectly natural. The ten year-old's bond with
his playmate of the same age is more natural and greater than
his bond with grown-ups. A boy who snitches on his comrade practices
treason and thus betrays a mentality which, harshly expressed
and enlarged, is the exact equivalent of treason to one's country.
Such
a boy can by no means be regarded as a 'good, decent'
child; no, he is a boy of undesirable character. The teacher
may find it convenient to make use of such vices for enhancing
his authority, but in this way he sows in the youthful heart
the germ of a mentality the later effect of which may be catastrophic.
More than once, a little informer has grown up to be a big scoundrel!
This
is only one example among many. Today the conscious development
of good, noble traits of character in school is practically
nil. In the future far greater emphasis must be laid on this.
Loyalty, spirit of sacrifice, discretion are virtues
that a great nation absolutely needs, and their cultivation
and development in school are more important than some of the
things which today fill out our curriculums. The discouragement
of whining complaints, of bawling, etc., also belongs in this
province. If a system of education forgets to teach the child
in early years that sufferings and adversity must be borne in
silence, it has no right to be surprised if later at a critical
hour, when a man stands at the front, for example, the entire
postal service is used for nothing but transporting whining
letters of mutual complaint. If at the public schools a little
less knowledge had been funneled into our youth and more self-control,
this would have been richly rewarded in the years from 1915
to 1918.
And
so the folkish state, in its educational work, must side by
side with physical culture set the highest value precisely on
the training of character. Numerous moral weaknesses in our
present national body, if they cannot be entirely eliminated
by this kind of education, can at least be very much attenuated.
*...............*...............*
Of
the highest importance is the training of will-power and determination,
plus the cultivation of joy in responsibility.
In
the army the principle once held good that any command is better
than none; related to youth this means primarily that any answer
is better than none. The dread of giving no answer for fear
of saying something wrong must be considered more humiliating
than an incorrectly given answer. Starting from this most primitive
basis, youth should be trained in such a way that it acquires
courage for action.
People
have often complained that in the days of November and December,
1918, every single authority failed, that from the monarchs
down to the last divisional commander, no one was able to summon
up the strength for an independent decision. This terrible fact
is the handwriting on the wall for our educational system, for
this cruel catastrophe expressed, hugely magnified, what was
generally present on a small scale. It is this lack of will
and not the lack of weapons which today makes us incapable of
any serious resistance. It sits rooted in our whole people,
prevents any decision with which a risk is connected, as though
the greatness of a deed did not consist precisely in the risk.
Without suspecting it, a German general succeeded in finding
the classic formula for this miserable spinelessness: 'I act
only if I can count on fifty-one per cent likelihood of success.'
In these 'fifty-one per cent' lies the tragedy of the German
collapse; anyone who demands of Fate a guaranty of success,
automatically renounces all idea of a heroic deed. For this
lies in undertaking a step which may lead to success, in the
full awareness of the mortal danger inherent in a state of affairs.
A cancer victim whose death is otherwise certain does not have
to figure out fifty-one per cent in order to risk an operation.
And if the operation promises only half a per cent likelihood
of cure, a courageous man will risk it; otherwise he has no
right to whimper for his life.
The
plague of our present-day cowardly lack of will and determination
is, all in all, mainly the result of our basically faulty education
of youth, whose devastating effect extends to later life and
finds its ultimate crowning conclusion in the lack of civil
courage in our leading statesmen.
In
the same line falls the present-day flagrant cowardice in the
face of responsibility. Here, too, the error begins in the education
of youth, goes on to permeate all public life, and finds its
immortal completion in the parliamentary institution of government.
Even
at school, unfortunately, more value is attached to 'repentant'
confession and 'contrite abjuration' on the part of the little
sinner than to a frank admission. The latter seems to many popular
educators of today the surest mark of an incorrigible depravity
and, incredible as it may seem, the gallows is predicted for
many a youth for qualities which would be of inestimable value
if they constituted the common possession of a whole people.
Just
as the folkish state must some day devote the highest attention
to the training of the will and force of decision, it must from
an early age implant joy in responsibility and courage for confession
in the hearts of youth. Only if it recognizes this necessity
in its full import will it finally, after an educational work
enduring for centuries, obtain as a result a national body which
will no longer succumb to those weaknesses which today have
contributed so catastrophically to our decline.
*...............*...............*
The
scientific school training which today is really the beginning
and end of all state educational work can with only slight changes
be taken over by the folkish state. These changes lie in three
fields.
In
the first place the youthful brain should in general not be
burdened with things ninety-five per cent of which it cannot
use and hence forgets again. Particularly, the curriculum
of the elementary and intermediate schools is today a mongrel;
in many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects
is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head
of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance
can find application, while on the other hand it is not adequate
for the man working and earning his living in a definite field.
Take, for example, the average government official, graduated
from the Gymnasium or the superior Realschule,
at the age of thirty-five or forty, and examine him in the school
learning that was once so painfully drummed into him. How little
of all the stuff that was once funneled into him is still present!
To be sure, you will get the answer: 'Well, the mass of material
learned then was not intended only for the future possession
of varied knowledge, but also for training mental receptivity,
the power of thought and especially the memory. This is partly
correct. Yet there is a danger in having the youthful brain
flooded with so many impressions which only in the rarest cases
it is able to master, and whose various elements it neither
can sift nor evaluate according to their greater or lesser importance;
and besides, as a rule, not the non-essential but the essential
is forgotten and sacrificed Thus the main purpose of learning
so much is again lost; for it cannot consist after all in inducing
learning power in the brain by an unmeasured heaping up of material,
but must be to give the future man that store of knowledge which
the individual needs and which through him in turn benefits
the community. And this becomes illusory if the man, in consequence
of the superabundance of the material forced on him in youth,
later either possesses it not at all or has long since lost
the very essentials. It is impossible to understand, for example,
why millions of people in the course of the years must learn
two or three foreign languages only a fraction of which they
can make use of later and hence most of them forget entirely,
for of a hundred thousand pupils who learn French for example,
barely two thousand will have a serious use for this knowledge
later, while ninety-eight thousand in the whole further course
of their life will not find themselves in a position to make
practical use of what they had once learned. They have in their
youth, therefore, devoted thousands of hours to a subject which
later is without value and meaning for them. And the objection
that this material belongs to general education, is unsound,
since it could only be upheld if people retained all through
their life what they had learned. So in reality, because of
the two thousand people for whom the knowledge of this language
is profitable, ninety-eight thousand must be tormented for nothing
and made to sacrifice valuable time.
And
in this case we are dealing with a language of which it cannot
even be said that it implies a training in sharp, logical thinking
as applies, for example, to Latin. Hence it would be considerably
more expedient if such a language were transmitted to the young
student only in its general outlines or, better expressed, in
its inner structure, thus giving him knowledge of the most salient
essence of this language, introducing him perhaps to the fundamentals
of its grammar and pronunciation, discussing syntax, etc., by
model examples. This would suffice for general use and, because
it is easier to visualize and remember, would be more valuable
than the present-day manner of drumming in the whole language,
which is not really mastered anyway and is later forgotten.
In this way, moreover, the danger would be avoided that of all
the overpowering abundance of material only a few unconnected
crumbs would stick in the memory, as the young man would have
to learn the most noteworthy aspects, and consequently the process
of sifting according to value or the lack of it would have taken
place in advance.
The
general foundation thus imparted would suffice most people,
even for later life, while it creates for those others who really
need the language later the possibility of building further
on it, and devoting themselves of their own free choice to learning
it with the greatest thoroughness.
Thus
the necessary time in the curriculum is gained for physical
training as well as the increased demands in the abovementioned
fields.
Particularly
in the present method of teaching history a change must be made.
Probably no people studies more history than the German; but
probably there is no people that applies it worse than ours.
If politics is history in the making, our historical education
is directed by the nature of our political activity. Here, again,
it is not permissible to complain about the wretched results
of our political achievements unless we are determined to provide
a better political education. The result of our present history
instruction is wretched in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred.
A few facts, dates, birthdays and names remain behind while
a broad, clear line is totally lacking. The essentials which
should really matter are not taught at all; it is left to the
more or less gifted nature of the individual to find out the
inner motives from the flood of dates and the sequence of events.
We may argue as much as we like against this bitter statement;
just read attentively the speeches on political problems, say
questions of foreign policy, delivered during a single session
by our parliamentary gentlemen; and bear in mind that these
men - allegedly at least - are the cream of the German nation, and
that at any rate a large part of them have even been at universities,
and from this you will be able to see how totally inadequate
the historical education of these people is. If they had not
studied history at all, but only possessed a healthy instinct,
it would be considerably better and more profitable for the
nation.
Especially
in historical instruction an abridgment of the material must
be undertaken. The main value lies in recognizing the great
lines of development. The more the instruction is limited to
this, the more it is to be hoped that an advantage will later
accrue to the individual from his knowledge, which summed up
will also benefit the community. For we do not learn history
just in order to know the past, we learn history in order to
find an instructor for the future and for the continued existence
of our own nationality. That is the end, and historical
instruction is only a means to it. But today the means
has become the end, and the end disappears completely. Let it
not be said that thorough study of history requires attention
to all these individual details' on the ground that only from
them can a great line be developed. To lay down this line is
the function of the special science. The normal, average man
is no history professor. For him history exists primarily to
give him that measure of historical insight which is necessary
for him to take a position of his own on the political issues
of his nation. Anyone who wants to become a history professor
may later devote himself intensively to this study. It goes
without saying that he will have to concern himself with all
and even the smallest details. For this, however, even our present
history instruction cannot suffice; for it is too extensive
for the normal, average man, but much too limited for the specialized
scholar.
Aside
from this, it is the task of the folkish state to see to it
that a world history is finally written in which the racial
question is raised to a dominant position.
*...............*...............*
To
sum up: the folkish state will have to put general, scientific
instruction into an abbreviated form, embracing the essentials.
In addition to this, the possibility of a thorough, specialized
training must be offered. It suffices for the individual man
to obtain a general knowledge in broad outlines as a foundation,
and only in the field which will be that of his later life,
to enjoy the most thorough specialized and detailed training.
General education should be obligatory in all departments; the
special training should remain free to the choice of the individual.
The
shortening of the curriculum and the number of hours thus achieved
will benefit the training of the body, of the character, of
the will power and determination.
How
irrelevant our present-day school training, especially in the
high schools, is for a future profession is best demonstrated
by the fact that today people from three schools of an entirely
different nature can arrive at one and the same position. In
reality only the general education is of decisive importance
and not the specialized knowledge that is funneled into them.
And where - as I have said before - a specialized knowledge
is really necessary it can naturally not be obtained within
the curriculums of our present high schools.
With
such halfway methods, therefore, the folkish state must some
day do away.
*...............*...............*
The
second change of scientific curriculum in the folkish state
must be the following:
It
is the characteristic of our present materialized epoch that
our scientific education is turning more and more toward practical
subjects - in other words, mathematics, physics, chemistry,
etc. Necessary as this is for a period in which technology and
chemistry rule - embodying at least those of its characteristics
which are most visible in daily life - it is equally dangerous
when the general education of a nation is more and more exclusively
directed toward them. This education on the contrary must always
be ideal. It must be more in keeping with the humanistic subjects
and offer only the foundations for a subsequent additional education
in a special field. Otherwise we renounce the forces which are
still more important for the preservation of the nation than
all technical or other ability. Especially in historical instruction
we must not be deterred from the study of antiquity. Roman history
correctly conceived in extremely broad outlines is and remains
the best mentor, not only for today, but probably for all time.
The Hellenic ideal of culture should also remain preserved for
us in its exemplary beauty. We must not allow the greater racial
community to be torn asunder by the differences of the individual
peoples. The struggle that rages today is for very great aims.
A culture combining millenniums and embracing Hellenism and
Germanism is fighting for its existence.
A
sharp difference should exist between general education and
specialized knowledge. As particularly today the latter threatens
more and more to sink into the service of pure Mammon, general
education, at least in its more ideal attitude, must be retained
as a counterweight. Here, too, we must incessantly inculcate
the principle that industry, technology, and commerce can
thrive only as long as an idealistic national community offers
the necessary preconditions. And these do not lie in material
egoism, but in a spirit of sacrifice and joyful renunciation.
*...............*...............*
By
and large the present education of youth has set itself the
primary goal of pumping into the young person that knowledge
which in his later career he needs for his own advancement.
This is expressed in the words: 'The young man must some day
become a useful member of society.' By this is meant his ability
some day to earn his daily bread in a decent way. The superficial
civic training carried on alongside rests on a weak base to
begin with. Since the state in itself represents only a form,
it is very hard to educate, let alone obligate people with regard
to it. A form can too easily be shattered. But the concept 'state'
- as we have seen - does not possess a clear content today.
And so there remains nothing but the current 'patriotic' education.
In old Germany its chief emphasis lay in a deification, often
unintelligent and usually very insipid, of the small and smallest
potentates, whose very quantity from the outset made it necessary
to renounce any comprehensive appreciation of our nation's really
great men. The result among our broad masses, consequently,
was a very inadequate knowledge of German history. Here, too,
the great line was lacking.
That
a real national enthusiasm could not be achieved in this fashion
is obvious. Our educational system lacked the art of picking
a few names out of the historical development of our people
and making them the common property of the whole German people,
thus through like knowledge and like enthusiasm tying a uniform,
uniting bond around the entire nation. They did not understand
how to make the really significant men of our people appear
as outstanding heroes in the eyes of the present, to concentrate
the general attention upon them and thus create a unified mood.
They were not able to raise what was glorious for the nation
in the various subjects of instruction above the level of objective
presentation, and fire the national pride by such gleaming examples.
This would have seemed reprehensible chauvinism to that period,
and in this form would not have met with much approval. Comfortable
dynastic patriotism seemed more agreeable and easier to bear
than the clamoring passion of higher national pride. The former
was always ready to serve, the latter might some day become
a master. Monarchistic patriotism ended in veterans' dubs, the
national passion would have been hard to direct in its course.
It is like a thoroughbred horse which does not carry everyone
in the saddle. Is it any wonder that the powers of the time
preferred to keep aloof from such a danger? No one seemed to
consider it possible that some day there might come a war that
would thoroughly test the inner steadfastness of our patriotic
convictions in drumfire and clouds of gas. But when it came,
the absence of the highest national passion brought the most
frightful consequences. People had but little desire to die
for their imperial and royal lords, and the 'nation' was unknown
known to most of them.
Since
the revolution made its entry into Germany and monarchistic
patriotism died out of its own accord, the purpose of instruction
in history is really nothing more than the mere acquisition
of knowledge. This state cannot use national enthusiasm; but
what it would like to have it will never get. For no more than
there could be a dynastic patriotism endowed with the
ultimate power of resistance in an age governed by the
principle of nationalities, much less can there be a
republican enthusiasm. For there can be no doubt that
under the motto, 'For the Republic,' the German people would
not remain in the battlefield for any four and one-half years;
least of all did those remain who have created this amazing
structure.
Actually
this Republic owes its unshorn existence only to its willingness,
of which it gives assurance on all sides, voluntarily to assume
all tribute payments and sign every renunciation of territory.
It is liked by the rest of the world; just as every weakling
is considered more agreeable by those who need him than a rough
man. True, this sympathy on the part of enemies is the most
annihilating criticism for precisely this state form. Our
enemies love the German Republic and let it live because they
could not find a better ally for their enslavement of our people.
To this fact alone does this magnificent structure owe its present
existence. That is why it can renounce any truly national education
and content itself with cries of 'Hoch' from Reichsbanner
heroes who, incidentally, if they had to protect this banner
with their blood, they would run away like rabbits.
The
third point to be considered in scientific education is the
following:
Science,
too, must be regarded by the folkish state as an instrument
for the advancement of national pride. Not only world history
but all cultural history must be taught from this standpoint.
An inventor must not only seem great as an inventor, but must
seem even greater as a national comrade. Our admiration of every
great deed must be bathed in pride that its fortunate performer
is a member of our own people. From all the innumerable great
names of German history, the greatest must be picked out and
introduced to the youth so persistently that they become pillars
of an unshakable national sentiment.
The
curriculum must be systematically built up along these lines
so that when the young man leaves his school he is not a half
pacifist, democrat, or something else, but a whole German.
In
order that this national sentiment should be genuine from the
outset and not consist in mere hollow pretense, beginning in
youth one iron principle must be hammered into those heads which
are still capable of education: any man who loves his people
proves it solely by the sacrifices which he is prepared to make
for it. There is no such thing as national sentiment which is
only out for gain. No more is there any nationalism which only
embraces classes. Shouting hurrah proves nothing and gives no
right to call oneself national if behind it there does not stand
a great, loving concern for the preservation of a universal
healthy nation. There is ground for pride in our people only
if we no longer need be ashamed of any class. But a people,
half of which is wretched and careworn, or even depraved, offers
so sorry a picture that no one should feel any pride in it.
Only when a nation is healthy in all its members, in body and
soul, can every man's joy in belonging to it rightfully be magnified
to that high sentiment which we designate as national pride.
And this highest pride will only be felt by the man who knows
the greatness of his nation.
An
intimate coupling of nationalism and a sense of social justice
must be implanted in the young heart. Then a people of citizens
will some day arise, bound to one another and forged together
by a common love and a common pride, unshakable and invincible
forever.
Our
era's fear of chauvinism is the sign of its impotence. Not only
lacking any exuberant force, but even finding it distasteful,
it is no longer destined by Fate for a great deed. For the greatest
revolutionary changes on this earth would not have been thinkable
if their motive force, instead of fanatical, yes, hysterical
passion, had been merely the bourgeois virtues of law and order.
And
assuredly this world is moving toward a great revolution. The
question can only be whether it will redound to the benefit
of Aryan humanity or to the profit of the eternal Jew.
The
folkish state will have to make certain that by a suitable education
of youth it will some day obtain a race ripe for the last and
greatest decisions on this earth.
And
the people which first sets out on this path will be victorious.
*...............*...............*
The
crown of the folkish state's entire work of education and training
must be to burn the racial sense and racial feeling into the
instinct and the intellect, the heart and brain of the youth
entrusted to it. No boy and no girl must leave school without
having been led to an ultimate realization of the necessity
and essence of blood purity. Thus the groundwork is created
by preserving the racial foundations of our nation and through
them in turn securing the basis for its future cultural development.
For
all physical and all intellectual training would in the last
analysis remain worthless if it did not benefit a being which
is ready and determined on principle to preserve himself and
his special nature.
Otherwise
that would occur which we Germans even now must greatly deplore,
though perhaps the full extent of this tragic misfortune has
hitherto not been realized: that in the future we remain
nothing out cultural fertilizer, not only in the limited conception
of our present bourgeois view, which regards an individual national
comrade lost as nothing more than a lost citizen, out with the
painful realization that in this event, despite all our knowledge
and ability, our blood is nevertheless doomed to decline. By
mating again and again with other races, we may raise these
races from their previous cultural level to a higher stage,
out we will descend forever from our own high level.
For
the rest this education, too, from the racial viewpoint, must
find its ultimate completion in military service. And in general,
the period of military service must be regarded as the conclusion
of the average German's normal education.
*...............*...............*
Important
as the type of physical and mental education will be in the
folkish state, equally important will be the human selection
as such. Today this matter is taken lightly. In general
it is the children of high-placed, at the time well-situated
parents who are considered worthy of a higher education. Questions
of talent play a subordinate role. Taken in itself, talent can
only be evaluated relatively. A peasant boy can possess far
more talents than the child of parents enjoying an elevated
position in life for many generations, even if he is inferior
to the bourgeois child in general knowledge. The latter's greater
knowledge has in itself nothing to do with greater or lesser
talent, but is rooted in the materially greater abundance of
impressions which the child continuously receives as a result
of his more varied education and rich environment. If the talented
peasant boy from his early years had likewise grown up in such
an environment, his intellectual ability would be quite different.
Today, perhaps, there is a single field in which origin is really
less decisive than the individual's native talent: the field
of art. Here where a man cannot merely 'learn,' but everything
has to be originally innate and is only later subject to a more
or less favorable development in the sense of wise encouragement
of existing gifts, the money and wealth of the parents are almost
irrelevant. Hence it is here best shown that talent is not bound
up with the higher walks of life, let alone with wealth. The
greatest artists arise not seldom from the poorest houses. And
many a poor village boy has later become a celebrated master.
It
does not exactly argue great depth of thought in our time that
this realization is not applied to our whole spiritual life.
People imagine that what cannot be denied in art does not apply
to the so-called exact sciences. Without doubt certain mechanical
abilities can be taught a man, just as clever training can teach
a docile poodle the most amazing tricks. But in animal training,
the intelligence of the animal does not of itself lead to such
exercises, and the same is the case with man. Without regard
for any other talent, man too can be taught certain scientific
tricks' but the process is just as lifeless and inwardly uninspired
as with the animal. On the basis of a certain intellectual drill,
knowledge above the average can be crammed into an average man;
but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge.
The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless
falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive
moments in life; he will always have to be coached again for
every situation, even the simplest, and by his own resources
will not be able to make the slightest contribution to the development
of humanity. Such a mechanically drilled knowledge suffices
at most for assuming state positions in our present period.
It
goes without saying that in the totality of a nation's population
talents will be found for every possible domain of daily life.
It is furthermore obvious that the value of knowledge will be
the greater, the more the dead knowledge is animated by the
relevant talent in the individual. Creative achievements
can only arise when ability and knowledge are wedded.
The
boundless sins of present-day humanity in this direction may
be shown by one more example. From time to time illustrated
papers bring it to the attention of the German petty-bourgeois
that some place or other a Negro has for the first time become
a lawyer, teacher, even a pastor, in fact a heroic tenor, or
something of the sort. While the idiotic bourgeoisie looks with
amazement at such miracles of education, full of respect for
this marvelous result of modern educational skill, the Jew shrewdly
draws from it a new proof for the soundness of his theory about
the equality of men that he is trying to funnel into
the minds of the nations. It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois
world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that
it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until
people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions
of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely
unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the
Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and
hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present
proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained
for intellectual professions. For this is training exactly like
that of the poodle, and not scientific 'education.' The same
pains and care employed on intelligent races would a thousand
times sooner make every single individual capable of the same
achievements.
But
intolerable as this state of affairs would be if it ever consisted
of anything but exceptions, equally intolerable is it today
in places where it is not talent and inborn gifts that decide
who is chosen for higher education. Yes, indeed, it is an intolerable
thought that every year hundreds of thousands of completely
ungifted people are held worthy of a higher education, while
other hundreds of thousands with great talent remain deprived
of higher education. The loss which the nation thereby suffers
is inestimable. If in the last decades the wealth of important
inventions has increased amazingly, especially in North America,
it is not least because there materially more talents from the
lowest classes find opportunity for higher education than is
the case in Europe.
For
invention, drilled knowledge does not suffice, but only knowledge
animated by talent. But in our country today no store is set
on this; it is only good marks that matter.
Here,
too, the folkish state will some day have to intervene by education.
Its task is not to preserve the decisive influence of an
existing social class, but to pick the most capable kinds from
the sum of all the national comrades and bring them to office
and dignity. It has not only the obligation of giving the
average child a certain education in public school, but also
the duty of putting talent on the track where it belongs. Above
all, it must see its highest task in opening the gates of the
higher state educational institutions to all talent, absolutely
regardless from what circles it may originate. It must fulfill
this task, since only in this way can representatives of a dead
knowledge be transformed into brilliant leaders of a nation.
And
for another reason the state must take measures in this direction:
our intellectual classes, especially in Germany, are so segregated
and so ossified that they lack a living connection with the
people below them. We suffer from this in two ways: in the first
place, they lack as a consequence any understanding and feeling
for the broad masses. They have been torn out of this relation
too long to possess the necessary psychological understanding
for the people. They have become alien to the people. And in
the second place, these intellectual strata lack the necessary
will-power, which is always weaker in this secluded intellectual
caste than in the mass of the primitive people. We Germans,
by God, have never lacked scientific education; but we have
been all the more lacking in any will power and determination.
The more 'intellectual' our statesmen were, for example, the
feebler, as a rule, was their actual accomplishment. The political
preparations, as well as the technical armament for the World
War, was not inadequate because insufficiently educated
minds ruled our people, but because the rulers were overeducated
men, crammed full of knowledge and intellect, but bereft of
any healthy instinct and devoid of all energy and boldness.
It was a calamity that our people had to conduct its struggle
for existence under the Chancellorship of a philosophizing weakling.
If, instead of a Bethmann-Hollweg, we had had a robuster man
of the people as a leader, the heroic blood of the common grenadier
would not have flowed in vain. Likewise, the excessively rarefied
pure intellect of our leader material was the best ally of the
revolutionist November scoundrels. By disgracefully withholding
the national treasure that had been entrusted to them, instead
of staking it fully and wholly, these intellectuals themselves
created the premise for the enemy's success.
In
this the Catholic Church can be regarded as a model example.
The celibacy of its priests is a force compelling it to draw
the future generation again and again from the masses of the
broad people instead of from their own ranks. But it is this
very significance of celibacy that is not at all recognized
by most people. It is the cause of the incredibly vigorous strength
which resides in this age-old institution. For through the fact
that this gigantic army of spiritual dignitaries is continuously
complemented from the lowest strata of the nations, the Church
not only obtains its instinctive bond with the emotional world
of the people, but also assures itself a sum of energy and active
force which in such a form will forever exist only in the broad
masses of the people. From this arises the amazing youthfulness
of this gigantic organism, its spiritual suppleness and iron
willpower
It
will be the task of a folkish state to make certain through
its educational system that a continuous renewal of the existing
intellectual classes through an influx of fresh blood from below
takes place. The state has the obligation to exercise extreme
care and precision in picking from the total number of national
comrades the human material visibly most gifted by Nature and
to use it in the service of the community. For state and statesmen
do not exist in order to provide individual classes with a living
but to fulfill the tasks allotted to them. This will only be
possible if as a matter of principle only capable and strong-willed
personalities are trained to deal with these tasks. This applies
not only to all official positions but to the intellectual leadership
of the nation in all fields. Another factor for the greatness
of the people is that it succeed in training the most capable
minds for the field suited to them and placing them in the service
of the national community. If two peoples, equally well endowed,
compete with one another, that one will achieve victory which
has represented in its total intellectual leadership its best
talents and that one will succumb whose leadership represents
only a big common feeding crib for certain groups or classes,
without regard to the innate abilities of the various members.
To
be sure, this looks impossible at first sight in our present
world. The objection will at once be raised that the little
son of a higher government official, for example, cannot be
expected, let us say, to become an artisan because someone else
whose parents were artisans seems more capable. This may be
true in view of the present estimation of manual labor. For
this reason the folkish state will have to arrive at a basically
different attitude toward the concept of labor. It will,
if necessary, even by education extending over centuries, have
to break with the mischief of despising physical activity. On
principle it will have to evaluate the individual man not according
to the type of work he does but according to the form and quality
of his achievement. This may appear positively monstrous
to an era in which the most brainless columnist, just because
he works with the pen, seems superior to the most intelligent
precision mechanic. This false estimation, as has been said,
does not lie in the nature of things, but is artificially cultivated
and formerly did not exist. The present unnatural condition
is based on the generally diseased condition of our present
materialized epoch.
Fundamentally,
the value of all work is twofold: a purely material value
and an ideal value. The material value resides in the importance,
that is to say, the material importance of a piece of work for
the life of the totality. The more national comrades draw profit
from a certain achievement performed, including direct and indirect
profit, the greater the material value is to be estimated. This
estimation, in turn, finds its plastic expression in the material
reward which the individual obtains from his work. Contrasting
with this purely material value, we now have the ideal value.
It does not rest in the importance of the work performed measured
materially, but in its necessity in itself. As surely as the
material profit of an invention can be greater than that of
an everyday handy-man's service, just as surely does the totality
need the small service just as much as the great one.
It
may make a material distinction in evaluating the benefit of
the individual piece of work for the totality, and can express
this by a corresponding reward; in an ideal sense, however,
it must recognize the equality of all as long as every individual
endeavors to do his best in his field - whatever it may be.
It is on this that the estimation of a man must be based, and
not on his reward.
Since
the concern of a sensible state must be to allot to the individual
the activity which is in keeping with his ability or, otherwise
expressed, to train the capable minds for the work that is suited
to them, but since ability and principle are not taught but
must be inborn, hence are a gift of Nature and not an achievement
of man, general civic estimation cannot depend on the work that
has, so to speak, been allotted to the individual. For this
work falls to the account of his birth and to the training which
he has consequently received through the community. The evaluation
of the man must be based on the manner in which he fulfills
the task entrusted him by the community. For the activity which
the individual performs is not the end of his existence, but
only the means to it. It is more important for him to develop
and ennoble himself as a man, but he can do this only within
the framework of his cultural community which must always rest
on the fundament of a state. He must make his contribution to
the preservation of this fundament. The form of this contribution
is determined by Nature; his duty is only to return to the national
community with honest industry what it has given him. Anyone
who does this deserves the highest estimation and the highest
respect. Material reward may be granted to him whose achievement
brings corresponding benefit to the community; his ideal reward,
however, must lie in the esteem which everyone can claim who
dedicates to the service of his nationality the forces which
Nature gave him and which the national community has trained.
Then it is no longer a disgrace to be an honest manual worker,
but it is a disgrace to be an incompetent official, stealing
the daylight from his maker and daily bread from honest people.
Then it will be taken for granted that a man will not be allotted
tasks to which he is not equal to begin with.
Moreover,
such activity provides the sole standard for right in universal,
equal, juridical civic activity.
The
present era is liquidating itself: it introduces universal suffrage,
shoots off its mouth about equal rights, but finds no basis
for them. It sees in material reward the expression of a man's
worth and thereby shatters the foundation for the noblest equality
that there can be. For equality does not rest and never can
rest on the achievements of individuals in themselves, but it
is possible in the form in which everyone fulfills his special
obligations. Thereby alone is the accident of Nature excluded
in the judgment of the man's worth, and the individual himself
becomes the smith of his own importance.
In
the present period, when entire human groups can estimate one
another only according to salary classes, there is - as said
before - no understanding for this. But for us this cannot be
a reason to renounce the fight for our ideas. On the contrary:
anyone who wants to cure this era, which is inwardly sick
and rotten, must first of all summon up the courage to make
clear the causes of this disease. And this should be the concern
of the National Socialist movement: pushing aside all philistinism,
to gather and to organize from the ranks of our nation those
forces capable of becoming the vanguard fighters for a new philosophy
of life.
*...............*...............*
Of
course, the objection will be made that in general the ideal
estimation is hard to separate from the material, indeed, that
the diminishing estimation of physical labor is brought about
precisely by its diminished reward. And that this diminished
reward is in turn the cause for the limitation of the individual
man's participation in the cultural treasures of his nation.
And that precisely the ideal culture of man, which does not
necessarily have anything to do with his activity as such, is
impaired thereby. That the dread of physical labor is really
based on the fact that, as a result of the inferior reward,
the cultural level of the manual worker is necessarily lowered
and that this provides the justification for a general diminished
estimation.
In
this there lies much truth. For this very reason we must in
future guard ourselves against an excessive differentiation
of wage rates. Let it not be said that this would destroy achievement.
It would be the saddest sign of the decay of a period if the
impetus to a higher spiritual achievement lay only in the increased
wage. If this criterion had been the sole determinant in the
world up to now, humanity would never have received its greatest
scientific and cultural treasures. For the greatest inventions,
the greatest discoveries, the most revolutionary scientific
work, the most magnificent monuments of human culture, have
not been given to the world through the urge for money. On the
contrary, their birth not seldom meant positive renunciation
of the earthly happiness of riches.
It
may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life,
but the time will come when man will again bow down before a
higher god. Many things today may owe their existence solely
to the longing for money and wealth, but there is very little
among them whose non-existence would leave humanity any the
poorer.
This,
too, is a task of our movement; even now it must herald a day
which will give to the individual what he needs for living,
but uphold the principle that man does not live exclusively
for the sake of material pleasures. This must some day find
its expression in a wisely limited gradation of earnings which
in any event will give every decent working man an honest, regular
existence as a national comrade and a man.
Let
it not be said that this is an ideal condition which this world
will not tolerate in practice and will actually never achieve.
We
are not simple enough, either, to believe that it could ever
be possible to bring about a perfect era. But this relieves
no one of the obligation to combat recognized errors, to overcome
weaknesses, and strive for the ideal. Harsh reality of its own
accord will create only too many limitations. For that very
reason, however, man must try to serve the ultimate goal, and
failures must not deter him, any more than he can abandon a
system of justice merely because mistakes creep into it, or
any more than a medicament is discarded because there will always
be sickness in spite of it.
Care
must be taken not to underestimate the force of an idea. I should
like to remind those who become faint-hearted in this connection
- in case they were ever soldiers - of a time whose heroism
represented the most overpowering proof of the force of idealistic
motives. For what made men die then was not concern for their
daily bread, but love of the fatherland, faith in its greatness,
a general feeling for the honor of the nation. It was when the
German people moved away from these ideals to follow the material
premises of the revolution, and exchanged their arms for knapsacks,
that they arrived, not at the earthly paradise, but at the purgatory
of general contempt and, no less, of general misery.
Therefore
it is really necessary to confront the master bookkeepers of
the present material republic by faith in an ideal
Reich.
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