Munich,
November 8, 1936
I
took the first step when I made the decision to found the Movement. And it was
a very difficult decision indeed for me to imprison the Bavarian Government and
proclaim a national revolution in Germany. For the first time one was
forced to make a decision on life and death without having been given any
orders. And I believe that was a good thing; in the past three-and-a-half years
I have had to make very difficult decisions [on life and death] in which, at
times, the fate of the entire nation was on the line. Unfortunately, I never
had that famous fifty-one-percent certainty when doing so. Often enough there was a ninety-five-percent chance of
failing and merely a five-percent chance of succeeding. Yet perhaps that eighth
of November 1923 helped me to later be able to decide on issues fraught with
danger. Moreover, that decision became an important lesson for the future.
Perhaps that is the achievement of which I am personally most proud and
for which history will surely one day give me the most credit: the fact that I
succeeded not only in not shattering the Army, but in forming it into cadres
for the new German Volksarmee.
And this gives us all a deep sense of inner satisfaction: when I
appeared in this hall for the first time, I myself was still a soldier. All of
us came from the old army, we all wore this garb, and it was because we were
all so very attached to this gray garb that we were unable to ever reconcile
ourselves with the revolution that had sullied this garb! It was as soldiers we
began this struggle, and as politicians we won it out! Yet the wonderful thing
about this struggle is that we have now been able to present the German Volk
with a new gift of the old army. And just as the old army once fought for the
old Reich, so shall the new army-if ever the hour so require-fight and prevail
for the new Reich.
There is but a single difference: when the old army went off to war, it
was armed with weapons against everything but the propaganda of infiltration
and decay. Today the Army carries with it the talisman of political immunity
against every attempt to infiltrate this Army.218
Never again will our opponents succeed there. This Army is the National
Socialist Army of the new Reich, and by virtue of the fact that, year for year,
we send one generation after another from our National Socialist offspring into
this Army, it becomes ever more closely bound up with our modern Volk and its
spirit. We are increasingly endowing it with the strength of our
Weltanschauung. This is perhaps the greatest achievement of all we have
accomplished after these many long years.
This is the one thing of which I am personally most proud. I believe
that one day posterity will give me the most credit that I did not confine
Germany to defenselessness for fifteen years, but that I succeeded in creating,
in scarcely four years’ time, a great German National Socialist Volksarmee from
the army of 100,000; that all those who might otherwise have become our enemies
are working and helping us in this Army. When the trial came to a close in
1924, I predicted-back then-that the hour would come in which both phenomena
would unite to become one. And that prediction has now come to pass! Cannot we
thus quite rightly say that those who were killed in 1923 did not die in vain;
that their sacrificial death was worth it? I hold that, were they to rise from
the dead, theirs would be eternal bliss were they to see what has now come to
be. [---] There are perhaps those who say, “You’re virtually making them into
martyrs!” Yes, that is my intention. I want to make of these dead the first
sixteen martyrs of the National Socialist Movement, sixteen persons who were
killed believing in something completely new that would only become a reality
ten years later. Sixteen persons who marched under a completely new flag to
which they pledged their oath of allegiance sealed with their blood. These
sixteen made the utmost sacrifice and deserve that we keep them in constant
remembrance.
Hence it is my wish that for all time, beyond centuries and millenniums,
the National Socialist Party and with it the whole of Germany shall always commemorate
this sacrifice on this day, that they may thus remember these men again and
again. [-] That is also why we are gathered together here once more today,
thirteen years after that day. This year in particular we have very strong
reasons to evoke a recollection of that former time. For today I can assure
you: this is the first time I am celebrating this day of commemoration without
deep concern for our German Volk. I can already see the time coming
in which our own numbers will slowly decrease and the young circle of new and
coming generations will rise up around us. Yet one thing I know is that even
after the last one of us has fallen from our ranks, the youth will hold our
flag clenched firmly in their hands and be ever mindful of those men who
believed-in the age of Germany’s
deepest humiliation-in a shining resurrection.
No comments:
Post a Comment