Berlin, February
1, 1933
More than fourteen years have passed since the unhappy
day when the German people, blinded by promises from foes at home and abroad,
lost touch with honor and freedom, thereby losing all. Since that day of
treachery, the Almighty has withheld his blessing from our people. Dissension
and hatred descended upon us. With profound distress millions of the best
German men and women from all walks of life have seen the unity of the nation
vanishing away, dissolving in a confusion of political and personal opinions,
economic interests, and ideological differences. Since that day, as so often in
the past, Germany has presented a picture of heartbreaking disunity. We never
received the equality and fraternity we had been promised, and we lost our
liberty to boot. For when our nation lost its political place in the world, it
soon lost its unity of spirit and will....
We
are firmly convinced that the German nation entered the fight in 1914 without
the slightest feeling of guilt on its part and filled only with the desire to
defend the Fatherland which had been attacked and to preserve the freedom, nay,
the very existence, of the German people. This being so, we can only see in the
disastrous fate which has overtaken us since those November days of 1918 the
result of our collapse at home. But the rest of the world, too, has suffered no
less since then from overwhelming crises. The balance of power which had
evolved in the course of history, and which formerly played no small part in
bringing about the understanding of the necessity for an internal solidarity of
the nations, with all its advantages for trade and commerce, has been set on
one side. The insane conception of victors and vanquished destroyed the
confidence existing between nations, and, at the same time, the industry of the
entire world.
The
misery of our people is horrible to behold! Millions of the industrial
proletariat are unemployed and starving; the whole of the middle class and the
small artisans have been impoverished. When this collapse finally reaches the
German peasants, we will be faced with an immeasurable disaster. For then not
only shall a nation collapse, but a two-thousand-year-old inheritance, some of
the loftiest products of human culture and civilization.
All
about us the warning signs of this collapse are apparent. Communism with its
method of madness is making a powerful and insidious attack upon our dismayed
and shattered nation. It seeks to poison and disrupt in order to hurl us into
an epoch of chaos.... This negative, destroying spirit spared nothing of all
that is highest and most valuable. Beginning with the family, it has undermined
the very foundations of morality and faith and scoffs at culture and business,
nation and Fatherland, justice and honor. Fourteen years of Marxism have ruined
Germany; one year of bolshevism would destroy her. The richest and fairest
territories of the world would be turned into a smoking heap of ruins. Even the
sufferings of the last decade and a half could not be compared to the misery of
a Europe in the heart of which the red flag of destruction had been hoisted.
The thousands of wounded, the hundreds of dead which this inner strife has
already cost Germany should be a warning of the storm which would come....
In
those hours when our hearts were troubled about the life and the future of the
German nation, the aged leader of the World War appealed to us. He called to
those of us in nationalist parties and leagues to struggle under him once more,
in unity and loyalty, for the salvation of the German nation. This time the
front lines are at home. The venerable Reichsprasident has allied himself with
us in this noble endeavor. And as leaders of the nation and the national
Government we vow to God, to our conscience, and to our people that we will
faithfully and resolutely fulfill the task conferred upon us.
The
inheritance which has fallen to us is a terrible one. The task with which we
are faced is the hardest which has fallen to German statesmen within the memory
of man. But we are all filled with unbounded confidence for we believe in our
people and their imperishable virtues. Every class and every individual must
help us to found the new Reich.
The
National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in
the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend
those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards
Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the
basis of national life....
Turbulent
instincts must be replaced by a national discipline as the guiding principle of
our national life. All those institutions which are the strongholds of the
energy and vitality of our nation will be taken under the special care of the
Government.
The
National Government intends to solve the problem of the reorganization of trade
and commerce with two four-year plans:
The
German farmer must be rescued in order that the nation may be supplied with the
necessities of life....
A
concerted and all-embracing attack must be made on unemployment in order that
the German working class may be saved from ruin....
The
November parties have ruined the German peasantry in fourteen years.
In
fourteen years they have created an army of millions of unemployed. The
National Government will, with iron determination and unshakable steadfastness
of purpose, put through the following plan:
Within
four years the German peasant must be rescued from the quagmire into which he
has fallen.
Within
four years unemployment must be finally overcome. At the same time the
conditions necessary for a revival in trade and commerce are provided.
The
National Government will couple with this tremendous task of reorganizing
business life a reorganization of the administrative and fiscal systems of the
Reich, of the Federal States, and the Communes.
Only
when this has been done can the idea of a continued federal existence of the
entire Reich be fully realized....
Compulsory
labor-service and the back-to-the-land policy are two of the basic principles
of this program.
The
securing of the necessities of life will include the performance of social
duties to the sick and aged.
In
economical administration, the promotion of employment, the preservation of the
farmer, as well as in the exploitation of individual initiative, the Government
sees the best guarantee for the avoidance of any experiments which would
endanger the currency.
As
regards its foreign policy the National Government considers its highest
mission to be the securing of the right to live and the restoration of freedom
to our nation. Its determination to bring to an end the chaotic state of
affairs in Germany will assist in restoring to the community of nations a State
of equal value and, above all, a State which must have equal rights. It is
impressed with the importance of its duty to use this nation of equal rights as
an instrument for the securing and maintenance of that peace which the world
requires today more than ever before.
May
the good will of all others assist in the fulfillment of this our earnest wish
for the welfare of Europe and of the whole world.
Great
as is our love for our Army as the bearer of our arms and the symbol of our
great past, we should be happy if the world, by reducing its armaments, would
see to it that we need never increase our own.
If,
however, Germany is to experience this political and economic revival and
conscientiously fulfill her duties toward the other nations, one decisive step
is absolutely necessary first: the overcoming of the destroying menace of
communism in Germany. We of this Government feel responsible for the
restoration of orderly life in the nation and for the final elimination of
class madness and class struggle. We recognize no classes, we see only the
German people, millions of peasants, bourgeois, and workers who will either
overcome together the difficulties of these times or be overcome by them. We
are firmly resolved and we have taken our oath. Since the present Reichstag is
incapable of lending support to this work, we ask the German people whom we
represent to perform the task themselves.
Reichspräsident
von Hindenburg has called upon us to bring about the revival of the German
nation. Unity is our tool. Therefore we now appeal to the German people to
support this reconciliation. The National Government wishes to work and it will
work. It did not ruin the German nation for fourteen years, but now it will
lead the nation back to health. It is determined to make well in four years the
ills of fourteen years. But the National Government cannot make the work of reconstruction
dependent upon the approval of those who wrought destruction. The Marxist
parties and their lackeys have had fourteen years to show what they can do. The
result is a heap of ruins.
Now,
people of Germany, give us four years and then pass judgment upon us. In
accordance with Field Marshal von Hindenburg's command we shall begin now. May
God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us
with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but
for Germany.
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