Allgäu, November 22, 1937
Since in international life there are only natural, sober interests, it
should be based neither on gratitude nor on family connections. Family
connections were as useless in preserving Prussia and Austria from war as they
were for Germany and England.
In Europe, we have more difficult obstacles to overcome than those, for
instance, which exist for England-which only [!] needed its naval supremacy to
occupy large living spaces with relatively little loss of blood.
Nonetheless: we had Europe once before. We only lost it because our
leadership lacked the initiative that would have been necessary to not only
maintain our position, on a long-term basis, but also to expand it.
Today a new state is being established, the unique feature of which is that
it sees its foundation not in Christianity and not in a concept of state;
rather, it places its primary emphasis on the self-contained Volksgemeinschaft.
Hence it is significant that the “Germanic Empire of the German Nation” now
puts this supremely capable concept of the future into practice, merciless
against all adversaries, against all religious fragmentation, against all
fragmentation into parties.
If we regard our German history in a very extensive sense from our most dim
and distant past up to today, we are the richest Volk in Europe. And if, with
utmost tolerance, we allow our great German heroes to march by, all our great
leaders of the past, all our great Germanic and German emperors-for they were great without exception-England would
have to shrink before us.
It is this unification of the German nation which gives us the moral
justification to step before the world with vital demands. The fact is that
ultimate justice resides in power. And power, in international life, resides in
the self-containment of the nations themselves. Today the German nation has
finally been given what it has lacked for centuries, namely, the organization
of a leadership of the Volk.
[…]
Today we are laying claim to the leadership of the Volk, i.e. we
alone are authorized to lead the Volk as such-that means every man and every
woman.
The lifelong relationships between the sexes is something we will
organize. We shall form the child!
We are giving you unconditional freedom in your teachings and in your views
on what God is. For we are well aware that we ourselves know nothing of these
things.
Yet let one thing be quite clear: the Churches may determine the fate of
the German being in the next world, but in this world the German nation, by way
of its leaders, is determining the fate of the German being. Only if there is
such a clear and clear-cut division can life be made bearable in a time of
transition.
At the bottom of our hearts, we National Socialists are religious. For the
space of many millenniums, a uniform concept of God did not exist. Yet it is
the most brilliant and most sublime notion of mankind, that which distinguishes
him most from animals, that he not only views a phenomenon from without, but
always poses the question of why and how.
This entire world, a world so clear-cut in its external manifestation, is
just as unclear to us in its purpose. And here mankind has bowed down in
humility before the conviction that it is confronted by an incredible power, an
Omnipotence, which is so incredible and so deep that we men are unable to
fathom it. That is a good thing! For it can serve to comfort people in bad
times; it avoids that superficiality and sense of superiority that misleads man
to believe that he-but a tiny bacillus on this earth, in this universe-rules
the world, and that he lays down the laws of Nature which he can at best but
study. It is, therefore, our desire that our Volk remains humble and truly
believes in a God.
Hence an immeasurably large scope is given for the Churches, and thus they
should be tolerant of one another! God did not create our Volk that it be torn
apart by priests. This is why it is necessary to ensure its unity by a system
of leadership. That is the task of the NSDAP. It is to comprise that order
which, beyond the limits of time and man, is to guarantee the stability of the
German development of opinion and hence of the political leadership.
The NSDAP is the largest organization the world has ever seen. All counted,
it encompasses a total of twenty-five million people and has 300,000 functionaries. It is quite obvious that an organization
that is only eighteen years beyond its founding cannot be the same as it would
be after one hundred years.
Yet the important thing is that we equip it with the law according to which
it came to power and which it shall retain. Here we have established the basic
rule of absolute obedience and absolute authority. Just as the Army-the weapon-
cannot prevail without this law of the absolute authority of each and every
superior to those below him and his absolute responsibility to those above,
neither can the political leadership of this weapon prevail. For what is gained
by the weapon is ultimately subject to political administration, and what the
political administration wants, the weapon is to procure. The leadership of the
Volk in former times, the Church, also recognized only this one law of life:
blind obedience and absolute authority.
Old Germany was overthrown because it did not possess this zealous blind
will, did not have this confidence and this serenity. New Germany will be
victorious because it integrates these virtues and at present has already
integrated them in an extremely difficult struggle. I know quite well that this
is independent of the individual. I know quite well that, were anything to
happen to me today, the next one would take my place and continue in the same
fashion, just as zealously; because that, too, is part of this Movement.
Just as it is not possible to instantly turn a political bourgeois association
into a fighting group of heroes, it will be equally impossible to ever turn
this Movement, which was built up from the very beginning on courage and
initiative, into a bourgeois association.
That is also the future task above all of these schools: to conduct this
test of courage over and over again, to break with the opinion that only the
soldier must be brave. Whoever is a political leader is always a soldier, too!
And whoever lacks bravery cannot be a soldier. He must be prepared for action
at all times. In the beginning, courage had to be the basic prerequisite for
someone to find his way to the Party-and it really was, otherwise no one came.
Today we have to install artificial obstacles, artificial trenches over
which the person has to jump. That is where he now has to prove whether he is
brave.
Because if he is not brave, he is of no use to us.
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