Foundations of National Socialist Ethics
An English translation of
Zucht und Ordnung:
Grundlagen einer nationalsozialistischen Ethik
(Hamburg, 1935)
by
Georg Usadel
Introduced and edited by Nathan R. Lawrence
INTRODUCTION
What you are about to read is an English translation of the 1935 book, “Zucht und Ordnung: Grundlagen einer nationalsozialistischen Ethik” (Discipline and Order: Foundations of National Socialist Ethics) by Georg Friedrich Hennig Usadel, a teacher and NSDAP politician.
This English translation comes from that of the only English translation available and put out by Third Reich Books.
The translators description of the book reads: “The main principle is that the folk was created by God and that each folk comrade has a divine duty to serve the folk. Conscientiousness draws strength from a feeling of responsibility and personal honor, which moves the individual to voluntarily do his duty. This duty is his life content and includes his spouse and their offspring, who must be raised as good National Socialists. Over generations, the folk will improve. Topics include sexuality (including premarital sex and the illegitimate child), marriage, child raising (both in the parental home and in the Hitler Youth), serving as a follower, honor, truthfulness, loyalty, faith (including a carefully written presentation of the friction between non-Christian and Christian) and leadership.”
I have formatted it for easier readability and corrected a few minor errors.
You can read more about Georg Usadel here:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Usadel
Nathan R. Lawrence
Broseley, November 3rd 2020
Table of Contents
Foreword
Attempt for a Life Based Foundation
The Formation of the Will
Of Marriage
Of the Illegitimate Child
The Follower
Serving
Of Honor
Of Truthfulness
Of Loyalty
Of the Attitude toward Faith
The Leadership
Of Power and its Application Of the Leader’s Appearance Of Leadership Selection
Of Decisiveness
Of the Raising of Youth
In the Parental Home
In the Hitler Youth
Conclusion
The NSDAP has no reservations about the release of this publication.
The chairman of the party official examination committee for the protection of the
NS writings. Berlin, October 3, 1935
FOREWORD
In itself, this book would have to be superfluous, for the laws of our action should be anchored in our breast. But we are in a period of transition to a new German; there are many ashes around the divine spark within us, which must be blown away. That is the task this book wants to fill.
By intention, it has not become an extensive work, since everything not absolutely necessary - or already often said - is avoided. It has arisen from the need to serve schooling and has grown from practice, from numerous lectures before leadership courses of party organizations, namely the Hitler Youth.
This book does not want to be a text book that contains life rules. It cannot - and also does not want - to raise a claim to completeness, rather just be a guideline. Life is infinitely rich in its fullness of possibilities, blows of fate, events, actions and deeds. A rule of conduct will not exist for every honor and minute, rather a general bearing is shown which the event and daily routine can follow.
One may perhaps accuse the book of containing a superficial „popular philosophy”. This accusation is gladly endured, because its most ardent wish it that it will be read by the folk, not by philosophers. But because it wants to be a German book, it cannot do without the connection of our action and life to the will of the eternal creator. It also does not do without occasional quotations that things of our desire have already been surmised and wanted by the great minds, namely of German history.
If it should also be claimed that the image of the future National Socialist folk comrade is drawn too idealistically, then I refer to one of the great forerunners of our time, to Paul de Lagarde: „The ideal does not stand above things, rather in things. The ideal is not a tasty snack, rather daily bread. For me, this leads to the conclusion that ideality must grow out of the things of daily life.”
ATTEMPT OF A LIFE BASED FOUNDATION
The world-view of National Socialism is built on the basis that a healthy racial composition of the German folk is the prerequisite for all accomplishments in all areas of life. The folk is not a constant variable at all times. If certain racial elements
- given especially favorable rules of selection prevail - increase more than the others, then the racial element previously dominating the folk can be forced into the background. Folk comrades with genes that cause inferior offspring will very quickly change the overall image of the folk, if one opens the path for them through especially favorable life conditions. The genetic base of a folk, however, is also not a constant variable, rather fate will again and again occasionally let genetically ill offspring emerge from the gene pool of healthy men and women along with healthy offspring. We will never be able to breed ourselves up to a divine condition, even if we had followed the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring for millennia. For what we can today still view as genetically healthy, could in future millennia be considered ill. Here as well, the principle holds that the better is the enemy of the good.
A good gene pool is hence the prerequisite for a healthy folk, for healthy assets living in the folk. In this world, we cannot imagine any ideas without their realization within a folk community, for even the greatest genius comes from the folk and not the reserve, the folk from the genius. The faith in God as well and the concepts of time and space receive their characteristic stamp through the folk, which is likewise determined by its gene pool. Gene pool does not here mean something material, not say the sum of the gonads of all presently living men and women; rather gene pool is a divine act of creation, is the divine force such as it is contained in the tree, which commands it to grow according to its laws. But just as, in the free growing tree, the healthy drives form next to the wild ones, and hence the healthy is contained it is life law, and only man - through the law of order that has put its stamp on him - through trimming branches that seem wild and useless to him gives the tree a different shape than its own causality had planned, so too can the organized folk subject its gene pool to a planning that seems healthy to it. This does not bring us to making the folk a God, to a blood materialism, when we consider the orderly folk as a prerequisite for a world-view, rather we affirm creation in the folk’s gene pool, which for eternity has been a divine prerequisite and which lies beyond any human explanation and any interpretation. Through God’s creation, the forces are formed within which the member of a folk works - and with which, and inside which, he works. Gravity is inexplicable to us, but we invariably consider it and build our houses within its line of forces; we overcome it with our airplanes and climb into the sky in order to again let ourselves glide down to the earth. The gene pool is a divine creation, so that we, who are the same blood within a folk, cannot separate ourselves from it. But we can live within this gene pole and - through law and order - intervene in the composition and care of this gene pool. Without folk, no state, no culture, no religion - also no church, no world-view, no character values, but without folk - this is obvious after what has been said - God. Not our thought creates God, rather God exists for us in infinite incomprehension, since we would otherwise not be able to think. Genetics is a divine law, within which we must life and work, just as we must live and work inside space and eternity. But we believe we can arrange the composition of the gene pool, just as we build things inside space and arrange eternal time through clocks and time measurement. But planning and ordering is never a task for the entirety of the folk, rather the task of leadership and being led, i.e. of leader and following. The moral bearing of the individual hence grows from how much he leads and how much he is a follower. The inscrutable divinity has ordained that we are able to think in opposites, that next to the unhealthy we know the healthy, and that we may only surmise holy men standing beyond good and evil. We are put in the struggle between good and evil, healthy and unhealthy, light and dark, we follow the God desired struggle of opposites and make its demand the content of our existence. Leadership and following hence stand under the commands of struggle in order to promote the healthy and the good in our folk and in each of us. The actions of leader and following stand under the responsibility of whether the folk received through divine assignment - and that is never just we who live today, rather also the ancestors behind us and the offspring in front of us - is promoted in its blood and soil.
THE FORMATION OF THE WILL
The Führer once stated that with Aryan man the forces and drives that serve the preservation of life are most wonderfully applied to the service for the community. The will hence emerges from the instinct for self-preservation and is ennobled by folk development. What was originally a dull, wild instinct, has become enabled through the freedom with which we desire. Hence simultaneously the will’s direction, which was initially aimed exclusively at the self, is shifted to the folk community formed by blood. The sublime development of those portions of mankind that are capable of forming folks is hereby elevated to the divine. In one regard, there is doubtlessly a compulsion, a necessity, in the fact that the Almighty let us become a German folk. But ants and bees also stand under this necessity, when they build their state with self-sacrificing industriousness. Certainly, German man once stood under this compulsion, when the categorical „You should!” included him as subject to „damned duty and obligation” to be stoically endured; but the subject is dead today, in his place comes in our folk the folk comrade, who does not derive duty and obligation from „You should!”, rather ignites - from the divine spark of eternity in his breast - the sacred flame „We want!”, because he knows that he comes from the gene pool of his folk, which is a divine creation, and through his duty puts his will on the appropriate parallel to the divine will. But whoever knows himself one with the will of the eternal, that person has entered the kingdom of freedom, because the eternal cannot stand under a compulsion. In this manner, the „You should!” is transformed into a „We want!”. Master Eckhardt felt the eternal as a „spark in the soul”; we go a step farther than he and light this spark of the eternal within us to the wanning flame of a will that is supported by freedom. We hereby see that the formation of National Socialist man does not primarily require the building of his will over things that he must know for his formation. Rather we do not want to allow to decay the best and noblest that the eternal itself placed inside us, rather nurture them and put them in the foreground of our life. Knowledge of the National Socialist values of race, heredity and folk is not the main thing, rather our life according to their demands. The scholar who has intellectually grasped the reasons of National Socialism, but who is unable to live according to them, is far beneath the simplest folk comrade who is able to develop life from the spark of eternity within himself, but who knows nothing about the thought up connections. It is in no way superfluous to here point out that the life of the scholars does not always correspond to their doctrine; one can just think of Schopenhauer. Certainly, knowledge is necessary, for heaven’s sake, it should not be rejected or made contemptible. But it is more necessary that knowledge and scientific research do not cut their connection to life and the eternal. But that is already the case, if the result of a research stands in contradiction to the life of the person researching.
To life itself belongs first the procreation of new life, which must stand under the same bearing as the rest of life. For we want to pass on, ennobling it, the gene pool within us, which stems from divine creation. It is amazing how little influence a person has over his body. The mind can command it to make bodily movements (how it happens, we do not know), give it materials that are useful to the body (food, medicine), or can harm it (excessive eating, alcohol and other poisons). Blood circulation, digestion, growth and death, however, are not subject to human will, likewise the development of the germ cells, the growth of the child in the mother’s womb and its birth. It grows in us, rejuvenates itself, dies off or gets old, whether we are awake or sleep. This portion of life within us stands beyond our will. The river of the mysterious, which lies beyond our influence, constantly flows through our body. This mystery within us is a part of the eternal that is woven through the universe, our mind and hence our will as well. If that were not the case, then our mind would not be able to form any concepts of the eternal. The Plotin student Goethe expressed that in his known works:
„Were the eye not sunny, It could not see the sun;
If God’s own force did not lie within us, How could the divine enchant us? ”
Certainly, no reasoning - irrefutable by the theory of cognition - is anchored in these thoughts, rather a sure faith lies in them, to which my reason as well says „Yes”. The plain and simple Matthias Claudius, who unfortunately is only read by a few, has told us with his plain and simple clarity: „As it is with secrets: whoever does not know them, explains them, and whoever explains them, does not know them. They do not let themselves be produced and taken by force; but whoever seeks to earn them and knows how to make a friend of the owner, sometimes learns them.”
We do not want to resist the river of the divine, rather let ourselves be carried by it. We have the freedom to live with the divine or to work against it. The gene pool within us - which we previously left solely to the natural, the unconscious - has been taken by us into the sphere of the will, which acts with the divine, not against it. We have no influence on the growth of the child in the mother’s womb, but we serve the eternal, if we strive for the pure and simple formations created by it. Hence we also put procreation in the sphere of the will that serves the eternal, and guide our gene pool to higher forms from generation to generation, from infinity to infinity:
„If in the infinite the same thing eternally flows repeating, the thousand-fold weave powerfully comes together;
Lust for life flows from all things The smallest, as the greatest star, And all pushing, all struggling Is eternal rest in God the Lord. ”
(Goethe)
Whoever has selected the „spark in the soul” as his bearing’s source of energy, must not unite his gene pol with another in whose body the „spark” has gone out. Hence only a marriage standing under National Socialist life bearing will let a better German folk develop than exists today. Offspring will be born who achieve a better and higher form of National Socialist German than we. For National Socialist children will come from National Socialist parents, and from a new youth will come the new following and the new leadership that will ennoble the whole German folk. Herein lies the ultimate task of this book, that we realize and desire that - through a youth who are born from parents with the above described bearing - an education to be a follower - with a new will - will become possible, and from it, in turn, the future following with new and better leadership and racially better folk will be achieved. The breeding idea, which previously all too easily remained on the level of the natural, will - through a responsible bearing - be elevated to the level of the moral. The reproach so often made against National Socialism, that it wants to conduct breeding experiments with the folk, is hence unjustified, for what is placed under the voluntarily selected law of moral responsibility is the highest thing that is able to guide human order.
Of Marriage
„One could give birth to well raised children, if the parents were well raised. ”
Goethe
According to what has just been said, the sex drive cannot take a position in our life as if it stood outside the forces that should shape the community, rather it must also be included in it and serve it. The divinity has wanted it so that we do not pass along our gene pool in freedom, rather that a powerful drive forcefully influences us. It can nonetheless never be the task of the National Socialist German to unrestrained follow his drive, rather he must, with struggle and under tension, put it in the service of the German folk and its development. There is no right to live life to the full in this area, rather only a high order, a duty taken in moderation and discipline. Only the liberal person - and the Marxist teaches it logically - who is able to observe himself and his place in the folk as separated from the natural order - could demand „freedom” - it was licentiousness - in this area. The more we view the folk as the community unit, whose promotion and health is our task in this world, the more we are obligated to adapt the sex life to the folk’s life.
There is probably hardly a life question of our time in which such a tremendous amount of rearranging and reshaping is demanded and at the same time is so controversial as that of the sex life. In broad folk segments there still lives an ascetic medieval concept that feels the sexual as blemish and original sin, and who produce in their opponents the view that denounces any moral demand in regard to sexuality as hypocrisy. One is as wrong as the other. The instinct for self-preservation - which pulls us in the direction of ruthlessly trampling every neighbor in the struggle for existence -, has nonetheless not been able to prevent the formation of folks, rather it has been ennobled through order, through law and custom. Hence the sex drive as well is to be adapted to the folk’s higher life, not because it is to be viewed as „evil” or „sinful”, rather because its moderate bridling is a demand for the folk’s preservation. The folk of predominantly Nordic stamp views marriage as a life form in which sex is put in the service of the higher life order. We hence in no way have to ascribe to a romanticizing of a Germanic man such as existed in Tacitus’ view, who is known to have extremely praised Germanic man’s chastity. The demand for life in the service of the folk community demands - without regard and pitilessly - the same from us living today.
Marriage is the germ cell of the folk. This statement in no way loses its validity, may it be spoken ever so frequently and previously so little achieved. The purpose of marriage is many children for the folk’s preservation. Only children who grow up among numerous siblings learn early the integration into the smallest community determined by common blood. Here the drive of selfishness is first bent, here consideration for each other and doing without are learned early. The raising of children in the first years of life - it is much more important than generally thought - is only possible within the family, for only here can the reasonable mother guide the child to endure the pains that are spared no child, to occupy itself independently and hence to give it inner firmness. Certainly, children can be raised in a state asylum with the same values, but nobody knows her children like the real mother. A necessarily hard training by the mother in connection with mother’s love is irreplaceable.
If marriage is accordingly a fundamental value from which the folkish culture is able to grow, then the moral bearing of man and wife - before, inside and outside of marriage - must stand unassailable and firm. Premarital, martial and extra-marital life must not possess their own different values, which are also different for men and women, rather all three must stand in the service of one and the same great task. In the liberal epoch there was never as much lying as in the area of premarital life. The view is fundamentally false that the girl or young man should be told that the awakening sex drive also demands its immediate gratification, because otherwise healthy problems would be the result. There is nothing more awful than an unrestrained debauchery or a badly played Don Juan. Whoever gives in early here, will also easily give in with other pitiless demands of a life of honor and duty. Just as in other areas of life we become stronger and harder through tension and renunciation, so here as well. We can certainly make the demand that abstinence - for both genders in their midtwenties - is not only possible, rather also - in regard to a healthy marriage - downright desirable. Certainly, we must still relearn a lot here. Girls who reject even the most passionate wooing of the young man should not be viewed by men as cold and dry, as repulsive Brunhild types, rather they should gain value in the eyes of the men. A long and persistent wooing should be the ambition of the new German man. Men should free themselves of the crude view that a girl’s resistance only exists to be broken more or less by force. It is not the worst men who have preserved a sacred shyness toward women and especially toward untouched girlhood. In them lives the surmising of an eternal procreation, within which the individual human pair is only a tiny part. Hence jokes about sexual matters should disappear among men as well as girls. For it is an unworthy low point to make the act to which we owe our life the object of a dirty joke, since we violate our mother by it.
Deceitful was also the previous standpoint of so-called double standards, which demanded virginity from the girl before marriage but not from the man. Even if the reason that the girl is the receiving and the man the giving part contains a certain appearance of justification for different standards, the natural difference does not speak for a fundamentally different view for the moral bearing of girl and man. If both enter marriage untouched, each will give the other a joyful gift that lies in the soul, since body and heart are given unseparated.
Whoever does not promote this bearing, cannot simultaneously demand that the German folk improve racially. If girls and men are deeply gripped by the idea of being cells of a folk - which they want to improve with the effort of their whole life - then they cannot live without restraint. They must have practiced the strictest self- discipline from earlier youth onward, just as they wish to train their body for higher performance in sports. How does the elimination of genetically inferior offspring through state laws help, if men and women do not have the self-discipline to not choose a partner whose clan contains inferiority. Previously, romantic love was solely fed by the beauty of the individual person desired. In the future, we will not see solely the individual man and the individual woman with their physical, intellectual and other advantages, rather we will also observe the siblings, parents and relatives, whether they present a guarantee for healthy blood. How much sacrifice will the future demand from the National Socialist! The mother will not be able to flee the National Socialist laws, if one of her children should fall under the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring. Many a passion will have to be overcome, because our will for the improvement of our folk demands it from us. That is the highest thing for which we can strive. We want to become racially better, but we want to assign the necessary selection for it less to state laws than to an obligating law for our life. The idea of breeding and selection has been elevated into the sphere of morality and duty. Nobody can speak disparagingly of them, unless he intends to turn against the divine command.
The Illegitimate Child
The demand for virginity before marriage should never mean that the marriage that lacks the joyful gift of mutual virginity should be damned. It should just be stressed that - in the high demand and its fulfillment - there lies for both marriage partners an infinitely firm anchor, so that the many shocks that every marriage, like life, must invariably bring, can be more easily withstood. In the judgment of the illegitimate child, it should never be claimed that every unmarried mother should be cast out in shame and misery. We do not want to fool ourselves:
Many girls are considered „honorable”, because they have found a „clever” man or because they themselves were „clever”, since they know the today easily accessible secrets of contraception. But the others, who - in the intoxication of the moment or in the ecstasy of passion - forgot themselves, are considered dishonorable, because they have given life to a child. This must be clearly stated. And the difficult and hardly answerable question must be raised: Who stands higher, the girl who in the passionate struggle against herself fails, or the one who gives herself and has a child, or the one that gives in and practices contraception? I believe that the order of the list as related contains the degree of their value. But let us guard ourselves against premature judgment! Not every man is a Goethe or a Hebbel or a Hermann Löns, even if many men all too gladly refer to them as their role-model to beautify their activity. Not every German girl is a Christiane Vulpius or an Elise Lensing, not every girl remains great after her „fall”.
In regard to the moral bearing of the great mass within our folk, the following must be stated in respect to the question of the illegitimate child: It is fundamentally false to claim that, due to our folk’s sinking birthrate, the illegitimate child should be promoted and every female should bring children into the world, regardless of inside or outside of marriage, otherwise she is not a full value member of the folk community. Whenever that was expressed by leading men, it was again and again always meant as just an ideal demand of the purest stamp, but never as a call for unrestrained life. It would also be an insult against the hundreds of thousands of German girls whose fiance fell in the World War and who have hence made a sacrifice like hundreds of thousands of mothers.
The concept of „illegitimate child” naturally does not include the child born before marriage. In many regions of Germany, the birth of a child or the impregnation of the girl is a prerequisite for the conclusion of the marriage. But generally, here as well, the young man who does not marry the girl is shown scorn and contempt.
The illegitimate child and its position must be viewed in the same context as we view the question of our overall moral bearing. Accordingly, one can distinguish three groups of illegitimate children:
First: The child is born outside of marriage, because the economic circumstances do not allow a marriage. Biologically speaking, these children can be fine, but they will not grow up inside a marriage. In the most favorable case, they will be given to relatives; in the least favorable case, they will go to strangers. Such a child does not know a mother’s love, since the mother probably has a job, nor siblings. Marriage as an educational community for the National Socialist will only in the most rare cases exist as an influence on such a child.
Second: The man does not marry the girl - either out of frivolity or conceit or boredom. But what girl with self-respect will give herself to a man who does not have respect for her in order to share her life with him? Precisely the predominantly Nordic girl sees the fulfillment of her love life only in marriage, and for her own sake will not respect the man who for the reasons mentioned seeks to avoid this fulfillment. But the child, as in the first case, will take second place, and its life will be dominated by the mother’s bitterness that the man did not see in her the value, which had to appear to her as the highest for her fulfillment.
Third: The illegitimate child is born by a mother who gives herself without thought. This case will be the most frequent. The child comes from a mother who has little restraint, and a father for whom such a girl is sufficient. Hence it will not have inherited the highest values from either side. Hence it is a totally mistaken view to claim that the stain of the illegitimate child was first implanted into the German folk by the church. Instead, healthy folk judgment was correct that the majority of illegitimate children come from parents who are not exemplary in the sense of best character values and hence also do not become the most valuable folk comrades.
But even these illegitimate children cannot help it that fate has called them to earth under these circumstances. It is hence wrong to blindly disadvantage illegitimate children, rather both parents should be held more accountable than was previously the case. In this regard, our legislation has previously been totally un-National Socialist, when it views the illegitimate child as related solely to the mother, or if the social position of the mother alone determined the amount of child support. According to the bourgeois law book, a working class father must pay an impossible sum for the illegitimate child of a rich merchant’s daughter. But in the opposite case, the working class girl will have to accept a payment that is a pittance for the father from a higher class. Here, a fundamental change will have to be made, which above all sees to it that the illegitimate child has a blood relationship not just to the mother, rather also to the father, and has right of inheritance of the paternal fortune. Certainly, the illegitimate child must not be better off than the legitimate one; it should not even be viewed as the same legally.
These demands must be clearly expressed within a new development of our folkish conditions. Perhaps other folks can afford to think differently about the purity of marriage, to live with less restraint, but still not decay. German man cannot afford that. Periods of decline in German history were simultaneously times of the greatest loosening of moral life bearing. Whoever experienced November 9, 1918 and the following weeks in Germany, knows that ruinous revolt had its chief meaning for many people in the destruction of the „restraints of pious shyness”. In the area of a healthy life bearing that is valuable for the German folk, we just have to do the opposite of what the November men did in Germany. Then we will be on the right path.
THE FOLLOWER
Serving
Millions of Germans are today bound by communities, are followers, and frequently non-commissioned officers within the communities at the same time. A plenitude of events and experiences has inundated us. We all struggle for a clarity which we - tied to a new life content - seek. It is all the same what position in life we hold, whether we are an SA man or merchant, whether artist or peasant, whether old or young - the National Socialist order has drawn all of us into its orbit. We cannot withdraw into solitude in order to lead a life of own private eccentricity. The German folk, from whose life we have developed, has claimed our life, for we have not received it from ourselves, rather from the thousands of efforts, sufferings, heroic fighting, from the virtues and vice, from the intellectual peaks and depths of our ancestors back to shrouded primeval time, when the divine mission had its beginning. We are bound and we want to remain bound, and we are happy about these bonds. Any dissolution from them is contemptible, since each is bound to the fate of the nation.
The present folk life with its weapons and its transportation technology cannot preserve its organizational unity only through such generous bonds beyond the blood connection. The relationship of the factory worker to the factory owner, that of the merchant to the buyer, that of the peasant to the consumer of his products, that of the scholar to his pupils, that of the artist to the owners of his works, goes beyond purely personal conduct. Since our life no longer plays out in a village community or small city, where everybody knows everybody else, salary and price, sale, purchase and cultural questions have become a matter for the entirety, otherwise the folk union would be lost forever. Insofar as the personal connection, for example in the country, still exists today, the individual peasant stands in the peasantry, the country teacher in teaching, the tradesman in the trades of his folk. A union in the folk is only possible, if each sees in his folk comrade of German genes a part of Germany. The great alienation that threatens to make us lonely as a result of the masses can only be overcome by a bond of fate created in millennia, of which each individual is made conscious. Such a splendid bond of each individual has nothing to do with conformity, nothing to do with a supression of the special traits of the individual, nothing to do with the annihilation of healthy individualism, nothing to do with the destruction of solitude. For everything great in this world needs solitude, needs quiet, but not for the sake of solitude and selfish willfulness, rather for the sake of maturity that should satisfy others. So did Luther need the quiet of the Wartburg period, Bismarck the years in Schönhausen and Hitler the stay in the Landsberg fortress. Thus no community is the summation of its greats (or each small unit), rather a coexistence of various wills, stirrings, talents, tendencies and talents. But above this often painful coexistence of followers there must stand in every following something powerfully bonding, which unites what separates in a higher union. For the National-Socialist, this higher plain is determined by the principle that forms his whole life content: We want to serve our folk, because we owe our life to it. We want to serve in order to make it stronger and better, so that one day after us healthier people will live than we are. We want to serve, because this duty to service is honorable, and because the most sublime thing for our life on this earth is that we have with consistent loyalty proven our duty to our leaders and comrades. In service lies not servitude, rather only the person who possesses consciousness of mastery is able to serve. Frederick the Great wanted to be nothing but servant, and Bismarck decided that on his gravestone it should be read that he was a servant.
„Where I found something alive, there I found the will to power, and even in the will of the person serving I found the will to be master.”
(Nietzsche)
A service is no longer a service, if it is performed for the sake of a wage. The wage is a necessary accompaniment of our life order, but it is no prerequisite for service. Likewise, the service performed only on command is not to be highly esteemed. Service on command can also be performed by the tamed sea lion in the circus that balances a burning lamp on its nose, without knowing why he does it. Orders are necessary in a structured community, but they do not justify our service, rather its execution is only part of it. All our service is a freedom out of necessity. We serve for the necessity of our folk’s life, not because a written law commands it of us. That is why enlistment and service is still free today in the National Socialist communities. This readiness for service is not fulfilled so that we become happy or feel any joy about it, rather because we feel within ourselves a moral obligation for service. „I believe that we are not born to be happy, rather in order to do our duty, and we want to yearn to know where our duty lies.“ (Nietzsche) The necessity of our folk’s life, however, comes from God, so that we, who come from God desired folk, do his will, when we want to serve. There is hardly anything more sublime on this earth than a self-chosen freedom, which wisely limits itself and makes volunteerism the starting point of our action. Service itself is an activity that often does not have a direct purpose and yet must be done. „We want to serve” thus does not mean only doing what we recognize as necessity, rather it also means doing something whose final meaning is still unclear to us. The follower must carry out every order that his leader gives him. The limitation of the power of command lies only with the leader, not in the knowledge of the follower, other than when it is about orders against higher leaders, hence about mutiny.
Not by coincidence has community bound life in Germany taken on a soldierly stamp - also through us marching in rank and file and wearing the same uniform. Whoever once marched as a soldier in an endless, field-grey column, was irresistibly gripped by this rhythm of being an individual in a great community. Hence it was not difficult to march in formation, we did not feel it as lack of freedom that we had to march and were not given the choice to go here or there, wherever our whims drove us. We were no longer ourselves, rather we were the company. When the battle for Germany’s new shaping raged, it was a wonderful release for us, when we could march, and when, during the ban period, we could no longer do it, we all yearned for the day when we could again surrender ourselves in order to unite our life with the marching column. When we think of community, then the marching step of the column rings in our ears. Hence the motif of marching in step appears again and again in the most sung songs of the NSDAP.
We do not want to forget this bearing, it is the prerequisite for every service that it brings no advantage for the person serving. That is still misunderstood in the German folk to a great extend. The first hoarse- frost that fell upon the enthusiasm of the year
1933 came from the lack of will for service. For service does not stop when one only does what was commanded, rather it demands that one endures what does not seem to serve one’s personal use. The pitiful, so-called grumbling is the evil result of insufficient readiness for service. This person does not agree with this, and that person with that, measure of the National Socialist government leadership, because he had hoped for something else, because a law or a regulation is perhaps a burden for him. That is not very honorable. Effort and burden are necessary so that we again and again prove ourselves to ourselves and prove that our service is honestly meant.
To service also belongs respect for the service of other folk comrades. It might still be remnant from the period of class struggle and class arrogance that so frequently someone looks down at the service of the others with a certain contempt. The dirtiest manual labor is just as necessary as the leadership of a regiment. Frederick the Great first learned the greatness of the Prussian state by studying the files in the grounds chamber at Küstrin, and only then did he become the great military leader. He said repeatedly that he had sacrificed his youth to his father; he had sacrificed his inclinations, his enthusiasm for art and a life in beauty, to the duty to serve in the sate. Service without sacrifice is never conceivable; if small minds protest against the idea that a large folk such as the German one can never be made to keep an eye on the general good coming before the private good, then we want to always and constantly refer to the greatest sacrifice in world history: the two million dead in the World War and in the movement’s period of struggle. It is no coincidence and no hollow custom that the legacy of this unique and hardly conceivable sacrifice is again and again called to our memory in state ceremonies, marches and rallies. If the death of more than two million has brought the proof that the service without regard for oneself is possible for the folk, then it must be possible to repeat that in our life. For before the death of the two million came their life with the obligation to endure the inhuman suffering, came an obligation that was imposed more by a voluntariness than by the oath to the flag. Whoever wanted to do so, could escape his service, as many shirkers did indeed do. But today we want to follow those who did not shirk and were not cowardly, rather who did not shun service despite the sacrifice.
Based on this mightiest experience of the German folk, we can believe in this heroic trait of readiness to serve, which goes through the whole folk. Only on the basis of this faith that, within the German folk, the thing develops that we tend to call socialist bearing. We must be clear among ourselves that a new order of economic life cannot be achieved without a new, namely socialist, bearing of the German folk. Before we have overcome the self-evident habit of bending over for every advantage like for a dirty coin, a new economic order will not be able to come. For if in the life of many folk comrades instead of readiness for sacrifice only profit and so-called petty swindle reside, then the problem of machine and technology cannot be solved. There is a certain danger, if revolutions trust in a coming, new man, who will one day be able to solve all tasks. For hidden in trust in the future can easily lie the impotence to shape the present. But never in recorded history has an attempt been made to actually create the new man. The will to breed a new folk comrade is new and not yet proven in the past. In previous attempts at improvement, one all too much thought solely about reason, one schooled knowledge and then believed man would act according to knowledge. It was forgotten that God did not put reason in the world all by itself, rather than the body is the bearer of the intellectual and spiritual, and that it has a miraculous, inexplicable reciprocal effect with them, which the Almighty wanted and created. Now we strive for the pure forms. We do not see the body alone, rather also the intellect. We know that a feeble-minded intellect in an otherwise healthy body does not guarantee healthy offspring and vice versa. If many generations of parents live with the will for pure forms, then folk comrades of socialist bearing will be born who renounce personal gain and advantage, who view folk comrades as helpers of the next and not as profit makers for the entrepreneur. They will view it as self-evident that the mental discipline „one for all and all for one” stands in the foreground of all action. Then all the activity of the individual will stand under the viewpoint that the life of the nation has given us direction, and not that of the individual. The will for the complete devotion of each to his folk will seem self-evident. That is no fantasy, rather the fulfillment of God’s will, because his laws are respected.
Socialism is just derived from service. The greatest difficulty in the fulfillment of its values lies in the lack of mutual understanding for the service of the manual laborer on the one side and the white-color worker on the other. The greatest blame doubtlessly lies with the white-collar worker. That is not stated out of the today perhaps falsely understood wish to ingratiate oneself with the manual laborer, or perhaps it is supposedly modem to stand up for the manual laborer, rather from honest heart and genuine conviction. The honest manual laborer is generally inclined to acknowledge the knowledge and intellectual superiority of the white-collar worker from the start. The hatred against the white-collar worker, which was so long nourished in the Marxist period, emerged basically through the fault of the white- collar worker. He tended to view knowledge of life as life, and he thereby lost the spontaneity of his life. He sees the life of the manual laborer, in which knowledge of the areas of life are not as extensive as his, as not having equal value; he looks down on it, he finally loses any connection with him. He is no longer able to talk plain and simple and natural with him, because social forms have crowded out the simple life in him, so he comes across as either the commanding master or the arrogant know-it-all. Finally, he sees in the external, in the clean fingernails, white collar and at least five room apartment the sole evidence for life and accomplishment. After the National Socialist revolution - often in the first panic - many white-collar workers approached the manual laborer with servile servitude, and when they noticed that the unpleasant national revolution left them unscathed, they displayed their icy arrogance twice as much.
Both sides must come together on the plain of service. The whitecollar worker should not believe that - through his social forms and his knowledge - he possesses freedom toward the manual laborer; Nietzsche’s words could apply to him: „You call yourself free? Your dominant idea do I want to hear, and not, that you have escaped a yoke. Are you one who may escape a yoke? There are many who throw away their last value, when they throw away their bondage.” The white-collar worker should learn to recognize and appreciate the character values in the life of the manual laborer. Manual labor as well, even the lowest and simplest, demands devotion, loyalty and conscientiousness. These virtues tend to permeate the life of the worker more than that of the mentally working strata. In the solidarity of the workers lies a unique, exemplary loyalty. There is more squabbling, quarreling, gossip and hatred to be found in the communal life of 1,000 white-collar workers than in a factory with 1,000 manual laborers, for the latter are more comrades and life companions than the white- collar workers. The white-collar worker should value this loyalty and honesty more than knowledge, and he should also accept the attributes of the worker: dirty work cloths and work sweat. The handshake with an oil-smeared boiler man’s hand does not make as dirty as that with an overly maintained woman’s hand with red polished fingernails. He should be able to talk to the worker simply and naturally, about daily cares as well as the great matters of folk, state and eternity. Whoever has lost that, that he can no longer converse with every spiritually healthy folk comrade, has spoiled his life, for it is worthless for the folk community. In loyalty, in service, do we want to measure all work, then we will respect all of us as folk comrades. The inescapable result is that the worker no longer produces under conditions that seem like slavery to him. Then the type of manual laborer will arise, of whom Nietzsche says: „Workers should feel like soldiers. A honorarium, a wage, but no payment! No relationship between payment and performance! Rather each individual according to his nature, so that he can perform the best that lies in his area.”
Another thing belongs to service: whoever genuinely serves, does not talk a lot; he knows how to perform his service silently. A following in which the followers have learned the virtue of silence will hold together better than one in each one gabs about the other.
„It is difficult to live with people, because keeping silent is so difficult.”
(Nietzsche)
Silence is one of the virtues in which equanimity reveals itself most clearly: Heroes are never chatty. One can agree with Thomas Carlyle’s enthusiastic praise for silence, when one has learned how valuable silence is: „Keeping silent and reticence! May altars be built to them - if our time were one building altars - for general prayer. Silence is the element in which great things take shape so that they are finally finished and step majestically into the day light of the life that they should henceforth dominate...Yes, in your own, routine matters just hold your tongue for a day; how much clearer will your intentions and duties be the next morning!” - Every comradely meeting in our following lets a plenitude of possibilities arise for one to talk about the other. The rumor mill, the gossip table and gossip aunts are the most miserable thing than can exist in a community. Toward them, one may break silence, for they must be set straight with passionate indignation. Otherwise, breach of silence is only permitted, if ugly tones, immoral bragging and dirty joke contaminate the followers. Whoever otherwise knows how to keep silent, will be able to prove at such opportunities that a volcano of honor, morality and decency bums within him. Through his demonic defense of these values, he can reveal that his usual silence is not a hiding of his lack of intellect or a mask for his stupidity.
The follower should also be able to endure injustice silently. Even with all love for justice, every non-commissioned officer will do an injustice to one or the other during the settling of disputes, making promotions or issuing orders. That is painful, but here lie human limitations. But the follower must never allow a suffered injustice to agitate against his leader or to speak against him. He should do his duty with doubled zeal and therefore slowly bring proof that he is different than he was judged. He certainly must not leave his following due to the suffered injustice. Whoever gives up the battleground, is never the victor.
Of Honor
Two driving forces determine my action: The first is the feeling of honor and the other is the well-being of my state, which heaven has given me to govern. (Frederick the Great)
The chief difficulty in the formation of a following is that the individual members are diverse beings. The art of leadership must lie in producing a uniform spirit in the following. The company commander might be able to easily do that in his company, because centuries of tradition of Prussian and German soldierly spirit support him. Among the NSDAP’s auxiliaries, this creation is infinitely more difficult, since political soldiery can in no way reach back centuries. Whoever has led a local unit of the NSDAP or SA troop, knows how infinitely difficult it was to forge the diverse characters into a community. The Führer had given us a regulation that was initially hardly understood by most and whose correctness we only recognized over the course of years. He demanded that the political leader in the period of struggle was not to reshape the people in the sense of making them better, rather he had to utilize them with their innate flaws and weaknesses. In the folkish groups outside the NSDAP, one did not follow this principle, therefore they splintered into tiny pieces and dissolved. In a period of struggle, measuring must be done with a different ruler. In war, action and the success achieved by the action count, not the man with his final virtues. Whether a trench is stormed by soldiers who - measured according to the usual virtues by a morality judge - pass or not, makes no difference for the success. Likewise, in the NSDAP’s period of struggle it was secondary, whether a local unit leader’s life style was above all criticism. The main thing was that he won his town’s folk comrades for National Socialism. After the rise to power, however, stricter criteria apply. A certain boundary must be observed, which is drawn by the formation of the new National Socialist folk comrade. Now it is not the success after a wild fight that counts, rather life in its entirety, just as the soldier faces greater demands in terms of his virtue in peacetime than in tumultuous war years. In peacetime, the virtue-lacking soldier may be less able to prove his perhaps boundless courage. Whereby it must certainly be noted that in war time the wild lansquenet were probably real daredevils, but also often threw away the victory they had won through lack of discipline. One should think of the breakthrough divisions in February 1918, which pounced on the alcohol supplies of the English and French and did not exploit their victory.
But only to a very limited extent are there two different measures for the bearing of the following, so that different rulers may be used in peace and in war. June 30, 1934 is the serious proof that many people who sufficed in the period of struggle failed in the development of a new type after the battle was over. When now in the following exposition the attempt is made to present those values for the follower that are necessary for the formation of a National Socialist following, this happens in the clear and sober realization that the highest demands are made. We will never presume that German folk comrades could become ideal figures who completely fulfill everything that is demanded from them. When honor, loyalty and duty are discussed, this always means the struggle for these values, which makes up the main content of our life, not the goal itself. We want to completely free ourselves of the romantic glorification that folk comrades may only be ideal. Once and for all, the struggle for the ideal is the motive of our life.
Certainly, honor is the virtue within us that is most closely related to the eternal, to the „spark in the soul”. From it develop all those other values that move our life: duty, justice, truthfulness and heroism. For if we want to conceptually define honor, then we must find that this is hardly possible. Honor has this in common with the concepts sacredness, eternity and omnipotence. The honor of the individual can only receive its basis from the folk, because it, as we have seen, is divine will and mission. Because we want our folk to be a folk of honor, we want to take as a self-evident prerequisite that he is a decent, duty conscious and loyal servant of his folk. Hence, for National Socialists there is no distinction between inner and outer honor. If by inner honor that sacred inviolateness within us is meant, this self-evident prerequisite for the presence of consciousness of duty, decency and heroism, certainly, then we must always be able to present proof of this bearing. When by outer honor the reputation of a social class is meant, then that is not valid for a National Socialist folk order. If somebody comes to me and denies of me one or several virtues of the National Socialist German, then he may be mistaken or be right. He may err out of innate treachery, as a honor besmircher, or due to false information, or mistaken grasp of the facts. If he is a habitual honor besmircher, then one should expel him from the folk community, for he commits a crime not against one folk comrade, rather in this individual he hurts his whole folk. Courts of honor will decide here. If somebody annoys another due to a mistake and he learns of his mistake, then he should admit it and take it back with manly words. But if conviction stands against conviction without sure proof, then the person whose honor has been injured must bring proof that he possesses true honor, and he should fight for it - with shooting or boxing, as the court of honor decides: „But we think kingly and respect a free, courageous death more decent than a dishonored life.” (Schiller) Then we must stake our life so that our folk believes us that we are able to be its servants with all virtues. Within this scope also belongs professional honor, because it is a part of the service to the folk.
A word must still be spoken in this connection about a man standing up for his wife’s honor. It is wrong to stand up for a woman who does not deserve it, because she has frivolously thrown away her woman’s honor. One should treat her as, according to Tacitus, Germanic man treated adulteresses. If the adulter is a conscious-lacking seducer, then one should, as far as I am concerned, surrender him to the same fate and drown him in the moor. Only where distrust rules, where conviction stands against conviction, should a man risk his life for his wife or his daughter.
We will only then be able to erect our community firm and indestructible, if the honor of each folk comrade is again respected. For each man and each woman are a part of the German folk, their honor is the honor of the folk, and Germany’s honor is their honor. One can hardly have an exaggerated feeling of honor: „Being truly great does not mean stirring without a good reason; but pay great attention even to a blade of straw, if honor is at stake.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet.) Hence nobody should frivolously pawn his honor. Secrets learned - if they prove necessary - should be passed on without word of honor. A simple promise suffices. But I can also especially firmly bind somebody whose discretion I do not fully trust through the acceptance of his word of honor, and thereby make him aware of the importance of the information. Certainly, it would be more beautiful in our life, if in these matters as well a simple
„yes” would suffice and everything else be superfluous. But when a word of honor is given, then the whole person with the weight of the holiest thing that I possess in this word is placed in the hand of the recipient of this word of honor. Whoever breaks it, should be expelled from the folk community, for he is just one miserable, pitiful scoundrel and rascal. We will probably hardly ever be able to get by without vows and oaths. But when breech of oath prevails, then - according to the mythos of our ancestors - the end of the world begins.
Of Truthfulness
Truthfulness is inseparably tied to honor. It is strange why people like so much to lie, when it is so much simpler to tell the truth. Often it is not innate baseness that leads them to untruth, rather the desire to make more out of themselves and their experiences than they really are. Why are people not satisfied with their experiences, why do they add something to the reality? Every rumor and every exciting period with its fables could make one doubt the folk comrades. There is so much in our time for each to experience, that everybody would have to be satisfied, so that they would not desire to experience more than fate has allotted them. Instead of following the principle „be more than you appear”, thousands build a new sensation around themselves. Added to this is, for countless thousands, unabashed lying for the sake of personal advantage. And yet truthfulness in words, but also in works, is the strongest bond within our folk. For deceit makes all unsure. From the lies develop dishonor, breech of oath and mutiny. To remain very truthful is an inseparable component of will power. We never have to fear that through unconditional uprightness too much rigidity must enter our nature. As a lie, however, I only count base lie and deceit! But not a community standing up for one of its members, who at one time or another committed a minor misdeed and should be held accountable. When the spirit prevails in a community that everybody wants to stand up for an offender, one should value this solidarity, insofar as it does not hide cowardice and his offense did not violate honor.
But can we really separate the lie from any relationship to purpose? Is it not unconditionally acceptable for a physician to lie to the patient about his real condition, that a leader leaves his folk in the dark about dangers? Is it not to be demanded that one makes use of the lie for the sake of a good cause? In order to remove all doubt from the start? A resurrection of the Jesuit principle that the end justifies the means can never come into question for us National Socialists. For us, the reverse of the contemptible rule is correct, that at any price the means must justify the end. For I cannot want good and sublime goals - and we have only wanted good ones - and desecrate them through foul means, because each untruth gives birth to new lies like a Hydra and desecrates the most sacred goal. But wouldn’t that make any political life impossible? Does rigid truthfulness elevate the naivety of the child to the simple ruler for the colorful, many-sided, sweeping life of rough reality? Do we not look with a kind of amazement at figures who were great in the ruthlessness with which they handled truth? No, no, whoever wants to use these examples as attorney for the lie, has not understood and comprehended the most solid building material from which the life community within the folk is formed. The lie destroys trust, and without trust a community formation is not possible. The greatest liars in world history were ruthless, selfish individualists with type-forming energy. They shined like a meteor that sweeps across the night sky, but they lacked that warming energy that makes new life awaken. A follower should never believe that an unsuitable noncommissioned officer - there will always be unsuitable ones as well - could be eliminated or weakened in his position through a lie. And whoever believes that an insincerity could be tolerated for the sake of the National Socialist idea, finds himself in a grave error. And whoever is not satisfied with the theoretical, for him I point to the living example of our Führer. He has never broken a promise or his word. He has always pointed about that the German folk can only be united through truthfulness - most persuasively in his Reichstag speech of July 13, 1934, in which the most passionate affirmation of truthfulness was set down. He always told the truth, even to his opponents, even the most unpleasant truth. They just did not believe him, that he spoke the truth; that was their mistake, not his. Whoever is possessed by a great goal, which he wants to achieve with the whole energy of his being, does not take dirty paths. With holy indignation we oppose the view that we may ever use rotten, deceitful means for the sake of our own person or of whatever cause. Not for our own sake do we hate such a thing, not out of fear of infamy, hell and damnation, rather for the sake of the folk entrusted to us by eternity, for the sake of its honor. Woe to the person who views the sovereign property of National Socialism as the diplomat’s language. May it be necessary for the latter to view it as a means to hide ideas. But woe to the National Socialist who misuses honor, duty and leadership as a means in order to conceal his shameful deeds! Woe to the speaker whose speech is not proven by his life, woe to the author of a book whose ideas do not correspond to his action! They are traitors against the most sacred thing that lived, lives and will live in the best of our folk, in the past, in the present and always.
Despite this affirmation, we must ascertain that, in one respect, truthfulness must have a limit: Within human society, for the sake of sincerity, not every idea that is thought may be spoken aloud. Taken too far, spoken sincerity destroys the harmony of our communities, like Siegfried’s purest truthfulness caused the fall of the Nibelungen. Hebbel interpreted Siegfried’s guilty-bound fate like this:
If one is transparent like an insect, Which looks red and green like its food, One must guard oneself against secrets, For even the intestines blab them out.
{Siegfried’s Death, IV., 7.)
As followers, we must not be transparent, rather must make ourselves non-transparent through silence. We cannot say everything that we think to our opponents, yes, we even cannot tell our friends. That is painful due to our human imperfection, but we otherwise destroy any community formation.
Furthermore, there is the question of whether truthfulness has another limit that is connected to our folk’s border. One of the most difficult questions for German man deals with the attitude toward foreign countries. Since we are a folk among folks, a necessary clarification must be made in this regard as well for the formation of National Socialist man. Mistake after mistake has been made in this regard in the past and in the present. Some immediately adapt to the foreigner and foreign countries, they speak his language and fearfully try to hide that they were born as Germans. The others make the opposite mistake: they brag about their strength and the strong fatherland, they present themselves provocatively and hurt the foreigner’s feelings. Still others act like superior minds and try to convince the foreigner like unpleasant schoolmasters what good people we are. But it is completely wrong, if one feels oneself to be a small ambassador in the vest pocket and confuses hypocrisy, falseness and lie with diplomacy. All of these bearings are wrong; each should be able to represent his folk, each should remember that his folk is judged by him. But neither bragging nor servile self-renunciation, nor the superior schoolmaster, wins the necessary respect. Only a consistent, calm, friendly and polite, but yet firm bearing awakens the respect of the foreigner. Better to keep silent and seem patient than to say one word too much or even brag about one’s folk! But whoever holds it in honor, speaks of it with love and enthusiasm, that person will be respected. We never have to be ashamed, if we do not master the language of the foreigner. One can go very far in the world with the German language (and German script). We can calmly feel superior to the foreigner, but one must not notice it from us.
In questions of great foreign affairs, the decisions about truthfulness are much more difficult. If it is necessary for life in our communities that truthfulness and sincerity dominate, does that also hold true for responsible leadership in foreign affairs? That is a question that does not only concern the leading diplomats, rather is also a matter for the follower, for life between folks is not regulated by the diplomats, rather by the unanimous bearing of the following that stands behind them. If foreign countries use the lie against us, should we counter them with openness and truth? If an Englishman follows his motto: „My country right or wrong”, should we respond with right alone? If we trust, but the others do not, rather respond to our trust with contemptible betrayal, has right not been dealt a mortal blow? Is it not frivolous to demand from a folk - for the sake of its life - to make use of the truth in its dealings with other folks? Must one not solely advise: Lie mightily and better than the others? Better to conclude no treaties at all, since each state just looks for a clause through which it can slip out? Is history not a single proof for the correctness of the lie between folks? If Hermann the Cherusker had not pretended friendship with the Roman Varius, would we today still be Germans at all? Did not Czar Alexander break his word to King Frederick Wilhelm II; did not Italy in 1915 fail to honor its treaty with Germany? Is English history not a chain of breeches of word? Did not Napoleon II. continually fail to keep his promises? Did not Wilson give up his solemnly proclaimed points at the point in time when it was necessary to stand up for them, manly and sincerely, because Germany had put down its weapons in trust in them? If only success in foreign affairs is the measure of value of all events, would it not then be practical to break off all foreign affairs and call home the expensive ambassadors and emissaries? If the language of diplomacy is actually just supposed to serve the purpose of hiding ideas, would it not be the solely correct thing to not use it at all - this violation of one of the highest human goods, which language is, rather to brutally annihilate? To ask with Hölderin’s Hyperion: „Believe me and reflect, I tell you from my deepest soul: Language is very superfluous. The best thing always remains for itself and rests in its depth, like pearls at the bottom of the sea.”? Or are there actually two kinds of right, the right that is valid in a folk, and outside its life a second one? Do we - who believe that right come from eternity and its freedom - come under the compulsion that we want to be a pure, good example of truthfulness in our own folk, but must lie to the outside world?
It is not intended to here avoid a sharply outlined position for the sake of comfort. It is to be stated very simply that each leader and each follower must - when the nation’s great questions of fate are at stake - also summon the courage to lie; the great life of politics between folks must not be measured by the yardstick of petty bourgeois morality! Certainly, all of us feel a readiness to act like that Frisian nobleman who was supposed to be baptized: rather to hell, to the ancestors, than to heaven, where no ancestors live. If we make the demand that a follower must be willing to make any sacrifice for his folk, hence also that of untruthfulness, then we have not established any secure basic norm, rather have evaded the question of the essence of truthfulness. If the world of folkish conflicts and foreign affairs were independent of morality, then why does every great statesman try to connect foreign policy with morality? If foreign affairs lies beyond morality, then why does the question of war guilt play such a big role in the history of folks? If that is met with the reply that this only happens for the purpose of awakening in the folk masses the consciousness of fighting for a just cause, then we already shift the necessity of the lie in foreign affairs into domestic politics, which is destructive to the community, as we have seen. The idea of right cannot exist twice in this world. Genuine ideas can only be unique. All that remains is to view right as constant variable, to smash the false idols and to determine that we erred, when we accepted right and justice as the supportive pillars of our existence. But that can never be the case. If we tear right and justice from the stars, then the eternal world of starts collapses and we with it, for without right and truthfulness, life is not longer worth living. „Truth does not direct itself according to us, rather we must direct ourselves according to it.” (Claudius) But we also saw in intra-folk life that the limits of truthfulness must be drawn by silence, but not by lie, that means spoken untruthfulness. Certainly, silence can be a concealment of untruth. But life in this world with its abysses between opposites cannot be mastered otherwise. For life is at stake here: here stands the life of the German folk and there the life of some other folk desired by eternity. Vital folks cannot exterminate another vital folk, it will always live, like Germany lives despite Versailles and National Socialism will live strengthened. The life of the German folk should be a life in the service of truth. May other folks make do with other values, the German folk cannot, should not and does not want to do it, and its Führer will always be the visible expression of this will in this sense. Our Führer Hitler has pronounced the most vibrant, clearest and more visible proof for the correctness of the principle that truthfulness - in the life between folks as well - must dominate, for he has stated the most noble truth of folks in all clarity: The truth of the unchangeability of each folk. Each folk is a power desired by the Almighty, which cannot be changed by human means of compulsion into another one. May we Germans at this time be alone with this realization, the time will come, when one will praise the statesman telling the truth, and the one who makes use of the lie will be despised, even in his own folk. If a foreign affairs politician losses his credibility, then he renounces the most powerful force that exists in this world. Certainly, truthfulness as a basic norm in the life between folks does not yet exist. Hence we want to tie the greatest carefulness to the affirmation of truthfulness and keep our eyes open. We will not let ourselves be fooled again by 14 or even 140 points! Whoever is full of mistrust, does not, however, have to be a despiser of the truth.
Of Loyalty
Without truthfulness, no loyalty is thinkable, for loyalty is the proof brought through our life that we are truthful. How should the follower be loyal, who lets his life be accompanied by the lie, and who does not summon up the courage for truth? Certainly, a Hagen lied and deceived Kriemhild and Siegfried, for the sake of his king’s honor. But who would want view the fateful net of guilt that lies over the fate of the Nibelungen as an example for his life? Certainly, Hagen lied, when he tricked Kriemhild into revealing Siegfried’s vulnerable spot, but even afterward he had the courage for the brutal courage for truth and for destruction. But loyalty does not first begin with the great relationships of life, rather it has its beginning in the smallest things. Whoever is not true to himself, today undertakes this and tomorrow that, that person also cannot be true to his leader. Of the ties that hold our communities together, loyalty is the strong bond. For the voluntary will to loyalty must develop from the voluntary service in the community. Just as the will comes from eternity, so does loyalty as well. Together with honor, it is the chastity, the most inviolate thing that there may be for the follower. Embezzlement is a breech of comradeship; disloyalty toward its leaders, however, is mutiny. We are all thankful to our supreme leader than he punished such a terrible mutiny on June 30, 1934, and thereby fully elevated the NSDAP to historical greatness, like Frederick Wilhelm I elevated Prussian soldiery and civil service to a type-forming institution through bloody victories. Disloyalty must be punished swiftly. Only the gossips of yesterday with liberal bone-softening become enthusiastic for weeks of court proceedings with the close examination of all details, which satisfies their lust. In times that shape history, mutinies that breakout overnight must also be eliminated overnight. The painful extinguishing of the life of individuals is not so difficult to endure than if a folk twists in convulsions. Disloyalty is unforgivable, it is always directed against the life of the folk, even if it is committed against the lowest noncommissioned officer. Here is it all the same whether it is about embezzlement, treason or desertion. The motives that lead to breech of loyalty can never be so grave that one could approve of the disloyalty.
Breech of loyalty for the sake of an idea appears to be an exception. When Henry the Lion refused to follow Kaiser Frederick Barbarossa, he did not remain loyal to his master. We National Socialists, who apply the yardstick of blood and soil to the events of the past, today agree with Henry the Lion, because through him German blood and German soil were increased, while Frederick Barbarossa achieved the opposite through his Italian policy. General von Yorck as well violated soldiery loyalty, but he was also ready to offer his head for it. His initiative in Lauroggen proved him right and not those who warned him against his step. Both these examples also show that loyalty can only be disavowed by those who are convinced of the correctness of their great idea, but who are also willing to bear all the consequences. The follower can only remain loyal simply and plainly, he must blindly trust his leader. Where he believes he can no longer take responsibility for his loyalty, he should have the next higher leader confirm or disprove his mistrust. But even where a misfortune leads to disloyalty, the guilt remains, and it must lead to annihilation, for it breaks the life of the folk, it dries the mysterious life river of honor and of truthfulness that eternity has set inside us. Unconditional loyalty, however, demands from each folk comrade the strictest conscientiousness toward the demands of the folk and state. A view is spread among the broadest circles that loyalty in regard to observance of the state’s so-called minor demands is not necessary. Attempts to avoid taxes, to gain little advantages through bride and small favors, are accepted by many as the imperfections of this life that one must not designate as disloyalty. Frederick Wilhelm I. and Frederick the Great were oddly filled with the pessimism that „these minor imperfections” are not to be eradicated. As much as they made loyalty the foundation of the whole state administration, they were simultaneously permeated with a deep mistrust of the reliability of officialdom. Both never could get rid of the suspicion that the official could misuse his position for his personal enrichment, or that the high official could namely oppress the small man in the folk. Frederick the Great covered the small miller Arnold with his (as if today fully confirmed) unjust complaints against judges - under the protest of all of Berlin’s high society. Almost all the measures in Prussia’s domestic administration proceed from this mistrust: To test the officials’ loyalty, the state apparatus was made so cumbersome by control offices, higher accounting chambers and reciprocally checking officials, that the slowness of the work tempo could only be overcome by being sharply whipped up again and again. The cumbersome apparatus largely remained until the National Socialist revolt, certainly without the higher power of state - which was possible in a centrally, absolutist governed state - pushing for tempo. In the National Socialist erected state, the principle: „You should faithfully do your duty” must be transformed into: „We all want to do our duty faithfully.” A great simplification would thereby be achieved, so that a gigantic demand for self-renunciation would be put to a large portion of officialdom to practice a moral bearing that would have as a result a reduction of the number of officials. The prerequisite for this is certainly the presence of National Socialist folk comrades from whom officialdom renews itself. A further necessary would be that the official - more than previously - shows himself to other folk comrades as a loyal servant who is there for the sake of the entirety and must hence always show the public a friendly nature and readiness to serve, but not a condescending mercy, as if the public does not know the word „hurry” at all.
The song of songs of loyalty has been sung again and again in the German past. Since the days of Frederick Wilhelm 1., the bells ring hourly the song of loyalty and honesty from the tower of the Gamisonkirche, and in thousands of listeners the same tunes resound today again and again in the radio receivers and admonish that no hour of our life may stand outside of loyalty and honesty. The song „Always practice loyalty and honesty” was stricken from the school reading book in 1919 by the Marxist Thuringian provincial government; but today it is sung and heard a thousand- fold. Hundreds of thousands of SS men today sing as their song: „When all become disloyal, we still remain loyal”. Can there be a more convincing proof for the purity of the Third Reich’s will than that the rhythm of loyalty rings through our whole life bearing?
Of the Attitude toward Faith
We cannot today honestly deny that, in one regard, the unity of the German folk is not present: in the faith in the eternal things. The schism between both Christian denominations is not as great as the one between the Christian denominations on the one side and their rejection on the other. In an exposition of National Socialist life formation, the pros and cons of both views cannot, may not and should not be discussed. But I cannot avoid the fact of the existence of this schism, without mentioning how the follower of one religious view should behave toward the person with a different one. One must hence honestly research wherein the difference in religious attitude lies and how - despite this difference - the unity of National Socialist life conduct can be maintained. The difference can indeed be portrayed in its broadest outlines, but it cannot be the task of this book to provide a precise religious instruction of both sides.
The Christian believes in the baseness of man, who is unable to move toward the divine from his own strength, and who can hence only be redeemed by God’s mercy and by the innocently shed blood of Christ. The opponents of Christian faith think that man could indeed be entwined in guilt, but he is not a born sinner, rather God’s fellow fighter against evil in the world, so that he does not demand redemption through an act of mercy. Both these views oppose each other and are sharpened by various views. The Christian sees in the non-Christian a cast off, a heathen, who wants to destroy the religious anchored in German history. The non-Christian claims that National Socialism and Christianity are incompatible. One sees in Christianity an enrichment of German essence, the other sees the deepest character values of German essence already in the German man of the prehistorical period, long before the introduction of Christianity. Finally, both sides raise the claim to have to encompass the totality of each human life.
As regrettable as it is that the German folk in its deepest, innermost essence does not communally believe the same thing, as depressing as it may that folk and faith do not come together, it must still be finally stated that we do not deviate from each all that much. If we view this question without zeal and rage, then it is completely possible to find final, very deep unity, which enables for us a common platform for living together. First, various vague points must be cleared up. Thousands of soldiers have died in the field with the Lord’s Prayer on their lips; a hero like Schlageter partook of the Lord’s Supper before his execution. Never should the reproach come up that affirmation of a Christian confession must by itself mean a lack of patriotism. But the non-Christian also must not automatically be labeled as a destroyer of German tradition or as a desolate materialist and communist. It is also fundamentally wrong to disparate the affirmation of blood, folk and genetics as „heathenism”, for one should take care not to suddenly develop into a Pharisee. The affirmation of the folk as a blood community fulfills God’s will more than what it disparages. Blood and race were created by God, and man should live in accordance to this creation, and obey its iron laws. The origin in God is hence shared by both views. Even if the faith in and of God is different, we want to still ascertain that where the believers come together in the eternal, they do not stand so far apart as those whose thinking ends with dead matter. Those who let the law of their action be determined by the eternal, belong together, for both are enemies of those who designate material and the moment as the depth of their sick conscience: „Piety binds greatly, but godlessness much more so.” (Goethe). - Godlessness bonds more - is the world already the master over the dangers from the east? Has rootless Jewry really already become so weak? We should reflect that natural allies belong together. Instead of standing together and advancing united against materialism, against the despisers of virtue, morality and faith, each religious movement fights a two front war: The Churches against the „Deutschgläubigen” [non-Christian believers in God], as we call them [Deutschkirchler, Deutschgläubige, Deutsche Glaubensbewegung] for the sake of simplicity, on the one side and against communism on the other side; the
„Deutschgläubigen” fight against communism and the Christian churches. These two front wars are dangerous, for we do not want to conjure up a second Thirty Years War for heavens sake, which would again have to be fought out in Germany.
Within the circles that trace their existence to the Almighty, mutual respect must be demanded. We want to let ourselves be guided by the principle of Matthias Claudius:
„Despise no religion, for it is secret to the intellect, and you do not know want could be hidden under unattractive images.” The religious life of every folk comrade must be inviolate for everyone. The principle that each may become blessed in his own fashion had indeed emerged in Frederick the Great’s Prussia from the Enlightenment, while we affirm it today for political reasons, for the political person must evaluate, weight and calculate the existing facts. Many thousands of people in the German folk affirm the church, and many believe in earnest that the church cannot offer them content anymore. Neither the one nor the other are better or worse Germans, hence we must not violate their religious life. Certainly, in the past there have again and again been people for whom the Christian churches were not the content of their life, only previously it was spoken less loudly than today, because we may and can be more open and honest in these things today.
1 intentionally avoid the exposition of the NSDAP’s affirmation set down in the party program - to positive Christianity - due to political bearing. For there is no authority - binding to all Christian churches - that can determine what is to be understood by Christianity. For the Catholic church, the authority is the Pope; for the Evangelical church, it is the Holy Scriptures. Did the NSDAP hence include in its program in one point an affirmation that cannot be defined? By no means; positive Christianity demands the same action as National Socialism. For the National Socialist politicians, positive Christianity is to be seen, above all, in the death of all those German Christians in the war and postwar period, who were able as best Germans to make their greatest sacrifice in devotion to Germany.
OF LEADERSHIP
Of Power and its Application
When leadership is spoken of here, this means the mass of the noncommissioned officers in the numerous communities. Writing about the Führer in the scope of this exposition would be silly, for he stands before our eyes as a unique manifestation of our time. Poets and thinkers will write about him one day; for us today, he is in everything the confirmation that National Socialist man can be not just a dream image, rather a living reality. Already in the chapter about the follower, his exemplary life radiated again and again; how much more so will that be the case here, where the task is set to outline the formation of National Socialist leadership. For the first time in the world, insofar as we are able to survey history, a unique reciprocal effect between leadership and following has been created by the Führer. He has in difficult struggle created a unified will in the German folk. After he put himself at the head of the folk leadership - with this power formed by a unanimous will -, he lets himself be carried by this unanimous direction of will as the leader of the folk. He is the folk leader, who shapes the bearing of the folk, and simultaneously the expression of the will of this folk. It seems that a reciprocal flow of energies between folk and Führer continuously takes place: From the Führer, the will flows into the folk, and the will of the folk flows back to him and strengthens him forever new tasks. All previously passed down concepts like kingship, tyranny or presidency pale in comparison. A fundamentally new form of folk leadership has been formed here. Another political movement aside from the ruling National Socialist one will not be tolerated. But the advantage of uniqueness should again and again be earned and acquired through plebiscite. Hence the touch between leadership and folk must never be lost.
In order to be able to solve this noble task, National Socialist leadership is supplied with a fullness of power, which it is to apply for the formation of following and folk. Each non-commissioned officer must therefore possess all those virtues that we demand from the follower, for each non-commissioned officer is simultaneously a follower. Demanded from him, however, is that he possesses - to a greater degree - all those values that are demanded of the follower. He must watch over his honor more strictly, he must be more loyal, more truthful, more upright than the following led by him. He must be able to keep silent better than the others. He must be the most exemplary comrade - without confusing comradeship with a boisterous fraternization that destroys discipline. This obligates each leader to constantly strive to prove his ability. Leadership must be earned again and again, the following’s trust in him constantly put to the test. Wavering masses that cannot be molded into a following show the shortcomings and failure of their leaders. The leader’s ability is proven by the success with which he manages to shape the following given him in a National Socialist sense. The following is never guilty, if it is useless, rather always only its leader, because he could not shape it. For part of the shaping of a following is the right contents, that means to remove the unworthy, to develop the valuable and to strengthen the wavering.
National Socialist leadership bestows a fullness of power. When we talked about the duties of the follower, we ascertained that each must obey his leader’s orders, except the one for mutiny. A limitation of the power of command hence lies only with the leader himself, in his responsibility upward and in his conscience. He must be responsible for each order issued; each leader must also again and again convince himself, whether responsible orders are issued by his subordinate leaders. Leadership in its entirely must always be conscious of Nietzsche’s words: „But this is the third thing that I heard: that commanding is harder than obeying. And not only, because the man commanding bears the burden of all those obeying and can easily be crushed by this burden: - an attempt - a risk appeared to me in all orders; and always, when it commands, the living risks itself.” Not solely responsible toward the superior leader should limit the power of command, rather the responsibility before one’s own conscience. With each order that a leader issues through his power, he should first ask his conscience, whether the order serves his person or his folk, whether it serves his vanity, his thirst for glory, his advantage, or the common will to serve the folk. The conscience is the ringing honor in the breast of the leaders. The conscience is something divine within us and hence makes us free, like everything that comes from the divine. Only through this wise restriction does power become a tool for service in the hands of each leader. Power has in every age been seductive, but it all too easily misleads to misuse. Whoever uses it for himself, will be destroyed by it. That was always the fate of those tyrants and dictators who forgot that power is a serving tool for the common good and not a servant for the escalation of selfishness. Among the hundreds of Germany’s absolutist princes in the 18th century, Frederick Wilhelm I. and Frederick the Great did not use the power of absolute rule for themselves, rather they voluntarily made themselves the first servant of their state. They did not view the state as existing for their sake, rather they bowed - as the innerly greatest free men of their time - to the idea of the state. This is why they created the prerequisite for the foundation of the Second German Empire, because they came closest to the German legacy and its obligation. Power is a sword in the hand that can be drawn for a just cause, but also for murder. Whoever misuses power, is destroyed by it; whoever views it as a serving tool, will be carried onward and elevated by it. With the power given us, we can subjugate or win. We will never make National Socialists out of folk comrades standing off to the side, if we convert them by force to respect our symbols or to try to win them to join this or that organization. People won by force leave at the first opportunity, just like the prisoners-of-war forcibly integrated into the Prussian army of Frederick the Great. We can only win by convincing them, by awakening the free will that is inside every decent German, by helping it grow so that it develops and flows into the great river of the German folk will. Certainly, this requires a victorious faith in the decency of the German folk, such as the Führer has had in his one and a half decade long struggle for the soul of the folk. The inner voice that obligates us to view power as the serving tool for National Socialism - that is our conscience. We all know the limits of our action, where our conscience reports: this divine admonisher within us that reminds us from eternity that we do not live on this earth for our own sake. Where vanity, ostentation and drunkenness, greed and egoism want to move us, the admonisher within us tends to report. We want to listen to his voice comforted, for the responsibility toward the superior officer could be accompanied by ignoble motives, such as sticking to a leadership position and the desire to make a good impression. But a personality that is solid and anchored in morality is the most glorious guarantee that power will not be misused.
Based on this obligation, another difficult task of leaderships lets itself be endured. To be just is the most difficult thing that is demanded from a leader. To the best of my knowledge, of all the historical personalities, only the Greek Aristides received the honorable sobriquet „The Just”. Justice can only emerge through iron self-discipline. Every leader will not be able to equally appreciate his followers, for one will seem more conscientious to him than the other. As the most exemplary comrade, he must never let that show. Beyond that, with every decision he makes as a leader, he must weigh cooly, so that he finds justice. He throws away his leadership, if he lets his sympathies be discovered and justice suffer from it. Useable as leader is only the person who knows how to keep - or acquire - this rigid equanimity, which the follower must prove to him through obedience. The equanimity is the necessary primal basis of leadership in other areas of life as well. The expression on his countenance must never reveal dangers, defeats must be endured without any disturbance of his nature, for no human life remains spared them. Frederick the Great became greater through overcoming the defeats of Kolin, Hochkirch and Kunersdorf than as victor at Hohenfriedberg and Leuthen. To want to start his work again and achieve the highest goal after November 9, 1923 - that was the mightiest thing that he proved. The self-control of the mood and its stirrings must grow from an even stronger self-discipline than the silence of the follower. Admirable are those leaders whose controlled countenance remains a puzzle that begs for solution. Unusable for leadership, on the other hand, are those who wear their heart on their sleeve. But in one aspect, each non-commissioned officer should show his inner self: He should be able to enthuse for the lofty, the pure and the sublime, so that he trains his following to reach something higher. Then equanimity will not mean an artificial life, rather the truth of his essence will be shown in it.
The strongest proof for equanimity lies in each leader being able to die in an exemplary manner. Two examples from Prussian history are rightfully mentioned again and again: When in the Battle of Leuthen a badly wounded ensign screamed in pain, Fredrick the Great said to him: „Die decently, ensign!” And from the War of
1870/71 it is related that a company was led against the enemy in tight formation; when the ensign was wounded and shouted in enthusiasm „Long Live the King!”, the company commander rode up to him and punished him with three days arrest, because he had spoken in formation without being addressed. Being able to compose oneself even in the face of death is the crown of a leader’s life. Only whoever was just in his life, will know how to die decently. Our folk is to be congratulated, if National Socialism trains a leadership stratum that hates injustice, persecutes it and wipes it out. The German folk can endure hunger, but not injustice. „The countenance of justice and of discipline is more beautiful than morning and evening star.” (Plotin)
Of the Leader’s Appearance
The power that is tied to any leadership position allows the leader to set the limits as he intends to expand his leadership position. He possesses the possibility to elevate himself above his following through especially heavily emphasized external appearance. Certainly, it will always be necessary for large organizations to make the leaders outwardly recognizable through rank insignia - but the rank insignia alone never bestows the necessary authority. But even the honestly acquired rank holds a lot of dangers. It comes over may leaders like an intoxication, when they see that a hundred or a thousand or even a hundred thousand must listen to their order. Anyone who has ever commanded a large formation must have experienced that people who were reasonable before their appointment suddenly could not handle their leadership position. Naturally, they thereby immediately forfeited their leadership. We also want to subject ourselves to a strict self-discipline, which again and again makes us check whether we earned our leadership position on the present day as on the previous one. An ever constant loyalty toward oneself, a constant control, which becomes like a part of our nature, must make sure that our living example again and again justifies our leadership position. The inwardly insecure will resort to the substitutes of genuine leadership ability, ostentation, mere appearance and self-deification, and hence lose contact with the individual follower. Every genuine leader will give his own special style to his leader’s dignity through plainness, simplicity and modesty. Not the size of the motor vehicle, not the ruthlessness with which it is driven through the streets, not the number of attendants win that always constant love in the broad circles of the following and of the folk comrades.
Simple and modest do we want to appear especially where we show ourselves without our following, always aware that thousands march behind us. When the Prussian emissary in London demanded a large carriage from Frederick the Great, he recommended he go by foot, for 100,000 Prussian soldiers marched behind him. But when we, together with our following, appear publicly as part of the NSDAP, then the overall image must always present a dignified style: disciplined, with simple, clear, great lines! No jumble, no crowding together of large formations on a too small square, but also without the assembled units being lost on too large squares! No excessive decoration of the hall or square, but also no preservation of the sparse daily routine image! Therein lies the magic of our assembles during the period of struggle, that even the poorest village could be transformed into a hallowed space through posters, flags, marching in with flags, flag salute and Horst Wessel Song. One should never use old outdated forms, when the greatness of the past is supposed to be presented. Frederick the Great and Bismarck in rented uniforms and poor portrayal on the stage never embody the spirit of these men or the sublime period. Speaking chores, choral processions or even just a splendidly song sung are much more effective than hurrah patriotic copies. We always want to demand from ourselves that what we show of the NSDAP is exemplary in terms of punctuality, conscientiousness, discipline and outward form; it must be gripping and irresistibly victorious. A poorly issued command during the flag entrance, a sloppily executed order, unclean or slovenly worn uniforms immediately destroy the recruiting power of the assembly. When a leader speaks in an assembly, he should speak from an elevated position without affecting piety or deification. If he is talented enough to excite, then he should endure the applause, even the loudest, without losing his head. If he can draw his listeners, then that is not his doing, rather that of the NSDAP’s founder, who has given him the opportunity to employ his talent for National Socialism.
We live in a period of leadership restructuring in Germany of such massive magnitude such as never yet happened in our fatherland. We want to be aware that each of us has a lot of acquaintances and friends who knew us when we were not higher or lower leaders or noncommissioned officers. Never should it be said of us: Now they that have become something, they no longer know us. The plainness and simplicity of our nation shows itself above all in that we remain the same people as we were before. I know how easily talk comes that one has supposedly become arrogant, because one is approached by hundreds of folk comrades with their cares and wishes and with requests for assistance. We should not be discouraged from patiently listening to these thousands of people. Even if it is impossible to help all, most are still relieved by the feeling that they at least find understanding and can speak their mind. We should only be gripped by impatience, if we clearly ascertain that selfishness alone has brought them to us, the desire to use - or abuse - „good connections”. Precisely the later were very abundant in the year 1933.
Our modesty proves itself in the sureness of our nature, so that we are able at any time to speak confidently with the last folk comrade. Not with the kindness that lets its mercy drip down from above, accompanied by a condescending pat on the shoulder of the „subordinate”. Whoever wants to lead folk comrades and not subjects or inferiors, must be able to speak with them in a comradely manner - comradely, not plump-confidential. We do not need to fear that we thereby lose respect and authority, for we receive them solely through the proof of our ability.
Of Leadership Selection
The most difficult task put to our leadership lies in leader training, in the preparation of future leaders. A lot of things can be learned, but never knowledge of people. Even whoever may possesses an objective and sure eye, will experience how he is again and again disappointed. The people in our following with the best and most genuine character are usually the most quiet ones, whom the seeking eye most easily overlooks. Whoever does not comprehend the tragedy of King Philipp in Don Carlos, has not become familiar with all the cares of leadership, when he desperately looks for a person he can trust:
„Now give me a person, good Providence.
You have given me many - give me Now a person. You -you are alone, For your eyes examine the hidden — I ask you for a friend, for I Am not all-knowing like you. ”
German man, when he is capable, is usually so modest that he prefers to hide his light under a basket then - permeated with his mission - admit his ability. Hence it is always better for one to look among the quiet and good characters instead of among the loud and conspicuous. The disappointment with the conspicuous usually turns out worse, because they tend to loudly brag about the damage they cause, while the reserved - in the event they prove themselves incapable - do not talk a lot. Furthermore, those with good character should be more favored than the capable with few good traits. Certainly, that also raises a concern: If we face a major operation and have the choice between a surgeon with an excellent character but is a bad surgeon and a doctor who is a swine in his private life but an excellent surgeon, then we pick the latter. But if we seek a non-commissioned officer for a post, then character above all must be judged, for the following orients itself around character. Whoever possesses a decent character with National Socialist bearing, will always find ways and means to replace his ignorance or inability in whatever area with suitable co- workers. Finally, a decent character is usually not paired with boundless stupidity.
One of the invariable demands of life is that there must be a healthy competition between the non-commissioned officers building communities. If there is also a close tie between the individual noncommissioned officers and their following, so that stiff competition for better performance again and again works as a stimulus, then that
„corps spirit” grows that really fully lets a community grow together into a body. But the prerequisite remains that this „corps spirit” does not cross certain boundaries and creates irreconcilable hostility. The common goal to which all must subordinate themselves must not be forgotten. Today, all non-commissioned officers must make sure that - beyond healthy unit ambition - the common goal is not forgotten: We all serve the German folk, in order to make it better and stronger, all must subordinate themselves to this task, nobody is better or worse, whether he is SA man or SS man or officer, whether Air Defense man or flier, whether soldier or Work Service man or officer.
A second boundary is set for the healthy competition between leaders. It must not lead to them being possessed by an unrestrained, mutual will for annihilation, which allows itself all, even unclean, means. The boundary to the will to succeed will be drawn by the law of honor. Defamations, besmirching honor and untruth remain useless baseness toward comrades. A non-commission officer who here closes even one eye during the selection of his leader, will produce a selection of figures in his following that is anything but National Socialist.
Nonetheless, we will again and again experience disappointments. Ambitious non- commissioned officers who ruthlessly push others aside, who are possessed by false ambition and become ruthless. We want to be ambitions in itself, for we want to stake our honor on putting our best into our office. But we will often experience that many consider the detail work for their leader - with which he must not and cannot burden himself - to be the main thing, and do not notice or value little the leader’s responsibility, his suggestions and plans. That is the necessary silent service of the
„right hand” of the leaders, their chief of staff, that they must quietly and modesty perform the main burden of the work, while the leader „only” bears the responsibility, but also the glory. Disloyalty can grow all too easily there. But despite all the disappointments that do not remain spared us, we never want to adopt the life rule that every folk comrade with whom we must work is to be viewed as a swine until he has convinced us of the opposite. May we be disappointed a thousand times: we always want to trust in the good again. For if we are no longer able to believe in the decency of the German folk, then we can no longer be National Socialists. Our Führer has believed in the decency of the German folk since the beginning of his work, it is just that this decency must be awakened and promoted by a decent leadership.
The hardest thing for a leader to bear, is when he feels himself passed over. All of us without indifferent hearts have at least once had the feeling that some position could have been best filled by oneself. Rancour and sulkiness can then settle in all too easily, when one is not given the desired office. Then we must really pull ourselves up to inner greatness and realize that the world goes on, even if the other, more fortunate fellow - in our opinion - is ever so incapable and we would have done it so much better. Then we want to take refuge in silence and fulfill the position we have with even greater consciousness of duty. Never do we want to withdraw into solitude out of anger. Certainly, one could always resign one’s office in order to prove that one does not cling to it. But whoever is convinced of the correctness of his action - tested before his conscience by moral responsibility -, must not withdraw to private life with resentment. Whoever leaves the battlefield - even if he is not beaten - can never become the victor.
Of Decisiveness
Lack of decisiveness for action must be present with no leader. An internally solid officer corps all too easily succumbs to the danger that each individual non- commissioned officer becomes accustomed to only wait for an order from above to act. It is no evidence against the correctness of the leadership principle - its responsibility upward and authority downward if decisiveness falls asleep, as has happened repeatedly in German history. We should prefer a Ferdinand von Schill, who possessed too much decisiveness, acted and perished in the process, than those Prussian fortress commanders who after the defeat of Jena and Auerstedt did not defend themselves to the last, because they had no orders. Heinrich von Plauen also did not wait for an order, for the election of a new Hofmeister, who would have been able to issue him orders. If he had acted correctly in „form”, then Marienburg would have fallen into enemy hands. Life is too rich and full of blows of fate for a paragraph from the regulation book to be made the guideline for action at every moment. Again and again, cases will emerge where the leader must act on his own initiative. General Courbiere viewed his king as the King of Graudenz, when the French demanded that he surrender the fortress, because the King of Prussia was greater. General von Yorck acted on his own initiative, without receiving orders from above. But in 1918 there was no commander of the general commando who on November 7th or 8th reported to his supreme commander that he had - based on his own power and decisiveness - beaten down the lack of discipline and mutiny. The demand of acting on one’s own initiative - this is shown by the examples given - usually only comes up in extraordinary times. But they can, to a smaller degree, suddenly at any time occupy any non-commission officer. When honor, loyalty and discipline are threatened, there must be quick action, getting an order could take too long. But that requires that these values are a firm concept for each non-commissioned officer, which have become part of him, otherwise he will waver. The same holds true for the ultimate matters of the nation in extraordinary times, when swift decisiveness becomes necessary. If the unity of the German folk is suddenly challenged internally or externally, so that it’s living space becomes even more restricted, if unfortunate events and defeat occur, then very often subordinate leaders must be able to act without orders. Then the principle holds: Better an incorrect order, which one might have to pay for with one’s head, than doing nothing.
Certainly, for that the political leader type must have a firm anchor in the realization of the necessities for the German folk.
These necessities will be present as long as there is a German folk. We will never become satisfied, so that the tension within our folk could ever decrease to allow doing without a leadership stratum providing a living, good example. If the German folk lives in a National Socialist manner, it will increase, and if it becomes bigger, we again and again have the obligation to act so that population and space, blood and soil, stand in a healthy proportion to each other. And this obligation demands the devoted, hard, disciplined decisiveness of a leadership that is internally subdued, unbending and heroic.
OF THE RAISING OF YOUTH
In the Parental Home
We have seen that our new will very strongly affects marriage. Men and women are simultaneously also members of following and leadership. Since the entirety of our folk is encompassed by National Socialism, the raising of the children must also be included in the formation of the National Socialist folk comrade, for we never want to lose sight of the goal of our striving that through better marriages, which are formed by better followers and leaders, a better German folk develops in the future, which then provides a better following and a better leadership. If for the National Socialist more than ever training is directly connected to discipline, then in education the will must be formed with such emphasis, so that the will for healthy discipline and through it again an escalated will for education becomes possible. Since training within the family - already in the first years of life - is of such extreme importance, we want to be clear about the values that we want to present to our children day after day. Even the small child must become accustomed to conscientiously concern with punctuality and order. Outside the punctually maintained meal times, it should rest. Even screaming, which is usually just a substitute for work and is intended to summon the adults - must not cause an interruption of the necessary rest. Precise punctuality and conscientiousness are here the prerequisite for a National Socialist order. We should not think that these things have nothing to do with the training of the small child or that this demand is synonymous with pedantry and rigid mechanics. Whoever is not trained to be conscientious in the little things in life, will not be able to do so in the big things later. Those who - with poorly played originality - claim to have always been unpunctual, sloppy, distracted and forgetful in life, in no way have anything to do with those whose sublime mind spends its time with the eternal things, so that they forget the moments of this world.
We want - at the right time - to accustom our children to emotional and psychology toughening up. Pain in this world begins for the child with the painful contact with objects that do not make way for him. The parents are not there to regret this pain or just to make them impossible by not wanting the child to come into contact with hard objects. The greatest portion of our knowledge of life comes from experience. Hence we sin against our children, if we exclude them from experience and put them in an unreal world, from which they will one day necessarily be driven out. But then the realization will be all the more painful, if it has not had years of life which - like the child’s first - have been arranged by a wise nature so that the cloak of forgetfulness conceals the memory of the experience of the first years of life.
The Spartans even went so far that they accustomed even boys to pain. It is reported of a Spartan boy who had stolen a fox and hidden it under his cloak that he suddenly collapsed dead in front of his interrogating judges, without having first given a sign of pain, although the fox had eaten into his body. We also want to accustom our children to the bearing of pain. To this belongs, above all, that they learn deprivation, because that is one of the most painful things in this world. We already saw at the beginning that this deprivation can most easily be learned in a family with many children, in which the selfish desires of the individual must necessarily be subordinated. For the same reasons, the training for self-sufficiency can also be developed, because self- sufficiency and decisiveness, as was portrayed above, are necessary characteristics of leadership.
The views about parental training have changed a lot in the history of our folk. In the last decades of decline, we all experienced that a liberal view entered this area as well. Live and let live, a so-called freedom and the parents giving in to the child’s wishes characterized „the century of the child”. On the other hand, in the decades before 1870, children down to the small peasantry and petty bourgeois families were raised with strict discipline. Children often had to address their parents with the formal „Sie”, which is in part to be explained by the French domination of the 18th century, but in this period was a sign of distance between parents and children. At mealtime, the children were not allowed to speak, often they had to stand, since sitting was a privilege of the adults. Along with the strictness came the will of the parents to protect their children against bad influences. Hence especially the daughter was fearfully withheld from the outside world. Only in southern Germany’s predominantly peasant families were more natural views preserved, so that a conversation between a girl and a lad were not immediately considered an immoral matter.
We must be clear that training in the sense of protection is not possible today. The community institutions (school and Hitler Youth) claim the youth already in such early years that no parental home would succeed in hiding them from the outside world. But where communities form, they also receive - despite all discipline and supervision - elements with the inclination to evil, not only to good. School and Hitler Youth bring the youth together, so it is impossible for the parents to keep their children away from bad influences. Hence the training of youth must not be chiefly aimed at protecting them against the bad, rather to steel them in time for the encounter with the bad. To this belongs, above all, that the parents receive their children’s trust. Excessive strictness and severity alienate parents and children so that an influencing of the will in the direction of the formation of strength of resistance is made impossible. Only defiance and at best a false toughening emerge to stubbornly take these hardships of youth and to overcome them. Trust, yes, even comradeship, must dominate between parents and children. Children turn to their parents with questions for so long until they have the feeling that they are given truthful answers. Comforting answers - with the mention that they are still too young or inexperienced in order to be able to give them a clear answer - are wrong. They will turn to other people in order to obtain the desired clarity, to comrades, who are far less suited to give them the truth than the parents, or they wind up with evil books as sources of their curiosity. Hence we parents always want to give our children answers that correspond to their ability to question and to comprehend.
Precisely the comradely relationship that we want to have with our children demands of us an exemplary bearing. In father and mother, children should see good examples, who possess the will for those virtues that we demand from our sons and daughters. They are the same virtues than we want to display as followers and leaders. Our existence receives its crown in this: Inside our four walls as well, we are not freed from service to our folk, quite the opposite, here we must prove it the most decisively. As father and mother, we want to live honor, loyalty, truthfulness, silence, modesty and duty as good example, for we thereby educate better than by punishment. If we have entered our marriage based on the bearing portrayed earlier, then the inclination toward these values will also be present in our children, so that we only need to awaken and promote them.
Hence we want, above all, to guide our children by being able to show them aversion and disgust at vices with great passion. We thereby educate better than by chastisement. In the acceptance of physical punishment, a kind of heroism can all too easily emerge in the youth, just to prove that one is able to control oneself and endure pain. All too easily, that stimulates the boy to test his resistance against parental orders and the physical pain of the chastisement. But it would be better to use that as a last resort, which must be viewed as despicable, because the appeal to honor failed. One can awaken a feeling for honor very early, the respect for high values, and one can clearly show the contempt that one feels for misdeeds. The strictest justice must dominate the parents, for one of the children should never notice that he is treated even the slightest differently for an offense than his siblings. Children can certainly be directed toward great tasks, such as courage and bravery, because the fatherland will one day demand these things from them. Among the most beautiful memories of youth will always be when the most beautiful and sublime songs of the fatherland have been sung to the children by the parents, or the mother opens for them the deep content of German fairy-tales. Certainly, children must not be overfed with experiences, because they otherwise tend toward blaseness. Despite every demand for comradeship, the children must be silent when adults speak. We want to always admonish our consciousness that in our children we train the future followers - and if heaven wills it, the future leaders. We want to implant in them the ambition to be the folk’s future servants. It is also a healthy sign, if parents strive for their children to surpass them in their position in life. But this healthy striving should never fall into the insanity of the liberal era that a higher position must solely be tied to a university study. After everything that has been said here, it is self-evident that it just depends on the moral bearing with which a profession is fulled, but not on the title or the income.
One mistake is made especially often in the training of sons and daughters in the parental home. Not just the fathers, rather also the mothers often excuse it that they see something special in their sons compared to the daughters, and do not have them perform certain jobs, because they are supposedly not suited for their gentlemen sons. One finds the view widely spread in many families that it is unworthy of the sons to participate in keeping the house tidy and clean. They are fearfully kept away from keeping their own clothes clean, polishing their shoes, acquiring and packing the necessary items for a trip or journey, but all the more so assign these tasks solely to the mother and daughters. The opinion gradually forms that the girls are the born servants of the boys who must fulfill any wish. It is obvious that from this easily emerges the view that girls outside the family are also there to satisfy the desires of the young gentlemen. We want to train our sons to respect our daughters, we want to let them help, because work never shames, so that they do not later become husbands who view their spouse as servant as opposed to life comrade. Furthermore, young men raised so will not later stumble over the ridiculous little things in life in their future communities, in the Work Service, in the Reichswehr and in the SA, in that they do not know how one cleans a pair of dirty boots or sows on a pants button. Respect for the female gender must be set in the sons’ hearts already in the family, so that they do not later live a false error and are unable to select a wife based on the will for the new National Socialist marriage.
For this is the goal of our training, this must be stressed again and again: Marriage for the improvement of the racial composition of the German folk, the National Socialist marriage based on the will for moral responsibility, to ennoble two lives that have grown from the German folk through devotion for devotion to the folk. Hence the training in the parental home must not ignore the life area of sexuality. It is strange: In many thousands of families, the child’s life drives are subject to education - eating, drinking, sleeping, life preserving drives are integrated into the family community; only the area of sexuality is usually ignored. Shyness and embarrassment of the parents have often closed their eyes, so that they believe these problems do not exist for their child, so that they can leave it to older, youthful comrades to open their eyes. One day the children’s knowledge of sexuality will then be accepted by the parents as self-evident, or the children go totally astray, because they fall into the hands of ruined and indecent people. This cannot remain so. The prerequisite for a change is that the parents gain the inner freedom to openly and clearly talk to their children about these things and consciously educate them, that means to strengthen their will here as well. This does not mean that they at a set hour suddenly start to talk in the sense of the so-called enlightenment, rather to first influence the child in earliest youth and second to tell it the truth in all things. The child should sleep hard and cool. One should give it no pampering mattress and coverlet. Movement, gymnastics, sports and hiking should ensure from earliest youth that sufficient tiredness - lasting through the night until getting up in the morning - is present. The first question will pop up at the birth of children in the family or among acquaintances. We parents want to answer them in such a way that we do not say everything, but that the answers always contain the seed of the whole truth: Children are God’s gift to people who live together as man and wife and who love each other. That will suffice many children for several years. Later, the question easily arises why mother is „ill” in bed, when a baby has arrived. Then one will answer that it has grown under the mother’s heart and parted from her with great pain. The final stage of answers will then be able to come at an age when the knowledge of the reproduction of plants - perhaps also of house pets - allow gentle comparisons. We do not want to talk with cynical expressions - but also not with extraordinary phrases - about the final thing, rather we want to refer to the moral responsibility that the anchoring of the drives demands from us, that they do not exist because of lust, that they are not base and indecent things, rather things that eternity gave us so that we can indeed make them indecent, but that we are also in the position as strong-willed folk comrades to keep far away from baseness.
In the Hitler Youth
We have also seen above that in modem life personal ties - such as was present in earlier times inside villages and small towns - are no longer possible to the same extent as previously. The danger point doubtless exists that given the large scale and breadth of our life, the individual classes today pull apart. Hence every opportunity must be used to unite the diverging forces. We have further seen that the formation of leadership and following - in the mighty organizations of the National Socialist movement and of the state - are called upon to produce this unity. National Socialism has given itself a similar task in that it unites the youth - in which the forces leading to the alienation of the individual parts have not yet developed so strongly - in a special union. While liberalism shattered the natural unity of the youth through excessively segregated youth associations, National Socialism wants to especially strengthen the natural unity through the Hitler Youth. The main task of the Hitler Youth lies in nurturing comradeship, so that through it the unity of the German folk is constantly built up anew. The youth comradeship receives its values from itself, not from a position of defense or attack again a third. Especially the principle of youth leadership by itself demands that leadership within this youth is totally built on comradeship. Because the personality of the youthful leader is not yet as fully developed as in an adult, he cannot be an exceptional leader based on the weight of his person, rather only through exemplary comradeship. The internally formed values of comradeship demand that selfish special wishes must be subordinated. It is the task of the comradely leader to develop the special values of the young comrade - despite the grinding will for classification. Much less so than the SA leader, may the Hitler Youth leader see in his subordinate comrades young recruits, rather just comrades, whose honor, truthfulness, loyalty, courage and decency he must awaken and promote through his example.
If these values are not found inside the young unit, then in most cases the comradely union is formed through a struggle against a third. Such a youth then directs itself against the older generation or against the state, finally against any authority. The robbers of Karl Mohr were also a community of young comrades, but nonetheless not a National Socialist youth community. The struggle against a third was necessary for the Hitler Youth before January 30, 1939. Since then, however, the Führer has proclaimed that the state of today is ours, that means it belongs to the National Socialists, so the youth cannot be based on a bearing against the state or an older generation. National Socialism ends the manifestation of liberalism that one back then called the generation conflict. For National Socialism, the unity of the folk is not solely the unity of the present, rather unity for all the future.
Furthermore, youth is preparation, not something complete; like birth, babyhood, manhood and womanhood - yes, even death - not are something complete, so youth is not. Youth in the sense of years of life is always preparation for manhood and womanhood. Hence, the Hitler Youth cannot take over the tasks that constitute great events in folk and state. Certainly, youth has its own laws, above all the law of youthful romanticism, which must never be taken away from it, because otherwise youth turns into youthful adulthood. On the other hand, youthful romanticism must not be carried over into manhood and womanhood, because then caricatures all too easily emerge, of which the „Wandervogel” [hikers] movement was not completely free: figures with an emphasized youthful getup, who tried to hide their inwardly dead youth with a youthful costume. The Hitler Youth does not want to remain isolated within itself, for the Fuhrer's name in the designation of this youth organization obligates to the striving toward a goal and not a condition.
Certainly, there will always remain a difference between age and youth, and through it a certain opposition, for all time, for age has the advantage of experience over youth. But experience does not let itself be fully conveyed and learned, rather experience must again and again be lived and experienced. If that were not the case, then the experience of an honorable and wise oldster could very easily put set down two or three thousand life principles, which the youth would have to memorize, in order to apply them case by case. Just as social life is regulated by a few thousand paragraphs of the bourgeois law book, so do the experiences of a life let themselves be classified. But such an endeavor would be useless, for it is our fate that we only become clever through experience. Therefore, our ultimate wisdom in regard to our folk’s maturing youth must rest in the difficult to take to heart, but true finding of the poet Wilhelm Raabe:
„The fruit ripens on the tree of knowledge difficulty,
Only when many dreams have been dreamed out, The person does not know the youth, who also Shows no understanding that they forget the thanks. ”
It should be noted, however, that they may only forget thanks for the conveyed principles of experience. The poet certainly did not mean that they should lack reverence for the older people. If the bearing of the follower toward the leader demands discipline and self-control, then especially the bearing of the younger to the older folk comrade. It has always been a characteristic of not only the German, rather of each Nordic folk, that the youth shows reverence toward age. That does not mean that they have to share the same opinion with age. They cannot and may not do that, because they lack the experience of age. But difference of opinion is not synonymous with irreverence. And it is also not synonymous with the change of tasks for the German folk. National Socialism has given the German folk an eternal task, namely to improve its blood and increase its soil. The methods by which this goal can be achieved will change, just as times change and set new tasks within them. It was surely a risk, but also a wonderfully generous trust, that Hitler’s name became the name of a National Socialist youth organization. For each shameful deed of a Hitler Youth is an attempt to raise a shadow in the world over this unique name. The Hitler Youth wants to be constantly aware of this and include even the younger Hitler boys and girls in the difficult responsibility and duty of being servants of the folk entirety. Bearing and discipline must hence be awakened in time, so that even the boy and girl of 10 years of age proudly has it within them that they are not willing to bring any shame to Hitler’s name. Therefore, it is the unanimous will of the Hitler Youth not to always be lauded and praised that they will one day became better National Socialists than the generation living today, rather it is their will to work on themselves so that they bring proof for it through their future life. Furthermore, that is also true for school, if it is serious about transforming from the purely learning school of the past centuries into a school of character. That this is not meant as an attack against the acquisition of knowledge, as is clear from what has already been said. Acquired knowledge is the moral obligation to use it in the service of the folk.
Conclusion
Our starting point was that the National Socialist folk comrade is breed less by state laws of selection and other laws for the improvement of our race than by the will that finds its moral responsible before conscience and eternity. A mate selection that takes place with these prerequisites offers a guarantee for healthy offspring, in which through education the inclination to National Socialist will will again be heightened, in order to one day make a mate selection even more deeply founded on morality and thereby ensure an additional step toward the genuine National Socialist. The life of every National Socialist is filled by service in the communities as follower and leader, because the life of the individual comes from his whole folk and he is tied to its fate. The service of the follower - as follower and leader - demands the fulfillment of certain values, the formation of a firmly outlined type. The life content of the follower and leader is formed by serving from moral responsibility and obligation, which receives its nobility through honor and through freedom. Honor and freedom are pieces of the eternal, which is not subservient to necessity, but which we can recognize, because the Almighty has anchored pieces of this eternity within us. That is the National Socialist of the future: Full of pride to be allowed to serve his folk without bragging or falling into servility, morally firm, but without hypocrisy, heroic, but fighting for high goals, loyal without condition, genuine, but not gabby, silent, without becoming indifferent, proud and in good taste, but without ostentation and snobbism, comradely without excessive familiarity. An enemy and despiser of selfishness, of indecency, of bought lansquenet, of gossip, of stupidity and arrogance, but a fighter for the whole folk, for cleanliness and purity, for heroism, refinement and beauty.
If we move within these tracks, then our folk will pass the eternal laws. Then the necessary tension remains preserved that does not let us fall into smug satisfaction and vain complacency. Then our Führer’s demand will be realized: All decent folk comrades are National Socialists, but the best National Socialists are party comrades. With the strength of the faith that in the period of struggle let us believe with every fiber of our being in the victory of our movement, we believe in the National Socialist folk comrade of the future. Germany will not die, because know ourselves one with the eternal, which wanted a German folk and allowed its development, hence our father- land will be eternal, because we want it.
Why Germanic Values will save the World
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