Eternal Front

 

by Albert Hartl

 

Publisher’s Foreword

Original Introduction

About the Meaning of Life

Nordic Faith

Community

Law and Obedience

Responsibility

Honor

Guilt and Atonement

Soldierdom

Grace

Heroism

Reverence

Of Joy

Suffering

Festivals and Celebrations

Solitude

Body Hygiene

About Enjoying

Human Leadership

Fanaticism and Objectivity

Eternal Front

 

Publisher’s Foreword

 

Eternal Front is translated from the Third Reich original Ewige Front. It was written by Anton Holzner (the pseudonym for SS-Sturmbannführer Albert Hartl) and published by Nordland-Verlag (which published several SS books) in Berlin in 1940. Eternal Front presents a non-Christian religious attitude often referred to as “gotgläubig”, which literally means “believing in God”. This religious attitude was common in National Socialist, and especially SS, circles in the Third Reich and still exists in Germany today.

 

 

Original Introduction

 

When the German rebirth began under the flags of the National Socialist revolution - after the World War from the war experience - and the arising generation went through the hard character school of the National Socialist movement, Germandom in the Sudetenland stood in a difficult struggle for the preservation of its folkdom and its home soil. Cut off from German cultural and intellectual life, borderland fate determined its fighting bearing. It formed the people and their character and made them a tough breed. And so, aside from the bonds of blood, it was the experience of struggle on other front sector of German life that carried out the uniform general direction of Germandom on this side and on the other side of the old borders of the Reich.

 

After the return of the Sudeten-German regions to Adolf Hitler’s Germany, it was a matter of giving a world-view foundation to, and firming, the battle-proven character formation of the German people. From this effort arose the essays of this little book, which appeared as Sunday articles in the Sudeten-German provincial organ “Die Zeit” [“The Time”]. For the old fighters in the Bohemian- Moravian region they became an interpretation of their sacrifice, struggle and victory, and for the folk comrades who previous stood apart from the greater German revolt, they become an introduction to our blood-determined world of feeling and thought. The collection of these essays in this volume rescues them from the fate of a newspaper article and makes them a valuable contribution to the character formation of German people.

 

Reichenberg, Sudetengau, Winter Solstice 1939. Dr. Karl Viererbl

Chief Director of the “Zeit”

 

About the Meaning of Life

 

In all millennia, serious people have researched and pondered about the meaning of this life. Some found their life goal in enjoying the pleasures of this life as much as possible. They became superficial materialists. Others figured this life is only a brief, but difficult, test, a bridge to a better afterlife or eternal damnation. The most diverse religions portrayed this afterlife each according to the racial nature of its promoters and spreaders. The diverse priest castes did more of less good business with this afterlife. Each claimed sole and absolute knowledge about this afterlife. They sold - following - diverse cult ceremonies - to living and dead places, advantages, honorary offices and mercy-gifts. It was the simplest and most primitive business, because no person returned from the afterlife and held the priest accountable. The witch doctor of the Negro Bushmen ran as little risk as the oriental magician, if he sold the afterlife to the believers as business.

 

In all periods there have also been people who opposed this afterlife materialism. A medieval story relates: Two monks portray the afterlife to each other again and again in their conversations. They imagine all the individual choruses and departments of angels and holy-men, the rank differences of the individual heavenly places, the otherworldly music, the heavenly hallelujah songs, God’s throne etc. They promise each other that the one who dies first will appear to the other the first nigh in a dream and tell him what it looks like in the afterlife. If it is as they imagined it, he will simply say “totally”. If it is different, he will say “different”. When one of the monks died, he actually did appear to the other the first night. But he did not say “totally” or “different”, rather “totally different”.

 

This is the old wisdom of Nordic man: The Almighty has put in curtain in front of life after death. It is a secret to us. No person may presume to possess any privileged knowledge about life after death. And yet, our faith and our knowledge go beyond our earthly life. We know that each of us is a link in an endless chain that stretches from the oldest ancestors to the most distant descendants, that our river of blood comes from distant times and flows across our earthly life into the distant future. And this knowledge broadens our view and leads it across hundreds of thousands of years. And this knowledge gives us the strength of millennia and lets us surmise eternity. It places us into the endless cycle of creation.

 

We know that even the person who is the last link of his clan can secure an eternal future through his works and deeds. The unknown worker who chisels, transports, and puts together the building blocks for great protective wall of the German folk or for the splendid buildings of the Third Reich, will live on in these works just like the great intellectual creators of these works. The soldier and the policeman who were the guarantors for the safe return of lost German territories to the Reich, and the quiet fighters for the freedom of the German folk, will live on forever in the Greater German Reich just like its great shapers.

 

Our reverence for the Almighty, however, is so great that we reject portraying the afterlife materialistically. We openly affirm here: About an afterlife we know nothing and will never know anything.

 

This affirmation leads us with doubled energy to this side, to earthly life. The creator put us in the life cycle of our folk. The meaning of our life is to fulfill the task given us in the organism of this folk.

 

We fulfill the meaning of our life, when we do everything possible to manifest and shape, to train and perfect the energies and abilities the Lord has given us. We are on earth so that we continue God’s work of creation in our blood and body, in our intellect and our soul.

 

Nordic Faith

 

Nordic man stands in the middle of life. He forms his picture of the world from nature. The laws of life that reveal themselves in his blood, in nature and in history, are his guidelines for action.

 

In life, God reveals himself to Nordic man as the Divine, the Almighty, Providence, the Lord or the Creator; for him, all these terms are an expression for one and the same divine power, which appears in life and in nature, above life and above the worlds.

 

When Nordic man gazes at night into the starry heaven, when he stands on the shore of a roaring sea, when he looks across the land from a mountain peak, or when in all silence he immerses himself in the beauty of a flower, of a living creative or a work of art, then he experiences that there is a divine force.

 

When Nordic man listens to the voice of his blood, and consciously thinks about the moral obligations prescribed him by the laws of his blood, the indivisible bond to his folk, honor and truthfulness, unshakeable faith and loyalty, then he feels that these laws of his action represent the highest laws.

 

And when in a contemplative hour he reviews his own life and the history of his folk, then he knows that a deep meaning and a supreme goal has often found an expression in his and his folk’s life.

 

So Nordic man will always be an idealist, always possess faith in a higher power, and an abysm will always separate him from that materialistic attitude, from godliness and lack of faith.

 

For Nordic man, therefore, there will also always be a unity between life and religious belief, for him the belief in God is and remains a necessary component of his world-view and life-view. For him there can be no gap between faith and knowledge, no disagreement between religion and life.

 

The path of people and their folks to their god is different, each according to its own racial nature. There are primitive folks for whom their god, their fetish, is simply their helper who brings them nice weather or rain, whom they beat, when he does not obey them, and whom they curse, when does not please them. There are folks for whom, due to their blood-determined feeling, their god is a merchant who haggles with the devil for the souls of people, for whom God is largely a wrecked, pitiful creature who suffers infinitely from the evil will of people. There are folks who want to banish their god to specific locations, folks who have a small or inferior image of God.

 

For German people, who live in such close bond to powerful nature, who life from such deep, blood-determined values and such a great history, there can also be just a very great and very powerful concept of the Almighty. Nordic man sees God not in the pasha to whom he is servilely devoted, before whom he throws himself on the ground and toward whom he acts like a slave, but he also does not see in God an inferior servant of his wishes. Nordic man stands before the Divine in reverence and at the same time feels himself closely connected to him like to a friend. Nordic man knows that his God is not banished in certain statues or a few holy substances or in solid houses, he feels close to his God everywhere, in his clan, in the great folk community, in the forests and fields, at the fine festival locations and in the quiet ceremony halls of his folk or at the home hearth.

 

Nordic man knows that he does not need to tell his God what moves him in long addresses or hours of prayer, or with oriental prayer chants or with Jewish phylacteries.

 

With a silent thought or a few short words, he feels himself - in hours of distress, in great danger, after a beautiful success, during the experiencing of a great joy - connected to his God, he feels the nearness of the Divine. Nordic man knows that God does not work for him, rather that success is only coming to him, if he himself - however, in confidence in Providence - employs all his energy for his work; he knows that God is only with him, if he himself fights and struggles bravely, if he himself is tenacious and works ardently and is active on his work.

 

The affirmation of this Nordic faith became covered over with weeds over the course of centuries by many foreign worlds. All great German men, however, have in every period in the final analysis been filled with this Nordic faith. This highest faith, this greatest idealism, has given great Germans of every period their security and fearlessness in life, has guided their artist hands and their creative genius in all areas of art and research. The German folk will not allow itself to be robbed of this faith in the Divine by anyone, never more. This faith, however, also means at the same time the highest moral responsibility and the deepest obligation toward these laws of life, which are God’s laws.

 

Community

 

The Creator has assembled us Germans into a folk. The forces of blood, the same homeland soil and a millennia old history have created an indivisible community out of this folk. There is not other community that may be higher for us, that obligates us more, that is more sacred to us, than our folk. That is the law of creation’s order, of God’s will.

 

The cells of this great folk body, however, are the clans and families. For time eternal, the clans will remain the most valuable foundations of folk life, clan welfare will be the necessary prerequisite of folk welfare.

 

Between both these corner pillars of folkish community life stand as connecting, natural communities and the communities of ideas or struggle. The former shape the life of people who are connected to each other through the same work, same workplace, same economic or cultural or other professional tasks. The latter weld closely together the people who are unconditionally devoted to the same world- view-political goals of struggle. The party, its auxiliaries and affiliated associations are bearers of these communities.

 

Countless artificial community-constructions have in the course of history tried to push out the natural life communities. With the growth of the natural communities, these unnatural structures die off again.

 

Community gives strength. Vae soli, Woe to whomever stands alone, goes an old Roman saying. Each person and each folk can again and again experience how weak isolation and how strong community makes. In daily life it is a support, it bestows supportive energy to great events, in difficult times it preserves strength of resistance and faith. Where a solid, natural community stands, the people are invincible.

 

Community gives joy. Countless of life’s joys have been denied to the individual by the Creator. Much that is beautiful, noble and great can only be experienced in the community. Where a community leaves one cold and gives no joy, it is just a superficial framework without a deeper core. By nature, community and joy belong together. Infinite happiness can flow to each individual from a genuine marriage, work community, community of struggle or folk community.

 

Community leads to eternity. The clan community connects the people in the endless chain with the most distant ancestors and descendants. But whomever Providence has denied descendants, can through his work become immortal  in his community of struggle or folk community. Eternity, however, connects with the Divine. So the community becomes a path to God. Service to the community becomes a religious service. Simple and clear are the virtues in which the community proves itself.

 

Trust belongs to the community. Each individual must have unconditional trust in each member of the community. He must stand in front of him full of respect, regardless what rank he holds. This trust is the prerequisite of the community and not the result of years of proven performance. Whoever abuses his comrade or coworker for as long until he has proven himself, is an enemy of any community. Basic distrust against each person is a crime against the community. Trust must even be demanded, even if somebody once took a wrong path and a wrong step. One may experience many a disappointment in the process. But on the other hand, one will be able to spiritually keep, save or boost the spirits of countless people though trust. Basically, one must always see the good core inside the fellow human being, even if a bad side sometimes prevails. Infinite trust is the greatest source of strength for a community. To give this trust day after day, to always live in the complete inner attitude of boundless trust, is the most sacred obligation.

 

Helpfulness is self-evident in any community. It is not shame and nor always a misfortune, if a person finds himself in psychological or physical distress. A world alien to us has exploited distress of every kind to bring to the person needing help pity - from above downward, with virtuous gesture - and mercifully donated to him help in the form of physical or psychological charity. This form of help injures more that it heals, destroys more than it helps, promotes not community, rather class hatred. For a German, it is the most natural thing in the world that he gives honest good advice to his fellow human being when he needs it, that he helps selflessly where there is need, that he stands alongside with understanding, when somebody no longer knows the way on his lonely path. Helpfulness must be a self- evident component of any comradeship. Help for the individual is always self-help for the community.

 

Honesty is self-evident for a German. Without honesty, any community is especially lost. Honesty in a word and idea, honesty toward all foreign intellectual property and honesty in all material things are equally important. To honesty belongs being able to look superiors and subordinates in the eye, not having to evade the one or the other though the back door, and not having to be cowardly.

 

Loyalty toward the community will always be carried by an unshakeable belief in it. This faith, however, grows from the consciousness that all natural communities correspond  to  the  laws  of  life  and  are  life  essential.  The  loyalty  toward the community is hence boundless. It continues to exist even if the external framework of this community has become damaged or even broken. Yes, precisely then, loyalty must be especially maintained.

 

Egoism, mistrust, dishonesty, disharmony, selfishness, distrust are crimes against the community and must be eradicated.

 

No intricate moral doctrines are required in order to be able to differentiate between what benefits a community and what disturbs it.

 

Community is something so great and mighty that any naturally feeling person can clearly recognize its basic lines and distinctly comprehend its laws. Community is something that especially belongs to the deepest nature of German man.

 

Law and Obedience

 

Where people live in a community, the natural order of life demands that a leadership and a following exist.

 

The task of leadership is to create regulations, measures and laws that serve the well-being and life interests of the entire following.

 

The job of the following is to follow these regulations and to obey these laws in trust in the good will and the correct insight of the leadership.

 

This is true for the plant, the community, the state. In the process, it is a self-evident prerequisite that the leadership corresponds to the natural life laws. The community that, in accordance to the God desired order of creation, stands at the top in human life, is the folk community.

 

The laws of correct folk leadership are hence also the most sacred laws. They obligate to unconditional, total obedience. Where the well-being of the folk community demands obedience, where the life necessities of the entire folk demand - through the voice of the folk leadership - sacrifice and subordination r summon to struggle and work, the individual no longer has any consideration for himself, for property and belongings and life, then even the family must take second place behind the great folk community.

 

Alien, supra-governmental powers have tried to destroy, bend or weaken this natural life legality. International Freemasonry, international Marxism and international [religious] confessionals put their super-governmental communities above the natural folk community. Whoever is a member of their lodge, their trade union, sect or confession, is first of all a brother and stands - even if he is of alien race - above any folk comrade who does not belong to this constructed community.

 

The laws of these super-governmental powers hence stand for the followers of these world-views above the laws of the folk community and of the folk leadership. Any state law, any regulation and measure of a plant management, of an office of the municipalities or of the state, only obligate insofar as this is compatible with the laws of their lodge, sect etc.. Any oath has for them validity only insofar as it does not stand in contradiction to their international obligations. Whoever formally designates himself as a follower of a super-governmental power or inwardly feels bound to such a power, must be clear in his own mind that, day for day, decisions could face him that force him to decide to take seriously the obligations toward his folk or toward some internal entity. There are thousands of cases in life in which obedience to the laws of folk leadership are incompatible with obedience to super-governmental powers.

 

A currency transfer can be a service to a super-governmental power and at the same time a crime against the folk wealth.

 

A complaint against the traitor can be sacred obligation toward the folk community and at the same time a betrayal of a super-governmental power to which one belongs.

 

A marriage can, according to the laws of folk well-being, be a crime, and at the same time, according to the laws of a super-governmental power, be permitted.

 

The contents of a book can be desirable from the national viewpoint, but be forbidden from the standpoint of some international entity.

 

A teacher can, on the basis of his inner, super-governmental ties feel obligated to obstruct, to disturb, to sabotage the work of the Hitler Youth, which he would have to promote by all means according to the laws of the folk leadership.

 

A police official or a judge can feel conscious-bound through an international power to treat minor offenses leniently, against which he would have to take most severe action, according to the natural folkish laws.

 

As manifold as the conflicts are that must arise from obedience to the laws of folk leadership and obedience to the laws of super-governmental powers, so clear must one thing to be to each German: The natural laws of the folk leadership, the laws of our natural communities are for us the laws of the order of creation, are God’s law. In the face of these laws, all other bonds lose their power. Obedience to these laws stands over any other obedience.

 

Happy is the person for whom the well-being of his folk is the solely obligating voice of God. For him there can no longer be any doubts and conflicts. For him, law and obedience are clearly and distinctly determined.

 

Responsibility

 

A basic question for the moral bearing of a person in his private and public life is the question of responsibility.

 

Based on their racial makeup, individual folks and countless world-views have taken very different stances toward this question. There are natural, primitive folks who go through life with a certain lack of worry, in their actions still largely driven by instinct, and for whom great conflicts about responsibility and duty do not exist.

 

There is a Marxist world that has managed to remove responsibility from the individual human being. The dominant factor in life is, for these Marxist circles, the environment. The conditions under which a person grows up, the people he lives with, the given surroundings in which fate has put him, in short, the whole environment in which he finds himself, shape his development. The criminal hence practically does not deserve any punishment. Prisons must hence practically be transformed into institutions of healing and sanatoriums for these unhappy people, toward whom all these mushy feelings of Marxism and humanitarian do-gooders turn.

 

According to another view, which comes from the oriental world, man is held down and chained by the original sin that weighs upon him. All folks of all eras are affected by the original sin the same way. Human reason is, according to this view, clouded, the human body is shameful, human will is weak. Man is practically only to a limited degree educatable. Insofar man can be led to positive action at all, so-called supernatural and cult means are much more important for influencing him than all natural forces.

 

The healthy German does not let his actions or his whole inner bearing be suppressed by environment or original sin. He feels that the Creator has not made him small - above all with an inescapable original sin -, rather he is filled deep inside with the faith in the hereditary nobility of his blood. Grateful and proud, the German carries within him the consciousness that the Creator has given him the most precious energies, which enable him to stand his ground in life.

 

Nordic man is basically always an idealist and optimist. He indeed sees the hampering, the negative and the bad in life, but he does not let himself be pulled down by that. His eye again and again looks at the good, the beautiful and noble that Providence has given him. His idealism is never unreal. In his heroic bearing he hence also overcomes everything tragic in life.

 

The symbol of Nordic man is the sun, which again and again shines, warms and radiates though every night and every cloud.

 

So German man walks his path into the future proud and happy, full of confidence in the strengths that the Creator gave him.

 

A past world sought the most diverse mitigating circumstances for its mistakes. For example, alcohol is mitigating circumstances for the law and moral view of the past Marxist and oriental world. In some areas it was downright common knowledge that one would rink before certain actions to obtain so-called mitigating circumstances.

 

The new German legal view has fundamentally cleared away these mitigating circumstances. German man considers himself responsible for his actions, he takes responsibility for what he has done. It is not his nature to shake off guilt, to burden other people with the guilt, or to seek other mitigating circumstances. The guiding star for all moral action is his concept of honor. Honor and responsibility flow together for him into a great union, which lets him approach his work hard and serious, but at the same time full of confidence and full of happy courage, and which keeps him far from any licentiousness and superficiality.

 

In this consciousness of determined moral responsible, German man directs his personal, private life and his behavior in public according to the laws that his blood dictates to him, according to what serves the well-being of his folk, his family and his homeland. Not whatever super-governmental bonds are for him the guidelines for his moral behavior, his responsibility is guided by the natural laws of life, by the laws of the order of the Creator, which are God’s laws.

 

Proceeding from this consciousness, which bases his responsibility on the most natural and fundamental norms that can exist in the world, he can in his behavior make clear, calm decisions, and he is not subjected to moral doubts and pains of conscience, which often face people with artificial, unnatural doctrines. Straightforward like the great buildings of the German present, clear and bright and full of greatness is the inner bearing of German man as well, who stands in life full of moral responsibility. His moral responsibility does not press him to the ground, it instead lifts him up and makes him happy, free and great.

 

Honor

 

For many people, folks and world-views, honor is something external, something that comes down to outward prestige, good reputation and general social rank. Whoever in public and in private life behaves correctly outwardly, whoever obeys the customary rules of bourgeois decency, whoever above all knows how to keep and outer shell around his inner bearing, he is considered an honorable gentleman in this superficial, liberal world. People and folks carefully keep watch over this so-called honor and thereby try to hide their inner degeneracy and hollowness. The appeal to this honorableness is for them nothing else than an expression of their basic deceit.

 

For German man, honor reaches into the final depths of his essence. It is the basic value of his character bearing. It grows from the deepest foundations of his racial world-view.

 

For German man, honor reaches into the final depths of his essence. It is the basic value of his character bearing. It grows from the deepest foundations of his racial world-view.

 

Honor means loyalty toward God’s order of creation, toward the life laws, toward the voice of blood, toward himself. The Almighty has placed the laws of action for people and folks in their blood inside them, in their conscience. To be loyal to these divine laws and hence to be an executor and fulfiller of the divine work of creation and of the will of creation, that is the greatest and highest thing for people, that is their honor.

 

This honor must prove itself in the thousands of big and little things of life. Whoever in great hours and in daily routine serves his folk full of devotion, joy and loyalty, is conscious of his honor.

 

Whoever keeps his blood and his soul pure, whoever preserves woman’s honor and family happiness in his heart, whoever fulfills his sacred duties toward ancestors and descendants he knows what German honor is.

 

Whoever always remembers that money and property were determined by the Creator for the whole folk community, whoever gives from his plenty to the needy as self-evident, whoever views other people’s property as inviolate, whoever guards folk fortune like his personal property, that person keeps his honor pure.

 

Whoever respects and treats each folk comrade as his blood brother, whoever does not arrogantly or self-adoringly elevate himself over other folk comrades, whoever does not lower himself like a dog and crawl before more powerful people, he is a man of honor.

 

Honor means loyalty to naturalness, means loyalty toward oneself and one’s folk. German man hence does not need a thousand individual moral rules, he does not need a Talmudic moral casuistry that prescribes to him exact rules of conduct for ten thousand individual situations in life. His honor is for him the clearest guideline for his life and his action.

 

Honor hence means inner truthfulness, genuineness and clarity. For German man there are no double standards for public life and private chamber, for uniform and civilian dress. The most secret thought, the most hidden deed and the most secret word must face German man’s personal court of honor just like his great public works. He is aware that even his mot secret feelings, stirrings, thoughts and actions are somehow building blocks for his character formation, somehow change and shape with fine chisels the image of his inner essence and hence also influence the physical reflection of his character. Despite this inner honorableness and consciousness, honor does not mean pettiness, pains of conscience of moral hypocrisy. Broad and clear, sensitive and tender at the same time, like God’s entire creation, are the laws of life and is hence also the honor of German man.

 

The consciousness that his life is imbedded in the great connections of the universe, that the divine is at work in his life wellsprings, that the Lord has given sacred forces to his blood, his soul and his spirit, the certainty that his life is great and meaningful in the consonance of eras and generations, the trust in the strengths that the Creator has bestowed on him - all that gives German man a justified pride. And this pride reflects itself in his feeling of honor.

 

With this proud consciousness of honor, German man knows that he himself must keep his honor pure, but also that he must not allow it to be soiled or attacked by anybody else. An injury of his honor is an injury of divine rights. He hence has the sacred obligation to stand up for his honor and to defend it against malicious people and folks. Here, too, he will not be petty and sensitive. But here as well he will act clearly, relentlessly and uncompromisingly, when the deepest and most sacred is really at stake. In the process, he will, above all, always be conscious that he can only expect respect for his honor from others, if he himself keeps the shield of his honor clean.

 

In all times in Germany, loss of honor was always considered the greatest shame and humiliation, and the worst treason. The loss of honor is the loss of one’s own deepest essence.

 

There have been times and folks that had no understanding for the concept of honor, they only knew moral action under the whip or an action pure selfishness. We Germans are happy and proud that the Creator has given us honor as the guidelines of our life and as the highest moral property at the same time. We are happy that National Socialism has again led us back to this moral basic value.

 

Guilt and Atonement

 

It is part of mankind’s nature that we again and again make little mistakes and transgressions. We learn from these mistakes, endeavor to avoid them in the future, but don’t take them too tragically or burden ourselves with senseless guilt on their account.

 

But every person can someday become weak in an important issue, in a basic matter, and take on major guilt. Then it is no longer easy to get over this guilt. It would be frivolous, stupid and immoral, if one would try to hide the guilt from oneself.

 

The most diverse religious communities, especially those coming from the Asiatic- African world, have found an often very mechanical way to free people from major guilt. In often very odd redemption ceremonies, which are sometimes connected to a common or a specialized confession in front of a priest or the community, the moral guilt of the faithful is simply expunged, erased and eliminated.

 

The responsibility-conscious person knows that a major guilt also requires an appropriate atonement, which he cannot avoid through a simple cult ceremony, and that many a guilt can only be atoned for by death. Very often, the atonement will be determined by the jurisprudence of the natural communities. Often the guilty person will have to very personally decide the atonement for himself and perform it. With great moral seriousness, every naturally decent person will in the case of serious guilt obligate himself to an appropriate atonement.

 

The crown of all atonement is the readiness to balance the guilt with a positive accomplishment and to replace the misdeed with a valuable work. Only where this unconditional will to the better deed also becomes a reality in life, can guilt be viewed as fully atoned.

 

There are people who martyr themselves because of whatever guilt. They ponder and wail, calculate and weigh what they can no longer undo. They waste their energy with senseless self-reproaches, pains of conscience and infertile artificial pains of regret. Then they usually no longer have any time or energy for positive reparation for committed wrongs.

 

A past bourgeois world often no longer gave an opportunity for atonement and rehabilitation to people whose misdeed became publicly known. Whoever  was sentenced by state jurisprudence for whatever offense, whoever made himself guilty of whatever misdeeds, was expelled from all time from so-called better society, despised and shunned. Full of self-glorifying arrogance, people who had often bitterly and severely atoned for whatever offense, were judged and discarded. Any return to life was barred them by people who were inwardly much worse, with less character and less worthy.

 

Naturally feeling German man considers it not just a tactlessness, rather meanness, if a long past, atoned for mistake is again and again put forth, if one carelessly and cruelly touches matters that a person perhaps atoned for years seriously and severely.

 

For German man, a folk comrade who has completely atoned for a guilt is again a full-valued member of his community, with all honors and rights. He is obligated to again unreservedly join the ranks of the folk’s great front, and he is entitled to again expect and to be allowed to demand from each folk comrade full trust and genuine comradeship.

 

Every guilt is at the same time a great misfortune for the guilty. And atone guilt can often mean a great joy for the person affected and his surroundings. Many people are so hopelessly addicted to frivolity, obstinacy, brutality, extravagance, moral licentiousness, that they can be torn away from this intoxication by a sudden awakening after an especially serious offense. Purifying atonement after a major guilt has had the effect of a healing medicine on the moral development of many people. Certainly, there is usually the prerequisite that the healing doctor stands at their side, and that, instead of healing, the complete moral and psychological destruction is not caused through the brutality and tactlessness of superiors and fellow human beings. Guilt and atonement are two terms that contain much tragedy for human coexistence, German man, however, does not let himself be captured by guilt, rather he fights the way upward his ideals though atonement.

 

Every person would do well from time to time in a still honor to examine a bit his attitude and his actions relating to guilt and atonement. He will then more easily avoid the misfortune of a serious guilt and hence not require the healing effect of severe atonement.

 

Soldierdom

 

The virtue of German man is soldierdom. His soldierly spirit has grown from the laws of his blood. German soldierdom has proven itself in the millennia of fighting of our Germanic ancestors for their living space, in the conflict of the Middle Ages with foreign powers and world-views, in the world of Frederick the Great and in the time of the Wars of Liberation. At Tannenberg in 1914, victories of soldierly bearing opened an unprecedented struggle against a world of enemies. In 1933, German soldierdom, purified and perfected, could celebrate its great resurrection. National Socialism has drawn the ultimate conclusions from the laws of the blood and taken the characteristics of soldierdom to final manifestation and made the demands of soldierdom demands for every German man.

 

The most obvious symbol of the soldier is the uniform, march in step, clear organization in ranks and columns. This external commonality is a symbol for the inner commonality. In 1918, the German folk could be temporarily chained, because the unified political and world-view front was missing behind the front of the soldiers of the war. Soldierdom means to German man the same marching direction, the same inner bearing, the same psychological and world-view orientation of the entire folk. The arms-bearers of the nation, the political soldiers and fighters for the cultural and world-view rejuvenation of the German folk, must stand in one line.

 

Soldiers know that they can only win victory, if they follow their leadership clearly and unreservedly. The leadership determines the marching direction, goal and tempo. Like a unified block, the German folk stands behind its leadership. Foreign powers and world-views may beckon and promise, offer and curse; for German man, there is only the command of his folk leadership and not the command of super-governmental powers. German man obeys, with pitiless hardness against himself, the commands of his leadership, because he has an unshakable faith in this leadership and its idea, because he has unreserved trust in it.

 

The laws according to which the soldier acts are the life laws of the folk, the laws of the blood, the laws of God’s order of creation. It is the soldier’s honor to be loyal to these laws. It is his pride to preserve and increase this sacred legacy of blood and folkdom. There have been times when the honor of the soldier almost disappeared behind the honor of the officer. Today there is still only one honor in the German folk and with German man, the honor of soldierdom. It is his greatest honor, if his soldierly honor is recognized. Honor is the shrine of the German soldier. His military uniform is a uniform of honor, his armed service is a service of honor.

 

The soldier must always be ready for action. Mobility, skill, constant readiness in the physical, intellectual and psychological areas belong to soldierdom. That requires constant drill, constant exercise, tireless schooling, constant watchfulness. These characterizes grow in light and sun, in holy, joyful naturalness, not in mystical half-darkness and unnatural rigidity. In God’s glorious nature, amid sun and water, at sports and gaiety, witch cheerful jokes and happy songs, young people develop into fresh, skilled, action-ready soldiers. Every German man, regardless where he stands, however, must today possess at every hour this constant readiness for action, must also acquire for himself this characteristic of soldierdom.

 

The German folk stands today and for all the future like a single unified company of soldiers. The Führer has created this new folk soldierdom. National Socialism has perfected this soldierly spirit.

 

The task of this soldierdom is to secure a lasting peace. Under the eternal protection of German soldierdom, the great works of German peace work will evolve for all time.

 

Grace

 

Each folk has a very distinct ideal concept of woman corresponding to its racial nature.

 

It is difficult to sum up in one word everything that German man relates to the ideal image of woman in terms of loftiness, nobility and beauty. One of the most fitting words for the totality of all the virtues and advantages of German girl and the girl woman is the word charm.

 

Charm means a natural, uniform, physical beauty. Unhealthy distortion of natural beauty, unnatural muscle athleticism, unnatural castigation of body, unfeminine masculinization or spiritualization of the body stand in contradiction to charm. This natural beauty is shaped, promoted and preserved through robust movement in air, sun and water. The charm of the female body radiates in fresh, happy games and dances, in female physical exercise and gymnastics; it enlivens celebrations and holidays, psychologically enriches the community and transmits highest values above all to the man. For the girl and woman herself, however, there lies therein wellsprings for fulfillment and perfection of her deepest essence. Genuine Nordic art of every millennium displays a mirror of this female charm.

 

Charm simultaneously means a mental-psychological bearing which expresses itself in manifold forms. Charm expresses the female harmony of mental and psychological forces, the gentle harmony of reason and mood. The meaning of all female life fulfills itself in the kind, caring loving and always helping mother and housewife. The art of all of German history has again and again celebrated precisely this inexhaustible depth of German female feeling, of German mother’s love, of selfless, love-fulfilled devotion and the immeasurable wealth of the German woman’s soul. And if one speaks of the charm of a girl or of a woman, then the psychological sincerity is also expressed by precisely this term.

 

The German woman, however, should not and does not want to only be a good mother and housewife. In the orient, the woman was often only a birthing machine and maid. The German woman wants to simultaneously, knowing and understanding, stand at the side of her husband as comrade and coworker. She wants to share the husband’s cares, tasks and work, yes, she wants to stimulate and fertilize. The German woman hence does not exhaust herself in superficial beauty and fleeting charms. Rich spirit and deep understanding for all things in life radiates from her charm. She does not just take care of the table, rather she shapes the culture of the house, the style of the residence, the family’s manner of life. Hence clear intellect and practical sense also radiate simultaneously from the charm of the German girl and the German woman.

 

The woman is the bearer of new life, the protector of her folk’s blood and kind for distant generations. She must guard the purity of the blood, maintain discipline and proper manner, ward off poison and decay. The most sacred obligation and the greatest pride lies therein for each girl and each woman. For each man this means immeasurable responsibility toward his folk. The deepest essence and the most beautiful decoration of female charm lies in this purity of blood and kind. The woman becomes a participant in divine powers as the bearer of new life. Through her own blood, she is inseparably bound to the folk’s eternal life.

 

The German world-view and life-view also grows from German blood and German kind. The woman is natural bearer and teacher of a world-view and life- view to her children fitting for her kind. She gives them life. But she is also the first, closest, natural one to solve for her child the riddle of life, to lead them into the little and larger worlds of divine creation. The woman opens the child’s eyes and their view for the manifoldness of this world and in the process she herself becomes ever richer inwardly. She teaches to differentiate between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, noble and base, useful and harmful. But she also lets her children surmise the eternal relationships of family, folk, homeland and Führer, of workers, peasants and soldiers, of war and peace and the eternal laws of life. The woman also finally leads her children to the faith in a divine power, a “dear God”, who lives above us. In this emersion in natural, genuine and deep world-wide, in this familiarly with the divine order of creation, the woman herself finds that inner strength and depth, that richness of the heart, which especially typifies the German woman.

 

Natural beauty and health, purity of blood, richness of feeling, clear sense, genuine, deep world-view - those are the gifts and advantages that radiate from the charm of the German girl and German woman.

 

To preserve and increase these advantages is the pride, the striving and the obligation of each girl and each woman. To win and keep such a girl and such a woman as the mother of his children and as life comrade, is the yearning and the unconditional will of each man. A folk, however, in which the radiance of this female charm is united with the soldierly bearing of the man, will live and blossom forever.

 

Heroism!

 

Loyal fulfillment of duty down to the smallest detail is for German man not a special virtue, rather self-evident.

 

Aside from this soldierly fulfillment of duty, however, there is also another heroism, which is more that fulfillment of duty, which towers above the average bearing.

 

Heroism means to totally devote oneself to a great idea, to consume oneself like a torch in the flame of a mighty ideal, to see only one great ideal in sight and in mind and in marching step. Heroism is being stirred, obsessed, fulfilled with a very great task.

 

His own personality no longer plays a role for the hero. Desire and suffering, life and death, step back for him behind the tremendous obligation toward the work for which Providence has called him. Heroic deeds are done not out of ambition and egoism, rather out of ultimate selflessness, unselfishness and personal devotion. Infinite faith in work, calling and idea fill and give wings to the deeds and the bearing of the hero.

 

Heroism differentiates itself from insanity, fantasy and senseless self-sacrifice.

 

In every age there have been people who, misled by false doctrines or driven by a hysterical disposition, were devoted to senseless and ineffective idols and fantasies and became pitiful, poor martyrs of life-alien religious teachings.

 

And there have been people who, above all, under the influence of the most diverse religions, viewed self-mutilation, unnatural castigations of the body and deadening of all natural forces as heroism.

 

Genuine heroism lives in reality and reckons with reality. Genuine heroism is supported by the natural laws of life and grows from the infinitely deep soil of folk, homeland and family. Only in the framework of this divine order of creation can a genuine heroism exist. Only in the service of real life - created and wanted by God - can a person become a hero. And only this earthly reality connects the hero to the divine.

 

Man’s heroic, ultimate effort for life often takes place in a brand framework visible from afar.

 

But often heroism grows in all quietness and seclusion. Heroic women and mothers, heroic soldiers and heroic workers are at work by the thousands in large cities and small villages, on all life’s battlegrounds and in all the folk’s workplaces.

 

The great heroes often awaken hundreds of thousands, yes, millions of people within a folk and pull them along to victorious charges and ultimate effort. Like shining torches, they often being life, movement and glow into a dark night. Fortune is the folk for whom in every age, but above all in difficult hours, heroes arise.

 

Not everyone is selected by Providence for this radiant heroism.

 

But everyone can brighten and encourage his small surroundings as a quiet hero of daily life, save them from exhaustion numbness, and lead them to a victorious life.

 

In a folk’s hours of decision and in the peaceful periods of confirmation, these quiet heroes are no less important than the great heroic figures. These quiet heroes hold the front together, always give new strength, again and again bring light and joy. They create calm where agitation threatens to cause damage and bring motion where a stoppage could mean danger. Hundreds of thousands of people owe it to the silent working of an unknown hero that they have preserved their faith and their idealism, that they have remained decent people or become ones again, that they hold their position soldierly at the place where Providence has put them.

 

If among a thousand people one quiet hero, man or woman, walks and works, then this heroic example will radiate onto them all, then our whole folk will grow together into a great, eternal front.

 

Each of us can be this quiet hero, at whom others looks, to whom they turn, even if no command calls for it.

 

But there can also come hours in life in which we face the choice either to be heroes or cowards, either to be men or traitors.

 

There are events in which a middle line between heroism and baseness is no longer possible.

 

Whoever proves heroic bearing in the quiet life struggle, will in these fateful hours all by himself grow to great heroism.

 

Heroism is the dream of all youth. Heroes are the shapers of all events.

God is with the heroes.

 

Reverence

 

When one divides the word reverence [“Ehrfurcht”] into its two components [“Ehre’’ = honor & “Furcht’’ = “fear’’] one still does not by a long shot exhaust its meaning. Reverence is the feeling of appreciation and admiration toward a very great reality. Especially among the great masters of German genius, such as Goethe, reverence has always represented an essential component of their inner bearing.

 

German man shows reverence toward all life. This life confronts us in million-fold diversity. We admire this life in the colorful splendor of flowers and feathers, in the apparent rigidity of stones, in the living greatness of forests and mountains, and in the endless motion of the seas we admire this life. And just as amazed do we stand before the life of all the countless animals that move in and on the ground, in the air and in the water. In the dying and becoming that constantly repeats itself in the eternal blossoming and withering, we see with amazed reverence a divine power that fills and guides all this great and glorious life, this mighty reality. This reverence forbids us from wantonly destroying this life, to senselessly break flowers or heartlessly torment animals.

 

In all the millennia, Nordic man has known reverence toward the stars in heaven. The sun has become to him a sacred symbol of life ever renewing itself. For thousands of years, he has sought to research the great consonances of the star world. In the process, he did not drift into reality-alien mystical dreaming and he did not lose himself in commercial astrology, rather he saw in the warmth, brightness and movement of the stars a mighty reality which showed him traces and paths of the divine. Today, like in the endless ages of the past, German man stands silent before the greatness of the stars, moved by reverence.

 

German man feels reverence for human life itself. Propagation and birth of new life are for him just as sublime events as the passing of all life and death. He rejects frivolity and superficiality just like fear. The innocence of youth, the experience of age, great joys and deep sorrow are to him expressions of this life, which likewise reveals to him the greatness and richness of this world. Reverently, he hence affirms this reality of life. Reverently, German man stands before the testaments of human life and works from the past. Cultural monuments, works of art, written documents, ceremonial sites and ancestral sites from distant times are for him witnesses to a great historical reality for which he has respect, even if they stem from foreign or hostile worlds.

 

The greatest reality of this, for the German, is the divine. He experiences the divinity in the endless diversity of this world as something great and near, as friend and at the same time as an inscrutable power. It is considered irreverent to dissect the Almighty scientifically in words, to imprison it in temples like a cult or to want to direct its eternal decisions in certain ceremonies. Nordic man knows that all folks and eras have a different concept of God according to their blood and level of culture. Hence he will always have the deepest reverence for all genuine religious expressions, because he knows that every honest religion bearing is directed at the one divine power.

 

Reverence is the basic tone that must dominate man’s every touch with the great realities of this life. Whoever is always filled with reverence, will find an intimate closeness and at the same time a fitting distance to all things and all life. Whoever observes life and its expressions full of reverence, will often first grasp its full richness and its genuine greatness.

 

Hence, above all the youth must learn reverence. It is, after all, so very open and so receptive for all life.

 

The reverent person simultaneously spares himself a long moral code and clumsy morality handbooks. Reverence shows him the clear, right and straightforward position on reality.

 

Reverence has nothing to do with mystical terror and cult half-darkness. Reverence springs instead from bright, fresh and living naturalness, and is one of the basic traits of a German life bearing that is close to reality and full of light.

 

Of Joy

 

Nationalist Socialist German man stands in life with both feet and is happy with this life. Happy and confident, he looks to the future. He stands in the present joyfully and is happy that he is able to enjoy this beautiful life. Today one still cannot measure at all what a great revolution in shaping life has taken place with the creation of “Strength through Joy”, with the rediscovery of joy for all people. There was a Marxist past when it was hammered into the working people with all means that they are slaves of a ruling class, and that it is their task to one day break these heavy slave chains. And indeed, often a small group of owners endeavored to exploit the working folk and make them slaves. It was really a joyless life.

 

Today every productive person knows he has an important place to fill in the overall organism of his folk, and that - at the place he now stands - he bears responsibility toward all folk comrades. Hence every person is today proud of the task that fate and the folk community have given him. For him there is nothing more beautiful and greater than to be allowed to employ all his energy, his whole personality, for his family and his folk.

 

An oriental and confessional world has made work a burden, a punishment for sins, something oppressive, a torment. German man sees in work something great and beautiful. He would not be happy, if he could not create and work. He opposes the Jewish curse of work with the beauty of work.

 

When we Germans hike through our glorious homeland and admire the beauty of our forests, fields and seas, and the greatness of the mountains and seas, then we are proud that the Almighty has given us such a precious land, then we are joyful, free and happy, and draw life energy from this joy. And just as our work simultaneously becomes a joyful affirmation of God’s works of creation, a noble prayer, so does our joyful hiking through God’s nature simultaneously become the most beautiful religious service in the great temple that the Lord himself has built. A hundred-fold is the shape of the joy that German man has rediscovered. Natural and genuine is this kind of joy. There are people who only know a measured, dignified joy; for whom there is only a restrained smile. We are joyful and happy that we can again laugh from a full hear, fresh and unforced. This laughter can sometimes be haughty, this joy can sometimes be unbridled. It will always be pure, because it is always natural. It will never be cruel, because it flows from nobility of our blood.

 

The sun is our symbol. It radiates pure and clear and warm. Just as the sun accompanies us, so does joy accompany us on our march into the future. Bright and sunny is our path. Work and struggle are also shined upon joy. Being German means being happy. Hence be happy with your life!

 

The faith in our idea is so great, the certainty that we again live according to God’s natural laws, according to the norms of the order of creation, gives us such security and confidence, the trust in the Führer gives us much strength that we can look into and walk toward the future, inwardly and outwardly happy, with honest joy, full of justified optimism.

 

Many of us must first again reconquer this joy, must first again learn to be happy. The coming generation will already hike in the middle of this happy German world and will hence by itself overcome many things that still cling to and hamper us as the inhibiting dregs of alien world-views.

 

But only then will once also be able to completely understand that the rediscovery of joy was for German man one of the greatest deeds of all millennia. Only then will one comprehend that the saying coined by Dr. Ley, “Strength through Joy”, is one of the most important principles of National Socialist, German life bearing.

 

Suffering

 

Suffering cannot be denied or removed from this world.

 

But in the position toward suffering, much can become different compared to past worlds. The National Socialist world-view must also prove itself in regard to suffering. A serious illness, the death of a dear or dearest person, a great psychological distress can suddenly strike any person.

 

An oriental, fatalistic world says: Suffering is predetermined for each person. It cannot be escaped. One can just devoutly accept suffering as part of fate. One must patiently bear his “cross”. One must bow beneath one’s “cross”. Quiet, devout, patient person, resigned sufferer, bowed “cross bearer” - those are the types of this fatalistic bearing. These people sink into their suffering, they surrender themselves fully to their suffering, they gradually become totally dominated by their suffering. Suffering becomes the center point of their life. They are devoted to it. They can no longer be liberated from suffering. And everywhere they are, they speak of their suffering, everywhere they go, they spread the dark shadow of their suffering, they always just complain.

 

There is another version of this oriental bearing. According to it, suffering is necessary for people as atonement for sins. This view is exaggerated so much that suffering seems downright desirable in order to be able to atone for as many sins as possible. And if one considers himself so just that one no longer has any sins of his own for which to atone, then one atones for the sins of others. With downright inner orgasm one paints for oneself the horrible sins of fellow human beings, and then imagines atoning for them with suffering. One atones for living and dead, for friends and enemies, and with special inner satisfaction for the grave sins of chiefs of state and the responsible men of public life. The suffering and hence atoning person becomes the ideal of human life. Gaiety and joy are rejected as frivolity and arrogance. Suffering is considered the sign of selection, as a special sign of God’s friendship. Joy is considered a temptation, as a bad sign of the devil’s threatening power.

 

And still others believe with falsely understood piety they must by this means become a similar to Christ as possible and copy him as much as possible, that they must yearn for a life full of suffering, that they must want to spend their whole life as cross bearer. Among especially so inclined people, this can go so far that all their thought and feeling and action stand under the spell of Christ’s’ crucifixion, and such people then even gets wounds on their body of the kind of Christ’s biblical wounds.

 

German man knows that next to light, darkness, and next to joy, suffering as well are in store for him. But he also knows that the Lord does not send him pain so that he will become the devoted slave of his suffering, rather so that man overcomes suffering. The fighting bearing is a special characteristic of the National Socialist world-view. German man knows that the Almighty has put forces into nature, not so that man must passively let himself be tormented by them, rather so that man researches and overcomes them, expands them and makes them useful. So German man also looks clear and calm, sure and objective at suffering, and knows that every suffering is a test of strength for him. Whoever in the struggle simply surrenders to fate, is lost. Whoever quietly surrenders to suffering, remains under the spell of suffering. German man always looks toward the future full of confidence, even if the present is ever so dark and painful for him. In every life question, even in the deepest suffering, even in the greatest distress, he has an unshakable faith in the future. Adolf Hitler’s faith in the German folk’s most difficult days will for all time be a signpost for all Germans.

 

Many people are hurled back and forth between frivolous superficiality and painful depression.

 

The objective look at the difficulty and hardness of life and the unshakable faith in the future, the always fighting and simultaneously always confident and optimistic bearing, protect German man against the power of frivolity and superficiality as well as against depression, disheartenment and passive surrender to suffering.

 

Help yourself, then God will help you; this old saying is correct precisely toward suffering.

 

One should not yearn for suffering, rather give in to the joy that fate grants one. Suffering comes at the right time by itself. But then one should face it strong and certain. There are many hours in life when any hope seems impossible, any faith senseless, when one believes so see the sole escape in suicide. And yet, suicide is usually just cowardice, just desertion. Precisely in these hours of greatest suffering and greatest distress, the National Socialist must prove himself. Precisely then he must overcome distress and suffering, even if he must completely rebuild his life from the beginning. Again and again, days and years will come in life in which one is happy that one has overcome the suffering, in which the suffering and past pains seem small and insignificant.

 

The motto for German man is not “Take your suffering upon yourself”, rather “Overcome the suffering!”. In the process, he knows that in life it is not just about him, rather that he is a link in the organism of the great community of his folk. And when he alone threatens to become too weak, he is held by the firm bond that ties him to more than eighty million people. When he alone wants to lamely surrender to the suffering, the marching step of his folk pulls him up; when he wants to throw away his life, he is called back to life by the obligation toward his folk.

 

When the whole folk is filled with this joyful faith in the future, with this sacred will to overcome any suffering, then whatever wants to can befall the individual and the whole Reich.

 

But whoever preaches surrender, preaches weakness; he is not German, he is our enemy.

 

Festivals and Celebrations

 

Human life does not proceed in a straight line with boring monotony. It is shaped by the constant up and down of happy times and serious hours. Among natural German man, this God desired rhythm of life grows out of a multiple festival circles.

 

German man lives in closest bond with great nature. He has hence in all times especially celebrated winter solstice and summer solstice, spring festival and harvest festival. The eternal return of the sun’s light is celebrated with manifold customs in the holy night of winter solstice. This day becomes a festival of always renewing life. The symbols of this life are united on the tree of light, the always green evergreen, and light radiating energy, brightness and warmth. Spring festival is a festival of youth and joy, of cheerful work and community. It is spent with fun games and joyous dance. The summer festival in the middle of radiant, hot summer days admonishes to contemplation, reminds of the constant up and down of life, but also ties again, with all contemplativeness, to the faith in the unshakeable force of our idea. Harvest festival is a festival of joy over the completed harvest and a festival of thanks to the Almighty for his gifts.

 

All these nature festival show the deep inwardness of Nordic man. His close bond to the Creator find expression in the bond to nature.

 

A second circle of festivals encompasses the holidays of the family. The goal of every marriage is the child. When an offspring comes to the family, this happy event is celebrated. In the circle of the relatives, it is ceremoniously accepted into the clan, it receives it name and receives the best wishes for its life path. The father or clan elder is usually the speaker for the whole clan.

 

When a young couple has decided to go through life together, they ceremonially enter into marriage before a representative of the state. This act as well becomes a celebration for the whole clan. Relatives, work colleagues, comrades and friends shape this day into a memorable experience.

 

When a person has ended this earthly life, his relatives and friends, coworkers and leaders prepare for him an honorable departure from this world with a dignified burial. Naturalness and inner honesty are the main prerequisites for these celebrations. As uniform as the basic idea will be among Germans so manifold will be the individual frameworks, according to the circle from which these celebrations are shaped, Family and clan will always stand at the center. Millennia ago, our ancestors shaped these celebrations inwardly, dignified and genuine. Our time again returns to this naturalness.

 

The national holidays and our folk’s days of remembrance belong to the third circle of festivals.

 

Very great historical days of remembrance, Memorial Day for the Dead, the celebration of a great victory, the Führer’s birthday, days when parades are held for the political, military and cultural soldiers of the folk, great market days and similar events became celebrations for the whole folk. All available means are employed in order to forge the whole folk community into an inner union and to have it resound in a uniform idea, a uniform experience. It is a beautiful and great task to be allowed to help shape these days.

 

This triple circle of festivals is for everyone the annual cycle of festivals that corresponds to life’s natural laws; it enlivens the daily routine, enthuses, and becomes a self-evident life rhythm.

 

In this rhythm of festivals, people, families and clans harmonize into the great folk community.

 

Confessional powers have sought to replace these natural festivals with their confessional holidays. In the process, the folk community is torn and split.

 

Over three hundred churches and sects try to present precisely their holidays as the holiest festivals. The Adventists, Baptists, Mormons and Methodists, the followers of the Mazdaznan movement or the Weissenberg sect, the Catholics and Protestants all celebrate their festivals in their own manner. Whoever is not Catholic may not be buried in a Catholic and whoever is not Protestant may be not buried in a Protestant cemetery. The Catholic folk must conclude his marriage according to Latin formulas in Latin and the Protestant according to Hebrew songs translated into German. The confessions have sought to totally push out the folk’s great days of remembrance and the natural festivals of the year. They have adopted the most valuable elements from the customs of these festivals, and used them to decorate Old Testament festivals like Easter or Pentecost and have then constructed a festival year thrown together from the most diverse worlds, above all from Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, North Africa, Gaul and Germania.

 

Just as the great building of the Third Reich rise to heaven clear and testify that a folk has again found its way back to the simple greatness of the natural, so do the festivals of the three natural festival circles also again differentiate themselves from the artificial festival constructions of the recent past and proclaim that the German folk again wants to live according to God’s natural laws.

 

These festival days should be days of honest, great, inner and outer celebration. They should bestow strength and unity, should make inwardly rich. They should indicate the great lines of life, the mighty goals of the folks, the meaning of nature and of history. People, residences, streets and squares wear a festive dress on these days. The great works of art fill the expanse of the folk soul. Ideas that encompass millennia are brought to man’s consciousness, the festivals themselves should become a sacred religious service.

 

Whoever wants a measuring stick for his inner worth and his spiritual wealth, should consider how he celebrates festivals.

 

Solitude

 

For centuries, Germans were often inwardly cut off from each other. The borders of class, confession and party separated them from each other.

 

Only the National Socialist revolution has again brought a genuine folk community.

 

At work, at festivals and celebrations, at recreation and sports, at school and enjoyment of art, the community idea, the community experience, stands in the foreground.

 

From time to time, however, a person also needs quiet hours, in order - all alone, somewhere in solitude - to let thoughts travel, to shape works, to shape his own inside.

 

The Catholic Church has made a brilliant soul training out of these quiet hours in its devotions.

 

For German man, here, as everywhere, the supreme principle of formation is naturalness.

 

There are certain days that are especially suited for these quiet hours: the birthday as the beginning of a new year of life, days when one had an experience that especially moved one inwardly, days of a great success or of a severe outward or inward defeat.

The places where one can devote oneself to this creative solitude are manifold: one’s own home, a quiet work room, a quiet field path, a forest, a mountain height, the sea shore, an art or cultural monument away from much traffic, an ancestral site.

 

In these hours of solitude, one gives an accounting to oneself, his folk and his Lord for the previous year, for a completed work or task. One reflects what one has done well and has done poorly, where one failed and where one was successful. One researches the cause of the success or failure, why one receives praise or scolding, what were the sources of mistakes and errors.

 

This search of conscience must be inward, honest and natural, without makeup and fixing up, free of rigidity. Clear and objective, one tells oneself what was right and resolves to continue to do so. Sober, one admits to oneself what was wrong and unjust, and promises oneself to do better next time.

 

Brief and clear is the line of separation that one draws under the past. There is no long complaining and brooding, nor fruitless pains of conscience, not useless inner martyrdom and waste of energy. There is only one thing: The resolution to improve oneself, and the new, better work, the more noble deed, the greater performance.

 

German man is directed forward, active, life affirming here as well.

 

In the hours of solitude, one reviews one’s relationship with fellow human beings. Has one given enough love, joy and trust to one’s family? Was one always comradely, honest and kind toward one’s superiors and subordinates? Did one leave nobody aside or behind, unjustly favored or disfavored, annoyed, insulted, slighted his honor? Was one selfish, brutal, cruel, quarrelsome, jealous, flattering, false?

 

Perhaps one can make everything well again with a word, a small deed? Perhaps, however, more effort, serious, conscientious work is necessary to again smooth out a past injustice.

 

If one has to shape a great work, carry out an important assignment, one faces a grave decision, then one will likewise have to collect oneself for it for a short time in solitude. The energies that one has gathered in the community, at festivals and celebrations, often take creative shape in solitude, suddenly become fertile in quiet hours, in order to then again serve the community, According to the words of Alfred Rosenberg, community and solitude supplement each other like breathing and breathing out, and together mean fruitful life. This life, however, enriches the individual just as it does the whole folk.

 

There are people who never feel comfortable in solitude, who always have to have motion around them.

 

These people become inwardly empty and superficial. Whoever wants to be up to great tasks, whoever wants to succeed in daily life, whoever wants to live his life as a deep German, seeks quiet hours of solitude from time to time. They bring him close to the divine and put him in the middle of life again with new energy, clear sight and greater faith.

 

Body Hygiene

 

It is reported of church saints that they martyred and deformed their body, that they let it decay, in order to deaden the body’s natural drives and already on earth become as heavenly as possible.

 

Saint Benedict hurled himself naked into bushes of thorns and stinging nettles and then rolled around in it, because a lovely female being appeared to him as a temptation. Saint Simon the Stylite for years always stood on one leg on a tall pole. Saint Rita did not wash at all for many years until her underwear rotted, worms grew on her head and her whole body was eaten by dirt and wounds. The holy recluses had themselves walled in so that the only had a small opening to receive food and to teach the amazed faithful, and preached about the vanity of earthly life for so long until they gradually perished in their own waste. Saint Ignatius - who, like many saints, martyred himself with penance belts and whips - sets down in his work “The Spiritual Exercises” that the human body is nothing but a festering wound, a boil that breathes pure poison. One could for hours relate from the church’s pious books the most repulsive self-mutilations, senseless forms of martyrdom and martyrdom tools for deadening the body, the most unnatural castigations and penance exercises. The purpose of this so-called piety is expressed in the characteristic term deadening. For these people, the body is a constant stimulus to sin, the devil’s welcome tool to rob the soul’s innocence. According to this view, the body must hence be held down and deadened.

 

In order to counter the so-called dangers of the body, it is prescribed that the body must be hidden as much as possible. The face may indeed be shown openly. According to church biographies, the Catholic Patron Saint of Youth, Aloysius, did not even dare to look his own mother in the face in order not to come into unchaste temptation. According to the clothing regulations of the Fulda Bishop’s Conference, of the rest of the body, only the neck, the arms beneath the elbows and the legs beneath the knees may be shown free and uncovered. Bathing (with swimsuit), according to church decrees, is only allowed separated by gender. The visit to family baths is considered a voluntary search for serious moral dangers and hence a grave sin. In many Catholic girls hostels, even individual bathing in the shower of a closed off bathroom is only allowed with a long shirt reaching down to the ankles. The monks and nuns, who strive for perfection in a quite special manner, keep their bodies completely covered, wrapped in thick cloths up to neck and face and down to the ankles, in order to present their fellow human beings no stimulus for unchastity.

 

Although - in accordance to this confessional view - the body is “conquered” through deadening and covering, the oriental position toward the body is shown in another manner, through systematic dematerialization of the body. Through intensive training the fakir manages to make his body no longer feel, he no longer feels pain and he can subject his body to the most unbelievable martyrdom without feeling the slightest thing in the process. The followers of oriental, occult sects seek - through rhythmic dancing and unique rhythmic gymnastics - to animate, dematerialize and spiritualize their bodies so much that it becomes supernatural and genderless. Oriental, middle-eastern hostility to the body tries here - by detour of many sect schools of gymnastics and dance - to sneak into the Nordic world. Pale, aesthetic, over-intellectualized, boneless, genderless or bisexual types are the product of this bearing alien to us. Precisely the youth is threatened by this poison. Externally, this world is often difficult to spot at first look. It sometimes appears in artistic garb or in festive dress. But if one goes to the depth, then the differences to natural body hygiene are unmistakable.

 

The middle-eastern attitude is hostile to the body. Everywhere, where the body is supposed to be deadened or dematerialized by apparent physical exercise and a so-called earthly burden is supposed to be cast off, where the body is deprived of its natural nature and task, where it is supposed to become unreal and spiritual, the laws of the order of creation are broken and combated, Nordic bearing is destroyed and denied. Not deadening and dematerialization of the body, rather development of the body and its abilities is the demand of German man. He gives his body much air and sun, movement and freedom and refreshing water. He protects his body against poisons of every kind, against unnatural constriction, cramping and violation. Naturalness is the guideline for his body hygiene and clothing. From this naturalness results the measure for the beauty and skill, energy and health of a person. Hence body hygiene must not be made genderless. It must rather develop the uniqueness of the genders. Body hygiene, clothing, game and dance must hence also never become base, senseless, immoral or inferior.

 

In his body hygiene, Nordic man can do without measuring morality with an inch ruler to classifying individual exercises according to the templates of rubrics. His laws are great and straightforward, unforced and natural. Natural feeling, healthy beat and properly formed moral consciousness tell him what is appropriate, what is allowed, and what does not belong.

 

The education of a beautiful, healthy, talented and strong breed is the goal of body hygiene. The education of a good and noble breed is better achieved by that than through long morality sermons and pushy advice.

 

About Enjoying

 

Seldom goes a word simultaneously include so much valuable and so much harmful as the word enjoyment. Genuine enjoyment corresponding to the life laws can enrich, strengthen and perfect the body, intellect and soul of a person. Senseless enjoyment debases, weakens and destroys the whole person.

 

There are pleasure substances that right from the start contain dangers and biological damage. The youthful human organism - which is still blossoming and developing - must be protected from these dangers.

 

But even things that are themselves valuable can lead to senseless pleasure and ruination. As a basic rule: any pleasure that aims at deadening or intoxicating body, mind and soul and to escape reality, contradicts the Nordic bearing rooted in life.

 

Primitive people used alcohol, opium or other narcotics in order to be able to forget this life for a while and to hover in unreal regions.

Base characters seek a temporary numbing of their senses and their soul through excessive eroticism and the unnatural abuse of sexual desire.

 

Still other people reach to religious means of numbing in order to leave the earthly world behind them for a few hours. The cult buildings of many religious communities, the mystic half-darkness, incense scent, cult ceremonies and cult music are much used to promote religious bliss and ecstasy and to temporarily hold people under their spell.

 

In many cults, even sexual excesses are and were - along with other means of numbing - tied with religious pleasures and put in the service of human domination.

 

Nordic man stands in the middle of life. His world-view proceeds from life, remains in reality and stays away from illusions.

 

He must instinctively reject any pleasure tat distances him from life, which even temporarily makes him incompetent in reality and threatens to permanently make his inner bearing powerless toward life. He must fundamentally combat any pleasure that leads him to illusions.

 

The life of Nordic man does not thereby become desolate and joyless. Rather it puts him in the position to fully enjoy real life. Genuine joy corresponding to the natural life order really leads back to reality and not away from it.

 

Wine, for example, is a gift of the Creator. Reasonable, sensible enjoyment of wine, moderate drinking and breathing in the powers of wine, teaches the noble enjoyment of this gift of God, encourages joy and industrious work, promotes the community and ennobles heart and mind.

 

That is the goal of every pleasure: The energies that a divinity has given people should be promoted, ennobled, perfected, strengthened and heightened by any pleasure. For pleasure of any kind should stimulate the person to work and joy in performance, to the experience of the natural community, to happy spirit and genuine affirmation of life. Reality should not be darkened by pleasure, rather put into clear light. A person should enjoy all the bodily, material and cultural gifts and goods of this world in order to thereby better fulfill his creative purpose and his life goal, and to be able to stand more firmly in life.

 

This life rule is simple and clear, like every German character bearing. No morality casuistic is necessary in order to be able to find the right place here. The natural laws of life clearly and self-evidently show this great, simple and noble Nordic life order.

 

Human Leadership

 

The difference between Nordic bearing and Mideastern essence is seldom shown more clearly than in the manner of human leadership.

 

The Mideastern nature, which also finds expression in manifold priesthoods, is that the superior is the pasha, the despot, the tyrant of his subordinates. He puts himself outside any community, surrounded with lavish, senseless pomp, makes himself free of all laws and obligations, and plays himself up as a small god or at least as God’s deputy. But he seeks to forge as many chains as possible for his subordinates, to make them little and inferior, to push them down and always hold them down. He stomps manly honor, female dignity and youthful joy into the dirt cold and heartless. He walks over corpses brutally, if he can thereby serve his egoism. He solidifies his rule through fear of hell, fear of demons and other terrors.

 

For him, leading men and keeping slaves is the same thing.

 

German man, instead of the words despot and slave, knows the concepts of leader and following. It belongs to the nature of the German leader type that the person leading as much as possible also leads the following upward, makes them as great as possible, seeks to educate them to be proud, honor conscious, free German people. People who were once with the Führer Adolf Hitler stress again and again that his presence never made one feel crushed or little like among many superiors from alien times, rather one became uplifted, great and free.

 

The Nordic leader always feels himself to be the first member of the community. He draws his productive strength from the community. He feels himself foremost obligated to the laws of the community. When he marches at the point of his following, then this means that he must also go ahead of the others to work, to daily life, to combat and, if necessary, to death as well. The Reichsführer SS Himmler has in many addresses again and again stressed that one of the first prerequisites for the SS officer is the personal kind heart. This is true for German human leadership overall. The leader must project to his following a personal kind heart that never gets cold or paralyzed, is always fresh and sunny. In objective decisions hard and straightforward, in personal contact happy and kind, that is our leader ideal. The leader must acquire a deep understanding for all the distresses, suffering and contacts of his following, a fine tactfulness for all weaknesses and delicate things, and honest empathy for all the joys. Only a few are born leaders. Most are officer cadets and must first learn, fight for and work for leadership, and experience it deeply and joyfully. The leader from whose eyes a personal kind heart shines and from whose nature it radiates can demand from his following sacrifice, work and performance. He no longer needs to use major pressure. Based on his inner bearing, he introduces his following with hearty comradeship to the purpose of their work, of their sacrifice, of their struggle. He treats them like full-valued comrades, not like servants, not like machines, but also not condescendingly or with pity. Not pushy, not like a school master, not like a professor, not like a pastor - he gives to his subordinates, who are for him coworkers, winks, tips, explanations, encouragements, clarifications in speech and conversation that is not forced. He shows them the work, helps to shape the work himself, is the first foreman. Foreman is the name of the department head in many areas. That is the German meaning: He is the man who stands at the front in leadership, work and performance.

 

The leader does not exploit his following, he does not pump them empty, he does not weight on them like a nightmare. He gives his people energy and strength, shows them in their work and in their life ever new possibilities, new opportunities, visions. He enriches his following inwardly with ideas, new joys, energies and sources of strength.

 

The leader is not a guard. He does not lurk for offenses. He is not happy when he catches a coworker at a mistake or ineptitude. He is not dissatisfied if he cannot find fault. Serious and kind, comradely and straightforward, he discusses everything that is not in order, he praises what has been made good.

 

Individuals may exploit this personal kind heart. The totality is forged together by this bearing.

 

Whoever has acquired this kind of leadership, does not have to intensively study long recipes and rules of behavior, he never has to fear for his reputation, he will always do the right thing. Whoever still discovers within himself traces of egoistical, heartless tyranny or slavish servitude, knows that he is not yet free of alien oriental bearing. But whoever makes this foreign nature his own, becomes a traitor against German essence.

 

For Nordic man it is the most beautiful goal to be the leader, to be allowed to march at the point of a sworn community, n the great organism of the folk, for a high idea.

 

Whoever is such a genuine leader, has taken on responsibility for his following before God and represents them before God in the community’s festive hours as well. In these festive hours, the whole community then grows together anew and at the same time grows into the infinite connections of God’s great order of creation.

 

Fanaticism and Objectivity

 

Two characteristics must distinguish the bearing of German man above all in personal and public life: fanaticism and objectivity. They must dominate all actions of daily life, they must above all glow through great hours and difficult decisions.

 

German man loves his folk, because God has put him in this folk, because his blood is inseparably bound to this folk. His homeland and his folk form a component of his essence. German man’s honor, love and remorse are for his folk. With God for Germany! is the slogan of every German at quiet daily work and in fateful, great times.

 

There is no tepidity, no mediocrity, no halfway, no hesitation and no question, no hedging and no doubt. There is just one glowing, always enthusiastic fanaticism. German hearts blaze like torches in devotion to their folk. Whoever is once seized by this fire, radiates with indestructible energy, may he stand at a lonely post, perform simple daily work or march in the foremost line of the soldierly, political or world-view struggle. But when a storm rages through the land, all these millions of torches untie into a huge sea of flames that lights up the dark night, devours all rubbish and destroys everything that opposes it.

 

The Führer’s personality, however, shines before all as a great example. The folk is given invincible strength by the consciousness that such a God blessed leader marches at its point.

 

There are hours and days when one can become weary and slack. There are times when one could be relaxed and indifferent. Then one thought of Führer and folk, a glance at the flag and the great symbols of the Reich, must suffice to shake us awake and ignite the glowing ambers to flame.

 

If one threatens to become weary from endless little adversities, if foreign world- view poison secretly seeks to spread, if one is in danger of cowardly wanting to ignore the distress or suffering of the folk comrades then fanaticism must break out again and again and lead hack to life again and again.

 

Fanaticism alone, however, can take wrong paths. Enthusiasm can smolder uselessly. Hence fanaticism must always be accompanied by objectivity. Germany is considered the land of poets and thinkers In German man, the deep view for reality combines with the élan of enthusiasm.

 

Fanaticism alone can make one-sided, can lead to injustice, senselessness and blindness. But whoever combines sober objectivity with fanaticism, will strike the opponent the deepest and hardest. The pure fanatic is often not taken seriously. But whoever is objective and fanatical at the same time, will overcome any resistance that opposes him in good times and bad. This is true for the positive construction of the natural German world for which we fight and this is equally true for the defense against all opponents. If we build and defend, in big things and in little things, fanatically and objectively at the same time, then this world will successfully withstand all enemies.

 

Eternal Front

 

Through external power, through sly calculation, clever reason, talented propaganda and skillful organization, temporary victories won.

 

However, the forces that in the life of people and folks lead to ongoing verification and eternal existence lie in the character bearing, in the blood determined final psychological substance.

 

Health, cleverness and reason, organizational talent and many other gifts of nature are prerequisites for man’s successful work. The decisive battles of the world, however, are fought by great characters. Without deep character, psychological foundation, every work is just a temporary illusion, any success just a fleeting flash in the pan.

 

A folk that wants to succeed in the struggle of political powers and world-view forces must hence blend together into one great front of inner, character bearing. No artificial missionary work with complicated moral doctrines and constructed dogmas is required for that. Character values flow from the racial, blood-related condition of the individual folks.

 

It just needs to make real in daily life this great, eternal front of divine life laws, which the Creator has put into the folks, to nurture it, to always clean it of rubbish, to protect it against alien seeds of decay.

 

For Nordic man, the purpose of life lies in this life itself. The divinity, however, rules for him in the middle of this world. Each individual person is a member of the natural communities. He hence owes obedience to the laws of the community. Every person is responsible for his actions and bearing. Honor is guideline for him in this. Whoever takes a guilt upon himself, he has the obligation for atonement. The character bearing of German man finds its best expression in the soldier spirit. The character of German woman is reflected in her charm. Decisive times often demand unprecedented heroism from men and women.

 

Nordic man faces all great realities of this life full of reverence. He finds a natural, self-evident bearing toward suffering and joy.

 

Festivals and celebrations in the circle of the community and quiet, creative activity in solitude mutually supplement his life rhythm.

 

Body hygiene and enjoyment of Creation’s gift are affirmed by German man as means toward the positive unfolding of life.

 

German human leadership as well is shaped, clearly and simply, by these laws without long moral regulations.

 

Fanaticism and objectivity together lead the individual person and the whole folk to the great successes of life and history.

 

Each individual German has the sacred obligation to join this great, eternal front of the character bearing of the German folk.

 

Anybody who fails to defeat his political opponents and foreign worlds, should first ask himself whether he is up to his opponents in terms of character.

 

By anybody who needs energy and strength in the present change of eras, should reflect that the great, eternal front - which is the bulwark of the German folk - represents the world of its psychological and character values.

 

This eternal front is great, straightforward and clear, turned toward the world and life affirming, following the divine order of creation, cheerful and sunny, but at the same time hard and invincible. It stood millennia ago, today is has awakened anew, and it will stand in millennia.