All That Must Be Struggled Through

 

Source: SS Leitheft, Year 8, Issue 6, 1942

 

The hardness of the present war places the demands on the entire German folk that the National Socialist movement’s period of struggle once placed on the individual fighters. For November 9 we publish here a letter by Dr. Hermann Gmelin, who as district leader of Landsberg and Weilheim died in an accident shortly after the rise to power in the year 1933. It is taken from the “Letters of a Fighter” and speaks for itself:

 

On the Road, 2 April 1932.

 

You can’t imagine my present life. Since Green Thursday I spoke again (except for Easter Sunday) each evening in closed assemblies. And that will go on every day until the provincial election day on 24 April.

 

On Palm Sunday Uli-Götz was confirmed. I could not even attend the blessing, because I had to go to Munich for a Führer conference, from which I did not return until 16:00.

 

Yesterday evening I spoke in P., spent the night at the home of a party comrade so simple that my bed was in the family bedroom (married couple with children). This morning purchases in Munich, afternoon business in Hersching and Diessen. This evening I speak in Issing and return home 01:00. Depart at 06:00, motorcycle to Munich, from there by train to Freilassing near Salzburg. There, between 15:00 and 20:00, I must speak three to four hours in two different towns. That is how it goes on.

 

Ten days prison await me, because I supposedly violated the November emergency decrees - in the struggle for the freedom for my folk. Uli-Götz is supposed to return to school in a week. I do not know where I am supposed to get the 55 Reichsmark each month. And despite all the worries one must keep one's wits, must convince thousands of opponents in assemblies, must give them hope and enthusiastic faith so they become fellow fighters, and must not burden them with how one struggle’s desperately for oneself and one’s own family.

 

Only rare are the hours of contemplation and reflection. Between them push the hours of worry for the family’s existence. In the struggle my wife again has it harder than I, as I am myself active in the struggle. Just like back then in the great war. Sometimes I come home for just a short night. Then the bills and unpleasant letters lie there. And all of that must be gone through and struggled through. - If one is financially well off, then it is not hard to have a world-view. But to keep them despite the distress, to be able to believe, is a great gift!

 

Fight for Hitler, you, too! April 10th should find us ready.”

 

Comrades, under those unspeakably hard circumstances the old fighters of the movement have struggled. Out of this poverty and distress, out of this idealism and out of this passionate love for our folk did the victory of the movement first become possible. So the apparent setback of November 9,1923 became a beacon for the rising of the nation.