by
SS-Hauptamt
The
Meaning of Life
To
preserve and increase oneself is the deepest meaning of life. Through its racial
policy, the National Socialist leadership places itself at the service of life
and strives to fulfil its meaning for the German folk. The preservation and
increase of life, however, includes the urge for improvement, higher development
and perfection, which is inherent in all living things. Every living being
strives for the full development of its inherent powers. The supra- individual
life of genera and species is completed in their growing adaptation to the
environment. The all-embracing life on our earth causes species to come into
being and pass away, it forms ever new forms out of itself with the aim of the
growing perfection of individuals and species, their higher development, the
increase of functions. It is not blind chance that directs the coming into being
and passing away in the millions of years in which life has taken place on
earth, no matter how much it may push itself into the foreground in individual
cases and cloud our view, above it stands the divine will of the all-embracing
life, which is in itself fulfilment and perfection.
Folks and races are the
highest expressions of life. Their task, too, is preservation and increase;
their meaning, too, lies in the striving for development, increase and
perfection of their being and essence. They remain if they obey this law of
life, they perish and others take their place if they refuse to obey it.
The preservation and
multiplication, the development and increase of life takes place in the struggle
for existence to which every plant, every animal, every species and every genus
is subjected. In this struggle they are weighed, selected or exterminated. Human
beings and human races are also subjected to this struggle; it determines their
value and their right to exist. The cultured folks, however, through their
artificially created environment, their cultural world, have largely removed the
individual from this struggle; the folk community as a whole stands up for it,
it must always stand up for its existence and its position in the world, for its
living space and its culture. The folk as a whole can and must therefore demand
from each of its members unconditional commitment to the whole in war and peace.
The individual is driven to this commitment by the law of duty in his breast,
which compels him to develop his strength in the service of the highest values
of his folk and to make sacrifices for family, clan and folk.
The
Goal of Folkish Evolution
It is given to cultured
folks, as the highest forms of life, to consciously recognize and shape that
which lives unconsciously in all living things. Out of their innermost being
they create the ideal to which they are called to aspire. In the works of their
best painters, sculptors, poets and sages, this physical and spiritual ideal
takes tangible form. Legend and history hold in the memory of the folk those men
and women in whom the racial and folkish essence has been most purely and
perfectly expressed and who point the way to the future for the living
generation. The best and most far-sighted leaders of the folk have always
striven to promote them in the fulfilment of their innate law and have sought
forms which would lend permanence to their work and serve the higher racial
development.
The conscious development
and improvement of a kind or race is called breeding. Mankind has known for
thousands of years the breeding of animal and plant races, whereby, building on
the law of evolution of life, a high increase of characteristics was achieved
according to certain goals set by the breeder himself (often, however, contrary
to nature). The confusing abundance of hereditary factors in humans makes the
process of inheritance infinitely more complicated than in animals and plants,
and this is compounded by the slow succession of the sexes and the resulting
difficulties in maintaining a direction of selection. A “conscious” breeding up
of an entire folk according to the example of animal and plant breeding is
therefore beyond the possibility of human ability and will.
The higher development of a
cultured folk must be borne by a consciousness of a completely different kind
than conscious animal breeding. It presupposes an inner vision of the racial
essence in its perfection, which is at the same time felt as a divine
commandment and in this respect is the core of every kind’s own religion. It
presupposes the will to devotion and sacrifice, which subordinates one's own
self to the divine commandment that works itself out in the community of blood
and destiny of the folk. What the animal accomplishes by virtue of its
instincts, the human being must, in addition, fulfil according to his conscience
and the law of ought in his breast. History gives us enough examples of the
higher development of cultured folks as well as of their decline and fall. The
precondition for the continued existence of the folks is the preservation of the
purity of the race; the precondition for higher development, however, is the
existence of a sufficiently numerous selection of men and women who are prepared
to take on more duties, to make greater sacrifices and to embody the ideal of
the race more purely than the other members of the folk. For the higher
development of a race and a folk, as in all of nature, can only ever come from
individuals who maintain themselves as the best and most capable and in the
course of generations multiply proportionately and again and again make a
selection of the best from among themselves.
The way in which this
higher development of cultured folks takes place, i.e. how this selection is
formed and shaped in each case, what goals it sets for itself, what bond binds
the individual members together, is predetermined by racial characteristics and
by the particular conditions of life; it changes and varies in the course of
history with the changing destinies of the folk and their increasing culture.
The goal of development, however, is always the same and is more or less clearly
and unambiguously expressed in all forms of selection: it is the perfection, it
is the increase of the physical of the physical, mental and spiritual powers of
a folk. This goal, however, is only achieved if it flows from the deepest
essence of the dominant race of a folk and fully corresponds to its
dispositions. Often this selective stratum was not built up in accordance with
the racial substance of the folk or it was no longer in accordance with the
changed living conditions of the folk, often it set itself goals which were
alien to the race and the folk, then its existence was not lasting and its
decline sometimes dragged the whole folk with it to ruin. The cultured folk of
the present day, whose selective class has remained most unchanged through the
centuries and which is most clearly aware of its task of taking on more duties
than the others, is the Japanese folk; Japan owes its steady upward development
and the long duration of its Reich to the selective class of the samurai.
In the history of the
European folks, reference can be made to the Spartans and the Roman Senate, to
the French Chevalier and the English gentleman. Among the German folk, the
German Order of Knights, the guild of Hanseatic merchants, the Prussian officer
corps, the Protestant clergy, all formed a selection along certain lines through
certain periods. But in Germany, as in Japan, a selective class has not yet
developed that embraced the whole folk community and felt responsible for it.
The main obstacle was the non-racial religion, which distorted the ideal of the
Nordic race and thus prevented the respective selection strata from creating an
ideal that was entirely their own. The strong influence of antiquity also
prevented the free, unbroken development of an original German-Nordic culture,
although we do not want to overlook the support we owe to antiquity. It has
severely impaired the German selective strata of the past in the formation and
development of a racial ideology. Today, in National Socialist Germany, we must
build on completely new foundations and seek new paths; for the selection
examples of our history can only become instructive for us through their
mistakes.
Nature and Task of Selection
The breeding goal of the
German folk is determined by the Nordic race, for it is the basic race of the
German folk; it unites the German folk into a blood community. Adolf Hitler,
through his racial policy, has for the first time in the history of our folk
created the prerequisite which makes possible the clear elaboration of a uniform
breeding goal for the whole German folk. Through the prevention of race-mixing,
the fight against counterselection, the enhancement of the will to have children
and the creation of a race-appropriate, kind-specific environment, the German
folk was educated to think racially, and the direction of their future
development was set for centuries, even millennia. On this basis, an order of
men could be formed who are prepared to carry the torch into the future for our
folk in hard discipline and to advance on the difficult path of the higher
development of the folkish being and the racial forces by taking on increased
duties.
That the Nordic race alone
can determine the breeding goal of the German folk is clear from the history of
the Aryan folks. It created the cultures of these folks; as long as it
determined the destinies of these folks, they rose to great heights; their
decline brought about the downfall of the folks and their cultures, for
disorganization always means cultural decay. Preservation and increase of the
Nordic blood share is therefore is therefore the most important component of the
breeding goal of the German folk. This does not mean a devaluation of the other
European races which have contributed to the building of our folk.
We know what we owe to the
Flemish perseverance, the Eastern warmth of spirit, the Dinaric originality, the
Western mobility; the impact races have contributed to the fullness of life and
the incomparable richness of German culture; the high level of achievement of
the German folk is also a consequence of their special racial composition.
Nevertheless, especially for the German folk, who are forced by their central
position, more than other folks in Europe, to constantly fight for their
self-assertion and world standing, the preservation and increase of the share of
the Nordic peasant and warrior races is the indispensable precondition of their
existence.
The Nordic race, like all
living things, represents an infinite variety of phenomena within the unity
formed by the common basic stock of Nordic hereditary factors. No two members of
this race are perfectly alike; there are gradations, differences, degrees of
physical, mental, character and spiritual qualities, powers and values. If we
add to this the fact that almost every Nordic German also carries in him blood
elements of some other race, then we understand what a wealth of manifestations
of Nordic humanity there is in our folk. Therefore, the level of achievement of
the races can be raised or lowered by different propagation within the races. A
higher development of the Nordic race and thus of the German folk therefore
requires the formation of a selection within the Nordic race. The bearers of the
best heredity must unite to form an order whose most important task is to see to
it that the most efficient members of the race reproduce most strongly.
The wide range and the
great diversity in heredity and appearance within the Nordic race makes this
selection process possible. the selection process which leads to higher
development. The values according to which the selection is carried out result
from the nature of the of the Nordic race; the desired image of the German man
of Nordic blood is the goal to which it strives for.
The selection extends to
the whole German folk and its Nordic blood heritage, it does not separate it
into a layer of the leaders and one of the led. On the contrary, it forms the
unifying bond and the formative core of the folk community. The selective orders
of the past could therefore not last and could not fulfil their deepest meaning,
because they either detached themselves from the folk or were too one sidedly
bound to a specific purpose or profession. The separation from the folk
community carries with it the danger that the fullness of the Nordic race will
no longer be grasped through limitation and that through inbreeding the inferior
will also be nurtured and inherited, while high-quality racial hereditary traits
will be lost in the selection layer. The Order, whose task in National Socialist
Germany is selection, will accept all those. The Order, whose task in National
Socialist Germany is selection, will accept all carriers of high-quality Nordic
heredity who are willing and able to place themselves in the service of the
higher breeding of our folk by accepting greater obligations. As development
progresses, its aims will become ever higher and its demands ever more
stringent.
Every valuable human race
forms certain types out of the wealth of its appearances, which embody
individual sides of its nature in a special way. The German Order of Knights,
the Hanseatic patrician class, the Prussian officer corps formed such a
selection of typical Nordic humanity. The National Socialist Order of Selection
will encompass all the valuable types of the Nordic race; it will form further
types from within itself and thus bring the whole wealth of the Nordic soul, the
whole fullness of the physical and spiritual hereditary traits to development
and enhancement.
The
Order of the SS
The order-laws issued by
the Reichsführer-SS include everything necessary for the formation of a
selection which must be the standard bearer of the future of the National
Socialist Reich. The SS is an association of Nordic men selected according to
special criteria. The physical ideal of the Nordic race determines selection.
Every selection must start from the body, because the living body is the
manifestation of the soul, is the carrier of the heredity. There is no Nordic
soul, no Nordic spirit and no Nordic character without the Nordic body. The
increase of the Nordic blood portion can only take place from the physical. That
is why the selection order of the SS must extend to those German men who bear
the best Nordic imprint in their physical appearance.
For the members of the SS
there is the “marriage permit”, which is “granted or refused solely on the basis
of racial and hereditary health considerations”. The wife of the SS man must
also be a carrier of good Nordic heredity; for only from the marriage of Nordic
people may we expect children of Nordic race. The prerequisite of every higher
racial development is the right choice of spouse. The greater the number of
hereditarily valuable clans of German, Nordic-determined kind, the greater the
guarantee for the upbringing and increased performance of our folk. The SS man,
out of responsibility for the future of his folk, takes upon himself a duty
which is not imposed on the folk community as a whole, namely that not he alone,
but the Order, decides on the choice of his wife. Mockery, scorn and
misunderstanding will not deter him, for anyone who wants to see this “regulated
choice of spouse” as a “human breeding establishment” only shows that he is a
stranger to life itself and is caught up in a spirit that has detached itself
from life and the eternal laws of nature. It is that racially alien and
instinctless spirit which knows only the erotic instinct as decisive for the
choice of marriage, which does not know that in the choice of a marriage partner
only the racial instinct as a shaped and formative instinct may show the way.
In reality, by the way, the
majority of marriages neither in the present, nor even less in the past, are
concluded on the basis of the erotic instinct. The choice of marriage is and was
often made according to aspects that have just as pernicious an effect as the
rule of the chaotic instinct, namely according to the property, class or
denomination of the spouse. Binding the marriage licence for SS men to racial
and hereditary health considerations also prevents marriage on the basis of
class, material and denominational grounds. In reality, therefore, it
re-establishes the natural soil on which alone a healthy marriage grows, in
which the spouses are united by genuine love, which is only present where the
instinct is pure and fully effective. The racial instinct speaks all the more
clearly and powerfully the sooner the man and the woman come to marriage after
full maturity.
The Order of the SS places
the choice of spouse of its members under the responsibility for the future of
the folk. It goes without saying that every SS man also has the obligation to
marry and to found a family with many children. The bearers of the best Nordic
heredity must multiply the most within the folk community. The increase in the
physical and spiritual fitness of a folk is bound up with the increase in the
number of children in their physical and spiritual families. “The question of
many children is not a private matter for the individual, but a duty to his
ancestors and to our folk.” The selection strata of the folks very often did not
promote the founding of families and the abundance of children; for the German
Order of Knights, for example, celibacy was the order's duty. In this way, the
meaning of selection is reversed: instead of increasing the valuable heredity of
the folks, its transmission is prevented and the most valuable clans are
condemned to extinction. The SS is therefore not an order of men, but the
conjured community of the clans of SS men, which renews and expands itself from
generation to generation.
In this way, the Order
creates the possibility of applying selection to its own offspring. This is the
only guarantee that the Nordic selection layer formed by the clan community will
remain a selection for all future times.
Out of the deepest
obligation to his own Nordic race, the Reichsführer-SS issued the order of
October 28, 1939, pointing out the danger to the Nordic heredity of our folk
evoked by the war, namely that many of the best young men fall without their
heredity living on in their children. “Only he can die quietly who knows that
his clan, that all that his ancestors and he himself have wanted and striven
for, finds its continuation in the children.” The limits of perhaps otherwise
necessary bourgeois laws and customs” cannot apply to our young soldiers who
prove themselves as whole men out on the fronts and daily stake their lives for
the future of the German folk. This future is then only fully secured when they,
who lay down their lives, live on in their children.
Selection of
Nordic-destined men, choice of spouses according to racial criteria, marriage
obligation and abundance of children are the biological foundations on which the
Order of the SS is built and through which it initiates the higher development
of our folk and secures it for the future. In order for it to endure as an
Order, it must also have an inner, spiritual bond, a community of a special kind
must unite the members of the Order, the spirit of common obligation must fill
each individual man.
The common goal is the
selection of the best Nordic humanity, the increase of the Nordic blood share
through abundance of children, in which the SS man and his wife see their
highest happiness and the meaning of their lives, is the development of all the
powers inherent in the Nordic heredity and the undiminished transmission of the
dispositions to the future generations.
The Order of the SS unites
in the common National Socialist worldview. The SS is a following of Adolf
Hitler ready to the last devotion, it is a conspiratorial order of the National
Socialist worldview.
The Order is united by the
common faith that flows from the Nordic attitude of the soul. For the Nordic man
there is only one faith, which is in harmony with his reason and his thinking.
That is why he has always fought the hardest battle against priesthood and
priestly deceit, against mystification, superstition and mediocrity, which
stands between him and the divine workings of Providence. From the depths of the
Nordic soul, he feels directly connected to the divine will to order the
all-embracing life that reveals itself in nature, in his folk, in his clan and
in his blood. The confession of this inherent faith is the touchstone for
membership of the Order, for it is in the struggle for freedom of spirit that
the Nordic soul proves itself.
The Reichsführer-SS,
through the SS Honour Law, united the Order by a common conception of honour
anchored in the essence of the Nordic race. “The honour of the German,
determined by the racial consciousness and the custom of the folk, guarded by
the individual, valued by the whole German folk as the most precious jewel and
the highest good on earth has been since ancient times the epitome of loyalty,
loyalty to oneself, to the kinsmen of the same blood, to one’s fellow swordsman,
to one’s comrade, to the Fuhrer of the folk, to blood and soil. ” (Reichsführer-SS
H. Himmler.)
The high character values
of the Nordic race, to which the Reichsführer-SS commits his men, give the will
of the Order members a common direction that binds them all. Besides honour and
loyalty, it is the idea of freedom, namely the freedom to do what our best,
innermost nature drives us to do, the freedom to serve the Fuhrer and the Reich.
Freedom is joined by obedience, the unconditional obedience of the political
soldier to his Fuhrer, which is nevertheless a free obedience, since Fuhrer and
followers are of one blood and therefore of one mind. Fighting spirit and
toughness are the most original characteristics of the Nordic race, toughness as
a service to one's own body, a controlled way of life, because only he who
remains master of his own life makes himself master of the enemy. “Whoever wants
to live must fight, and whoever does not want to fight in this world of eternal
struggle does not deserve to live. ” (Adolf Hitler.) Deeply rooted in the Nordic
nature is also the respect for the personality of the blood and folk comrades,
which grants them the same honour as itself and holds their property sacred.
The prerequisite for
admission to the Order of the SS is the Nordic blood heritage. However,
selection is followed by probation through performance; for it is only in
performance that it becomes apparent whether the selection was fully valid and
correct. Performance, military service and parenthood are obligatory values for
the SS man.
Part of the essence of an
order is the bond of a particularly deep and strong comradeship, which not only
embraces the SS men but also includes their clans. In the “Lebensborn”, the
Order of the SS has created an institution which supports hereditary-
biologically valuable, large families, which cares for racially and
hereditary-biologically valuable expectant mothers and their children, even if
they are illegitimate, which supports the wives of the SS men with advice and
deeds, The law of the Reichsführer-SS of 9 November 1937 makes it the sacred
task of the SS, as a conjured community of the clans of the SS men, to assist
the wives and children of deceased comrades in every way. In this way, every SS
man and his relatives feel embedded in a strong community on which they can rely
in every situation in life.
The clan community of the
Order will also create a special form of education and has already done the
preparatory work for this. The education of the younger generation has proved to
be one of the best means of binding the Order in various Orders of the German
past, because the youth grows up in comradeship and, at the most malleable age,
absorbs the spirit of the Order into which it will one day enter. An increased
sense of duty and a heightened sense of honour will be the goal of this
education. At an early age, the youth must become aware of their responsibility
towards their own person, towards their clan, race and folk. A purely
German-Nordic spirit will determine the physical, character and spiritual
education of the Order's youth.
The deepest meaning of the
SS, to be an order of German, Nordic-dominated men, includes in itself the
special task of the SS to be guardians and caretakers of German peasantry and
soldiery, for the Nordic race will only be able to exist as a peasant and
warrior race. That is why the Order leads its members back to the land as far as
possible, that is why it takes on the difficult but for our folk so important
task of settling the newly won East. The SS Wehrbauer (soldier-peasant) is the
forerunner of this eastern settlement, in him peasantry and militancy prove
themselves at the same time, here the man can steel himself in constant battle,
so that from the soldier-peasantry the best offspring will arise for the Order.
As an order of
Nordic-determined men, the SS also has the task of initiating the community of
all the Germanic folks. The Reichsführer-SS is instructed by the Fuhrer (order
of 12 August 1942) to conduct negotiations with all Germanic folks in Denmark,
Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands within the sphere of the NSDAP, its branches
and affiliated associations. The SS is the bearer of the Nordic idea in Europe,
it calls upon the best of the Germanic folks across state and national borders
to join its ranks and take up the fight for the preservation of Nordic blood.
The laws of the SS will not only determine the racial structure of the German
folk, they will also contribute to that of all the Germanic folks of Europe.
The Order of the SS does
not want to be a leadership class, but a select class of Nordic people, it does
not strive for a new gentility in the folk community, which would one day have
to tear it apart again, it stands under the law “I serve” and wants for itself
only higher duties, greater commitment and harder struggle. He who makes the
highest demands on himself, who works hard on himself, who despises lavish
living, is called to lead a folk.
The
words of our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler point the way for the SS and its leadership
task: “The political leadership of a nation must seek the most essential
distinction from the rest of the folk not in higher enjoyment, but in harder
self-discipline.”
