by Dr. Gerhard Wagner
The world has been most interested in the
policies and actions of National Socialism that have to do with its new
approach to the concepts of race and population.
From my experience, one can
divide those who respond to the New Germany’s measures in these regards with a
lack of understanding, uncertainty, opposition, or even hostility, into several
groups.
One group consists of émigrés
and ignoramuses. I group them together because we are going to ignore them.
Even the gods fight in vain against ignorance and stupidity, and émigré lies
have become so outrageous and tasteless that they find ever fewer gullible
listeners abroad.
Another group consists of
scholars and scientists, a group steadily becoming smaller — even abroad — as
is clear from the most varied decisions of foreign and international scientific
societies that agree with our racial hygiene measures and our genetic policies.
We can only say to these learned critics that our genetic and racial thinking
stems in the end not from our scientific, but rather from our National
Socialist convictions, and that it was not learned scientists, but rather our
Führer Adolf Hitler, and he alone, who made genetic and racial thinking the
center of our National Socialist worldview and the foundation of the rebuilding
of our people’s state. The doctrines of blood and race are not first of all an
important and interesting piece of biological science to us, but rather above
all else a political-ideological attitude that fundamentally determines our
attitudes to things and to the questions of life.
More important than these two
groups, however, are those who reject or oppose us because they hold to another
worldview.
Those who base their
materialist image of the world on the doctrines of a liberal or Marxist era
cannot understand how we can have dethroned their idols of “the economy and
Mammon,” replacing them at the center of our National Socialist process of
construction and renewal with the German man, with the German people.
The other groups with a
worldview warn their sheep in Christian piety, and in the name of both
confessions, of the errors of National Socialist genetic and racial doctrines,
and of the errors of the measures taken by the Third Reich. I have this request
to those who, in contrast to the communist and Marxist foreign apostles,
overtly and covertly go about their business at home: When you don the worthy
priestly robes of either confession and claim that “your kingdom is not of this
world,” please concern yourselves with your kingdom and leave to us the
responsibility for the kingdom of this world. Allow us to form our German state
according to our laws and needs.
My fellow party members, you
know the reasons for our National Socialist population and racial policies. We
want to rescue a dying people from the edge of the abyss and lead it back to
the paths that will lead, according to human reason, to a future in the coming
millennium. We must oppose the three great dangers of racial and biological
decline that have repeatedly destroyed states, peoples, and cultures in the
past if they did not succeed in resisting them in good time. We must therefore
contend with these three issues: the decline in the birth rate, the increase in
sick and unfit genes in our people, and the mixing of the blood of our people
with that of foreign and unrelated peoples, in particular with Jewish blood.
When I spoke here a year ago
about the necessity of a law to protect German blood, none of us imagined that
a few days later the Führer would present his people with the brilliant
Nuremberg Laws, the “Reich Citizenship Law” and the “Law for the Protection of
German Blood and German Honor.” The law to protect German blood created clarity
in the Jewish Question, and the Reich citizenship law fulfilled points 4 and 5
of the National Socialist program.
Points 4 and 5 state:
“Only racial comrades may be
citizens. A racial comrade can only be someone of German blood, without regard
to religious confession. No Jew can therefore be a citizen.”
“He who is not a citizen may
live in Germany only as a guest, and must abide by the laws for foreigners.”
The Nuremberg Laws replaced
the concept of “citizen of the state” with “citizen of the Reich.” That by
itself had only formal significance. It did not by itself realize the demands
of the party program.
However, the Nuremberg Laws
make further infiltration of Jewish blood into the German national body
impossible. To National Socialists, whose racial standpoint is anchored in blood,
the wide-ranging scope of this historic decision makes all the other political
and economic aspects of laws regarding the Jews of secondary importance.
The Nuremberg Laws would have
been incomplete and unfinished had they not dealt with the status of the
so-called German-Jewish half breeds, that is, the half and quarter Jews. This
bastardized mixed race is not wanted, and the goal of the legislation is to
make it disappear — both biologically and politically — as soon as possible.
The marriage regulations will lead to that. A quarter Jew may only marry
someone of full German blood, and a half Jew, provided he has not chosen to
belong to the Jewish religion, or as we prefer, married a Jewish partner and
thereby joined the Jewish people, may marry a German only with the permission
of the Ministry of the Interior and the Deputy Führer [Rudolf Hess’ office].
It came as no surprise to us,
indeed it was what we expected, that the Nuremberg Laws were a welcome occasion
for the Jews and their allies to scream about the “German barbarians.” It is
not worth the time to look into all these varied complaints. Our handling of
the Jewish question is a matter of domestic German policy, but we do hope that
many of our foreign Olympic guests were able to see for themselves how badly
things are going for the “Poor Jews” in terrible Nazi Germany.
To those who think that our
regulations on the marriage of half Jews in Germany are unreasonable — or
depending on their attitudes, inhumane or unchristian — I can only say that if
the church can demand celibacy of hundreds of thousands, we believe before God
and our consciences that it is good for our German people for us to forbid
200,000 half Jews to marry Germans.
I can well understand those
German racial comrades who want to refuse any mixture of foreign Jewish blood
at all, and who cannot understand the marriage regulations of the Nuremberg
Laws that permit marriage to quarter Jews. To them I say that we have
confidence that our 67 million people will be able to absorb the 100,000
quarter Jews — there are no more than that — without significant damage.
But those who believe that the
Jewish question has been fully resolved in Germany by the Nuremberg Laws must
know that the battle goes on. World Jewry itself is seeing to that. We will be
victorious only when each German racial comrade knows that it is a matter of
our very existence. The party’s educational and training work seems to me more
necessary than ever before, since even some party comrades see these matters as
no longer relevant or important.
People are always saying that
our National Socialist racial thinking is materialistic, unchristian,
chauvinistic, imperialistic, and that it leads to the defamation of foreign
races and peoples. The opposite is the case. We believe that our racial policy
is the surest guarantee for mutual respect and for peaceful coexistence between
the peoples of this world. Someone of another race is different from me both in
body and soul, for both are important. This makes no value judgment about other
races. We are too conscious of the relationship between our own blood and our
own race to presume to make such a judgment, which could only come from a
standpoint that thought itself above race and humanity.
Scientifically, the
differences between races and peoples are incontrovertible. That is the
foundation, the justification, and also the obligation of any racial policy,
without which, according to our view, Europe and the whole world can never be
at peace. National Socialism would never use military action to forcibly take
over nations or populations that differ from us in blood and soul, since they
would forever remain foreign elements within our state. We therefore reject
chauvinism and imperialism, since we grant to other races on this earth the
same right we claim for ourselves, namely the right to form our own life and
environment according to the necessities and laws of our nature. Racial policy
is thus to us a policy of peace.
Finally, a word to those who
reject our racial policy as “unchristian.” God has chosen to create humanity in
the form of various races, as he has done in all of the rest of nature. Those
who ignore race and its laws are not acting in a Christian manner, but rather
we claim to be following the will of God, who has created the various racial
types of this world so that each may maintain the greatest possible racial
purity that will enable to develop its particular strengths.
I turn next to the second
process of biological decline that has long been evident in our people: an
improper selection that has neglected the most valuable elements in an almost
criminal manner while providing for and supporting the inferior with endless
resources.
The millions and billions that
we have spent and the past, and the about one billion marks that we sacrifice
today for the care of the genetically ill, is a squandering of our national
resources that we National Socialists cannot justify when we consider the needs
of the healthy population. Healthy working class families with numerous
children today earn only enough for the necessities of life, which means that
it is irresponsible that the state must provide the money for some genetically
ill families who may have several family members in institutions costing
thousands of marks annually.
The National Socialist state
cannot repair the failings of the past, but through the “Law for the Prevention
of Genetically Ill Offspring,” it has seen to it that in the future the
inferior will not be able to produce more inferior children, saving the German
people from a steady stream of new moral and economic burdens resulting from
genetic illnesses.
I discussed these matters in
greater detail at the last two party rallies, so I will here respond only to
several objections that have been made that might worry or concern harmless and
gullible souls, though the objections are outbalanced by constantly growing
praise from the whole world.
To those who claim that we act
in an unchristian way, sinning against the will of God, we reply that we are
convinced that we are acting consistent with the will of the creator when we
prevent unhealthy life from being propagated, saving children and their
children from new and enormous misery. The creator himself established the laws
of life, which harshly and brutally let all that is unworthy of life perish to
make room for the strong and healthy to whom the future belongs. This is
necessary for the preservation and development of all that lives on this earth.
Even more absurd is the
objection that our law on the sterilization of the genetically ill permits
their sterilization without their explicit consent. We think it would be
ridiculous to allow the genetically ill, who may lack intelligence — as with
the feeble-minded — or free will — as in the case of the mentally ill — to make
this decision, particularly since we already control their use of money and
other dead things. It would be absurd to leave them with far more important
decisions on procreation and children.
As for you critics from the
communist-Marxist camp, we refuse your the right to judge whether we are acting
correctly when we prevent inferior life as long as you promote the unlimited
right to abortion when the growing life is valuable, whenever the mother, a
doctor, or someone else wishes it.
I believe that we have a good
conscience before the world when we eliminate life that is unworthy of life,
particularly when we see everywhere that the poisonous seed of communism is
senselessly slaughtering thousands of valuable people.
But the National Socialist
state is interested in more than merely preventing the spread of unfit genes.
Just as important, indeed even more important, are the measures that aim to
care for and promote the nation’s valuable genes.
The most important measure
since the last party rally is the “Law for the Protection of the Genetic Health
of the German People” of 18 October 1935. As a “healthy marriage act,” it
returns marriage to its real purpose — producing healthy children. It provides
for careful marriage counseling to ensure that people will marry only if it can
be expected that their children will be healthy — genetically healthy.
A large number of other
measures promote health and physical ability, maintain the military and
productive readiness of the German people, and advance these by all possible
means.
The duty of the state is to
protect the people’s health through legal measures, and to ensure that these
policies are implemented. The task of the movement is to win the support of the
people for these government policies, and to reestablish the sense of
responsibility people have toward themselves, their families, and their people.
The rights and necessities of the whole people supersede the right of the
individual to his own body.
The state is responsible for
ensuring health, the party is responsible for providing leadership in the area.
The two reinforce and support the same goal: the maintenance and improvement of
the strength of the German people.
Successful leadership in the
area of health is primarily in the hands of the approximately 20,000 expert
physicians with a reliable worldview who are organized in the Office for
People’s Health. They are the foundation of the confidence which must exist
between those who will lead and those who are to be led. We do not believe this
confidence develops in the offices of state physicians, but rather only in
personal contact between the individual citizen and a doctor whom he trusts.
Our ideal, therefore, is not based on the laws, regulations, and rulings of
experienced state doctors, but rather in the German people’s doctor, the old
family doctor, who respects nature and knows how to use its healing powers —
which have often been criminally ignored in the past. Of course, he also
understands the methods of academic medicine. Since he understands racial
hygiene, he will never forget the people as a whole when he treats the
individual. Prevention is more important to the doctor than healing! He wants
to be a faithful aide not only in time of sickness, but also a counselor and a
friend when someone is healthy. He is happier with a child who runs toward him
with joy than with the most interesting and perhaps the most lucrative
sickness.
I know that confidence in the
German doctor suffered in many places in the past. I know that a comprehensive
restructuring of a profession does not happen overnight, but rather requires a
reasonable time. But I also know that an ever growing number of our German
doctors are conscious of the great responsibility they have in the front lines
of the battle for the strength and preservation of our people’s blood, the most
valuable treasure we possess, and the one thing that — once lost — can never be
regained.
History teaches us in the long
run peoples are not destroyed by economics or politics, by natural
catastrophes, wars or inner struggles, but rather the last and ultimate cause
behind every people’s decline throughout history has a biological foundation
that broke its strength and health. Many peoples have suffered heavy blows,
including huge costs in living racial comrades, yet recovered within a few
generations because their fertility was unharmed and their will to life
remained healthy and strong. How often have healthy children sprung from the
wombs of a defeated people and grown to become avengers and liberators who led
their people to new greatness and to new triumphs.
Strength and health are given
but once to a people, and once lost, they can never be regained, unlike
destroyed cities and ruined fields.
In this regard, it is valuable
to look at conditions in the Russian Soviet Union.
Although for understandable reasons
it is not reported in official statistics and reports, various announcements
and newspaper articles make it clear that heath conditions in Russia are
becoming more and more catastrophic.
“Communist Pravda” writes on
24 February 1936: All the hospitals in Moscow were built over 20 or 30 years
ago. No major repairs have been made for decades. The ceiling and walls of the
department of infectious diseases were last painted in 1925. Hospitals are
constantly short of needles, smocks, hand towels, as well as body and hand
soap. In the leading Moscow model clinic, the bedding is tattered, and the
mattresses, as in most hospitals, are entirely worn out.
“Pravda” of 7 July 1935
complains about criminal conduct against the health of workers and provides
distressing numbers about illnesses resulting from unhealthy working conditions
at the Moscow factory for measuring instruments during the first half of the
year 1934.
It is also striking that,
according to a report from Louis Fisher in the “Neuer Tagebuch” in 1936, the
number of births in Moscow has steadily declined in recent years from 30.7 to
15.3, that is by more than half, and the number of abortions has increased by a
factor of six. It is one and a half times as large as the number of births.
These reports make it clear
that the Russian leaders have allowed unbelievable damage to be done to their
people’s health that will have bitter consequences for this people and for its
military strength. To these Russian communist leaders, their people are only puppets
in the battle for power, be that a struggle between various Jewish cliques or
the struggle to establish communist-Jewish world domination. The well-known
Franciscan priest and sociologist Duffee, who is certainly not guilty of any
great love for Germany, wrote in the “New York Times” of 14 July 1936 that he
had come to the conclusion, after six years of research, that communism was
only a facade for international capitalism. [Duffee was a Catholic high school
teacher, not a particularly well-known scholar, and the NYT article mentioned
was actually dated 12 July 1936.] We can only hope, in the interests of
humanity, that this knowledge spreads more and more throughout the world.
My party comrades, we must
understand that all the measures of our population policy that I have already
described to you only make sense when the corresponding population is at hand,
and the birth rate is sufficient to keep the population at the necessary level.
The German people grew from 42
million to 67 million between 1870 and today, but not through an increase in
the birth rate, but only because the death rate constantly fell, resulting in
an increase in the average life span. Aside from the fact that this shift leads
to an undesired increase in the average age of the population, the death rate
cannot go on falling forever, since we cannot abolish death and illness.
If the birth rate of the last
decade were to continue — between 1900 and 1933, the annual number of births
fell from two million to one million, which means it has fallen by half — a
substantial decline in Germany’s population would over time be inevitable. The
German Office of Statistics estimates that the population of the German Reich
would fall to about 47 million by the year 2000, and continue to fall thereafter,
until another, stronger people would move into the empty space and our Germany
would vanish from history like the old Greeks and other cultures of the past.
You know that since the
takeover of power, there has been a happy improvement in the catastrophic
population decline that had until then prevailed. The number of marriages,
which had fallen to 517,000 in 1932, rose to 639,000 in 1933, 739,000 in 1934,
and 651,000 in 1935.
The number of births per
thousand reached its lowest point in 1933 at 14.7, or 971,000. In 1934 it rose
for the first time in a long while to 1,197,000, or 18 per thousand, an
increase of about a quarter. Despite a substantial decline in the number of
marriages, the number of births rose again to 1,261,000, or 18.9 per thousand
of the population. That is a very good situation that we can be more than proud
of, since it shows unexpected and unrequested confidence in the government
leadership and in the political and economic future.
Still, those voices both at
home and abroad — I remember, for example, a recent article in Mussolini’s
paper “Popolo d’Italia” — are premature in drawing the conclusion that the
German people has already resolved its population crisis. Aside from the fact
that a birth rate of 20 per thousand is necessary to maintain our population, a
figure that we have not yet reached, we have to expect a significant reduction
in the number of marriages in coming years, which is the result of a not
insignificant decline in the war and postwar generations that are now reaching
marrying age. Thirty years of a declining birth rate have cost Germany around
13 million unborn children. From the standpoint of racial hygiene, a
particularly painful and serious loss is the 3 to 3.5 million unborn children
who would have been born to the best of our people, those who remained on the
field of honor. They now would have been married and had children, the mothers
and fathers of a strong generation that is now missing.
The statistics of the first
quarter of 1936 show that the declining marriage rate of 1935 is continuing.
There were 10.4% fewer marriages than in the first quarter of 1935. At the same
time, the statistics also prove the very happy fact that, just as last year,
the decline of the birth rate has not been parallel to the decline in the
marriage rate. It fell by only 1.4%, a bit less than last year.
All of our efforts and
policies must aim at maintaining these favorable birth statistics, and
strengthening them.
The critical question is
whether we can succeed in reaching an average of three to four live births per
marriage. Only that will guarantee the survival of our people. The duty of the
state is to provide legal and especially economic measures to equalize the
burdens that today fall particularly heavily on families with many children.
The task of the movement will continue to teach the people through a powerful
campaign of education and enlightenment that the path to the future leads
through a generation of healthy children, a generation large enough to maintain
— and if necessary — defend what their parents and ancestors have won and
created. The deepest causes of the decline in the birth rate are not economic.
They are spiritual, they are rooted in the hostile attitude of the past era to
families and children. If we do not succeed in changing this internal attitude
of the German people, all our population policy efforts — however generous they
may be — will be useless and without hope.
Only
when the German people join its powerful political will to self assertion to a
determined affirmation of its will to life, to the maintenance of its
population both in number and in kind, will it guarantee its military strength,
its freedom, its honor, and its future for all time.