Artworks by Ernst von Dombrowski

(12.09.1896 - 14.07.1985)

Postcards Collection – RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst / Reich Labour Service)

Part II

The Reich in Photos – The Führer's Visit in Italy, May 1938

Part III – Rome

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 652 – 03 March 1943

- German Tanks Take on US and British in Tunisia;

- German Troops Retreat on the Eastern Front;

Hitler Sets His Hand to the Plough

Source: Germany’s Hitler (Chapter XII) - by Heinz A. Heinz

“Nothing of importance in life is merely given to man. Everything must be struggled for. Thus the uplifting of a nation does not come lightly, by chance or fate, but must be the outcome of effort.”–Adolf Hitler.

For fifteen years Hitler had directed his Movement; during the whole length of this period had he, in thousands of meetings and assemblies, sought to inculcate the masses with his ideas. At length the German people had come to look to him for their resuscitation, for their salvation from the menace of Bolshevism, and they trusted that once in power he could, and would, make good his promises.

When Hitler came to power he did, indeed, proceed at once to carry out the purposes and promises of a programme conceived so many years before. We have seen him working it out, point by point, boiling it down, pinning it down under twenty-five “Headings” in Anton Drexler’s little Wohnzimmer (living-room) while Frau Drexler gets the frugal supper. We have seen him submitting it point by point to the Munich public in the Hofbräusaal, when hundreds of dissentient beer mugs were hurled at his head. We have seen him pacing up and down his narrow room at Landsberg pouring out the whys and wherefores of it all to Rudolf Hess, who rattles as hard as he can go on the typewriter to get the teeming content of this energetic brain into some sort of literary order.

And now, after fifteen years of struggle, he saw himself at long length on the threshold of achievement.

Together with Hitler two other National-Socialists were included in the new Cabinet, Herr Wilhelm Frick as Minister of the Interior, and Captain Hermann Goering as Minister without Portfolio, and Commissary for Air.

With the coming of this new Government, and the setting aside of the old duality as between Prussia and the rest of the Reich, was the basis laid for a universal German policy, and for the elimination of all elements inimical to German life.

In his first address to the people the Chancellor called for a sense of national discipline. He asked for four years in which to make good the blunders of the post-War administrators, in which to re-erect the State, in which to cope with the problem of unemployment; in which to redeem German peasantry from its misery and help-lessness.

In the night of February 27th-28th, 1933, the Communists set fire to the Reichstag. A few days previously a raid on the catacombs of the Karl Liebknecht House in Berlin had brought to light a great quantity of material which proved beyond cavil that the forces of Bolshevism were girding themselves for a mass offensive in Germany. The Chancellor replied by draconian measures to ensure the safety of the State.

On the evening before the great elections of March, on the “Day of the Awakened Nation,” the Chancellor addressed the entire people by means of the radio. The result of his speech was to renew in every heart in Germany the will to succeed, the passion for freedom, the sense of nationality. Everywhere bells were pealed, bonfires were ignited on the hills, flags bedecked the streets in every town and village–as Horst Wessel, indeed, had predicted in his song!

The National-Socialists brought off a complete and overwhelming victory on March 5th with a return of 17 300 000 votes, and a win of two hundred and eighty- eight seats in the Reichstag. Adolf Hitler, who headed the voting list, entered the Parliament House, himself, for the first time. The Government could count on a majority of 52 per cent. These results at the poll inducted the “National-Socialist Revolution”– perhaps the most bloodless Revolution known in history. The National-Socialists, everywhere, “took over.”

In Munich the Minister President Held boasted that were Hitler to send a Reichs Commissary thither, he would have him arrested on the frontier. When, however, on March 9th, the Reichs Commissary, in the person of General Ritter von Epp, duly appeared, the Minister President immediately climbed down and withdrew from the scene of action.

Herr Esser, who took part in these proceedings, told me how minutely and exactly all had been arranged beforehand. Everything went by clockwork, according to plan, without the least confusion or miscarriage. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “we had been prepared for a good deal more opposition, Held had been so full of threats and fulminations.”

The opening of the Reichstag on March 21st was an act symbolising the unity of the entire German people. Not less historically significant was the hand-clasp exchanged between the aged and revered General Field Marshal von Hindenburg and the new young Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. The dignity of immemorial tradition extended a welcome to the younger generation straining towards a new and happier future… .

At the first session of the new Reichstag an “Enabling Bill” was passed whereby Hitler was made absolute Dictator for a period of four years. The purpose of this was to free him from the shackles and delays of parliamentary procedure in bringing his programme into immediate action. We shall see in a subsequent chapter how, and to what first ends, he availed himself of this measure.

Another important step towards the general weaving together of all the aspects of government was the appointment everywhere of new Reichstatthalter, i.e. of Provincial Premiers. These, Hitler suggested, should be nominated by the President. The Chancellor himself is Reichstatthalter for Prussia in order personally to bind that country and the whole Reich together. The duties of these Provincial Premiers, as they may be called, are numerous and important.

In April came the law which would recapture for those of German birth and extraction the majority of representation in the learned professions and in official life. This law, bearing heavily as it did upon the Jews, makes exception in their case for all those who had fought for Germany in the War, and for those whose fathers and sons had so fallen.

Then came ordinances to regulate school matters. In no direction more than in this is the new spirit and bent of National Socialism to be discerned. The High Schools were overcrowded. Their overflow to the Universities had to be facilitated. At the same time Hitler resolved to check the superfluity of girls seeking facilities for the higher education.

An entire book could be written of Hitler’s theory of education; on his estimate of the place and function of woman in the State; and on the great youth movement resultant from both, known in Germany as Hitlerjugend. He says the most important thing for girls is the right training of the body, next that of character, and third that of the intellect. A striking proof of the self-sacrificing enthusiasm and unanimity with which such data are accepted by the female intelligentsia in Germany to-day has, for instance, been afforded by the willingness of the University women of Heidelberg largely to forgo, at Hitler’s behest, and in favour of men, the learned professional careers to which they had looked forward.

To those who imagine that Hitler has set back the clock five hundred years for German womanhood there is this to be answered: If German girls do not retire from competitive life with men, there will be neither work nor food for either in another few decades. A country with a dense and growing population and no colonies, must narrowly restrict its labour market, in the learned professions as well as in the trades. Again, there is no parallel to be drawn between the type of woman and the numbers of women frequenting the Universities in England and America to those in Germany. The German Universities–and their name is legion–were swarming with women. Some went thither for the purposes of serious study. For those who do not go thither for the purposes of serious study, it is obvious enough that the quicker they are driven home again the better.

In May the German Labour Front took the place of the old system of Trade Unions. It would require many pages to give an adequate idea of this reorganisation in Germany of the relationships between employer and employee. The idea underlying it was typical of the “Socialism” in Hitler’s programme.

By the time summer had come round, most of the previously existing separate (and highly antagonistic) political parties in the State had ceased to exist. The Social Democrats were suppressed, and for the most part the rest extinguished themselves. A law was passed forbidding the formation of fresh parties. The public were relieved at last to be free of the veritable pest of so many parties and groups, and the Gordian knot of German disunity was cut at one blow.

Then came the organisation of the air, both for purposes of ordinary communication and for defence. This Ministry was confided to General Goering.

The lot of the ordinary man in the street, the everyday person, claimed its share of the Chancellor’s attention. A law was passed, which, among other things, aimed at making life easier for the weak and unfit, for those impoverished by the War, for War widows and orphans.

Hitler looks to early and healthy marriage, State aid for struggling young families, to assist in stamping out many of those social abominations which St. Paul says should not even be named among Christians, but which have been more hideously rife in the world since the Great War than at any previous period.

Severe measures were enacted to put down immorality, and further, a law was framed with the object of preventing unfit children coming into the world.

Hitler’s much discussed Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, passed on July 14th, 1933, is based upon the German policy of “regeneration”(These particulars are taken from an article published by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, in News in Brief Vol. 2, No. I, page 5.), which aims at promoting the propagation of valuable, innately healthy children, while preventing an offspring of hereditarily diseased persons in so far as those descendants are likely to be of inferior quality. Considering the fact that the average ratio of children of healthy families to diseased families is from 1 to 2 to 5 to 7, the necessity of such a policy seems clear.

The following statements, taken from the Zentralblatt für Reichsversicherung und Reichsversorgung (Central Gazette for Federal Insurance and Pensions), show to what extent the German people is affected by hereditarily diseased persons, in the sense of the law, their number being estimated at 400 000 (one-half of them innately feeble-minded). On the average, each diseased person costs the community which sends him to an institution, RM. 1 482 per annum. Since insane persons live in institutions 7 ½ years on the average, they require an expenditure of RM. 11,600. It is a conservative calculation that the German communities have to spend more than 170 millions of marks a year on their insane alone.

“ This does not include the expenditures for diseased children a part of whom are attending auxiliary schools. Every pupil of an auxiliary school is costing the Government RM. 573 per annum, compared to a maximum of 230 for a healthy pupil. For the whole of the Reich the expenditures for auxiliary schools amount to about 40 millions of RM. per annum. Direct expenditures on hereditarily diseased persons in the Reich, states and communities, amount to at least 350 million RM. a year in all. We have to add to that sum all of the expenditures made by charitable organisations and institutions, by churches and by private persons; also the costs of execution which amount to about 100 million RM. a year. Some institutions, where insane criminals are kept, show quotas of RM. 20 a day for every inmate. The significance of such figures will seem the more evident if we realise that many healthy, industrious families cannot afford a quarter of that sum as a daily expenditure for their entire household.”

One can gather from all this how far-seeing the law is which provides for the sterilisation of the hereditarily defective when so far as medical science can predict, only further severe bodily or mental abnormality is to be anticipated. The absence of the birth of those unfitted for life relieves those upon whom their subsistence would depend from indescribable suffering and unremitting sacrifice.

In spite of all that has been written and said to the contrary the action of the Chancellor in unifying the Protestant sects of Germany has had no anti-Christian significance. “The rock bed foundation of the German Evangelical Church,” says the Instrument which achieves this purpose, “is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as witnessed for us in the Sacred Scriptures, and as enlightened afresh by the Confession of the Reformation.”

The Chancellor sought by a Concordat with Rome to define the relationships and rights of the Catholic Church and the State respectively, so as to secure smooth working in both spheres.

The Party Day in Nuremberg, 1933, witnessed such a demonstration of loyalty to Adolf Hitler as had never yet been seen. For the first time the Party Day had become a State function and had developed into an assembly of the nation.

Hitler can never lay stress enough on the importance of the agricultural classes, of the plough-driving peasant. Upon them, and upon him, is built the superstructure of the State. Agriculture is the source of the country’s strength.

All the great cities would soon be nothing but arid deserts of bricks and mortar where they not to receive, year after year, an influx of fresh healthy life from the country. On the other hand, this migration to the towns, if carried too far, is a curse in itself against which the National-Socialist theory of the State sedulously sets its face. Hitler envisages for the future not a gathering of the population into endless great cities, but their re-establishment, right down to the roots, in their native soil. National Socialism has already achieved a great deal, and with much success, in this direction.

The law touching hereditary farmland seeks to relieve the small farmer of many of the uncertainties and troubles which have hitherto weighed him down. His land is to be inalienable and no longer the easy prey of the financial speculator.

On Saturday, October 14th, 1933, Hitler withdrew his country from the League of Nations. There should have been no occasion in this for the universal amazement it has caused. Adolf Hitler had announced his intention of taking this step some months before. Not before Germany has parity of rights does it concern her at all to waste time over disarmament conferences which forever come to nothing.

On the same day President von Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag, since, in consequence of the dissolution of all parties except the National-Socialists, this now had become a mere Rump.

The new electors fully confirmed all former National-Socialist gains, and went far beyond. The result of these, held in November, was a victory for Adolf Hitler which even his most ardent adherents had hardly dared hope. From a voting population of 43 millions, 40½ millions supported the National-Socialist regime. Six hundred and sixty-one Members returned to the Reichstag. It meant that 95 per cent of the German people had firmly taken their stand behind Hitler.

This result was their thanks to him for all that he had hitherto done for them.

There would be little purpose in giving a description of all the measures since undertaken by Hitler for the reconstruction of Germany, these being generally known. It would moreover require at least a volume for the purpose, even if the most important only were taken into consideration.

The foregoing brief resume has concerned itself with little but the political aspect of things. In the following chapter some attempt will be made to show what all this meant translated into everyday terms, brought to bear on the everyday life of the German citizen.

Was Hitler Really a Dictator

Source: https://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/dictator/dictator00.html

by Friedrich Christian, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe

Written in 1977. Published: Kritik: Die Stimme des Volkes, Issue 86;
Nordwind-Verlag © 1994.
Translated by Victor Diodon and published here by kind permission of the copyright owner.
Translation © 1998 by The Scriptorium.

1. Introduction

2. The masses readily become a hangman...

3. The „dictator“

4. The fatal lack of understanding of human nature

5. „Denazification Certificate trade“ and self-deception

6. The system of slander

7. Slander: psychological genocide!

8. Art, culture and social innovations

9. The eternal ethical laws of nature

10. A word to the slanderers themselves

11. Conclusion

12. Epilogue

Part 1 - Introduction

The American sociologist Robert S. Lynd said: „It is easier to believe a lie one has heard a hundred times than a truth one has never heard before.“

Since the beginning of this century, one campaign of lies after the other has been aimed at us Germans. No matter how often the great many untruths were refuted - it became clear that, unfortunately, it is much more profitable to spread lies than to stand up for the truth, especially if the liar had also been the victor in a war.

A country where it is dangerous to voice the truth is on the wrong path. In any case, I personally prefer to live in a country where it is advantageous to tell the truth.

But as the French author Marquis de Vauvenargues put it in his Maximes et Réflexiones: „Only few people are strong enough to tell the truth and to hear it.“

When I write in order to help truth to victory it is frequently inevitable that this involves criticism. The two are often inseparable, and sometimes people are unintentionally hurt in the process.

There is no revolution, movement, organization or other association, no matter how good, which does not incorporate both „right“ and „wrong“, just as there are natural and indispensable opposites in evidence everywhere.

In Adolf Hitler’s Movement as well, there was both light and shadow, and - a universal constant - people with strong as well as with weak points. Only a genius can really assess them both, see them for what they are, and employ them in accordance with their talents.

If I learned from Dr. Goebbels, or even from Hitler himself, which of the crucial men in the Party Vanguard were not „all right“, then for the sake of truth this must not be hushed up even if the men in question had other merits to point to, without which they could not have risen to leading positions. It is a matter of calling attention to the morally upstanding, decent, honest colleagues and comrades-in-arms, even if doing so should draw criticism down on me for also shedding light on unpleasant matters in the process.

First and foremost, the issue is not individual persons - it is truth for the German people as a whole.

I will try to describe the leading men through their actions and behavior, even if the incidents are frequently relatively trivial ones. I have chosen them for events as typically human as possible, which render the person and thus his thoughts and actions easier to understand.

In their fundamental character, the German people are so decent that they have frequently been taken in by their enemies simply because they would not have thought them capable of evil - simply could not think it possible.

One judges others based on one’s self - that’s how it has always been, and that’s how it continues to be with those who slander our nation! In instances where they themselves stepped into the scene - in revolutions and wars - they were particularly cruel and inhuman. It was never the people as a whole, always the „movers and shakers“, the floor leaders. Just recall, for example, the French Revolution, the extermination of the Indians, the battle against the Boers, the Great Revolution of the Chinese and the Russians, the subjugation of India, etc.

We Germans differ from almost all of the major powers on our globe primarily in that we have never provoked revolutions or instigated civil wars in foreign countries, in other words on an international basis, and never tried to wear down other peoples through large-scale international campaigns of incitement.

I do not, of course, count those „Germans“ who participated in the international anti-German incitement as members of our people! They who exploited the war in order to divide our people by mendacious propaganda and to play each side against the other, are the branded ones of our age.

In the course of my interrogation by the Chief Prosecutor in the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, this prosecutor claimed that the Germans living abroad must all be counted as part of the „fifth column“ - that is, agents of Hitler, for the purpose of revolutionizing the world - and that this mighty organization had been under the control of Dr. Goebbels.

I told him that such an organization (as had in fact existed for decades, only against Germany) would be incredibly expensive. The indispensable buying-up of the press of foreign nations in itself would require gigantic sums of cash. He agreed with this statement. I then explained that I knew exactly how large the Reich Ministry of Propaganda’s budget for foreign propaganda had been, at a time when foreign propaganda had still been possible - approximately until 1943. The largest annual budgetary allocation ever had been one million Reichsmark. This had to cover lecture tours, the tours of the great symphony orchestras and theatre companies, as well as those of the great performing artists. On top of this, there were also expenses for sports events and - „on the side „, so to speak - subsidies for newspapers of importance for cultural advertising. Altogether, therefore, it was a ridiculous, a paltry sum, just barely better than nothing at all.

Further, I remarked that Hitler himself had strictly forbidden the NSDAP to engage in any and all propaganda activities abroad, the only exception being Germans from the Reich temporarily residing abroad. I witnessed an instance once when Hitler angrily told a leading Party man that National-Socialism was not an „export article“ and he himself no human panacea for the world’s woes, and that his sole concern was to help the German people!

What the enemies of Germany accused us of in those days is what they themselves did to our detriment on a much greater scale, and with funds no doubt a thousand times greater than the budget of our Ministry of Propaganda.

The British believed a great deal of what the then famous Lord Haw-Haw told them over the air - but that did next to nothing to detract from their composure as a nation.

The Germans, on the other hand, could not believe what they saw refuted by everyday life - but as of March 1945, they began to flag in their composure as a nation. And this process is still ongoing.

It is my wish that this booklet may help to revive and strengthen in our people the sense that the defiled and much-maligned generation of our fathers did their best in the struggle for Germany’s future, true to good old tradition, and holds the honorable position that is its due in the history of our people.

Friedrich Christian, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe

Part 2 - The masses readily become a hangman...

The Frenchman Gustave le Bon (1841-1931) was one of the foremost psychologists. He knew a great deal about the nature of human reactions, and so I will quote him at the outset: „It does not take much to turn the broad masses into a hangman, but just as little to make them a martyr.“

We will have to recall le Bon a number of times yet, since for a long time now our people have been at the mercy of a cruel enemy of whom they still know next to nothing. If for no other reason than that, we must finally put our cards on the table, so that we Germans - all of us - will not slowly but surely become dehumanized by never-ending calumny.

Without wanting to admit it, our nation became a martyr long ago, perhaps precisely because it does not have what it takes to become a hangman. The Germans have always been too trusting, too decent and too honest, but most of all: too frank and open - especially when times were good for them. Then they have to virtually broadcast their good fortune. And that had unforeseeable consequences, as there is nothing more suited to arousing enmity in others. Soon there were those who turned this essentially harmless fact into the basis for a large-scale political racket: the world-wide slandering of our nation.

Le Bon writes „...that in intellectual terms, the masses are always subordinate to the person who stands alone. In terms of emotions and the actions brought about by them, however, they may be better or worse. It all depends on the kind of influence the masses are under.“

In times of misfortune we Germans have always tended to look for the blame within ourselves. This throws the gates of opportunity wide open to slander.

Le Bon: „A person’s nimbus always vanishes in the moment of failure. The hero whom the masses cheered yesterday will be reviled by them tomorrow if fate strikes him down. The greater the nimbus, the greater the backlash. The masses then regard the fallen hero as the likes of themselves and take revenge for the fact that they once submitted to superiority which they now no longer acknowledge. When Robespierre had his colleagues and a great number of his contemporaries beheaded, he possessed an incredible nimbus. A shift in only a few voices immediately deprived him of this nimbus, and the masses dogged his heels to the guillotine with as many curses as they had hurled at his victims the day before. The faithful always vent their fury by smashing the icons of their former gods.

„Misfortune rapidly cancels any nimbus. It can also be worn down, however, by discussion; that takes longer - but it is a more certain way. A nimbus discussed is no longer a nimbus. Idols and men who understood how to preserve their halo have never tolerated discussion. He that wants to be admired by the crowds must keep them at a distance.“

---

Witnessing as I now do a fourth epoch of German history, I feel that I have seen an unusually great deal and certainly am in a position to compare. I hope that my readers will not consider it presumptuous of me to suggest that, in terms of this period of time, I am one of the very few people who are able, and entitled, to recount events from personal experience - and to judge them.

Now you will perhaps say: if that is so, then why are you speaking up only now, more than fourty years later?

For two reasons:

a) because I still believed that others were far more suited to this task, since their positions of particular responsibility ought to have afforded them greater insight, and

b) because I simply could not believe that one and the same people could be so terribly different. Unfortunately I have had to realize that it is no longer a matter of one and the same people. If it were, then a great many things would be different today in the German sphere of influence - better for everyone.

Therefore I feel that it is my duty to take up my pen in order to record what I have personally learned and seen, and make what testimony my personal experience enables me to make with a clear conscience, against the slanderers and for our people - for the sake of the truth.

I lived in the days of the monarchy, the son of a governing Prince. As a child I saw what close, honest and loyal ties our people had to our family, and vice versa, our family to the people. The clearest proof of this was the fact that only a few days before my eldest brother’s abdication the Schaumburg-Lippean Landtag unanimously requested its sovereign not to step down. At that time the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) was the strongest party in Parliament! But the pressures exerted by the Emperor and the government of the Reich were too great, and our state too small, for continued independent statehood to be possible. National defence was given up, and the military as well as the provincial police forces withdrew. But I felt such solidarity with our citizens of Schaumburg-Lippe that I managed, with only my wife to help me, to carry out and win a petition for a referendum, so that the Landtag had to break off its almost completed negotiations with Prussia, and Schaumburg-Lippe remained a Free State until after 1945.

In the mid-1930s Hitler strove to put the Reich Reform into effect. This entailed amalgamating the small states with the large in order to render administration much cheaper and more efficient, thus strengthening the unity of the Reich. I asked to speak to him and recounted what I had successfully done for our Schaumburg-Lippe in 1928. He was so enthusiastic about it that he immediately summoned the Reich Minister of the Interior, stated verbatim: „This young Prince is the best democrat of us all, we must help him!“, and ordered a prompt review of whether the sovereignty of Schaumburg-Lippe could be maintained.

Only a short time later, Hitler personally informed me that my homeland would remain a Free State, in other words, independent within the Reich. And our citizens of Schaumburg-Lippe were very happy. Hitler had made an exception to his Reich Reform, an exception to his own principle - was that dictatorship? I think it is rather the exact opposite.

Events such as this one, even if it was of no particular political import except for the little State and its citizens themselves, were never mentioned in Hitler’s favor after 1945.

Part 3 - The „Dictator“

What kind of people were those who started the world-wide campaign of slander, and continue to disseminate lies to this very day? One can only begin to understand this matter if one asks: what is needed in order to slander someone on such a large scale? Unfortunately the answer can only be: a great deal of money, and unscrupulousness without compare.

People with a great deal of money and unscrupulousness can never live in their own homeland for very long. They would soon become known, attract attention, and get into trouble. Why should these people carry out their activities in exactly the place where they could most easily be watched?

No, such activities are the work of people who wanted to (or had to) leave their homeland for political reasons and who take revenge on the people of their native land by vilifying them whom they had to leave behind and whom they secretly envy. They suddenly discover that their old homeland wasn’t really their home. And then they are free of any second thoughts.

The more they run down the land of their birth abroad, in conversation and soon in the press as well, the more they realize that such a „policy“ can be lucrative, perhaps even very much so! It is just a matter of finding those who also have an interest in defaming the people from which they come.

Who was, and continues to be, the most sensitive towards German export trade? Without a doubt it is England and the United States, and in earlier days, France as well. Therefore there was no place where anti-German propaganda could be as profitably accommodated and even sold as in England and the United States. It is self-evident that of these two nations, the United States were and are much more attractive in this context. Only in the United States is there enough money available for such endeavours, only in the United States are there experts in worldwide operations of this sort, and only in the United States can one find the absolutely unscrupulous profiteers necessary for such an enterprise. And there are probably more emigrants in the USA than anywhere else in the world. Added to this is the fact that, especially since the Second World War, we Germans accord grotesquely inflated importance to anything and everything that comes to us from the United States.

In qualification I must add that those Americans with whom the Germans are so taken are generally those who have next to no connections with those social circles which have had prominence ever since the United States were founded - in other words, those to whom the United States owes her meteoric rise and hence her power and status in the global community.

Thanks to several trips to the States, I am very familiar with these conservative social circles of the South - and I hold them in high regard. They have nothing in common with the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, the Schlesingers, the Kissingers and the Rockefellers - no matter how wealthy these are, and how successful they have long been in their own way.

Wasn’t it General Eisenhower who spent a fortune in buying up one of the most perfidious anti-German hate publications, and then distributed it to the senior members of the United States Army?

The last time I visited with some very conservative Americans near Lake Erie, a highly respected newspaper publisher said in his table talk at a luncheon given in honour of the famous Mr. Krips and myself:

„My dear Prince, when you have returned home again, tell your German fellow-countrymen that we Americans never had anything against the Germans. We never hated them - not even in war. But if your Germans continue to sit placidly by while being defamed so horribly, if they continue to do nothing to refute all those lies and to silence the liars, if, in short, they continue to do nothing to preserve the German nation’s honour, then soon the Germans will no longer have a friend in the world!!!“

On the occasion of this same visit, a particularly popular minister, the head of a large parish - a former army chaplain in Nuremberg at the time of my detention there by the International Military Tribunal - invited me to give the sermon in his large, splendid church the following Sunday. When I asked which topic I would speak on - for in order to be able to speak in English without notes I would have to prepare - he said: „The topic I have announced is: ‘The Injustice of Nuremberg’.“ I would have spoken on this topic only with the consent of my country’s Embassy. He, the minister, had had to witness the hanging of our comrades in the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, and had always been against the injustice perpetrated there. His family was originally from Germany. -

In the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, as I was being led to the interrogation room, a tall Negro from the guards spoke to me on the sly, and said: „You, Prince - you’re a slave and I’m a slave - we’ve got to stick together!“

We understood that it was not „the Americans“ who were to blame, but rather a very specific kind of American citizen. These were emigrants to a man, most of them of Jewish extraction and many of these from Germany. Many of them worked as interrogators etc. in the offices of the IMT. The slanderers came and went freely there. When lies take on an official character, they can very easily turn into verdicts - even death sentences! Let’s quote le Bon one last time:

„The nature of crimes committed by the mob is clear.

„A typical example is the murder of du Launay, the warden of the Bastille. After the capture of this fortress, the warden was attacked from all sides by the furious crowd surrounding him. Hang him, they shriek, behead him, or tie him to the tail of a horse! In his struggles to free himself, the warden accidentally kicks one of those closest to him. Immediately someone suggests - and the crowd cheers the suggestion - that the kicked man should cut the warden’s throat.

„This man, an unemployed cook who had come to the Bastille half out of mere curiosity to see what was going on there, thinks, because this is the general public opinion, that this deed would be patriotic, and even believes he deserves a medal for killing a monster. He is handed a sabre, with which he slashes at the warden’s bare throat. But since the sabre is blunt and will not cut, he now draws a small black-handled knife from his pocket and (since as cook he knows how to cut meat) finishes the job successfully.“

The sum total of the victims of the Inquisition in Spain, Italy and France, of the British Revolution, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, as well as of the Marxist uprisings in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany in the days of the Weimar Republic can only be roughly estimated - but it may be assumed to exceed nine million. If we add to this all those Germans - men, women and children - who were killed by the various occupation forces in Italy, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the entire Reich territory etc., then this additional figure probably makes up far more than another 600,000.

After the armistice had been concluded, more than 10,000 mostly very young men from the Waffen-SS were killed without any trial, for no other reason than that they had their blood group tattooed on their arm, so that in case of injury the correct medical supplies could be used without delay. The „Chief Justice of the Waffen-SS and Police“ already told me in Nuremberg, where I met him, that their number in fact probably exceeded the 50,000 mark. The testimony of this Chief Justice, Dr. Reinecke, at the IMT at Nuremberg was so damning for the victors that the Nuremberg Trial was suspended, until the order to proceed came from the United States. Unfortunately there were not enough Reineckes in Nuremberg, otherwise that great trial and the many others following in its wake could never have been carried out, since they were based to a considerable extent on the so-called incriminating evidence provided by German traitors only intent on saving their own skin.

Sometimes, when we were taken to be interrogated in Nuremberg, we happened to catch a glimpse of some of these „gentlemen“; they were former officials and diplomats who had at one time sworn allegiance to Adolf Hitler and had always been oh-so-eager to prove their „loyalty“.

From several statements that Hitler made in the small circle of his closest friends, I know that he attached extraordinarily great value to a sworn oath. It was inconceivable to him that German officials or soldiers could break their oath. That is also why he would never have forced anyone to swear an oath. Furthermore, it was always made very clear to everyone that an oath sworn to the Führer was always also synonymous with an oath sworn to the Reich. So anyone who later deliberately broke his oath to the Führer also at the same time broke the oath he had sworn to the German Reich. This corresponded to the tradition of the former oath sworn to „the Kaiser and the German Empire“.

There were also security reasons for not wanting to bind the validity of an oath to only one human life. Those who broke their oaths thus also betrayed the Reich, and in my opinion that has a great deal to do with the division of Germany. It is time for all Germans to remember this, and to take steps against the defamation of our people from this point of view as well.

And with this we have reached the heart of the problem, for the worldwide defamation of all things German did not by any means begin only in Hitler’s time. It is not true that he, his Party, his plans and actions were what gave rise to it. The truth is that the defamation of the German Empire and people already began when the Idea of a unified Germany, inspired by Otto von Bismarck with the Prussian virtues of integrity, honesty, modesty etc., offered all German people a tremendous opportunity. The more the slanderers concentrated their hatred on the Emperor and his Princes - and later on Adolf Hitler and his Movement - the more it became their great and single goal to shatter the Reich and to strip the German people of all power.

The methodology of their slander shows this clearly time and again. Why else would these very same groups never so much as bat an eyelash when other nations, other political powers, other people do things much, much worse than the worst that has ever been imputed to our people?!

The history of the Germans contains nothing even remotely comparable to the Inquisition, the British and the French Revolutions, the Russian revolutions and all that was done to us Germans by certain victorious powers after the armistice - at which point I must stress that in my opinion even these victorious powers are not the ones to blame; rather, the guilty party is almost always that more or less anonymous power that fights its battles exclusively by means of calumny and incitement, and has done so for more than a century!

This is the power that works systematically, never for one country and from one country, but always internationally. The boundless abuses of democracy that take place in a great many nations on earth afford that international gang of agitators and calumniators every opportunity to terrorize large parts of the world’s population, to the point where soon there will no longer be any individual nations, just „mankind as a mass“ which will let itself be sold off at will.

Because our people were so good and capable and highly esteemed, they have been at the top of the slander hit list for decades. Europe without the German Reich is no longer „the Occident“, but that is exactly what increasingly materialistic mankind needs.

„It is possible that the German may yet be swept from the world’s stage; for he has all the qualities necessary for attaining Heaven, but not a single one for asserting himself on Earth, and all the nations hate him like the Evil One hates Good. But if they should ever really succeed in driving him out, conditions will ensue that will make them wish that they could dig him out of his grave again, even if it be with their bare and bleeding fingers.“

Hebbel, Diaries, January 4, 1860

---

And that brings me to Hitler the „dictator“. Today, thanks to enemy propaganda, he is considered the prototype of a dictator, an „autocrat“. A dictatorship, wrote the Bertelsmann Encyclopaedia after 1945, may be exercised by one individual or by a group (party dictatorship):

„In accordance with its origins, which are to be found in the Roman Republic, a dictatorship is a valid form of government as a means of eliminating certain crises (war, civil war). Its duration is thus temporary and its implementation is bound by certain rules....

„In recent history, dictatorships are closely tied to the establishment of modern-day constitutions. In the British Revolution of 1642-49 as well as in the French of 1789-99, the originally liberal popular movements ended in dictatorships, which in these cases were exercised, not by individuals, but by certain groups, and not as authorized delegates, but high-handedly and with reference to religious motives or the right of popular sovereignty. In these cases as well, the dictatorships were originally regarded as a temporary measure for the establishment of a new ruling class and the eradication of the old, corrupt generation, but ended up as absolute dictatorship under a Cromwell or a Napoleon.

„...the fact is frequently overlooked that even modern Criminal Codes recognize temporary dictatorship as emergency measure. The Weimar Constitution (§ 48) is an example of this, also the Enabling Act....

„...a type of state in which the exercise of supreme authority is concentrated in one organ of the state - (e.g.) in the case of the Third Reich, initially in the State Cabinet, later in the Head of State; in the case of the Soviet Union, in the Parliament - in which a separation of powers is enacted for organizational reasons, although the principle of a restriction of power is not put into effect;....

„...Dictatorship is always totalitarian, but rarely absolute in modern times; rather, constitutional dictatorship predominates.“

If in Hitler’s case one could even speak of a „dictatorship“, then in my opinion only of a constitutional dictatorship, since especially in important matters he never acted entirely on his own; on the contrary, in by far the most cases his actions were guided by pertinent laws and by agreement with the government of the Reich. It is known that in particularly pregnant cases (e.g. the Saarland, succession of Hindenburg, Enabling Act), he let the people themselves decide, and then acted according to the wishes they had expressed - either by plebiscite or through the Reichstag.

There is no doubt that he could have gained power in the Reichstag in 1933 even without a vote. But he subordinated himself and his government to the decision of the old Reichstag, and he received the vote of many a one who, like Theodor Heuss (later to become Federal President) and Federal Chancellor Adenauer, no doubt had good intentions and voted for Hitler without being a member of the NSDAP.

Hitler himself never felt that he had the power of a dictator. The comment he once made during the war - „...if one of us has the power of a dictator, then it’s Roosevelt, he has a much greater say in his country than I have in mine...“ - says a lot, I think. And he considered Stalin to be far more powerful than even Roosevelt.

---

When Hitler moved into the Reich Presidential Palace, he ordered some architectural improvements. What bothered him the most was Hindenburg’s terribly old-fashioned bathroom. He had the facilities modernized, and without running up a noteworthy bill for it. The Auditor-General’s Office then told him that he would have to pay for the renovations himself and, furthermore, that he had not been authorized to effect the changes. - Hitler offered his opinion that the ancient bathroom facilities would have had to be replaced one way or another, and further, that surely the Führer and Chancellor of the Reich ought to be able to make an independent decision on the fate of an old bathtub so as not to waste the state’s time. As far as I know, he then proceeded to pay the bill out of his personal funds. The Palace was, after all, state property.

This happened at about the same time that Hitler showed my wife and myself his bedroom, on our own request. It was a dark and somewhat plainly furnished room with a somewhat old-fashioned bed that could not have been very comfortable. On the wall above it hung a picture of his mother, which he had had painted, probably from a photograph. He said that it was a good likeness and one of his very few keepsakes from his family; it was very dear to him and not a day went by that he wasn’t glad to have it. This rather spartan room was definitely no setting for excesses and debauchery such as unscrupulous profiteers have imputed to Hitler.

In the years from 1922 to 1935 my wife and I frequently visited him in his private residence, the so-called New Reich Chancellery, often at least one or two evenings a week. The residence was roomy but impersonal. He didn’t like it. Company gathered at a large, low, round table, in easy or regular chairs, was served tea and biscuits and small sandwiches.

It is often claimed today that he never let others get a word in edgeways. In truth it was quite the opposite. He asked the others to speak, to recount events from their lives etc. He made jokes to liven up the conversation and to get others to join in. Only when all this failed and the others finally insisted that he should speak himself, as this would be much more interesting in many ways - then he would relent, and could talk for hours. And I must say that this was often a great experience, for this man had already lived a most interesting life. Speaking retrospectively, he viewed everything with incredible objectivity and, hence, amazing modesty.

I know that many will not believe me - but these are facts and I can’t change them. I am not writing in order to do someone a favour, but rather to serve the purpose of truth. Can I help never having met the evil Hitler? Should I invent a worse man? Whom would that serve? Certainly not my people, and in the long run not our enemies either.

I was personally acquainted with a great many well-known and even famous artists, politicians, statesmen, several reigning monarchs - I could almost say, „around the world“. I was friends with many of them - just as good friends as with many completely unknown labourers, farmers and soldiers. But - in my opinion there was never another man even remotely like Adolf Hitler.

It is very difficult to write about this without being laughed at or even suspected; but if I want to be completely honest - and that is my only aim, anything else would be not only pointless, but also evil - then I must say that he was certainly a most extraordinary person. I have often asked myself whether this man can even be compared with other people, or whether he must be considered from a completely different perspective.

---

In a large old villa outside the gates of Vienna, overlooking the vineyards of the Kahlenberg, there is a cosy wine cellar where the higher-ranking American officers liked to get together of an evening after the Second World War. One might call it a tavern, with designs painted among the timberwork all round.

The proprietess, beautiful Princess Wittgenstein, showed me in and asked me to give a critical opinion on the paintings, and only afterwards to read the calligraphic inscriptions between them. I looked closely at everything and then said, without knowing anything further about it: „It seems to me that the artist had a feeling for architecture, especially for certain laws of nature, such as the ‘golden section’, since all of it goes together so well.“ - „That’s very interesting,“ said the Princess, „and now read the inscriptions.“

I read - and I cannot recall it verbatim, but the essence of it is still perfectly clear in my mind: „I know that my life will be an exceptional, an extraordinary one, but its end will be a catastrophe!“ - The Princess, who was by no means a National-Socialist, then told me: „That was painted and written by an apprentice. Even the words, astonishing as they are, are his and his alone. And this is the receipted bill that I found among the old papers and which confirms that all work was done by a painter’s apprentice by the name of Adolf Hitler.“

These were ornaments, words and thoughts that have not the slightest bit to do with violence - they were the expression of a very deep emotional life or, to call it what it truly was: it was an element of the Faustian (Faustian: searching, striving, brilliant) in this man who ever remained an enigma.

Once, when a conversation between him and Dr. Goebbels happened to end up in a dispute about the „Faustian“ quality in the German as a type, Hitler grew very solemn and almost melancholy, as I had never seen him before. A statement of Dr. Goebbels’ came to mind: „Sometimes he’s uncanny - as if he weren’t of this world - and strangely enough, that’s when he is the most fascinating. I’ll never completely understand him - he is more than just a person. There is nobody who has studied him like I have. But who takes the time to really get to know this man - who? Who knows anything of his outstanding qualities, of his modesty towards fate - who even suspects any of it? No-one! If they realized that he does not wish to become their idol, not even their god, but that he lives solely for his mission that is not entirely ‘of this world’ - then they would fear him, because they do not understand the reality.“

I have done my utmost to repeat Goebbels’ words as accurately as possible from memory, and did not write them down until they were as vivid to me again as though I had heard him speak them then and there. Of course, the fact that in those days this topic interested me like no other, helped considerably.

In his Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1, chapter „The Heirs“, Sir Houston Chamberlain wrote: „Asceticism increases the intellectual capacities and culminates, when carried out with absolute consistency, in the complete conquest of the senses; these may then continue, so to speak, as material for the imagination, to serve the mystical devotion of a Saint Theresa or the mystical metaphysics of the author of Chandogya; from that time forth they are senses rendered subject to will, elevated and purified by the power of the mind, and this the Hindoo teacher expresses when he writes: ‘the man of understanding is already in his lifetime bodiless.’“

Elsewhere, Chamberlain wrote about this same topic: „The greatness of every extraordinary man lies not in that which he wanted to do, but in that which he had to do.“ What compelled the young painter’s apprentice, Hitler, to inscribe those words amongst the decorations in the cellar bar of the Villa Kahlenberg? It would have been pointless to do that if he had not had to. Only a higher power could have given him the courage and determination for it. That he, the young Hitler, was the one who did that work is expressly confirmed on the bill by his master.

And these thoughts, which are so to the point in the case in question, draw attention to the fact that every true genius at least approximates to being a universal genius.

I myself witnessed how Hitler dominated in purely technical discussions with leading men of the Mercedes-Benz factory, in other words, was absolutely superior to an elite of engineers.

I also witnessed how, in a conversation with the Italian Minister of Justice who had attempted to precisely describe the Parthenon, Hitler disputed his architectural details. The point at issue was that Hitler had pointed out the mathematical perfection of the Parthenon’s beauty, whereas the Minister would not concede it. Finally, Hitler asked me to bring him a sketch pad, ruler, and pencils - he declined an eraser.

A short time later he interrupted his conversation with the Minister in order to make a very rapid but detailed sketch of the Parthenon - off the top of his head, without any aids and completely without prior preparation, since nobody could have known that the conversation with the Italian would lead to this topic. When the sketch was finished, an encyclopedia was procured, in which the Parthenon’s dimensions were given. Once converted to metric, they were identical with those indicated on Hitler’s sketch. And then it was an easy matter for Hitler to prove to the Italian Minister the way in which the law of nature known as the „golden section“ finds expression in the beauty of that glorious structure, the Parthenon.

In terms of business or politics I was certainly nothing special to Hitler. But in social terms, I believe, he liked us, my first wife Alexandra Countess of Castell-Rüdenhausen and myself, very much - until others kept us at a distance from him. –

Part 4 - The fatal lack of understanding of human nature

I was not in Munich very frequently. One day, however, when I had business there, I happened to walk past the „Brown House“. At that moment Hitler came out into the street, without any sort of escort or guard. He saw me, greeted me, and asked if I would like to come along. He was going to take a look at the building under construction next door; some alterations were necessary there. I was pleased, and accompanied him gladly.

On the construction site we met a few workers, who treated him as though he were one of them - just particularly popular. His relations with people on the whole always struck me as of a very special kind. Oswald Spengler, about whom he did not like to speak, wrote the following about this matter at the end of volume 1 of his Decline of the West:

„The final issue to which Faustian wisdom tends - though it is only in the highest moments that it has seen it - is the dissolution of all knowledge into a vast system of morphological relationships. Dynamics and Analysis are in respect of meaning, form-language and substance, identical with Romanesque ornament, Gothic cathedrals, Christian-German dogma and the dynastic state. One and the same world-feeling speaks in all of them. They were born with, and they aged with, the Faustian Culture, and they present that Culture in the world of day and space as a historical drama. The uniting of the several scientific aspects into one will bear all the marks of the great art of counterpoint. An infinitesimal music of the boundless world-space - that is the deep unresting longing of this soul, as the orderly statuesque and Euclidean Cosmos was the satisfaction of the Classical. That - formulated by a logical necessity of Faustian reason as a dynamic-imperative causality, then developed into a dictatorial, hard-working, world-transforming science - is the grand legacy of the Faustian soul to the souls of Cultures yet to be, a bequest of immensely transcendent forms that the heirs will possibly ignore. And then, weary after its striving, the Western science returns to its spiritual home.“

Near the end of the Second World War there was an excellent book available by Kurt Pfister, about Emperor Friedrich II of Hohenstaufen, who in his own time was already called „transformer of the world“. I knew that Hitler had liked and devoted a great deal of thought to this book. In 1945 my wife bought it for me - literally with her last few pennies - in order to send it to me at the prison camp. Since we prisoners there were forced to live in conditions that were in every respect beneath human dignity, she had to smuggle it into the camp at great personal risk. And I could only read it in secret. As she well knew, it was to be of decisive importance to me. Years later, she told me that she had noticed so many parallels in the book and that she had known that these would help me a great deal in clinging to life. And that was indeed how it was. There really are parallels, not only in political matters - the Reich Idea of the Occident - but also in purely human matters.

Bosshart once wrote: „A genius has something of the instinct of migratory birds.“ - It is quite meaningless if some then counter: „Yes, but Hitler resulted in the greatest catastrophe!“ We humans are obviously not meant to know why we live, and what stands behind us. Perhaps knowing would only drive us insane. Our mission results from our duty, and our duty has its origin in the ethical laws inherent in nature. These are evident for each of us to see, within us and all around us. And the miracles of nature should be an incentive for us to choose the right way - that of the eternal order of nature.

There is a tendency today to be nothing short of criminally easygoing in passing judgement on even the most brilliant persons. People lie and cheat, not even for the sake of ideals, but for money. It is impossible to sink any lower. Ebb tide has reached its lowest point, it is high time for it to turn and rush over the foulness it has revealed, to wash all the filth onto the land where it may burn up in the sunshine and leave the water clear enough again so that, at least where we stand, we may see the bottom again.

It was not criticism and scientific analyses that helped me to recognize the person that Hitler was, it was the observation of his thought processes. I was so fortunate as to be able to see him without business obligations and without any prejudices. In terms of personal background I was probably his most extreme opposite. Each of us admitted that to the other with perfect frankness. This fact was probably the key to later understanding, which was mutual as well. I was interesting to him because of my background, namely because, as he told me later, he had discovered a revolutionary within me. I was an enigma to him at first - as he was to me. The trust he had in me developed in a way that was typical for him: it was based on his observation of how well my marriage worked. It was exactly what he had not expected from a person of my background.

He was always happy to see marriages that worked. I think that had something to do with the loving relationship he had had with his mother. Whenever he saw an unhappy marriage amongst his friends or comrades, he would not rest until he had reconciled the couple. The Goebbels marriage was a case in point. I witnessed many instances of this and sometimes, in my opinion, the couple in question were not at all worth the energy that the Head of State expended on them. In the case of the Goebbels’s, however, it was a blessing that he did so. The human element was always more important to him than the political - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that things political carried only as much weight with him as seemed to be warranted by the human element.

And this brings us to his lack of knowledge of human nature. On a qualifying note I must add that the term „knowledge of human nature“ is perhaps not quite correct, or at least needs an explanation. He knew very well how to tell a loyal person from a disloyal one, an industrious one from a lazy one, an honest from a dishonest, etc. But there were qualities to him that distracted him from the objective assessment of people. For example, in the case of persons who had stood loyally by him during hard times, he tended to be overly ready to overlook and to forgive objectionable qualities and actions that arose or occurred later on.

One of the most striking cases in this context was the Gauleiter of Central Franconia, Julius Streicher, who behaved in an increasingly reprehensible and, ultimately, a downright scandalous manner. Hitler frequently called him to account, and even removed him entirely from the political arena, only to rehabilitate him, as it were, years later - something that none of us, not even Dr. Goebbels, could make sense of. After all, Julius Streicher had long carried on a campaign of anti-Semitism by means of his publication „Der Stürmer“ - a campaign which not only no longer had any resemblance to the official stance of the NSDAP but, beyond that, misrepresented all of us.

Goebbels repeatedly urged that Hitler should ban the „Stürmer“, but a long time of grave mistakes went by before his requests met with success. A man like Streicher should have been punished with particular severity, exactly because he was one of the first and foremost Party members and had used to be a loyal follower of Hitler’s. He was indeed removed from his position as Gauleiter, but that was not enough.

The matter of Dr. Robert Ley, the head of the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF), was no better. As early as 1929, when I personally told Hitler that Ley had cheated me and a number of others out of our money and had thus left us in very bad circumstances, Hitler answered: „I never advised you to lend Ley money - I deal only with Ley the Gauleiter, not with Ley the businessman - I’m sorry, I can’t help you!“ I objected: „But I only trusted Ley because I assumed that a Gauleiter is not a rascal.“ Hitler replied that he was not in a position to check up on the private lives of all his subordinates. „Just look at the other parties - each of the major parties has several Leys in its leadership - it’s bad, but very difficult to change, and the change can only be brought about gradually. I promise you I will keep an eye on Ley - but you’ll have to see about recovering your money yourself.“ I only succeeded to a small extent, years later.

The third case which I witnessed myself was that of Alfred Rosenberg, a man from the Baltic who had become Chief of the Foreign Affairs Office of the NSDAP. He carried on Baltic politics on his own initiative and to the detriment of Adolf Hitler’s German politics. Some of his policies were not at all in accord with Hitler’s. How could someone from the Baltic shape German foreign policy, anyhow?

In the „Time of Struggle“, in other words before 1933, Rosenberg had been editor-in-chief of the Völkischer Beobachter, the largest of the party newspapers. During the war he served as „Reich Commissioner for the Occupied Eastern Territories“ and was thus responsible for the horrible mistakes perpetrated on the Ukrainians, who had been so well inclined towards us.

Dr. Goebbels told me at that time that he had reason to believe that Rosenberg was a Russian spy - his girlfriend most certainly was. During the war Goebbels was very concerned that no connection whatsoever should develop between the staff of the Foreign Department of his own Ministry, and the so-called „Rosenberg Office“.

Rosenberg, on the other hand, cultivated the closest ties possible to Martin Bormann, who at first held the position of Chief of Staff under the „Deputy Führer“, Rudolf Hess. It is remarkable that on the occasion of Hess’ mission to England, Hess’ politically utterly insignificant adjutant was arrested, while Hess’ politically most prominent Chief of Staff, Martin Bormann, was called in to the Reich Chancellery and promoted to Chief of the „Party Chancellery of the Führer and Chancellor of the Reich“ - headquartered even in the Reich Chancellery! From 1943 to 1945, „Reich Leader“ Bormann was the most powerful man in Germany, second only to Hitler. I know this from bitter personal experience as well as from Dr. Goebbels.

In early 1945 Goebbels, in my presence, described Bormann Bormann and Hitler’s personal physician, Professor Morell, as „the criminals in the Reich Chancellery“. As far as I know, Bormann also had relations with the Soviet Union dating back to earlier days, but, as Dr. Goebbels put it, those relations were „all the wrong ones.“

To the best of my knowledge, Professor Morell admitted at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg that he had intended to kill Hitler. I am more inclined to believe, however, that with the injections he gave him, he attempted to make him the obedient pawn of a certain clique of leading politicians.

The fact that Hitler installed Martin Bormann, of all people (besides Goebbels), in the Reich government under Dönitz was, in my opinion, part of Hitler’s last great plan: an alliance with the Soviet Union against the United States. Virtually five minutes before midnight, Hitler had still telegraphed the army group Kesselring: „Hold out at all costs, negotiations with the Russians against the Americans are pending.“

I am certain that such an alliance would instantaneously have created a totally different political scene. It would have been child’s play for Germans and Russians, united, to bring all of Europe under their control. At the very least there would still be a German Reich today, and no slander of our people - nobody would dare any such thing.

Germany - Europe - would be the dominant power on earth today - the Third Reich could have assumed the legacy of the First Reich, and International Capitalism would have been finished. Goebbels must still have had some grounds for hope, else he would not have spent almost an hour on the telephone to Marshal Shukov shortly before his death.

This shows clearly that the selfsame Hitler who in the course of the war had made four extremely fair peace offers to the enemy and had not even received a response, still found the resolve even at the last minute to turn completely about and attempt the extreme opposite. That was probably what he meant when he said in his last great address to the German people, that he hoped the people would understand if he were forced to take a most extraordinary chance.

In wartime, logically, too much depends on the enemy and his attitude and actions for someone to be able to assess one’s own statesmen objectively and accurately. There is no doubt that Hitler, once private first class, was also a genius in his capacity as commander. None of his numerous Generals, many of whom were themselves of great talent and experience, ever disputed that, and many were full of admiration for him. In this context as well, he had a great deal of knowledge that he could never have learned. I don’t know how often I heard Generals say about him: „Where did he get all the prerequisites for this? Is it only instinct, or something more?“

Hitler hated being lauded, and did not at all enjoy being idolized, as it were. But political propaganda wanted to use him as advertisement, and he could not dispute the importance of such advertising to the dissemination of his Idea of National-Socialism. Lao-tse said - and I think this is eminently apropos to Hitler: „The wise man puts his own self last - and see: it comes to the fore. He gives up his own self - and see: it is preserved.“

And indeed, those people whom he helped without having to help them, ultimately proved to be his undoing. In this respect his fate is that of all truly great men. As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to his sister in 1885: „It seems to me that even with the best of intentions a person may do immeasurable harm if he is presumptuous enough to try to be of service to those whose spirit and will is hidden from him.“

There can be no doubt whatsoever that Hitler did the German people and the Reich an inordinate amount of good. No serious and fair critic can help but see and admit that. It would be both pointless and harmful to all involved to deny it.

Part 5 - „Denazification Certificate trade“ and self-deception

His idea of the fusion of nationalism and Socialism was doubtless a new and very good one. In this way he succeeded in balancing the major conflicts among the people as a whole and hence in bringing about an internal peace such as remains unparalleled in any nation on earth either both before and since. This unique condition lasted from approximately 1933 to the 1936 Olympics. From that point on, a change began to creep in which became clearly apparent only much later, towards the end of the war.

The first trigger was the removal of the SA from power, a process which began on June 30, 1934. It was a crucial blow against the National-Socialist Revolution. I got the first taste of this on the evening of June 30, 1934. My wife Alexandra and I were visiting the Goebbels’ when Hitler, just arrived at Berlin, told us in detail how this fateful day had passed for him. He knew that I was a Troop Commander with the SA and one of three aides to the Senior Troop Commander of the SA Unit Berlin-Brandenburg, albeit only pro forma - excused from SA service to discharge my duties as ministerial aide.

In the course of conversation that distressing day, Hitler suddenly asked me: „Where were you today, anyway - your superior, Senior Troop Commander Ernst, was caught while attempting to escape - and has been executed!“ I replied that I had been doing my work at the Ministry, as usual. „You were lucky. If you had been taken along with Ernst, I doubt I could have saved you.“ This statement was like a bucket of ice-water in my face. My wife was outraged as well; she never forgave him for this answer.

There can be no doubt that he was correct in taking severe measures against Röhm and the corrupt members of the higher-up SA leadership, and especially in taking these measures personally and at great risk to himself. But he should never have suffered his SA - the backbone of the Revolution, which he had trained to function with fantastic self-discipline - to be politically wiped out. In permitting this to happen, he put the Revolution at the mercy of very different powers - and that was the beginning of the end.

Among those executed - and unjustly so - were two of my closest friends: Troop Commander Schneidhuber and Brigadier General Baron von Wechmar.

Of course we, more than anyone else, asked ourselves for years why Hitler had acted as he had. Three factors had pushed him to it: the Party (later under the influence of Bormann), the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, who was in the process of establishing his own power base, and the former Chief of Staff of the SA, Hermann Göring, who believed that he would now be able to build up a National-Socialist air force as the focal point of domestic power.

Around 5 pm on June 30, 1934, when Adolf Hitler arrived from Munich at Tempelhof, a company of the Luftwaffe air force was assembled to salute the Führer for the first time. This was meant to surprise and please Hitler. But Hitler’s face darkened, he all but ignored the Luftwaffe, and Goebbels was furious.

In the morning that same day, I had sat in my office on Wilhelm Square, waiting for my Minister, when Göring had suddenly come in. He greeted me, went directly to the large window, drummed against the glass with his fingers, and said, without looking at me: „Do you know what’s going on?“ I answered that I knew next to nothing. Then he said - and it made almost no sense to me at the time: „Chief of Staff Röhm is being executed today.“ Röhm, also a Reich Minister, shot himself, and rightly so, for as Chief of Staff of the SA he was utterly impossible, as well as a depraved character and hence a traitor. The Wehrmacht seems to me to have served in a double game.

The elimination of the SA automatically resulted in the neglect of the „old guard“ of the NSDAP, since most of the members of the „old guard“ had also been members of the SA for many years. Thus, June 30, 1934 slowly but surely led to the shut-down of the Revolution, which from that point on took place largely in private, so to speak.

And thus the path was cleared for all those who wished to join the Party as soon as they possibly could in order to profit somehow from the external success of this state and this people. The real National-Socialists scornfully called these people „the Nazis“. With them and through them, the Party grew more and more bureaucratic. The „old fighters“ no longer felt comfortable with it and retreated into the SA or the „old guard“.

We perceived this to be all the more tragic because now the years came where the actual process of reconstruction and development could begin; for Hitler had created order, the people were as happy and as united as never before, industry was booming, export trade flourished, and at the center of it all was the German worker, both „of muscle“ and „of intellect“ - respected, and with a cheerful heart.

What do people strive for who live a free and happy life and take well-deserved pride in their and their nation’s progress? A family, a home, and children! This is how it has been everywhere and at all times. A look at the statistics of the 1930s proves more clearly than any election results that the German people were very content at that time, and counted on a long time of peace. Anyone who claims that there was any considerable popular resistance against Adolf Hitler and his government before 1944 either lacks even the most basic understanding of those days - or is a contemptible liar!

In 1945-46 millions of Germans believed that only lies could save them. Day in, day out, the enemy served them clever and cunning falsehoods, either directly or in a roundabout way. This was also the origin of the atrocious „Persil note“ racket, the denazification certificate scam by means of which millions „saved“ themselves at the expense of the truth and the honour of the entire nation.

I doubt that there is any other place on earth where lies as numerous and as imaginative have been dreamed up as in post-war Germany - especially in West Germany. Since more or less all the Germans had supported the National-Socialist Reich in one way or another, especially during wartime, post-1945 reconstruction was quite inconceivable without these more than 90% of the people.

No doubt all those who provided the professional as well as the political know-how required for the reconstruction of the new state had previously acquired and applied their abilities under Hitler’s regime. It is thus in no way an exaggeration to say that the courage, the determination, the team spirit and most of all the faith in Germany - all those qualities without which Germany could never have been resurrected from its rubble - had their origins in exactly that Germany that was henceforth to be so dreadfully calumniated.

We owe the reconstruction of Germany to a German people who had lived through the Thirties and who thus provided the consequent attitude towards nation and state, to life in general and to the mind-set resulting from it. If today’s new generation were faced with the same task as the Hitler generation had faced between 1945 and 1952, the reconstruction efforts would be a sorry sight indeed. It is impossible to achieve something truly essential for one’s nation and state in the absence of great and eternal ideals!

The first Federal Chancellor of post-war days, Dr. Konrad Adenauer - a close personal acquaintance of mine from my student days - was himself part of this. Under Hitler’s regime he had made extraordinary efforts to regain the position of Mayor of a major German city (Cologne). Hitler did not doubt Adenauer’s abilities, but he felt that because of his attitude in the days of Rhenish separatism he could not assign him such a privileged position now. He did, however, decree that Dr. Adenauer should receive an annual pension of 40,000 Reichsmark. Reich Minister Dr. Lammers told me this after the war. He had seen Hitler personally about this matter and was thus the best possible witness.

No doubt Federal Chancellor Dr. Adenauer as well as his successor Dr. Kurt Georg Kiesinger - who had served as liaison between Reich Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop and Reich Minister of Propaganda Dr. Goebbels - both knew enough of how things had really been, to be able to publicly counter the slander aimed at the German people - but they were careful not to do any such thing!

The „Persil notes“, those denazification certificates, were the prerequisite for the army of slanderers. Through them, a situation was created where the events of the past were not clarified on a basis of conviction or of loyalty to people and state and for the sake of peace with the former enemy powers; rather, an atmosphere of million-fold fears regarding dependence on the enemy powers and the apparent hopelessness with respect to a peace agreement gave rise to a generalized, demoralizing complex of lies that strained any real attempts at German foreign relations to the utmost and thus rendered internal peace impossible for both ethical and moral reasons.

And the more the real contemporaneous witnesses die off, the less chance there is for this nation to find its way back to the whole truth about itself.

But for as long as a nation is burdened down like that - rightly or wrongly -, it cannot possibly be a free agent in its decision-making process, its politics, or ultimately in its life as a whole. For as long as the burden remains, it will be blackmailed by other nations - and the internal blackmail amongst the people themselves will also continue.

And what did the post-war governments of West Germany do about this? The wrongest thing they could possibly have done! They tried to beg and buy the honor of their people. But bowing and scraping, and payments rendered in hopes of appeasement, only ever exacerbate such a situation - they never remedy it, for every half-way sensible person in other countries cannot help but reason that anyone who bows and scrapes and pays up like that, has got to have a tremendously guilty conscience!

And when we say today: „What we are charged with isn’t true at all - the greatest part of it, at least, is a total lie!“, then the response we get is: „If that’s the case - as we suspected it to be from the start, by the way - then you Germans of today are such a bad lot that we can’t respect you at all anymore, because you’re too cowardly to tell the truth and restore your honor - merely to safeguard your export trade!“

Mankind did itself a poor service indeed when it tried to crush a people, a state and most of all a Revolution which, with the proper support, could have done everyone a world of good. Today even more than in the 1920s, the nations of the highly civilized Western world suffer from standing in the service of unbridled materialism and hence of Capitalism, and they suffer from having lost the ability to think naturally, and from having thus lost themselves in ever more devastating excesses and lack of moderation. For decades these nations have been deceiving themselves while in fact offering themselves up for their total destruction. The governments have long been acting in accordance with the teachings of Emile Coue, in the true style of self-persuasion, effusively lauding our happy and fortunate lifestyle over and over again in spite of what reality tells them and in the face of the most glaring evidence to the contrary, and praising that progress which in the end will be our undoing.

During the worst of the bombing of Berlin I was able to leave all the furnishings which I had been able to salvage from my gutted house, standing in the street, completely unguarded, for eight days and nights without a single item being stolen. These furnishings included many valuable antique pieces of furniture, carpets and paintings. And this was by no means an exceptional case, but rather the rule in that nation and time now sneered at as „Hitler’s Germany“!

Even in wartime, Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels and I were able to go for walks in Central Berlin, on Wilhelm Street and Unter den Linden, without ever meeting even one person who gave us anything but a friendly greeting.

In February 1945, in the staff headquarters of the „Feldherrnhalle“, I saw four young soldiers crying with helpless rage because they had been caught trying without permission to sneak to the Front, to finally get their chance to fight for Germany. -

For me, one of the most devastating and at the same time one of the greatest experiences was Christmas Eve 1945, when we, some 6,000 captured National-Socialists, surrounded by watchtowers manned by guards with machine-guns, suddenly and without prior arrangement began to sing the song „I Pray to the Power of Love“. All the American officers and many thousands of Germans gathered to see and hear us and to join in - and the American camp commander, a front-line officer, had tears in his eyes.

At the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, an Army General threw himself from the third floor down to the stone-paved corridor of the ground floor. There, in the central square of the great prison, he lay dead on the ground before our very eyes. It was not long before some of the men in their cells began to sing, and more and ever more joined in, until all of us - the imprisoned National-Socialists and the non-National-Socialists and even some foreigners - sang along, and the enormous vaults resounded with that song that had used to pass our lips so easily, and now came from the heart and soul one last time: „To you, Adolf Hitler, we pledged ---!“ Among the singers were soldiers, officers, Generals, professors, clergymen, lawyers, judges, physicians etc., of whom dozens already knew that they would be hanged - because none of them were what the Ignorant Ones of then and now claim they were.

US infantry, armed to the teeth, arrived in droves, Allied tanks surrounded the prison, while night descended on that „prison of honor“.

Part 6 - The system of slander

Certainly, all these are only small and isolated excerpts. They are just what I am able to recount from personal experience. But nevertheless - or perhaps, because of that - it shows, I think, what the people were really like before and right after May 8, 1945. From my own experience alone, I could give many more, similar accounts that show our people and all who belonged to it in a much better light than almost all of those who participated in the post-war incitement and slander have ever shown them.

A single individual may commit a crime. Abominable child-murderers are handled with kid gloves nowadays. One of the worst ever, Jürgen Bartsch, was even permitted to get married in prison, complete with a minister’s services, with wedding feast, guests and champagne.

But a nation of 60 million souls, plucked out of the midst of its peaceful Revolution, its labours of reconstruction, its sense of community and contentment attained at long last, and forced more or less anonymously into a Second World War - such a nation must be cursed as „criminal“ for decades, must remain fair game for slander and blackmail whenever someone feels like making some more enormous profits - a nation to whom all of mankind has owed an immense debt of gratitude for a millennium and even longer!!! No - things cannot go on like that! They must not! It does not benefit anyone in all the world - except the riffraff scoundrels who perpetuate the process.

It seems there is not a single bad trait that has not been alleged against our people at one time or another. This fact alone is proof that these allegations are mainly lies, for a people with none other than bad qualities does not exist, never has existed, is not provided for in the order of this world, and would not fit in.

As early as the 1920s and 1930s, we tried to find out which circles all this malice and mendacity originate in. We soon found that there is a method behind it. We noticed that the attacks are generally directed against individual persons, specifically against particular traits or characteristics of those persons; traits or characteristics which often were or are not even in fact present, but which are imputed to these people because doing so seems to be the only way to attack them.

For example, it was claimed that Adolf Hitler was a Czech. This trick was so successful that even the German President, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, was convinced of the truth of this assertion right until the day he first met Hitler. It was not until conversation had progressed for some time that Hindenburg began to wonder, and finally asked Hitler outright. The matter was cleared up easily enough: there is a town called Braunau in Czechoslovakia as well as in Upper Austria. The latter was Adolf Hitler’s birthplace, but he was simply called „a Czech by birth“. The town of Braunau in the so-called „Land of Braunau“ is called Broumov in Czech, and always numbered many Germans among its population of 8,000. Braunau in Upper Austria, on the other hand, has a population of more than 12,000, and is an ancient German town. Even if Hitler had been born in Broumov he could very well have been of German descent, especially as there is nothing at all Czech about his name, which sounds typically Austrian. For decades now, however, this one downright absurd lie has done a great deal of harm to Hitler’s reputation as well as to that of the German people, who allegedly sold themselves to „a Czech“.

About three years ago, a major German daily, the Wiesbadener Kurier, published a front-page article and photograph claiming that during the Second World War the government of the German Reich had offered a bounty of 60,000 marks for the sinking of the huge British passenger ship „Queen Mary“. I was outraged at such a lie and demanded to be told where this report had originated. The Wiesbadener Kurier informed me that the report had come from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), via the dpa (German Press Agency). I asked the highest officer of the Federal Marine, the chief officer in the Department of the Navy in the Federal Ministry of the Armed Forces, as well as Grand Admiral Dönitz to comment on this claim. All three assured me in writing that the German Navy had never offered monetary rewards for any purpose. All three officers rejected this report as outright fabrication.

I did not need any better proof than that. I informed the Wiesbadener Kurier of these findings and asked the editorial staff to immediately print a retraction in the same conspicuous place they had accorded their initial story, and to publish the truth. They told me that they would be willing to publish my statement as a letter to the editor, on my own responsibility. They themselves, however, would not take any action in the matter, since the report had originated with the BBC and had come to them via dpa.

In the course of a trip abroad, a high-ranking German diplomat once told me and my wife in great detail how terribly he had been made to suffer under Hitler’s tyranny until, in a specified year, he had determined to emigrate and, thank God, had thus been spared the worst. We did not believe him, and later my wife and I calculated how old the man would have been at the time he had allegedly had to suffer so terribly under Hitler’s regime: he had been about six years old at the time! -

Once, in the second half of the war, I had been called to report to the Chief of Staff of the SA in the Reich Chancellery, and was asked to wait in the adjutancy. I was in the midst of a conversation with the Head of the Adjutancy, SA Gruppenführer Girgensohn, when a good-looking officer came in and was greeted enthusiastically by the Gruppenführer. The officer was introduced to me and I learned that even before 1933, when he was a young officer in the German army, he had been reprimanded for marching, in uniform and with a swastika flag, at the head of an SA demonstration. When this officer was speaking to the Chief of Staff while I still had to wait, I learned that he was designated for a position in the Adjutancy because he was considered to be the most National-Socialist of the younger officers!

This was Count Stauffenberg, who later attempted to kill Hitler with a bomb in his quarters „Wolfsschanze“. As we know, Hitler survived, but several high-ranking officers and civilians were injured or killed. Hitler arranged for the Chief of Police, General Dr. Martin, Head of the SS Unit for Central Franconia, to convey his (Hitler’s) condolences to Count Stauffenberg’s widow or mother - I think it was his mother - and had her presented with a huge bouquet of flowers. And since there was a great deal of outrage amongst the people against Count Stauffenberg, Hitler even ordered a guard for the protection of the family. Dr. Martin later recounted this to me in great detail in the prison camp of Hersbruck.

Enemy propaganda during and campaigns of slander after the war chose the SA as their preferential target - that organization, of all possible choices, whose members were trained to be exceptionally self-disciplined and which turned millions of men from the working class, and particularly Social-Democrats and Communists, from enemies into friends and comrades through personal conviction and sacrifice and personal moral decency. I can say this quite freely, because I witnessed it myself for years. I know that with the exception of a vanishingly few fellow-travellers, spies and agents provocateurs planted by the enemy, the SA had practically nothing at all to do with the 1938 persecution of the Jews. And those who were proved to have had a part in it were punished with especial severity, on Hitler’s express orders.

The exemplary nature of the SA was brought home to me most vividly at the NSDAP Party Convention in Nuremberg in 1929. Hitler was in the Hall of the Cultural Association, giving his programmatic address to some 1,500 members of the Party and the SA, when suddenly we heard a tremendous uproar outside. Only a few minutes later we saw the great heavy door being burst open with brute force. Most of the people in the auditorium stood up to see what was going on behind them. Hitler called out, with striking calm: „Party comrades - what’s happening back there isn’t nearly as important as what I have to say up here. Please sit down again, listen to me and leave all the rest to our SA.“

And indeed everyone resumed their seats and Hitler continued his address as though nothing had happened. Those who had forced their way into the Hall were several hundred Communists, under the leadership of the infamous criminal Max Hölz; as they themselves couldn’t proclaim loudly enough, they had come from Berlin with the express purpose of turning the entire NSDAP Party Convention „into one huge blood-bath“! But the SA formed an impenetrable wall against them, so solid that all the Communists were slowly but surely crowded out of the Hall, and ultimately out of the building altogether.

It would have been easy enough to beat these Communists to a pulp - except that the SA was forbidden to do so. They had to let themselves be punched - and the only recourse open to them was to muster up even more resolution to crowd the enemy out. - Following this incident, Hitler sent his Dr. Goebbels to drive through the streets of Nuremberg in order to reinforce to the SA everywhere that such self-discipline was absolutely essential. There was one casualty and several wounded - albeit only in the ranks of the SA!

At the funeral of Herbert Norkus, the Hitler Youth murdered by the Marxists in Berlin in 1932, I witnessed how the Communists perching close by on a wall threw large and heavy rocks at us, especially at Dr. Goebbels and those accompanying him. Goebbels gritted his teeth and whispered to us: „Stand still, don’t so much as blink an eye, don’t let them provoke you!“ Each of us passed the message on to the next. Everyone acted accordingly: if they had not, the situation would have degenerated into a massive blood-bath. Afterwards, when we marched off through the Reddest part of Berlin, singing our battle songs, many of the Communists joined us, and marched and sang along with us.

In political as well as spiritual terms, Hitler’s Revolution was a comprehensive one, if not one of the greatest - and unique in its degree of discipline. That was the key by which it gained power. It was the factor that set it most clearly apart from its rivals. That is why the slander of our German past is nowhere as brutal as where it attempts to deny this discipline, to erase it from the memory of us Germans. Such discipline has as its prerequisite an unsurpassably strong faith - and the slanderers are well aware of this. Such a faith could easily rise again, even without any Hitler or National-Socialism - simply based on the legitimacy of nature, for example.

When Count Helldorf, Chief of Police of Greater Berlin, reported in detail to the Gauleiter of Greater Berlin after the so-called „Kristallnacht“, I happened to witness their conversation without their knowledge.

Count Helldorf reported that only very few Party members had participated in the ransacking of Jewish stores and the mistreatment of Jews. And most of these few had only done so because they had been incited to it, namely by Communists disguised as SA-men. Goebbels’ answer was: „Helldorf - I tell you, one of these days this madness will cost us a million dead soldiers!“

It is not true that Hitler wanted the „Kristallnacht“ to happen. On the contrary; he and Goebbels repeatedly made some very long and heated telephone calls that night in attempts to forestall any acts of violence, abuse or plundering. I know this from a gentleman from the Press Department of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda who was on duty at the telephone switchboard that night and listened in on these calls out of understandable curiosity. He took some notes, recording what he heard.

Apart from this evidence, there can certainly be no doubt that Hitler, Goebbels, Göring etc. were at least smart enough to know that it would be downright suicidal to make an arch-enemy of world Jewry - especially if there is nothing one needs as badly as a long and stable time of peace. It is impossible to carry out a revolution in wartime! And the Revolution was everything to Hitler - meant to save the German people as well as the Reich! It had originated in the terrible consequences of the First World War, and in the protest against these consequences. Risking a new war right in the midst of the realization of this Revolution would have been begging for trouble. But his foremost aim was to achieve his goals without the danger of war! A man such as Julius Streicher certainly thought differently on this matter, but one can blame neither the Party nor the people, and least of all Adolf Hitler, for that.

Institutions are worth only as much as the people that represent them. One who wants to write history must not judge people by actions, but rather the actions by the people. The more that materialism has come to be established, the less attention has been paid to the people - and the more to their „achievements“. Anyone who wants to judge actions by the people, however, must personally know the people in question and must have experienced them from the perspective of an independent observer. He must not try to judge on the basis of an intent or of political tactics, but solely for the purpose of doing justice to the truth!

The pre-war, wartime and most of all the post-war vilification of the German people and their past has as little to do with truth as it has to do with honor - it served, and continues to serve, the exclusive purpose of preparation for a Third World War, in the event that it should once again turn out that the German nation has not been broken forever.

Part 7 - Slander: psychological genocide!

In this particular context, the problem of „the extermination of Jews in concentration camps“ is the most devastating in every respect, and for everyone involved - regardless of which side they took or take.

During my imprisonment right after the war, I was thrown together with many men who had been interned in the various major German concentration camps in the course of the last years of the war. I got them to tell me as much about it as possible. In fact, not one of them was ever able to confirm that even a single person had ever been gassed in any of the concentration camps of that time. That the bodies of victims of the epidemics which had broken out near the end were burned because they could not be buried, and that this practice still continued even after the Allied Occupation Forces had taken control - that was a self-evident necessity for reasons of hygiene alone. Near the end of the war, not even the greatest and most heroic efforts sufficed to provide medication, rations, etc. - In the meantime it has long been proven that in the camp of Dachau, for example, there were never any facilities for the gassing of human beings.

Official statistics show that a maximum of 3.7% of the total number of Jews - that is, the total of all nations - were missing at the time in question. Jews emigrated not only from Germany, but from the Balkans, France, Greece and Italy as well.

During the war, when the Americans landed in Casablanca, 5,000 Jews from the city of Marrakech alone left Morocco. Why should a great many more Jews not also have fled from the much larger cities in Morocco - such as Casablanca, Rabat, Tangiers, etc. - just as from the other Arab countries?

How many Jews were clever enough not to register as Jews per se in the countries where they settled, eg. in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, etc.? And the number of Jews that disappeared or „went underground“ in the Soviet Union is given as exceeding the one million mark.

Why does it upset today’s opinion-makers so badly when it turns out that not eight million, but barely half-a-million Jews are missing for the time period in question? Shouldn’t it be reason to rejoice that fewer are missing? Even the number of Jews who were able to flee to the United States via neutral countries during and after the war, both from Germany and from German-occupied areas, must have been great, for there were many more Jews in the United States after the war than there had been before.

Of course it is horrible when people are killed. But if one counts one group, one must also count the others. It won’t to do accuse Germany because she lost the war and can barely even defend herself, while hushing up almost everything that the other side ought to account for!

Why is it possible the world over to spend decades talking with impunity about six million allegedly gassed Jews - while at the same time the world public never hears a word about what was done to our already helpless Germany in the last days of the war, and later, after conclusion of the armistice? Why does the world still not know how many tens of thousands of German SS-soldiers were shot for the sole reason that they had their blood group tattooed beneath their arm (so that in case of injury they could be given the proper blood transfusion without delay)?

Why is it hushed up to this day what an inconceivably horrible blood-bath the British and American bomber planes visited on the hospital city of Dresden, exactly at the time when the great numbers of fleeing Silesian refugees were passing through that already overcrowded city? Hundreds of thousands of poor civilians who had never fired a single shot were murdered in cold blood in Dresden.

Why is the world kept in the dark about the dreadful death suffered by the Germans in Prague, where German soldiers were strung up along the streets and set on fire like torches, where tens of thousands, mostly barefoot, were spat on and beaten and hunted across stretches of broken glass? Why are there never any reports about what American Negro soldiers in Aschaffenburg did to the 300 German girls who were stationed there as army news service assistants?

Why have there been decades of nothing but silence about the countless and, as a rule, particularly brutal tortures which thousands of German soldiers, officers and even civilians were subjected to - after the war! - by the Allied Occupation Forces? This is something that comes to my mind frequently nowadays, whenever I read the outraged reports in today’s Federal German press about torture allegedly taking place in Chile, Spain or Greece - as though like things never happened in the so-called „democratic“ nations of the Western world!

Why was it possible, just recently, for the Pope to speak of „a criminal Germany of the past“ when at the same time he has spent almost a decade now, passively watching his Church wage civil war against the Protestants in Northern Ireland - a very criminal war indeed, ever expanding in scope and now spreading even to the British island?

Were the wars in Korea and Vietnam not a great deal more brutal than the battles fought by the Germans in the Second World War?

Vilification is only ever aimed at the Germans, and almost always by exactly the same circles. For the biggest business on earth has always been war! Not for the warring parties, but for those that supply the arms - and the most evil weapon has ever been slander.

The German Reich not only did not want war, it staked everything for a lasting peace. The war was forced on it. And exactly those same circles that managed to do so, have ensured that the war never ends. The global campaign of vilification is nothing other than part of the state of war that still persists, and that is why the German government cannot simply defend itself against it. Many very weighty and decisive treaties, particularly the „Treaty of Germany“, render the Federal Republic of Germany dependent on the victorious powers. Beyond that, she has also entered voluntarily into obligations she could only meet as a sovereign state. But Germany can only have either its present state of dependence, or sovereign status. Trying to function under both at the same time is a fatal combination.

A confident and self-confident German people would give their government the backing it needs in order to take the appropriate and long-overdue steps for becoming more than just a follower of orders given by the USA, and for obtaining a peace treaty at long last. Dependents, on the other hand, can never negotiate freely.

However, the prerequisite for the necessary yet sorely lacking self-confidence of our people - in the East as well as in the West - is the absolute truth about the people’s past, their fate, their „self“. And regardless how bitter, how awful this truth were, it would in any case be a fate, a destiny for us, inconceivable perhaps but nevertheless a progression in the clearly perceptible natural order of this world.

Unfortunately, for as long as the majority of the Germans bury their heads in the sand for the sake of perpetuating their own creature comforts, our path will continue to spiral steadily downwards, especially in spiritual terms, and ultimately that means complete destruction. These people have already sunk so low that they are prepared to relinquish their right to the truth about themselves, and thus thoughtlessly choose those who spread the least unpleasant lies and whitewash.

A nation that lets itself be trained to take an interest in nothing beyond its television programme will one day also readily give up any and all social interaction, its statehood as a whole, the once great regard accorded to it by the world, and ultimately even its future generations. We do not need to look to politics for proof of this; the evidence stares us in the face even in everyday life:

a) a people known especially in the 1930s for their cleanliness in every sense of that term have turned into a shockingly dirty „consumer society“. The percentage of young people who never brush their teeth and of those who never even take a bath has already exceeded 12%;

b) syphilis, almost eradicated during the 1930s, is again so widespread that it poses a threat to the people’s very existence;

c) the number of violent crimes is steadily on the increase; within the framework of internationally organized terrorist conspiracies, acts of terrorism are able nowadays to blackmail entire nations and their people and to force them to their knees within a very few days, for example by means of the complete cut-off of water or electricity or through bacterial warfare.

It is certainly possible to simultaneously impose a regime of programmatic anarchy on the key nations of Europe within the space of two or three days. Even a large-scale attempt at any such thing would result in utter chaos. Every politically conscious person in western Europe as well as the United States, and especially in the Soviet Union, is fully aware of this.

Many foreigners still place their hopes in the German people - but they are deluding themselves, for the nation of the 1930s, the nation of brave endurance in wartime, is long gone. Its self-confidence had been destroyed, and with it its spiritual strength. That self-confidence that was able to weather world wars and could even muster up the strength afterwards to bring about the „Economic Miracle“ - that self-confidence has been eroded by the treacherous, downright satanic campaign of calumny waged against it by its real enemies, who never yet wore a uniform in honour. Along with the truth, honour died as well, and along with honour, so did the love that once informed this nation.

Of course there are a few million Germans left who know what is at stake - but they, too, largely lack the necessary strength. The lie is too crafty, too all-encompassing, and simply incomprehensible to the German mind. This is a fact which in itself should already speak eloquently for our people but which, I think, has never been considered.

That German people and German politicians have managed for thirty years to let themselves be blackmailed by foreign countries, much to the detriment of their own nation and state - blackmailed into paying out billions upon billions in „reparations“, into giving away huge portions of the German nation without having even so much as a peace treaty - that has been possible only because the continuous and still increasing slander has instilled in them such a guilty conscience that they are willing to do anything and everything just to „atone“, to „make reparations“, without even having a clear and objective conception of what really happened.

Some few hundred Germans - „fanatics of justice“, and true Socialists - for whom their own people have always been the essence of their striving, have not sat back idly, but tried despite all imaginable difficulties to ascertain the absolute truth. They have determined indisputable facts which in and of themselves already ought to suffice to instill a deep mistrust of the main of the other lies. These people know about the legions of false witnesses, about countless deceitful testimonies, innumerable instances of blackmail, great numbers of suicides, massive bribes, forgeries, perjuries, etc.

We know today that by far the majority of the allegations aimed at our people - in the context of two world wars, the Imperial, Weimar and Hitler days - are complete fabrications or at the very least gross exaggerations.

Part 8 - Art, culture and social innovations

Those engaging in this campaign of calumny are experts at attaining great results with crafty little tricks. Hundreds of millions of people around the globe know Adolf Hitler only as a monster with a whip in his hand, a grimly scowling face and a great dark strand of hair across his forehead. Anyone who knows only this image must assume that what he is faced with is a bloodthirsty, bellicose and very unpleasant man who could very well be the instigator of heinous crimes.

I have already said that I knew Adolf Hitler since 1928, and between 1933 and 1935 I was frequently with him, sometimes every day, and usually quite privately, often from 9 pm to about 2 am. That was the quiet part of his day, which he liked to spend in the company of close friends. In 1936 and 1937 I only saw him infrequently, hardly ever in the time before the outbreak of the war, and not at all anymore during wartime.

I can only state that I never once saw Hitler with a whip in his hand. As well, I never saw him with a strand of hair across his forehead, except perhaps accidentally in the course of a vigorous speech. His hair was without exception very neat, perfectly cut and combed. I did - very rarely - see him scowl, understandably enough at times when he was angry about something. When it happened in the presence of ladies, he would immediately apologize to them afterwards.

One very pronounced characteristic of his, however, is never mentioned nowadays, and was not very well known even then: his striking sense of humour.

No-one knew Hitler as well as Dr. Goebbels did. Whenever he had to take an unpleasant bit of news to Hitler, he would always bring along a few really good jokes, which had the effect of soothing and very efficacious medicine on Hitler. It must also be said that Dr. Goebbels had a flair for telling these jokes.

Two years ago I was very surprised to read that the great comedian Karl Valentin was being celebrated in Munich as „victim of Nazi persecution“. I wrote the Valentin Society that Hitler had been a particularly enthusiastic fan of Valentin’s and, in the small circle of his closest friends, had on several occasions recited the most popular Valentin skits - from memory, and very well at that. I think Hitler would have let Valentin get away with anything and everything. The claim that he persecuted him politically is, in my opinion, an outrageous lie.

One of the descendants of the famous singer Leo Slezak - his son, I think - claimed after the war that Slezak had had to suffer terribly under Hitler. Even Margarete Slezak, doubtless a great artist, had had a hard time of it during the Hitler regime, it was claimed. The fact is that Hitler numbered the Slezaks among his personal friends. I met Margarete dozens of times at Hitler’s place, and in every instance the two of them had a good and cheerful time together; old Slezak himself was never anything but admired for his great voice, his acting talent and his humanity.

Hitler knew that Slezak’s mother was one of the daughters of the banker Wertheim, in other words, of Jewish extraction. At age 59, Slezak gave up his position as singer with the State Opera - expressly „on his own request“, as he himself stated in the encyclopedia „Who’s Who“. He was brilliantly successful to the end, in America as well as especially at the Wagner and Mozart Festivals in Bayreuth and Salzburg. After the war I repeatedly visited his daughter, Margarete Slezak, in her beautiful house in Egern on the Tegernsee; she was still a great follower of Hitler’s, and made no secret of it.

In the course of the last twenty years, many well-known actors and actresses, especially those coming from the motion-picture industry, have written more or less political memoirs. I knew most of them personally, and so I know quite well what they thought of Hitler and Goebbels „in those days“, and what they invented „afterwards“ so as to ingratiate themselves with the regime of today just as they did very successfully back then with Hitler and the Reich Minister responsible for theatre and film.

I was already familiar with the methods these people used, from what I had observed during the 1920s and from 1930 to 1932. In their memoirs several of them seem to have confused their experiences in the 1920s with those of the 1930s, for in my opinion they were treated far too well in the 1930s. With respect to several of the „ladies“ from this field I can only say that their fawning was downright shameless. Often we literally took to our heels when we saw them converging on the Ministry, there to gush once again most effusively about how enraptured they were with Hitler and Goebbels and what a blessing National-Socialism was for the entire people.

But if Hitler wanted the German motion picture industry to become known and popular outside Germany - for up until then it was quite unknown - then he had to come to an arrangement with these people. Their pushiness was not in itself reason enough to dispense with good actresses.

There were also modest and decent artists, however, who made great careers for themselves even if they were politically, let’s say, uncomfortable. I know of several brilliant actors who made no secret of the fact that they were Communists. They were among the most respected ones to the end, their views notwithstanding. Heinrich George, Eugen Klöpfer, Emil Jannings, Werner Kraus, Mathias Wiemann, Gustav Gründgens, Alexander Golling - apart from the singers, these were for the most part not National-Socialists, and some of them were even known as opponents.

Hitler and Goebbels were in full agreement: actors must not be assessed in political terms, else real, good theatre as such will die out - and this, in turn, is something one cannot do to the people. The people come first! And to this day I believe that that was the right attitude to take.

One thing is for certain: politicians understand „theatre“ better than actors understand politics. And no doubt that is how it has been at all times and in all nations.

In any case, none of the actors as such had the slightest grounds for discontent. They were extremely successful, they were very popular not only at home but some of them even abroad, and theatre, just like the German movies, was more popular and respected than it has ever been again since. German movies did not attain world-wide significance until Hitler’s time. One of the last movies made in the Third Reich, „Kolberg“, was still a big hit abroad many years after the war. But it was rarely shown in Germany during the war, and not at all afterwards!

German broadcasting gained such prestige in the world that Germany was given the chairmanship of the World Broadcasting Association. German symphony orchestras also enjoyed unprecedented international popularity.

German sports did not attain world-wide importance until Hitler’s day, which was most evident at the Berlin Olympics. German jurisprudence gained such world-wide prestige under Hitler that a world conference of judges was moved to Germany. The Chairman of this conference, and host, so to speak, was Dr. Roland Freisler, who later was made a very particular target of by the slanderers of Germany and all things German.

German locomotives, German automobiles, German ships came to be greatly admired abroad, and bought, ie. ordered, worldwide. German physicians began to play a leading international role. Foreign experts came from all parts of the world to look at and copy Hitler’s Autobahn superhighways.

The organization of German agriculture, as well as the German solution to the problem of labour unions - in the shape of the „German Labour Front“ (DAF, Deutsche Arbeitsfront), which Hitler himself was reluctant to call „National-Socialist Labour Front“ - soon also came to be internationally regarded as exemplary.

After the war, when the Americans had the organization, structure and functional abilities of the „National-Socialist People’s Welfare Organization“ (NSV) and the „Winter Relief Organization“ (WHW) explained to them, they said - and I know this from eye-witnesses - that there was no other organization in the world as efficient and outstanding as these.

I cannot conclude this list without mentioning Arno Breker, one of the greatest artists of that epoch. Wide sections of the art-conscious population abroad practically idolized him, even though, as is commonly known, he was commissioned by Hitler personally, as were Count Plettenberg and Josef Thorak. Great artists from almost every country eagerly flocked to Germany.

And when Hitler then built up a fleet by means of which the German working man could see the world and come to know and honour other peoples, thus building bridges of understanding from one person to another - that was when he unconsciously touched a sore spot with his enemies and slanderers, for this was something that should not and must not be. The organization „Strength Through Joy“ (Kraft durch Freude, KdF) was by far the greatest of all social measures introduced by the Third Reich. It alone was already a Revolution of the true form of Socialism - independent of financial means. Time and again one could see thousands of men and women from all social strata of the German nation visiting Madeira and other „paradises“ on earth - and that was a great innovation for all of mankind in those days!

The only institution with which the German Reich sorely failed to excite admiration was its armed forces, which, due to imposed necessity, were much too small for such a large and significant nation. The navy was in dire need of at least five times the existing number of submarines, at least ten times as many transport ships of all kinds, at least twice as many warships of various kinds, as well as a number of surprises.

The air force was in even worse a shape than the navy. In fact, it barely existed at all. At least 3,000 fighter planes of various kinds were needed.

To expand and train the army, navy and air force on such a scale was very costly and, according to the experts, would require five to eight years’ time! Hitler was fully aware of all this, and so this alone means that it was completely out of the question for him to want war. Since the traitors also knew this, the matter of who started the war is quite clear, as is the fact that the entire campaign of slander and calumny was directed exclusively by those who wanted to eradicate „Made in Germany“ once and for all. Five to eight years - that meant that the Reich could not be fully armed before 1946 at the earliest!

But Hitler not only needed time for the armed forces, he also needed a great deal more time for the internal consolidation of the Reich. In this context he wanted at least ten to twelve more years - which means that the desired state of armament of the German armed forces would not be attained at any time prior to 1950! Hitler was of the opinion that at such a time there would no longer even be any danger of war, for he would surely have achieved an alliance with England long before that time, especially since he had renounced any and all colonial claims for the German Reich. Who else but him would have done any such thing back then?

Does anyone really believe that the German Reich could have concluded a naval treaty with England, treaties with Italy, Rumania and Japan, and even with the Soviet Union, if even one of the lies being spread around had been the truth? Never!

Does anyone believe that the two major Churches prayed for Hitler and his government for twelve whole years - and not only within Germany! - because deep down they really believed that he and his government were diabolical? I think this theory may safely be dismissed as out of the question.

From 1932 on I was personally acquainted with the papal nuncio Orsenigo, who for many years was a most respected ambassador of the Holy See to Berlin. Whenever he spoke about Hitler it was always in an appreciative, sometimes even an admiring vein. I never once knew him to voice anything negative. I was also well acquainted with Ambassadors Alfieri (Italy) and Frölicher (Switzerland), the Irish Ambassador, who remained supportive to the very end, as well as the Ambassadors of Japan (Oshima), Spain, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

It goes without saying that all these gentlemen listened to foreign radio broadcasts as well as to the German ones, in order to compare them. That was their privilege. In this way they regularly learned what new accusations the slanderers aimed at Germany. It was their right to demand pertinent information from the governments they were accredited to, and so they were always well-informed. They were also free to send informed members of their staff back to their countries of origin, for purposes of reporting there.

Not one of the many foreign diplomats whom I met in Berlin in the course of more than ten years considered Hitler’s regime to be „criminal“. They voiced criticism wherever they felt that something needed to be remedied - and it was their right as well as their duty to do so. But all of them without exception admired the German national community as Hitler’s greatest achievement. All of them acknowledged that Hitler preserved not only Germany but all of Europe from Communism. And many of them admired Hitler as a very brilliant man whose existence was a blessing, and not only for Germany.

I particularly remember the English diplomat Sir Ivon Kirkpatrick. We were personal friends of his and his family’s. Once he even attended a meeting of the NSDAP which was being held in the Reddest part of Berlin, and at which I was the sole speaker. When he congratulated me afterwards, he remarked that it was a great pity that only very few of the foreigners who came to Germany so full of curiosity had the chance to witness such a meeting. It was only at this meeting, he said, that he had fully realized that what was happening in Germany was a primarily Socialist revolution which - adapted, of course, to reflect individual situations - could be of immense benefit to all nations!

On the occasion of a party which Kirkpatrick gave at his home for his friends, he took me aside to ask me to tell my Minister in his name the next day (which was the day before Dr. Goebbels left for Egypt) that when he was in Egypt he should bear in mind that a very brilliant statesman had already been known to fail disastrously when he followed up on his war in Egypt by also invading Russia! I passed this message on to Dr. Goebbels - he did not answer, but I will never forget the way he looked at me.

No doubt Kirkpatrick meant well. After the war he served as a high-ranking Commissioner of the Queen in the British-occupied part of the Reich. During Kirkpatrick’s time in Berlin, the British Ambassador was Henderson. Unlike me, Hitler considered him a friend.

One evening when we were at the home of Chief of Staff Lutze, the host’s dachshund walked past us, and Henderson said: „You see, my dear Prince, this animal has typically German characteristics - a big mouth and a long tail.“ I answered: „And as far as I am aware, the dog typical for England is the bulldog - he bites from below, Your Excellency.“

I only mention these two brief episodes because I witnessed them myself and because they showed me how fundamentally different were the attitudes of those two Englishmen, who were both with the British Embassy at that time and who both played significant parts afterwards.

I especially liked to visit Ambassador Fran‡ois Poncet at the French Embassy. Hitler regarded him as a „particularly intelligent and tactful man“. From many private remarks I had gathered the impression that Fran‡ois Poncet was more kindly disposed towards the Germans than von Ribbentrop would have liked. Ribbentrop banked on Henderson. History has proven that the exact opposite would have been correct. But I could not possibly have interfered, especially since in 1929-30 Alfred Rosenberg had brought about my expulsion from the Party - and Hitler’s signature had been forged towards this end - because Baron Lersner and I had suggested to Hitler that he should review his position towards France and try to obtain an alliance with the French. Hitler acted on this suggestion, and Rosenberg told him that Baron Lersner was not fully Aryan. Rosenberg’s outrageous behaviour did not come to light until 1936, when Hitler declared that he had never heard of my being expelled from the Party, and after all, if he had known, he would not have continued to confide in me for years afterwards.

I only mention this because it shows how many dangers to Hitler and his struggle lurked within the Party’s leadership, and that it is insane to call him a dictator. If only he had been one, probably everything would have turned out fine, especially since he never intended to remain in the Party vanguard forever. I repeatedly heard him say, „As soon as I have finished laying the foundations of the Reich, I am going to step down and devote myself to the elaboration of our ideology.“ This is yet another factor which shows that he never wanted a war.

Part 9 - The eternal ethical laws of nature

„So why are you saying all this only now?“, many a reader will probably ask. The answer is, first, because there were many others who had, and have, much more evidence at their disposal, and who, further, held much higher ranks than I did - yet who lacked my personal relationship with Hitler, which was probably unique. The only one to personally describe Hitler accurately did not live in Berlin. He is a great artist, but was never active in politics - Dr. Hans Severus Ziegler, General Director of the Thuringian Theatres. His book tells the truth - and that is the highest praise one can give a book nowadays.

Several of the formerly high-ranking Party or state officials have tried to lend the truth a voice. They have produced many a good book. But the fact that someone dealt with Hitler only in the line of business is a hindrance. There would never have been any National-Socialism without Hitler. Since Hitler did exist, National-Socialism necessarily also had to come about, and because both finally existed after a long, hard struggle, the community of the German people developed. Only someone who can write about Hitler, about the human element, can ever write accurately about that time. I was very fortunate to know him only in those days when he was still completely his true self, free of all those pressures that came from outside once it had become profitable to have a part in the Revolution.

I knew Hitler the revolutionary statesman, who was as yet identical with Hitler the human being. And my second piece of good fortune was that I could feel quite independent of him - I needed him neither for a salary nor for rank, and least of all for social advantages. He knew that, and discussed it with me himself. That is why I dare to say: I knew Hitler. And that is why I feel obliged to write these lines, for in my opinion, having such knowledge also entails the obligation to pass it on to the people and most of all to posterity. Our nation has a right to every single word of the truth that will at long last help it return to a healthy state of self-confidence. And I feel that any German government must agree when I say: only the truth can help us - amongst ourselves as well as outwardly!

„The belief in original sin is what created the true original sin. Christianity has preached the evil of human nature for so long that it has become evil in fact.“

Coudenhove-Kalergi, in Held und Heiliger

The German Reich still exists - but only the truth will make it live again, for the power of truth is never more apparent than in the time of greatest need.

The concerns about the future of our Germany are legion. The greatest, however, is that of the decline of our people, as is already shockingly manifest in several respects. The root of this development is the fact that a proud nation has been stripped of its self-confidence. This nation is as yet able to exist, but not to fight for its existence. That such a fact is exploited to the limit by the enemies of this nation, is self-evident.

Where honour has lost its value, there can be no trust. Where trust is a thing of the past, there can be no friendship, and no camaraderie. Man slowly but surely becomes a predatory animal. Whether the state „treats“ criminals or punishes them is all the same: their numbers are frighteningly on the increase, even if they are less openly apparent. By the example of several great peoples throughout history we can see that this has ever been the same development that ultimately terminates a life of indulgence and excesses in dreadful self-destruction. In all cases, the destruction of national self-confidence was the start of this process, for anyone who has lost confidence in himself can no longer have confidence in anyone else, and one who can trust no-one is already lost.

As yet we could save our people if we could ignore parties, denominations, class and rank and could simply see ourselves and each other as Germans beginning a new life together by returning to the absolute truth, first within ourselves and then outwardly. We ask our governments to help us in this. The past must remain past - but with honesty, with unconditional and absolute truth! Truth is the prerequisite for honour. Truth plus honour results in loyalty - and these three together combine to form the most essential of all ideals: true love. The eternal ethical legitimacy of nature has decreed it so - and it does not require our agreement or consent.

Truth is one of mankind’s greatest ideals. It stands in a relationship of interdependence with the other great ideals: loyalty, love, and justice. All of them are part of the eternal ethical laws of nature. Hence they are inalienable and indivisible. One cannot and must not say: truth, justice - yes! But not for Hitler, because he was an awful criminal, he was to blame for everything.

Today the law puts particular emphasis on considering, treating and judging a criminal as a person. That is a great point of view! It incorporates the complete and total acknowledgement of the eternal ethical laws of nature! The very changeable concepts of „good“ and „evil“ - „angel“ and „devil“, „divine“ and „satanic“ - are based more on Church precepts than on religious principles, and least of all on truly natural fundamentals of order.

It has taken almost two thousand years until now people are gradually beginning to see Christ as a unique individual, not more and not less. Anyone who wants to abolish „devils“ must also do away with „angels“, and for this reason: for the sake of the „real person“, the human being whose soul in particular plays a great, mysterious, essential role and hence has a mission and a profound responsibility as part of the eternal order of this world.

Times when Germans in Germany were called „criminals“ while Frenchmen in France or Englishmen in England were celebrated as heroes for exactly the same reasons - such times must never come again. Instead of the extremely variable concepts of „good“ and „evil“ we must think in terms of „right“ and „wrong“ - „responsible“ versus „irresponsible“ human behaviour - within the framework of the eternal order of nature, so that mankind may finally break free of that vicious circle that Diderot described when he wrote: „Evil is whatever brings more detriment than advantage for one’s interests - and good is what brings more advantage than detriment.“

„Nature knows neither good nor evil; human opinion is what made the distinction.“

Sextus Empiricus

No doubt one of the greatest dangers to mankind is that craving for status that motivates the international seizure of power, for it is the most devastating violation of the natural law of diversity. All internationality ultimately has a negative effect on the freedom of natural unity. Not only that: it is also the best prerequisite for anonymity in politics. And that is the basis for the greatest crimes, all the more so because so-called technological progress increasingly offers such a development all the means for its further expansion.

It is downright grotesque for an international power, which today is globally active with the assistance of a large-scale computer network, to dare to slander as „dictator“ some statesman not bound by the international system, just because he attempts in all honesty to act in a direct relationship with the nation and people entrusted to him, without the interposition of machines without conscience!

But it is exactly these international powers which wage the concentrated war of slander against defeated Germany with ever-increasing intensity. Such a large-scale offensive of lies and deceit, practicable only from out of the dark of anonymity, has only been possible since mankind is ruled by relatively few overlords under the influence of the international powers.

At the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg between 1945 and 1949, people were condemned who certainly wanted only the best for their people, and acted as they did for this reason. They all were part of their nation’s great process of reconstruction, and the last thing they wanted was war; yet they perceived themselves to be under attack, and so - albeit much too late - they decided on total war... after their enemies had already launched the same, much earlier.

The entire Nuremberg Trial was a tragedy for both sides, because our opponents were not France, England, Russia, America etc., but rather the sum total of the international power dominating these nations. Countless most sincere conversations with high-ranking officers from such nations have shown me time and again that it was indeed so. None of those nations wanted war with Germany - and the Reich more than any other wanted to coexist in peaceful community with them for as long as possible. Not least of all, Hitler and his work was admired by the people of most nations and even by the most prominent of their politicians, such as Winston Churchill, Pierre Laval, etc.

Who was it who created the first, and to this day the most significant, of all Internationals? The International of the Proletariat? Karl Marx! He was the man who truly wanted to conquer the world, not for one nation and even less for all people, but solely and expressly for the proletariat, at everyone else’s expense. He himself wrote that he was prepared, if necessary, to annihilate the entire middle class! And during the great Russian Revolution his followers acted accordingly - they butchered millions! Why have the historians and politicians of virtually every nation on earth refrained from publicly denouncing Karl Marx as dictator? Isn’t the International of the Proletariat by far the greatest thrust towards world dictatorship to date?

The great Revolution during the First World War in Russia did not emanate primarily from the Russians any more than the revolts of the Marxists in Germany during the Twenties emanated primarily from the Germans, or those in Austria from the Austrians, those in Hungary from the Hungarians, those in Spain from the Spanish or those in Italy from the Italians - and all of them together cost Europe several million dead. The goal was the same everywhere: the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’! They assumed the role of dictator wherever brute force offered any opportunity, regardless which country served as playground: the likes of Trotsky, Adler, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Radek, etc., and at the vanguard of them all - Karl Marx!

Let us not forget that in 1919, on the orders of the Jew Eisner, some 300 hostages - mostly men who had earned merit in the defense of their country - were slaughtered in the square of the Royal Seat in Munich, without even so much as a court verdict. And let us not forget that Rosa Luxemburg’s and Karl Liebknecht’s uprisings in Berlin, Hannover and Hamburg, in Saxony, Hesse and the Ruhr region totalled far more than 50,000 dead, or that the Revolt of 1936, instigated by the dictatorship of the proletariat and initially a great danger to Spain’s very existence, cost the Spanish more than half a million dead.

Among the participants in the Red International in those days were Togliatti, Hemingway, Willy Brandt and many other leading Marxists from various countries; some of them are politically very active in Germany today. Those who instigated the blood-bath in order to seize the reins of dictatorial power were almost never people native to the country itself, but aliens, legitimized - so to speak - by the „International of the Proletariat“ which, according to Karl Marx, intended the annihilation of the entire middle class, if necessary.

Who dares deny that the idea of the „dictatorship of the proletariat“ has triggered countless, sometimes most bloody revolutions around the world, and created numerous dictatorships? The total must also include those revolutions which provoked natural counterforces and, accordingly, counter-revolutions.

This is the context within which one must view the two world wars. Both cases were a matter of the triggering of the Marxist World Revolution and the corresponding reactions. It is no wonder that enemy propaganda and slander did not begin only with Hitler and his rise to power, but rather already in the time of Emperor Wilhelm II. We may discern from this that said efforts were directed primarily neither at the Emperor nor at Hitler, but at the German nation and the German people. If this were not so, then the gigantic program of anti-German calumny would be quite incomprehensible, and useless to our enemies, today - 32 years after Hitler’s death!

In the view of the leading Marxists, the dictatorship of the proletariat - by its very character, and due to the nature of the people, both pro and con - had no greater enemy than the German Reich. The first and foremost concern of this dictatorship of the proletariat, therefore, is to destroy this German empire, to eliminate it once and for all, or at the very least to reduce it to an impotent state construct of third rank at best.

Marxism cannot be considered a democratic nor even a Socialist movement; Marx and its other loyal champions proclaimed it, aptly and significantly enough, as the dictatorship of the proletariat, and it has been repeatedly celebrated as such. However, a revolution that fights exclusively for only a particular sector of the population and seeks to eliminate the other sectors to achieve its end - such a revolution is the worst possible enemy of the people as a whole, ie. of the truly Socialist community. Anyone who calls such a revolution „Socialist“ or „democratic“ deceives his own people!

It is vital to understand this, for the Marxists have gained their position of power on the strength of this main ideological pillar. By means of their Godesberg Program they even gained additional „middle class“ support, specifically from those who still retain a touch of true Socialism - that kind which addresses the natural unity of a people.

If Hitler wanted to save the German people and nation from the desperate situation of the Twenties, he had to find a way that every German could follow. He had to create a party in which all Germans - without any differences, simply as Germans - could feel comfortable. Such a party could not have gained power by means of violence. Bloodshed may win victories, but not social community. Bloodshed may produce fear, but not true comradeship - it may gain an alliance, but never true unity and wholeness. Hitler understood this clearly from the start, and repeatedly stressed it to others.

The logical consequence of this was his self-sacrificial bearing at the Feldherrnhalle, where his Party did not shoot back when the police opened fire. Hitler, Hess, Göring and General Ludendorff strode resolutely and without hesitation into the volley. There were fourteen dead and many injured - the latter included Göring. In a symbolical sense this march became of utmost significance to the Revolution. Hitler’s bearing and that of his men during those minutes remained an example to the millions that came later, who must not let themselves be provoked under any circumstances. Not letting oneself be provoked heightens one’s self-discipline and faith. The one effects the other. Nothing else creates such a bond of comradeship. Nothing else is quite as impressive to one’s adversaries. Many former opponents gave me confirmation of this in the prison camp after the war.

In 1932 I was just a common SA-man. My wife and I were driving through Hangelar near Bonn, when the district head of the KPD [Communist Party of Germany] took a shot at me from his house. The bullet struck the door beside me, just about ten inches from my head. I waived my right at criminal prosecution, and Hitler thanked me for it.

At Christmas, 1933, Dr. Goebbels ordered a gigantic table piled with gifts to be set up in the Reddest part of Greater Berlin, along one of the main streets in the Communist district. National-Socialist and Communist families alike were given Christmas gifts. In the course of this very touching hour, one of the leading Communists arrived. He had just been released from prison, even though he had committed a number of violent crimes. I saw him coming, since he had been driven from the prison right up to the table of gifts, where he met his family and his circle of friends and comrades - as well as his greatest adversary, Dr. Goebbels, and his men. To this day I number these minutes among the most wonderful of my life.

„This Christmas could not have been better“, said Dr. Goebbels, and he was right. - Incidentally, it was the Russians who saw to it at the IMT in Nuremberg in 1946 that the SA as a whole was acquitted, and thus was not counted as one of the so-called „criminal organizations“.

Where else has there ever been a nation of 70 million souls, on the highest level of civilization and culture, which gave 98% of its election vote to one single man? Nowhere! „For me there are no more opponents among the people,“ Adolf Hitler said in my presence when he was asked whether he knew the missing 2%.

During the Berlin Olympics of 1936 I heard Hitler say that, no matter how sad it was, we would have to try to stem the flood of medals for the German athletes somewhat - else it would come to be embarrassing towards our foreign guests.

That man was truly no dictator - but the slanderers have always tried to portray him as such. And it is in human nature to believe evil rather than good, falsehood rather than truth - especially if they think that they will profit more by this; a belief which always proves mistaken in the long term, however.

Certainly Adolf Hitler never wanted the war. On the contrary, he had hoped for a very long time of peace. All his real interests could be realized only in peacetime. Among those who slander him and the entire German people to this day, there are and were next to none who really knew him personally, as independent person, as free agent, long enough to be able to judge fairly.

His plans for post-war times were enormous in scale and scope - ranging from the eradication of cancer to the giant power plants he wanted to build in the Sahara, together with the African nations, in order to harness solar energy. „It’s not necessary to be allied or bound to everyone - it’s much easier to help everyone without international ties“; that was his opinion. Immensely interesting plans were already on the drawing board. All of us wanted peace as soon as possible. Hitler made offers of peace four or five times and received - no answer at all! In light of all this, can one really call him guilty, criminal - a dictator?

You, the reader, can decide for yourself; but you must understand that falsehood is always to everyone’s detriment. Of all things, the past in particular ought to be perfectly clear to one who views it, like a precious diamond, and just as natural and immutable.

Part 10 - A word to the slanderers themselves

And now, a word to the slanderers themselves. A word from the pen of Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps one of the most prominent, courageous and profound of all philosophers:

„And this is the tale of Zarathustra’s conversation with the fire-dog: The earth (he said) has a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called ‘Man’. And another of these diseases is called ‘the fire-dog’: men have told many lies and been told many lies about him.

„To fathom this secret I fared across the sea: and I have seen truth naked, truly! barefoot to the neck.

„Now I know all about the fire-dog; and also about all the revolutionary and subversive devils which not only old women fear.

„‘Up with you, fire-dog, up from your depth!’ I cried, ‘and confess how deep that depth is! Where does it come from, that which you snort up?

„‘You drink deeply from the sea: your bitter eloquence betrays that! Truly, for a dog of the depths you take your food too much from the surface!

„‘At the best, I hold you to be the earth’s ventriloquist: and when I have heard subversive and revolutionary devils speak, I have always found them like you: bitter, lying, and superficial.

„‘You understand how to bellow and how to darken the air with ashes! You are the greatest braggart and have sufficiently learned the art of making mud boil.

„‘Where you are there must always be mud around and much that is spongy, hollow, and compressed: it wants to be freed.

„‘Freedom’, you all most like to bellow: but I have unlearned belief in „great events“ wherever there is much bellowing and smoke about them.

„‘And believe me, friend Infernal-racket! The greatest events - they are not our noisiest but our stillest hours.

„‘The world revolves, not around the inventors of new noises, but around the inventors of new values; it revolves inaudibly.’“

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Part 11 - Conclusion

Immensely much could still be said about this topic. I have restricted myself, on the whole, to things I know from personal experience. My intent was not to settle scores with former opponents; we have no need of that. My intent was twofold:

a) to establish how abominable and base a barrage of lies has been aimed at us Germans for decades; and

b) to point out who does this, and why.

The circles which have instigated and perpetuated the world-wide slander of our nation for decades now are themselves in every way the extreme opposite of us Germans. They are more or less an imitation of their prophet Karl Marx. They give themselves away ever more clearly by no longer trying to destroy only us Germans with their lies, but other nations as well. The Chileans, the Spanish, the South Africans and the Arabs are but a few examples. They, too, the slanderers accuse of heinous crimes, they too are placed at the receiving end of continual hate-mongering carried out on an international level and even by means of international organizations.

Anyone who comes to know them through their methods knows that their lies are only a means towards their end in the struggle for world power. For if it were otherwise, they would have the courage to slander the great powers as well: Russia, China and the United States. But not a hair of their heads is ever touched! What all do these states have on their conscience even only with respect to their own nations, their own people? Not a word is written about that. There are even attempts to forge spiritual alliances against us with these nations - which endeavour has succeeded all too well in the case of the United States. I just recall the disgusting hate-propaganda that a certain General Eisenhower ordered distributed in immense quantities to his officers near the end of the Second World War!

And who still recalls that the Poles indulged in such unspeakably atrocious excesses in Germany in 1945 that some of the Russian troops saw fit to protect the Germans from these Poles? What prompts the slanderers to keep silent about the fate of the Jews in the Soviet Union as well as in the States? In 1961, in Buffalo, USA, I saw one of the largest synagogues in the city, which had burned down and, it seemed, was not being rebuilt. I asked numerous respected Americans what that meant. They shrugged their shoulders and laughed a little maliciously, and that was all. I then asked deliberately: „When is it going to be rebuilt?“ The answer: „We don’t know if it’s going to be rebuilt!“

Even though the incitement and hate-mongering against our nation and its history is carried on by far the most vigorously and most disgustingly in the United States, I do not think that most of the people are prepared to believe everything they hear.

Those criminal slanderers who incite the entire world against our German nation and its history, and act in a similar manner towards very specific other nations as well, do not, however, voice even the slightest objection when international Capitalism / Marxism promotes a process which in the long run will most certainly destroy the whole of all life on earth. I only need to mention that horrible topic, „disposal of radioactive waste“.

No-one knows what to do with this deadly waste-material, of which there is more and more every day. Because storage on the ocean floor has already proven much too dangerous, the only possibility considered to be still an option is to deposit it in particularly deep ocean trenches, where this waste will not become active for another 10,000 years - we hope. But if the amount of waste that has already accumulated gets out of hand in even only 1,000 years, then this should more than suffice to utterly destroy all life on this planet in a very brief period of time indeed!

My question: who are those international dictators, unprecedentedly thoughtless and callous, irresponsible and unscrupulous, who dare to continue producing radioactive waste even though they know full well that the enormous dangers to all life grow more and more monstrous with each new barrel that is sunk, and can never be stopped?

Anyone who tolerates that, who does not speak out against it, who does not denounce those dictators of economy and finance as by far the worst criminals of all time and all nations - God knows, such a person does not have the slightest right to criticize things past.

Those who calumniate us Germans and our history were and continue to be the ones truly at the root of the great wars - and they are at the same time the ones who pave the way for that Dictatorship of World Capital which I have particularly stressed.

Thus, the circle closes, and what seemed so incomprehensible at first becomes quite clear.

And exactly for this reason, that now we know what at best we could sense then, I must take this opportunity to remember those tens of thousands, and probably even hundreds of thousands, of good German men and women who, since May 8, 1945, have slowly died an agonizing death because their love of home and Fatherland, their decency and their loyalty to their people and their nation simply could not bear all these base lies and deception. I saw many of them already slowly begin to die of this spiritual agony in the prison camp - and not a few of them, out of their bottomless despair, ended their own lives.

I know that I was born a German so as to live and do my duty as a German. That is in accordance with the eternal order of this world we live in. He that deliberately acts against this order, can only be a traitor, a scoundrel! He harms everyone else. No philosophy, no religion, no mathematics can ever be stronger than the eternal ethical legitimacy of nature!

„This above all: to thine own self be true!
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.“

Shakespeare, Hamlet I,3 (Polonius)

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Part 12 - Epilogue

Whether it makes sense or not - it is an undeniable fact, proven anew day in, day out, that Adolf Hitler is the best-known person in the world today, second only to Jesus Christ. Particularly in the most powerful nations, he is - politically speaking - still very much alive, for time and again, the world over, he is repeatedly quoted and continually referred to and described. Magazines, books, movies, radio, television, parliaments and countless speakers from all nations continue, 31 years after his death, to seize every possible opportunity to exploit this man and to profit from him. The most glaring example of this which I myself witnessed must be mentioned:

In a speech which I gave in Ulm/Donau, I attempted to establish that there can never be absolutely rigid judgements in politics. The more natural any given teaching is, the more human discipline is required of its adherents. Hence, the more sacrifices must be made, the smaller the number of true followers, fighters and faithful.

I said: „Let no-one believe that everyone who once wore the Brown Shirt is my friend today. On the contrary - in this matter I am particularly discriminating, because I know that the number of National-Socialists decreased, the more rapidly the numbers of Party members grew! If someone today points out a Federal Minister or party leader who used to hold a position in the NSDAP, I could not care less, for I know that he could never have ben a National-Socialist. He just ‘acted the part’ - and so he will just ‘act the part’ all his life.“

In closing, I said: „It was a very bad thing that both Ribbentrop and Bormann, for example - two profoundly different men - were not National-Socialists. The wrong political attitude is in itself disastrous, but to fake the positive political attitude and then to abuse and betray it, that is catastrophic.“

In this context I mentioned that I had seen Bormann in the train station of Buchloe after the war, in 1948 or 1949. This remark caused an uproar, and a leading German magazine asked me for an interview. I agreed, on the condition that I would first be given a clear answer to the following question, which was of paramount interest to me at the time: „Am I correct in the assumption that the official account of Hitler’s death is partly untrue? By ‘partly’ I mean ‘to a considerable degree’.“

The magazine’s editorial staff withdrew for a brief conference, and then declared that it was in fact so, the official account was incorrect in some vital respects. I responded that it was quite incomprehensible to me why such a prominent magazine would then forfeit the great credit of publication, and keep silent for years. Their answer was: „All in good time, dear Prince!“...

This interview has remained in my mind as exceptionally revealing and interesting. And that is also a reason for my writing this booklet, even though it strikes me as somewhat incomplete an attempt at the interpretation of Adolf Hitler’s personality.

And just at this time, quite unexpectedly, I have received what is probably the most interesting and valuable supplement imaginable: Adolf Hitler’s last recorded statements shortly before the end of the war - some notes, unknown to date.

The reader will no doubt wonder whether these notes are genuine. Naturally, we too considered this point frequently and earnestly. I can only say this: the writing is Hitler’s style, the statements are doubtless his own thoughts, the mood of those days is singularly brought to life, and the notes were released by a reliable and trustworthy source - for the sake of the truth, and only for its sake!

Adolf Hitler’s expositions* affected me, who knew him well until 1936, like a profession by the soon to be departed. With perfect candor he tells how he saw matters - and exactly that is of paramount importance for us to know, for:

„The concealment of truth brings evil!“
Friedrich Nietzsche

*KRITIK issue no. 70: Adolf Hitler - ein Leben für Deutschland und Europa.