Be More than Appear

Source: SS Leitheft, Year 8, Issue 7, Christmas 1942

A Word about Our World-View Style

We deem it a good sign that the enemy scatters leaflets over air-threatened regions that are directed against the Waffen-SS. The opponent has always jabbed where he presumes the strongest clamps of the Reich idea, and we consider it an honor to be viewed as the most passionate representatives of an uncompromising and clear National Socialist line. After all, no one has in seriousness come up with the idea that over there in the east the fight is about the greater honor and expansion of any religious institution. Everybody knows the Waffen-SS is deployed at the foremost front precisely because there Germandom defends Europe’s culture ground and with the military victory the decision will also be made over Europe’s reconstruction and rejuvenation from the Germanic world-view.

Clarity and Responsibility

This consciousness, however, includes a high responsibility. Whatever groups or individuals in our folk may have serious thoughts about the world-view or religious rejuvenation, they do not bear the leadership and the responsibility for the employment of the spiritual weapons, rather the Führer and the movement’s leading men. The SS, as the order of German men sworn to the Führer, shares a substantial portion of this responsibility and is proud to be recognized by friend and foe as the bearer of a clear political and ideological line.

The German claim to Europe’s leadership has as a prerequisite a complete clarity of world-view thought. We are aware that a folk cannot be really led by divided and unclear men, rather only by uncompromisingly clear thinking, courageous and at the same time real-politically acting men. No one may surpass us in clarity and goal-orientation of will, and if anybody may confuse an occasional restraint with inner insecurity, then he makes the same mistake that part of the German public once made in complete underestimation of the real power relationships of the movement.

The Soldierly Style

The style of our world-view is first and foremost determined by Prussian-German soldierdom. It is disciplined, simple, clear and simply not transferrable to people who are not deeply serious by what they say. Our world-view is above all not lofty. The soldier like the political soldier of the movement experiences danger with open eyes. His senses are sharpened. He does not speak of his deeds. When necessary, he suffers death without word and without complaint. His inner relationship to the creator of all things is simple and clear - and requires no intermediary. From him he receives life, and he gives his life back into his great order. He knows no one will help him, not even God, if he does not fight his own way out of distress and death. The German trust relationship between man and God has always remained the same through the centuries despite clouding through alien motifs of reverence and fear and shines bright and clear especially in difficult moments. That makes the German man so calm, so fearless and so unconcerned. The soldierly virtues are the main part of our world-view. Who has not passed through the school of the movement and of the army, through this self-evident fulfillment of duty, discipline and hardness against himself, is not authorized to take spiritual responsibility for our folk. There are no moral norms without deep, faith-based background. An army that without clear world-view just outwardly affirms these norms could at best present a well-drilled troop, which must however fail in a modem war where clarity and independence are demanded.

A second thing is hence decided: The relationship of the German to his Lord God has its main point in the spiritual and not in external forms. That is very decisive for the whole spiritual work within the SS, for our communal hours and especially for our celebrations. One should not forget that the great Germanic protest that arose from the ground of Central Europe against the church came not in the least from the different kind of Nordic style-feeling, which rejects any cult that is not the expression of a simple and natural religiosity. The protest has to rise again, if somewhere in the movement unclear men unburdened with responsibility would attempt to shift the emphasis in the sense of what was once overcome for always. The life of the Germanic man in his creative world, in his family and his folk, is so full of deep relationships that it requires no spiritual compulsion and no magic to peel out the simple religious core of his world-view.

A Good Core in a Rough Shell

It is a fundamental mistake to believe that the soldierly bearing, which in contrast to other European folks has a downright mythical significance in our folk, is not compatible with inner fineness and sensitivity, which are necessary for the faith- related leadership of our folk. In the Prussiandom of Frederick the Great the harshness and dryness of the external form entered into a downright unique connection with the inner richness and musicality of the German soul. One should read the letters and essays of Prussian statesmen and soldiers in order to recognize what loftiness and what fine feeling can hide behind a harsh and bare eternal form. On Germanic soil the final inner things downright require a certain covering through external reserve and sparseness of expression. German man cannot daily hawk his most valuable possession. Precisely in this sphere the slogan is true: “Be more than appear.” He knows that which one may designate chastity toward religious things. The less he speaks of it, the more they determine his action. One should not deceive himself; this external reserve has nothing to do with artistic emptiness. On the contrary: The intellectual and artistic history of our folk has given evidence of that inexhaustible richness that slumbers in Europe’s most soldierly nation and has again and again become the source of rejuvenation of other folks.

The inside, that so closes off itself, does not age so easily. An eternal youthfulness, light and clarity shine out to us from our folk’s history. It enables ever new resurrection after the most difficult catastrophes. What is presented to us as hardness and bareness is in reality the eternal youthful strength of a folk that surrounds itself with a rough and hard shell, through which dew-fresh, green twigs and leaves break again and again.

Cleanliness and Self-Criticism

Fundamentally, no kind of fantasy world is compatible with the purity and cleanliness of this bearing. Our time is too serious and too hard for us to again revive long overcome mistakes. Many so-called faith-teachings of the present have failed because they jumbled up fantastic, utopian images and scientific knowledge. Primitiveness of thought is no proof for religious and world-view leadership. Primitiveness should also not be confused with naturalness and with a thinking that is directed by natural instincts. For our scientific work is an indispensable component of the cleanliness and clarity of spiritual bearing. We affirm scientific knowledge and see no other way that with our senses and the categories of our thought to penetrate ever deeper into nature. Whoever denies this Faustian drive of German man is a romantic or Utopist and is filled with deep mistrust of the created world, to which our senses and our knowing also belong. We are, however, of the view that every fertile work stems from the belief in a natural world order, confirms it with its knowledge and again flows into it.

That is the light, courageous and disciplined spirit with which we approach the research of the Germanic roots of our folk. May it determine the style of our political and religious life.

Wilhelm Gschwend