Faith and Hardness

Source: SS Leitheft, Year 10, Issue 8. 1944

“In such unholy times one must provide oneself with innards of iron and an iron heart.”

Frederick the Great, 1757

Frederick the Great after the Battle of Kolin - by Julius Schrader

It is not hard to follow the Führer in hours of joy. What faith and loyalty are capable of, is proven only during setbacks and hours of stress. Precisely in these months as the fifth year of our folks’ hard and glorious struggle of fate comes to an end, it should be said that for us SS-men faith was never the same as blind trust in a malevolent fate, which would one way or another make things work out alright anyway, rather than for our whole life long, since we decided for the Führer’s cause, have never forgotten to look the enemy straight in the eye and to include the changes of fate in our calculations. We have had an idea that the Führer has more than once had a heart full of concern, perhaps precisely at the moment when our folk cheered him and had occasion to celebrate. Nothing, especially no victory, fell into the Führer’s lap. He had to so to speak defiantly wrestle every success from fate step by step. After victories and successes, one forgets the bitter path and the sleepless nights that led to them.

After defeats a folk in inclined to be thankless and shortsighted and to forget what has been accomplished. The path that lies behind us gives us cause enough to keep our faith and have the courage to not let ourselves be bent by any setbacks and to accept no defeat as final. Precisely in this historically important moment of our folk the history of the Seven Years War comes to mind, so near to the present. There is no span of German history that is more instructive and so full of most valuable experience for our whole folk. The struggle of the great king with his generals, officers and peasant sons against a vastly superior foe is an unprecedented example of the secret of a nation’s victory due to superiority of will. For seven years the great king fought on four fronts. The Reich, based on its central position in Europe, has so to speak since the cradle faced the continuous threat of its borders from great military powers. Little Prussia bore and fought through the same fate that later Bismarck and today Adolf Hitler had to take over as heir and task.

France, Austria, Russia and Sweden stood against the great king. Back then like today the Germanic middle had to draw two conclusions from its numeric inferiority: The first was the strictest concentration of all forces, an unbreakable by anything loyalty of officer and man to the king, hardest fighting spirit and an iron faith in the own cause. On the basis of these virtues Prussia and its great king withstood Kolin, Hochkirch and the most dangerous defeat of the Seven Years War, Kunersdorf. After each war year the situation was restored. Fate has a long breath and gives the crown of victory to the one whose bravery and spirit withstand greatest tests and stresses. The officers of the great king more than once during the war had to abandon homeland and family to the enemy, but nonetheless formed a ring of following around the king that no fate broke. “One may plunder our lands, one may devastate and burn them, one may rob us of ground and earth, yes even life, we will happily make all these sacrifices for our great king. ” That was the judgment of a Prussian officer in August of the year 1759.

The great king drew a second conclusion from the numeric inferiority of his armies: He tried to separate the enemy by lightning-like movements and beat them one after the other. Prussia could never be successful on all fronts simultaneously. But in the fateful struggle back then the god of war proved to be moody and made things hard for the king. Already after the defeat of Kolin in the second war year, the dice had fallen in such a way to make it foreseen that the plan to knock one main opponent out of the war through an annihilating battle had failed and that there would be a long-term war on four fronts, which would intensify over time. In this war the German army has to show a series of glorious campaigns in Poland, in Greece, in France and in Norway. Then came the long hesitation, the eighth month wait of our troops in France shortly before the invasion in England. The fourth opponent, the must imponderable of all, Russia, was closer to intervention than one could have expected. Its constantly escalating, blackmailing demands proven it. On June 21, 1941 it was decided that fate would not spare us a two-front war. And similarly like after Kolin in the Seven Years War, after the pitiless winter of 1941/1942, it was clear that the enemy in the east was not to be driven from the field through lightning-like operations. The west hence had time to catch up. We stand in the effects of this situation. It will be mastered. It will be mastered alone by unchangeable loyalty to the Führer, by unconditional obedience and by readiness to action to the last. May we in these hours remember what has been accomplished. The countless dead of the National Socialist army covers glorious battlefields. Now we must not beat an eyelash. We take blows, stubborn, but not desperate. More than once since 1918 fate has put the Führer and our folk to the test. Adolf Hitler, with a small and then ever-growing number of loyal followers, year after year overcame each threat. Hours of the most extreme risk had to be mastered, from the introduction of universal military service to the march into Austria and the Sudetenland to that fateful decision of June 21, 1941. The Führer mastered these hours, because he knew the following of his movement, his loyal officers and soldiers to be behind him. The spirit of our soldiers is the same as that of the Prussian army. Faith, duty and loyalty lie anchored immortal in the heart of the common German man and of the German woman. Never have we realized more than today what importance precisely the virtues have that the Reichsführer-SS has again and again emphasized to his men, namely loyalty and obedience. The German soldier is at every time good, courageous, reliable, full of trust and ready to the extreme, when he is well led. That is how he was in the First World War, too. Let us close the ring tighter around the Führer, like the old Germanic following around their leader. The strength of the German folk is unbroken. It will show itself worthy of the fate that its Führer will once more give it in hard hour.

Faith and loyalty are stronger than death.

They are the unshakeable foundations of victory.

Lower kind of soul,

to sun itself in the pleasure of good fortune!

Well filed air! It was

only won by the mercy of chance.

Never in good fortune

does higher meaning rise,

if life is good to us,

we do not rise over the swarm.

But against misfortune and terror

to rise more proudly, to stretch,

truly, that is what I call: with honors

to prove manliness!

Frederick the Great