By Heinrich Himmler
There
they hang on the wall, one hundred ninety-six little plaques in oval, gilded
frames. And there are still far fewer than there ought to have been. All the
frames in the upper rows show only a name with a couple of dates on white paper.
But in the lower rows they become alive. The portraits begin about the time of
the Thirty Years War. They are fine miniatures, carefully painted with a pointed
brush on ivory, which has long since yellowed.
One cannot but think of the difficulty the artist must have had in capturing
those stern, proud features with his soft, marten-hair brush. All of the white
ruffled collars, the lace, the puffed sleeves and on the “gentlemen”, the jabots
have a frivolous effect on these portraits dating from the beginning of the
eighteenth century. “Ladies”? “Gentlemen”? No, indeed! In spite of the velvet
and silk there is not a “lady” nor a “gentleman” among them. They are all women
and men – and that says far more than the “gentleman” of today.
For they. there on the wall, living again in their portraits – were free! This
is what we have come to, that we must banish our ancestors to pictures or vital
statistics on the wall in order to give them a faint presence in our dim
memories. Ancestors? People today do not even know the birth dates and death
dates of their own parents. Of course, they are written down somewhere. It is a
wonder if one knows even a little about his grandfather, not to mention his
great-grandfather.
As for great-great-grandfather, one does not think about him at all, as if he
had never existed. Earlier – much earlier – things were different. That was
before words had become but mere merchandise, used to concoct lies, when a man
still lived by his word; then it was not necessary to write down and record
one’s ancestors. That was a time when the living flow of blood from son to
father, from father to grandfather and great-grandfather and
great-great-grandfather still had not been choked off. It had not yet sunk, as
it has today, so deep beneath all of the alien values within mind and soul, that
most of us can no longer hear its rustle, even in the stillest hour. Once the
whole past dwelt in the hearts of the living. And from this past the present and
the future grew upward like the strong limbs of a healthy tree. And today? They
laugh at the fables of our Folk, they do not even understand them. Nevertheless,
that which remains with us from the “Once upon a time” of our fables, serves as
a reminder, a finger showing us the way back into the millennia of our great
past.
You believe that we have no use for what is past and gone? Nonsense! The man in
whose breast the “Once upon a time” of his race is no longer awake – has no
future which truly belongs to him. How timely would be the appearance of a man
who would teach us again the meaning of our fables, and show us that our
struggle for the freedom of the earth which has borne us was, also, the struggle
of our ancestors a hundred and a thousand years ago!
Did you know that when you read about Snow White and the Wicked Queen who came
over the mountains, that those mountains she had to cross each time she came to
kill Snow White were the Alps, and that the Queen came from Rome, the deadly
enemy of everything Nordic? Think about the Queen’s Daily query: “Mirror, mirror
on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” When you think of this saying
think about Rome, which could not rest until everything Nordic, bright and
joyful was exterminated, and only darkness remained – dark like the Wicked queen
in the fairy tale, so that she could be the fairest in all the land, after
everything white was dead.
That which came over the southern mountains to us tolerated no peers. Everything
had to kneel before it and kiss its feet. When the queen came over the Alps the
first time, dressed as a peddler from a distant land, she offered Snow White a
bewitched corset – bewitched because it was alien. Then she pulled the laces so
tight that Snow White fainted and fell. The emissaries of Rome bound the Nordic
spirit in the suffocating bonds of alien concepts and deceitful words.
But the queen’s ruinous plan did not succeed. The dwarves – the good spirits of
the Folk – came and freed Snow White. The Frisians crushed the Roman emissaries
who tried to break the strength of our people with their doctrines of misery and
servitude. For nearly a thousand years the Nordic tribes struggled against the
poison from Sinai, which gradually fouled their blood.
And when the vain queen again asked her mirror, the answer was: “... but Snow
White, over the seven mountains with the seven dwarves is a thousand times
fairer than you.” Driven by her restless jealousy, the queen came over the snowy
wall of the Alps with a new deception. She offered Snow White a magnificent
glittering Comb, the most exotic thing she had ever seen. The “Holy Roman
Empire” diverted the Nordic will-of-action away from its natural course; one
after another, Nordic leaders have gone off to Rome and the consequence has been
turmoil and Roman law in our land, which has enchained our Nordic pride. It
began with Karl, the eternally cursed Frank, murderer of Saxons. From Aller to
Verdun, the blood of the most noble or our people is on his hands. In
recognition for his deeds, the Roman priests bestowed upon Karl the title of
“The Great.”
Silent forever are the lips of our Folk who named this wretched Frank, “Karl the
Saxon slayer”!
Despite this, the Nordic spirit remained unbroken; the Wicked queen still was
not the fairest in the land. And so, for a third visit she came and presented
Snow White with a rosy-cheeked, but poisoned apple. The first bite stuck in Snow
White’s throat and caused her to faint as if dead. This apple symbolized the
rejection of our own nature, the abandonment of tribal ways. “As if dead,” the
fairy tale says, acknowledges the enormous strength which slumbers in our
people, recognizing that one day will come the great hour, when that strength
will mightily throw off the chains of Sinai. Has it yet come, this long-awaited
hour?
“Snow White” is but one of the hundreds and hundreds of age-old Nordic tales
which remind us, with as many different images, of the difficulties, the
oppression and the deep wisdom of our ancestors.
And as Rome cracked its whip over our land, mercilessly annihilating every
genuine manifestation of our own nature, our wise forebears wove into these
tales, using colourful symbols and allegory, a legacy of our heritage. But
Rome’s influence extended over our tales and sagas, falsifying them, giving them
new meaning and made advantageous to Roman domination. Thus, it was that our
people no longer could understand the voice of our ancestors, that we went
astray these many centuries, becoming more and more alienated from our own ways
and enslaved to Rome, and thus to Judah. Only he who bears his own soul, living
and burning in his breast, is an individual – a master.
And he who abandons his own kind is a slave. The key to freedom lies within us!
Now we must hearken again to the voice of our ancestors and protect our essence
from alien influences, protect that which wants to grow out of our own souls.
Stronger than any army is the man who wields the power which resides within him!
Reflectively, I look over the long rows of my ancestors. The last members reach
so far back that hardly more than a name and a date on a sheet of paper remain.
Yet their voices come alive in my blood, because their blood is my blood.
I think of how the French-speaking monks came from Switzerland to convert our
forefathers, the Goths and the Vandals. Even their deadly enemies, the Romans
said: “Where the Goths are, there virtue rules. And where the Vandals are, there
even the Romans become chaste.”
And to such men the commandments from Sinai were offered as guiding lights for
their lives! Can one understand why these men laughed when they heard those
commandments, which demanded that they not commit acts they never would have
dreamed of committing?
Can one understand that they raised their swords in wrath when the monks told
them that they were “born in sin” – these best of the Goths, whose very name
means “The Good Ones”?
Cannot one understand the unspeakable contempt with which these noble men
regarded those who promised them a reward in heaven for abstaining from doing
things which, according to their own nature, were beneath the dignity even of
animals?
To such men the commandments were brought; men infinitely superior in human
dignity and morality than the monks who brought them. For countless generations
they had lived far above the moral plateau on which the commandments from Sinai
then operated. Thousands of years before the time of the “Christ” the monks
claimed to represent, our ancestors had sown the seeds of culture and
civilization throughout the world on their fruitful voyages and wanderings.
When I contemplate the small portraits and see in their firmly composed faces
the expressions of my ancestors, which compel no more notice of these times, it
seems as if we have descended from a high, high ladder – a ladder which we must
yet again climb. Nowadays, it is seldom that we can even appear to be like they
were. They were on intimate terms with Allfather and did not need to call on
halo-wearing intermediaries when they wished to speak to him. And even then,
they did not know how to beg; they were too strong, too proud and too healthy
for supplication.
Blessings prayed for are not true blessings! They wanted nothing of gifts;
either they already had everything they wanted or, if they lacked something,
they got it for themselves. Their creed was a saying as brief as a wink and as
clear and deep as a mountain stream: “DO RIGHT AND FEAR NO ONE!”
As for their religion, there was no necessity to put it into words, which suited
a people who were naturally frugal with their words anyway. They carried their
spiritual consciousness deep within their souls; it served them like a compass
needle which always steers a ship on its proper course.
Was that not a better religion than one which must be written down in a thick
book, lest it be forgotten – and which one cannot properly understand until a
priest comes and interprets what is written there? And even then, an act of
faith is required to believe that this intricate interpretation is correct.
In their day, faith grew from the blood and it was knowledge. Today it must be
learned, for it is an alien faith, unable to strike roots in our blood. It is
dogma and doctrine which none can know and which most of us silently renounce,
because it is contrary to nature and reason. Tell me – have we become better
since taking on this new religion? A great wordless sorrow resides in the breast
of most of us, a boundless sense of homelessness, because the way of our
ancestors lives on eternally in our Nordic blood like a dream.
We want, once again, to be free of sin – like our ancestors were. We are tired
of being humble and small and weak and all the other things demanded of us by a
god who despises his own creations and looks on the world as a den of
corruption. We want to be proud again, and great and strong, and to do things
for ourselves!
How different are those faces there on the wall from the faces of today! Only if
one looks very closely does one still find a trace of that clarity of the
features in the present generation.
What lived so dominantly in our ancestors that it showed in their faces has
disappeared back into our blood to dream. That is why faces so often deceive us
today. Many a person whose hair colour and eye colour come from the south, still
have the greatest part of their blood from Nordic fathers. And many who appear
forgotten by the last two thousand years bear their bright hair and grey or blue
eyes only as a deceptive mask, for their blood bears no trace of their fathers
from the Northland. The one has only the appearance of the alien and retains his
Nordic blood. The other has taken the blood of the alien and retains his Nordic
face as an illusory mask. Which is better?
Today, one must look into a person’s eyes and see whether or not they are still
firm, shining and keen.
The soul is illuminated through the eyes and it does not deceive. There were
many a rebel among those there on the wall, and men who left home; many had
refused to bend to those with power. They could not go crooked, these fellows.
They preferred poverty abroad over submission at home. But they did not stay
poor for long. Those who went abroad followed the restless stream of their
blood, which gave them no rest until they had found themselves; rejecting that
which was foreign to them and flowing into the bloodstream of their fathers, and
so became conscious links in the chain of ancestors, closing the great kindred
circle.
When one of these came home again – and they all came home – he had become a
calm, complete man. It is hard to describe this quality of completeness. If
others are babbling in confusion, and such a man utters softly only a couple of
words, then all the others will understand and become quiet and attentive. And
such a man does not ask questions; others ask him! Look at their eyes; just as
they mastered life, so they stood on intimate terms with death.
To them death was life’s trusted companion. Those same eyes show up among them
even in the most recent generations. There is one of them; Erik was his name and
he fell at Kemmel. The steel helmet on his head seems to be a part of him. His
mouth is a hard, straight line. But in his twenty-year-old eyes twinkles a
silent laugh. And with this laugh, foreign to his mouth, and a wink, saluting
with his fist against his breast, beckoning as he steps past, Erik greeted
death. I cannot imagine this Erik, with bent knee and plaintive voice, begging
some god up in the clouds for mercy and help.
This is the way I picture him: leaping up from a crouch and with a fierce shout,
plunging his great sword into a charging enemy – then, still in the same leap,
being struck by an arrow and collapsing back to the ground with his final
thought, “I gave my best for Germany!”
Erik seized the bitter cup with a proud laugh and drank it down in a single
draught without a grimace. And he likely rapped the cup with a fingernail, so
that all could hear it was empty.
He did not pray, “Father, let this cup pass from me.” He reached out and seized
it for it himself, for he knew... everything necessary is good! Beneath Erik’s
portrait is his motto, written in his own firm, clear hand: “Let a man be noble,
benevolent, loyal and good.” Does that not say far more than those commandments
Moses had issued to the depraved rabble in the desert, in order to make that
horde grasp the rudiments of humanity?
The Commandments were appropriate for that Hebraic bunch. Even the Egyptians had
driven them out of their lands. Even as slaves the Hebrews were too wicked and
infected Egyptian life. The Hebrews – the chosen people of god! It is ludicrous
that anyone take it seriously. A commandment presupposes a transgression. One
can recognize from the mere necessity for such commandments (which demand
nothing more than the barest behaviour required to claim the designation “human
beings”) to what kind of creatures they had been given, creatures truly entitled
to claim no more than a resemblance to human beings.
To the men of the North these commandments were a slander, an unforgivable
insult to their sacred blood.
So, there rose out of the burning indignation of the Nordic blood a Wittekind,
who returned again and again to lead his people into battle against the
doctrines from Sinai. For these teachings are a deadly poison to our blood. You
ask – when will Wittekind return no more? Hearken: Wittekind will die only with
the last Northman! So long as a single Aryan lives, Wittekind is alive and the
world is not safe from him!
Seventy million Aryans on this glorious earth are more than enough for anything
that comes from Sinai. The last remnant who are still pure will still be poised
when swords resound on shields and the bugles sound for the last, great battle
of this wretched millennium.
He who slumbers still, whose blood is dull and sour, no glory for him! He will
be thoughtlessly trampled underfoot by the valiant who rush into battle down
every street of Aryan homelands.
An ancient custom among our kind has remained alive even to the present day in
most parts of our Northland. There was a time when it seemed that this practice,
handed down to us from our forefathers, would die out. But it has been revived –
and the time is at hand when all our great and beautiful people will again
recognize the significance of this custom and be made sound by it.
Our ancestors gave to each child a powerful name, full of joy and vital energy.
Actually, they only lent him this name. And it became a shining hope for the
child, far ahead of him on his life’s course.
The child bore this name in his soul like his most precious treasure, for it was
to him both a goal and a sacred responsibility.
This name strengthened the child’s soul as he developed into a conscious, mature
individual.
When the child had become a youth, the elders of the kindred gathered for a
celebration, at which they decided whether or not the developed character of the
young man suited the name which had been given to him. If the man and the name
were found to be in harmony, then his name was given to him for life. Otherwise,
the young man chose a suitable name for himself one which characterized his
nature. So, it came to be that our ancestors were like their names and their
names like them. And so, their name carried weight like a rune-carved sword,
like their word and a handshake, like yea and nay.
In Christian times our ancestors were compelled by the new law from abroad to
adopt still another name; it was written down in the church register, primarily
for the benefit of the census taker. The authorities were obliged to write the
living heathen name of a man beside his characterless Christian name in his
register, lest it become nothing but a list of phantoms.
In those times the most upright men and the proudest women sprung forth from our
race.
I step closer to the rows of pictures and read the names. The oldest are: Helge,
Fromund, Meinrad, Markward, Ran, Waltari, Eigel, Asmus, Bjoern. Peculiar names,
are they not? They are names born from the great language of our people. There
is nothing foreign in them, no spurious sound. They ring true to the ear. These
names taste of the salty sea, of the heavy, fruitful earth, of air and sunshine
– and of the homeland. Do you notice that?
A few will notice – but all too few. Their own language has become foreign to
them and has nothing more to say to them. After these first rows our ancestors
began to name their sons Gottlieb, Christian, Farchgott, Leberecht, Christoph
(which mean: God-lover, Christ-worshipper, God-fearer, Righteous-liver,
Christ-carrier)... Still later came the names Paulus, Johannes, Petrus,
Christophorus, Korbinianus, Stephanus, Karolus. By those times our forefathers
had no other names. Do you feel how something has been broken in these men, how
they have become alienated from their own nature? Do you feel how steeply the
ladder descends?
A destiny is locked up in the transformation of these names. It is not the
destiny of an individual or of a clan, but of a whole people – our Folk. But
then something strange happened. Those who had been named Karolus and Paulus by
their fathers suddenly regarded these names as annoying, alien, unsuitable,
ridiculous. And now comes the generation that went into the Great War. The names
with little iron crosses behind the dates on which they fell – a mere 20 or even
fewer years from their birth dates, read: Jochen, Dieter, Asmus, Erwin, Walter.
Roland, Georg... These are the names we still have today.
And what are the names of our youngest, those who carry their names into the
third millennium after the time of Nordic self-forgiveness? Gerhardt, Hartmut,
Deitrich, Ingo, Dagwin, Guenther, Hellmut, Gernot, Dagmar, Ingeborg, Helga...
Has the Great War done this? The names tell the story.
A few men wear priestly garments. But the painter has given us a clue. And
whoever is able to find this clue can see how little or how much the strong
heart of the man is darkened by the shadow of the black robes he wears.
The paintings are all bust portraits, nevertheless in one of them the artist
shows a hand. It is a strong, sinewy hand, of the sort which could steer a ship
through a storm.
The black book in his hand looks like a frivolous toy. Such a hand does not
bless an enemy; it crushes him. His name is Frith. That is a strange name for a
priest. “Frith” means “peace robber.” Another portrait shows a man with grey,
windswept hair. He has a hawkish nose and in his eyes one perceives unlimited
vision. Did Ran really bow his head in remorse, repentance and humility? Did he
really despise the world and place his confidence in a power other than his own?
I know why fate ordained that these men must wear the black robes; had it not
been for them, there would be far fewer heathens in the North today; without
them there would be many more who would have exchanged their own image of God
for an alien one and would have grown weary of their own strength and the world;
and many more would have been seduced by the alien doctrine into becoming its
slaves and forgetting their own blood.
They are true saints, for they have preserved their healthy inner selves.
despite the priests cassocks. They fought the enemy with his own weapon. People
called them “HEATHENS”. A few were so proud of this title that they incorporated
it into their names, as one might don a precious jewel. For the heathen is one
who remains true to himself and his kind, whose blood flows pure in his veins.
And this pure blood regards the world with neither the hateful sneer of Sinai or
the weak knees of Nazareth. It bears divinity, pure, clear and beautiful in its
red stream, so long as the race endures. None of these men has ever sought God.
One does not seek that which dwells in one’s own soul.
None of these men has ever been torn with doubt about the divine. Only he who
betrays the divinity in himself and offers his soul to an alien god knows such
doubt. Doubt is eternal where there is the eternal alien, and thereby the
eternal unknown.
The Christian is an eternal doubter.
Can any man be loyal, who is disloyal to himself? Can any man be great, who is
consumed with a longing to return to dust? Can any man be strong, who loves
weakness? Can any man be proud, who wanders along in humility? Can any man be
pure, who regards himself born in sin? Can any man be happy in this world, who
despises the world? And can any man bear the Creator in his soul, who despises
divine Creation?
What a strange god you Christians have, who created you upright, but who
commands you to crawl to him on your knees!
We heathens do not beg to our Creator; it would be an insult to the divinity in
our souls.
Nor do we heathens come to the Creator to complain. We do not proclaim our
failures to the world and least of all not to the Creator. We seek to overcome
our faults and to grow.
Our way is not complaining, but anger – and first of all anger against
ourselves. Nor do we repent, we heathens, because we cannot be cowardly; we have
the courage to stand by our deeds.
Why have you Christians made the name “Heathen” an insult? You should not peddle
your pettiness in the streets, for it permits people to see that the love you
are commanded to display is bound up with hate, and that the forgiveness your
religion requires of you is burdened with your desire for vengeance. Only the
envious stoop to insults. We see your envy and are ashamed for you, since many
of you are still brothers of our blood.
There was a time when it was a disgrace to be a Christian. But then you began to
conquer the masses and so you were able to turn the tables and make virtue a
disgrace. Then you labelled us the “strange” ones and called us heathens. We
have remained “strange”, despite your insults. We will never be a mass or a
herd. Do you know that there are, also, many among you who are “strange” as we
are? Why do you not throw away the beggar’s rags which cover the noble garments
of your manhood?
Are you ashamed to be “strange”? Afraid to be called heathens? When you
Christians have finished burying your god in the sky – come to us; we heathens
will again show you the Creator. And do not think we have settled accounts with
you Christians. We weigh silently – but we do not weigh with false weights.
We do not deceive the God in us, since we do not deceive ourselves. And as we
have weighed justly, so have we calculated, so we would be reckoned with justly
by God for our souls. You see, we do not repent, since we have nothing to
repent. Our value lacks nothing. We retained and preserved our whole worth. And
now you weigh! And when you have weighed. calculated and evaluated, ask your
envious spirit how much you have lost. He who has lost nothing of his worth is
without envy – and without hatred for us heathens.
The petty man hates whatever is superior to him, while the great man admires it.
The petty man pities whatever is beneath him, while the great man scorns it, if
it merits his scorn, or he helps it up. There in his cradle lies my son,
reaching, reaching gleefully toward his ancestors’ portraits on the wall.
This tiny, laughing bundle of life is the next step of the future of my race. I
was the last step. He is the next. And behind me I see the path of my race
passing back through the distant millennia until it is dimmed by the mist of
time – for the generations which came before the earliest on the wall are, also,
real. My race’s entire path through time I do not know – but, I do know that I
live and that I am only a link in the chain in which no link must fail, so long
as my people live. Otherwise, I never would have been. For generations a
parchment-bound book has been passed down through our family. I open it and
inscribe a yellowed page for my son: “Your life is not of this day and not of
tomorrow. It is of the thousand years which came before you and the thousand
years to come after you. During the thousand years before you, your blood was
purely preserved, so that you would be who you are. Now you must preserve your
blood, so that all of the generations of the next thousand years will honour you
and thank you.”
That is the meaning of life, that divinity awakens in the blood. But only in
pure blood does it live!
Of whom have I spoken? Of my ancestors? They are only a symbol of the Folk of
which I am a living part.
To whom have I spoken? To my son? My son is only a part of my Folk. The wisdom
of a thousand generations slumbers in you. Waken it and you have found the key
which will open the doors of your truest aspirations. Only he who esteems
himself is worthy of being a man.
Only he is a man who bears the living past and future in himself, for only he is
able to stand above the present hour. And only he who is master of the present
is successful; he alone is fulfilled. As only in fulfilment is divinity. Thus,
sayeth the Voice of our Ancestors…
Wittekind was Saxon Chief who lead resistance against Charlemagne, King
of the Holy Roman Empire, who forced Christianity on the German people.
Wittekind was symbolic of Northern Paganism and all out resistance
against domination.
