Education and Soul

 

Source: Command and Obedience: SS Leadership Guide by Alfred Kotz

 

Education always serves higher development. It has roots in the human soul. Its result should be the moral development of the individual; its goal is the joyous formation of the relationships among people.

 

As there is strength and weakness, so are there also an up and a down in questions of education. Once a person himself knows the moral demands of humanity, of folk, of the whole, he gladly and voluntarily accepts them and climbs upward through hard work. Another person is stubborn, a third is too comfortable or selfish to subordinate himself to the education necessary for the community, and still another is too downright rebellious if his condition is affected.

 

Faith and confidence, insight, knowledge, love and devotion carry one person toward the heights. Compulsion must first tear another person from his narrowness so that he sees. It comes down to the increase of the morale value of the community. It’s unimportant if some people’s education bears the mark of compulsion and the success is achieved by drill. We’re not talking about them here. All of us have been volunteers where there has been a forward. We were always led by our hearts, and thus we view the questions of education solely with an eye on all those who do so voluntarily, this means whose souls are receptive for everything noble and beautiful. To this group belong many more than a fleeting glance recognizes. Many desire the best; unfortunately there are also weaklings about them. Hence education will in essence be nothing other than help and assistance, which the strong gives to the weaker, so that everyone finds within the realm of the soul the ground on which they can develop new values.

 

Just ask somebody who it really is who requires education. The answer is all of us, and most of all he who thinks he needs it the least, the one who is the most conceited.

 

And who is the educator? Life, which levels lonely heights and fills forgotten abysses, life, that wants to be formed by robust people with strong souls and noble desire! Education means leading to the better, hence again: leading. Whoever is a leader has the noble task of education. Whoever cannot educate might have an external rank, but he is nonetheless never a leader, because he lacks the inner leader value.

 

How could he fill the soul of another with goodness, if he himself is too poor to give something?

 

Education is more than presenting information. Educating means to guard and form souls.

 

We haven’t reached the point where we only need to paint people so that they become the way we want them. We would be happy if we could reach everybody with a good core. Filing away the imperfections that hamper this core is the difficult task we must undertake. Performing this work means doing the best for Germany. Stars and oak leaves on the collar are not a prerequisite. In the German fatherland there are also quiet leaders of the nation, who have no external leadership rank. We often pass them by. We seldom know them. But they are there, and that is enough for us.

 

Among the units, the task of education steps into the foreground. The carriers of this responsible task are the leaders. If their education proceeds properly and if the success is not driven into empty, bottomless pits, if instead expectation and results coincide, in short: if promises are kept, then we need no treatises and no books about psychology. Much has already been written about the psychology of the soldier! How often has one tried to get at the root of the problem? If he thinks he has found an answer, then the same people he based everything upon later turn things upside down. Forgetting also plays a big role. How do the realizations of individuals help, if the others who must assume this task do not want to learn from these realizations and must instead learn the hard way through their own bitter experiences? Or: Weren’t the worst ones those who were once nothing, who vastly exaggerated every incorrect treatment by superiors, didn’t they become the worst ones when they became something? The era of political favouritism thoroughly proved that.

 

But the foundations have now changed. They still hold true, because the premises we proceed from are genuine. The premises were namely there before the foundation was created. Hitler and his brown soldiers were already there before the National Socialist State existed!

 

The education of which we speak has proven its justification through success. Now it’s about expanding the foundation. Every National Socialist helps, each at his place, quietly and without advertising himself. The battle-proven unit provides a firm framework. No word is needed for the old Hitler soldiers who have the University of the Revolution behind them. The effort is necessarily for the sake of the comrades who later joined us.

 

What does the enlisted man seek from us, what does he expect? Not everyone came with a clear knowledge. The enlisted man still does not know the final tasks. He initially came because he inconspicuously sought the community of his own kind. All share the faith to find what they seek. All share the faith in the Führer. They believe in him, because they know that he speaks, strives for and does that which they themselves have already desired and wished.

 

That’s enough to build on. Education should bring everybody and everything to ONE formulation, first comradeship. Each has different ideas about it according to experience, events, knowledge, training, character and age. The front soldier seeks his own kind. He wishes the fulfilment of the world from which he comes. These comrades are in order. They always fit in the formation. The younger comrade still misses the essence of things. He is drawn by the rhythm of the marching column, the great common drive and the uniform; he takes pleasure in the uniformity and discipline. Each brings along only a piece of what is needed. The other things are images that miss the real point. This means a lot of weakness must be destroyed and replaced with firmness and permanence. The enlisted man must first learn to be a comrade. He must learn that an opposition can emerge between comradeship and discipline, and that discipline always has priority.

 

It’s good for every unit to want to be the best. It’s good for regiments to compete with their achievements. So nobody should accuse us of presumption, if we want to be the best men in Germany. May others wish the same! Accordingly, we stand by our unit. Because of this pride, we place the highest value on a uniform, purposeful, hard training.

 

That’s why we have nothing to do with self-conceit and arrogance, for arrogance is simply a disguise for lack of values. A man of great character will never be vain. For vanity is also stupidity. It is stuck to the present and not woven into future things, which we wish to serve. The great man will always be natural. He does not forget where he comes from. He easily mingles with the little people, but he remains great.

 

We wish to learn together. Hence we practice things that are inconspicuous. We show good form and good bearing. One can certainly be a good comrade without laying in the gutter with everybody. When standing at attention we cross our thumbs in order to remind ourselves what we want. We do not speak in formation, because we want to practice to be master over ourselves and not let ourselves go.

 

Sturmführer! Tell this to your men in a similar way and you will see the desired success does not go lacking!

 

We wish to learn to fit in so that we don’t immediately fall over if some matter does not go according to our wishes. It is always necessary to observe the whole. The small „I“ must be second. Eventually something you’re involved in will go wrong. Don’t pout! Don’t speak of great injustice!

 

National Socialism looks to the whole, and the Hitler soldier is the best National Socialist.

 

All of us admire the great Prussian king. Do you think everybody loved him in his time? Do you think there wasn’t anybody who could not have truthfully said, „He was unjust to me?“ Even under him, many a splendid man had to stand to the side. He always rejected Lieutenant Yorck. What did this capable officer feel and suffer? But would Yorck have finally become the leader in

 

the War of Liberation and the hero of Tauroggen if Frederick the Great had not rejected him? A person all too easily forgets the big things surrounding, if he himself must accept a small deficiency. Indeed, this small deficiency does not even have to affect him directly. He only needs to hear of it – „one has said that…“ In the blink of an eye, even this small deficiency becomes a teeth-gnashing cannibal. One should do something against this philistine!

 

Hitler soldiers, you are not philistines. Don’t be afraid of drowning, if you can swim! Pay attention instead to those who are in danger, because they do not know how to swim!

 

To education belongs practice. Practice is drill. Let us hence subordinate ourselves to drill! Those who don’t need it, should nonetheless be there, because the others need a good example.

 

This work on ourselves is hard. The Hitler soldier must not become soft. It is a dangerous mistake, if someone thinks his work is done because swastika flags fly over Germany. The fight for Germany is not over. It simply has a different face. It continues to be the struggle for the soul of German man, because every decent man should proudly affirm the Third Reich.

 

Although the state also needs laws to preserve order and to enforce its will on the rebellious, we nonetheless know that the German folk is something else than the small segment that must be forced to obey the command of the state and to not endanger the valuable.

 

We know from experience that legal codes and regulations are not the essential thing, rather it comes down to the art of ruling and practicing how to win the soul of all folk comrades and to guard it as the most precious treasure.

 

Our struggle is now devoted to education. We have a fine means for that: the shiny shield of honour, the cleanness of action and belief. It comes down to the living example.

 

More will be demanded of us than of others. We are the bearers of the folk community. We must make sure it never again comes down to: „bourgeois here, proletariat there! Scholar here, worker there!” We must ensure that it comes down to: “Germans – comrades!” We must be the Führer’s helpers, so that in the circle in which life has placed us nobody spoils the love and joy for common work through false treatment and arrogance. An unspeakably difficult task has been given us. We will fulfil it, if we who speak of training make an effort to ourselves be trained.