The German Prayer

 

Source: SS Leitheft, 1939, Issue 9

 

by Herybert Menzel

 

We are Germans. As Germans we also want to step before our God. We want to step before him upright as that, which we are, as soldiers.

 

Soldiers know their law. They have sworn to a leader and a flag. They await the call, they heed the order, they obey it.

 

Who has sworn to a leader, no longer doubts. He was gained a firm faith.

 

This faith gives him his security, his proud straightness, his silent readiness. Who is always so on the march to a great goal, who is so ready, to risk his life as well, has already won eternity in the earthly. When he then steps before his God, before the God of his folk, he will not ask him for what men can give and present him, he will not ask for what he is always ready to risk in this great struggle; God is not a trader, God is not a kind old man who is smilingly inclined to childish wishes.

 

We feel him as the strength that allows us to give ourselves strength.

 

Lord, do not let me become cowardly, called the unknown soldier of the World War when he demanded the hardest from himself.

 

That we do not lose our courage, that we not over-esteem all joy, that we gain new strength from suffering, that is what we ask for.

 

The peasant’s harvest may be destroyed by hail, his hard labour may be annihilated by drought, can he just go there and complain and want to do nothing more? No, he should step before his God and ask for what alone can help him to overcome this blow, he should ask for the strength that pulls him up again, that again gives him light in the eyes, defiance in the fists and the courage to try it again.

 

One may have given everything to people whom he valued and whom he loved, and now one disappoints and deceives him; should his heart be allowed to turn to stone, to mock loyalty and disavow the noble? No, he should step before his God and ask him for what alone can still help him, he should ask for the strength that shows him that loyalty is stronger than betrayal, that faith conquers doubt, that courage is more compelling than distress. Has he not recognized everything that threatens him? Has he not nonetheless dared the path and the struggle?

 

We have sought comrades who can still laugh in distress, who in death still believe in victory. And so many died, and they believed in victory, because they believed in us. Because we remember them, we are already stronger; because we remember them, the path has already been shown to us.

 

So for all of us the order is valid to a new look for people, who believe in us, for their sake and for our sake.

 

As the peasant again draws his plough, so must our love again be active and our loyalty.

 

Not according to those should we orient, who are smaller than we, rather according to those who provide us with an example.

 

We are Germans, and if we ask for help, he directs us to those who once stood great in our folk.

 

They are not dead, we feel that in such an hour. They are not dead, because their faith, their courage, their will was greater than everything that stood against them, even greater than dying.

 

And so they today still speak to us, and God speaks through them. For as he had us awaken to this life as Germans, so do we feel his command when we strive to think and to act as the best Germans managed.

 

Although we cannot make for ourselves a picture or image of God, we nonetheless sense his presence in everything, and we sense it most deeply where we approach the high and noble. In the great Germans he has spoken to us. There will probably come hours when we slip away from ourselves. There is no suffering that is greater than what we inflict on ourselves. We do not want to then doubt ourselves. A person who gives up on himself cannot be saved by another. But in these hours God is there for us. Each person has God alone with himself that hour. He will remain silent about that hour, but he will emerge from it with new strength.

 

We believe as Germans in our folk’s eternity, and so we also believe in God, to whom each gives himself in the need of his heart and conscience, in order to as a genuine German fill his place in his folk’s space.

 

When we pray, we pray for strength.