Speech to the entire leadership of the National Socialist Motor-Vehicle Driver Corps (NSKK) on the occasion of the general roll-call of the Motor Brigade Berlin on January 16,1936 in the Deutschlandhalle.
NSKK-men! German motor-vehicle drivers!
At the start of the new year, you have assembled for rollcall! At the start of a year, which will certainly again bring effort and cares like the previous one. But also - this is our well-founded hope - again new successes.
How happy can we be that Germany, unlike once before the rise to power, does not have to look at the coming year with the conviction that all work and all effort will be in vain, that the downslide continues apparently unstoppable, more and more to the bitter end!
What everyone who loves his folk suffered back then, only we know ourselves.
We cannot, therefore, reproach foreigners, if they do not comprehend what has happened with us and continues to happen - if even the well-meaning people get their view blurred by the dust, which the great cleansing process in Germany has stirred up, if they allow themselves to be influenced by the shouting of people who have felt the broom!
We do not reproach them, rather we call to them: If you had gone through, what we have gone through - if you had to look on as in your land Jewish Bolsheviks dragged through the mud everything, which is sacred to you - if you had to look on as one allowed your nation to be disarmed and it was surrendered to the despotism of your enemies - if you had to experience how the folk’s property was sold off by international swindlers, the decent folk comrade dispossessed through inflation, how hunger spread - if you had stood at the graves of those who had committed suicide out of desperation, stood at the coffins of those who were killed by communists, only because they loved their nation and this did not suit the Jewish-Bolshevik agitators: you would understand us!
If foreigners claim the individual’s freedom has been restricted by us, we can only reply: By us nobody complains about too little freedom except for those who want to misuse freedom.
For this is correct: the freedom to betray the land unpunished, deceive the folk unpunished, agitate folk comrade against folk comrade unpunished, preach murder unpunished, drive Germany into the arms of Bolshevism unpunished - this freedom has finally stopped!
Perhaps understanding for this “limitation of freedom” will grow after the illustrated instruction, which Bolshevism has recently given to the world in South America.
But if foreign countries, despite everything, do not want to show us any understanding, we cannot change it: Foreign countries may become happy in their own way; we take the freedom to be happy in our way!
That our folk is happier than previously, that the manner to lead it corresponds to the will of the folk, has been proven by the great plebiscites, whose overwhelming results the defenders of the so-called democratic freedoms want so much to be forgotten.
No democracy in the world can support itself on such a unified will of the folk as Adolf Hitler 's Reich. And nobody can claim that the results of the plebiscites were achieved by pressure. That, too, we thank to the German Saarlanders, that a year ago they produced the proof to the world that, even under international supervision, a plebiscite ends with the same result as the rest of the plebiscites in Germany. This fact has not failed to make an impression on the decent people in other nations.
We see with you that the agreement between the decent people continues - despite all interests for agitation of the folks. Representatives of the front-fighters of England and France have exchanged visits with those of Germany.
Full of pride we can point out to visitors to our land what mighty achievements our folk has accomplished in three years of the National Socialist regime by its methods! Never would it have been possible under the liberal- democratic or even the Marxist-communist system to in such a short time make our folk free again and independent from the rest of the folks of the world - based on its own strength, based on weapons and on men who are able to use these weapons.
Never would have under the previous system in the same period millions again gained work and bread.
Previously, it would have been unthinkable that our folk could in addition to the greatest work effort in its history: the total armament, complete mighty works of peace, make the Führer’s globally unprecedented Autobahnen a reality, construct monumental buildings - huge halls like this Deutschlandhalle, which surrounds us -, and that the greatest sports field in the world would emerge.
Never could have under the old system in the area closest to you - the area of motorized vehicles - in a few years the previously considered impossible rise take place: Germany’s motorization in the grand style with simultaneous blossoming of previously heavily depressed industries.
In Germany mighty new factory works are under construction, which are supposed to enable it that as many folk comrades as possible participate in the cultural advances, and that hence likewise National Socialist work again will become effective in the equalization of the material needs of life. And additional new factory works are supposed to make us independent from the extortive attempts by the rest of the world to bring us to our knees through blockage of raw material import and to again deliver Germany to the blessings of overcome systems.
The preparation of these coming things and all previous successes would not have been possible without the joyful assistance of the entire folk and the subordination of the individual to higher interests,
And you, men of the NSKK, have - for a large part already before National Socialism became state principle - voluntarily integrated yourselves into an organization, which from the start only wanted to serve greater common interests and today serves the whole!
You are motor-vehicle driers, who by your own decision have subordinated yourselves to the compulsion of this organization amid renunciation of much personal freedom. The mass of NSKK-men takes up itself the often not easy service, in addition to its regular work, to always be ready for action to the last, if the interests of the whole demand it, for example help after major accidents.
In addition to the free time, which the NSKK-man sacrifices, he makes a material sacrifice, he wears out his vehicle. It is demanded of him that he be a good example, that he is more sacrificing, more courageous, that he maintains driver discipline better than any other German motor-vehicle driver. From him is expected that he nonetheless is not arrogant in bearing toward others, that he does not demand a privilege for himself at road checks and other occasions, when he comes into contact with state organs - in short, that he is a National Socialist through and through.
As a National Socialist he is even supposed to make a special sacrifice, a sacrifice, which precisely the good motorist senses: I have issued a decree that the motor-vehicle driving party comrade in general should reduce his speed so that tires and material are conserved as long as until we again have them in surplus. You can believe me that the issuance of this decree was not exactly easy for me; for I myself far prefer to drive 120 km/h than 80 to 90! Furthermore, the Führer here as everywhere sets a good example. - It is certain than just a 10% reduction in speed in the overall German motorization means millions in saved currency annually. It is National Socialistic, in realization of this, to make the sacrifice of a pleasure. For speeds over 100 km/h are primarily a pleasure and not so much a time saving, as each old driver among you knows, who has seen how little it affects the total travel time, if one pushes the vehicle to the extreme.
You should be a knighthood of the country road, but not bandit knights! A knighthood, which has exchanged the horse for the motor, but who should love your gas-burner no less than the knight his oats motor - who have an eye for the beautify of a modem mechanical construction like they earlier had an eye for the beauty of a noble animal. You should be grown together with it like the good rider is grown together with his steed.
The good driver proves that not the machine is master of the man, as often claimed, and as it easily has the appearance in the poor driver - rather that the machine is the willing servant of the man. It is the friend of man and, note well, of animal. One should remember just the suffering of man and animal, who in the past in winter had to make their way with a small wagon through frost and snow, for many hours exposed to the bad weather, and then put a motorized vehicle next to them, which covers the same stretch in a few minutes without a living being having to suffer!
No animal protection club has brought such a blessing to the horses as technology and the invention of the automobile.
You, German motor-vehicle drivers, who are united in the corps and in the club and National Socialist led, administer and care for this technological blessing for Germany. You are co-responsible for its development and its effect for the use of all folk comrades.
After me, the Corps Leader - party comrade Hühnlein - will present the special tasks of the NSKK. He will agree with me when I emphasize that the National Socialist motor-vehicle corps joyfully marches in the comradely community of National Socialist formation at the position, where the Führer has commanded it. Likewise, the corps stands in close comradeship with the armed forces. The presence of Senior General von Blomberg at this roll-call here expresses on the other side the same attitude of the armed forces to the NSKK as well to all the other branches of the movement. The diverse tasks, which the motorization places on the German motor-vehicle driver on both the military as well as the traffic-technical side, have as their basis and prerequisite the comradeship of the leadership and of the individuals. With joy we can ascertain the successes of the common work on this basis.
In terms of world-view united in National Socialism, the German motor-vehicle drivers stand united in the coming year before tasks, for whose fulfilment I, from this office, wish you strength and energy and the successes resulting from them!
I know, and this fills all of us with proud consciousness, that the National Socialist motor-vehicle drivers, too, together with the Führer’s whole following, at the end of the year 1936 will again be able to report to the Führer: Führer! We have done our duty!
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