Fighting the Enemies of the State

 

by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich

 

When, in spite of the excellent election results and the German people's vote of confidence in the Fuhrer, there is talk here about the reason why it is spoken of as enemies of the state is that experience teaches us that the old great opponents, who, as is well known, are or were not only in the German people, will now redouble and triple their efforts in order to destroy or at least hinder the work of the Fuehrer as far as possible. For it is precisely the election result that has shown them that their previous work among the people has not had the success they had hoped for. National Socialism, seen in historical time, can only assert itself completely and secure and maintain the National Socialist idea among the entire people if the fight against the enemies of the state is successful. A battle is successful only if the enemy becomes and remains permanently incapable of fighting. In war it is not the number of battles won that is decisive, but the outcome of the war. Whether the battle or the war ends successfully, however, depends on whether the enemy is correctly recognised in his methods, his means, his mental and physical condition, and whether he is correctly fought accordingly

 

Therefore, if we are to speak intelligibly about the struggle against enemies of the state, we must consider the means and methods of the enemy and our own resistance.

 

1. The Public Enemy

 

The liberalist past started from the state and not from the people. It thought of the state as a separate entity, detached from the people. If it then wanted to determine the enemy of the state in concrete terms, it appeared as the enemy of those who controlled the state apparatus at any given time. The enemy of the state changed, depending on whether the government was German nationalist, centrist or Marxist.

 

National Socialism no longer emanates from the state, but from the people. The Fuehrer has already said this in “Mein Kampf“ in a guiding way. He calls the state “means to an end“, as“ an institution for the particular people in question“ for the preservation and promotion of a“ community of physically and mentally similar living beings“ .

 

Accordingly, we National Socialists know only the enemy of the people. He is always the same, he remains eternally the same. It is the enemy of the racial, popular and spiritual substance of our people. Enemies of the people were those forces which in the past led the State and fought us National Socialists as enemies of the State. Thus, we experienced the curiosity that we were branded enemies of the state while the enemies of the people sat in government. The then owners of the state power apparatus, enemies of the people in the truest sense of the word, were able to deprive the German people of its folkish power in all spheres of life, and in the process fight us National Socialists, who fought for the preservation of our people and made the greatest sacrifices, apparently formally in the right, as enemies of the state. We, however, finished off this system by its own means. We adjusted ourselves to its rules of the game, we were “legal“ as the Constitution wanted us to be, and with the constitutional means we legally destroyed a system that, without inner substance, was ready to give itself up at any time, if only it was done legally.

 

Because of our world view, it is clear to us, and we have learned from our struggles for power, that only the leadership of a state is right for which enemies of the state and enemies of the people are the same. This is the case today. Thus, we understand by the enemies of the State in the National Socialist State the enemies of the people. That the enemies of the people are at the same time the fiercest opponents of the state apparatus occupied by National Socialism, that both, enemy of the state and enemy of the people, can no longer fall apart, results from the fact that the state is indeed the instrument of the people under its noblest representation, the movement, is that, according to the words of the leader, it is not the State that commands us, but we the State.

 

National Socialism, which as the spirit of the movement waged the struggle for power from the ground of world outlook, also breaks with the liberalist fight against the enemy of the state. According to liberalist thinking, only the act hostile to the state and the organisation of the enemy of the state as the bearer of this act were fought. National Socialism is concerned with the spiritual forces of these opponents. It wants to recognise and hit them. We know today, they are the eternal same: The Jew, the Freemason and the political clergyman. Their aims are the same, their forms of organisation adapt themselves to the respective legal possibility. Their struggle is directed against our state form and party form and against the spiritual foundations of the idea. The details of the tactics of the enemy have been discussed at length elsewhere. The effective fight against the enemy must be based on the realisation that all visibly appearing opponents are only the outer feelers of the eternally same, dangerous spiritual forces. They are sent forward to probe the terrain, they are guided according to uniform points of view. From the experience that the adversary always proceeds very cleverly, it can be assumed that he will try by all means to penetrate into the key position of the state apparatus. From here he can better pursue his aims; he then knows the strength and the weak points of the apparatus fighting him and is above all in a position to bend measures against himself.

 

2. The bearers of the fight against the enemy of the state

 

Knowledge of the enemy leads to very definite conclusions as to the organisation, methods and choice of men of the institution which must undertake the fight against the enemies of the state.

 

- The structure of the State Police must be such that, on the one hand, it does not break up the large administration that sustains the State. This implies a certain connection of the State Police with the general administration. On the other hand, it must be a self-contained organization which contains within itself the possibility of a direct line of command and reporting. This is necessary in the event that the enemy should succeed in penetrating the administrative apparatus in a skilful manner. In addition, it is necessary that for special tasks (e.g. defence) the working group be kept as small as possible, in order to prevent that the forces which are to be secrets which must be preserved become known. These necessities are currently fulfilled for Prussia by the law of 10 February 1936.

 

- The human material for this fighting state police must be of a special kind. The very necessary administrative and criminalistic training in itself is not enough. The best specialist in burglary, with years of practice, need never become a suitable fighter against Communism. Purely technical ability may suffice to apprehend an illegal functionary of the KPD, to establish the objective facts of the case. To fight the enemies of the state, moreover, belongs the unconditional grasp of the National Socialist idea and the comprehensive knowledge of the enemy in his foundations. The men of the State Police must therefore be absolutely like- minded in their mental attitude. They must feel themselves to be a fighting corps. This is doubly necessary, for experience teaches that the individual man is no match for this great, uniformly led adversary, and the constant preoccupation with only negative things can be sustained in the long run only if the positive counter-values bring a balance through a corpslike community. This is also the reason why very many officers of the State Police are at the same time SS-leaders or SS-men.

- The following results for the way of fighting the opponent:

a) The ideological struggle against the foundations of the enemy can only be waged by the National Socialist idea and thus by the National Socialist movement

 

b) The state police must recognise the organisational forms and the strategic and tactical intentions of the overall enemy on the basis of ideological knowledge: 

- to teach the bearers of the war of ideas,

- in order to create the tactical basis for the tactical and criminalistic apprehension and combating of the individual enemy of the state and the individual anti-state organisations.

3. The Security Service

 

The State Police is assisted in its duties by the Party intelligence organisation, the Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS, which is not vested with executive authority. This Sicherheitsdienst is a branch of the Gesamt-SS, to which the Reich leadership of the NSDAP assigns intelligence research and surveillance of the ideological opponents of National Socialism. Naturally, the structure of the Security Service corresponds geographically to the structure of the general SS. The men of this Security Service are SS-leaders and SS-men of the total-SS who alternately have their commands with the Security Service and in the general SS. While on the one hand the State Police tasks are of a tactical and executive nature, on the other hand the Security Service has the intelligence and research task of providing strategic bases for the leadership of the movement and thus of the State. The necessary close cooperation between the Security Service of the Movement and the State Police of the State is ensured by the fact that the Reichsführer-SS as such is the supreme chief of the Security Service and at the same time the deputy chief of the Secret State Police, and that the head of the Secret State Police Office under him is at the same time the chief of the Main Security Office.

 

In summary, the following can be said: National Socialism sees the enemy of the people in the enemy of the state. All expressions of anti-state forces lead back again and again to the enemy of the people, are supported, directed and determined in their actions from here. The enemy of the people can be fought properly only when he is recognised spiritually in his methods and means. This task is fulfilled by the Secret State Police and the Security Service of the SS, which thus set an example of unity between party and state in exemplary cooperation.