. . . AMIDST all the crises under which we suffer and which
do but present a single connected picture, perhaps that which the people feels
most acutely is the economic crisis. The political crisis, the moral crisis,
are only very rarely felt by the individual. The average man sees in the
experiences of his day not that which affects the community as a whole but for
the most part only that which strikes himself. Therefore the present has only
very rarely any consciousness of political or moral collapse, so long as this
collapse does not extend in one way or another into economic life. For when
this happens it is no longer a question of some abstract problem that can
perhaps be observed or studied in its effect on others, but one day the
individual himself will be caught hold of by this question, and the more
intimately such a crisis begins to influence his own life, the more clearly
does he come to recognize that existing conditions cannot remain as they are.
Then all of a sudden people talk of economic distress, of economic misery, and
then, starting from this distress, one can awaken an understanding for that
other distress which otherwise is wont to remain for a long time hidden from
the individual man.
It is not enough to say that the German economic distress
is a phenomenon resulting from a world crisis, from a general economic
distress...It is clear that even so
this distress cannot have its roots all over the world, those roots must
always be found within the life of peoples. And though only one thing is
probably true - that these roots are perhaps the same in the case of many
peoples - yet one cannot hope to master this distress by the mere statement
that the presence of a certain distress is a feature of the age; rather it is
clearly a necessity to disclose these roots in the internal life of a single
people and to cure the distress there where one can really effect a cure.
Unfortunately it is precisely the German who is only too
inclined at such times, instead of looking at his own internal life, to let
his gaze range into the far distance. Our people has been so long falsely
taught to think in international terms that even in such a distress as the
present it tends to treat this problem, too, from international points of
view. And the result is that many of us simply cannot believe that perhaps it
might be possible to remedy such a misfortune in some other way than by
international methods. And yet that is an error....every people must wage this battle on its own behalf, and above all...no single people can be liberated from this distress by international
methods if it does not for its own part take the necessary measures. These
measures can, of course, find their place within the framework of
international measures, but one's own action must not be made dependent upon
the action of others.
The crisis in German economics is not merely a crisis which
is expressed by our economic statistics, but it is above all a crisis which
can also be traced in the internal course of our economic life, in the
character of its organization, etc. And here we can indeed speak of a crisis
which has hit our people more severely than other peoples. It is the crisis
which we see in the relations between capital, economics, and people. This
crisis is particularly obvious in the relations between our workmen and the
employers. Here the crisis has been more acute than in any other country in
the world....
The first cause lies in the alteration in the form of
business organization which determined the character of our economics. That
cause may be traced throughout the world precisely as in Germany....
The gradual alienation of classes which we in Germany
experienced led to the appearance on the one side of the special interests of
the employers and on the other side the special interests of the employed.
This was the beginning of our unhappy economic development. When one had once
started on this road, of necessity the two sides became ever more widely
separated. Here a law governs human affairs: when one has once chosen the
wrong road this road always leads one further from reason.
On the contrary, the road led necessarily to further
alienation ...I might almost say that this process was apparently still
further encouraged and strengthened on scientific grounds. There gradually
arose an ideology which believed that it could permanently support the
conception of property even though those who derived any practical profit from
the conception no longer represented more than a minimal percentage of the
nation. And on the other hand there arose the view that, since there was now
only so small a percentage of those who enjoyed property, the conception of
private property as such should be abandoned....
When one has once started on this course, then logically
the employers will in turn form their organization. And as a matter of course
these two organizations will not pursue their own ends in mutual toleration,
but they will maintain their apparently separate interests with those weapons
which are given them: viz, lockouts and strikes. In this warfare sometimes one
and sometimes the other side will conquer. But in either case it is the whole
nation which will have to pay the cost of this warfare and suffer the damage.
And the final result of this development is that these organizations as they
build themselves up...at length the organization will no longer
serve the interests of its creators, but these will be subservient to the
organization, so that the warfare is continued in order that the existence of
the organization may be justified, even though at times reason suddenly comes
and says; 'The whole affair is madness; the gain when compared with the
sacrifices is positively ludicrous. If you reckon up the sacrifices which we
make for the organization they are far greater than any possible profit.' Then
the organizations in their turn will have to prove how necessary they are by
stirring up the parties to fight each other. And then it may even be that the
two organizations come to an understanding, when once they have realized the
situation.
The second reason is the rise of Marxism. Marxism, as a
conception of the world with disintegration for its aim, saw with keen insight
that the trade-union movement offered it the possibility in the future of
conducting its attack against the State and against human society with an
absolutely annihilating weapon. Not with any idea of helping the worker -what
is the worker of any country to these apostles of internationalism? Nothing at
all! They never see him! They themselves are no workers: they are alien
litterateurs, an alien gang! . . .
One had to inoculate the trade union with the idea: You are
an instrument of the class war and that war in the last resort can find its
political leaders only in Marxism. What is then more comprehensible than that
one should also pay one's tribute to the leadership? And the tribute was
exacted in full measure. These gentlemen have not been content with a tithe:
they demanded a considerably higher rate of interest.
...what Marxism really hoped to gain from this weapon -
(was) not a means for the salvation of the worker, but on the contrary only an
instrument of war for the destruction of the State which opposed Marxism. To
prove to what lengths this whole madness could go we Germans have an
unprecedented example, as frightful as it is instructive, in the War.
We can add only one remark: Had the German trade unions
been in our hands during the War, if they had been in my hands and had they
been trained with the same false end in view as was in fact the case, then we
National Socialists would have placed the whole of this gigantic organization
at the service of the Fatherland. We should have declared: We recognize, of
course, the sacrifices entailed; we are ready ourselves to make those
sacrifices; we do not wish to escape, we want to fight with you on the same
terms; we give our destiny and our life into the hand of Almighty Providence
just as the others must do. That we should have done as a matter of course.
For, German workmen, we should have said, you must realize: It is not the fate
of the German State which is now to be decided, not of the Empire as a
constitutional form, not of the monarchy; it is not a question of capitalism
or militarism; it is the existence of our people which is at stake and we
German workmen make up seventy per cent of this people. It is our fate which
is to be decided!
That is what should have been known then, and it could have
been known. We should have known it....
It was a crime that this was not done. It was not done
because it would have violated the inner meaning of Marxism, for Marxism
wanted only the destruction of Germany. . . . For since the days of November,
1918, millions of Germans have held the view that it was the fault of the
German workingman which caused the country's collapse. He who himself had made
such unspeakable sacrifices, he who had filled our regiments with the millions
of their riflemen - he as a class was suddenly made collectively liable for
the act of the perjured, lying, degenerate destroyers of the Fatherland. That
was the worst that could have happened, for at that moment for many millions
in Germany the community of the people was shattered....
The third cause of this fatal development lay in the State
itself. There might have been something which could perhaps have opposed these
millions and that something would have been the State, had it not been that
this State had sunk so low that it had become the plaything of groups of
interested parties. It is no mere chance that this whole development runs
parallel with the democratization of our public life. This democratization
tended to bring the State directly into the hands of certain strata of society
which identified themselves with property as such, with big business as such.
The masses increasingly got the impression that the State itself was no
objective institution standing above parties, that in particular it was no
longer the incorporation of any objective authority, but that it was itself
the mouthpiece of the economic will and of the economic interests of certain
groups within the nation, and that even the leadership of the State justified
such an assumption. The victory of the political bourgeoisie was nothing else
than the victory of a stratum of society which had arisen as the result of
economic laws....
While it is natural that amongst soldiers he only can be a
leader who has been trained for that post, it was by no means a matter of
course that only he should be a political leader who had been trained in that
sphere and had besides proved his capacity; gradually the view gained ground
that membership of a certain class which had arisen as the result of economic
laws carried with it the capacity to govern a people. We have come to realize
the consequences of this error. The stratum of society which claimed for
itself the leadership has failed us in every hour of crisis and in the
nation's hour of supreme difficulty it collapsed miserably.... Let no one say
to me: 'No other course was possible.' It was only for these leaders that no
other course was possible....
We must penetrate to the inner causes of the collapse with
the resolution that these inner causes shall be removed. I believe that
immediately we must begin at the point where in the last resort a beginning
must today be made - we must begin with the State itself. A NEW AUTHORITY MUST
BE SET UP, AND THIS AUTHORITY MUST BE INDEPENDENT OF MOMENTARY CURRENTS OF
CONTEMPORARY OPINION, ESPECIALLY OF THOSE CURRENTS WHICH FLOW FROM A NARROW
AND LIMITED ECONOMIC EGOISM. THERE MUST BE CONSTITUTED A LEADERSHIP OF THE
STATE WHICH REPRESENTS A REAL AUTHORITY, an authority independent of any one
stratum of society. A leadership must arise in which every citizen can have
confidence, assured that its sole aim is the happiness, the welfare, of the
German people, a leadership which can with justice say of itself that it is on
every side completely independent.....
Nothing can prove that more clearly than the mere
conception of a class war - the slogan that the rule of the bourgeoisie must
be replaced by the rule of the proletariat. That means that the whole question
becomes one of a change in a class dictatorship, while our aim is the
dictatorship of the people, i.e., the dictatorship of the whole people, the
community.
And further it is essential that one should sweep away all
those forces which consciously abuse human weaknesses in order with their help
to carry into execution their deadly schemes. When fourteen or fifteen years
ago and over and over again since then I declared before the German nation
that I saw my task before the bar of German history to lie in the destruction
of Marxism, that was for me no empty phrase, that was a sacred oath which I
will keep so long as I draw breath. This confession of faith, the confession
of faith of an individual, through my effort has become the confession of
faith of a mighty organization....
We must accordingly wage our battle without any compromise
whatsoever against the force which has eaten at the heart of our German people
during the last seventeen years, which has inflicted on us such fearful
injuries and which, if it had not been conquered, would have destroyed
Germany. Bismarck once declared that liberalism was the pacemaker for social
democracy. And I do not need in this place to say that social democracy is the
pacemaker for communism. But communism is the pacemaker for death - the death
of a people - downfall. WE HAVE BEGUN THE FIGHT AGAINST COMMUNISM AND WE SHALL
WAGE IT TO THE END. As so often in German history, it will once more be proved
that the greater the distress, the greater is the power of the German people
to find its way upwards and forwards. This time, too, it will find the way;
indeed, I am convinced that it has already found it.
(Our leaders must be in) principle nationally minded, who look only to their people, and
who both on principle are ready to subordinate everything else in order to
serve the common weal. Only if that is possible from the first can I believe
in the success of our efforts. It is the spirit from which efforts spring that
helps to decide the issue. There must be no conquerors and no conquered; our
people must be the only conqueror - conqueror over classes and castes, and
conqueror over the interests of these single groups in our people! ....
Personally, I am against all honorary titles, and I do not
think that anyone has much to accuse me of on this score. What is not
absolutely necessary for me to do, that I do not do. I should never care to
have visiting cards printed with the titles which in this earthly world of
ours are given with such ceremony. I do not want anything on my gravestone but
my name. All the same, owing to the peculiar circumstances of my life, I am
perhaps more capable than anyone else of understanding and realizing the
nature and the whole life of the various German castes. Not because I have
been able to look down on this life from above but because I have participated
in it, because I stood in the midst of this life, because fate in a moment of
caprice or perhaps fulfilling the designs of Providence, cast me into the
great mass of the people, amongst common folk. Because I myself was a laboring
man for years in the building trade and had to earn my own bread. And because
for a second time I took my place once again as an ordinary soldier amongst
the masses and because then life raised me into other strata of our people so
that I know these, too, better than countless others who were born in these
strata. So fate has perhaps fitted me more than any other to be the broker - I
think I may say - the honest broker for both sides alike. Here I am not
personally interested; I am not dependent upon the State or on any public
office; I am not dependent upon business or industry or any trade union. I am
an independent man, and I have set before myself no other goal than to serve,
to the best of my power and ability, the German people, and above all to serve
the millions who, thanks to their simple trust and ignorance and thanks to the
baseness of their former leaders, have perhaps suffered more than any other
class.
...I
know that the intellectual classes fall all too easily a victim to that
arrogance which measures the people according to the standards of its
knowledge and of its so-called intelligence; and yet there are things in the
people which very often the intelligence of the 'intelligent' does not see
because it cannot see them. The masses are certainly often dull, in many
respects they are certainly backward, they are not so nimble, so witty, or
intellectual; but they have something to their credit - they have loyalty,
constancy, stability....
Because I know this people better than any other, and at
the same time know the rest of the people, I am not only ready in this case to
undertake the role of an honest broker but I am glad that destiny can cast me
for the part. I shall never in my life have any greater reason for pride than
when at the end of my days I can say: I have won the German workingman for the
German Reich.