If at the end of this volume I describe the first period in the development of our movement and briefly discuss a number of questions it raises, my aim is not to give a dissertation on the spiritual aims of the movement. The aims and tasks of the new movement are so gigantic that they can only be treated in a special volume. In a second volume, therefore, I shall discuss the programmatic foundations of the movement in detail and attempt to draw a picture of what we conceive of under the word ‘state.’ By ‘us’ I mean all the hundreds of thousands who fundamentally long for the same thing without as individuals finding the words to describe outwardly I what they inwardly visualize; for the noteworthy fact about all reforms is that at first they possess but a single champion yet many million supporters. Their aim has often been for centuries the inner longing of hundreds of thousands, until one man stands up to proclaim such a general will, and as a standardbearer guides the old longing to victory in the form of the new idea.
The fact that millions bear in their hearts the desire for a basic change in the conditions obtaining today proves the deep discontent under which they suffer. It expresses itself in thousandfold manifestations with one in despair and hopelessness, with another in ill will, anger, and indignation; with this man in indifference, and with that man in furious excesses. As witnesses to this inner dissatisfaction we may consider those who are weary of elections as well as the many who tend to the most fanatical extreme of the Left.
The young movement was intended primarily to appeal to these last. It is not meant to constitute an organization of the contented and satisfied, but to embrace those tormented by suffering, those without peace, the unhappy and the discontented, and above all it must not swim on the surface of a national body, but strike roots deep within it.
In purely political terms, the following picture presented itself in 1918: a people torn into two parts. The one, by far the smaller, includes the strata of the national intelligentsia, excluding all the physically active. It is outwardly national, yet under this word can conceive of nothing but a very insipid and weakkneed defense of socalled state interests, which in turn seem identical with dynastic interests. They attempt to fight for their ideas and aims with spiritual weapons which are as fragmentary as they are superficial, and which fail completely in the face of the enemy’s brutality. With a single frightful blow this class, which only a short time before was still governing, is stretched on the ground and with trembling cowardice suffers every humiliation at the hands of the ruthless victor.
Confronting it is a second class, the broad mass of the laboring population. It is organized in more or less radical Marxist movements, determined to break all spiritual resistance by the power of violence. It does not want to be national, but consciously rejects any promotion of national interests, just as, conversely, it aids and abets all foreign oppression. It is numerically the stronger and above all comprises all those elements of the nation without which a national resurrection is unthinkable and impossible.
For in 1918 this much was clear: no resurrection of the German people can occur except through the recovery of outward power. But the prerequisites for this are not arms, as our bourgeois ‘statesmen ‘ keep prattling, but the forces of the will. The German people had more than enough arms before. They were not able to secure freedom because the energies of the national instinct of selfpreservation, the will for selfpreservation, were lacking. The best weapon is dead, worthless material as long as the spirit is lacking which is ready, willing, and determined to use it. Germany became defenseless, not because arms were lacking, but because the will was lacking to guard the weapon for national survival.
If today more than ever our Left politicians are at pains to point out the lack of arms as the necessary cause of their spineless, compliant, actually treasonous policy, we must answer only one thing: no, the reverse is true. Through your antinational, criminal policy of abandoning national interests, you surrendered our arms. Now you attempt to represent the lack of arms as the underlying cause of your miserable villainy. This, like everything you do, is lees and falsification.
But this reproach applies just as much to the politicians on the Right. For, thanks to their miserable cowardice, the Jewish rabble that had come to power was able in 1918 to steal the nation’s arms. They, too, have consequently no ground and no right to palm off our present lack of arms as the compelling ground for their wily caution (read ‘ cowardice ‘); on the contrary, our defenselessness is the consequence of their cowardice.
Consequently the question of regaining German power is not: How shall we manufacture arms? but: How shall we manufacture the spirit which enables a people to bear arms? If this spirit dominates a people, the will finds a thousand ways, every one of which ends in a weapon ! But give a coward ten pistols and if attacked he will not be able to fire a single shot. And so for him they are more worthless than a knotted stick for a courageous man.
The question of regaining our people’s political power is primarily a question of recovering our national instinct of self preservation, if for no other reason because experience shows that any preparatory foreign policy, as well as any evaluation of a state as such, takes its cue less from the existing weapons than from a nation’s recognized or presumed moral capacity for resistance. A nation1s ability to form alliances is determined much less by dead stores of existing arms than by the visible presence of an ardent national will for selfpreservation and heroic deathdefying courage. For an alliance is not concluded with arms but with men. Thus, the English nation will have to be considered the most valuable ally in the world as long as its leadership and the spirit of its byroad masses justify us in expecting that brutality and perseverance which is determined to fight a battle once begun t04 victorious end, with every means and without consideration of time and sacrifices; and what is more, the military armament existing at any given moment does not need to stand in any proportion to that of other states. If we understand that the resurrection of the German nation represents a question of regaining our political will for selfpreservation, it is also clear that this cannot be done by winning elements which in point of will at least are already national, but only by the nationalization of the consciously antinational masses.
A young movement which, therefore, sets itself the goal of resurrecting a German state with its own sovereignty will have to direct its fight entirely to winning the broad masses. Wretched as our socalled ‘ national bourgeoisie ‘ is on the whole, inadequate as its national attitude seems, certainly from this side no serious resistance is to be expected against a powerful domestic and foreign policy in the future. Even if the German bourgeoisie, for their wellknown narrowminded and shortsighted reasons, should, as they once did toward Bismarck, maintain an obstinate attitude of passive resistance in the hour of coming liberation an active resistance, in view of their recognized and proverbial cowardice, is never to be feared.
It is different with the masses of our internationally minded comrades. In their natural primitiveness, they are snore inclined to the idea of violence, and, moreover, their Jewish leadership is more brutal and ruthless. They will crush any German resurrection Just as they once broke the backbone of the German army. But above all: in this state with its parliamentary government they will, thanks to their majority in numbers, not only obstruct any national foreign policy, but also make impossible any higher estimation of the German strength, thus making us seem uradesirable as an ally. For not only are we ourselves aware of the element of weakness lying in our fifteen million Marxists, detmocrats, pacifists, and Centrists; it is recognized even more by foreign countries, which measure the value of a possible alliance with us according to the weight of this burden. No one allies himself with a state in which the attitude of the active part of the population toward any determined foreign policy is passive, to say the least.
To this we must add the fact that the leaderships of these parties of national treason must and will be hostile to any resurrection, out of mere instinct of selfpreservation. Historically it is just not conceivable that the German people could recover its former position without settling accounts with those who were the cause and occasion of the unprecedented collapse which struck our state. For before the judgment seat of posterity November, 1918, will be evaluated, not as high treason, but as treason against the fatherland.
Thus, any possibility of regaining outward German independence is bound up first and foremost with the recovery of the inner unity of our people’s will.
But regarded even from the purely technical point of view, the idea of an outward German liberation seems senseless as long as the broad masses are not also prepared to enter the service of this liberating idea. From the purely military angle, every officer above all will realize after a moment’s thought that a foreign struggle cannot be carried on with student battalions, that in addition to the brains of a people, the fists are also needed. In addition, we must bear in mind that a national defense, which is based only on the circles of the socalled intelligentsia, would squander irreplaceable treasures. The absence of the young German intelligentsia which found its death on the fields of Flanders in the fall of 1914 was sorely felt later on. It was the highest treasure that the German nation possessed and during the War its loss could no longer be made good. Not only is it impossible to carry on the struggle itself if the storming battalions do not find the masses of the workers in their ranks; the technical preparations are also impracticable without the inner unity of our national will. Especially our people, doomed to languish along unarmed beneath the thousand eyes of the Versailles peace treaty, can only make technical preparations for the achievement of freedom and human independence if the army of domestic stoolpigeons is decimated down to those whose inborn lack of character permits them to betray anything and everything for the wellknown thirty pieces of silvery For with these we can deal. Unconquerable by comparison seem the millions who oppose the national resurrection out of political convictionunconquerable as long as the inner cause of their opposition, the international Marxist philosophy of life, is not combated and torn out of their hearts and brains.
Regardless, therefore, from what standpoint we examine the possibility of regaining our state and national independence, whether frost the standpoint of preparations in the sphere of foreign policy, from that of technical armament or that of battle itself, in every case the presupposition for everything remains the previous winning of the broad masses of our people for the idea of our national independence.
Without the recovery of our external freedom, however, any internal reform, even in the most favorable case, means only the increase of our productivity as a colony. The surplus of all socalled economic improvements falls to the benefit of our international control commissions, and every social improvement at best raises the productivity of our work for them. No cultural advances will fall to the share of the German nation; they are too contingent on the political independence and dignity of our nation.
Thus, if a favorable solution of the German future requires a national attitude on the part of the broad masses of our people, this must be the highest, mightiest task of a movement whose activity is not intended to exhaust itself in the satisfaction of the moment, but which must examine all its commissions and omissions solely with a view to their presumed consequences in the future.
Thus, by 1919 we clearly realized that, as its highest aim, the new movement must first accomplish the nationalization of the masses.
From a tactical standpoint a number of demands resulted from this.
Whatever economic concessions are made to our working class today, they stand in no proportion to the gain for the entire nation if they help to give the broad masses back to their nation. Only pigheaded shortsightedness, such as is often unfortunately found in our employer circles, can fail to recognize that in the long run there can be no economic upswing for them and hence no economic profit, unless the inner national solidarity of our people is restored.
If during the War the German unions had ruthlessly guarded the interests of the working class, if even during the War they had struck a thousand times over and forced approval of the demands of the workers they represented on the dividendhungry employers of those days; but if in matters of national defense they had avowed their Germanism with the same fanaticism; and if with equal ruthlessness they had given to the fatherland that which is the fatherland’s, the War would not have been lost. And how trifiing all economic concessions, even the greatest, would have been, compared to the immense importance of winning the War!
Thus a movement which plans to give the German worker back to the German people must clearly realize that in this question economic sacrifices are of no importance whatever as long as the preservation and independence of the national economy are not threatened by them.