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NAZI CULTURE: INTELLECTUAL, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL LIFE IN THE THIRD REICH |
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4. Building Myths and Heroes MYTHS AND HEROES were all-important in what Hitler called the "magic influence" of mass suggestion. A myth is an image which can inspire men. It must have some element of truth in it, but it is twisted into a vision that conforms to the desired ideal. Nietzsche did live, and his name was familiar to most Germans, but Alfred Baeumler (b. 1887) transformed Nietzsche's thought into a myth which put the famous philosopher at the service of the Nazi world view. Baeumler stresses Nietzsche's heroism, his emphasis upon the power of the will, and his advocacy of an aristocratic community. Such ideas can be found in Nietzsche, who was a singularly unsystematic philosopher, and there can be little doubt about Nietzsche's opposition to Christianity and democracy. However, Baeumler does not mention the philosopher's hatred of nationalism and his contempt for Germans. The philosopher of the "heroic" became a part of the Nazi world view. Baeumler himself was one of the leading academic philosophers of the Third Reich. As professor at the University of Berlin, he became the chief liaison man between the German universities and Alfred Rosenberg's office, which was charged with the ideological education of the Nazi party. Baeumler connects Nietzsche's activism to Nordic and soldierly virtues. Indeed, the war experience produced an important renewal of supposedly heroic virtues. Ernst Rohm (1887-1934) catalogues them 'for us: plain talk, defiance, passion, and hate-a soldier is rough and direct. These virtues are identical with those "genuine" qualities of the Volk which the Nazis praised so much: they are natural as opposed to artificial (see page 27). Rohm himself had fought in the First World War, and afterward against the left-wing uprisings in northern and southern Germany. Soldiering was his whole life, and he continued it when he became the leader of the SA. Rohm's autobiography is called Die Geschichte eines Hochverraters (The Story of a Traitor), and it was as a traitor that Hitler regarded him when he was murdered in 1934. In reality, he was done away with because the independence, power, and revolutionary fervor of the SA had to be brought under the Fuhrer's control. The idealized war experience was made to serve the Nazi ideology just as Baeumler had transformed Nietzsche into a prophet for the Third Reich. Joseph Goebbels' Michael is the hero who sacrifices himself for his people. Goebbels always had literary ambitions, but Michael (1929) was his only novel, though by 1942 it had gone through seventeen editions. Michael gives up his studies to go down to the people at work, to "a war without cannons." The experience of the trenches becomes a court of appeal: there all Germans had been united, regardless of class, through their work for the Fatherland, and now they must recapture this unity once again. The anti-bourgeois prejudice of Goebbels comes through in this novel. Soldiers, students, and workers will build the new Reich. But for Goebbels, as for Hitler, "bourgeois" is not a class term, but rather a label for the older generation still imprisoned in liberalism and held enthralled by the lure of Mammon. Michael does not succeed. At the end of the novel he is killed in a mining accident. But a heroic death in a just cause is an important factor in the building of heroes. Albert Leo Schlageter (1894-1923) became one of the most celebrated heroes of the Third Reich. He had fought against the French when they occupied the Ruhr Valley in order to obtain reparations for war damages. The French captured Schlageter, probably while he was performing an act of sabotage. He was condemned to death by a military tribunal and shot. Like Michael, he was in search of his people and, like Michael too, he died in their cause. But he was also a soldier (he had fought in the Free Corps after the war), and the slim memorial volume of his letters stresses his simplicity as well as his activism -- a note very similar to that of Rohm's autobiography and Baeumler's essay on Nietzsche. Hanns Johst's play Schlageter had its premiere in Hitler's presence and on Hitler's birthday (April 20, 1933). It was performed throughout the Reich by a series of theatrical touring companies. Johst (b. 1890) was the only distinguished playwright to put himself wholly at the service of the Nazi cause, becoming president of the Reichsschriftstumskammer (see page 13 5). The excerpt from the play illustrates the stress put upon the differences between generations. The son wants to join his hero, Schlageter, while the father holds back. The "young generation" were the "new men" who confront the old bourgeois generation, which (so the Nazis hoped) was "finished." Fritz Todt (1891-1942) died in the glory of his great accomplishment: the building of the Autobahnen. He was burned alive in a plane crash while returning from a visit with Hitler, whom he was then serving as Minister of Munitions. Here was a contemporary hero for whom the superhighway was symbolic of speed and activism in the service of his leader. Moreover, his work is linked to a lively sense of history and an appreciation of the genuineness of nature. But what about heroes of the past? The cult of Frederick the Great goes back to the party's years of struggle and was expanded during the war. Goebbels was the high priest of this cult. [1] Wilhelm Ihde puts forward the Nazi version of the Prussian King. His strength of will stands in the foreground, while his artistic interests and his philosophical predilections are relegated to unimportance. Such had to be the case, for Frederick was, after all, a man of the hated Enlightenment. Ihde himself was a former journalist who rose to high rank in the SS (Obersturmfuhrer) and became the director of the Reichsschriftstumskammer. The creation of heroes and the creation of myths are closely interrelated. No doubt, for the young SA bride Hermann Goring was a living hero, surrounded as he was by the acted-out mythology of the summer solstice celebration. The marching, the torches, the fire -- this was the "magic" that produced enthusiasm among many a youth (see page 271). This account of a Nazi experience was written four years before Hitler came to power, at a time when Nazi strength had not yet made an impact upon the voting behavior of the boys' and girls' parents. The myth was institutionalized; it became a part of the official rhythm of the Third Reich. As the instructions for festivities in the school state, the teacher battles for the human soul on the cultural- political front. Here celebrations are important, because they help root the mythology of the movement in that soul; they are indeed "confessions of faith." Like all Nazi festivities, these are set up in the form of recitations, responses, and choruses: the Christian liturgical framework is adapted to the content of the Nazi world view. Building myths and heroes was an integral part of the Nazi cultural drive. The theme, specifically illustrated here, runs throughout this book. Racial thought produced strong myths and the peasant provided the constant culture hero of National Socialism. The flight from reason became a search for myths and heroes to believe in, and National Socialism was only too glad to provide both in full measure. G.L.M. _______________ Notes: 1. Ernest K. Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, 1925-1945 (East Lansing, Mich., 1965), pp. 444-445. Nietzsche and National Socialism, by ALFRED BAEUMLER Nietzsche and National Socialism stand on the other side of the traditions of the German bourgeoisie. What does that mean? The spiritual forces which have formed the German bourgeoisie in the last several centuries have been Pietism, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism. Pietism was the last truly revolutionary religious movement on Lutheran soil. It led men from a hopeless political reality back into their own selves and gathered them together in small private circles. It was a religious individualism which strengthened the inclination toward concern with self, toward psychological analysis and biographical examination. Every apolitical state-alien tendency necessarily had to find support and nourishment in Pietistic Germany. The wholly different individualism of the Enlightenment also worked in this direction. This individualism was not of a religious-sentimental character. It believed in reason, it was rational, but it was "political" only in that it denied the feudal system; it was unable to erect an enduring political system of its own and was capable only of breaking the path for the economic system of capitalism. Man was viewed as a wholly individual entity, cut off from all original orders and relations, a fictitious person responsible only to himself. In contrast, Romanticism saw man again in the light of his natural and historical ties. Romanticism opened our eyes to the night, the past, our ancestors, to the mythos and the Volk. The movement that led from Herder to Gorres, to the brothers Grimm, Eichendorff, Arnim, and Savigny, [1] is the only spiritual movement that is still fully alive. It is the only movement with which Nietzsche had to wrestle.... When we call National Socialism a world view we mean that not only the bourgeois parties but also their ideologies have been annihilated. Only ill-willed persons could maintain that everything that has been created by the past must now be negated. Rather, we mean that we have entered into a new relationship with our past, that our view has been cleared for what was truly forceful in this past but which had been clouded by bourgeois ideology. In a word, we have discovered new possibilities for understanding the essence of German existence. Precisely in this Nietzsche has preceded us. We hold a view of Romanticism that is different from his. But his most personal and lonely possession, the negation of bourgeois ideology as a whole, has today become the property of a generation.... The foundations of Christian morality -- religious individualism, a guilty conscience, meekness, concern for the eternal salvation of the soul -- all are absolutely foreign to Nietzsche. He revolts against the concept of repentance: "I do not like this kind of cowardice about one's own action; one should not leave one's own self in the lurch before the assault of unexpected disgrace and vexation. Rather, an extreme pride is in order here. For, finally, what is the use! No deed can be undone by repentance." What he means here is not a reduction of responsibility, but rather its intensification. Here speaks the man who knows how much courage, how much pride, is necessary to maintain himself in the face of Fate. Out of his amor fati Nietzsche spoke contemptuously about Christianity with its "perspective of salvation." As a Nordic man he never understood for what purpose he should be "redeemed." The Mediterranean religion of salvation is alien to and far removed from his Nordic attitude. He can understand man only as a warrior against Fate. A mode of thought which sees struggle and work only as a penance appears incomprehensible to him. "Our real life is a false, apostatic, and sinful existence, a penalty existence." Sorrow, battle, work, death, are merely taken as objections to life. "Man as innocent, idle, immortal, happy -- this concept of 'highest desirability' especially must be criticized." Nietzsche turns passionately upon the monastic vita contemplativa, against Augustine's "Sabbath of all Sabbaths." He praises Luther for having made an end of the vita contemplativa. The Nordic melody of strife and labor sounds strong and clear here. The accent with which we pronounce these words today we heard from Nietzsche for the first time. We call Nietzsche the philosopher of heroism. But that is only a half-truth if we do not regard him at the same time as the philosopher of activism. He considered himself the world-historical counterpart to Plato. "Works" result not from the desire for display, not from the acknowledgment of "extramundane" values, but from practice, from the ever repeated deed. Nietzsche employs a famous antithesis to make this clear: "First and above all there is the work. And that means training, training, training! The accompanying faith will come by itself -- of that you can be certain." Nietzsche opposes the Christian proscription of the political sphere, of the sphere of action altogether, with the thesis that also overcame the contrast between Catholicism and Protestantism (work and faith): "One has to train oneself not in the strengthening of value feelings, but in action; One has to know how to do something." In this way he re-established the purity of the sphere of action, of the political sphere. Nietzsche's "values" have nothing to do with the Beyond, and therefore cannot be petrified into dogma. In ourselves, through us, they rise struggling to the surface; they exist only as long as we make ourselves responsible for them. When Nietzsche warns, "Be true to the Earth!" he reminds us of the idea that is rooted in our strength but does not hope for "realization" in a distant Beyond. It is not enough to point out the "this-worldly" character of Nietzsche's values if one at the same time does not want to refute the notion that values are "realized" by action. Something inferior is always attached to the "realization" of given values whether these values are of a mundane or extramundane character.... Nietzsche's Nordic and soldierly valuation opposes that of the Mediterranean world and that of the priests. His critique of religion is a criticism of the priest, and arises from the point of view of the warrior, since Nietzsche demonstrates that even the origin of religion lies in the realm of power. This explains the fateful contradiction in a morality based on the Christian religion. "To secure the rule of moral values, all kinds of unmoral forces and passions have to be enlisted. The development of moral values is the work of unmoral passions and considerations." Morality, therefore, is the creation of unmorality. "How to bring virtue to rule: This treatise deals with the great politics of virtue." It teaches for the first time "that one cannot bring about the reign of virtue by the same means used to establish any kind of rule, least of all through virtue." "One has to be very unmoral to make morality through deeds." Nietzsche replaces the bourgeois moral philosophy with the philosophy of the will to power -- in other words with the philosophy of politics. If in doing so he becomes the apologist for the "unconscious," this "unconscious" is not to be understood in terms of depth psychology. Here the concern is not with the instinctive and unconscious drives of an individual. Rather, "unconscious" here means "perfect" and "able." And beyond that, "unconscious" also means life as such, the organism, the "great reason" of the body. Consciousness is only a tool, a detail in the totality of life. In opposition to the philosophy of the conscious, Nietzsche asserts the aristocracy of nature. But for thousands of years a life-weary morality has opposed the aristocracy of the strong and healthy. Like National Socialism, Nietzsche sees in the state, in society, the "great mandatory of life," responsible for each life's failure to life itself. "The species requires the extinction of the misfits, weaklings, and degenerates: but Christianity as a conserving force appeals especially to them." Here we encounter the basic contradiction: whether one proceeds from a natural life context or from an equality of individual souls before God. Ultimately the ideal of democratic equality rests upon the latter assumption. The former contains the foundations of a new policy. It takes unexcelled boldness to base a state upon the race. A new order of things is the natural consequence. It is this order which Nietzsche undertook to establish in opposition to the existing one. In the face of the overpowering strength of the race, what happens to the individual? He returns -- as a single member in a community. The herd instinct is basically altogether different from the instinct of an "aristocratic society," composed of strong, natural men who do not permit their basic instincts to languish in favor of a mediocre average -- men who know how to curb and control their passions instead of weakening or negating them. This again must not be understood from an individualistic point of view. For a long time emotions will have to be kept under "tyrannical" control. This can be done only by one community, one race, one people.... If there ever was a truly German expression, it is this: One must have the need to be strong, otherwise one never will be. We Germans know what it means to maintain ourselves against all opposition. We understand the "will to power" -- even if in an altogether different manner than our enemies assume. Even in this connection, Nietzsche has supplied the deepest meaning: "We Germans demand something from ourselves that nobody expected from us -- we want more." If today we see German youth on the march under the banner of the swastika, we are reminded of Nietzsche's "untimely meditations" in which this youth was appealed to for the first time. It is our greatest hope that the state today is wide open to our youth. And if today we shout "Heil Hitler!" to this youth, at the same time we are also hailing Nietzsche. From Alfred Baeumler, Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Berlin: Junker und Dunnhaupt Verlag, 1937), pp. 283-285, 288-294. _______________ Notes: 1. These are all Romantic writers of the late eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. A Soldier Believes in Plain Talk, by ERNST ROHM I have opened here the book of my life to the understanding friend as well as to the nagging philistine. The narrow-minded petit bourgeois may find my attitude injudicious, but that does not bother me. Many books have been written, but few with such reckless frankness. Even my political friends may have found some of my opinions objectionable; my soldier's sensibility compelled me, in spite of the prevalent onesidedness of thought and feeling, to recognize the merits of the enemy no less than the shortcomings of the friend. I am a believer in plain talk and have not hid my heart like a skeleton in the closet. I must write without fear, with defiance -- just as it comes from my soul. And yet nothing was further from my intention than to offend or to injure anyone. Soldiers' talk is rough and direct, but we soldiers all speak the same language and understand each other. The "soldiers' emperor," Napoleon, is reported to have said on one occasion during his exile: "Soldiers will never be able to hate me, even if they have faced me on the battlefield." The wife of a soldier in my company, whose political convictions were far removed from mine, said to me on one occasion: "In the heart of my husband, his captain takes the first place; there is nobody to outrank him. Only then come his mother and I." And another of my soldiers, a Communist, during the period of the soldiers' councils, jumped up in a meeting at which the officers were being denounced, and shouted: "I don't know whether what you are saying about the officers is true, but I know that as far as my captain is concerned, it's not true." This is the way in which the hand of a soldier reaches out beyond all differences of class,. rank, and political philosophy. Soldierly comradeship, cemented with blood, can perhaps temporarily relax, but it can never be torn out of the heart, it cannot be exterminated. Still, all of Germany has not been awakened yet -- despite National Socialism. My words shall be a trumpet call to those who are still asleep. I am not appealing to the hustling and sneaky trader who has made accursed gold his God, but to the warrior who is struggling in the battle of life, who wants to win freedom and with it the kingdom of heaven. I approve of whatever serves the purpose of German freedom. I oppose whatever runs counter to it. Europe, aye, the whole world, may go down in flames -- what concern is it of ours? Germany must live and be free. One may call me a bigoted fool -- I can't help that. I am opposed to sport in its present form and to its effects. Moreover, I consider it a definite national danger. We cannot rebuild the Fatherland with champions and artificially nurtured "big guns of sport." Only the most careful development which provides physical strength and capability, with spiritual elasticity and ethical backbone, can be of use to the Volk community. Indeed, it is in keeping with these times of pretense and advertising: rubbish, confusion of the senses and sensation, have no enduring essence. I leave the sport mania to Ullstein and Mosse. [1] I remain with Jahn. [2] The Germans have forgotten how to hate. Virile hate has been replaced by feminine lamentation. But he who is unable to hate cannot love either. Fanatical love and hate -- their fires kindle flames of freedom. Passionlessness, matter-of-factness, objectivity, are impersonality, are sophistry. Only passion gives knowledge, creates wisdom. "Peace and order" is the battle cry of people living on pensions. In the last analysis you cannot govern a state on the basis of the needs of pensioners. "One is being circumspect," wrote the Munchner Zeitung in 1927 on the occasion of French attacks in the occupied zone, [3] "if one peacefully takes a punch in the ears." Translated into German it means "peace and order," hence simply shaking at the knees. Once more to hell with this peace and prudence, with the halfhearted, the middlings, the cowards! "Non-circumspect" persons fought four and a half years at the front! The "circumspect" ones remained at home! "Immature" persons fought in Upper Silesia for the preservation of the Reich. The "mature" persons locked themselves behind their doors. "Irresponsible dreamers" for years and years have called upon the people to rise up against enslavement and oppression. The "responsible politicians" of the new Germany in these same years have sold Germany lock, stock, and barrel. Our people and Fatherland are slowly but surely going under because of "circumspection" and "maturity." From time immemorial Germany was not suited to "diplomacy" and "politics." The sword has always determined the greatness of its history. "I most respectfully beg of the diplomats not to lose again what the soldier has gained with his blood." This is what Blucher had to write his king, Frederick William II, after the Battle of "Belle-Alliance." [4] Only the soldier could lead his people and Fatherland out of wretchedness and shame to freedom and honor. From Ernst Rohm, Die Geschichte eines Hochverraters (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher Nachf., 1928), pp. 365-367. (This extract has been taken from the seventh edition, 1934.) _______________ Notes: 1. The two leading publishing houses of Germany. 2. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) combined patriotism, defined as allegiance to the Volkdom, with preparedness through physical fitness. He founded the gymnastic associations and the modern fraternity movement. 3. That is, the French occupation of the Ruhr Valley. 4. A battle in the wars of liberation against Napoleon. Michael: A German Fate, by JOSEPH GOEBBELS June 3 Intellectualism is becoming a big bore to me. I feel nauseous at every printed word. I don't find anything in it that could redeem me. Richard wants to help me in small ways. I cannot very well speak uncivilly to him. *** Sometimes I sit for hours in listless indecisiveness, do nothing, and think nothing. Then again I am pursued by a thousand demons and forge plan after plan. But I don't begin to carry any of them out. Every evening I read the Sermon on the Mount. I find no consolation in it, only despair and shame. Something is wrong about it. *** In Germany's higher schools much work is done, but little of it for the future. It is all only day laborer's work. The wisdom of university chairs will never be able to redeem us! *** June7 If Christ were to be restored as he was, perhaps that would be our redemption. *** June 10 Before me rises a new fatherland. I am learning to love this fatherland again. And the more disgraceful its shame, the more ardent becomes my love for it. When I see the new man, I seek first for the German man. I will root myself in the soil of this fatherland. It is the mother of my thoughts and longings. We will not be blind to its failures and shortcomings. But we shall love these too, because they are our failures and shortcomings. The new nationalism desires Germany's future, not the restoration of a broken past. What does nationalism mean? We stand by Germany because we are Germans and because Germany is Our fatherland, the German soul is our soul, because each of us is a piece of Germany's soul. I hate the tongue-warriors who always carry the words "fatherland" and "patriotism" in their mouths. Fatherland: that must again become something that is self-evident to us. All of German history is nothing but a continuous chain of the battles of the German soul against its enemies. The German soul is Faustian! In it lies the instinctive bent toward work and its possibilities and the longing for redemption from the mind. There is a German idea, just as there is a Russian idea. They both will have to take each other's measure in the future. *** June 15 The battle that is raging through Europe today is a battle between newly emerging aristocratic classes. Every history-making epoch has been created by aristocrats. Aristocracy = the rule of the best. Never do the people rule themselves. This madness has been invented by liberalism. Behind its concept of the sovereignty of the people hide the most corrupt rogues, who do not want to be recognized. It is easy to see that it is all a cheap swindle, which can deceive only a fool whose head is stuffed with straw. The mass is victorious: what madness! Just as if I were to say: marble makes the statue. No work of art without its creator. No people without a statesman. No world without God! History is a sequence of many virile decisions. Armies are not victorious, but men within armies. Europe will be reconstructed by peoples who will be the first to overcome the mass madness and find their way back to the principle of personality. However, the new aristocracy is being created on the basis of new law. Tradition is being replaced by ability. The Best One! This title is not inherited, it has to be earned. Geniuses are only the highest forms of expression of the national will. They represent, so to speak, the incarnation of the creative Volkdom. No oak tree grows without soil, root, and strength. No man comes out of the unsubstantial. The people are his soil, history his root, blood his strength. Great ideas are always championed by minorities. In the end, however, they create a condition which enables whole nations to exist. Works of art, inventions, ideas, battles, laws, and states -- at the beginning of all of them stands always the man. Race is the matrix of all creative forces. Humanity -- that is a mere supposition. Reality is only the Volk. Humanity is nothing but a multitude of peoples. A people is an organic entity. Humanity has only the chance to become organic. To be organic means to possess within oneself the capability of creating organic life. The forest is only a multiplicity of trees. I cannot destroy nations and keep humanity alive, just as I could not uproot the trees and keep the forest. Trees -- that is, in their totality a forest. Peoples -- that is, in their totality humanity. The stronger the oak grows, the more will it beautify the forest. The more thoroughly a people is people, the greater its service to humanity ... Everything else is invented, not organically grown. For that reason it cannot stand up to history. A minority, if it includes the best, will turn the German fate. We must, therefore, be more courageous, more clever, more radical, and have more character than the majority; then we will automatically be victorious. That other peoples are ruled by their social scum should give us no headaches. The better the prospect of our success. If the most courageous hold the helm, they shall openly pronounce: We practice dictatorship! We assume responsibility before history -- who will cast the first stone at us? But if the cowards have the helm in their hand, they say: The people rule. They avoid responsibility and stone all those who unite to turn against this hypocrisy. Rule will always be an affair of a minority. The people have only the choice to live under the open dictatorship of the courageous, or to die under the hypocritical democracy of cowards. This is an account that is as simple as it is logical.... *** July 2 "1 will have to go to work, Agnes Stahl. It is my only salvation." "You always worked." "No, I was a dreamer, an aesthete, a fine talker. "I wanted to redeem the world with phrases. "I had a high regard for myself. "But now I would like to take my place in the middle of things. Nobody can remain neutral when two enemies, armed to the teeth, battle each other for the future." "Two enemies? Where and when?" "Yes, you don't see it, you don't want to see it. But it's so just the same. Money has made slaves of us, but work shall make us free. With the political bourgeoisie we staggered on the edge of an abyss; but with the political working class we will achieve a resurrection." "But you are opposed to the class struggle, and now you preach the rule of a class?" "Labor is no class. Class derived from the economic sphere. But labor has its roots in politics. It is a historical social estate. Nations have importance only if their ruling social estate has reality. The political bourgeoisie is nothing and does not want to be anything. It wants only to live, to live wholly primitively. For that reason it is doomed to destruction. "We can maintain life only if we are ready to die for it! "But the working class, on the other hand, has to fulfill a mission, above all in Germany. It must free the German people internally and externally. This is a world mission. If Germany goes under, the light of the world will be extinguished." "You are not very modest." "Only scoundrels are modest. The less I ask for myself, the more passionately I fight for the rights of my Volk. And since I see this sold out and betrayed by the bourgeoisie, I write off the past and begin with my work from the bottom up." "You may make revolutions, as many as you want. Fat will always swim on the surface." "Correct, the fat ones will always say the big words; they will own country villas and will deliver the speeches on national holidays. Mass man rules today and the morrow as well. But we will engrave our name on history. We alone! "The others live only for today. That is why they will be dead in the future. But those who are willing to renounce life today will be alive tomorrow." "Why renunciation? Who will thank you for it?" "Thank? I don't know the word. I want no thanks. What difference does this bit of life make?" "But you yourself come from the bourgeoisie." "That is why I learned to hate it so devoutly. One has to experience a thing in order to learn either to love or hate it thoroughly. "I hate the bourgeois because he is a coward and no longer wants to fight. He is only a zoological organism, nothing else. "Soldiers, students, and workers will build the new Reich. I was a soldier, I am a student, I want to be a worker. I have to go through all three steps to show the way. I was not granted the word, so I must begin to act. Each one to his post." "You love to sacrifice?" "Yes, sacrifice is necessary. I don't like it, but I must do it. I must descend to the deepest abyss. We have to begin from below. "Up to now we were inheritors. We have accepted what was transmitted to us with thanks. "But we must start from the beginning. "I shall be most ruthless and completely commit myself." "You have always been totally committed. You were always all ardor and sacrifice," "But in connection with wrong things. The new German man will be born in the workshops, not in books. "We have written, twaddled, and romanticized enough. Now we must work." "You will ruin yourself in the attempt." "No, I shall live. I want to make a beginning." "Work will reduce you to serfdom." "No, I shall ennoble my work. Work is not a thing in itself, it is only a step." "You put us all to shame." "I can take no credit for it; I have to be and act the way I am." Both of us are silent for a long while; it is getting late and the day is dying.... *** September 15 I feel good only if it crashes and thunders down there. When the pit props crash and the stone breaks. When the noise of work roars so that you can't hear your own voice. Symphony of work! Satiated, full life! Creation! Work! To use one's hands! To be master! Conqueror! King of life! And then I yearn again for the divine loneliness of the mountains and the virgin white snow. *** September 18 It is not the spirit that sets us free, nor is it work. Both are only forms of a higher power. Struggle stands at the beginning and at the end. I have undertaken the struggle with myself. We must first overcome the scoundrel in ourselves. The rest is child's play. Out of spirit, work, and struggle we create the motor which will set our age into motion. It will be an age of the newly formed aristocracy of achievement. *** September 20 Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood. I hate Mammon. It breeds sloth and satiated rest. It poisons our own values and subjects us to the service of low and base instincts. To me the worst day of the week is payday. They throw the money at us like bones to a dog. This world is hard and cruel. As hard as money in the thin hands of a miser. Thrift is a sticky virtue. Let them collect treasures and gold -- I shall be spendthrift with the surplus of my soul. *** Money is the yardstick for the values of liberalism. So insubstantial is this concept that it can elevate mere appearance to reality. That is what will eventually lead to its ruin. Money is the curse of labor. One cannot set money above life. Where that is done, all noble forces must run dry. Money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. If it becomes a purpose unto itself, then it must of necessity devaluate all labor until it becomes the means to an end. A Volk which evaluates everything in terms of money already stands before its own dark end. It will slowly be eaten up by the disintegrating forces of gold, which since time immemorial have led peoples and cultures to ruin. While the soldiers in the Great War offered their bodies for the protection of their homes and two million of them bled to death, the speculators coined gold out of their red and noble blood. And they later used this gold to cheat the returning soldiers out of house and home. The war was won by money and lost by labor. The peoples are not the victors or the vanquished. They performed only day labor in the service of money, or defended work against this slave labor. Germany battled for work. France fought for money. Labor lost the battle. Money won it. Money rules the world! If true, this is a horrible statement. But today we die because it is a reality. Money and Jew -- they belong together. Money is without roots. It stands above the races. Slowly it eats its way into the sound bodies of nations and little by little poisons their creative force. We must deliver ourselves from money through struggle and work. We must destroy this delusion in ourselves. Then the Golden Calf will come crashing down. In its deepest sense, liberalism is the philosophy of money. Liberalism means: I believe in Mammon. Socialism means: I believe in work. . . . *** September 28 I'm beginning to gain recognition among my fellow workers. Here and there one of them says a word to me. Some of them even initiate me into their sorrows and hardships. Slowly their distrust vanishes. Even my landlords become friendlier. This afternoon I found a few modest flowers on my table. How they filled me with joy! The children now call me by name when they see me and hang on to to my hands. *** October 3 "You're wearing yourself out, Michael. You can't keep it up. You will ruin yourself." "A man can endue more than we think. One can't take care of oneself. One has to assume great burdens in life. "During the war we wrested even more from our bodies and our defiance and we didn't go to ruin." "But we suffered grievously in body and soul." ''True, Matthias, it was not easy to overcome it all. But see here, we did it together, worker and master. "We lay together in the trenches, he who came from a palace and he who hailed from a miner's cottage. "We clung together, became friends, and for the first time knew each other. "But when the war was over, the unholy cleavage opened up again. "Work is a war without cannons. Here too we must hold together, brawn and brain. We must for once understand each other, the sooner the better. "Life is difficult. We don't have time enough to be each other's enemy. We must raise bread for the millions already born and for the millions yet to come. Otherwise, sooner or later we go to ruin." "Yes, but none of them up there thinks as you do: only money and power count with them." "These creatures have to be forced. There are people who are impressed only by the fist under their nose. There can be no special considerations. We young people have the greater right before history. "The old ones don't even want to understand that we young people even exist. They defend their power to the last. "But one day they will be defeated after all. Youth finally must be victorious. "We young ones, we shall attack. The attacker is always stronger than the defender. "If we free ourselves, we can also liberate the whole working class. And the liberated working class will release the Fatherland from its chains." "What you said about labor and war is absolutely right. And the most beautiful part of it is that you yourself make these words come true. "You do not merely mouth phrases like the others. You act. "As soon as you arrived here, when I saw you for the first time, I knew that you were a pioneer of the idea of labor. "Alas, we see many university students here. They are all eager and do their duty below in the pit. "But most of them fail to understand us miners. They climb down to us. Moreover, they condescend to come down to our level. There always remains an open space between them and us. That is the reason for the brooding hatred between us and the 'white hands.' "You will find here much animosity against the students. But I know that you want to improve things. You don't want to come down to us, you want to help us to come up to you. "You understand how to grasp this correctly, because you see the comrade in us. Therefore you easily find the right word that opens our hearts." I kneel beside Matthias Grutzer deep down in the pit during our breakfast break. We can only talk after long intervals and must shout in order to understand each other. From Joseph Goebbels, Michael: Ein deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblattern (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Frz. Eher Nachf., 1929), pp. 112-115, 118-120, 137-142. Germany Must Live, by FRIEDRICH BUBENDEN
The November day of the year 1918 when Germany fell to pieces was dying, oddly worn out, languid, yellow intermingled with the bitter-sweet fragrance of falling autumn leaves. Suddenly the stillness of death over a sea of battlefields, the stillness of death over millions of dead bodies. At the crossroads, on the empty fields, on the cloud-enveloped mountainsides, on the wet shore, on which the waves beat sluggishly, astonished, startled faces of soldiers still hot with battle, there is a catching of breath, the restless shrugging of shoulders, a leaderless forlornness, a deeply alarmed questioning: "Over?" "Yes -- over!" A war comes to an end. A world war ends with a final bang. A smirking skeleton squats and giggles inaudibly over victor and vanquished. Who is the victor? In this brief moment, in which the very earth stands still, nobody knows. Even afterward nobody knows. The primordial, eternal laws governing our planet are again set in motion, and the earth rotates once more. The petrification dissolves. One draws a breath, another draws a breath. Hands, forlornly, rub foreheads. The earth rotates faster and faster, already it spins at the usual speed; by now the clever have understood. The blood again pulsates through their veins. The smokeless chimneys of the Wendel mines on the Lorraine frontiers point like steel fingers in the air, and a lieutenant, with fluttering red ribbons in his buttonhole, stands smiling in the door of his quarters. Discarded rifles pile up in the Cologne railroad station. anthem, also discarded, lies an inconvenient dagger, and train after train rolls, rolls, rolls eastward along the bare rails. And now men are flowing into the heart of the homeland from all sections of the front. A small cluster of heroes remains behind in the forgotten war lands, still deeply rooted, still uncomprehending. They do not yet know that the earth is once more rotating. Among them stands Albert Leo Schlageter. The cowardly Soldiers' Council stepped back from their flashing, angry eyes, and even more from their clenched fists, and let them pass. But in the homeland the Reds are victorious! Frenzy, ardor, greed for life, have replaced paralyzed shock. Liquor glasses clink. And as warehouses and granaries slowly and gradually fill up, it is forgotten that the earth's crust is cracking. Ho! Good times are here again! Business as usual! A spirit that goes arm in arm with everything that promises and pledges peace and quiet. But one person sits restlessly there. Among students at their books. He is always on the lookout for leadership. It never comes. Shall Germany live or who? Under colorful caps in Freiburg one man moans: it is Albert Leo Schlageter. Suddenly he disappears. Riga, German Riga calls! The battery sprays flaming lightning on narrow bridges. Riga is delivered. [1] Among those who breathe freely, the happy ones, the rejoicing ones, is Albert Leo Schlageter, the leader of that battery. Schlageter the mercenary. The mercenary? The waves rise higher in the homeland. Greedy hands reach out for gold, which flutters away in paper form. That's nothing! Just don't listen. Enjoy life. It's peace after all! The peace of Versailles! Only one listens: Albert Leo Schlageter! He hears the subterranean rumbling of the mountains of the Ruhr. The goaded, wild, misled Red mob rises up! The petit bourgeois only shudders. He doesn't even see the insolent, yellow Muscovite mask. Albert Leo Schlageter again, impetuously firing off his battery, scatters the Red rabble. The easily adjusting bourgeois smiles: it wasn't so bad after all. Where is the leadership? Here! calls Albert Leo Schlageter! Free Corps officer in Silesia! The Annaberg looks down on German heroes. The Pole grates his teeth, pulls back. German land is saved. But how much German land was lost altogether? The merchants and usurers call: Away with the Free Corps that has saved us! The war is over! Now let's have some peace and quiet. Become civilians! In the background the Marxists smile, the Communists smile, the Jews smile, a Reich government smiles contentedly. But one man does not smile! Doesn't he take a rest then? Does Germany still call? She calls! But only to those who listen! And those who listen must withdraw. They must always be on the move. They must keep hidden. From the police and the burghers. Restlessly they move here and there. Among them again stands -- he! There he hears him call, the unnamed, unknown soldier, whom only a few know at first. He, without being called to leadership, also shouted his "Here!" Under the earth, near the Reich's capital, but nevertheless under the earth, Albert Leo Schlageter dedicated himself to the flag of this man. But the fate of the German earth calls Albert Leo Schlageter to another task. Between the Rhine and the Ruhr the fires are burning again! According to the "Treaty and Agreement," the cowardly enemy [2] may invade and seize, jail, and assault Germany's sons and daughters; he may steal and rob. Silent war in the Ruhr territory. Albert Leo Schlageter sets out when Germany calls again. He does not know that it is the last time in his life that Germany will call him. The war becomes increasingly more hidden, increasingly more secret. From an open fight in an open battlefield, it turns into a dark, secret, almost powerless defense. But he grits his teeth, and his fiery spirit, dampened into what only seems like powerlessness, fights on. Muffled explosions and crashes. Railway tracks and iron bars split open! Bridges fly up in the air. Fear sits day and night in the shaking knees of the victor." But suddenly base treachery stands alongside unfettered heroism. Incomprehensible, this going under of the holy light in the murkiness of hell! Again and again someone must experience this on this earth, and end with death. Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do! The cross of Golgotha is raised anew in the lonely pile in the sandpit in Golzheim. A Great One must again -- how often in world history -- sink lifeless to his knees because all the petty ones hate him, must hate him. A salvo flashes, roars in the pale gray dawn of May 26, 1920. Albert Leo Schlageter is dead! Is he dead? Odd! Where he is dead everything now springs to life around him and his heroism. He had fought on in the battalions of German heroes after the war. Alongside him, with him, before him, behind him, his comrades fought for the same prize: for Germany.... This Albert Leo Schlageter who was restless in life, because he sought Germany, now dead, spread restlessness among ever more and new thousands. Who was Albert Leo Schlageter? Anyone who reads these simple letters and thinks about them knows. Certainly no one could have written more simply! Was he a creator of illusions? A gifted talker? A singer of freedom? A herald of the word, a lord of speech? A poet? This slender little volume of letters says: no! However, this Albert Leo Schlageter, wasn't he, and isn't he, much, much more? He was nothing else, wanted and could be nothing else but a true son of his Volk and of his homeland, nothing else but a living deed! He did not preach the deed, he was the deed itself! But because he was a man of action and not of words, because he accepted the bitter chalice for the sake of his faith in Germany and drank it to its last dregs, standing upright, he was and is -- the German conscience! This German conscience was threatened by struggle as long as he lived. Today the silent, despairing struggle of the unenlightened among us still goes on against this German conscience! Again, again, and again will there be this struggle between God and the Devil, between light and darkness. It will come to an end only with the final redemption of the world. Until then, we who call ourselves German and who feel in our blood that we are Germans must persevere in this struggle, even if it costs us our lives! We must do it, as did Albert Leo Schlageter, for the sake of Germany. If, however, courage and strength forsake us and if we are in danger of sinking into a non-militant contemplation -- then the testament of these plain letters that have been bequeathed to us shall once more open the path to heroism. Then the German conscience in these pages shall smite us. From the afterword to Deutschland muss leben: Gesammelte Briefe von Albert Leo Schlageter, edited by Friedrich Bubenden (Berlin: Paul Steegemann Verlag, 1931), pp. 70-75, 77-78. _______________ Notes: 1. Delivered from the Bolshevists' advance. In 1920 they were forced to recognize the independence of Latvia, with Riga as its capital. 2. France and Belgium. The Difference Between Generations, by HANNS JOHST AUGUST: You won't believe it, Papa, but that's the way it is. The young people don't pay much attention to these old slogans any mare ... they're dying out ... the class struggle is dying out. SCHNEIDER: So ... and what do you live on then? AUGUST: The Volk community! SCHNEIDER: And that's a slogan ... ? AUGUST: No, it's an experience! SCHNEIDER: My God! ... Our class struggle, our strikes, they weren't an experience, eh ...? Socialism, the International, were they fantasies maybe ...? AUGUST: They were necessary, but they were ... they have been ... with respect to the future, that is, they are historical experiences. SCHNEIDER: So ... and the future therefore will have your Volk community. Tell me, how do you actually envision it? Poor, rich, healthy, upper, lower, all this ceases with you, eh? A social land of Cockaine, eh ... ? AUGUST: Look, Papa ... upper, lower, poor, rich, that always exists. It is only the importance one places on this question that is decisive. To us life is not chopped up into working hours and furnished with price charts. Rather, we believe in human existence as a whole. None of us regards making money as the most important thing; we want to serve. The individual is a corpuscle in the bloodstream of his people. SCHNEIDER: That is the romanticism of adolescence! Redemption of the people through minors. Rub your nose in reality first! World views aside for now.... Let's talk about something concrete: What is the attitude of your corps and your "Volk community" toward passive resistance? AUGUST: We want to turn it into a putsch, into a national uprising. SCHNEIDER: Turn it into a putsch ... ? AUGUST: You, as an old revolutionary, I must say, stress the word "putsch" rather oddly. The government either will march with us or it will vanish! SCHNEIDER: You are talking to a regional president and he tells you: the government will raise hell with putschists! AUGUST: I'm talking quite cheerfully and agreeably with my old father. SCHNEIDER: Your old father is an official of the state, which considers passive resistance right and proper! AUGUST: And your son is a revolutionary! SCHNEIDER: My son is a lout who is going to get a box on the ears .... Now obey! AUGUST [moves back, laughing gaily]: As a regional president you still manage things like an old work master. That's all right for teaching children good manners. But ... SCHNEIDER: But ... but.... We oldsters are not as stupid as you youngsters imagine. To you, Schlageter and his cronies are national heroes ... to us here, they are just an event. Schlageter is a dead man if he doesn't obey orders. The governments of Europe are agreed that the last adventurers and fanatics and firebrands and bandits of the world war must be exterminated with fire and sword! We want peace! That's what I tell you, young man, and I stood four years under fire for Germany, as it is today and as it will remain, so long as I draw breath! AUGUST: No!! And I say this to you, that I have no idea of what a battle is in which equipment is decisive, or of barrages, flame-throwers, and tanks. We young people, who stand by Schlageter, do not stand by him because he is the last soldier of the world war, but because he is the first soldier of the Third Reich!!! CURTAIN From Hanns Johst, Schlageter (Munich, 1934), pp. 82-85. Fritz Todt: Contemporary Hero, by EDUARD SCHONLEBEN At the very beginning of his work, on the occasion of the opening of the short Autobahn built to bypass the town of Opladen, on September 27, 1933, he said: "The new road of Adolf Hitler, the Autobahn, is in keeping with the essence of our National Socialism. We wish to fix our goal far ahead of us, we want to achieve our aims directly and in a straight line. We build bridges over crossroads; unnecessary connections are alien to us. We do not need switch tracks; we create for ourselves a road that leads only forward, since we need a road which permits us to maintain a speed that suits us. "Thus do we build our roads in the Third Reich, thus do we educate our people, thus do we erect the whole National Socialist Reich." The second secret of Dr. Todt's ability to accomplish great things was an unremitting hardness against his own self, which never permitted him to demand from others what he was unwilling to do himself. "He who is privileged to live in the times of Adolf Hitler must subordinate all desire for personal comfort to the sacred obligation of accomplishing any task the Fuhrer assigns to him." A few sentences, typical of Dr. Todt's artistic views, must be repeated here: "The master builder who builds in the stone-ocean of a great city must envision his creation amidst the forms and modes of human expression of earlier times. He must express the greatness of our time in relationship to the accomplishments of earlier periods. But the attitude of the master builder who is called upon to create in the wide-open space of the all-German landscape must be altogether different. His building site is the wide room of nature. The attempt to be even more monumental, even greater than nature, will seem arrogant and presumptuous." From Eduard Schonleben, Fritz Todt: Der Mensch, der Ingenieur, der Nationalsozialist (Oldenburg: Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1943), pp. 13, 72. Frederick the Great: Prussian Hero, by WILHELM IHDE Anyone who understands what the ancient Greeks, in their wordly wisdom, were trying to represent by the classic figure of Prometheus may also speculate whether Frederick does not occupy in history the position of the Prometheus of the Prussian state. Obviously, in his physical stature Frederick could not compare with the muscular demigod chained to the rock. But, then, it is not always the physically heroic figures who are chosen by Fate to awaken, through their own will, the determination of a Volk. When the exulting rhythm of the Hohenfriedberger March sounded -- when flags waved proudly in the crimson dawn of the Prussian-German morning -- when the people of Berlin bared their heads in silent reverence -- when all of Europe paid more than due respect -- when the Mediterranean corsairs freed Prussian ships-when in faraway China there was awestruck whispering at the sight of the ensigns of Prussian ships-when even a sophisticated posterity must admit its unconditional admiration -- when all this happens, it is not alone due to the King of Prussia, but much more to the man Frederick, whose Prussian will overcame the weaknesses of his body and who in the forty-six years of his reign always did more than just his duty. What is there to say of this Prussian will of Frederick's, this inflexible will to live? Fortunate is he whose will finds open doors and favor able circumstances among men and things; he may unfold the fullness of his being undisturbed. But flaming sparks are ignited only then, when the genius of a great man is engaged in desperate battle with unyielding Fate, when the harmoniously peaceful purpose of his planning is transformed into the stormy, roaring hurricane of his will. Then the human will shines as a sublime heavenly flame which illuminates true human greatness beyond all time and earthliness. Only when a man's iron will wrestles breast to breast with Fate, when, gnashing his teeth and panting, he tears the disguise from the awesome power and punishes it with the club of his will -- only then does the human spirit tear itself away from all matter and soar to the heights, leaving earth behind and boldly demanding entry into the realm of the Godhead. Only then does the reality of daily drudgery disappear before our eyes and in a flash of sudden awe we understand how man's struggling will can hurl thunderbolts which tear the rainbow-bridged path between earth and the universe and force the Godhead to extend its benediction. His will pushes the Gods from their "golden seats" and forces them to give justice to the human race. Frederick never experienced good will and luck. From his youth he was forced to stand question and answer, to receive blows and to repay them with even harder blows. From year to year his spirit grew in this never-ending dialogue. Fate raised her own enemy. He was not concerned with the petty joys of life, he hardened his heart early and eventually grew far beyond the everyday world to greatness during the hardest battles of the Seven Years' War. Four and a half million Prussian subjects defended themselves against a European coalition of 96 million. But Frederick could muster only 150,000 soldiers against many hundred thousands. He marched back and forth across the land, joined battle wherever the enemy could be found, and through cleverly conceived maneuvering kept the multitudinous pack of his enemies before the edge of his sword. His will made up for the lack of troops, his mind for the lack of allies.... Perhaps, then, the great King of Prussia was a philosopher? Many who understood that Frederick could not be explained either as a coldly calculating general, as an unfeeling diplomat, or as a personally ambitious statesman thought it possible to attribute these qualities to him by calling him a philosopher in whom the lives and sufferings of his subjects and the wishes of the surrounding world aroused no sympathy. Nothing could be more wrong than such fabrications! Of course, he was called the Philosopher of Sanssouci, [1] but this philosopher was a human being who was involved in reality with all the fibers of his feelings. He had been forced to look into the weakness and the baseness of the human character. And he had to take them into consideration every day, had no leisure to search for hypotheses alien to reality. There was hardly a man of his time, filled as it was with so-called philosophical speculation, who expressed his scorn and derision for them as strongly as did Frederick. True, in some situations he seemed to be a fatalist, but on the whole he had his feet solidly on the ground and he avoided philosophical speculations which seldom can awaken the interest of active people. In fact, he hated them in his innermost soul. He himself confessed: "A little rest, a little sleep, a little bit of good health -- these constitute my whole philosophy." His whole so-called "philosopher's conceit" was nothing but a splendid humaneness, tempered by suffering and woe, by victory and glory, a heart that was not alien to anything human. This then is the golden key to Frederick II, King of Prussia; he was nothing but a human being! He had no less need than others for human joys and happiness; indeed, because of his artistic sensibility he could even have laid a greater claim to them. Who would deny that the bitter disappointments of his youth and his forced marriage made him worthy of a share of some compensating human happiness? A man of Frederick's capacities would have known well what loveliness, what enrapturing felicities and artistic enjoyments, life holds for the connoisseur, and his own capacity for life was equally ready to give and take. The temptations that beset this gracious prince were not small. At the small price of national dignity, the whole of Europe would have been willing to let him lead a life that would have provided the greatest opportunities for his personal inclinations. And in view of the real power relations, posterity would have found little cause to criticize him for it. This Frederick was not forced to be a hero. If he had succumbed to the blandishments of life, it would certainly have been an expression of the will to live on the part of the most charming and intellectual prince in Europe, but we would have searched in vain for the Prussian will to live. This man Frederick, gifted and blessed for the pursuit of human happiness, made the decision himself. On the day that he, alone in the world and before God, was charged with the future of his people, it was as if a glowing stream of fire went through his heart; he tore himself loose from his personal fate and made this avowal: "It is not necessary for me to live, but that I do my duty." From then On he was Frederick of Prussia, the first servant of his people, and nothing else. Far behind now lay the idyl of Rheinsberg, lost were friends and joys, and before him rose the terror of the battlefield, and for all the future, until the hour of his death, the unfailing clockwork of service. Now, as Fate had declared war on him, he became a hero. In the face of sorrows and hardships he knew nothing of a hero's glory, but when he raised his eyes to his generals -- when his glance swept over his grenadiers -- when from his desk he inspired his ministers -- when he instructed the ambassadors of foreign powers-when he looked like a father upon the least of his Prussians -- then appeared before all of them the hero Frederick. When finally he fell asleep in the arms of his valet in Sanssouci and wrote finis to seventy-four troublesome years, he left no more personal property than a single threadbare uniform coat of his own guards regiment, an old and tired whippet hound, the old gray charger Conde, and a few snuffboxes. Every general and minister possessed more. But the great king left behind a Prussia which he had put into the world with will and might, so that it could look forward to its German destiny. From Kampfer, Kunder, Tatzeugen: Gestalter deutscher Grosse, Vol. I: Kampfer, edited by Ernst Adolf Dreyer and Heinz W. Siska (Munich, Vienna, Leipzig: Zinnen-Verlag, 1942), pp. 182-184, 203- 205. _______________ Notes: 1. Frederick's palace at Potsdam. The Diary of an SA Man's Bride, by GUDRUN STREITER Although I am very tired, I just cannot sleep. The events of the last days have filled me with such a great enthusiasm that despite the late hour I take up my beloved diary in order to write in it what has so deeply stirred me. It was cloudy and overcast when I set out for the Rhine yesterday with my Hitler comrades, men and women. Nevertheless, we paid no attention to the unfavorable weather. Our hearts flamed with a glowing enthusiasm and a great joy. The lutes played and our song-happy lips never rested. Men and women party comrades boarded the train at almost every station and brought even more cheer to the frolicsome group. Time flew by so quickly with all the singing and jingling and jangling and before we were aware of it Germania was already greeting us from the Niederwald. Upon arriving in Bingen, we were still undecided whether we should go by ferry in order to travel up the other side of the Rhine by train or whether we should proceed to our destination by steamboat on the German Rhine. The weather decided for us. An opaque black mass of clouds had formed in the skies. The clouds were riveted together like iron chains. While we were looking up at the skies pondering alternatives, a violent storm began to rage and pound the waves of the Rhine with terrible force. Then we were all seized by a yearning for wild waves, stormy wind and rain. We boarded the steamer and clambered to the upper deck, to let the storm wind blow through us and to lift our heads to the elements. How loudly our hearts pounded and how proudly waved our swastika flags and pennants in the storm wind. Legend-woven castles greeted us boldly and stubbornly from both banks. And our enthusiasm and ecstasy grew even mare. The beautiful trip was concluded much too quickly and soon we could spot the little Rhenish town, Our destination, greeting us. A great stir of life could be seen on the shores of the Rhine. Unnumbered bands of Brownshirts marched with their blood-red flags to assembly on the banks of the Rhine. Roaring shouts of "Heil!" greeted us, echoing back and forth. We were met by a wonderful panorama when we entered the town. The streets were a regular forest of flags. From every house waved the glorious German banners. Garlands and a profusion of flowers decorated the streets. There was liveliness everywhere. SA men hurried past us, carrying out the orders of their leaders. From every side we could hear stirring tunes of Prussian military marches. And then I saw something I had never seen before: women and girls in the brown Hitler uniform. They sold us badges for the solstice celebration. This touched me in a wondrous way, and a desire began to burgeon and to burn within me, to be permitted to help, like these women and girls, in the great work of our leader Adolf Hitler. A torch had been thrown into my heart and continued to flame and blaze. There was no place for any other thought within me. Almost in a trance, I followed my girl comrades to our quarters. I no longer heard or saw what was happening around me; I just sat on my cot and wondered how I could become a helper in the reconstruction of the Fatherland. I was still lost in thought when one of my girl comrades found me and took me to the open-air concert of the SA. Deep inside I was annoyed that I had been disturbed in my thoughts. But outwardly, of course, I gave no indication and acted as though I were in high spirits. But in spite of the eager talk of the other girls, I was soon lost in my thoughts again, not at all aware of the fact that I was already beginning my work for the Hitler movement. As we approached the square, we heard the last few bars of the Petersburg March, and then there was a pause in the music program. I soon lost my comrades in the press of people. I went along a stretch of the Rhine promenade and suddenly found myself before the statue of our great Blucher. I stood on the spot where, on New Year's night in 1814, the Prussian army led by Blucher had crossed the Rhine. My thoughts rushed back to that memorable night and, fully occupied with meditation on this great deed of the courageous Prussians, I just stood there. I was torn out of my thoughts when I heard a man's voice beside me and I saw an SA man standing in front of me. He said to me: "Pardon me, are you a party comrade?" "Yes, of course," I answered. "Heil and greetings." I looked up and saw before me a weather-browned manly face with a pair of strikingly large and sunny eyes. He looked at me questioningly. "Wouldn't you like to help the movement a bit by selling some cards?" "With pleasure," I responded, and received a stack of cards from his hands. With joy I rushed toward the mass of people that surrounded the band. In only a quarter of an hour I had sold all the relief cards and joyfully delivered the money to the SA man for the movement. He was overjoyed and thanked me by shaking my hand. He told me his name, Wolfgang Jensen. I told him my name in return. We exchanged a few more words and then I hastened to rejoin my comrades to tell them about my card selling. In the evening, at ten o'clock, there was a great assembly before the Blucher monument. We had bought torches from the SA men and now we took our place in the ranks of the Hitler legions. Countless people stood in formation. SS and SA men, Hitler Youth, National Socialist women and girls' groups, Stahlhelmer, Pfadfinder, Wandervogel, and thousands of others formed the endless ranks of the participants in the solstice festival. In the van stood the standard-bearers with their blood-red swastika flags, and countless pennants waved between the ranks in the evening breeze. We stood like that in rank and file for more than two hours. At twelve-fifteen finally came the great moment. The order came to march off and the torches were lighted. We marched with joyful song, accompanied by lutes, through the streets of the little town. After a short time we were in top marching form. As we entered the market square, there was a roar of "Heil!" There stood Flight Captain Hermann Goring, his hand raised in the Hitler salute, and he reviewed the long line of marchers, while shouts of "Heil!" echoed in the square. After we left the town, the road led us up into the mountains toward the solstice fire. It was a splendid sight. The road led to the mountain in serpentine twists and turns. From the top we could look back on the long marching columns. The brilliant glare of the torches in the night was glorious. It was an overwhelming sight. My words are too poor to portray this experience. For a long time we let this picture enter our thirsty souls to their uttermost depths until our eyes were focused on one mighty flaming fire. It was our solstice celebration. We were received by the tunes of Prussian military marches. Then, with the Dutch Prayer of Thanksgiving, the inspiring festival began. Heads were bared. With folded hands we listened devoutly to the solemn melody: "We come to pray before the righteous God ..." Toward the end Hermann Goring rose again to deliver a flaming address. In his call to battle for Germany's freedom the rustle of the Rhine sounded like a prayer for redemption from foreign despotism. In the deep darkness of the night, the iron words of Ernst Moritz Arndt [1] sounded forceful and thundering on Hermann Goring's tongue: "The Rhine, Germany's river, but not Germany's border." After singing the national anthem, we all sat down around the great fire and sang our songs. Goring stepped into the circle and remained standing, proud and upright. It was a glorious picture, the great air hero standing there, surrounded by the light of the solstice fire. But his face remained somewhat in the dark, since the dying flames did not reach that far. I had the luck to sit directly behind him. With a sudden decision I jumped up and held my torch over his shoulder, and now his face, too, radiated a great glow. Then came a great, eventful moment for me. He turned and nodded thankfully to me. Who could have been happier than I? Then we sang Lons's [2] song of the Red hussars. Again, the main speaker addressed us in imperative and flaming words and stepped out of our midst, accompanied by roaring shouts of "Heil!" Our eyes followed him for a long time until he vanished in the dark night. I thought that I would not see him again for a long time. I had not noticed that meanwhile an SA man had stepped to my side. I turned around only after I heard myself addressed by name, and encountered the manly face of SA man Jensen. He shook my hand and asked about my impressions of the solstice celebration. I began to tell him in my stormy and elated state of excitement. He looked at me with joyful and shining eyes, sharing my enthusiasm and joy. After I had expressed all my feelings about the solstice celebration, we both fell silent. I noticed that his facial expression had changed. A deadly seriousness was on his face. He looked at me silently for a long time and then he asked how long I had been a follower of Hitler and what had prompted me to become a National Socialist. He did not turn his eyes from me, but continued to look at me, steadfast and probing. I shall never forget these hours. His eyes plumbed the depth of my soul. His gaze was strong and powerful, but without importunity. I felt his eyes in the deepest corner of my heart and it would have been impossible for me to make a secret of anything that he wanted to know of me. I answered his question and explained clearly and simply when and why I had become a National Socialist. He was silent for a while, turned his head, and looked thoughtfully into the flames of the solstice fire. Slowly he turned his face to me, looked deep into my eyes, and, shaking my hand, said in all seriousness: "You have truly grasped what National Socialism is!" Meanwhile the fire was banking. Some threw their torches into the flames. Wolfgang Jensen and I followed the example of the others and once again the flames shot up. We looked silently and seriously into the fire. Then Wolfgang Jensen said admonishingly, almost solemnly, to me: "Don't ever forget the solstice fire. Let it flame in your heart and let its rays reach out to your racial comrades. Then you will truly help in the great work of Adolf Hitler." From Gudrun Streiter, Dem Tod so nah ...: Tagebuchblatter einer SA-Mann's Braut (published by the author, n.d.), pp. 8-11. _______________ Notes: 1. Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860), a patriotic Romantic poet. 2. Hermann Lons (1866-1914), a writer, mostly of peasant and regional novels. On Festivities in the School, by HERMANN KLAUSS The German school is not an institution devoted only to the transmission of knowledge; it is not a dead organizational form -- it is a form of life itself. The teacher is not just an instructor and a transmitter of knowledge. He is more than that. He is a soldier, serving on the cultural-political front of National Socialism. True, the battle on this front is of a different nature and is fought with different weapons, but it is no less important, because the struggle is for the soul of the people. It would make no sense whatsoever to win the political but lose the cultural-political battle. The task of the German educator is to form human souls. The festive hours in the school are charged with the highest mission of leadership -- hours in which the task of forming human souls is most urgent. Hence the festivity can never be something secondary, something, say, that is off to the side, that merely deflects everyone from their real task. The daily school work all too easily leads a class to withdraw into its work assignment and to a separation from the school community and the outside world. At a festivity, however, teacher and students stand together, whether the occasion is a simple flag-raising ceremony or a great celebration involving the whole school community. Nowhere can we discern the spirit that prevails in a community as clearly as in the manner in which its celebrations are conducted. This applies to a ceremony of a single class as well as to a ceremony of the whole school. The old proverb could be changed to read: "Show me how you celebrate, and I will tell you who you are." Every festive hour is a confession of faith. The school administration has clearly recognized the great importance of school celebrations. This is distinctly shown in the regulations for the curricula of the various types of schools. The regulations for education and instruction at the grade-school level set forth on page 7:
The corresponding regulations for education and instruction in the intermediate school read:
The regulations for education and instruction in the higher schools also explain how the various school subjects can be integrated in the school festivities. Festivities during the School Year Individually school celebrations show a great variety, ranging from the simple morning speech and song to the flag raising, the morning celebration, the memorial hour, and the festive drama, to the great celebrations of national holidays in a form suitable for young people. The great celebrations of the school community should be few; they should represent climaxes in the life of the school. If these celebrations follow each other too frequently, they lose their effectiveness. But celebrations are also held in small groups in order to prepare the youth for the experience of the great national holidays. School celebrations can be grouped as follows: Celebrations under the Flag
The School's "Own" Celebrations
National Holidays
Celebrations during the School Year
General Morning Celebrations
Festive Hours On Special Occasions
Concerning the Organization of a Festive Hour Action, speech, and music are the pillars upon which the great national celebrations rest. Music serves to prepare the celebrants. Speech opens bridges to their hearts. Action creates meaningful customs.... The Flag Orders Our Day The law of the flag rules over our lives. It also stands above our school work. We begin each section of the school year with a general flag-raising ceremony. We close it with a general flag lowering. The first great experience of a new student is the ceremonial flag raising. The school year ends with the flag lowering on the last day of school. On the holidays of the school and the Volk community the school hoists the flags of the Reich and its youth. Flag raising is honor, elevation, admonition, and avowal of faith. The external expression -- assembly, speech, song, greetings, and retreat -- is an unfailing indication of the spirit which prevails in the community. Generally, the flag-raising ceremony is quite brief and is limited to a recitation and song. In some cases it will be enlarged to include an appeal, reflection, and avowal of loyalty in recitation, song, and address. Such would be the case on the occasion of the flag raising at the beginning of a new school year, on the first day in the country boarding school, on national holidays, and on other similar occasions. The flag song is always a "We" song, a song of the community. A large selection of such songs is readily available in all collections, so that it is not necessary to list them here.... *** The following suggestions for celebrations -- "The Flag Is Our Faith" ... -- are so conceived that they could take place before the flag raising with the song of the nation. It is, of course, also possible to have the flag raising precede these ceremonies. In that case the first song could be dispensed with. The narrator of the words of the Fuhrer stands before the ranks of the assembled teachers; the narrators of the avowal of faith and loyalty stand in the front rank of the pupils. "The Flag Is Our Faith We sing together:
A student speaks:
A teacher speaks: Thus the Fuhrer admonishes us: "Everything that we demand of Germany in the future, that, boys and girls, we also demand of you. "This must you practice and this must you then pass on to the future, because whatever we create today and whatever we do, we will have to pass on. But in you Germany will live on, and when there is nothing left of us, it will be up to you to hold in your fists the flag which we once raised out of nothingness. "Therefore you must stand solidly on the ground of your soil, and you must be hard so that this flag does not slip from you, then may you be followed by generation after generation from whom you can make the same demand that they be as you were. And then Germany will look upon you with pride." *** Or a brief address:
A student recites:
We sing together:
From Hermann Klauss, Feierstunden der deutschen Schule (Stuttgart: Franck'sche Verlagshandlung, 1941), pp. 7 ff. ________________ Notes: 1. A battle in World War I (1914), fought by youthful volunteers, most of whom perished.
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