Munich -- Speech of August 1, 1923

THERE are two things which can unite men: common ideals and common criminality. We have inscribed upon our banner the great Germanic ideal and for that ideal we will fight to the last drop of our blood. We National Socialists have realized that from the international cesspool of infamy, from the Berlin of today, nothing can come to save the Fatherland. We know that two things alone will save us: first, the end of internal corruption, the cleansing out of all those who owe their existence simply to the protection of their party comrades. Through the most brutal ruthlessness towards all party officials we must restore our finances. It must be proved that the official is not a party man, but a specialist! The body of German officials must once more become what once it was. But the second and the most important point is that the day must come when a German government shall summon up the courage to declare to the Foreign Powers: 'The Treaty of Versailles is founded on a monstrous lie. We refuse to carry out its terms any longer. Do what you will! If you wish for war, go and get it! Then we shall see whether you can turn seventy million Germans into serfs and slaves!' If cowards cry out: 'But we have no arms!' that is neither here nor there! When the whole German people knows one will and one will only - to be free - in that hour we shall have the instrument with which to win our freedom. It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God. When the eyes of German children look questioning into ours, when we see the suffering and distress of millions of our fellow-countrymen who without any fault of theirs have fallen into this frightful misfortune, then we laugh at the curses of the whole world, if from these curses there issues the freedom of our race. But since we know that today the German people consists for one-third of heroes, for another third of cowards, while the rest are traitors, as a condition of our freedom in respect of the outside world we would first cleanse our domestic life. The present 'United Front' has failed in that task. The day of another 'United Front' will come. But before that there must be a day of reckoning for those who for four and a half years have led us on their criminal ways. The domestic battle must come before the battle with the world without - the final decision between those who say 'We are Germans and proud of the fact' and those who do not wish to be Germans or who are not Germans at all. Our Movement is opposed with the cry 'The Republic is in danger!' Your Republic of the Ninth of November? In very truth it is: the November-Republic is in danger! How long, think you, you can maintain this 'State? . . . Our Movement was not formed with any election in view, but in order to spring to the rescue of this people as its last help in the hour of greatest need, at the moment when in fear and despair it sees the approach of the Red Monster. The task of our Movement is still today not to prepare ourselves for any coming election but to prepare for the coming collapse of the Reich, so that when the old trunk falls the young fir-tree may be already standing. The Via dolorosa of Germany from Wirth, by way of Cuno to Stresemann, will end in the dictatorship of a Jewish lord of finance.... WE WANT TO BE THE SUPPORTERS OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF NATIONAL REASON, OF NATIONAL ENERGY, OF NATIONAL BRUTALITY AND RESOLUTION. GERMANY CAN BE SAVED ONLY THROUGH ACTION, WHEN THROUGH OUR TALKING HERE THE BANDAGE HAS BEEN TORN FROM THE EYES OF THE LAST OF THE BEFOOLED. It is from our Movement that redemption will come - that today is the feeling of millions. That has become almost a new religious faith! And there will be only two possibilities: either Berlin marches and ends up in Munich, or Munich marches and ends up in Berlin! A bolshevist North Germany and a nationalist Bavaria cannot exist side by side, and the greatest influence upon the fortunes of the German Reich will be his who shall restore the Reich.... Either Germany sinks, and we through our despicable cowardice sink with it, or else we dare to enter on the fight against death and devil and rise up against the fate that has been planned for us. THEN WE SHALL SEE WHICH IS THE STRONGER: THE SPIRIT OF INTERNATIONAL JEWRY OR THE WILL OF GERMANY.