Munich -- Speech of July 28, 1922
IT IS a battle which began nearly 120 years ago, at the moment when the Jew was granted citizen rights
in the European States. The political emancipation of the Jews was the beginning of an attack of
delirium. For thereby they were given full citizen rights and equality to a people which was much more
clearly and definitely a race apart than all others, that has always formed and will form a State within the
State. That did not happen perhaps at one blow, but it came about as things come about today and
always do come about: first a little finger, then a second and a third, and so bit by bit until at last a
people that in the eighteenth century still appeared completely alien had won equal citizen-rights with
ourselves.
And it was precisely the same in the economic sphere. The vast process of the industrialization of the
peoples meant the confluence of great masses of workmen in the towns. Thus great hordes of people
arose, and these, more's the pity, were not properly dealt with by those whose moral duty it was to
concern themselves for their welfare. Parallel with this was a gradual 'moneyfication' of the whole of the
nation's labor-strength. 'Share-capital' was in the ascendant, and thus bit by bit the Stock Exchange came
to control the whole national economy.
The directors of these institutions were, and are without exception, Jews. I say 'without exception,' for
the few non-Jews who had a share in them are in the last resort nothing but screens, shop-window
Christians, whom one needs in order, for the sake of the masses, to keep up the appearance that these
institutions were after all founded as a natural outcome of the needs and the economic life of all peoples
alike, and were not, as was the fact, institutions which correspond only with the essential characteristics
of the Jewish people and are the outcome of those characteristics.
Then Europe stood at the parting of the ways. Europe began to divide into two halves, into West Europe
and Central and Eastern Europe. At first Western Europe took the lead in the process of
industrialization. Especially in England crowds of farm laborers, sons of farmers, or even ruined farmers
themselves, streamed into the towns and there formed a new fourth estate.
But here one fact is of more importance than we are accustomed to admit: this England, like France, had
relatively few Jews. And the consequence of that was that the great masses, concentrated in the towns,
did not come into immediate contact with this alien nation, and thus feelings of aversion which must
otherwise necessarily have arisen did not find sufficient nourishment for their development. In the end
the fifty or sixty thousand Jews in England - there was hardly that number in England then - with
supreme ease were able so to 'Europeanize' themselves that they remained hidden from the primitive eye
of the ordinary member of the public and as 'Captains of Industry,' and especially as representatives of
capital on a large scale, they could appear no longer as foreigners but themselves became Englishmen.
This accounts for the fact that anti-Semitism in these States could never attain to any native vigor; for
the same is true of France. And precisely for this reason in these countries it was possible to introduce
the system which we have to represent to ourselves under the concept of 'Democracy.' There it was
possible to create a State-form whose meaning could only be the mastery of the herd over the
intelligentsia, the mastery over true energy through the dead weight of massed numbers. In other words:
it must be supremely easy for the Jewish intelligentsia, small in numbers and therefore completely
hidden in the body of the British people, so to work upon the masses that the latter, quite unconscious of
whom they were obeying, in the end did but serve the purposes of this small stratum of society.
Through the press propaganda, through the use of the organs of information, it was possible in England
to found the great model parties. Already in those early days they saw to it shrewdly that here were
always two or three groups apparently hostile to each other, but in fact all hanging on a gold thread, the
whole designed to take account of a human characteristic - that the longer a man possesses an object, the
more readily he grows tired of it. He craves something new: therefore one needs two parties. The one is
in office, the other in opposition. When the one has played itself out, then the opposition party comes
into power, and the party which has had its day is now in its turn the opposition. After twenty years the
new party itself has once more played itself out and the game begins afresh. In truth this is a highly
ingenious mill in which the interests of a nation are ground very small. As everyone knows, this system
is given some such name as 'Self-Government of a People.'
Besides this we always find two great catchwords, 'Freedom' and 'Democracy,' used, I might say, as
signboards. 'Freedom': under that term is understood, at least amongst those in authority who in fact
carry on the Government, the possibility of an unchecked plundering of the masses of the people to
which no resistance can be offered. The masses themselves naturally believe that under the term
'freedom' they possess the right to a quite peculiar freedom of motion - freedom to move the tongue and
to say what they choose, freedom to move about the streets, etc. A bitter deception!
And the same is true of democracy. In general even in the early days both England and France had
already been bound with the fetters of slavery. With, I might say, a brazen security these States are
fettered with Jewish chains....
In consequence of this widespread aversion it was more difficult for the Jew to spread infection in the
political sphere, and especially so since traditionally loyalty was centered in a person: the form of the
State was a monarchy, and power did not lie with an irresponsible majority. Thus the Jew saw that here
it was possible for an enlightened despotism to arise based upon the army, the bureaucracy, and the
masses of the people still unaffected by the Jewish poison.
The intelligentsia at that time was almost exclusively German, big business and the new industries were
in German hands, while the last reservoir of a people's strength, the peasantry, was throughout healthy.
In such conditions if, as industry grew, a fourth estate was formed in the towns, there was the danger
that this fourth estate might ally itself with the monarchy, and thus with its support there might arise a
popular monarchy or a popular 'Kaisertum' which would be ready and willing to give a mortal blow to
those powers of international supra-State finance which were at that time beginning to grow in
influence. This was not impossible: in the history of Germany princes had from time to time found
themselves forced, as in Brandenburg, to turn against the nobility and seek popular support.
But this possibility constituted a grave danger for Jewry. If the great masses of the new industrialized
workmen had come into Nationalist hands and like a true social leaven had penetrated the whole nation,
if the liberation of the different estates had followed step by step in an organic development and the
State had later looked to them for support, then there would have been created what many hoped for in
November, 1918, viz., a national social State. For Socialism in itself is anything but an international
creation. As a noble conception it has indeed grown up exclusively in Aryan hearts: it owes its
intellectual glories only to Aryan brains. It is entirely alien to the Jew.
The Jew will always be the born champion of private capital in its worst form, that of unchecked
exploitation.... Voltaire, as well as Rousseau, together with our German Fichte and many another - they
are all without exception united in their recognition that the Jew is not only a foreign element differing
in his essential character, which is utterly harmful to the nature of the Aryan, but that the Jewish people
in itself stands against us as our deadly foe and so will stand against us always and for all time.
The master-stroke of the Jew was to claim the leadership of the fourth estate: he founded the Movement
both of the Social Democrats and the Communists. His policy was twofold: he had his 'apostles' in both
political camps. Amongst the parties of the Right he encouraged those features which were most
repugnant to the people - the passion for money, unscrupulous methods in trade which were employed
so ruthlessly as to give rise to the proverb 'Business, too, marches over corpses.' And the Jew attacked
the parties of the Right. Jews wormed their way into the families of the upper classes: it was from the
Jews that the latter took their wives. The result was that in a short time it was precisely the ruling class
which became in its character completely estranged from its own people.
And this fact gave the Jew his opportunity with the parties of the Left. Here he played the part of the
common demagogue. Two means enabled him to drive away in disgust the whole intelligentsia of the
nation from the leadership of the workers. First: his international attitude, for the native intelligence of
the country is prepared to make sacrifices, it will do anything for the life of the people, but it cannot
believe in the mad view that through the denial of that national life, through a refusal to defend the rights
of one's own people, through the breaking down of the national resistance to the foreigner, it is possible
to raise up a people and make it happy. That it cannot do, and so it remained at a distance.
And the Jew's second instrument was the Marxist theory in and for itself. For directly one went on to
assert that property as such is theft, directly one deserted the obvious formula that only the natural
wealth of a country can and should be common property, but that that which a man creates or gains
through his honest labor is his own, immediately the economic intelligentsia with its nationalist outlook
could, here too, no longer co-operate: for this intelligentsia was bound to say to itself that this theory
meant the collapse of any human civilization whatever. Thus the Jew succeeded in isolating this new
movement of the workers from all the nationalist elements....
More and more so to influence the masses that he persuaded those of the Right that the faults of the Left
were the faults of the German workman, and similarly he made it appear to those of the Left that the
faults of the Right were simply the faults of the so-called 'Bourgeois,' and neither side noticed that on
both sides the faults were the result of a scheme planned by alien devilish agitators. And only so is it
possible to explain how this dirty joke of world history could come to be that Stock Exchange Jews
should become the leaders of a Workers Movement. It is a gigantic fraud: world history has seldom seen
its like.
And then we must ask ourselves: what are the final aims of this development?
So soon as millions of men have had it hammered into them that they are so oppressed and enslaved that
it matters not what their personal attitude may be to their people, their State, or economic life, then a
kind of passive resistance must result, which sooner or later will do fatal damage to the national
economy. Through the preaching of the Marxist economic theory the national economy must go to ruin.
We see the results in Russia: the end of the whole economic life of the State: the handing over of the
community to the international world of finance. And the process is furthered through the organization
of the 'political strike.' Often there are no adequate economic grounds for a strike, but there are always
political grounds and plenty of them.
And to this must be added the practical political sabotage of the State, since the thought of the individual
is concentrated on the idea of international solidarity. It is clear that a nation's economic life depends
upon the strength of a national State: it does not live on such phrases as 'Appeasement of the peoples' or
'Freedom of the Peoples.'
At the moment when no people supports the economic life of a nation, ready to give it its protection, at
that moment economic life collapses. The breaking in pieces of a nation's strength is the end of a nation's
prosperity, the national existence must cease altogether.
And one can see constantly how wonderfully the Stock Exchange Jew and the leader of the workers,
how the Stock Exchange organ and the journal of the workers, co-operate. They both pursue one
common policy and a single aim. Moses Kohn on the one side encourages his association to refuse the
workers' demands, while his brother Isaac in the factory incites the masses and shouts, 'Look at them!
they only want to oppress you! Shake off your fetters....'
His brother takes care that the fetters are well and truly forged. The Stock Exchange organ seeks without
intermission to encourage fevered speculation and unparalleled corners in grain and in the food of the
people, while the workmen's newspaper lets off all its guns on the masses, telling them that bread is
dearer and this, that, and the other is dearer: up Proletarians! endure it no longer-down with . . .
How long can this process last? It means the utter destruction not only of economic life, but of the
people. It is clear that all these apostles who talk their tongues out of their heads, but who spend the
night in the Hotel Excelsior, travel in express trains, and spend their leave for their health in Nice - these
people do not exert their energies for love of the people. No, the people is not to profit, it shall merely be
brought into dependence on these men. The backbone of its independence, its own economic life, is to
be destroyed, that it may the more surely relapse into the golden fetters of the perpetual interest-slavery
of the Jewish race. And this process will end when suddenly out of the masses someone arises who
seizes the leadership, finds other comrades and fans into flame the passions which have been held in
check and looses them against the deceivers.
That is the lurking danger, and the Jew can meet it in one way only - by destroying the hostile national
intelligentsia. That is the inevitable ultimate goal of the Jew in his revolution. And this aim he must
pursue; he knows well enough his economics brings no blessing: his is no master people: he is an
exploiter: the Jews are a people of robbers. He has never founded any civilization, though he has
destroyed civilizations by the hundred. He possesses nothing of his own creation to which he can point.
Everything that he has is stolen. Foreign peoples, foreign workmen build him his temples, it is
foreigners who create and work for him: it is foreigners who shed their blood for him. He knows no
'people's army': he has only hired mercenaries who are ready to go to death on his behalf. He has no art
of his own: bit by bit he has stolen it all from the other peoples or has watched them at work and then
made his copy. He does not even know how merely to preserve the precious things which others have
created: as he turns the treasures over in his hand they are transformed into dirt and dung. He knows that
he cannot maintain any State for long. That is one of the differences between him and the Aryan. True,
the Aryan also has dominated other peoples. But how? He entered on the land, he cleared the forests; out
of wildernesses he has created civilizations, and he has not used the others for his own interests, he has,
so far as their capacities permitted, incorporated them into his State and through him art and science
were brought to flower. In the last resort it was the Aryan and the Aryan alone who could form States
and could set them on their path to future greatness.
All that the Jew cannot do. And because he cannot do it, therefore all his revolutions must be
'international.' They must spread as a pestilence spreads. He can build no State and say 'See here, Here
stands the State, a model for all. Now copy us!' He must take care that the plague does not die, that it is
not limited to one place, or else in a short time this plague-hearth would burn itself out. So he is forced
to bring every mortal thing to an international expansion. For how long? Until the whole world sinks in
ruins and brings him down with it in the midst of the ruins.
That process today in Russia is practically complete. The whole of present-day Russia has nothing to
show beyond a ruined civilization, a colony ripe for development through alien capital, and even this
capital in order to supply resources in labor for its practical work must introduce Aryan intellects, since
for this again the Jew is useless. Here, too, he is all rapacity, never satisfied. He knows no ordered
economy, he knows no ordered body of administrators. Over there in Russia he is laying his hands on
everything. They take the noble's diamonds to help 'the People.' The diamonds then stray into foreign
societies and are no more seen. He seizes to himself the treasures of the churches, but not to feed the
people: oh no! Everything wanders away and leaves not a trace behind. In his greed he has become quite
senseless: he can keep hold of nothing: he has only within him the instinct for destruction, and so he
himself collapses with the treasure that he has destroyed.
It is a tragic fate: we have often grown excited over the death of a criminal: if an anarchist is shot in
Spain we raise a mighty howl over 'the sacrifice of valuable human blood' . . . and here in the East thirty
million human beings are being slowly martyred - done to death, some on the scaffold, some by machine
guns . . . millions upon millions through starvation.... A whole people is dying, and now we can perhaps
understand how it was possible that formerly all the civilizations of Mesopotamia disappeared without a
trace so that one can only with difficulty find in the desert sand the remains of these cities. We see how
in our own day whole countries die out under this scourge of God, and we see how this scourge is
threatening Germany, too, and how with us our own people in mad infatuation is contributing to bring
upon itself the same yoke, the same misery.
We know that the Revolution which began in 1918 has covered perhaps but the first third of its course.
Two things, however, there are which must scourge it forward upon its way: economic causes and
political causes. On the economic side, the ever-growing distress, and in the political sphere, are not
nearly all Germans in their hearts - let each one admit it - in despair when they consider the situation
which leaves us quite defenseless in face of a Europe which is so hostile to Germany? AND WHY IS
EUROPE HOSTILE? WE SEE HOW OVER THERE IN THIS OTHER EUROPE IT IS NOT THE
PEOPLES WHICH AGITATE AGAINST US, IT IS THE SECRET POWER OF THE ORGANIZED
PRESS WHICH CEASELESSLY POURS NEW POISON INTO THE HEARTS OF THESE
PEOPLES.
And who are then these bandits of the press? The brothers and the relatives of the publishers of our own
newspapers. And the capital source which provides the energy which here - and there - drives them
forward is the Jewish dream of World Supremacy.
Today the idea of international solidarity has lost its force, one can still bring men out of the factories,
but only by means of terrorism. If you ask for an honest answer the worker will confess that he no
longer believes in this international solidarity. And the belief in the so-called reasonableness of the other
peoples has gone too. How often have we been told that reason will lead them not to be too hard with us:
true, reason should have moved them thus, but what did move them had nothing to do with reason. For
here there is no question of the thought of reasonable peoples: it is the thought of a wild beast, tearing,
raging in its unreason, that drives all of them to the same ruin as that to which we ourselves are driven.
So the masses of the people in Germany are becoming, in the political sphere, completely lost. Yet here
and there people are beginning to get some practice in criticism. Slowly, cautiously, and yet with a
certain accuracy the finger is being placed on the real wound of our people. And thus one comes to
realize: if only this development goes on for a time, it might be possible that from Germany the light
should come which is destined to light both Germany and the world to their salvation. And at that point
the everlasting lie begins to work against us with every means in its power....
It is said, if one criticizes the state of affairs to which we have been brought today, that one is a
reactionary, a monarchist, a pan-German. I ask you what would probably have been the state of
Germany today if during these three years there had been no criticism at all? I believe that in fact there
has been far, far too little criticism. OUR PEOPLE UNFORTUNATELY IS MUCH TOO
UNCRITICAL, OR OTHERWISE IT WOULD LONG AGO HAVE NOT ONLY SEEN THROUGH
MANY THINGS, BUT WOULD HAVE SWEPT THEM AWAY WITH ITS FIST! The crisis is
developing towards its culmination. The day is not far distant when, for the reasons which I have stated,
the German Revolution must be carried forward another step. The leaders know all too well that things
cannot always go on as they are going today. One may raise prices ten times by 100 per cent, but it is
doubtful if in the end even a German will accept a milliard of marks for his day's wage if in the last
resort with his milliard-wage he must still starve. It is a question whether one will be able to keep up this
great fraud upon the nation. There will come a day when this must stop - and therefore one must build
for that day, before it comes.
And so now Germany is reaching that stage which Russia has drunk to the lees. Now in one last
stupendous assault they will finally crush all criticism, all opposition, no, rather whatever honesty is still
left to us, and that they will do the more rapidly the more clearly they see that the masses are beginning
to understand one thing - National Socialist teaching.
Whether for the moment it comes to them under that name or under another, the fact is that everywhere
more and more it is making headway. Today all these folk cannot yet belong to a single party, but,
wherever you go, in Germany, yes almost in the whole world, you find already millions of thinking men
who know that a State can be built only on a social foundation and they know also that the deadly foe of
every social conception is the international Jew.
Every truly national idea is in the last resort social, i.e., he who is prepared so completely to adopt the
cause of his people that he really knows no higher ideal than the prosperity of this - his own - people, he
who has so taken to heart the meaning of our great song 'Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles,' that
nothing in this world stands for him higher than this Germany, people and land, land and people, he is a
Socialist! And he who in this people sympathizes with the poorest of its citizens, who in this people sees
in every individual a valuable member of the whole community, and who recognizes that this
community can flourish only when it is formed not of rulers and oppressed but when all according to
their capacities fulfill their duty to their Fatherland and the community of the people and are valued
accordingly, he who seeks to preserve the native vigor, the strength, and the youthful energy of the
millions of working men, and who above all is concerned that our precious possession, our youth,
should not before its time be used up in unhealthy harmful work - he is not merely a Socialist, but he is
also National in the highest sense of that word.
It is the teaching of these facts which appears to the Jews as leaders of the Revolution today to constitute
a threatening danger. And it is precisely this which more than anything else makes the Jew wish to get in
his blow as soon as possible. For one thing he knows quite well: in the last resort there is only one
danger which he has to fear-and that danger is this young Movement.
He knows the old parties. They are easily satisfied. Only endow them with a few seats as ministers or
with similar posts and they are ready to go along with you. And in especial he knows one thing: they are
so innocently stupid. In their case the truth of the old saying is proved afresh every day: 'Those whom
the gods wish to destroy, they first strike with blindness.' They have been struck with blindness:
therefore it follows that the gods wish to destroy them. Only look at these parties and their leaders,
Stresemann and the rest of them. They are indeed not dangerous. They never go to the roots of the evil:
they all still think that with forbearance, with humanity, with accommodation they can fight a battle
which has not its equal in this world. Through gentleness they think that they must demonstrate to the
enemy of the Left that they are ready for appeasement so as to stay the deadly cancerous ulcer through a
policy of moderation.
No! A thousand times No! Here there are only two possibilities: either victory or defeat!
What today is the meaning of these great preparations for the decisive battle on the part of bolshevist
Judaism?-
To make the nation defenseless in arms and to make the people defenseless in spirit.
Two great aims!
Abroad Germany is already humiliated. The State trembles before every French Negro-captain, the
nation is no longer dangerous. And within Germany they have seen to it that arms should be taken away
from the decent elements of the people and that in their stead Russian-Jewish-bolshevist bands should be
armed. Only one thing remains still to do: viz., the muzzling of the spirit, above all the arrest of the evil
'agitators' - that is the name they give to those who dare to tell the people the truth. Not only are their
organizations to be known to all, but the masses are to be incited against their persons. Just as the Jew
could once incite the mob of Jerusalem against Christ, so today he must succeed in inciting folk who
have been duped into madness to attack those who, God's truth! seek to deal with this people in utter
honesty and sincerity. And so he begins to intimidate them, and he knows that this pressure in itself is
enough to shut the mouths of hundreds, yes, of thousands. For they think, if I only hold my tongue, then
I shall be safe in case they come into power. No, my friend. The only difference will be that I may hang
perhaps still talking, while you will hang - in silence. Here, too, Russia can give us countless examples,
and with us it will be the same story.
We know that the so-called 'Law for the Protection of the Republic' which comes from Berlin today is
nothing else than a means for reducing all criticism to silence. We know, too, that no effort will be
spared so that the last outstanding personalities - those who within Germany foresee the coming of
disaster - shall in good time disappear. And to that end the population of North Germany will be
scourged into opposition to Bavaria with every lie and every misrepresentation that comes to hand. Up
there they have the feeling that in one corner of the Reich the spirit of the German people is not yet
broken. And that is the point to which we National Socialists have to grapple ourselves. We National
Socialists are, God's truth! perhaps the most loyal, the most devoted of all men to our German
Fatherland. For three years we have waged a war, often against death and devil, but always only for our
German Fatherland. We got so far that at the last, as crown of all our labors, we had to land in prison.
But in spite of everything there is one thing we would say: We do make a distinction between a
Government and the German Fatherland. When today here in the Landtag or in the Reichstag at Berlin
some lousy half-Asiatic youth casts in our teeth the charge that we have no loyalty to the Reich, I beg
you do not distress yourselves. The Bavarian people has sealed its loyalty to the Reich with its countless
regiments which fought for the Reich and often sank under the earth two or three times. We are
convinced, and that in the last resort is our one great faith, that out of this bitterest distress and this utter
misery the German Reich will rise again, but not as now, not as the offspring of wretchedness and
misery - we shall possess once again a true German Reich of freedom and of honor, a real Fatherland of
the whole German people and not an asylum for alien swindlers. There is today constant talk about
'Federalism,' etc. I beg you not to abuse the Prussians while at the same time you grovel before the Jews,
but show yourselves stiff-necked against the folk of Berlin. And if you do that, then you will have on
your side in the whole of Germany millions and millions of Germans, whether they be Prussians or men
of Baden, Wurttembergers, men of Saxony, or Germans of Austria. Now is the hour to stand stiff-necked
and resist to the last!
We National Socialists who for three years have done nothing but preach - abused and insulted by all, by
some mocked and scorned, by others traduced and slandered - we cannot retreat! For us there is only one
path which leads straight ahead. We know that the fight which now is blazing will be a hard struggle. It
will not be fought out in the court of the Reich at Leipzig, it will not be fought out in a cabinet at Berlin,
it will be fought out through those factors which in their hard reality have ever up to the present time
made world history. I heard recently in the speech of a minister that the rights of a State cannot be set
aside through simple majority decisions, but only through treaties. BISMARCK ONCE USED
DIFFERENT LANGUAGE ON THIS SUBJECT: HE THOUGHT THAT THE DESTINIES OF
PEOPLES COULD BE DETERMINED NEITHER THROUGH MAJORITY DECISIONS NOR
THROUGH TREATIES, BUT ONLY THROUGH BLOOD AND IRON.
On one point there should be no doubt: we will not let the Jews slit our gullets and not defend ourselves.
Today in Berlin they may already be arranging their festival-dinners with the Jewish hangmen of Soviet
Russia - that they will never do here. They may today begin to set up the Cheka - the Extraordinary
Commission - in Germany, they may give it free scope, we surrender to such a Jewish Commission
never! We have the conviction, firm as a rock, that, if in this State seven million men are determined to
stand by their 'No' to the very last, the evil specter will collapse into nothingness in the rest of the Reich.
For what Germany needs today, what Germany longs for ardently, is a symbol of power, and strength.
So as I come to the end of my speech I want to ask something of those among you who are young. And
for that there is a very special reason. The old parties train their youth in the gift of the gab, we prefer to
train them to use their bodily strength. For I tell you: the young man who does not find his way to the
place where in the last resort the destiny of his people is most truly represented, only studies philosophy
and in a time like this buries himself behind his books or sits at home by the fire, he is no German
youth! I call upon you! Join our Storm Divisions! And however many insults and slanders you may hear
if you do join, you all know that the Storm Divisions have been formed for our protection, for your
protection, and at the same time not merely for the protection of the Movement, but for the protection of
a Germany that is to be. If you are reviled and insulted, good luck to you, my boys! You have the good
fortune already at eighteen or nineteen years of age to be hated by the greatest of scoundrels. What
others can win only after a lifetime of toil, this highest gift of distinguishing between the honest man and
the brigand, falls as a piece of luck into your lap while you are but youths. You can be assured that the
more they revile you, the more we respect you. We know that if you were not there, none of us would
make another speech. We know, we see clearly that our Movement would be cudgelled down if you did
not protect it! You are the defense of a Movement that is called one day to remodel Germany in
revolutionary fashion from its very foundations in order that there may come to birth what perhaps so
many expected on the ninth of November: a German Reich and a Germanic and, so far as in us lies, a
German Republic.
Every battle must be fought to the end - better that it come early than late. And he ever stands most
securely who from the first goes to the fight with the greatest confidence. And this highest confidence
we can carry with us in our hearts. For he who on our side is today the leader of the German people,
God's truth! he has nothing to win but perhaps only everything to lose. He who today fights on our side
cannot win great laurels, far less can he win great material goods - it is more likely that he will end up in
jail. He who today is leader must be an idealist, if only for the reason that he leads those against whom it
would seem that everything has conspired.
But in that very fact there lies an inexhaustible source of strength. The conviction that our Movement is
not sustained by money or the lust for gold, but only by our love for the people, that must ever give us
fresh heart, that must ever fill us with courage for the fray.
And as my last word, take with you this assurance: if this battle should not come, never would Germany
win peace. Germany would decay and at the best would sink to ruin like a rotting corpse. But that is not
our destiny. We do not believe that this misfortune which today our God sends over Germany has no
meaning: it is surely the scourge which should and shall drive us to a new greatness, to a new power and
glory, to a Germany which for the first time shall fulfill that which in their hearts millions of the best of
our fellow countrymen have hoped for through the centuries and the millennia, to the Germany of the
German people!
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