The Course of Lectures

The work of politicians is without significance for the following generation.

This is because their temporary success was based on the expediency of avoiding all really great decisive problems and ideas which would be valid also for future generations.

To pursue ideals which will still be of value and significance for the future is generally not a very profitable undertaking.

He who follows such a course is only very rarely understood by the masses.

Vanity is always one of the blood-relations of unintelligence. It makes the general run of politicians to always eschew those schemes for the future which are really difficult to put into practice.

They will practise this avoidance so that they may not lose the immediate favour of the mob.

The importance and the success of such politicians belong exclusively to the present and will be of no consequence for the future. But that does not worry small-minded people; they are quite content with momentary results.

The position of the constructive political philosopher is quite different. The importance of his work must always be judged from the standpoint of the future; and he is frequently described by the word WELTFREMD, or dreamer.

While the ability of the politician consists in mastering the art of the possible, the founder of a political system belongs to those who are said to please the gods only because they wish for and demand the impossible.

They will always have to renounce contemporary fame; but if their ideas be immortal, posterity will grant them its acknowledgment.

Within long spans of human progress it may occasionally happen that the practical politician and political philosopher are one. The more intimate this union is, the greater will be the obstacles which the activity of the politician will have to encounter.

Such a man does not labour for the purpose of satisfying demands that are obvious to every philistine, but he reaches out towards ends which can be understood only by the few. His life is torn asunder by hatred and love. The protest of his contemporaries, who do not understand the man, is in conflict with the recognition of posterity, for whom he also works.

For the greater the work which a man does for the future, the less will he be appreciated by his contemporaries. His struggle will accordingly be all the more severe, and his success all the rarer.

When, in the course of centuries, such a man appears who is blessed with success then, towards the end of his days, he may have a faint prevision of his future fame. But such great men are only the Marathon runners of history.

The laurels of contemporary fame are only for the brow of the dying hero.

The great protagonists are those who fight for their ideas and ideals despite the fact that they receive no recognition at the hands of their contemporaries. They are the men whose memories will be enshrined in the hearts of the future generations.

It seems then as if each individual felt it his duty to make retroactive atonement for the wrong which great men have suffered at the hands of their contemporaries. Their lives and their work are then studied with touching and grateful admiration. Especially in dark days of distress, such men have the power of healing broken hearts and elevating the despairing spirit of a people.

To this group belong not only the genuinely great statesmen but all the great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great we have such men as Martin Luther and Richard Wagner.

When I heard Gottfried Feder’s first lecture on ‘The Abolition of the Interest-Servitude’, I understood immediately that here was a truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people.

The absolute separation of stock-exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without at the same time attacking capital as such, for to do this would jeopardize the foundations of our national independence.

I clearly saw what was developing in Germany and I realized then that the stiffest fight we would have to wage would not be against the enemy nations but against international capital. In Feder’s speech I found an effective rallying-cry for our coming struggle.

Here, again, later events proved how correct was the impression we then had. The fools among our bourgeois politicians do not mock at us on this point any more; for even those politicians now see–if they would speak the truth–that international stockexchange capital was not only the chief instigating factor in bringing on the War but that now when the War is over it turns the peace into a hell.

The struggle against international finance capital and loan-capital has become one of the most important points in the programme on which the German nation has based its fight for economic freedom and independence.

Regarding the objections raised by so-called practical people, the following answer must suffice: All apprehensions concerning the fearful economic consequences that would follow the abolition of the servitude that results from interest-capital are illtimed; for, in the first place, the economic principles hitherto followed have proved quite fatal to the interests of the German people.

The attitude adopted when the question of maintaining our national existence arose vividly recalls similar advice once given by experts–the Bavarian Medical College, for example–on the question of introducing railroads. The fears expressed by that august body of experts were not realized.

Those who travelled in the coaches of the new ‘Steam-horse’ did not suffer from vertigo. Those who looked on did not become ill and the hoardings which had been erected to conceal the new invention were eventually taken down. Only those blinds which obscure the vision of the would-be ’experts’, have remained. And that will be always so.

In the second place, the following must be borne in mind: Any idea may be a source of danger if it be looked upon as an end in itself, when really it is only the means to an end. For me and for all genuine National-Socialists there is only one doctrine. PEOPLE AND FATHERLAND.

What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfil the mission assigned to it by the Creator.

All ideas and ideals, all teaching and all knowledge, must serve these ends. It is from this standpoint that everything must be examined and turned to practical uses or else discarded. Thus a theory can never become a mere dead dogma since everything will have to serve the practical ends of everyday life.

Thus the judgment arrived at by Gottfried Feder determined me to make a fundamental study of a question with which I had hitherto not been very familiar.

I began to study again and thus it was that I first came to understand perfectly what was the substance and purpose of the life-work of the Jew, Karl Marx. His CAPITAL became intelligible to me now for the first time. And in the light of it I now exactly understood the fight of the Social-Democrats against national economics, a fight which was to prepare the ground for the hegemony of a real international and stock-exchange capital.

In another direction also this course of lectures had important consequences for me.

One day I put my name down as wishing to take part in the discussion. Another of the participants thought that he would break a lance for the Jews and entered into a lengthy defence of them. This aroused my opposition. An overwhelming number of those who attended the lecture course supported my views. The consequence of it all was that, a few days later, I was assigned to a regiment then stationed at Munich and given a position there as ‘instruction officer’.

At that time the spirit of discipline was rather weak among those troops. It was still suffering from the after-effects of the period when the Soldiers’ Councils were in control. Only gradually and carefully could a new spirit of military discipline and obedience be introduced in place of ‘voluntary obedience’, a term which had been used to express the ideal of military discipline under Kurt Eisner’s higgledy-piggledy regime.

The soldiers had to be taught to think and feel in a national and patriotic way. In these two directions lay my future line of action.

I took up my work with the greatest delight and devotion. Here I was presented with an opportunity of speaking before quite a large audience. I was now able to confirm what I had hitherto merely felt, namely, that I had a talent for public speaking.

My voice had become so much better that I could be well understood, at least in all parts of the small hall where the soldiers assembled.

No task could have been more pleasing to me than this one; for now, before being demobilized, I was in a position to render useful service to an institution which had been infinitely dear to my heart: namely, the army.

I am able to state that my talks were successful. During the course of my lectures I have led back hundreds and even thousands of my fellow countrymen to their people and their fatherland. I ’nationalized’ these troops and by so doing I helped to restore general discipline.

Here again I made the acquaintance of several comrades whose thought ran along the same lines as my own and who later became members of the first group out of which the new movement developed.