Why The Second Reich Collapsed -- The Cause of the Disease

THE DEPTH of a fall is the difference between the original height and where it has fallen. Only the profound decline or collapse of what reached extraordinary heights can strike the eye of the beholder.

The same holds for Nations and States.

The collapse of the Second REICH was all the more bewildering because it fell from a great height to these days of misery and humiliation.

An act of statesmanship was accomplished whereby the Germans, princes as well as people, established the future REICH and restored the symbol of the Imperial Crown.

Bismarck’s State was founded by the regiments that had fought at the front.

• This unique birth and baptism of fire gave the Second Empire historical splendour that most of the older States did not have.

• Germany increased in numbers and in worldly wealth.
• The honour of the State and the people were secured and protected by an army
  • That army was the most striking difference between this new REICH and the old German Confederation.

The downfall of the Second Empire and the German people has been so profound.*

The Germans forgot to look for the symptoms of the great collapse.

Those symptoms were in the Germans who for whom Germany was more than merely a place of abode and a source of livelihood.

Bodily ailments can be cured only when their origin has been diagnosed. Political disease can be treated only when it has been diagnosed.

Most Germans recognize the German collapse only in the prevailing economic distress and the results that have followed therefrom.

The broad masses see little of the cultural, political, and moral background of this collapse.

Many of them completely lack both the necessary feeling and powers of understanding for it.

Intelligent Germans regard the German collapse primarily as an economic catastrophe, and consequently think that its cure requires an economic solution is why no improvement has been brought about.

Economics plays only a second or third role. The main part is played by political*, moral and racial factors.

This is important for a political movement which aims at overcoming this disaster.

Our present misfortune is said to be the result of a lost war. But this is absurd.

Those who started the 1918 Revolution declared that:

• it would be immaterial to the great masses what the result of the War might be.
• there would be a resurgence of the German people once ‘militarism’ had been crushed.

That kind of impudence is typical of the Jews.

They proclaim that the defeat of the army as the cause of the German collapse. The Berlin VORWÄRTS, that organ and mouthpiece of sedition then wrote that the Germany should not be permitted to bring home its banners triumphantly.

Yet they attribute our collapse to the military defeat*.

My observations are meant for our fighting followers, seeing that nowadays one’s spoken words are often forgotten and twisted in their meaning.

I assert that the loss of the War was not the cause of the German collapse.

Rather, the loss of the War was just an effect of the Germans who collaborated against Germany.

Our enemies were not cowards. The organization and leadership of the German Army was the mightiest that the world has ever seen.

In several circles, the misfortunes of the Fatherland were even joyfully welcomed.

If the front had given way and thus brought about a national disaster, then the German nation would have accepted the defeat in another spirit.

• They would have borne the subsequent misfortune with clenched teeth, or they would have been overwhelmed by sorrow.

But in reality that disgraceful state of affairs arose that induced a British officer, Colonel Repington, to declare with scorn: Every third German is a traitor!

This shows only too clearly how false it is to say that the loss of the War was the cause of the German break-up. No. The military defeat was itself but the consequence of a whole series of morbid symptoms and their causes which had become active in the German nation before the War broke out.

The War was the first catastrophal consequence of how:

• traditions and national morale had been poisoned and
• the instinct of self-preservation had degenerated.

These were the preliminary causes which for many years had been undermining the foundations of the nation and the Empire.

But it remained for:

• the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, ,
• the Marxists, the fighting comrades of the Jews

They blamed the loss of the world war on Ludendorff – the only adversary likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.

From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited.

Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race?

What a race!

One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. Schopenhauer called the Jew “The Great Master of Lies”.

But we can see Germany’s terrible catastrophe as a bitter stroke of luck.

If things had gone on more slowly, but more surely, then Germany would have gone to ruin – the disease would have become chronic.

• But since it took the form of an acute disaster, it showed itself clearly to many observers.

Man conquered the black plague more easily than he conquered tuberculosis.

• The plague appeared in terrifying waves of death that shook the whole of mankind. It induces terror.
  • This is opposed by so much human energy.
• Tuberculosis advances insidiously. It induces gradual indifference.
  • This is oppoosed by feeble means.

Thus man has mastered the black plague, while tuberculosis still gets the better of him.

The same applies to diseases in nations.

So long as these diseases are not of a catastrophic character, the population will slowly accustom itself to them and later succumb.

The important question here is the differentiation of the root causes from the circumstances developing out of them.

• This becomes all the more difficult the longer the germs of disease remain in the national body