Marxists Versus Nazis

The whole undertaking was of its very nature dangerous.

Back then, it would have been absolutely impossible openly to invite people to a national meeting that made a direct appeal to the masses.

Those who attended such meetings were usually dispersed and driven away with broken heads.

The largest so-called bourgeois mass meetings were used to dissolving. The people would run away like rabbits as soon as a dozen communists appeared on the scene.

On the contrary, however, they were all the more determined to use every possible means of annihilating once and for all any movement that appeared to them to be a danger to their own interests. The most effective means which they always employed in such cases were terror and brute force.

The Marxist leaders deceived and misled the public. They naturally hated most of all a movement that aimed to win over the masses which hitherto had been exclusively at the service of international Marxism in the Jewish and Stock Exchange parties.

The title alone, ‘German Labour party’, irritated them.

People in our own movement back then were anxious at the prospect of a conflict with Marxists.

• They wanted to refrain as much as possible from coming out into the open, because they feared that they might be attacked and beaten.

I found it difficult to defend my own position:

• The conflict should not be evaded.
• It should be faced openly.
• We should be armed with weapons to protect against brute force.

Terror cannot be overcome by the weapons of the mind but only by counter-terror.

The success of our first public meeting strengthened my own position.

The members felt encouraged to arrange for a second meeting, even on a larger scale.

Some time in October 1919 the second larger meeting took place in the EBERLBRÄU KELLER. The theme of our speeches was ‘Brest-Litowsk and Versailles’. There were four speakers.

I talked for almost an hour, and the success was even more striking than at our first meeting. The number of people who attended had grown to more than 130. An attempt to disturb the proceedings was immediately frustrated by my comrades.

The would-be disturbers were thrown down the stairs, bearing imprints of violence on their heads.

A fortnight later another meeting took place in the same hall. The number in attendance had now increased to more than 170, which meant that the room was fairly well filled. I spoke again, and once more the success obtained was greater than at the previous meeting.

Then I proposed that a larger hall should be found. After looking around for some time we discovered one at the other end of the town, in the ‘Deutschen REICH’ in the Dachauer Strasse.

The first meeting at this new rendezvous had a smaller attendance than the previous meeting. There were just less than 140 present. The members of the committee began to be discouraged, and those who had always been sceptical were now convinced that this falling-off in the attendance was due to the fact that we were holding the meetings at too short intervals.

There were lively discussions, in which I upheld my own opinion that a city with 700,000 inhabitants ought to be able not only to stand one meeting every fortnight but ten meetings every week. I held that we should not be discouraged by one comparative setback, that the tactics we had chosen were correct, and that sooner or later success would be ours if we only continued with determined perseverance to push forward on our road.

This whole winter of 1919-20 was one continual struggle to strengthen confidence in our ability to carry the movement through to success and to intensify this confidence until it became a burning faith that could move mountains.

Our next meeting in the small hall proved the truth of my contention. Our audience had increased to more than 200. The publicity effect and the financial success were splendid.

I immediately urged that a further meeting should be held. It took place in less than a fortnight, and there were more than 270 people present. Two weeks later we invited our followers and their friends, for the seventh time, to attend our meeting. The same hall was scarcely large enough for the number that came. They amounted to more than 400.

During this phase the young movement developed its inner form. Sometimes we had more or less hefty discussions within our small circle. From various sides–it was then just the same as it is to-day–objections were made against the idea of calling the young movement a party. I have always considered such criticism as a demonstration of practical incapability and narrow-mindedness on the part of the critic.

Those objections have always been raised by men who could not differentiate between external appearances and inner strength, but tried to judge the movement by the high-sounding character of the name attached to it. To this end they ransacked the vocabulary of our ancestors, with unfortunate results.

At that time it was very difficult to make the people understand that every movement is a party as long as it has not brought its ideals to final triumph and thus achieved its purpose.

It is a party even if it give itself a thousand difterent names.

Any person who tries to carry into practice an original idea whose realization would be for the benefit of his fellow men will first have to look for disciples who are ready to fight for the ends he has in view.

If these ends did not go beyond the destruction of the party system and therewith put a stop to the process of disintegration, then all those who come forward as protagonists and apostles of such an ideal are a party in themselves as long as their final goal is reached.

It is only hair-splitting and playing with words when these antiquated theorists, whose practical success is in reverse ratio to their wisdom, presume to think they can change the character of a movement which is at the same time a party, by merely changing its name.

On the contrary, it is entirely out of harmony with the spirit of the nation to keep harping on that far-off and forgotten nomenclature which belongs to the ancient Germanic times and does not awaken any distinct association in our age. This habit of borrowing words from the dead past tends to mislead the people into thinking that the external trappings of its vocabulary are the important feature of a movement. It is really a mischievous habit; but it is quite prevalent nowadays.

At that time, and subsequently, I had to warn followers repeatedly against these wandering scholars who were peddling Germanic folk-lore and who never accomplished anything positive or practical, except to cultivate their own superabundant self-conceit.

The new movement must guard itself against an influx of people whose only recommendation is their own statement that they have been fighting for these very same ideals during the last 30-40 years.

Now if somebody has fought for forty years to carry into effect what he calls an idea, and if these alleged efforts not only show no positive results but have not even been able to hinder the success of the opposing party, then the story of those forty years of futile effort furnishes sufficient proof for the incompetence of such a protagonist.

People of that kind are specially dangerous because they do not want to participate in the movement as ordinary members. They talk rather of the leading positions which would be the only fitting posts for them, in view of their past work and also so that they might be enabled to carry on that work further.

But woe to a young movement if the conduct of it should fall into the hands of such people. A business man who has been in charge of a great firm for forty years and who has completely ruined it through his mismanagement is not the kind of person one would recommend for the founding of a new firm.

It is just the same with a new national movement. Nobody of common sense would appoint to a leading post in such a movement some Teutonic Methuselah who had been ineffectively preaching some idea for a period of forty years, until himself and his idea had entered the stage of senile decay.

Furthermore, only a very small percentage of such people join a new movement with the intention of serving its end unselfishly and helping in the spread of its principles. In most cases they come because they think that, under the aegis of the new movement, it will be possible for them to promulgate their old ideas to the misfortune of their new listeners.

Anyhow, nobody ever seems able to describe what exactly these ideas are.

It is typical of such persons that they rant about ancient Teutonic heroes of the dim and distant ages, stone axes, battle spears and shields, whereas in reality they themselves are the woefullest poltroons imaginable. For those very same people who brandish Teutonic tin swords that have been fashioned carefully according to ancient models and wear padded bear-skins, with the horns of oxen mounted over their bearded faces, proclaim that all contemporary conflicts must be decided by the weapons of the mind alone.

Thus they skedaddle when the first communist cudgel appears. Posterity will have little occasion to write a new epic on these heroic gladiators.

I have seen too much of that kind of people not to feel a profound contempt for their miserable play-acting. To the masses of the nation they are just an object of ridicule; but the Jew finds it to his own interest to treat these folk-lore comedians with respect and to prefer them to real men who are fighting to establish a German State. And yet these comedians are extremely proud of themselves.

Notwithstanding their complete fecklessness, which is an established fact, they pretend to know everything better than other people; so much so that they make themselves a veritable nuisance to all sincere and honest patriots, to whom not only the heroism of the past is worthy of honour but who also feel bound to leave examples of their own work for the inspiration of the coming generation.

Among those people there were some whose conduct can be explained by their innate stupidity and incompetence; but there are others who have a definite ulterior purpose in view.

Often it is difficult to distinguish between the two classes. The impression which I often get, especially of those so-called religious reformers whose creed is grounded on ancient Germanic customs, is that they are the missionaries and protégés of those forces which do not wish to see a national revival taking place in Germany.

All their activities tend to turn the attention of the people away from the necessity of fighting together in a common cause against the common enemy, namely the Jew.

Moreover, that kind of preaching induces the people to use up their energies, not in fighting for the common cause, but in absurd and ruinous religious controversies within their own ranks.