Marxists Versus Nazis

The whole undertaking was of its very nature dangerous.

Back then, it was absolutely impossible to openly 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.

The Reds were determined to annihilate any movement that was a danger to their own interests.

• Their most effective means 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.

The people in our own movement back then 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 First Meetings

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

• The members felt encouraged to arrange for a larger second meeting.

Some time in October 1919 the second meeting took place in the EBERLBRÄU KELLER.

• The theme of our speeches was ‘Brest-Litowsk and Versailles’.
• There were 4 speakers.

I talked for almost an hour. 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 attendees had now increased to more than 170, which meant that the room was fairly well filled.

I spoke again. It was more successful than the previous meeting.

Then I proposed that a larger hall should be found. We found it at the other end of the town, in the ‘Deutschen REICH’ in the Dachauer Strasse.

The first meeting here had a smaller attendance at just less than 140.

The members of the committee began to be discouraged. 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 should be able not only to stand one meeting every fortnight but 10 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 another meeting. It took place in less than a fortnight. 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 attendees were more than 400.

During this phase, the young movement developed its inner form.

Objections were made against the idea of calling the young movement a party. I thought such objections came from practical incapability and narrow-mindedness.

They were raised by men who could not differentiate between external appearances and inner strength. They tried to judge the movement by the high-sounding character of the name attached to it.

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

Any person who has an original idea to benefit of his fellow men will first have to look for disciples.

As long as their final goal is reached, then they are are a party in themselves.

The new movement must guard itself against an influx of people who say that they have been fighting for these very same ideals for the last 30-40 years.

Their efforts have:

• shown no positive results
• not been able to hinder the success of the opposing party

People of that kind are specially dangerous because they do not want to participate in the movement as ordinary members.

They use their past work to get into the leading positions.

A businessman who has led a great firm for 40 years to ruin through his mismanagement should not be recommended for the founding of a new firm.

It is just the same with a new national movement.

Nobody of common sense would appoint a leading post to some Teutonic Methuselah who had been ineffectively preaching some idea for 40 years.

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

To the nation’s masses, they are an object of ridicule.

But the Jew finds it to his own interest to:

• treat these folk-lore comedians with respect
• prefer them to real men who are fighting to establish a German State.

These comedians pretend to know everything better than other people. They make themselves a nuisance to all patriots.

Some of these people are stupid and incompetent.

But there are others who have an ulterior purpose.

Often it is difficult to distinguish between the two classes.

The so-called religious reformers are grounded on ancient Germanic customs. They claim to be the missionaries and protégés of those forces which do not wish to see a national revival taking place in Germany.

They turn the people away from fighting together the common enemy, namely the Jew.