Ernst Pöhner

The Government itself, except for 2 people, did everything to hamper this process of recovery and make it impossible:

1. Ernst Pöhner

He was Chief of Police at the time

2. Dr. Frick

This was the loyal counsellor of Ernst and chief executive official.

Ernst Pöhner was the only one who did not pay court to the mob. He felt that his duty was towards the nation. He was ready to risk and sacrifice everything, even his personal livelihood, to help restore the German people, whom he dearly loved.

That is why he was a bitter thorn in the venal group of Government officials.

They simply truckled to the wishes of the Government, so as to secure their daily bread for themselves, but they had no thought whatsoever for the national welfare that had been entrusted to their care.

Above all, Pöhner was one of those people who, in contradistinction to the majority of our so-called defenders of the authority of the State, did not fear to incur the enmity of the traitors to the country and the nation but rather courted it as a mark of honour and honesty.

For such men the hatred of the Jews and Marxists and the lies and calumnies they spread, were their only source of happiness in the midst of the national misery.

Pöhner was a man of granite loyalty.

He was like one of the ascetic characters of the classical era and was at the same time that kind of straightforward German for whom the saying ‘Better dead than a slave’ is not an empty phrase but a veritable heart’s cry.

He and his collaborator, Dr. Frick, are the only men holding positions then in Bavaria who have the right to be considered as having taken active part in the creation of a national Bavaria.

Before holding our first great mass meeting it was necessary not only to have our propaganda material ready but also to have the main items of our programme printed.

In the second volume of this book I shall give a detailed account of the guiding principles which we then followed in drawing up our programme. Here I will only say that the programme was arranged not merely to set forth the form and content of the young movement but also with an eye to making it understood among the broad masses.

The so-called intellectual circles made jokes and sneered at it and then tried to criticize it. But the effect of our programme proved that the ideas which we then held were right.

During those years I saw dozens of new movements arise and disappear without leaving a trace behind. Only one movement has survived. It is the National Socialist German Labour Party.

Today I am more convinced than ever before that, though they may combat us and try to paralyse our movement, and though pettifogging party ministers may forbid us the right of free speech, they cannot prevent the triumph of our ideas.

When the present system of statal administration and even the names of the political parties that represent it will be forgotten, the programmatic basis of the National Socialist movement will supply the groundwork on which the future State will be built.

The meetings held before January 1920 had enabled us to collect the financial means that were necessary to have our first pamphlets and posters and programmes printed.

I shall bring the first part of this book to a close by referring to our first great mass meeting, because that meeting marked the occasion on which our framework as a small party had to be broken up and we started to become the most powerful factor of this epoch in the influence we exercised on public opinion.

At that time my chief anxiety was that we might not fill the hall and that we might have to face empty benches. I myself was firmly convinced that if only the people would come this day would turn out a great success for the young movement. That was my feeling as I waited impatiently for the hour to come.

It had been announced that the meeting would begin at 7.30. A quarter-of-an-hour before the opening time I walked through the chief hall of the Hofbräuhaus on the PLATZ in Munich and my heart was nearly bursting with joy. The great hall–for at that time it seemed very big to me–was filled to overflowing. Nearly 2,000 people were present. And, above all, those people had come whom we had always wished to reach.

More than half the audience consisted of persons who seemed to be communists or independents. Our first great demonstration was destined, in their view, to come to an abrupt end.

But things happened otherwise. When the first speaker had finished I got up to speak.

After a few minutes I was met with a hailstorm of interruptions and violent encounters broke out in the body of the hall. A handful of my loyal war comrades and some other followers grappled with the disturbers and restored order in a little while. I was able to continue my speech. After half an hour the applause began to drown the interruptions and the hootings. Then interruptions gradually ceased and applause took their place.

When I finally came to explain the twenty-five points and laid them, point after point, before the masses gathered there and asked them to pass their own judgment on each point, one point after another was accepted with increasing enthusiasm. When the last point was reached I had before me a hall full of people united by a new conviction, a new faith and a new will.

Nearly four hours had passed when the hall began to clear. As the masses streamed towards the exits, crammed shoulder to shoulder, shoving and pushing, I knew that a movement was now set afoot among the German people which would never pass into oblivion.

A fire was enkindled from whose glowing heat the sword would be fashioned which would restore freedom to the German Siegfried and bring back life to the German nation.

Beside the revival which I then foresaw, I also felt that the Goddess of Vengeance was now getting ready to redress the treason of the 9th of November, 1918. The hall was emptied. The movement was on the march.