The Fundamental Principle of the State

We National Socialists know that in holding these views, we take up a revolutionary stand as revolutionaries.

But our views and our conduct will not be determined by the approbation or disapprobation of our contemporaries, but only by our duty to follow a truth which we have acknowledged.

On these principles we National Socialists base our standards of value in appraising a State.

This value will be relative when viewed from the particular standpoint of the individual nation, but it will be absolute when considered from the standpoint of humanity as a whole.

In other words, this means: That the excellence of a State can never be judged by the level of its culture or the degree of importance which the outside world attaches to its power, but that its excellence must be judged by the degree to which its institutions serve the racial stock which belongs to it.

A State is a model example if it:

• adequately serves the vital needs of the racial stock it represents
• assures by its own existence the preservation of this same racial stock

This is no matter what cultural significance this statal institution may have in the eyes of the rest of the world.

It is not the State’s task to create human capabilities, but only to assure free scope for the exercise of capabilities that already exist.

On the other hand, a State may be called bad if, in spite of the existence of a high cultural level, it dooms to destruction the bearers of that culture by breaking up their racial uniformity.

For the practical effect of such a policy would be to destroy those conditions that are indispensable for the ulterior existence of that culture, which the State did not create but which is the fruit of the creative power inherent in the racial stock whose existence is assured by being united in the living organism of the State.

The State itself is not the substance but the form.

Therefore, the cultural level is not the standard by which we can judge the value of the State in which that people lives. It is evident that a people which is endowed with high creative powers in the cultural sphere is of more worth than a tribe of negroes.

Yet the statal organization of the former, if judged from the standpoint of efficiency, may be worse than that of the negroes. Not even the best of States and statal institutions can evolve faculties from a people which they lack and which they never possessed, but a bad State may gradually destroy the faculties which once existed. This it can do by allowing or favouring the suppression of those who are the bearers of a racial culture.

Therefore, the worth of a State can be determined only by asking how far it actually succeeds in promoting the well-being of a definite race and not by the role which it plays in the world at large. Its relative worth can be estimated readily and accurately.

But it is difficult to judge its absolute worth, because the latter is conditioned not only by the State but also by the quality and cultural level of the people that belong to the individual State in question.

Therefore, when we speak of the high mission of the State we must not forget that the high mission belongs to the people and that the business of the State is to use its organizing powers for the purpose of furnishing the necessary conditions which allow this people freely to unfold its creative faculties. And if we ask what kind of statal institution we Germans need, we must first have a clear notion as to the people which that State must embrace and what purpose it must serve.

Unfortunately the German national being is not based on a uniform racial type. The process of welding the original elements together has not gone so far as to warrant us in saying that a new race has emerged.

On the contrary, the poison which has invaded the national body, especially since the Thirty Years’ War, has destroyed the uniform constitution not only of our blood but also of our national soul.

The open frontiers of our native country, the association with non-German foreign elements in the territories that lie all along those frontiers, and especially the strong influx of foreign blood into the interior of the REICH itself, has prevented any complete assimilation of those various elements, because the influx has continued steadily. Out of this melting-pot no new race arose.

The heterogeneous elements continue to exist side by side. And the result is that, especially in times of crisis, when the herd usually flocks together, the Germans disperse in all directions. The fundamental racial elements are not only different in different districts, but there are also various elements in the single districts.

Beside the Nordic type we find the East-European type, beside the Eastern there is the Dinaric, the Western type intermingling with both, and hybrids among them all. That is a grave drawback for us.

Through it the Germans lack that strong herd instinct which arises from unity of blood and saves nations from ruin in dangerous and critical times; because on such occasions small differences disappear, so that a united herd faces the enemy.

What we understand by the word hyper-individualism arises from the fact that our primordial racial elements have existed side by side without ever consolidating.

During times of peace such a situation may offer some advantages, but, taken all in all, it has prevented us from gaining a mastery in the world. If in its historical development the German people had possessed the unity of herd instinct by which other peoples have so much benefited, then the German REICH would probably be mistress of the globe to-day.

World history would have taken another course and in this case no man can tell if what many blinded pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining and crying, may not have been reached in this way: namely, a peace which would not be based upon the waving of olive branches and tearful misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that would be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed with the power to master the world and administer it in the service of a higher civilization.

The fact that our people did not have a national being based on a unity of blood has been the source of untold misery for us. To many petty German potentates it gave residential capital cities, but the German people as a whole was deprived of its right to rulership.

Even to-day our nation still suffers from this lack of inner unity; but what has been the cause of our past and present misfortunes may turn out a blessing for us in the future.

Though on the one hand it may be a drawback that our racial elements were not welded together, so that no homogeneous national body could develop, on the other hand, it was fortunate that, since at least a part of our best blood was thus kept pure, its racial quality was not debased.

A complete assimilation of all our racial elements would certainly have brought about a homogeneous national organism; but, as has been proved in the case of every racial mixture, it would have been less capable of creating a civilization than by keeping intact its best original elements.

A benefit which results from the fact that there was no allround assimilation is to be seen in that even now we have large groups of German Nordic people within our national organization, and that their blood has not been mixed with the blood of other races. We must look upon this as our most valuable treasure for the sake of the future. During that dark period of absolute ignorance in regard to all racial laws, when each individual was considered to be on a par with every other, there could be no clear appreciation of the difference between the various fundamental racial characteristics.

A complete assimilation of all the various elements which constitute the national being might have resulted in giving us a larger share of external power: but, on the other hand, the highest of human aims would not have been attained, because the only kind of people which fate has obviously chosen to bring about this perfection would have been lost in such a general mixture of races which would constitute such a racial amalgamation.

But what has been prevented by a friendly Destiny, without any assistance on our part, must now be reconsidered and utilized in the light of our new knowledge.

He who talks of the German people as having a mission to fulfil on this earth must know that this cannot be fulfilled except by the building up of a State whose highest purpose is to preserve and promote those nobler elements of our race and of the whole of mankind which have remained unimpaired.

Thus for the first time a high inner purpose is accredited to the State. In face of the ridiculous phrase that the State should do no more than act as the guardian of public order and tranquillity, so that everybody can peacefully dupe everybody else, it is given a very high mission indeed to preserve and encourage the highest type of humanity which a beneficent Creator has bestowed on this earth.

Out of a dead mechanism which claims to be an end in itself a living organism shall arise which has to serve one purpose exclusively: and that, a purpose which belongs to a higher order of ideas.

As a State the German REICH shall include all Germans. Its task is not only to gather in and foster the most valuable sections of our people but to lead them slowly and surely to a dominant position in the world.

Thus a period of stagnation is superseded by a period of effort. And here, as in every other sphere, the proverb holds good that to rest is to rust; and furthermore the proverb that victory will always be won by him who attacks.

The higher the final goal which we strive to reach, and the less it be understood at the time by the broad masses, the more magnificent will be its success.

That is what the lesson of history teaches. And the achievement will be all the more significant if the end is conceived in the right way and the fight carried through with unswerving persistence.

Many of the officials who direct the affairs of State nowadays may find it easier to work for the maintenance of the present order than to fight for a new one.

They will find it more comfortable to look upon the State as a mechanism, whose purpose is its own preservation, and to say that ’their lives belong to the State,’ as if anything that grew from the inner life of the nation can logically serve anything but the national being, and as if man could be made for anything else than for his fellow beings.

It is easier to consider the State’s authority as nothing but the formal mechanism of an organization, rather than as the sovereign incarnation of a people’s instinct for self-preservation on this earth.

For these weak minds the State and the authority of the State is nothing but an aim in itself, while for us it is an effective weapon in the service of the great and eternal struggle for existence, a weapon which everyone must adopt, not because it is a mere formal mechanism, but because it is the main expression of our common will to exist.

Therefore, in the fight for our new idea, which conforms completely to the primal meaning of life, we shall find only a small number of comrades in a social order which has become decrepit not only physically but mentally also. From these strata of our population only a few exceptional people will join our ranks, only those few old people whose hearts have remained young and whose courage is still vigorous, but not those who consider it their duty to maintain the state of affairs that exists.

Against us we have the innumerable army of all those who are lazy-minded and indifferent rather than evil, and those whose self-interest leads them to uphold the present state of affairs. On the apparent hopelessness of our great struggle is based the magnitude of our task and the possibilities of success.

A battle-cry which from the very start will scare off all the petty spirits, or at least discourage them, will become the signal for a rally of all those temperaments that are of the real fighting metal.

If a highly energetic and active body of men emerge from a nation and unite in the fight for one goal, thereby ultimately rising above the inert masses of the people, this small percentage will become masters of the whole.

World history is made by minorities if these numerical minorities represent in themselves the will and energy and initiative of the people as a whole.