Targetting the Lower Class

The programme of the ordinary political party is just to cook up favourable results for the next general elections.

But the programme of a WELTANSCHAUUNG is a declaration of war on the existing order of things, against present conditions, in short, against the established WELTANSCHAUUNG.

Every individual fighter for such a new doctrine does not need to have a full grasp of the ultimate ideas and plans of the leaders of the movement.

He should just:

• have a clear notion of the fundamental ideas
• thoroughly assimilate a few of the most fundamental principles

In this way, he will be convinced of the necessity of carrying the movement and its doctrines to success.

The individual soldier is not initiated in the knowledge of high strategical plans. But he is trained to:

• submit to a rigid discipline
• be passionately convinced of the justice and inner worth of his cause
• devote himself to it without reserve.

So, too, the individual follower must be acquainted with its far-reaching purpose, how it is inspired by a powerful will and has a great future before it.

If each soldier in an army were a general then that army would not be an efficient fighting instrument.

Similarly, a political movement would not be very efficient in fighting for a WELTANSCHAUUNG if it were made up exclusively of intellectuals.

• No, we need the simple soldier also.
• Without him, no discipline can be established.

By its very nature, an organization can exist only if leaders of high intellectual ability are served by a large mass of men who are emotionally devoted to the cause.

It would be easier to maintain discipline in the long run:

• in a company of 190 less-gifted men and 10 of higher education
• than a company of 200 men who are equally intelligent and capable

The Social-Democrats have profited very much by recognizing this truth.

They took the broad masses of our people who had just completed military service and learned to submit to discipline.

They subjected this mass of men to the discipline of the SocialDemocratic organization, which was as rigid as the discipline of military training.

The Social-Democratic organization consisted of an army divided into officers and men.

• The private soldier is the German worker.

• The Jewish intellectual was the officer.
• The German trade union functionaries may be compared to the non-commissioned officers.

The bourgeois parties mostly consisted of intellectuals – a feckless band of undisciplined individuals.

From such people, the Marxist leaders formed an army of party combatants which had much less intelligence.

These combatants obey their Jewish masters just as blindly as they formerly obeyed their German officers.

The German middleclasses never bothered about psychological problems because they felt themselves superior to such matters.

They believed that a political movement which draws its followers exclusively from intellectual circles must be more important and have better chances of success than a party made up of the ignorant masses.

They failed to realize that a political party’s strength never consists in the intelligence and independent spirit of its rank-and-file, but rather in the spirit of willing obedience to their intellectual leaders.

When two bodies of troops are arrayed in mutual combat victory will not fall to that side in which every soldier has an expert knowledge of the rules of strategy, but rather to that side which has the best leaders and at the same time the best disciplined, most blindly obedient and best drilled troops.

That is a fundamental piece of knowledge which we must always bear in mind when we examine the possibility of transforming a WELTANSCHAUUNG into a practical reality.

If we agree that in order to carry a WELTANSCHAUUNG into practical effect it must be incorporated in a fighting movement, then the logical consequence is that the programme of such a movement must take account of the human material at its disposal.

Just as the ultimate aims and fundamental principles must be absolutely definite and unmistakable, so the propagandist programme must be well drawn up and must be inspired by a keen sense of its psychological appeals to the minds of those without whose help the noblest ideas will be doomed to remain in the eternal, realm of ideas.

If the idea of the People’s State, which is at present an obscure wish, is one day to attain a clear and definite success, from its vague and vast mass of thought it will have to put forward certain definite principles which of their very nature and content are calculated to attract a broad mass of adherents; in other words, such a group of people as can guarantee that these principles will be fought for. That group of people are the German workers.

That is why the programme of the new movement was condensed into a few fundamental postulates, twenty-five in all. They are meant first of all to give the ordinary man a rough sketch of what the movement is aiming at. They are, so to say, a profession of faith which on the one hand is meant to win adherents to the movement and, on the other, they are meant to unite such adherents together in a covenant to which all have subscribed.

What we call the programme of the movement is absolutely right as far as its ultimate aims are concerned, but as regards the manner in which that programme is formulated, certain psychological considerations had to be taken into account.

Hence, in time, the opinion may well arise that certain principles should be expressed differently and might be better formulated. But any attempt at a different formulation has a fatal effect in most cases. For something that ought to be fixed and unshakable thereby becomes the subject of discussion.

As soon as one point alone is removed from the sphere of dogmatic certainty, the discussion will not simply result in a new and better formulation which will have greater consistency but may easily lead to endless debates and general confusion.

In such cases the question must always be carefully considered as to whether a new and more adequate formulation is to be preferred, though it may cause a controversy within the movement, or whether it may not be better to retain the old formula which, though probably not the best, represents an organism enclosed in itself, solid and internally homogeneous.

All experience shows that the second of these alternatives is preferable. For since in these changes one is dealing only with external forms such corrections will always appear desirable and possible.

But in the last analysis the generality of people think superficially and therefore the great danger is that in what is merely an external formulation of the programme people will see an essential aim of the movement.

In that way the will and the combative force at the service of the ideas are weakened and the energies that ought to be directed towards the outer world are dissipated in programmatic discussions within the ranks of the movement.

For a doctrine that is actually right in its main features it is less dangerous to retain a formulation which may no longer be quite adequate instead of trying to improve it and thereby allowing a fundamental principle of the movement, which had hitherto been considered as solid as granite, to become the subject of a general discussion which may have unfortunate consequences.

This is particularly to be avoided as long as a movement is still fighting for victory. For would it be possible to inspire people with blind faith in the truth of a doctrine if doubt and uncertainty are encouraged by continual alterations in its external formulation?

The essentials of a teaching must never be looked for in its external formulas, but always in its inner meaning. And this meaning is unchangeable. And in its interest one can only wish that a movement should exclude everything that tends towards disintegration and uncertainty in order to preserve the unified force that is necessary for its triumph.

Here again the Catholic Church has a lesson to teach us. Though sometimes, and often quite unnecessarily, its dogmatic system is in conflict with the exact sciences and with scientific discoveries, it is not disposed to sacrifice a syllable of its teachings. It has rightly recognized that its powers of resistance would be weakened by introducing greater or less doctrinal adaptations to meet the temporary conclusions of science, which in reality are always vacillating.

Thus it holds fast to its fixed and established dogmas which alone can give to the whole system the character of a faith. And that is the reason why it stands firmer to-day than ever before. We may prophesy that, as a fixed pole amid fleeting phenomena, it will continue to attract increasing numbers of people who will be blindly attached to it the more rapid the rhythm of changing phenomena around it.

Therefore whoever really and seriously desires that the idea of the People’s State should triumph must realize that this triumph can be assured only through a militant movement and that this movement must ground its strength only on the granite firmness of an impregnable and firmly coherent programme.

In regard to its formulas it must never make concessions to the spirit of the time but must maintain the form that has once and for all been decided upon as the right one; in any case until victory has crowned its efforts. Before this goal has been reached any attempt to open a discussion on the opportuneness of this or that point in the programme might tend to disintegrate the solidity and fighting strength of the movement, according to the measures in which its followers might take part in such an internal dispute.

Some ‘improvements’ introduced to-day might be subjected to a critical examination to-morrow, in order to substitute it with something better the day after.

Once the barrier has been taken down the road is opened and we know only the beginning, but we do not know to what shoreless sea it may lead.

This important principle had to be acknowledged in practice by the members of the National Socialist Movement at its very beginning. In its programme of 25 points the National Socialist German Labour Party has been furnished with a basis that must remain unshakable.

The members of the movement, both present and future, must never feel themselves called upon to undertake a critical revision of these leading postulates, but rather feel themselves obliged to put them into practice as they stand.

Otherwise the next generation would, in its turn and with equal right, expend its energy in such purely formal work within the party, instead of winning new adherents to the movement and thus adding to its power.

For the majority of our followers the essence of the movement will consist not so much in the letter of our theses but in the meaning that we attribute to them.

The new movement owes its name to these considerations, and later on its programme was drawn up in conformity with them. They are the basis of our propaganda. In order to carry the idea of the People’s State to victory, a popular party had to be founded, a party that did not consist of intellectual leaders only but also of manual labourers.

Any attempt to carry these theories into effect without the aid of a militant organization would be doomed to failure to-day, as it has failed in the past and must fail in the future. That is why the movement is not only justified but it is also obliged to consider itself as the champion and representative of these ideas.

Just as the fundamental principles of the National Socialist Movement are based on the folk idea, folk ideas are National Socialist. If National Socialism would triumph it will have to hold firm to this fact unreservedly, and here again it has not only the right but also the duty to emphasize most rigidly that any attempt to represent the folk idea outside of the National Socialist German Labour Party is futile and in most cases fraudulent.

If the reproach should be launched against our movement that it has ‘monopolized’ the folk idea, there is only one answer to give.

Not only have we monopolized the folk idea but, to all practical intents and purposes, we have created it.

For what hitherto existed under this name was not in the least capable of influencing the destiny of our people, since all those ideas lacked a political and coherent formulation. In most cases they are nothing but isolated and incoherent notions which are more or less right.

Quite frequently these were in open contradiction to one another and in no case was there any internal cohesion among them. And even if this internal cohesion existed it would have been much too weak to form the basis of any movement.

Only the National Socialist Movement proved capable of fulfilling this task. All kinds of associations and groups, big as well as little, now claim the title VÖLKISCH.

This is one result of the work which National Socialism has done. Without this work, not one of all these parties would have thought of adopting the word VÖLKISCH at all.

That expression would have meant nothing to them and especially their directors would never have had anything to do with such an idea. Not until the work of the German National Socialist Labour Party had given this idea a pregnant meaning did it appear in the mouths of all kinds of people. Our party above all, by the success of its propaganda, has shown the force of the folk idea; so much so that the others, in an effort to gain proselytes, find themselves forced to copy our example, at least in words.

Just as heretofore they exploited everything to serve their petty electoral purposes, today they use the word VÖLKISCH only as an external and hollow-sounding phrase for the purpose of counteracting the force of the impression which the National Socialist Party makes on the members of those other parties.

Only the desire to maintain their existence and the fear that our movement may prevail, because it is based on a WELTANSCHAUUNG that is of universal importance, and because they feel that the exclusive character of our movement betokens danger for them–only for these reasons do they use words which they repudiated 8 years ago, derided 7 years ago, branded as stupid six years ago, combated five years ago, hated four years ago, and finally, two years ago, annexed and incorporated them in their present political vocabulary, employing them as war slogans in their struggle.

And so it is necessary even now not to cease calling attention to the fact that not one of those parties has the slightest idea of what the German nation needs. The most striking proof of this is represented by the superficial way in which they use the word VÖLKISCH.