German Marxists

If the German working class, in 1914, consisted of real Marxists the War would have ended within 3 weeks.

The fact that the German people carried on the War proved that the Marxist folly had not yet been able to penetrate deeply.

But as the War was prolonged, German soldiers and workers gradually fell back into the hands of the Marxist leaders.

12,000-15,000 of these Jews were corrupting the nation.

If they had been forced to submit to poison-gas at the beginning or even during the War, then millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain.

The situation in 1923 was quite similar to that of 1918.

No matter what form of resistance was decided upon,

The first prerequisite for taking action is the elimination of the Marxist poison from the nation.

I was convinced that the first task then of a really National Government was to:

• find those forces against Marxism
• give these forces a free hand.

At that time I often talked myself hoarse in trying to make it clear, at least to the socalled national circles, what was then at stake and that by repeating the errors committed in 1914 and the following years we must necessarily come to the same kind of catastrophe as in 1918.

I frequently implored of them to let Fate have a free hand and to make it possible for our Movement to settle with the Marxists.

But I preached to deaf ears. They all thought they knew better, including the Chief of the Defence Force, until finally they found themselves forced to subscribe to the vilest capitulation that history records.

I then became profoundly convinced that the German bourgeoisie had come to the end of its mission and was not capable of fulfilling any further function. And then also I recognized the fact that all the bourgeois parties had been fighting Marxism merely from the spirit of competition without sincerely wishing to destroy it. For a long time they had been accustomed to assist in the destruction of their country, and their one great care was to secure good seats at the funeral banquet. It was for this alone that they kept on ‘fighting’.

At that time–I admit it openly–I conceived a profound admiration for the great man beyond the Alps, whose ardent love for his people inspired him not to bargain with Italy’s internal enemies but to use all possible ways and means in an effort to wipe them out. What places Mussolini in the ranks of the world’s great men is his decision not to share Italy with the Marxists but to redeem his country from Marxism by destroying internationalism.

What miserable pigmies our sham statesmen in Germany appear by comparison with him. And how nauseating it is to witness the conceit and effrontery of these nonentities in criticizing a man who is a thousand times greater than them. And how painful it is to think that this takes place in a country which could point to a Bismarck as its leader as recently as fifty years ago.

The attitude adopted by the bourgeoisie in 1923 and the way in which they dealt kindly with Marxism decided from the outset the fate of any attempt at active resistance in the Ruhr. With that deadly enemy in our own ranks it was sheer folly to think of fighting France.

The most that could then be done was to stage a sham fight in order to satisfy the German national element to some extent, to tranquillize the ‘boiling state of the public mind’, or dope it, which was what was really intended.

Had they really believed in what they did, they ought to have recognized that the strength of a nation lies, first of all, not in its arms but in its will, and that before conquering the external enemy the enemy at home would have to be eliminated. If not, then disaster must result if victory be not achieved on the very first day of the fight. The shadow of one defeat is sufficient to break up the resistance of a nation that has not been liberated from its internal enemies, and give the adversary a decisive victory.

In the spring of 1923 all this might have been predicted. It is useless to ask whether it was then possible to count on a military success against France. For if the result of the German action in regard to the French invasion of the Ruhr had been only the destruction of Marxism at home, success would have been on our side.

Once liberated from the deadly enemies of her present and future existence, Germany would possess forces which no power in the world could strangle again. On the day when Marxism is broken in Germany the chains that bind Germany will be smashed for ever. For never in our history have we been conquered by the strength of our outside enemies but only through our own failings and the enemy in our own camp. Since it was not able to decide on such heroic action at that time, the Government could have chosen the first way: namely, to allow things to take their course and do nothing at all.

But at that great moment Heaven made Germany a present of a great man. This was Herr Cuno. He was neither a statesman nor a politician by profession, still less a politician by birth. But he belonged to that type of politician who is merely used for liGYMNASIUMating some definite question. Apart from that, he had business experience. It was a curse for Germany that, in the practice of politics, this business man looked upon politics also as a business undertaking and regulated his conduct accordingly.

“France occupies the Ruhr. What is there in the Ruhr? Coal. And so France occupies the Ruhr for the sake of its coal?” What could come more naturally to the mind of Herr Cuno than the idea of a strike, which would prevent the French from obtaining any coal?

Therefore, in the opinion of Herr Cuno, one day or other they would certainly have to get out of the Ruhr again if the occupation did not prove to be a paying business. Such were approximately the lines along which that OUTSTANDING NATIONAL STATESMAN reasoned.

At Stuttgart and other places he spoke to ‘his people’ and this people became lost in admiration for him. Of course they needed the Marxists for the strike, because the workers would have to be the first to go on strike.

Now, in the brain of a bourgeois statesman such as Cuno, a Marxist and a worker are one and the same thing. Therefore it was necessary to bring the worker into line with all the other Germans in a united front. One should have seen how the countenances of these party politicians beamed with the light of their moth-eaten bourgeois culture when the great genius spoke the word of revelation to them. Here was a nationalist and also a man of genius.

At last they had discovered what they had so long sought. For now the abyss between Marxism and themselves could be bridged over.

And thus it became possible for the pseudo-nationalist to ape the German manner and adopt nationalist phraseology in reaching out the ingenuous hand of friendship to the internationalist traitors of their country. The traitor readily grasped that hand, because, just as Herr Cuno had need of the Marxist chiefs for his ‘united front’, the Marxist chiefs needed Herr Cuno’s money.

So that both parties mutually benefited by the transaction.

Cuno obtained his united front, constituted of nationalist charlatans and international swindlers. And now, with the help of the money paid to them by the State, these people were able to pursue their glorious mission, which was to destroy the national economic system.

It was an immortal thought, that of saving a nation by means of a general strike in which the strikers were paid by the State. It was a command that could be enthusiastically obeyed by the most indifferent of loafers.

Everybody knows that prayers will not make a nation free.

But that it is possible to liberate a nation by giving up work has yet to be proved by historical experience.

Instead of promoting a paid general strike at that time, and making this the basis of his ‘united front’, if Herr Cuno had demanded two hours more work from every German, then the swindle of the ‘united front’ would have been disposed of within three days. Nations do not obtain their freedom by refusing to work but by making sacrifices.

Anyhow, the so-called passive resistance could not last long. Nobody but a man entirely ignorant of war could imagine that an army of occupation might be frightened and driven out by such ridiculous means. And yet this could have been the only purpose of an action for which the country had to pay out milliards and which contributed seriously to devaluate the national currency.

The French were able to make themselves almost at home in the Ruhr basin the moment they saw that such ridiculous measures were being adopted against them.

They had received the prescription directly from ourselves of the best way to bring a recalcitrant civil population to a sense of reason if its conduct implied a serious danger for the officials which the army of occupation had placed in authority. Nine years previously we wiped out with lightning rapidity bands of Belgian FRANCS-TIREURS and made the civil population clearly understand the seriousness of the situation, when the activities of these bands threatened grave danger for the German army.

In like manner if the passive resistance of the Ruhr became really dangerous for the French, the armies of occupation would have needed no more than eight days to bring the whole piece of childish nonsense to a gruesome end.

For we must always go back to the original question in all this business: What were we to do if the passive resistance came to the point where it really got on the nerves of our opponents and they proceeded to suppress it with force and bloodshed? Would we still continue to resist? If so, then, for weal or woe, we would have to submit to a severe and bloody persecution.

In that case, we should fight.