Mein Kampf aka My Struggle

last SG · 2004-04-07T16:07:10+00:00

CONCLUSION ON NOVEMBER 9, 1923, in the fourth year of its existence, the National Socialist German Workers' Party was dissolved and prohibited in the whole...

weidev SG

The sole organizations which at this time would have had the courage and strength to oppose the Marxists and their incited masses, were for the present the free corps; later the self-defense organizations, citizens' guards, etc., and finally the tradition leagues.

But why their existence brought about no sort of shift that was in any way discernible was due to the following:

Just as the so-called national parties could exert no sort of influence for lack of any threatening power on the streets, likewise the so-called defense organizations, in turn, could exert no sort of influence for lack of any political idea, and above all of any real political goal.

What had given Marxism its success was its complete combination of political will and activistic brutality. What excluded national Germany from any practical activity in shaping the German development was the lack of a unified collaboration of brutal force with brilliant political will.

Whatever the will of the 'national' parties might be, they had not the least power to fight for this will, least of all on the streets.

The combat leagues had all the power, they were the masters of the streets and the state, and possessed no political idea and no political goal for which their strength was or even could be thrown in for the benefit of national Germany. In both cases it was the slyness of the Jew who, by clever persuasion and insistence, was able to bring about a positive perpetuation, in any case an increasing intensification, of this calamitous state of affairs.

It was the Jew who through his press knew how to launch with infinite dexterity the idea of the 'unpolitical character' of the combat leagues, as, on the other hand, in political life he always praised and encouraged, with equal slyness, the 'purely spiritual nature' of the struggle. Millions of German blockheads babbled this nonsense after him, without having even the faintest idea that in this way they were for practical purposes disarming themselves and exposing themselves defenseless to the Jew.

But for this, too, indeed, there is again a natural explanation. The lack of a great, creative, renewing idea means at all times a limitation of fighting force. Firm belief in the right to apply even the most brutal weapons is always bound up with the existence of a fanatical faith in the necessity of the victory of a revolutionary new order on this earth.
A movement that is not fighting for such highest aims and ideals will, therefore, never seize upon the ultimate weapon.

weidev SG

The fact of having a new great idea to show was the secret of the success of the French Revolution; the Russian Revolution owes its victory to the idea, and only through the idea did fascism achieve the power to subject a people in the most beneficial way to the most comprehensive creative renewal.

Of this, bourgeois parties are not capable.

But it was not only the bourgeois parties that saw their political goal in a restoration of the past, but also the combat leagues, in so far as they concerned themselves with any political aims at all. Old veterans' club and Kyffhäuser tendencies were alive within them and contributed to politically blunting the sharpest weapon that national Germany had in those days and making it languish in the mercenary service of the Republic. The fact that in this they acted in the best conviction, and above all in the best good faith, changes nothing in the catastrophic madness of these occurrences.

Gradually Marxism obtained the required power to support its authority in the Reichswehr that was being consolidated, and thereupon, consistently and logically, began to disband as superfluous the nationalist combat leagues, which seemed dangerous. Individual leaders of especial boldness, who were looked on with distrust, were haled before the bars of justice and put behind Swedish curtains. But with all of them the destiny for which they themselves were responsible was fulfilled.

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With the founding of the NSDAP, for the first time a movement had appeared whose goal did not, like that of the bourgeois parties, consist in a mechanical restoration of the past, but in the effort to erect an organic folkish state in place of the present senseless state mechanism.

The young movement, from the first day, espoused the standpoint that its idea must be put forward spiritually, but that the defense of this spiritual platform trust if necessary be secured by strong-arm means. Faithful to its belief in the enormous significance of the new doctrine, it seems obvious to the movement that for the attainment of its goal no sacrifice can be too great.

I have already pointed to the forces which obligate a movement, in so far as it wants to win the heart of a people, to assume from its own ranks its defense against the terrorist attempts of its adversaries. And it is an eternal experience of world history that a terror represented by a philosophy of life can never be broken by a formal state power, but at all times can be defeated only by another, new philosophy of life, proceeding with the same boldness and determination. This will at all times be displeasing to the sentiment of the official guardians of the state, but that will not banish the fact. State power can only guarantee law and order when the content of the state coincides with the philosophy dominant at that particular time, so that violent elements possess only the character of individual criminal natures, and are not regarded as proponents of an idea in extreme opposition to the state views. In such a case, the state can for centuries apply the greatest measures of violence against a terror oppressing it; in the end it will nevertheless be able to do nothing against it, but will go down in defeat.

weidev SG

The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism. In its struggle of seventy years it has not been able to prevent the victory of this philosophy of life, but, despite a sum total of thousands of years in prison and jail sentences and the bloodiest measures which in innumerable cases it applied to the warriors of the menacing Marxist philosophy, has nevertheless been forced to almost total capitulation. (This, too, the run-of-the-mill bourgeois political leader will want to deny, though obviously he will be unable to convince anyone.)

The state which on November 9, 1918, unconditionally crawled on its belly before Marxism will not suddenly arise tomorrow as its conqueror; on the contrary: even today feebleminded bourgeois in ministerial chairs are beginning to rave about the necessity of not governing against the workers, and what they have in mind under the concept 'worker' is Marxism. But by identifying the German worker with Marxism, they not only commit a falsification as cowardly as it is untrue, but attempt by this motivation to conceal their own collapse in the face of the Marxist idea and organization.

But in view of this fact - that is, the complete subjection of the present state to Marxism - the National Socialist movement really acquires the duty, not only of preparing the victory of its idea, but of taking over its defense against the terror of an International drunk with victory.

I have already described how in our movement a body for the protection of meetings gradually developed out of practical life, how it gradually assumed the character of a definite monitor troop, and strove for an organizational form.

Much as this gradually arising body might outwardly resemble a so-called combat league, it was nevertheless not to be compared with one.

As already mentioned, the German combat organizations had no definite political idea. They were really nothing but self-defense leagues of more or less competent training and organization, with the result that they actually represented an illegal complement to the state's momentary instruments of power. Their character of free corps was based only on the way in which they were formed and on the condition of the state at that time, but they were by no means deserving of such a title as free formations of the struggle for a free conviction of their own. This, despite all the opposition of individual leaders and whole leagues toward the Republic, they did not possess. For being convinced of the inferiority of an existing condition does not suffice to entitle one to speak of a conviction in the higher sense; no, the latter is rooted only in the knowledge of a new condition and in the inkier vision of a condition the achievement of which one feels as a necessity, and to stand up for whose realization one regards as one's highest life task.

What distinguishes the monitor troop of the National Socialist organization of that time essentially from all combat leagues is that it was not and did not want to be in any way a servant of the conditions created by the revolution, but that it fought exclusively for a new Germany.

weidev SG

In the beginning, it is true, this monitor troop possessed only the character of a meeting-hall guard. Its first task was a limited one: it consisted in making it possible to hold meetings which without it would have been simply prevented by the enemy. Even then, it had been trained to carry out an attack blindly, but not, as stupid German-folkish circles nonsensically claimed, because it honored the blackjack as the highest spirit, but because it understood that the greatest spirit can be eliminated when its bearer is struck down with a blackjack, as in actual fact the most significant heads in history have not seldom ended beneath the blows of the pettiest helots. They did not want to set up violence as a goal, but to protect the prophets of the spiritual goal from being shoved aside by violence. And in this they understood that they were not obligated to undertake the protection of a state which offers the nation no protection, but that, on the contrary, they had to assume the protection of a nation against those who threatened to destroy the people and the state.

After the meeting-hall battle in the Munich Hofbräuhaus the monitor troop, once and for all, in eternal memory of the heroic storm attacks of the small number they were then, received the name of Sturmabteilung (storm section). As this very designation indicates, it represents only a section of the movement. It is a link in it, just as propaganda, the press, the scientific institutes and so forth, constitute mere links in the party.

How necessary its development was, we could see, not only by this memorable meeting, but also by our attempt gradually to spread our movement from Munich into the rest of Germany. Once we had appeared dangerous to the Marxists, they missed no opportunity to nip any attempt at a National Socialist meeting in the bud, or prevent it from being held by breaking it up. And it was absolutely a matter of course that the party organizations of all shadings of Marxism blindly supported any such intentions and any such occurrences in the representative bodies. But what was one to say of bourgeois parties which themselves had been so thrashed by the Marxists that in many places they could no longer venture to have their speakers appear in public and which, nevertheless, followed any struggles against Marxism that in any way turned out unfavorably for us with an absolutely incomprehensible, idiotic satisfaction. They were happy that the enemy which could not be bested by them, which on the contrary bested them, could not be broken by us either. What should be said of state officials, police presidents, nay, even ministers, who with a really disreputable lack of principle liked to represent themselves publicly as 'national men,' but who in ail conflicts that we National Socialists had with the Marxists, acted as the most disgraceful stooges for them? What should be said of men who went so far in their self-abasement that for a pitiful word of praise in the Jewish newspapers they did not hesitate to persecute the men to whose heroism in risking their own lives they in part owed the fact that a few years previous they were not tattered corpses hung up on lamp-posts by the Red mob?

These were such sad figures that they once moved the unforgettable late President Pöhner, who in his hard straightforwardness hated all crawlers as only a man with an honest heart can hate, to the harsh utterance: 'All my life I wanted to be nothing else than first a German and then an official, and I would never like to be confused with those creatures who prostitute themselves like official whores to everyone who can play the master at the moment.'

And in all this it was especially sad that this kind of men gradually gained power over tens of thousands of the most honorable and best German civil servants, but even gradually infected them with their own disloyalty, and persecuted the honest ones with grim hatred and finally drove them out of their posts and positions, while they themselves, with lying hypocrisy, still represented themselves as 'national' men.

weidev SG

From such men we could never hope for any support, and we obtained it only in the very rarest cases. Solely the development of our own defense organization could safeguard the activity of the movement and at the same time win for it that public attention and general respect which are accorded to the man who, when attacked, takes up his own defense.

As the directing idea for the inner training of this storm section, the intention was always dominant, aside from all physical education, to teach it to be an unshakable, convinced defender of the National Socialist idea, and finally to strengthen its discipline in the highest degree. It should have nothing in common with a combat organization of bourgeois conception, but likewise nothing in common with a secret organization.

The reason why, even at that time, I sharply opposed having the SA of the NSDAP organized as a so-called combat league, was based on the following consideration:

From the purely practical point of view, the military training of a people cannot be carried out by private leagues, except with the help of the most enormous state means. Any other belief is based on great overestimation of their own ability. And so it is out of the question that organizations possessing military value can be built up beyond certain limits with so-called 'voluntary discipline.' The most important support of the power to command is lacking, to wit, the power to punish. To be sure, it was possible in the fall, or even better in the spring of 1919, to set up so-called 'free corps,' but not only did most of them possess front-line fighters who had gone through the school of the old army, but the type of obligation which they laid upon the individuals subjected them, for a limited time at least, just as unconditionally to military obedience.

This is totally lacking in a voluntary 'combat organization' of today. The larger the league, the weaker its discipline will be, the smaller the demands made on the individual men, and the more the whole will take on the character of the old non-political soldiers' and veterans' clubs.

It will never be possible to carry out a voluntary training for army service among the great masses without guaranteed unconditional power of command. Never will more than a few be willing to submit of their own accord to such forced obedience as was considered self-evident and natural in the army.

Furthermore, real training cannot be given in consequence of the absurdly small means at the disposal of a so-called combat league for such a purpose. But the best, most reliable training should be precisely the main task of such an institution. Since the War, eight years have gone by, and since that time not a single age class among our German youth has been systematically trained. But it cannot be the function of a combat league to include the old classes that have already been trained, since otherwise it can at once be reckoned mathematically when the last member will leave this corporation. Even the youngest soldier of 1918 will in twenty years be incapable of fighting, and we are approaching this moment with a disquieting speed. Thus every so-called combat league must necessarily assume more and more the character of an old soldiers' association. This, however, cannot be the purpose of an organization that designates itself not as an old soldiers' league, but as a Wehrverband (combat league), and which by its very name endeavors to express the fact that it sees its mission, not only in the preservation of the tradition and common bond of former soldiers, but in the development of the military (wehr) and in the practical advocacy of this idea, that is, in the creation of a military body.

weidev SG

This task, however, absolutely demands the training of elements which had previously received no military drill, and this in practice is actually impossible. With one or two hours training a week, you really cannot make a soldier. With the present-day enormously increased demands that warfare makes on the individual, a two-year period service is perhaps just adequate to transform an untrained young man into an expert soldier. We have all of us in the field seen the terrible consequences that resulted for young soldiers not thoroughly trained in their trade. Volunteer formations, which for fifteen or twenty weeks had been drilled with iron determination and boundless devotion, nevertheless represented nothing but cannon fodder at the front. Only distributed among the ranks of experienced old soldiers could younger recruits, trained for from four to six months, furnish useful members of a regiment ; even then they were directed by the 'old men' and thus gradually grew into their functions.

How thoughtless in contrast seems an attempt to try to create troops with a so-called training period of one or two hours a week, without clear power of command and without extensive means! It might be possible to freshen up old soldiers in this way, but never to turn young men into soldiers.

How indifferent and totally worthless such a procedure would be in its results can be demonstrated especially by the fact that, while a so-called volunteer league, with puffing and blowing, with trouble and grief, trains or tries to train a few thousand essentially well-intentioned men (it does not get to any others) in the military idea, the state itself, by the pacifistic-democratic nature of its education, consistently robs millions and millions of young people of their natural instincts, poisons their logical patriotic thinking, and thus gradually transforms them into a herd of sheep, patiently accepting every arbitrary tyranny.

How absurd, in comparison with this, are all the exertions of the combat leagues to transmit their ideas to the German youth.

But almost more important is the following consideration, which had always made me take a position counter to any attempt at a so-called military rearming on the basis of volunteer leagues.

Assuming that despite the above-mentioned difficulties a league nevertheless succeeded in training a definite number of Germans year after year into arms-bearing men - equally with respect to their convictions as with respect to their physical fitness and schooling in the use of arms - the result would nevertheless be practically nil in a state which, by its whole tendency, absolutely does not desire such military education, in fact positively hates it, since it stands in complete contradiction to the aim of its leaders - the destroyers of this state.

In any case such a result would be worthless under governments which have not only demonstrated by their deeds that they care nothing about the military strength of the nation, but which above all would never be willing to issue an appeal to this strength, except at best for the support of their own ruinous existence.

weidev SG

And today this is the case. Or is it not absurd to try to train some tens of thousands of men for a government in the dim light or dawn and evening, when the state a few years previous disgracefully sacrificed eight and a half millions of the best-trained soldiers, not only ceasing to use them, but as thanks for their sacrifices actually exposing them to general vilification; And so they want to train soldiers for a state r¨¦gime which befouled and spat upon the most glorious soldiers of former days, tore their decorations from their chest, took away their cockades, trampled their banners and degraded their achievements? Or has this present state r¨¦gime ever undertaken a single step to restore the honor of the old army, to call to account those who have corrupted and reviled it? Not in the slightest. On the contrary; we can see these creatures enthroned in the highest state posts. - Remember the words spoken at Leipzig: 'Right goes with power.' But since today in our Republic the power lies in the hands of the same men who engineered the revolution, and this revolution represents the vilest high treason, nay, the most wretched piece of villainy in all German history, really no reason can be found for enhancing the power of these very characters by the formation of a new young army. In any event, all the arguments of reason speak against it.

But what importance this state, even after the revolution of 1918, attributed to the military strengthening of its position could be seen clearly and unmistakably by its attitude toward the large self-defense organizations that then existed. As long as they had to intervene for the protection of personally cowardly creatures of the revolution, they were not unwelcome. But as soon as, thanks to the gradually increasing depravity of our people, the danger to these creatures seemed eliminated and the existence of the leagues meant a strengthening of the national-political forces, they were superfluous, and everything was done to disarm them, in fact, if possible to break them up.

Only in the rarest examples does history show gratitude in princes. But to count on the gratitude of revolutionary pyromaniac murderers, plunderers of the people and traitors to the nation, is something that only a neo-bourgeois patriot can manage. In any case, I, in examining the question of whether volunteer combat leagues should be created, could never refrain from the question: for whom am I training the young people? For what purpose are they used and when are they to be called up? The answer to this question provides at the same time the best directives for our own attitude.

If the present state were ever to train forces of this sort, it would never be for the defense of national interests against the outside world, but only for the protection of the rapers of the nation at home against the general rage that some day perhaps will flare up in the swindled, betrayed, and sold-out people.

For this reason alone, the SA of the NSDAP could have nothing in common with a military organization. It was an instrument for defense and education in the National Socialist movement, and its tasks lay in an entirely different province from that of the so-called combat leagues.

But it could also constitute no secret organization. The aim of secret organizations can only be illegal. In this way the scope of such an organization is automatically limited. It is not possible, especially in view of the talkativeness of the German people, to build up an organization of any size and at the same time to keep it outwardly secret or even to veil its aims. Any such intention will be thwarted a thousand times. Not only that our police authorities today have a staff of pimps and similar rabble at their disposal who will betray anything they can find for thirty pieces of silver, and even invent things to betray, but the supporters themselves can never be brought to the silence that is necessary in such a case. Only very small groups, by years of sifting, can assume the character of real secret organizations. But the very smallness of such organizations would remove their value for the National Socialist movement. What we needed and still need were and are not a hundred or two hundred reckless conspirators, but a hundred thousand and a second hundred thousand fighters for our philosophy of life. We should not work in secret conventicles, but in mighty mass demonstrations, and it is not by dagger and poison or pistol that the road can be cleared for the movement, but by the conquest of the streets. We must teach the Marxists that the future master of the streets is National Socialism, just as it will some day be the master of the state.

weidev SG

The danger of secret organizations today lies, furthermore, in the fact that the members often totally misunderstand the magnitude of the task, and the opinion arises that the fate of a people really might be suddenly decided in a favorable sense by a single act of murder. Such an opinion can have its historical justification especially when a people languishes under the tyranny of some oppressor genius, of whom it is known that his outstanding personality alone guarantees the inner solidity and frightfulness of the hostile pressure. In such a case, a self-sacrificing man may suddenly spring forth from a people, to plunge the steel of death into the breast of the hated individual. And only the republican sentiment of petty scoundrels with a bad conscience will regard such a deed as horrible, while our people's greatest poet of freedom has dared to give a glorification of such an action in his Tell.

In the years 1919 and 1920 there existed a danger that the member of secret organizations, filled with enthusiasm by the great models of history and horrified by the boundless misfortune of his fatherland, should attempt to avenge himself against the destroyers of his homeland, in the belief that in this way he could put an end to the distress of his people. Any such attempt, however, was an absurdity, because Marxism had not been victorious thanks to the superior genius and personal significance of an individual, but by the boundless contemptibleness, the cowardly failure of the bourgeois world. The most cruel criticism that can be made of our bourgeoisie lies in the fact that the revolution itself did not produce a single leader of any greatness and nevertheless subjected it. It is understandable to capitulate to a Robespierre, a Danton or a Marat, but it is devastating to have crawled before the scrawny Scheidemann, the fat Herr Erzberger and a Friedrich Ebert and all the other innumerable political midgets. In reality there was not one leader who might have been regarded as the genius of the revolution and hence the misfortune of the fatherland; they were all revolutionary bedbugs, knapsack Spartacists, wholesale and retail. To put any one of these out of the way was completely irrelevant and the chief result was that a few other bloodsuckers, just as big and just as threadbare, came into a job that much sooner.

In those years it was not possible to attack sharply enough a conception which had its cause and explanation in the really great figures of history, but was not in the least suited to the present era of dwarfs.

Likewise, in the question of eliminating so-called traitors against the nation the same consideration is in order. It is absurdly illogical to kill a scamp who has informed about a cannon, while next door in the highest posts and dignities sit scoundrels who have sold a whole Reich, who have the vain sacrifice of two millions on their consciences, who bear the responsibility for millions of cripples, and with all this calmly carry on their republican business deals. It is senseless to eliminate petty traitors in a country whose government itself frees these traitors against the nation from any punishment. For then it is possible that some day the honest idealist, who puts a scoundrelly armaments stoolpigeon out of the way, for his people, is called to account by capital traitors against the nation. Therefore, it is an important question: Should we have such a traitorous petty creature eliminated by another creature or by an idealist? In one case the success is doubtful and the treason for later almost certain; in the other case, a small scoundrel is eliminated and the life of a perhaps unreplaceable idealist is risked.

Further, in this question, my position is that there is no use in hanging petty thieves in order to let big ones go free; but that some day a German national court must judge and execute some ten thousand of the organizing and hence responsible criminals of the November betrayal and everything that goes with it. Such an example will provide the small armaments stool-pigeon with the necessary lesson for all time.

weidev SG

All these are considerations which caused me again and again to forbid participation in secret organizations and to preserve the SA itself from the character of such organizations. In those years I kept the National Socialist movement away from experiments, whose performers for the most part were glorious, idealistic-minded young Germans, whose acts, however, only made victims of themselves, but were powerless to improve the lot of the fatherland even in the slightest.

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Now if the SA could be neither a military combat organization nor a secret league, the following consequences inevitably resulted

1. Its training must not proceed from military criteria, but from criteria of expediency for the party.

In so far as the members require physical training, the main emphasis must be laid, not on military drilling, but on athletic activity. Boxing and jiu-jitsu have always seemed to me more important than any inferior, because incomplete, training in marksmanship. Give the German nation six million bodies with flawless athletic training, all glowing with fanatical love of their country and inculcated with the highest offensive spirit, and a national state will, in less than two years if necessary, have created an army, at least in so far as a certain basic core is present. This, as things are today, can rest only in the Reichswehr and not in any combat league that has always done things by halves. Physical culture must inoculate the individual with the conviction of his superiority and give him that self-confidence which lies forever and alone in the consciousness of his own strength; in addition, it must give him those athletic skills which serve as a weapon for the defense of the movement.

2. In order, at the outset, to prevent the SA from assuming any secret character, in addition to its uniform immediately recognizable to all, the very size of its membership must point the way which benefits the movement and is known to the whole public. It must not hold sessions in secret, but must march beneath the open sky, thus being put unmistakably into a type of activity which destroys all legends of 'secret organization' once and for all. And in order to remove it, spiritually as well, from all attempts to satisfy its activism by petty conspiracies, it had from the very beginning to be initiated completely into the great idea of the movement and to be educated so thoroughly in the task of fighting for this idea that its horizon broadened from the outset, and the individual man saw his mission, not in the elimination of any greater or lesser scoundrel, but in fighting for the erection of a new National Socialist folkish state. Thereby the struggle against the present-day state was removed from the atmosphere of petty actions of revenge and conspiracy, to the greatness of a philosophical war of annihilation against Marxism and its organization.

3. The organizational formation of the SA, as well as its uniform and equipment, can therefore not reasonably emulate the models of the old army, but must pursue an expediency determined by its function.

weidev SG

These views, which directed me in 1920 and 1921 and which I gradually endeavored to inject into the young organization, had the result that, as early as midsummer, 1922, we disposed of an imposing number of companies, which in late autumn, 1922, little by little received their special distinguishing uniforms. Three events were of infinite importance for the further shaping of the SA.

1. The great general demonstration of all patriotic leagues against the Law for the Protection of the Republic in late summer 1922 on the Königsplatz in Munich.

The patriotic leagues of Munich had issued an appeal summoning a gigantic demonstration as a protest against the introduction of the Law for the Protection of the Republic. The National Socialist movement was also expected to participate in it. The solid procession of the party was headed by six Munich companies, followed by the sections of the political party. In the column itself marched two brass bands, and about fifteen flags were carried along. The arrival of the National Socialists in the half-filled square, which was otherwise void of flags, aroused immeasureable enthusiasm. I myself had the honor of being privileged to address the crowd, now numbering sixty thousand heads, as one of the orators.

The success of the rally was overpowering, particularly because, in defiance of all Red threats, it was proved for the first time that national Munich, too, could march in streets. Red republican defense corps (Schutzbund), who attempted to proceed with terror against the approaching columns, were within a few minutes scattered with bloody skulls by SA detachments. The National Socialist movement then for the first time showed its determination to claim for itself the right to the streets in the future, thus wresting this monopoly from the hands of the international traitors to the people and enemies of the fatherland.

The result of this day was an incontestable proof of the psychological and also organizational soundness of our conceptions with regard to the structure of the SA.

On the foundation which had been so successfully proven, it was energetically broadened, so that only a few weeks later double the number of companies had been set up.

2. The march to Coburg in October, 1922.

'Folkish' associations planned to hold a so-called 'German Day' in Coburg. I myself received an invitation to it, remarking that it would be desirable for me to bring an escort. This request, which I received at eleven o'clock in the morning, came very opportunely. An hour later the arrangements for attending this 'German Day' had been issued. As an 'escort' I appointed eight hundred men of the SA; we arranged to transport them in approximately fourteen companies by special train to the little city that had become Bavarian. Similar orders went out to National Socialist SA groups which had meanwhile been formed in other places.

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It was the first time that such a special train was used in Germany. At all towns where new SA men got in, the transport aroused much attention. Many people had never seen our flags before; the impression they made was very great.

When we arrived at the Coburg station, we were received by a deputation of the organizers of the 'German Day,' which conveyed to us an order from the local trade unions - in other words, from the Independent and Communist Party - to the effect that we were forbidden to enter the town with flags unfurled, or with music (we had taken along a forty-two-piece band of our own), or to march in a solid column.

I at once flatly rejected these disgraceful conditions, and did not fail to express to the gentlemen present, the organizers of this congress, my surprise that they had carried on negotiations with these people and entered into agreements; I declared that the SA would immediately line up in companies and march into the city with resounding music and flags flying.

And that is just what happened.

On the square in front of the railroad station we were received by a howling, shrieking mob numbering thousands. 'Murderers,' 'bandits,' 'robbers,' 'criminals,' were the pet names which the model founders of the German Republic affectionately showered on us. The young SA kept exemplary order, the companies formed on the square in front of the station, and at first took no notice of the vulgar abuse. In the city that was strange to all of us, frightened police officials led the marching column, not, as arranged, to our quarters, a shooting gallery situated on the periphery of Coburg but to the Hofbräuhauskeller, near the center of the city. To left and right of the procession, the uproar of the masses of people accompanying us increased more and more. Hardly had the last company turned into the courtyard of the Keller than great masses, amid deafening cries, tried to crowd in after us. To prevent this, the police locked the Keller. Since this state of affairs was intolerable, I had the SA line up once again, gave them a brief speech of admonition, and demanded that the police open the gates immediately. After a long hesitation, they yielded.

To get to our quarters, we marched back the way we had come, and now at last a stand had to be taken. After they had been unable to disturb the poise of our companies by cries and insulting shouts, the representatives of true socialism, equality, and fraternity had recourse to stones. At this our patience was at an end, and so for ten whole minutes a devastating hail fell from left and right, and a quarter of an hour later, there was nothing red to be seen in the streets.

In the evening there were serious dashes again. Some National Socialists had been assaulted singly, and patrols of the SA found them in a terrible condition. Thereupon we made short shrift of our foes. By next morning the Red terror, under which Coburg had suffered for years, had been broken.

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With real Marxist-Jewish lies they now attempted to harry the 'comrades of the international proletariat' back into the streets, by totally twisting the facts and maintaining that our 'bands of murderers' had begun a 'war of extermination against peaceful workers' in Coburg. The great 'demonstration of the people,' which, it was hoped, tens of thousands of workers from the whole vicinity would attend, was set for half-past one. Therefore, firmly resolved to dispose of the Red terror for good, I ordered the SA, which had meanwhile swollen to nearly one and a half thousand men, to line up, and set out with them on the march for the Fortress of Coburg, by way of the great square on which the Red demonstration was to take place. I wanted to see whether they would dare to molest us again. When we entered the square, only a few hundred were present instead of the announced ten thousand, and at our approach they kept generally quiet, and some ran away. Only at a few points did Red troops, who had meanwhile come from the outside and who did not yet know us, try to pester us again; but in the twinkling of an eye, all their enthusiasm was spoiled. And now it could be seen how the frightened and intimidated population slowly woke up and took courage, and ventured to shout greetings at us, and in the evening as we were marching off broke into spontaneous cheering in many places.

At the station the railroad men suddenly informed us that they would not run the train. Thereupon I notified a few of the ringleaders that in that case I planned to round up whatever Red bosses fell into my hands, and that we would run the train ourselves; however, we would take along a few dozen of the brothers of international solidarity on the locomotive and the tender and in every car. Nor did I fail to call it to the gentlemen's attention that the trip with our own forces would, of course, be an extremely risky undertaking and that it was not excluded that the whole lot of us should break our necks and bones. But, anyway, in that case, we should be delighted to leave for the Hereafter, not alone but in equality and fraternity with the Red gentlemen.

Thereupon the train departed with the utmost punctuality, and we were back in Munich safe and sound the following morning.

Thus, for the first time since 1914 the equality of citizens before the law was re-established in Coburg. For if today some simpleton of a higher official ventures the assertion that the state protects the lives of its citizens, this was certainly not the case at that time; for at that time the citizens had to defend themselves against the representatives of the present-day state.

At first the importance of this day could not be fully evaluated by its consequences. Not only that the victorious SA had been enormously enhanced in its self-confidence and its faith in the soundness of its leadership, but the outside world also began to follow our doings more closely, and many for the first time recognized in the National Socialist movement the institution which in all probability would some day be called upon to put a suitable end to the Marxist madness.

Only the democrats groaned that anyone could dare not peacefully to let his skull be bashed in, and that under a democratic republic we had had the audacity to oppose a brutal attack with fists and cudgels instead of pacifistic songs.

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On the whole, the bourgeois press, as usual, was partly pitiful and partly contemptible, and only a few honest newspapers greeted the fact that in one place at least someone had dared to call a halt to the activity of the Marxist highwaymen.

In Coburg itself, at least a part of the Marxist working class, which incidentally could be regarded only as misled, had learned a lesson from the fists of National Socialist labor and been taught to realize that these workers also fight for ideals, since, as experience shows, men fight only for something that they believe in and love.

The greatest benefit, however, was derived by the SA itself. It now grew with great rapidity, and at the Party Day held on January 27, 1923, approximately six thousand men could take part in the dedication of the flag, and the first companies were fully equipped with their new uniforms.

For the experience in Coburg had shown how necessary it is, and not only in order to strengthen the esprit de corps, but also to avoid confusion and forestall mutual non-recognition, to introduce uniform dress among the SA. Until then it wore only the armband; now the canvas jacket and the well-known cap were added.

And, furthermore, the experience of Coburg had the significance that we now began systematically, in all places where for many years the Red terror had prevented any meeting of people with different ideas, to break this terror and restore freedom of assembly. From now on, National Socialist battalions were assembled again and again in such localities, and in Bavaria gradually one Red citadel after another fell a victim to National Socialist propaganda. The SA had grown more and more into its task, and so had moved further and further away from the character of a senseless and unimportant defense movement and risen to the level of a living organization of struggle for the erection of a new German state.

This logical development lasted until March, 1923. Then there occurred an event which compelled me to shift the movement from its previous course and subject it to a modification.

3. The occupation of the Ruhr by the French in the first months of 1923 had in the following period a great significance for the development of the SA.

Even today it is not yet possible, and particularly in the national interest not expedient, to speak or write of this with full publicity. I can only express myself in so far as this theme has already been touched upon in public proceedings and thus brought to the knowledge of the public.

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The occupation of the Ruhr, which came as no surprise to us, gave rise to the justified hope that now at length there would be an end to the cowardly policy of retreat, and that with this a definite task would fall to the combat leagues. And the SA, which then embraced many thousands of young powerful men, could not fittingly be excluded from this national service. In the spring and midsummer of 1923 it was reshaped into a military fighting organization. To it the later development of 1923, in so far as it concerned our movement, was attributable.

Since I treat the development of 1923 in broad outlines elsewhere, I shall only state here that the reorientation of the SA was a harmful one from the viewpoint of the movement, if the presuppositions that had led to its reorientation - that is, the resumption of active resistance against France - did not materialize.

The close of the year 1923, terrible as it may seem at first sight, may, if viewed from a higher standpoint, be regarded as positively necessary, in so far as with one stroke it ended the reorientation of the SA, made pointless by the attitude of the German Reich government and hence harmful for the movement, and thus created the possibility of building some day at the point where we had once been forced to relinquish the correct road.

The NSDAP, newly founded in 1925, must again set up, train, and organize its SA according to the aforementioned principles. It must thus return to the original healthy views, and must now once more find its highest task in creating, in its SA, an instrument for the conduct and reinforcement of the movement's struggle for its philosophy of life.

It must neither suffer the SA to degenerate into a kind of combat league nor into a secret organization; it must, on the contrary, endeavor to train it as a guard, numbering hundreds of thousands of men, for the National Socialist and hence profoundly folkish idea.

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End of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 9: BASIC IDEAS REGARDING THE MEANING AND ORGANIZATION OF THE SA

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Begin of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 10: FEDERALISM AS A MASK

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IN THE WINTER of 1919 and even more in the spring and summer of 1920, the young party was forced to take a position on a question which even during the War rose to an immense importance. In the first volume, in my brief account of the symptoms of the threatening German collapse that were visible to me personally, I have pointed to the special type of propaganda which was carried on by the English as well as the French for the purpose of tearing open the old deft between North and South. In spring, 1915, there appeared the first systematic agitational leaflets attacking Prussia, as solely responsible for the War. By 1916, this system had been brought to full perfection as adroit as it was treacherous. And after a short time the agitation of the South German against the North German, calculated on the lowest instincts, began to bear fruit. It is a reproach that must be raised against the authorities of that time, in the government as well as the army command - or rather the Bavarian staff offices - a reproach which these last cannot shake off, that in their damnable blindness and disregard of duty they did not proceed against this with the necessary determination. Nothing was done! On the contrary, various quarters did not seem to take it so much amiss, and they were small-minded enough to believe that such a propaganda would not only put a bar in the path of the development of the German people toward unity, but that it would inevitably and automatically bring a strengthening of the federative forces. Scarcely ever in history has a malicious omission brought more evil consequences. The weakening these men thought they were administering to Prussia struck the whole of Germany. And its consequence was the acceleration of the collapse, which, however, not only shattered Germany herself, but primarily, in point of fact, the individual states themselves.

In the city where the artificially fanned hatred against Prussia raged most violently, the revolution was first to break out against the hereditary royal house.

Yet it would be false to believe that the manufacture of this anti-Prussian mood is attributable solely to hostile war propaganda and that the people affected by it had no grounds of justification. The incredible way in which our war economy was organized, a positively insane centralization that held the whole German Reich territory in tutelage and pillaged it to the limit, was one of the main reasons for the rise of this anti-Prussian sentiment. For the average little man, the war societies, which happened to have their central offices in Berlin, and Berlin itself, were synonymous with Prussia. It scarcely dawned on the individual at that time that the organizers of this institute of robbery, known as 'war societies,' were neither Berliners nor Prussians, in fact, were not Germans at all. He saw only the great faults and the constant encroachments of this hated institution in the capital and then naturally transferred his whole hatred to the capital and Prussia simultaneously, all the more so since in certain quarters not only nothing was done about this, but such an interpretation was even secretly and smirkingly welcomed.

The Jew was far too shrewd not to realize in those days that the infamous campaign of pillage that he was then organizing against the German people, under the cloak of the war societies, would, nay, must, arouse resistance. But as long as it did not spring at his throat, he had no need to fear it. But in order to prevent an explosion of the masses driven to despair and indignation In this direction, there could be no better prescription than to cause their rage to flare up elsewhere, thus using it up.

Let Bavaria fight against Prussia and Prussia against Bavaria as much as they wanted, the more the better! The hottest struggle between the two meant the securest peace for the Jew. In this way, the general attention was entirely diverted from the international maggot of nations. And if the danger seemed to arise that thoughtful elements, of which there were many in Bavaria, as elsewhere, called for understanding, reflection, and restraint and so the embittered struggle threatened to die down, the Jew in Berlin needed only to stage a new provocation and wait for the result. Instantly all the beneficiaries of the conflict between North and South flung themselves on every such occurrence, and kept on blowing until the flame of indignation had again burst into a roaring blaze.

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It was an adroit, subtle game that the Jew then played, constantly occupying and distracting the individual German tribes and meanwhile pillaging them the more thoroughly.

Then came the revolution.

If up to the year 1918, or rather up to November of this year, the average man, and especially the little-educated petit bourgeois and worker, especially in Bavaria, could not yet correctly estimate the real course and the inevitable consequences of the quarrel of German tribes among themselves, the section calling themselves 'national' should at least have had to recognize it on the day of the outbreak of the revolution. For no sooner had the action succeeded than in Bavaria the leader and organizer of the revolution became the defender of 'Bavarian' interests. The international Jew Kurt Eisner began to play Bavaria against Prussia. It goes without saying, however, that this Oriental who spent his time as a newspaper journaille running all over Germany, was unquestionably the last man fitted to defend Bavarian interests, and that to him, in particular, Bavaria was a matter of the utmost indifference possible on God's earth.

In giving the revolutionary uprising in Bavaria a thoroughly conscious edge against the rest of the Reich, Kurt Eisner did not in the least act from Bavarian motives, out solely as the servant of the Jews. He used the existing instincts and dislikes of the Bavarian people, to help him break up Germany the more easily. The shattered Reich would have easily fallen a prey to Bolshevism.

After his death the tactics applied by him were at first continued. The Marxists, who had always covered the individual states and their princes in Germany with the bloodiest scorn, now came out as an 'Independent Party' and suddenly appealed to those feelings and instincts which had their strongest roots in princely houses and individual states.

The fight of the Bavarian Republic of Councils against the approaching contingents of liberation was dressed up by propaganda as mainly a 'struggle of the Bavarian workers' against 'Prussian militarism.' Only from this can it be understood why in Munich, quite unlike the other German territories, the overthrow of the Republic of Councils did not bring the great masses to their senses, but rather led to an even greater bitterness and rancor against Prussia.

The skill with which the Bolshevistic agitators were able to represent the elimination of the Republic of Councils as a 'Prussian militaristic' victory against the 'anti-militaristic' and 'anti-Prussian' Bavarian people, bore rich fruit. While Kurt Eisner, on the occasion of the elections to the legislative Bavarian Provincial Diet in Munich, still could summon not even ten thousand supporters, and the Communist Party actually remained under three thousand, after the collapse of the Republic both parties together had risen to nearly a hundred thousand voters.

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As early as this period my personal fight against the insane incitement of German tribes against each other began.

I believe that in all my life I have undertaken no more unpopular cause than my resistance at that time to the anti-Prussian agitation. In Munich, even during the Soviet period, the first mass meetings had taken place, in which hatred against the rest of Germany and in particular against Prussia was lashed to such a white heat that it not only involved a risk of his life for a North German to attend such a meeting, but the conclusion of such rallies as a rule ended quite openly with mad cries of: 'Away from Prussia!'-'Down with Prussia! '-'War against Prussia! ' a mood which a particularly brilliant representative of Bavarian sovereign interests in the German Reichstag summed up in the battle-cry: 'Rather die Bavarian than rot Prussian!'

You need to have lived through the meetings of that time to understand what it meant for me when, surrounded by a handful of friends, I for the first time, at a meeting in the Löwenbräukeller in Munich; offered resistance against this madness. It was war comrades who then supported me, and perhaps you can imagine how we felt when a mob - by far the greatest part of which had been deserters and slackers, hanging around the reserve posts or at home while we were defending the fatherland - lost all reason and bellowed at us and threatened to strike us down. For me, to be sure, these incidents had the virtue that the squad of my loyal followers came to feel really attached to me, and was soon sworn to live or die by my side.

These struggles, which were repeated again and again and dragged out through the entire year of 1919, seemed to become even sharper right at the beginning of 1920. There were meetings - I particularly remember one in the Wagner-Saal in the Sonnen-Strasse in Munich - in which my group, which had meanwhile grown stronger, had to withstand grave clashes, which not seldom ended in dozens of my supporters being mishandled, struck down, trampled under foot, and finally, more dead than alive, thrown out of the halls.

The struggle which I had first taken up as an individual, supported only by my war comrades, was now continued by the young movement as, I might also say, a sacred mission.

Today I am still proud to be able to say that in those days - dependent almost entirely on our Bavarian adherents - we nevertheless slowly but surely put an end to this mixture of stupidity and treason. I say stupidity and treason because, though fully convinced that the mass of followers were really nothing but good-natured fools, such simplicity cannot be attributed to the organizers and instigators. I regarded them, and today still regard them, as traitors bought and paid for by France. In one case, the Dorten case, history has already given its verdict.

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What made the affair especially dangerous at that time was the skill with which the true tendencies were concealed, by shoving federalistic intentions into the foreground as the sole motive for this activity. But it is obvious that stirring up hatred against Prussia has nothing to do with federalism. And a 'federative activity' which attempts to dissolve or split up another federal state makes a weird impression. An honorable federalist, for whom quotations of Bismarck's conception of the Reich are more than lying phrases, would hardly in the same breath want to separate portions from the Prussian state created or rather completed by Bismarck, let alone publicly support such separatist endeavors. How they would have yelled in Munich if a conservative Prussian party had favored the separation of Franconia from Bavaria, or actually demanded and promoted it by public action. In all this one could only feel sorry for the honest, federalist-minded souls who had not seen through this foul swindle; for they, first and foremost, were the cheated parties. By thus compromising the federative idea, its own supporters were digging its grave. It is impossible to preach a federalistic form for the Reich, at the same time deprecating, reviling, and befouling the most essential section of such a state structure, namely, Prussia, and in short, making it, if possible, impossible as a federal state. What made this all the more incredible was that the fight of these so-called federalists was directed precisely against that Prussia which can least be brought into connection with the November democracy. For it was not against the fathers of the Weimar Constitution, who themselves incidentally were for the most part South Germans or Jews, that the vilifications and attacks of these so-called 'federalists' were directed, but against the representatives of the old conservative Prussia, hence the antipodes of the Weimar Constitution. It must not surprise us that they took special care not to attack the Jew, and perhaps this furnishes the key to the solution of the whole riddle.

Just as before the revolution the Jew knew how to divert attention from his war societies, or rather from himself, and was able to turn the masses, especially of the Bavarian people, against Prussia, after the revolution he had somehow to cover his new and ten times bigger campaign of pillage. And again he succeeded, in this case in inciting the so-called 'national elements' of Germany against one another: conservative-minded Bavaria against equally conservative-thinking Prussia. And again he managed it in the shrewdest way; he, who alone held the strings of the Reich's destinies, provoked such brutal and tactless excesses that the blood of those affected could not but be brought to the boiling point each time anew. Yet never against the Jew, but always against the German brother. It was not the Berlin of four million hard-working, producing people that the Bavarian saw, but the rotten decaying Berlin of the foulest West End! But it was not against this West End that his hatred turned, but against the 'Prussian' city.

Often it could really drive you to despair.

This aptitude of the Jew for diverting public attention from himself and occupying it elsewhere, can be studied again today.

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