Reclaiming the Swastika
Steve Dufour
Reclaiming the Swastika
It's understandably reviled as a symbol of Nazism, but the swastika is
really a Hindu symbol of good luck.
By Aparita Bhandari
It was late at night when I got my father's email with the PDF
attachment. My father, currently the ambassador of India to the United
Arab Emirates, had gotten in touch with a printer in New Delhi to make
an invitation for my wedding ceremony in Toronto.
The attached document had a few options for font and style. But they
all had one thing in common. The header was made up of a line-drawing
of Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, along with a shloka (Sanskrit
verse) invoking Ganesh and something that would likely shock non-Hindu
Westerners: two swastikas.
When I saw the swastikas, I started to wonder. Should I also draw
swastikas on the separate invitations to the reception, which I was
making by hand? Would this add to the beauty of the card or would the
symbol's Nazi connotations mar the auspiciousness of the invitation?
It was an ironic quandary, considering that Ganesh, whom I'd also draw
on the card, is also the destroyer of evil and the shloka asks Him to
remove all obstacles.
Of course, the swastika has a long history in Hinduism, entirely
separate from its modern perversion by Nazi Germany. The etymology of
the word swastika connects the Sanskrit su (good) and asti (to be),
resulting in "well-being." The symbol is drawn to denote good luck. The
swastika is as sacred as the symbol for Om, which is Hinduism's
supreme and most sacred syllable.
The swastika is said to symbolize the Hindu concept of samsara--the
eternal cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth. The four arms
pointing to the cardinal directions--north, east, south, and
west--signify stability and groundedness. The swastika has also been
used to symbolize Surya, the sun god, and Ganesh is often depicted
sitting atop lotus flower on a bed of swastikas. Because of its
auspiciousness, the symbol is also used in yantras (symbolic
representations of divinity). Besides Hinduism, the swastika can be
found in Buddhism and Jainism.
I have always thought of the swastika as a beautiful symbol. It's
never been my favorite design to draw, as I preferred other traditional
designs, such as the amiya (raw mango), shankh (conch shell), or other
swirly, floral patterns. But there was something about the swastika's
symmetry that I always liked.
There are actually two types of swastikas--the right-facing and the
left-facing swastikas, which are mirror-images of each other. These two
forms are said to represent the two forms of Lord Brahma, the creator:
The right-facing swastika indicates the evolution of the universe
(Pravritti) and the left-facing swastika symbolizes involution of the
universe (Nivritti, the process that allows creation to happen).
When I attended high school in New Delhi, some of my friends drew
swastikas on the first page of their notebooks, hoping to have a good
year and get good grades in the annual examinations. During many
religious celebrations, I've seen priests draw swastikas with a paste
made from vermilion powder and water. In this context, I considered the
swastika as a religious signifier, blessing the ceremony with its
auspiciousness. It's also common to see the swastika in many
decorative designs, such as floor and wall paintings, as well as in the
architectural details of temples.
As a child in India, I was aware, like many of my peers, of the
swastika's use by the Nazis and how it had become a representation of
the horrific atrocities committed against Jews. But like most Indians,
I completely separated in my mind the two uses of the swastika. It was
only when I moved to Toronto that I got a sense of just how potent the
symbol remains in the West.
I was drawing a floor painting outside the small downtown Toronto
studio where I learn Kathak (Hindu dance). I filled the alpana
(painting) with a peacock design and drew other traditional motifs,
such as amiyas, shankhs, and floral patterns. When I ran out of ideas,
I decided to draw small swastikas in the circle.
One of the other volunteers came over and admired the artwork, which
was so different from the modern approach of her own contemporary
drawings. Then she peered into my designs, etched on to the sidewalk of
a major Toronto street with a paste of multani mitti (Fuller's Earth)
and water.
"Is that a swastika?" she asked.
"Yes, I replied."
"I'm not sure if you want to draw that," she smiled.
"But it's not that swastika," I replied. "In Hinduism, it's
considered lucky."
"Even so, some people might not know. It's better not to use it."
After some reflection, I erased the swastikas from the alpana. I felt
sad that the symbol had become so synonymous with the Nazis that it had
lost its original meaning. But it was better to err on the side of
caution, just in case it resulted in any misunderstanding.
I decided to research this symbol that I took for granted. A Google
search resulted in thousands of hits. According to Answers.com, the
swastika was used by the Hittites, the Greeks and the Celts, and it
occurs in Asian, European, African, and Native American cultures.
It's thought that the swastika's symmetry and simplicity led to its
independent development across the world.
An article on the BBC website told me this symbol that has been around
for thousands of years was used by Rudyard Kipling in the dust jackets
of all his books until the rise of Nazism made it inappropriate. It was
also used by the scouts in Britain and the Finnish Air Force in World
War II. Although rarely seen in Western architecture, interlocking
swastikas make up the floor design of the cathedral of Amiens, France.
There's even a small mining town in Ontario called Swastika, about
580 kilometers north of where I live. Attempts by the government of
Ontario to change the town's name during World War II were rejected
by the residents, the BBC reports.
The Nazis used the swastika because of their belief in the purity of
the Aryan race. They believed in the Aryan invasion theory, wherein a
master Aryan race from South Russia and Eastern Ukraine invaded Iran,
India, Central Asia, and Europe. The Indian Aryans, then, were
prototypical white invaders and the swastika came from their Vedic
tradition. And so, the swastika became the symbol of "the fight for
the victory of Aryan man," as Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf."
The swastika-based Hakenkreus (hooked cross) adopted by the Nazis in
the 1920s is now taboo in the West. It's unfortunate that the
swastika's original meaning has been lost in the West, perverted by
Nazism. I certainly understand the revulsion people feel at the sight
of a swastika. The symbol wasn't retired with the demise of Nazi
Germany, but remains a sign of hate for neo-Nazis and skinheads today.
However, I still hold out the hope that someday the swastika will
reclaim its ancient significance and become a symbol of auspiciousness
for everyone--not just Hindus. Popularizing the real meaning of the
swastika in the West would, after all, be a sign that we've repudiated
the Nazis and refuse to let them continue to hijack tradition.
In the end, I didn't draw swastikas on my handmade reception cards.
There are swastikas on the wedding invitation, however. It's
appropriate for this traditional symbol to be on the card that heralds
my traditional wedding ceremony; the swastika will not be
misinterpreted by the primarily South Asian guests at my morning
wedding. The evening reception, however, is just a party celebrating my
marriage. There's no religious import to those festivities. And
although all my invited guests are enlightened people who know I have
no patience for any racist ideology, there's no point in even a
momentary affront to someone's sensibilities.
Besides, I am sure Ganesh will bless the event and remove all obstacles.
michael james
If the education system in the west would instruct people about the
origin of the swastika
then one would not have to worry about using it. Especially when it is
used with other Hindu symbols.
I remember something about the symbol, that there are two of them, each
rotating in different directions, one indicating positive energy and the
other negative energy. I am not sure which one the Nazis used.
In any case, it did not bring them good luck.
harmony
"michael james" <ad...@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:437A2986...@videotron.ca...
you may be right in that it probably did not bring good luck to germans. but
it sure brought good luck to hindus.
without hitler's crippling blow to the brits, hindus would not have gained
their freedom.
michael james
Chris Jacobs wrote:
> michael james wrote:
>
>>If the education system in the west would instruct people about the
>>origin of the swastika
>>then one would not have to worry about using it. Especially when it is
>>used with other Hindu symbols.
>>I remember something about the symbol, that there are two of them,
>>each rotating in different directions, one indicating positive energy
>>and the other negative energy. I am not sure which one the Nazis used.
>>
>>In any case, it did not bring them good luck.
>
>
> There are not only two of them but many more.
>
> see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
>
> Compare: The Swastika in decorative Hindu form,
>
> with: The flag of Nazi Germany and the NSDAP
>
> If you think there are only two of them, then those both were the same, the
> right-facing one.
>
> My favorite one is the digit 5 in font bobco 9, that is a left-facing one
> with diagonal lines.
>
> It looks inconsistent in a way which reminds me of Escher.
>
> Chris
>
well I was thinking stricly of the one that the Nazis made famous in the
West.
If you want alternatives they are in many cultures. Even the Celts have
a three sided symbol, the triskele.
ref:
Dr. Jai Maharaj
I posted the following in 1994 -- archived here:
Excerpts from Hinduism Today:
In the West, before Hitler, the Swastik: was a popular
good luck insignia. Boy Scouts wore it engraved on their
belt-buckles, the British used it on a World War I pin
and private U.S. clubs were proud to stamp their
membership tokens with it. But the origins of the
Swastik: go as far back as man's history itself, and the
diagram has been used in many cultures for millennia.
Protected from a parching Sun, 3,500 years ago Babylonian
stone carvers squatted inside an open-air thatched hut. A
goddess was emerging from a large stone. Onto her
decorated girdle the sculptors neatly cut a bent-spoked
symbol, a Swastik:. On the other side of the planet,
American Indians have scribed the spoked sign of good
luck into salmon colored seashells, healing sticks, woven
garments and pottery, " As long as we can remember," they
say. Two thousand miles to the south, the Mayans of the
Yucatan chiseled it into temple diagrams.
Once moored to the ancient highland cultures of Asia
Minor, the bent-ribbed wheel later voyaged around the
Mediterranean, through Egypt and Greece, northward into
Saxon lands, Scandinavia and west to Scotland and
Ireland.
In Bharat (India), the Swastik: also has been always
present --sometimes turned clockwise, sometimes counter -
- with a variety of Tantric "left-handed" and "right-
handed" interpretations for each. For the Vedic
civilization, and later the Hindus, the bent icon signals
supreme auspiciousness. There are numerous other
meanings.
Clearly, the word Swastik: itself comes from the Ved(as):
Swasti --"well being" from the Sanskrit Su,"well," and
As,"to be." When Buddhism fomented its birth out of
Bharat's spiritual wellspring, it inherited the right-
angled emblem. On the backs of monks, the little double-
jointed design journeyed north over the Himalaya(s) into
China -- often carved into Buddha's feet -- and splayed
into a spectrum of decorative "meandering" Swastik:(s),
the classical, geometric oriental motif.
Nineteenth century Americans picked up the symbol from
the American Indians. Boy scouts tightened their britches
with brassy Swastik: buckles and a U.S. World's Fair
minted flashy Swastik: commemorative coins. Deformed into
a mark of demonic racism by Hitler, the ancient symbol
soon disappeared except in Bharat where it retains its
auspicious identity and aura of blessings.
Source -
Hinduism Today
http://www.HinduismToday.com
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Om Shanti
In article <dYref.29107$2k5.11854@dukeread09>,
"harmony" <a...@hotmail.com> posted:
CJ Adams
northern Ontario, Canada. When there were rumblings about the choice of
name in 1939-45, the town replied "We had it first." And they've still
got it.
Cheers
CJ Adams
Arte et Marte
Topaz
"We have the power. Now our gigantic work begins."
Those were Hitler's words on the night of January 30, 1933, as
cheering crowds surged past him, for five long hours, beneath the
windows of the Chancellery in Berlin.
His political struggle had lasted 14 years. He himself was 43, that
is, physically and intellectually at the peak of his powers. He had
won over millions of Germans and organized them into Germany's largest
and most dynamic political party, a party girded by a human rampart of
hundreds of thousands of storm troopers, three fourths of them members
of the working class. He had been extremely shrewd. All but toying
with his adversaries, Hitler had, one after another, vanquished them
all.
Standing there at the window, his arm raised to the delirious throng,
he must have known a feeling of triumph. But he seemed almost torpid,
absorbed, as if lost in another world.
It was a world far removed from the delirium in the street, a world of
65 million citizens who loved him or hated him, but all of whom, from
that night on, had become his responsibility. And as he knew -- as
almost all Germans knew on January 1933 -- that this was a crushing,
an almost desperate responsibility.
Half a century later, few people understand the crisis Germany faced
at that time. Today, it's easy to assume that Germans have always been
well-fed and even plump. But the Germans Hitler inherited were virtual
skeletons.
During the preceding years, a score of "democratic" governments had
come and gone, often in utter confusion. Instead of alleviating the
people's misery, they had increased it, due to their own instability:
it was impossible for them to pursue any given plan for more than a
year or two. Germany had arrived at a dead end. In just a few years
there had been 224,000 suicides - a horrifying figure, bespeaking a
state of misery even more horrifying.
By the beginning of 1933, the misery of the German people was
virtually universal. At least six million unemployed and hungry
workers roamed aimlessly through the streets, receiving a pitiful
unemployment benefit of less than 42 marks per month. Many of those
out of work had families to feed, so that altogether some 20 million
Germans, a third of the country's population, were reduced to trying
to survive on about 40 pfennigs per person per day.
Unemployment benefits, moreover, were limited to a period of six
months. After that came only the meager misery allowance dispensed by
the welfare offices.
Notwithstanding the gross inadequacy of this assistance, by trying to
save the six million unemployed from total destruction, even for just
six months, both the state and local branches of the German government
saw themselves brought to ruin: in 1932 alone such aid had swallowed
up four billion marks, 57 percent of the total tax revenues of the
federal government and the regional states. A good many German
municipalities were bankrupt.
Those still lucky enough to have some kind of job were not much better
off. Workers and employees had taken a cut of 25 percent in their
wages and salaries. Twenty-one percent of them were earning between
100 and 250 marks per month; 69.2 percent of them, in January of 1933,
were being paid less than 1,200 marks annually. No more than about
100,000 Germans, it was estimated, were able to live without financial
worries.
During the three years before Hitler came to power, total earnings had
fallen by more than half, from 23 billion marks to 11 billion. The
average per capita income had dropped from 1,187 marks in 1929 to 627
marks, a scarcely tolerable level, in 1932. By January 1933, when
Hitler took office, 90 percent of the German people were destitute.
No one escaped the strangling effects of the unemployment. The
intellectuals were hit as hard as the working class. Of the 135,000
university graduates, 60 percent were without jobs. Only a tiny
minority was receiving unemployment benefits.
"The others," wrote one foreign observer, Marcel Laloire (in his book
New Germany), "are dependent on their parents or are sleeping in
flophouses. In the daytime they can be seen on the boulevards of
Berlin wearing signs on their backs to the effect that they will
accept any kind of work."
But there was no longer any kind of work.
The same drastic fall-off had hit Germany's cottage industry, which
comprised some four million workers. Its turnover had declined 55
percent, with total sales plunging from 22 billion to 10 billion
marks.
Hardest hit of all were construction workers; 90 percent of them were
unemployed.
Farmers, too, had been ruined, crushed by losses amounting to 12
billion marks. Many had been forced to mortgage their homes and their
land. In 1932 just the interest on the loans they had incurred due to
the crash was equivalent to 20 percent of the value of the
agricultural production of the entire country. Those who were no
longer able to meet the interest payments saw their farms auctioned
off in legal proceedings: in the years 1931-1932, 17,157 farms -- with
a combined total area of 462,485 hectares - were liquidated in this
way.
The "democracy" of Germany's "Weimar Republic" (1918 -1933) had proven
utterly ineffective in addressing such flagrant wrongs as this
impoverishment of millions of farm workers, even though they were the
nation's most stable and hardest working citizens. Plundered,
dispossessed, abandoned: small wonder they heeded Hitler's call.
Their situation on January 30, 1933, was tragic. Like the rest of
Germany's working class, they had been betrayed by their political
leaders, reduced to the alternatives of miserable wages, paltry and
uncertain benefit payments, or the outright humiliation of begging.
Germany's industries, once renowned everywhere in the world, were no
longer prosperous, despite the millions of marks in gratuities that
the financial magnates felt obliged to pour into the coffers of the
parties in power before each election in order to secure their
cooperation. For 14 years the well-blinkered conservatives and
Christian democrats of the political center had been feeding at the
trough just as greedily as their adversaries of the left…
One inevitable consequence of this ever-increasing misery and
uncertainty about the future was an abrupt decline in the birthrate.
When your household savings are wiped out, and when you fear even
greater calamities in the days ahead, you do not risk adding to the
number of your dependents.
In those days the birth rate was a reliable barometer of a country's
prosperity. A child is a joy, unless you have nothing but a crust of
bread to put in its little hand. And that's just the way it was with
hundreds of thousands of German families in 1932…
Hitler knew that he would be starting from zero. From less than zero.
But he was also confident of his strength of will to create Germany
anew -- politically, socially, financially, and economically. Now
legally and officially in power, he was sure that he could quickly
convert that cipher into a Germany more powerful than ever before.
What support did he have?
For one thing, he could count on the absolute support of millions of
fanatical disciples. And on that January evening, they joyfully shared
in the great thrill of victory. Some thirteen million Germans, many of
them former Socialists and Communists, had voted for his party.
But millions of Germans were still his adversaries, disconcerted
adversaries, to be sure, whom their own political parties had
betrayed, but who had still not been won over to National Socialism.
The two sides -- those for and those against Hitler -- were very
nearly equal in numbers. But whereas those on the left were divided
among themselves, Hitler's disciples were strongly united. And in one
thing above all, the National Socialists had an incomparable
advantage: in their convictions and in their total faith in a leader.
Their highly organized and well-disciplined party had contented with
the worst kind of obstacles, and had overcome them…
In the eyes of the capitalists, money was the sole active element in
the flourishing of a country's economy. To Hitler's way of thinking,
that conception was radically wrong: capital, on the contrary, was
only an instrument. Work was the essential element: man's endeavor,
man's honor, blood, muscles and soul.
Hitler wanted not just to put an to the class struggle, but to
reestablish the priority of the human being, in justice and respect,
as the principal factor in production…
For the worker's trust in the fatherland to be restored, he had to
feel that from now on he was to be (and to be treated) as an equal,
instead of remaining a social inferior. Under the governments of the
so-called democratic parties of both the left and the right, he had
remained an inferior; for none of them had understood that in the
hierarchy of national values, work is the very essence of life; …
The objective, then, was far greater than merely getting six million
unemployed back to work. It was to achieve a total revolution.
"The people," Hitler declared, "were not put here on earth for the
sake of the economy, and the economy doesn't exist for the sake of
capital. On the contrary, capital is meant to serve the economy, and
the economy in turn to serve the people."
It would not be enough merely to reopen the thousands of closed
factories and fill them with workers. If the old concepts still ruled,
the workers would once again be nothing more than living machines,
faceless and interchangeable…
Nowhere in twentieth-century Europe had the authority of a head of
state ever been based on such overwhelming and freely given national
consent. Prior to Hitler, from 1919 to 1932, those governments piously
styling themselves democratic had usually come to power by meager
majorities, sometimes as low as 51 or 52 percent.
"I am not a dictator," Hitler had often affirmed, "and I never will
be. Democracy will be rigorously enforced by National Socialism."
Authority does not mean tyranny. A tyrant is someone who puts himself
in power without the will of the people or against the will of the
people. A democrat is placed in power by the people. But democracy is
not limited to a single formula. It may be partisan or parliamentary.
Or it may be authoritarian. The important thing is that the people
have wished it, chosen it, established it in its given form.
That was the case with Hitler. He came to power in an essentially
democratic way. Whether one likes it or not, this fact is undeniable.
And after coming to power, his popular support measurably increased
from year to year. The more intelligent and honest of his enemies have
been obliged to admit this, men such as the declared anti-Nazi
historian and professor Joachim Fest, who wrote:
For Hitler was never interested in establishing a mere tyranny. Sheer
greed for power will not suffice as explanation for his personality
and energy -- He was not born to be a mere tyrant. He was fixated upon
his mission of defending Europe and the Aryan race ... Never had he
felt so dependent upon the masses as he did at this time, and he
watched their reactions with anxious concern.
These lines weren't written by Dr. Goebbels, but by a stern critic of
Hitler and his career…
When it came time to vote, Hitler was granted plenary powers with a
sweeping majority of 441 votes to 94: he had won not just two thirds,
but 82.44 percent of the assembly's votes. This "Enabling Act" granted
Hitler for four years virtually absolute authority over the
legislative as well as the executive affairs of the government…
After 1945 the explanation that was routinely offered for all this was
that the Germans had lost their heads. Whatever the case, it is a
historical fact that they acted of their own free will. Far from being
resigned, they were enthusiastic. "For the first time since the last
days of the monarchy," historian Joachim Fest has conceded, "the
majority of the Germans now had the feeling that they could identify
with the state."…
"You talk about persecution!" he thundered in an impromptu response to
an address by the Social Democratic speaker. "I think that there are
only a few of us [in our party] here who did not have to suffer
persecutions in prison from your side ... You seem to have totally
forgotten that for years our shirts were ripped off our backs because
you did not like the color . . . We have outgrown your persecutions!"
"In those days," he scathingly continued, "our newspapers were banned
and banned and again banned, our meetings were forbidden, and we were
forbidden to speak, I was forbidden to speak, for years on. And now
you say that criticism is salutary!"…
Hitler's millions of followers had rediscovered the primal strength of
rough, uncitified man, of a time when men still had backbone…
Gustav Noske, the lumberjack who became defense minister - and the
most valiant defender of the embattled republic in the tumultuous
months immediately following the collapse of 1918 - acknowledged
honestly in 1944, when the Third Reich was already rapidly breaking
down, that the great majority of the German people still remained true
to Hitler because of the social renewal he had brought to the working
class…
Here again, well before the collapse of party-ridden Weimar Republic,
disillusion with the unions had become widespread among the working
masses. They were starving. The hundreds of Socialist and Communist
deputies stood idly by, impotent to provide any meaningful help to the
desperate proletariat.
Their leaders had no proposals to remedy, even partially, the great
distress of the people; no plans for large-scale public works, no
industrial restructuring, no search for markets abroad.
Moreover, they offered no energetic resistance to the pillaging by
foreign countries of the Reich's last financial resources: this a
consequence of the Treaty of Versailles that the German Socialists had
voted to ratify in June of 1919, and which they had never since had
the courage effectively to oppose…
In 1930, 1931 and 1932, German workers had watched the disaster grow:
the number of unemployed rose from two million to three, to four, to
five, then to six million. At the same time, unemployment benefits
fell lower and lower, finally to disappear completely. Everywhere one
saw dejection and privation: emaciated mothers, children wasting away
in sordid lodgings, and thousands of beggars in long sad lines.
The failure, or incapacity, of the leftist leaders to act, not to
mention their insensitivity, had stupefied the working class. Of what
use were such leaders with their empty heads and empty hearts -- and,
often enough, full pockets?
Well before January 30, thousands of workers had already joined up
with Hitler's dynamic formations, which were always hard at it where
they were most needed. Many joined the National Socialists when they
went on strike. Hitler, himself a former worker and a plain man like
themselves, was determined to eliminate unemployment root and branch.
He wanted not merely to defend the laborer's right to work, but to
make his calling one of honor, to insure him respect and to integrate
him fully into a living community of all the Germans, who had been
divided class against class.
In January 1933, Hitler's victorious troops were already largely
proletarian in character, including numerous hardfisted street
brawlers, many unemployed, who no longer counted economically or
socially.
Meanwhile, membership in the Marxist labor unions had fallen off
enormously: among thirteen million socialist and Communist voters in
1932, no more than five million were union members. Indifference and
discouragement had reached such levels that many members no longer
paid their union dues. Many increasingly dispirited Marxist leaders
began to wonder if perhaps the millions of deserters were the ones who
saw things clearly. Soon they wouldn't wonder any longer.
Even before Hitler won Reichstag backing for his "Enabling Act,"
Germany's giant labor union federation, the ADGB, had begun to rally
to the National Socialist cause. As historian Joachim Fest
acknowledged: "On March 20, the labor federation's executive committee
addressed a kind of declaration of loyalty to Hitler." (J. Fest,
Hitler, p. 413.)
Hitler than took a bold and clever step. The unions had always
clamored to have the First of May recognized as a worker's holiday,
but the Weimar Republic had never acceded to their request. Hitler,
never missing an opportunity, grasped this one with both hands. He did
more than grant this reasonable demand: he proclaimed the First of May
a national holiday…
I myself attended the memorable meeting at the Tempelhof field in
1933. By nine o'clock that morning, giant columns, some of workers,
others of youth groups, marching in cadence down the pavement of
Berlin's great avenues, had started off towards the airfield to which
Hitler had called together all Germans. All Germany would follow the
rally as it was transmitted nationwide by radio…
In the dark, a group of determined opponents could easily have heckled
Hitler or otherwise sabotaged the meeting. Perhaps a third of the
onlookers had been Socialists or Communists only three months
previously. But not a single hostile voice was raised during the
entire ceremony. There was only universal acclamation.
Ceremony is the right word for it. It was an almost magical rite.
Hitler and Goebbels had no equals in the arranging of dedicatory
ceremonies of this sort. First there were popular songs, then great
Wagnerian hymns to grip the audience. Germany has a passion for
orchestral music, and Wagner taps the deepest and most secret vein of
the German soul, its romanticism, its inborn sense of the powerful and
the grand.
Meanwhile the hundreds of flags floated above the rostrum, redeemed
from the darkness by arrows of light.
Now Hitler strode to the rostrum. For those standing at the of the
field, his face must have appeared vanishingly small, but his words
flooded instantaneously across the acres of people in his audience.
A Latin audience would have preferred a voice less harsh, more
delicately expressive. But there was no doubt that Hitler spoke to the
psyche of the German people.
Germans have rarely had the good fortune to experience the enchantment
of the spoken word. In Germany, the tone has always been set by
ponderous speakers, more fond of elephantine pedantry than oratorical
passion. Hitler, as a speaker, was a prodigy, the greatest orator of
his century. He possessed, above all, what the ordinary speaker lacks:
a mysterious ability to project power.
A bit like a medium or sorcerer, he was seized, even transfixed, as he
addressed a crowd. It responded to Hitler's projection of power,
radiating it back, establishing, in the course of myriad exchanges, a
current that both orator and audience gave to and drew from equally.
One had to personally experience him speaking to understand this
phenomenon.
This special gift is what lay at the basis of Hitler's ability to win
over the masses. His high-voltage, lightning-like projection
transported and transformed all who experienced it. Tens of millions
were enlightened, riveted and inflamed by the fire of his anger,
irony, and passion.
By the time the cheering died away that May first evening, hundreds of
thousands of previously indifferent or even hostile workers who had
come to Tempelhof at the urging of their labor federation leaders were
now won over. They had become followers, like the SA stormtroopers
whom so many there that evening had brawled with in recent years.
The great human sea surged back from Tempelhof to Berlin. A million
and a half people had arrived in perfect order, and their departure
was just as orderly. No bottlenecks halted the cars and busses. For
those of us who witnessed it, this rigorous, yet joyful, discipline of
a contented people was in itself a source of wonder. Everything about
the May Day mass meeting had come off as smoothly clockwork.
The memory of that fabulous crowd thronging back to the center of
Berlin will never leave me. A great many were on foot. Their faces
were now different faces, as though they had been imbued with a
strange and totally new spirit. The non-Germans in the crowd were as
if stunned, and no less impressed than Hitler's fellow countrymen.
The French ambassador, André François-Poncet, noted:
The foreigners on the speaker's platform as guests of honor were not
alone in carrying away the impression of a truly beautiful and
wonderful public festival, an impression that was created by the
regime's genius for organization, by the night time display of
uniforms, by the play of lights, the rhythm of the music, by the flags
and the colorful fireworks; and they were not alone in thinking that a
breath of reconciliation and unity was passing over the Third Reich.
"It is our wish," Hitler had exclaimed, as though taking heaven as his
witness, "to get along together and to struggle together as brothers,
so that at the hour when we shall come before God, we might say to
him: 'See, Lord, we have changed. The German people are no longer a
people ashamed, a people mean and cowardly and divided. No, Lord! The
German people have become strong in their spirit, in their will, in
their perseverance, in their acceptance of any sacrifice. Lord, we
remain faithful to Thee! Bless our struggle!" (A. François-Poncet,
Souvenirs d'une ambassade à Berlin, p. 128.)
Who else could have made such an incantatory appeal without making
himself look ridiculous?
No politician had ever spoken of the rights of workers with such faith
and such force, or had laid out in such clear terms the social plan he
pledged to carry out on behalf of the common people.
The next day, the newspaper of the proletarian left, the "Union
Journal," reported on this mass meeting at which at least two thirds
-- a million -- of those attending were workers. "This May First was
victory day," the paper summed up.
With the workers thus won over, what further need was there for the
thousands of labor union locals that for so long had poisoned the
social life of the Reich and which, in any case, had accomplished
nothing of a lasting, positive nature?
Within hours of the conclusion of that "victory" meeting at the
Tempelhof field, the National Socialists were able to peacefully take
complete control of Germany's entire labor union organization,
including all its buildings, enterprises and banks. An era of Marxist
obstruction abruptly came to an end : from now on, a single national
organization would embody the collective will and interests of all of
Germany's workers.
Although he was now well on his way to creating what he pledged would
be a true "government of the people," Hitler also realized that great
obstacles remained. For one thing, the Communist rulers in Moscow had
not dropped their guard -- or their guns. Restoring the nation would
take more than words and promises, it would take solid achievements.
Only then would the enthusiasm shown by the working class at the May
First mass meeting be an expression of lasting victory.
How could Hitler solve the great problem that had defied solution by
everyone else (both in Germany and abroad): putting millions of
unemployed back to work?
What would Hitler do about wages? Working hours? Leisure time?
Housing? How would he succeed in winning, at long last, respect for
the rights and dignity of the worker?
How could men's lives be improved -- materially, morally, and, one
might even say, spiritually? How would he proceed to build a new
society fit for human beings, free of the inertia, injustices and
prejudices of the past?
"National Socialism," Hitler had declared at the outset, "has its
mission and its hour; it is not just a passing movement but a phase of
history."
The instruments of real power now in his hands -- an authoritarian
state, its provinces subordinate but nonetheless organic parts of the
national whole -- Hitler had acted quickly to shake himself free of
the last constraints of the impotent sectarian political parties.
Moreover, he was now able to direct a cohesive labor force that was no
longer split into a thousand rivulets but flowed as a single, mighty
current.
Hitler was self-confident, sure of the power of his own conviction. He
had no intention, or need, to resort to the use of physical force.
Instead, he intended to win over, one by one, the millions of Germans
who were still his adversaries, and even those who still hated him.
His conquest of Germany had taken years of careful planning and hard
work. Similarly, he would now realize his carefully worked out plans
for transforming the state and society. This meant not merely changes
in administrative or governmental structures, but far-reaching social
programs.
He had once vowed: "The hour will come when the 15 million people who
now hate us will be solidly behind us and will acclaim with us the new
revival we shall create together." Eventually he would succeed in
winning over even many of his most refractory skeptics and
adversaries.
His army of converts was already forming ranks. In a remarkable
tribute, historian Joachim Fest felt obliged to acknowledge
unequivocally:
Hitler had moved rapidly from the status of a demagogue to that of a
respected statesman. The craving to join the ranks of the victors was
spreading like an epidemic, and the shrunken minority of those who
resisted the urge were being visibly pushed into isolation -- The past
was dead. The future, it seemed, belonged to the regime, which had
more and more followers, which was being hailed everywhere and
suddenly had sound reasons on its side.
And even the prominent leftist writer Kurt Tucholsky, sensing the
direction of the inexorable tide that was sweeping Germany, vividly
commented: "You don't go railing against the ocean." (J. Fest, Hitler,
pp. 415 f.)
"Our power," Hitler was now able to declare, "no longer belongs to any
territorial fraction of the Reich, nor to any single class of the
nation, but to the people in its totality."
Much still remained to be done, however. So far, Hitler had succeeded
in clearing the way of obstacles to his program. Now the time to build
had arrived.
So many others had failed to tackle the many daunting problems that
were now his responsibility. Above all, the nation demanded a solution
to the great problem of unemployment. Could Hitler now succeed where
others had so dismally failed?…
Unemployment could be combated and eliminated only by giving industry
the financial means to start up anew, to modernize, thus creating
millions of new jobs.
The normal rate of consumption would not be restored, let alone
increased, unless one first raised the starvation-level allowances
that were making purchases of any kind a virtual impossibility. On the
contrary, production and sales would have to be restored before the
six million unemployed could once again become purchasers.
The great economic depression could be overcome only by restimulating
industry, by bringing industry into step with the times, and by
promoting the development of new products…
Nearly ten years earlier, while in his prison cell, Hitler had already
envisioned a formidable system of national highways. He had also
conceived of a small, easily affordable automobile (later known as the
"Volkswagen"), and had even suggested its outline. It should have the
shape of a June bug, he proposed. Nature itself suggested the car's
aerodynamic line.
Until Hitler came to power, a car was the privilege of the rich. It
was not financially within the reach of the middle class, much less of
the worker. The "Volkswagen," costing one-tenth as much as the
standard automobile of earlier years, would eventually become a
popular work vehicle and a source of pleasure after work: a way to
unwind and get some fresh air, and of discovering, thanks to the new
Autobahn highway network, a magnificent country that then, in its
totality, was virtually unknown to the German worker.
From the beginning, Hitler wanted this economical new car to be built
for the millions. The production works would also become one of
Germany's most important industrial centers and employers.
During his imprisonment, Hitler had also drawn up plans for the
construction of popular housing developments and majestic public
buildings.
Some of Hitler's rough sketches still survive. They include groups of
individual worker's houses with their own gardens (which were to be
built in the hundreds of thousands), a plan for a covered stadium in
Berlin, and a vast congress hall, unlike any other in the world, that
would symbolize the grandeur of the National Socialist revolution.
"A building with a monumental dome," historian Werner Maser has
explained, "the plan of which he drew while he was writing Mein Kampf,
would have a span of 46 meters, a height of 220 meters, a diameter of
250 meters, and a capacity of 150 to 190 thousand people standing. The
interior of the building would have been 17 times larger than Saint
Peter's Cathedral in Rome." (W. Maser, Hitler, Adolf, p. 100.)
"That hall," architect Albert Speer has pointed out, "was not just an
idle dream impossible of achievement."
Hitler's imagination, therefore, had long been teeming with a number
of ambitious projects, many of which would eventually be realized.
Fortunately, the needed entrepreneurs, managers and technicians were
on hand. Hitler would not have to improvise.
Historian Werner Maser, although quite anti-Hitler -- like nearly all
of his colleagues (how else would they have found publishers?) - has
acknowledged: "From the beginning of his political career, he [Hitler]
took great pains systematically to arrange for whatever he was going
to need in order to carry out his plans."
"Hitler was distinguished," Maser has also noted, "by an exceptional
intelligence in technical matters." Hitler had acquired his knowledge
by devoting many thousands of hours to technical studies from the time
of his youth.
"Hitler read an endless number of books," explained Dr. Schacht. "He
acquired a very considerable amount of knowledge and made masterful
use of it in discussions and speeches. In certain respects he was a
man endowed with genius. He had ideas that no one else would ever have
thought of, ideas that resulted in the ending of great difficulties,
sometimes by measures of an astonishing simplicity or brutality."
Many billions of marks would be needed to begin the great
socioeconomic revolution that was destined, as Hitler had always
intended, to make Germany once again the European leader in industry
and commerce and, most urgently, to rapidly wipe out unemployment in
Germany. Where would the money be found? And, once obtained, how would
these funds be allotted to ensure maximum effectiveness in their
investment?
Hitler was by no means a dictator in matters of the economy. He was,
rather, a stimulator. His government would undertake to do only that
which private initiative could not.
Hitler believed in the importance of individual creative imagination
and dynamism, in the need for every person of superior ability and
skill to assume responsibility.
He also recognized the importance of the profit motive. Deprived of
the prospect of having his efforts rewarded, the person of ability
often refrains from running risks. The economic failure of Communism
has demonstrated this. In the absence of personal incentives and the
opportunity for real individual initiative, the Soviet "command
economy" lagged in all but a few fields, its industry years behind its
competitors.
State monopoly tolls the death of all initiative, and hence of all
progress.
For all men selflessly to pool their wealth might be marvelous, but it
is also contrary to human nature. Nearly every man desires that his
labor shall improve his own condition and that of his family, and
feels that his brain, creative imagination, and persistence well
deserve their reward.
Because it disregarded these basic psychological truths, Soviet
Communism, right to the end, wallowed in economic mediocrity, in spite
of its immense reservoir of manpower, its technical expertise, and its
abundant natural resources, all of which ought to have made it an
industrial and technological giant.
Hitler was always adverse to the idea of state management of the
economy. He believed in elites. "A single idea of genius," he used to
say, "has more value than a lifetime of conscientious labor in an
office."
Just as there are political or intellectual elites, so also is there
an industrial elite. A manufacturer of great ability should not be
restrained, hunted down by the internal revenue services like a
criminal, or be unappreciated by the public. On the contrary, it is
important for economic development that the industrialist be
encouraged morally and materially, as much as possible.
The most fruitful initiatives Hitler would take from 1933 on would be
on behalf of private enterprise. He would keep an eye on the quality
of their directors, to be sure, and would shunt aside incompetents,
quite a few of them at times, but he also supported the best ones,
those with the keenest minds, the most imaginative and bold, even if
their political opinions did not always agree with his own.
"There is no question," he stated very firmly, "of dismissing a
factory owner or director under the pretext that he is not a National
Socialist."
Hitler would exercise the same moderation, the same pragmatism, in the
administrative as well as in the industrial sphere.
What he demanded of his co-workers, above all, was competence and
effectiveness. The great majority of Third Reich functionaries - some
80 percent -- were never enrolled in the National Socialist party.
Several of Hitler's ministers, like Konstantin von Neurath and
Schwerin von Krosigk, and ambassadors to such key posts as Prague,
Vienna and Ankara, were not members of the party. But they were
capable…
"Herr Schacht," he said, "we are assuredly in agreement on one point:
no other single task facing the government at the moment can be so
truly urgent as conquering unemployment. That will take a lot of
money. Do you see any possibility of finding it apart from the
Reichsbank?" And after a moment, he added: "How much would it take? Do
you have any idea?"
Wishing to win Schacht over by appealing to his ambition, Hitler
smiled and then asked: "Would you be willing to once again assume
presidency of the Reichsbank?" Schacht let on that he had a
sentimental concern for Dr. Luther, and did not want to hurt the
incumbent's feelings. Playing along, Hitler reassured Schacht that he
would find an appropriate new job elsewhere for Luther.
Schacht then pricked up his ears, drew himself up, and focused his big
round eyes on Hitler: "Well, if that's the way it is," he said, "then
I am ready to assume the presidency of the Reichsbank again."
His great dream was being realized. Schacht had been president of the
Reichsbank between 1923 and 1930, but had been dismissed. Now he would
return in triumph. He felt vindicated. Within weeks, the ingenious
solution to Germany's pressing financial woes would burst forth from
his inventive brain.
"It was necessary," Schacht later explained, "to discover a method
that would avoid inflating the investment holdings of the Reichsbank
immoderately and consequently increasing the circulation of money
excessively."
"Therefore," he went on, "I had to find some means of getting the sums
that were lying idle in pockets and banks, without meaning for it to
be long term and without having it undergo the risk of depreciation.
That was the reasoning behind the Mefo bonds."
What were these "Mefo" bonds? Mefo was a contraction of the
Metallurgische Forschungs-GmbH (Metallurgic Research Company). With a
startup capitalization of one billion marks - which Hitler and Schacht
arranged to be provided by the four giant firms of Krupp, Siemens,
Deutsche Werke and Rheinmetall -- this company would eventually
promote many billions of marks worth of investment.
Enterprises, old and new, that filled government orders had only to
draw drafts on Mefo for the amounts due. These drafts, when presented
to the Reichsbank, were immediately convertible into cash. The success
of the Mefo program depended entirely on public acceptance of the Mefo
bonds. But the wily Schacht had planned well. Since Mefo bonds were
short-term bonds that could be cashed in at any time, there was no
real risk in buying, accepting or holding them. They bore an interest
of four percent -- a quite acceptable figure in those days -- whereas
banknotes hidden under the mattress earned nothing. The public quickly
took all this into consideration and eagerly accepted the bonds.
While the Reichsbank was able to offer from its own treasury a
relatively insignificant 150 million marks for Hitler's war on
unemployment, in just four years the German public subscribed more
than 12 billion marks worth of Mefo bonds!
These billions, the fruit of the combined imagination, ingenuity and
astuteness of Hitler and Schacht, swept away the temporizing and
fearful conservatism of the bankers. Over the next four years, this
enormous credit reserve would make miracles possible.
Soon after the initial billion-mark credit, Schacht added another
credit of 600 million in order to finance the start of Hitler's grand
program for highway construction. This Autobahn program provided
immediate work for 100,000 of the unemployed, and eventually assured
wages for some 500,000 workers.
As large as this outlay was, it was immediately offset by a
corresponding cutback in government unemployment benefits, and by the
additional tax revenue generated as a result of the increase in living
standard (sping) of the newly employed.
Within a few months, thanks to the credit created by the Mefo bonds,
private industry once again dared to assume risks and expand. Germans
returned to work by the hundreds of thousands.
Was Schacht solely responsible for this extraordinary turnaround?
After the war, he answered for himself as a Nuremberg Tribunal
defendant, where he was charged with having made possible the Reich's
economic revival:
I don't think Hitler was reduced to begging for my help. If I had not
served him, he would have found other methods, other means. He was not
a man to give up. It's easy enough for you to say, Mr. Prosecutor,
that I should have watched Hitler die and not lifted a finger. But the
entire working class would have died with him!
Even Marxists recognized Hitler's success, and their own failure. In
the June 1934 issue of the Zeitschrift für Sozialismus, the journal of
the German Social Democrats in exile, this acknowledgement appears:
Faced with the despair of proletarians reduced to joblessness, of
young people with diplomas and no future, of the middle classes of
merchants and artisans condemned to bankruptcy, and of farmers
terribly threatened by the collapse in agricultural prices, we all
failed. We weren't capable of offering the masses anything but
speeches about the glory of socialism.
VI. The Social Revolution
Hitler's tremendous social achievement in putting Germany's six
million unemployed back to work is seldom acknowledged today. Although
it was much more than a transitory achievement, "democratic"
historians routinely dismiss it in just a few lines. Since 1945, not a
single objective scholarly study has been devoted to this highly
significant, indeed unprecedented, historical phenomenon.
Similarly neglected is the body of sweeping reforms that dramatically
changed the condition of the worker in Germany. Factories were
transformed from gloomy caverns to spacious and healthy work centers,
with natural lighting, surrounded by gardens and playing fields.
Hundreds of thousands of attractive houses were built for working
class families. A policy of several weeks of paid vacation was
introduced, along with week and holiday trips by land and sea. A
wide-ranging program of physical and cultural education for young
workers was established, with the world's best system of technical
training. The Third Reich's social security and workers' health
insurance system was the world's most modern and complete.
This remarkable record of social achievement is routinely hushed up
today because it is embarrasses those who uphold the orthodox view of
the Third Reich. Otherwise, readers might begin to think that perhaps
Hitler was the greatest social builder of the twentieth century…
Nevertheless, restoring work and bread to millions of unemployed who
had been living in misery for years; restructuring industrial life;
conceiving and establishing an organization for the effective defense
and betterment of the nation's millions of wage earners; creating a
new bureaucracy and judicial system that guaranteed the civic rights
of each member of the national community, while simultaneously holding
each person to his or her responsibilities as a German citizen: this
organic body of reforms was part of a single, comprehensive plan,
which Hitler had conceived and worked out years earlier.
Without this plan, the nation would have collapsed into anarchy.
All-encompassing, this program included broad industrial recovery as
well as detailed attention to even construction of comfortable inns
along the new highway network.
It took several years for a stable social structure to emerge from the
French Revolution. The Soviets needed even more time: five years after
the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, hundreds of thousands of Russians
were still dying of hunger and disease. In Germany, by contrast, the
great machinery was in motion within months, with organization and
accomplishment quickly meshing together…
Hitler personally dug the first spadeful of earth for the first
Autobahn highway, linking Frankfurt-am-Main with Darmstadt. For the
occasion, he brought along Dr. Schacht, the man whose visionary credit
wizardry had made the project possible. The official procession moved
ahead, three cars abreast in front, then six across, spanning the
entire width of the autobahn…
Hitler's plan to build thousands of low-cost homes also demanded a
vast mobilization of manpower. He had envisioned housing that would be
attractive, cozy, and affordable for millions of ordinary German
working-class families. He had no intention of continuing to tolerate,
as his predecessors had, cramped, ugly "rabbit warren" housing for the
German people. The great barracks-like housing projects on the
outskirts of factory towns, packed with cramped families, disgusted
him.
The greater part of the houses he would build were single story,
detached dwellings, with small yards where children could romp, wives
could grow vegetable and flower gardens, while the bread-winners could
read their newspapers in peace after the day's work. These
single-family homes were built to conform to the architectural styles
of the various German regions, retaining as much as possible the
charming local variants.
Wherever there was no practical alternative to building large
apartment complexes, Hitler saw to it that the individual apartments
were spacious, airy and enhanced by surrounding lawns and gardens
where the children could play safely.
The new housing was, of course, built in conformity with the highest
standards of public health, a consideration notoriously neglected in
previous working-class projects.
Generous loans, amortizable in ten years, were granted to newly
married couples so they could buy their own homes. At the birth of
each child, a fourth of the debt was cancelled. Four children, at the
normal rate of a new arrival every two and a half years, sufficed to
cancel the entire loan debt.
Once, during a conversation with Hitler, I expressed my astonishment
at this policy. "But then, you never get back the total amount of your
loans?," I asked. "How so?" he replied, smiling. "Over a period of ten
years, a family with four children brings in much more than our loans,
through the taxes levied on a hundred different items of consumption."
As it happened, tax revenues increased every year, in proportion to
the rise in expenditures for Hitler's social programs. In just a few
years, revenue from taxes tripled. Hitler's Germany never experienced
a financial crisis.
To stimulate the moribund economy demanded the nerve, which Hitler
had, to invest money that the government didn't yet have, rather than
passively waiting -- in accordance with "sound" financial principles
-- for the economy to revive by itself.
Today, our whole era is dying economically because we have succumbed
to fearful hesitation. Enrichment follows investment, not the other
way around…
Even before the year 1933 had ended, Hitler had succeeded in building
202,119 housing units. Within four years he would provide the German
people with nearly a million and a half (1,458,128) new dwellings!
Moreover, workers would no longer be exploited as they had been. A
month's rent for a worker could not exceed 26 marks, or about an
eighth of the average wage then. Employees with more substantial
salaries paid monthly rents of up to 45 marks maximum.
Equally effective social measures were taken in behalf of farmers, who
had the lowest incomes. In 1933 alone 17,611 new farm houses were
built, each of them surrounded by a parcel of land one thousand square
meters in size. Within three years, Hitler would build 91,000 such
farmhouses…
Everywhere industry was hiring again, with some firms -- like Krupp,
IG Farben and the large automobile manufacturers -- taking on new
workers on a very large scale. As the country became more prosperous,
car sales increased by more than 80,000 units in 1933 alone.
Employment in the auto industry doubled. Germany was gearing up for
full production, with private industry leading the way.
The new government lavished every assistance on the private sector,
the chief factor in employment as well as production. Hitler almost
immediately made available 500 million marks in credits to private
business.
This start-up assistance given to German industry would repay itself
many times over. Soon enough, another two billion marks would be
loaned to the most enterprising companies. Nearly half would go into
new wages and salaries, saving the treasury an estimated three hundred
million marks in unemployment benefits. Added to the hundreds of
millions in tax receipts spurred by the business recovery, the state
quickly recovered its investment, and more.
Hitler's entire economic policy would be based on the following
equation: risk large sums to undertake great public works and to spur
the renewal and modernization of industry, then later recover the
billions invested through invisible and painless tax revenues. It
didn't take long for Germany to see the results of Hitler's recovery
formula.
Economic recovery, as important as it was, nevertheless wasn't
Hitler's only objective. As he strived to restore full employment,
Hitler never lost sight of his goal of creating a organization
powerful enough to stand up to capitalist owners and managers, who had
shown little concern for the health and welfare of the entire national
community.
Hitler would impose on everyone -- powerful boss and lowly wage earner
alike -- his own concept of the organic social community. Only the
loyal collaboration of everyone could assure the prosperity of all
classes and social groups.
Consistent with their doctrine, Germany's Marxist leaders had set
class against class, helping to bring the country to the brink of
economic collapse. Deserting their Marxist unions and political
parties in droves, most workers had come to realize that strikes and
grievances their leaders incited only crippled production, and thus
the workers as well.
By the of 1932, in any case, the discredited labor unions were
drowning in massive debt that realistically could never be repaid.
Some of the less scrupulous union officials, sensing the oncoming
catastrophe, had begun stealing hundreds of thousands of marks from
the workers they represented. The Marxist leaders had failed:
socially, financially and morally.
Every joint human activity requires a leader. The head of a factory or
business is also the person naturally responsible for it. He oversees
every aspect of production and work. In Hitler's Germany, the head of
a business had to be both a capable director and a person concerned
for the social justice and welfare of his employees. Under Hitler,
many owners and managers who had proven to be unjust, incompetent or
recalcitrant lost their jobs, or their businesses.
A considerable number of legal guarantees protected the worker against
any abuse of authority at the workplace. Their purpose was to insure
that the rights of workers were respected, and that workers were
treated as worthy collaborators, not just as animated tools. Each
industrialist was legally obliged to collaborate with worker delegates
in drafting shop regulations that were not imposed from above but
instead adapted to each business enterprise and its particular working
conditions. These regulations had to specify "the length of the
working day, the time and method of paying wages, and the safety
rules, and to be posted throughout the factory," within easy access of
both the worker whose interests might be angered and the owner or
manager whose orders might be subverted.
The thousands of different, individual versions of such regulations
served to create a healthy rivalry, with every factory group vying to
outdo the others in efficiency and justice.
One of the first reforms to benefit German workers was the
establishment of paid vacations. In France, the leftist Popular Front
government would noisily claim, in 1936, to have originated legally
mandated paid vacations -- and stingy ones at that, only one week per
year. But it was actually Hitler who first established them, in 1933
-- and they were two or three times more generous.
Under Hitler, every factory employee had the legal right to paid
vacation. Previously, paid vacations had not normally exceed four or
five days, and nearly half of the younger workers had no vacation time
at all. If anything, Hitler favored younger workers; the youngest
workers received more generous vacations. This was humane and made
sense: a young person has more need of rest and fresh air to develop
his maturing strength and vigor. Thus, they enjoyed a full 18 days of
paid vacation per year.
Today, more than half a century later, these figures have been
surpassed, but in 1933 they far exceeded European norms.
The standard vacation was twelve days. Then, from the age of 25 on, it
went up to 18 days. After ten years with the company, workers got a
still longer vacation: 21 days, or three times what the French
socialists would grant the workers of their country in 1936.
Hitler introduced the standard forty-hour work week in Europe. As for
overtime work, it was now compensated, as nowhere else in the
continent at the time, at an increased pay rate. And with the
eight-hour work day now the norm, overtime work became more readily
available.
In another innovation, work breaks were made longer: two hours each
day, allowing greater opportunity for workers to relax, and to make
use of the playing fields that large industries were now required to
provide.
Whereas a worker's right to job security had been virtually
non-existent, now an employee could no longer be dismissed at the sole
discretion of the employer. Hitler saw to it that workers' rights were
spelled out and enforced. Henceforth, an employer had to give four
weeks notice before firing an employee, who then had up to two months
to appeal the dismissal. Dismissals could also be annulled by the
"Courts of Social Honor" (Ehrengerichte).
This Court was one of three great institutions that were established
to protect German workers. The others were the "Labor Commissions" and
the "Council of Trust."
The "Council of Trust" (Vertrauensrat) was responsible for
establishing and developing a real spirit of community between
management and labor. "In every business enterprise," the 1934 "Labor
Charter" law stipulated, "the employer and head of the enterprise
(Führer), the employees and workers, personnel of the enterprise,
shall work jointly toward the goal of the enterprise and the common
good of the nation."
No longer would either be exploited by the other -- neither the worker
by arbitrary whim of the employer, nor the employer through the
blackmail of strikes for political ends.
Article 35 of the "Labor Charter" law stated: "Every member of an
enterprise community shall assume the responsibility required by his
position in said common enterprise." In short, each enterprise would
be headed by a dynamic executive, charged with a sense of the greater
community -- no longer a selfish capitalist with unconditional,
arbitrary power.
"The interest of the community may require that an incapable or
unworthy employer be relieved of his duties," the "Labor Charter"
stipulated. The employer was no longer unassailable, an all-powerful
boss with the last word on hiring and firing his staff. He, too, would
be subject to the workplace regulations, which he was now obliged to
respect no less than the least of his employees. The law conferred the
honor and responsibility of authority on the employer only insofar as
he merited it…
In the Third Reich, the worker knew that "exploitation of his physical
strength in bad faith or in violation of his honor" was no longer
tolerated. He had obligations to the community, but he shared these
obligations with every other member of the enterprise, from the chief
executive to the messenger boy. Finally, the German worker had clearly
defined social rights, which were arbitrated and enforced by
independent agencies. And while all this had been achieved in an
atmosphere of justice and moderation, it nevertheless constituted a
genuine social revolution…
Factories and shops, large and small, were altered or transformed to
conform to the strictest standards of cleanliness and hygiene:
interiors, so often dark and stifling, were opened up to light;
playing fields were constructed; rest areas where workers could unbend
during break, were set aside; employee cafeterias and respectable
locker rooms were opened. The larger industrial establishments, in
addition to providing the normally required conventional sports
facilities, were obliged to put in swimming pools!
In just three years, these achievements would reach unimagined
heights: more than two thousand factories refitted and beautified;
23,000 work premises modernized; 800 buildings designed exclusively
for meetings; 1,200 playing fields; 13,000 sanitary facilities; 17,000
cafeterias.
To assure the healthy development of the working class, physical
education courses were instituted for younger workers. Some 8,000 were
eventually organized. Technical training was equally emphasized.
Hundreds of work schools, and thousands of technical courses were
created. There were examinations for professional competence, and
competitions in which generous prizes were awarded to outstanding
masters of their craft.
Eight hundred departmental inspectors and 17,300 local inspectors were
employed to conscientiously monitor and promote these improvements.
To provide affordable vacations for German workers on a hitherto
unprecedented scale, Hitler established the "Strength through Joy"
program. As a result, hundreds of thousands of workers were now able
to make relaxing vacation trips on land and sea each summer.
Magnificent cruise ships were built, and special trains brought
vacationers to the mountains and the seashore. In just a few years,
Germany's working-class tourists would log a distance equivalent to 54
times the circumference of the earth! And thanks to generous state
subsidies, the cost to workers of these popular vacation excursions
was nearly insignificant…
Was Hitler's transformation of the lot of the working class
authoritarian? Without a doubt. And yet, for a people that had grown
sick and tired of anarchy, this new authoritarianism wasn't regarded
as an imposition. In fact, people have always accepted a strong man's
leadership.
In any case, there is no doubt that the attitude of the German working
class, which was still two-thirds non-Nazi at the start of 1933, soon
changed completely. As Belgian author Marcel Laloire noted at the
time:
When you make your way through the cities of Germany and go into the
working-class districts, go through the factories, the construction
yards, you are astonished to find so many workers on the job sporting
the Hitler insignia, to see so many flags with the swastika, black on
a bright red background, in the most densely populated districts.
Hitler's "German Labor Front" (Deutsche Arbeitsfront), which
incorporated all workers and employers, was for the most part eagerly
accepted. The steel spades of the sturdy young lads of the "National
Labor Service" (Reichsarbeitsdienst) could also be seen gleaming along
the highways.
Hitler created the National Labor Service not only to alleviate
unemployment, but to bring together, in absolute equality, and in the
same uniform, both the sons of millionaires and the sons of the
poorest families for several months' common labor and living.
All performed the same work, all were subject to the same discipline;
they enjoyed the same pleasures and benefited from the same physical
and moral development. At the same construction sites and in the same
barracks, Germans became conscious of what they had in common, grew to
understand one another, and discarded their old prejudices of class
and caste.
After a hitch in the National Labor Service, a young worker knew that
the rich man's son was not a pampered monster, while the young lad of
wealthy family knew that the worker's son had no less honor than a
nobleman or an heir to riches; they had lived and worked together as
comrades. Social hatred was vanishing, and a socially united people
was being born.
Hitler could go into factories -- something few men of the so-called
Right would have risked in the past -- and hold forth to crowds of
workers, at times in the thousands, as at the huge Siemens works. "In
contrast to the von Papens and other country gentlemen," he might tell
them, "in my youth I was a worker like you. And in my heart of hearts,
I have remained what I was then."
During his twelve years in power, no untoward incident ever occurred
at any factory he visited. Hitler was at home when he went among the
people, and he was received like a member of the family returning home
after making a success of himself.
But the Chancellor of the Third Reich wanted more than popular
approval. He wanted that approval to be freely, widely, and repeatedly
expressed by popular vote. No people was ever be more frequently asked
for their electoral opinion than the German people of that era -- five
times in five years.
For Hitler, it was not enough that the people voted from time to time,
as in the previous democratic system. In those days, voters were
rarely appealed to, and when they expressed an opinion, they were
often ill-informed and apathetic. After an election, years might go
by, during which the politicians were heedless and inaccessible, the
electorate powerless to vote on their actions.
To enable the German public to express its opinion on the occasion of
important events of social, national, or international significance,
Hitler provided the people a new means of approving or rejecting his
own actions as Chancellor: the plebiscite.
Hitler recognized the right of all the people, men and women alike, to
vote by secret ballot: to voice their opinion of his policies, or to
make a well-grounded judgment on this or that great decision in
domestic or foreign affairs. Rather than a formalistic routine,
democracy became a vital, active program of supervision that was
renewed annually.
The articles of the "Plebiscite Law" were brief and clear:
1. The Reich government may ask the people whether or not it
approves of a measure planned by or taken by the government. This may
also apply to a law.
2. A measure submitted to plebiscite will be considered as
established when it receives a simple majority of the votes. This will
apply as well to a law modifying the Constitution.
3. If the people approves the measure in question, it will be
applied in conformity with article III of the Law for Overcoming the
Distress of the People and the Reich.
The Reich Interior Ministry is authorized to take all legal and
administrative measures necessary to carry out this law.
Berlin, July 14, 1933.
Hitler, Frick…
From the first months of 1933, his accomplishments were public fact,
for all to see. Before end of the year, unemployment in Germany had
fallen from more than 6,000,000 to 3,374,000. Thus, 2,627,000 jobs had
been created since the previous February, when Hitler began his
"gigantic task!" A simple question: Who in Europe ever achieved
similar results in so short a time?…
In his detailed and critical biography of Hitler, Joachim Fest limited
his treatment of Hitler's extraordinary social achievements in 1933 to
a few paragraphs. All the same, Fest did not refrain from
acknowledging:
The regime insisted that it was not the rule of one social class above
all others, and by granting everyone opportunities to rise, it in fact
demonstrated class neutrality -- These measures did indeed break
through the old, petrified social structures. They tangibly improved
the material condition of much of the population. (J. Fest, Hitler,
pp. 434-435.)
Not without reason were the swastika banners waving proudly throughout
the working-class districts where, just a year ago, they had been
unceremoniously torn down.
http://www.nationalvanguard.org http://www.natvan.com
http://www.thebirdman.org http://www.RealNews247.com
ib011...@blueyonder.co.uk
A lot of pro nazi crap.
Look at the state of Germany in May 1945,that was the end result of the
nazi regime's crazy policies.
Hitler NEVER got everybody in Germany working,even at the height of
the war lots of lazy corrupt nazi party officials avoided war service
and hung around on the home front,women were never called up to the
same extent as in Britain.
Slave labourers were treated badly but did not produce well for their
masters.
As soon as the SS AND Gestapo were not in power the German people put
themselves under the authority of who ever was in control of their part
of the country.
The Werewolves never turned up for the final fight,everybody except
Goering said "I was never a nazi".
Leon Degrelle was a pro nazi Belgian who had to hide in fascist Spain
after the war to stop his fellow countrymen from executing him.
Kenneth McVay OBC
Mr. Vangel forgot to mention that he thinks murder is a dandy way to
deal with "problem" children.
Here is a quote from Alex Vangel:
"I said I agreed with the Bible because it is against the
homosexual perverts, the feminists, and the Jews. This is
what it says about delinquents:
"Deuteronomy 21:18-21
"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will
not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother,
and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto
them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him,
and bring him out unto the elders of the city, and unto the
gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his
city, This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not
obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the
men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die:
so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel
shall hear, and fear." (UseNet alt.revisionism. Subject:
"Re: More crap from the VangelBot," 31 Jan. 2001. Message-ID:
3c589...@spamkiller.newsgroups.com)
Note that this quote from Mr. Vangel says nothing about
"homosexual perverts, the feminists, and the Jews," as he
suggested. Yet he cites it to justify the murder of children
whose only crime was that of being found "unruly" by Adolf
Hitler's murdering thugs.
For information about Mr. Vangel's hate group, see
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/christian-identity
--
"ALL FACTS IN THE COMPLAINT AND ADMISSIONS ARE DEEMED ADMITTED."
http://nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/b/bradbury.scott/Edeiken-v-Bradbury-A1.01
"ALL FACTS IN THE COMPLAINT AND ADMISSIONS ARE DEEMED ADMITTED."
http://nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/b/bradbury.scott/Edeiken-v-Bradbury-A1.02
Topaz
<ib011...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>complete rubbish.
>A lot of pro nazi crap.
>Look at the state of Germany in May 1945,that was the end result of the
>nazi regime's crazy policies.
No, that was the result of the Communists and other Jewish
controlled countries.
An article by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, January 21, 1945
The Creators of the World's Misfortunes
by Joseph Goebbels
One could not understand this war if one did not always keep in mind
the fact that International Jewry stands behind all the unnatural
forces that our united enemies use to attempt to deceive the world and
keep humanity in the dark. It is so to speak the mortar that holds the
enemy coalition firmly together, despite its differences of class,
ideology and interests. Capitalism and Bolshevism have the same Jewish
roots, two branches of the same tree that in the end bear the same
fruit. International Jewry uses both in its own way to suppress the
nations and keep them in its service. How deep its influence on public
opinion is in all the enemy countries and many neutral nations is
plain to see that it may never be named in newspapers, speeches and
radio broadcasts. There is a law in the Soviet Union that punishes
anti-Semitism - or in plain English, public education about the Jewish
Question - by death. The expert in these matters is in no way
surprised that a leading spokesman for the Kremlin said over the New
Year that the Soviet Union would not rest until this law was valid
throughout the world. In other words, the enemy clearly says that its
goal in this war is to put the total domination of Jewry over the
nations of the earth under legal protection, and to threaten even a
discussion of this shameful attempt with the death penalty.
It is little different in the plutocratic nations. There the struggle
against the impudent usurpation of the Jewish race is not punished by
the executioner, rather by death through economic and social boycott
and by intellectual terror. This has the same effect in the end.
Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt were made by the Jewry. They enjoy its
full support and reward it with their full protection. They present
themselves in their speeches as upright men of civil courage, yet one
never hears even a word against the Jews, even though there is growing
hatred among their people as a result of this war, a hatred that is
fully justified. Jewry is a tabu theme in the enemy countries. It
stands outside every legal boundary and thus becomes the tyrant of its
host peoples. While enemy soldiers fight, bleed and die at the front,
the Jews make money from their sacrifice on the stock exchanges and
black markets. If a brave man dares to step forward and accuse the
Jews of their crimes, he will be mocked and spat on by their press,
chased from his job or otherwise impoverished, and be brought into
public contempt. Even that is apparently not enough for the Jews. They
want to bring Soviet conditions to the whole world: to give Jewry
absolute power and freedom from prosecution. He who objects or even
debates the matter gets a bullet in the back of his head or an axe
through his neck. There is no worse tyranny than this. This is the
epitome of the public and secret disgrace that Jewry inflicts on the
nations that deserve freedom.
That is all long behind us. Yet it still threatens us in the distance.
We have, it is true, entirely broken the power of the Jews in the
Reich, but they have not given up. They did not rest until they had
mobilized the whole world against us. Since they could no longer
conquer Germany from within, they want to try it from without. Every
Russian, English and American soldier is a mercenary of this world
conspiracy of a parasitic race. Given the current state of the war,
who could still believe that they are fighting and dying at the front
for the national interests of their countries! The nations want a
decent peace, but the Jews are against it. They know that the end of
the war would mean the dawning knowledge of humanity of the unhealthy
role that International Jewry played in preparing for and carrying out
this war. They fear being unmasked, which has in fact become
unavoidable and must inevitably come, just as the day follows the
night. That explains their raging bursts of hatred against us, which
are only the result of their fear and their feelings of inferiority.
They are too eager, and that makes them suspicious. International
Jewry will not succeed in turning this war to its advantage. Things
are already too far along. The hour will come in which all the peoples
of the earth will awake, and the Jews will be the victims. Here too
things can only go so far.
It is an old, often-used method of International Jewry to discredit
education and knowledge about its corrupting nature and drives,
thereby depending on the weaknesses of those people who easily confuse
cause with effect. The Jews are also masters at manipulating public
opinion, which they dominate through their network of news agencies
and press concerns that reaches throughout the world. The pitiful
illusion of a free press is one of the methods they use to stupefy the
publics of enemy lands. If the enemy press is as free as it pretends
to be, let it take an open position, for or against, on the Jewish
Question. It will not do that because it cannot and may not do so. The
Jews love to mock and criticize everything except themselves, although
everyone knows that they are most in need of public criticism. This is
where the so-called freedom of the press in enemy countries ends.
Newspapers, parliaments, statesmen and church leaders must be silent
here. Crimes and vices, filth and corruption are covered by the
blanket of love. The Jews have total control of public opinion in
enemy countries, and he who has that is also master of all of public
life. Only the nations that have to accept such a condition are to be
pitied. The Jews mislead them into believing that the German nation is
backward. Our alleged backwardness is actually proof of our progress.
We have recognized the Jews as a national and international danger,
and from this knowledge have drawn compelling conclusions. This German
knowledge will become the knowledge of he world at the end of this
war. We think it our primary duty to do everything in our power to
make that happen.
Humanity would sink into eternal darkness, it would fall into a dull
and primitive state, were the Jews to win this war. They are the
incarnation of that destructive force that in these terrible years has
guided the enemy war leadership in a fight against all that we see as
noble, beautiful and worth keeping. For that reason alone the Jews
hate it. They despite our culture and learning, which they perceive as
towering over their nomadic worldview. They fear our economic and
social standards, which leave no room for their parasitic drives, They
are the enemy of our domestic order, which has excluded their
anarchistic tendencies. Germany is the first nation in the world that
is entirely free of the Jews. That is the prime cause of its political
and economic balance. Since their expulsion from the German national
body has made it impossible for them to shake this balance from
within, they lead the nations they have deceived in battle against us
from without. It is fine with them, in fact it is part of their plan,
that Europe in the process will lose a large part of its cultural
values. The Jews had no part in their creation. They do not understand
them. A deep racial instinct tells them that since these heights of
human creative activity are forever out of their reach, they must
attack them today with hatred. The day is not distant when the nations
of Europe, yes, even those of the whole world, will shout: The Jews
are guilty for all our misfortunes! They must be called to account,
and soon and thoroughly!
International Jewry is ready with its alibi. Just as during the great
reckoning in Germany, they will attempt to look innocent and say that
one needs a scapegoat, and they are it. But that will no longer help
them, just as it did not help them during the National Socialist
revolution, The proof of their historical guilt, in details large and
small, is so plain that they can no longer be denied even with the
most clever lies and hypocrisy.
Who is it that drives the Russians, the English and the Americans into
battle and sacrifices huge numbers of human lives in a hopeless
struggle against the German people? The Jews! Their newspapers and
radio broadcasts spread the songs of war while the nations they have
deceived are led to the slaughter. Who is it that invents new plans of
hatred and destruction against us every day, making this war into a
dreadful case of self-mutilation and self-destruction of European life
and its economy, education and culture? The Jews! Who devised the
unnatural marriage between England and the USA on one side and
Bolshevism on the other, building it up and jealously ensuring its
continuance? Who covers the most perverse political situations with
cynical hypocrisy from a trembling fear that a new way could lead the
nations to realize the true causes of this terrible human catastrophe?
The Jews, only the Jews! They are named Morgenthau and Lehmann and
stand behind Roosevelt as a so-called brain trust. They are named
Mechett and Sasoon and serve as Churchill's money bags and order
givers. They are named Kaganovitsch and Ehrenburg and are Stalin's
pacesetters and intellectual spokesmen. Wherever you look, you see
Jews. They march as political commisars behind the Red army and
organize murder and terror in the areas conquered by the Soviets. They
sit behind the lines in Paris and Brussels, Rome and Athens, and
fashion their reins from the skin of the unhappy nations that have
fallen under their power.
That is the truth. It can no longer be denied, particularly since in
their drunken joy of power and victory the Jews have forgotten their
ordinarily so carefully maintained reserve and now stand in the
spotlight of public opinion. They no longer bother, apparently
believing that it is no longer necessary, that their hour has come.
And this is their mistake, which they always make when think
themselves near their great goal of anonymous world domination.
Thoughout the history of the nations, whenever this tragic situation
developed, a good providence saw to it that the Jews themselves became
the grave diggers of their own hopes. They did not destroy the healthy
peoples, rather the sting of their parasitic effects brought the
realization of the looming danger to the forefront and led to the
greatest sacrifices to overcome it. At a certain point, they become
that power that always wants evil but creates good. It will be that
way this time too.
The fact that the German nation was the first on earth to recognize
this danger and expel it from its organism is proof of its healthy
instincts. It therefore became the leader of a world struggle whose
results will determine of fate and the future of International Jewry.
We view with complete calm the wild Old Testament tirades of hatred
and revenge of Jews throughout the world against us. They are only
proof that we are on the right path. They cannot unsettle us. We gaze
on them with sovereign contempt and remember that these outbursts of
hate and revenge were everyday events for us in Germany until that
fateful day for International Jewry, 30 January 1933, when the world
revolution against the Jews that threateend not only Germany, but all
the other nations, began.
It will not cease before it has reached its goal. The truth can not be
stopped by lies or force. It will get through. The Jews will meet
their Cannae at the end of this war. Not Europe, rather they will
lose. They may laugh at this prophecy today, but they have laughed so
often in the past, and almost as often they stopped laughing sooner or
later. Not only do we know precisely what we want, we also know
precisely what we do not want. The deceived nations of he Earth may
still lack the knowledge they need, but we will bring it to them. How
will the Jews stop that in the long run? They believe their power
rests on sure foundations, but it stands on feet of clay. One hard
blow and it will collapse, burying the creators of the misfortunes of
the world in its ruins.
>Hitler NEVER got everybody in Germany working,even at the height of
He got everyone working and the Jews control your media and your
mind.
There was a book in ordinary bookstores called "An Empire of
Their Own". It was a pro-Jewish book but it showed that the Jews ran
Hollywood.
Here are some quotes from a magazine for Jews called "Moment".
It is subtitled "The Jewish magazine for the 90's" These quotes are
from the Aug 1996 edition after the Headline "Jews Run Hollywood - So
What?":
"It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish
power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most
influential production executives at each of the major movie studios
will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names."
"the famous Disney organization, which was founded by Walt
Disney, a gentile Midwesterner who allegedly harbored anti-Semetic
attitudes, now features Jewish personnel in nearly all its most
powerful positions."
The head of Walt Disney studios is now the Jew Michael Eisner.
On studios that were bought out by the Japanese the magazine says:
"When Mitsushita took over MCA-Universal, they did nothing to
undermine the unquestioned authority of Universal's legendary - and
all Jewish - management triad of Lew Wasserman, Sid Scheinberg, and
Tom Pollack."
Here are some quotes from the paper "Jews Control the Media
and Rule America"
It may be rather out of date but it still explains why things are the
way they are.
"American Broadcasting Companies (ABC), Coumbia Broadcasting
System (CBS), and National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Each of these
three has been under the absolute control of a single man over a long
enough period of time--ranging from 32 to 55 years--for him to staff
the corporation at every level with officers of his choosing and then
to place his imprint indelibly upon it. In each case that man has been
a Jew.
"Until 1985, when ABC merged with Capital Cities
Communications, Inc...the chairman of the board of directors and chief
executive officer (CEO) of the network was Leonard Harry Goldenson, a
Jew...In an interview in the April 1, 1985 issue of Newsweek,
Goldenson boasted 'I built this company (ABC) from scratch.'"
"CBS was under the domination of William S. Paley for more than
half a century. The son of immigrant Jews from Russia..."
"There has been no move by top G-E management to change the
Jewish "profile" of NBC or to replace key Jewish personel. To the
contrary, new Jewish executives have been added: an example is Steve
Friedman..."
"The man in charge of the television entertainment division at
CBS is Jeff Sagansky. At ABC the entertainment division is run by two
men....nearly all of the men who shape young Amercians' concept of
reality, of good and evil, of permissible and impermissible behavior
are Jews. In particular, Sagansky and Bloomberg arre Jews. So is
Tartikoff. Littlefield is the only Gentile who has had a significant
role in TV entertainment programming in recent years."
"American Film magazine listed the top 10...entertainment
companies and their CEOs...Time Warner Communications (Steven J Ross,
Jew) Walt Disney Co. (Michael D. Eisner, Jew)...Of the 10 top
entertainment CEOs listed above, eight are Jews."
"The Newhouse media empire provides an example of more than a
lack of real competition among America's daily newspapers; it also
illustrates the insatiable appetite Jews have shown for all organs of
opinion... The Newhouse's own 31 daily newspapers, including several
large and important ones, such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the
Newark Star-Ledger, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune; the nation's
largest trade book publishing conglomerate, Random House, with all
its subsideries; Newhouse Broadcasting, consisting of 12 television
broadcasting stations and 87 cable-TV systems, including some of the
countries largest cable networks- the Sunday supplement Parade, with a
circulation of more than 22 million copies per week; some two dozen
major magazines, including the New Yorker, Vogue, Madamoiselle,
Glamour, Vanity Fair, HQ, Bride's, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Self,
Home&Garden...."
"Furthermore, even those newspapers still under Gentile ownership
and management are so thoroughly dependent upon Jewish advertising..."
"the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington
Post. These three...are the newspapers which set trends and guidlines
for nearly all others. They are the ones which decide what is news and
what isn't, at national and international levels. They originate the
news; the others merely copy it. And all three newspapers are in
Jewish hands...The Suzberger family also owns, through the New York
Times Co. 36 other newspapers; twelve magazines, including McCall's
and Family Circle..."
"New York's other newspapers are in no better hands than the
Daily News. The New York Post is owned by billionare Jewish
real-estate developer Peter Kalikow. The Village Voice is the personal
property of Leonard Stern, the billionaire Jewish owner of..."
"There are only three newsmagazines of any note published in the
United States: Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report....The CEO
of Time Warner Communications is Steven J. Ross, and he is a Jew.
"Newsweek, as mentioned above, is published by the Washington
Post Co., under the Jewess Katherine Meyer Graham..."
"U.S. News & World Report... owned and published by Jewish real
estate developer Mortimer B. Zucherman..."
" The three largest book publishers...Random House... Simon &
Schuster , and Time Inc. Book Co....All three are owned or controlled
by Jews...The CEO of Simon & Schuster if Richard Snyder, and the
president is Jeremy Kaplan; both are Jews too."
"Western Publishing...ranks first among publishers of childrens
books, with more than 50 per cent of the market. Its chairman and CEO
is Richard Bernstein, a Jew."
"Jewish spokesmen customarily will use evasive tactics. "Ted
Turner isn't a Jew!" they will announce..."
"We are doing more than merely giving them a decisive influence
on our political system and virtual control of our government; we also
are giving them control of the minds and souls of our children..."
>the war lots of lazy corrupt nazi party officials avoided war service
>and hung around on the home front,women were never called up to the
>same extent as in Britain.
>Slave labourers were treated badly but did not produce well for their
>masters.
>As soon as the SS AND Gestapo were not in power the German people put
>themselves under the authority of who ever was in control of their part
>of the country.
>The Werewolves never turned up for the final fight,everybody except
>Goering said "I was never a nazi".
>Leon Degrelle was a pro nazi Belgian who had to hide in fascist Spain
>after the war to stop his fellow countrymen from executing him.
Here is a quote from The Nameless War, by Captain A. H. M. Ramsay:
"The urgent alarm sounded in 1918 by Mr. Oudendyke in his letter
to Mr. Balfour (see page 25), denouncing bolshevism as a Jewish plan,
which if not checked by the combined action of the European powers,
would engulf Europe and the world, was no exaggeration. By the end of
that year the red flag was being hoisted in most of the great cities
of Europe. In Hungary the Jew Bela Kuhn organized and maintained for
some time a merciless and bloody tyranny similar to the one in Russia.
In Germany the Jews, Liebknecht, Barth, Scheidemann, Rosa Luxemburg,
etc., made a desperate bid for power. These and other similar
convulsions shook Europe; but each country in its own way just
frustated the onslaughts.
In most countries concerned a few voices were raised in the
endeavour to expose the true nature of these evils. Only in one,
however, did a political leader and group arise, who grasped to the
full the significance of these happenings, and perceived behind the
mobs of native hooligans the organisation and driving power of world
Jewry. This leader was Adolf Hitler, and his group the National
Socialist Party of Germany.
Never before in history had any country not only repulsed organized
revolution, but discerned Jewry behind it, and faced up to that fact.
We need not wonder that the sewers of Jewish vituperation were flooded
over these men and their leader; nor should we make the mistake of
supposing that Jewry would stick at any lie to deter honest men
everywhere from making a thorough investigation of the facts for
themselves. Nevertheless, if any value liberty, and set out to seek
truth and defend it, this duty of personal investigation is one which
they cannot shirk.
To accept unquestioningly the lies and misrepresentaions of a
Jew-controlled or influenced press, is to spurn truth by sheer
idleness, if for no worse reason."
Kenneth McVay OBC
Topaz <mars...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On 16 Nov 2005 05:05:30 -0800, "ib011...@blueyonder.co.uk"
><ib011...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>complete rubbish.
>>A lot of pro nazi crap.
>>Look at the state of Germany in May 1945,that was the end result of the
>>nazi regime's crazy policies.
>
> No, that was the result of the Communists and other Jewish
>controlled countries.
>
> An article by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, January 21, 1945
Mr. Vangel forgot to mention that he thinks murder is a dandy way to
deal with "problem" children.
Here is an article by Alex Vangel:
--
The Nizkor Project - An electronic Holocaust educational resource
David Irving vrs. Deborah Lipstadt & Penguin Books Ltd: Judgment
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/judgment-00-00.html
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/i/irving.david/libel.suit
michael james
Topaz wrote:
> On 16 Nov 2005 05:05:30 -0800, "ib011...@blueyonder.co.uk"
> <ib011...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>complete rubbish.
>>A lot of pro nazi crap.
>>Look at the state of Germany in May 1945,that was the end result of the
>>nazi regime's crazy policies.
>
>
> No, that was the result of the Communists and other Jewish
> controlled countries.
>
>
INTELLECTUAL VOMIT
Topaz
1933 to the particular attention of the leading politicians of the
U.S.A. and of the international Jews who stand behind them. Our
defensive measures against international Jewry have aroused increasing
tirades against Germany in America. Sometimes it seemed as if it would
be impossible to increase the flood of hatred and lies...
After leading politicians such as the American Secretary of the
Interior Harold Ickes and Senator Pittman attacked the German
government in the foulest manner, President Roosevelt did even more in
his New Year address. He tried to persuade the American people that
world peace was not assured, and that it was the duty of the American
people to defend three vital principles: those of religion, democracy
and international good will. Roosevelt did not believe these
principles were threatened by Soviet Russia or Soviet Spain, rather by
authoritarian Germany and Italy.
Millions are dead in Soviet Russia and Spanish priests estimate that a
half million people have been murdered there only because of their
faith, but that is not important and proves nothing. The dead do not
trouble the American President's conscience, indeed they did not stop
him from being the single world statesman to congratulate the Soviet
Russian government on the anniversary of the Bolshevist Revolution. No
other statesman did this, which explains why no other statesman
received such praise from the Soviet press. The Soviet press praised
the "noble efforts of the great American statesman."
Roosevelt also ignored the murder of millions of people when it was
called to his attention by a letter from the former Spanish ambassador
in Great Britain, the Marquis de Merry del Wal. The ambassador told
Mr. Roosevelt the following:
Your country's press tells the world of Your Excellency's protests
against the "persecution of the Jews" in Germany. According to the
press, you are deeply distressed by these events. How is it then that
the murder and massacre of 400,000 defenseless men, women and children
in Spain has not resulted in the slightest distress on your part?
These unfortunate people did not die on the battlefields of a civil
war. They were torn from their homes and murdered in public not only
because of their political, but also their religious, beliefs. Their
murderers openly declared their goal of destroying the very
civilization that Your Excellency defends. They have intentionally
destroyed thousands of churches and monuments along with uncounted
works of art and private homes. They have torn the clothes from nuns
and revealed them to everyone's eyes. They raped women and looted to a
degree unknown in the annals of the Christian era.
Your own ambassador, Your Excellency, against all the laws, norms and
customs of international law, has been forced to live away from the
government to which he is accredited, since as he said his personal
security would otherwise be in danger. I further know, Your
Excellency, that you have received certain proof of my assertions, for
I have made efforts to ensure that you have received reports that
support what I have said. Despite that, Your Excellency, you complain
about events in Germany, events that cannot be compared with what is
happening in Spain-and you have not given even the slightest sign of
disapproval at the death of hundreds of thousands of people who have
18 million fellow believers who are among the best citizens of your
country, far more than the two million Jews.
These people have been murdered solely because of their beliefs. Mr.
Roosevelt however has never spoken of a threat to faith or religion.
But they were only believers in a Christian church, after all. Mr.
Roosevelt is conducting a crusade against the authoritarian states
under the banner of religion only because the religious compatriots of
his closest friends have been put in their place in the authoritarian
states.
If President Roosevelt believes that he has to take the field to
defend democracy, we may ask where and when we have ever threatened or
attacked democracy. In the past years Germany has done nothing more
than to partially undo the injustices inflicted on it by the
predecessor of the current president of the U.S.A. Germany has not
arbitrarily altered the map of Europe as he did, creating states
against the will of their peoples only for purposes of power politics.
It has only reclaimed its citizens who suffered a decade long under
governments foreign or hostile to Germany...
In a closed session, he told the Defense Committee of the Senate that
the United States must be ready to support England and France in the
event of a European war. The President reportedly even suggested that
definite agreements already existed to this effect. He further
proposed the unrestricted sale of war materials to Western Europe. The
only restriction was that they had to be able to pay for it. When a
member of the American Senate asked how this policy could be squared
with the law demanding strict neutrality over against Europe,
Roosevelt replied: "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
These revelations naturally were a sensation throughout the world. The
impact was greater than the master of the White House in Washington
wanted. He therefore denied the reports. The force of his denial was
somewhat weakened by excited reports in the American press in which
various members of Congress refused to be called liars, and
furthermore suggested that Roosevelt had said even more during the
session than has been reported. The force of the denial was also
weakened by a cynical article in a French newspaper that noted that
"the strength of the claim has not been weakened, for it is not a
matter of the letter of the law, but of the spirit."...
Roosevelt is acting as the mouthpiece and puppet of international
Jewry when he attacks the authoritarian states. They want to use every
means to destroy the newly awakened nations...
The leaders of the Soviet Union tried to persuade their people that
true communism could only develop after all the other states of the
world were allies of the powers in Moscow, and the Red rulers in
Soviet Spain tried and tried to conceal their governmental
incompetence by unleashing a world conflict. We are not surprised to
see the American President in such company. The real rulers of the
Soviet Union are the same as in the United States: international
Jewry.
The truth of this claim is confirmed by the behavior of the wife of
the American President. Mrs. Roosevelt, as a sign of her support for
the Spanish Bolshevist rulers, accepted a gift of stolen etchings by
Spanish masters. Mrs. Roosevelt chaired an exhibition of busts of
Spanish Communist leaders, made by the Jew Josef Davidson. She also
invited the well-known top Bolshevist Toller to lunch. She surrounds
herself with wounded bigwigs of Soviet Spain under whose orders
500,000 Spaniards were killed only because they were faithful to their
beliefs and their religion...
America today is not governed by men like Roosevelt, Ickes, etc.,
rather its fate is determined by the Jews who stand behind them, Jews
like Baruch, Frankfurter, Morgenthau, etc. They are the real rulers of
America, and Roosevelt, Ickes, etc., are only their tools. The fact
that this is known in America is evident from a variety of newspaper
articles. The "New York Daily News," for example, wrote that "the wave
of anti-Semitism in America has increased significantly in recent
weeks and months." The fact that the Jew Bernard Baruch, the
President's closest adviser, is called the unofficial president of the
United States is proof of this fact.
But enough of that. We refuse to interfere in the affairs of other
nations. We think that every country gets the Jews that it deserves.
But we demand the same principle be extended to us. Let Mr. Roosevelt
carry out his reforms and crusades in his own country. He will not
live long enough to do it all. We do not think we have yet seen
anything on the other side of the ocean that is worth imitating. We
think it not a sign of ability, rather of incompetence, that a nation
with such enormous resources and space, with all modern methods, finds
itself in such mass misery and is unable to do anything to alleviate
that misery.
Where would Roosevelt be if he had had to deal with the situation the
Führer faced when he took power in Germany? Mr. Roosevelt has
agricultural resources more than sufficient to feed the country, yet
his people are starving. His country has enormous resources, yet
millions are unemployed. There is only one conclusion to be drawn."
Kenneth McVay OBC
Alex "Topaz" Vangel <mars...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"We National Socialists have grown accustomed since our takeover in
Mr. Vangel forgot to mention that he thinks murder is a dandy way to
deal with "problem" children.
Here is a quote from Alex Vangel:
--