May 1933: Hitler Abolishes Unions
Harry Hope
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/02/20/may-1933-hitler-abolishes-unions/
On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
halls and labor leaders were arrested.
Trade Unions were outlawed by Adolf Hitler, while collective
bargaining and the right to strike was abolished.
This was the beginning of a consolidation of power by the fascist
regime which systematically wiped out all opposition groups, starting
with unions, liberals, socialists, and communists using Himmler’s
state police.
Fast forward to America today, particularly Wisconsin.
Governor Walker and the Republican/Tea Party members of the state
legislature are attempting to pass a bill that would not only severely
punish public unions (with exception for the police, fire, and state
trooper unions that supported his campaign), but it would effectively
end 50 years to the right of these workers to collectively bargain.
Collective bargaining is a process of voluntary negotiations between
employers and trade unions aimed at reaching agreements which regulate
working conditions. Collective agreements usually set out wage scales,
working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance
mechanisms and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
-wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_bargaining
__________________________________________________
Harry
Republicans-Are-T...@america.com
NEWS JUNKIE POST
Feb 20, 2011 at 10:07 pm
May 1933: Hitler Abolishes Unions
On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
halls and labor leaders were arrested. Trade Unions were outlawed by
Adolf Hitler, while collective bargaining and the right to strike was
abolished. This was the beginning of a consolidation of power by the
fascist regime which systematically wiped out all opposition groups,
starting with unions, liberals, socialists, and communists using
Himmler’s state police.
Fast forward to America today, particularly Wisconsin. Governor
Walker and the Republican/Tea Party members of the state legislature
are attempting to pass a bill that would not only severely punish
public unions (with exception for the police, fire, and state trooper
unions that supported his campaign), but it would effectively end 50
years to the right of these workers to collectively bargain.
Collective bargaining is a process of voluntary negotiations between
employers and trade unions aimed at reaching agreements which regulate
working conditions. Collective agreements usually set out wage scales,
working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance
mechanisms and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
-wiki
First of all, assaulting the rights of workers to collectively bargain
has absolutely nothing to do with any immediate budgetary issues. It
does however have everything to do with ending one of the basic rights
of labor to organize.
Second, and more importantly, the budget “crisis” in Wisconsin is both
exaggerated and created in part by the new Republican power base as a
tool to attack political opponents. Walker decreased state revenue
when he enacted tax cuts for the rich and big corporations, who are
not surprisingly large campaign donors for his political campaign.
Photo by COTO Report
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/wisconsin-governors-fake-budget-crisis/
To the extent that there is an imbalance — Walker claims there is a
$137 million deficit — it is not because of a drop in revenues or
increases in the cost of state employee contracts, benefits or
pensions. It is because Walker and his allies pushed through $140
million in new spending for special-interest groups in January. If the
Legislature were simply to rescind Walker’s new spending schemes — or
delay their implementation until they are offset by fresh revenues —
the “crisis” would not exist. -The Cap Times
Decimating unions has long been an objective of the rich and powerful.
Growing out of trade guilds in Medieval Europe, they were banned
starting with the Ordinance of Labourers 1349 and Statute of Labourers
in England. It was not until the Industrial Revolution that labor
began to organize again.
Every little gain for the rights of workers was hard fought and
bitterly resisted by the rich and powerful. The photo above shows the
Lawrence Textile Strike (also known as the Bread and Roses strike)
where mostly immigrant workers rebelled against increasingly harsh
work conditions and lowered pay caused by mechanization. Specifically,
state law mandated a reduction in working hours for women and children
from 56 to 54 hours, and factory owners responded by cutting salaries,
something the poor workers could not afford.
Over time, organized labor managed to abolish child labor all
together, as well as institute an 8 hour work day, 40 hour work week,
mandatory breaks, safety guidelines, grievance procedures, a minimum
wage, the concept of a work free weekend, workers comp, pensions,
health safeguards, and paid sick days, vacation days, and holidays. If
you enjoy any of these things, thank a union member and support the
passage of a strong Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
Collective Bargaining in the US was finally legalized for the private
sector on a countrywide scale in 1935 with the National Labor
Relations Act signed by FDR. JFK signed an executive order extending
this right to the public sector in 1962. This is the key measure
Governor Walker’s bill being sped through the Wisconsin legislature
would mandate health insurance contributions by public employees,
force them to pay more for their promised pensions, and remove
bargaining rights. When public employees started protesting, Walker
instructed the state National Guard to be “prepared” if any “problems”
should arise, in what could be described as a thinly veiled
intimidation tactic.
Although this draconian bill will not outlaw unions, it will
effectively neuter them, as their CPI adjusted wages will be frozen
and all other means cannot be improved as a whole. Public sector
unions will lose their freedom to negotiate against the state
together. This is a deliberate tactic to punish political opponents
and to effectively lessen the rights of working Americans everywhere
for the benefit of the rich and multinational corporations.
Walker’s plan to eviscerate collective bargaining rights for public
employees is right out of the Koch brothers’ playbook. Koch-backed
groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long
taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of
these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. In
Wisconsin, this conservative, anti-union view is being placed into
action by lawmakers in sync with the deep-pocketed donors who helped
them obtain power. (Walker also opposes the state’s Clean Energy Job
Act, which would compel the state to increase its use of alternative
energy.) At this moment—even with the Wisconsin uprising
unresolved—the Koch brothers’ investment in Walker appears to be
paying off. -Mother Jones
In response to this open revolt on at the Wisconsin state capitol,
which saw crowds initially in the hundreds quickly swell to tens of
thousands, a Tea Party group hastily organized a counter rally on
Sunday. Dozens of free buses were mysteriously available from both
inside and outside the state for Tea Partiers, with no mention of who
paid for them, leading to speculation that this is blatant corporate
astroturfing. At publishing time no camels were being charged into the
estimated 70,000 pro-worker/anti-Walker demonstrators [creative humor
license].
Photo courtesy of @cwoodardnews http://twitpic.com/41j2ra
The Americans for Prosperity group, a Tea Party group that is a Koch
Brothers front, has put up a website [for the Tea Party Rally that]
attacks all collective bargaining – not just for public employees’
unions. -Forbes
Wisconsin is ground zero in the fight for worker’s rights in America.
Following the ultra-conservative sweep of many state legislatures and
governorships in the 2010 midterms, most Republicans are salivating at
the opportunity to destroy the last stronghold of organized labor in
America: the public sector.
Last year, more working people belonged to a union in the public
sector (7.9 million) than in the private (7.4 million), despite the
fact that corporate America employs five times the number of
wage-earners. 37 percent of government workers belong to a union,
compared with just 7 percent of private-sector employees. -Alternet
The percentage of the work force that have been organized has been
declining (along with many other things) since Reagan and the
conservatives took power, ending the Great Compression and starting an
epoch in American history known as the Great Divergence (which
culminated in the Great Recession, which we are in today).
Pro-corporate, fiscally conservative policies (such as deregulation
and underfunding) have severely damaged private sector unions, unions
that set the bar for standards and pay for all workers (thus,
contributing towards the huge wealth concentration that is taking
place).
The one point where this anti-union trend has not taken place is in
the public sector.
This is precisely why the conservatives (mostly in the Republican
Party) and their corporate masters are now planning the next phase in
their strategy: to destroy public sector unions across the country.
Right now, their assault has triggered a massive and growing revolt by
not only public sector unions, but students, progressives, and working
men and women across the Upper Midwest region of the US.
The corporate front groups are desperately trying to play catchup and
unleash their Tea Party legions, who need little convincing as
apparent from the We Stand With Walker Facebook page. The fear and
hate caused by disinformation and Fox Propaganda is palpable, and they
are only too eager to “fight back” against supposed union
transgressions both in the workplace and in demonstrations.
Which brings us back full circle. Union busting measures by
Republicans in Wisconsin this week have brought up some disturbing
historical parallels to another sad chapter from human history. This
writer is not trying to say that Republicans are Nazis and the Tea
Party are their Brownshirts, only that the union busting, corporate
control over the government is part of the definition of fascism
(along with authoritarian nationalism).
The attacks on unions that are taking place in American society today
echoes a very sad chapter in Western history where unions were smashed
for the benefit of a far right authoritarian corporate regime. When
Hitler abolished unions in 1933, it was followed by a 25% drop in real
wages, and ended the ability of workers to protect living standards,
and this is one of those times where history should not be allowed to
repeat itself.
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/02/20/may-1933-hitler-abolishes-unions/
shutterbug98
Freedom Man
news:6mw9p.17797$u15....@newsfe15.iad...
> Republican=Nazi
Yes! And history is repeating only because the brainwashed Sheeple are
ignorant of it and too cowardly to fight for their freedom.
Lamont Cranston
Response from the rightards: <CRICKETS!>
Sanders Kaufman
news:ik6co3$1a2$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
>
> Yes! And history is repeating only because the brainwashed Sheeple are
> ignorant of it and too cowardly to fight for their freedom.
Anonymously whining about people being too afraid.
That's some serious irony there.
Transition Zone
> "Freedom Man" <freespe...@4eva.com> wrote in message
I heard that all unions in Wisconsin are supposed to strike this
Tuesday (in 4 days).
That'll catch Gov Walker influence peddler.
First Post
Good. Let them strike and do without a paycheck for a while. That'll
save even more tax dollars. Let them live off of their strike fund.
That would put them more in line with the public that they and you
believe owe them a better living than those they are supposed to be
working for.
Neoconis_Ignoramus
> On Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:36:35 -0800 (PST), Transition Zone
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
That's what it's all about with you fuckin losers - constantly worried
about what other people are making.
Pepe Le Jew
Republicans-Are-T...@America.com wrote:
> By Ole Ole Olson
>
> NEWS JUNKIE POST
> Feb 20, 2011 at 10:07 pm
> May 1933: Hitler Abolishes Unions
>
> On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
> halls and labor leaders were arrested.
In February, 2011 Union groups occupied the Wisconsin capitol, they're
still there, un-arrested.
> Trade Unions were outlawed by
> Adolf Hitler, while collective bargaining and the right to strike was
> abolished.
Trade unions are legal in America, and Hitler didn't ban unions, he
created state unions. Nazis appealed to the lower/lower middle class
middle and lower class, moved church socialism to the state.
They were just early democrats.
The reason unions are declining is because people don't need them
anymore, not because they're being brownshirted by nazi goons. The goons
in this case are the unionistas marching all over the place because
their folks lost the election.
Bret Cahill
According to teabaggers "filling pot holes is just like Hitler."
Bret Cahill
Topaz
Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
"There were millions and millions of workmen who began by being
hostile to the Social Democratic Party; but their defences were
repeatedly stormed and finally had to surrender. Yet this defeat was
due to the stupidity of the bourgeois parties, who had opposed every
demand put forward by the working class. The short-sighted refusal to
making an effort towards improving labour conditions, the refusal to
adopt measures which would insure the workmen in case of accidents in
the factories, the refusal to forbid child labour, the refusal to
consider protective measures for female workers, especially expectant
mothers--all this was of assistance to the Social Democratic leaders,
who were thankful for every opportunity which they could exploit for
forcing the masses into their net. Our bourgeois parties can never
repair the damage that resulted from the mistake that was made. For
they sowed the seeds of hatred when they opposed all efforts at social
reform. And thus they gave, at least, apparent grounds to justify the
claim put forward by the Social Democrats--namely that they alone
stand up for the interest of the working class.
"And this became the principle ground for the moral
justification of the actual existance of the Trades Unions, so that
the labour organizations became from that time onwards the chief
political recruiting ground to swell the ranks of the Social
Democratic Party."
"the Jew seized upon the manifold possiblities which the
situation offered him for the future. While on the one hand he
organized capitalistic methods of exploitation to their ultimate
degree of efficiency, he curried favour with the victims of his policy
and his power and in a short while became the leader of their struggle
against himself. 'Against himself' is here only a figurative way of
speaking; for this 'Great Master of Lies' knows how to appear in the
guise of the innocent and throw the guilt on others. Since he had the
impudence to take a personal lead among the masses, they never for a
moment suspected that they were falling prey to one of the most
infamous deceits ever practiced. And yet that is what it actually
was."
http://www.ihr.org/ http://www.natvan.com http://www.nsm88.org
http://heretical.com/ http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/
Topaz
Ray Fischer
Of course there's no response. They cannot grasp the fact that they
are being used for puppets just like the Nazis used the German people.
--
Ray Fischer | Mendacracy (n.) government by lying
rfis...@sonic.net | The new GOP ideal
sarge
Hitler was a moron whose decisions led to the deaths of more of his
people than anyone else's. His refusal to let much better military
minds do their thing, resulted in a devastating war for the Germans.
His idiocy around Jews led to their shame. His incest, his own
shame.
The guy was a terrible leader and a terrible person.
Who cares what he thinks of trade unions?
Phlip
> Of course there's no response. They cannot grasp the fact that they
> are being used for puppets just like the Nazis used the German people.
Well, according to Glenn Beck, Nazis are Socialist. Because the Z
stands for Zocialist.
And unions are socialist. So Nazis LIKED unions. except when they were
assassinating union leaders...
Siobhan Medeiros
> Lamont Cranston <Lamont.Crans...@FogYourMind.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >On 2/22/2011 5:51 PM, Harry Hope wrote:
>
> >>http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/02/20/may-1933-hitler-abolishes-unions/
>
> >> On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
> >> halls and labor leaders were arrested.
>
> >> Trade Unions were outlawed by Adolf Hitler, while collective
> >> bargaining and the right to strike was abolished.
>
> >> This was the beginning of a consolidation of power by the fascist
> >> regime which systematically wiped out all opposition groups, starting
> >> with unions, liberals, socialists, and communists using Himmler s
> >> state police.
>
> >> Fast forward to America today, particularly Wisconsin.
>
> >> Governor Walker and the Republican/Tea Party members of the state
> >> legislature are attempting to pass a bill that would not only severely
> >> punish public unions (with exception for the police, fire, and state
> >> trooper unions that supported his campaign), but it would effectively
> >> end 50 years to the right of these workers to collectively bargain.
>
> >> Collective bargaining is a process of voluntary negotiations between
> >> employers and trade unions aimed at reaching agreements which regulate
> >> working conditions. Collective agreements usually set out wage scales,
> >> working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance
> >> mechanisms and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
>
> >> __________________________________________________
>
> >Response from the rightards: <CRICKETS!>
>
> Of course there's no response. They cannot grasp the fact that they
> are being used for puppets just like the Nazis used the German people.
>
> --
> Ray Fischer | Mendacracy (n.) government by lying
Oh, but the Nazis were socialist, don't ya know. So socialists must
like to ban unions.
The sound you hear in the background is rightard heads exploding.
Siobhan Medeiros
>
> >On Feb 25, 1:03 am, "Sanders Kaufman" <bu...@kaufman.net> wrote:
> >> "Freedom Man" <freespe...@4eva.com> wrote in message
>
> >>news:ik6co3$1a2$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
>
> >> > Yes! And history is repeating only because the brainwashed Sheeple are
> >> > ignorant of it and too cowardly to fight for their freedom.
>
> >> Anonymously whining about people being too afraid.
> >> That's some serious irony there.
>
> >I heard that all unions in Wisconsin are supposed to strike this
> >Tuesday (in 4 days).
>
> Good. Let them strike and do without a paycheck for a while. That'll
> save even more tax dollars.
Hey, moron. It won't be the public unions striking this time.
Taxpayers aren't paying their salaries to begin with, so they won't
save a thing.
>Let them live off of their strike fund.
> That would put them more in line with the public that they and you
> believe owe them a better living than those they are supposed to be
> working for.
How do you figure that, rightard? The public unions have already said
they're willing to take the pay cuts. This is about the right to
collective bargaining.
Siobhan Medeiros
> In article <ouvbm6hap16leb23tqeppdns5u26jtm...@4ax.com>,
>
> Republicans-Are-THIS-Fucking-Stu...@America.com wrote:
> > By Ole Ole Olson
>
> > NEWS JUNKIE POST
> > Feb 20, 2011 at 10:07 pm
> > May 1933: Hitler Abolishes Unions
>
> > On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
> > halls and labor leaders were arrested.
>
> In February, 2011 Union groups occupied the Wisconsin capitol, they're
> still there, un-arrested.
>
> > Trade Unions were outlawed by
> > Adolf Hitler, while collective bargaining and the right to strike was
> > abolished.
>
> Trade unions are legal in America, and Hitler didn't ban unions,
Um, yeah, he did.
> he
> created state unions.
Suuuurrrreeeeee. That's why he arrested the union leaders.
> Nazis appealed to the lower/lower middle class
> middle and lower class, moved church socialism to the state.
>
Funny then how Germany's money men were all in love with him.
Church socialism to the state...that's one of the stupidest ideas I've
heard yet. I haven't heard of a church who wanted to invade Poland.
> They were just early democrats.
Funny then that it was Democrats that shut them down in the end.
>
> The reason unions are declining is because people don't need them
> anymore,
Like the wolf saying that we don't need shepherds.
> not because they're being brownshirted by nazi goons. The goons
> in this case are the unionistas marching all over the place because
> their folks lost the election.
You're thinking of the Tea Party crowd. The people who you're talking
about are trying to keep their right to bargain collectively.
ZNUYBV
> http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/02/20/may-1933-hitler-abolishes-unions/
>
> On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
> halls and labor leaders were arrested.
>
> Trade Unions were outlawed by Adolf Hitler, while collective
> bargaining and the right to strike was abolished.
That was about the same time that FDR banned collective bargaining
for
federal employees in this country.
Roy
==
Nein, dah Nazis were as much socialist as mein hund.
==
Chom Noamsky
> Nein, dah Nazis were as much socialist as mein hund.
Hitler equated democracy with socialism and we all know how democratic
he was once he became chancellor.
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
>
> Well, according to Glenn Beck, Nazis are Socialist.
>
> May 1933: Hitler Abolishes Unions
competition)
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/11-21-45.asp
Ray Fischer
>On Feb 25, 8:36 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Of course there's no response.
>Because it's a mindless slogan.
>>
>> Well, according to Glenn Beck, Nazis are Socialist.
>And according to Hitler himself....
Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
That's what they call themselves, so N. Korea must be a democracy
according to the dumbass rightard.
Ray Fischer
Lay off of the crack, rightard.
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
> Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >On Feb 25, 8:36 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Of course there's no response.
> >Because it's a mindless slogan.
>
> >> Well, according to Glenn Beck, Nazis are Socialist.
> >And according to Hitler himself....
>
> Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
>
> That's what they call themselves,
you nobody gives a shit. (Call Hitler what you want, in the end he was
progressive filth like you)
------------------
Who favors Nazi shit like the expansion of government into every
faucet of life, gun control, socialized medicine, supports a
centralized economy, abortion, eugenics, racial quotas, supports
controlled speech, legalized drug use, opposes inherited wealth,
supports population controls, hates the free market, supports purging
Christianity from daily life in exchange for their own religion,
supports spending vast sums on giving out free (re)education,
etc....progressive or conservative?
Topaz
Let's say the Germans merely removed the Jews from positions of
political power and banned them from the legal profession. Germany
went from devastating economic poverty in 1932 to full employment just
a couple years later. If an incredible economic improvement can be
achieved, merely by removing the Jews from power (and replacing them
with patriotic nationalists), then every Gentile nation in the world
should give this a try.
Obviously the Jews don't want anyone else getting the idea of removing
them to create prosperity. The Jews control the mass media in most
Western countries. Most people don't know about the Balfour
Declaration. During World War One, Zionist Jews offered to use their
control of the press to bring America into World War One if Britain
would promise them Palestine. This offer was dubbed the Balfour
Declaration. If the Jews had enough media control and influence to
push America into World War One in 1917, what else have they done with
their power?
It was a huge embarrassment for the Jews to see Germany so prosperous
in the mid-1930s after removing them from power. They considered this
a dangerous precedent. To deal with this "problem" the Jewish World
Congress declared war on Germany in 1933. This declaration of war at
least encouraged a world-wide boycott against Germany and at worst
encouraged other nations of the world to become hostile toward
Germany. (The Jews curiously sanctioned the Germans before the Germans
passed any laws restricting the Jews.) More importantly the Jews
pushed vicious anti-German slander in all the Jewish-owned newspapers
in the West in the years leading up to World War Two. The Communist
mass murder of 30 million people in Russia and the Ukraine received
almost no publicity in the Jewish media. Most people in the West only
heard a serious mention of these Communist mass murders beginning in
the 1980s. Instead, the Jewish media focused all their hatred and
agitation against Germany and its allies.
After six years of relentless agitation, the Jews pushed England and
France into war with Germany. Only two years later, FDR and his cabal
of Jews provoked a war with Japan (and Germany).
Naturally, the Jews did not want future historians to say: "World War
Two was provoked by the Jewish media in retaliation for Germany
removing the Jews from power." The Jews needed a new reason for World
War Two. A reason that painted their enemies as unquestionably evil.
So they invented the Holocaust.
The Holocaust stood mostly unchallenged for decades after the war
because people feared being branded "Nazi-sympathizers" for
questioning its details. The truth always comes out in the long run.
Professor Arthur Butz published his famous work "The Hoax of the 20th
Century" in 1977 detailing a very solid argument against this war
propaganda. Dr. Butz pointed out that the world population of Jews
remained at about 16 million before and after the war. He also noted
that half a million Jews remained in Paris after four years of German
occupation. Both these facts strongly suggest the Holocaust is a
fraud, but the political power of the Jews has suppressed and punished
any public questioning of the Holocaust to this day. David Irving
joined the ranks of Revisionist historians several years ago and went
from a famous successful author to a pariah thanks to persecution by
the Jews.
The Institute for Historical Review has done great work exposing the
Holocaust as a great historical fraud. Anyone interested in looking
for historical truth should visit their website. It's a shock for many
people to see how much propaganda we've been force fed.
Topaz
Leon Degrelle
"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.
Topaz
Topaz
Here are some quotes from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
after the heading Ku Klux Klan:
"Ku Klux Klan, the name of an American secret association of Southern
whites united for self-protection and to oppose the Reconstruction
measures of the United States Congress"
"The various causes assigned for the origin and development of
this movement were: the absence of stable government in the South for
several years after the Civil War; the corrupt and tyrannical rule of
the alien, renegade and negro, and the belief that it was supported by
the Federal troops which controlled elections and legislative bodies;
the disfranchisement of whites; the spread of ideas of social and
political equality among the negroes; fear of negro insurrections; the
arming of negro militia and the disarming of whites; outrages upon
white women by black men"
"The constitutions and rituals of these secret orders have
declarations of principles, of which the following are characteristic:
to protect and succour the weak and unfortunate, especially the widows
and orphans of Confederate soldiers; to protect members of the white
race in life, honour and property from the encroachments of the
blacks"
"To control the negro the Klan played upon his superstitious
fears by having night patrols, parades and drills of silent horsemen
covered with white sheets, carrying skulls with coals of fire for
eyes"
"the Ku Klux movement went on until it accomplished its object by
giving protection to the whites, reducing the blacks to order,
replacing the whites in control of society and state, expelling the
worst of the carpet-baggers and scalawags, and nullifying those laws
of Congress which had resulted in placing the Southern whites under
the control of a party composed principally of ex-slaves."
Topaz
Here is excerpt from his memoirs General Leon Degrelle, former
leader of the Belgian contingent of the Waffen-SS:
"One of the first labor reforms to benefit the German workers
was the establishment of annual paid vacation. The Socialist French
Popular Front, in 1936, would make a show of having invented the
concept of paid vacation, and stingily at that, only one week per
year. But Adolf Hitler originated the idea, and two or three times as
generously, from the first month of his coming to power in 1933.
Every factory employee from then on would have the legal right
to a paid vacation. Until then, in Germany paid holidays where they
applied at all did not exceed four or five days, and nearly half the
younger workers had no leave entitlement at all. Hitler, on the other
hand, favored the younger workers. Vacations were not handed out
blindly, and the youngest workers were granted time off more
generously. It was a humane action; a young person has more need of
rest and fresh air for the development of his strength and vigor just
coming into maturity. Basic vacation time was twelve
days, and then from age 25 on it went up to 18 days. After ten years
with the company, workers got 21 days, three times what the French
socialists would grant the workers of their country in 1936.
century since then, but in 1933 they far exceeded European norms. As
for overtime hours, they no longer were paid, as they were everywhere
else in Europe at that time, at just the regular hourly rate. The
work day itself had been reduced to a tolerable norm of eight hours,
since the forty-hour week as well, in Europe, was first initiated by
Hitler. And beyond that legal limit, each additional hour had to be
paid at a considerably increased rate...
Dismissal of an employee was no longer left as before the
sole discretion of the employer. In that era, workers' rights to job
security were non-existent. Hitler saw to it that those rights were
strictly spelled out. The employer had to announce any dismissal four
weeks in advance. The employee then had a period of up to two months
in which to lodge a protest. The dismissal could also be annulled by
the Honor of Work Tribunal. What was the Honor of Work Tribunal? Also
called the Tribunal of Social Honor, it was the third of the three
great elements or layers of protection and defense that were to the
benefit of every German worker. The first was the Council
of Trust. The second was the Labor Commission.
The Council of Trust was charged with attending to the
establishment and the development of a real community spirit between
management and labor. In any business enterprise, the Reich law
stated, the employer and head of the enterprise, the employees and
workers, personnel of the enterprise, shall work jointly towards the
goal of the enterprise and the common good of
Thus from 1933 on, the German worker had a system of justice
at his disposal that was created especially for him and would
adjudicate all grave infractions of the social duties based on the
idea of the Aryan enterprise community. Examples of these violations
of social honor are cases where the employer, abusing his power,
displayed ill will towards his staff or impugned the honor of his
subordinates, cases where staff members threatened work harmony by
spiteful agitation; the publication by members of the Council of
confidential information regarding the enterprise which they
became cognizant of in the course of discharging their duties.
Thirteen Tribunes of Social Honor were established, corresponding
with the thirteen commissions...
From then on the worker knew that exploitation of his physical
strength in bad faith or offending his honor would no longer be
allowed. He had to fulfill certain obligations to the community, but
they were obligations that applied to all members of the enterprise,
from the chief executive down to the messenger boy. Germany's workers
at last had clearly established social rights that were arbitrated by
a Labor Commission and enforced by a Tribunal of Honor. Although
effected in an atmosphere of justice and moderation, it was a
revolution.
This was only the end of 1933, and already the first effects
could be felt. The factories and shops large and small were reformed
or transformed in conformity with the strictest standards of
cleanliness and hygiene; the interior areas, so often dilapidated,
opened to light; playing fields constructed; rest areas made
available where one could converse at one's ease and relax during
rest periods; employee cafeterias; proper dressing rooms.
With time, that is to say in three years, those achievements
would take on dimensions never before imagined; more than 2,000
factories refitted and beautified; 23,000 work premises modernized;
800 buildings designed exclusively for meetings; 1,200 playing
fields;
Eight hundred departmental inspectors and 17,300 local inspectors
and installations.
The large industrial establishments moreover had been given
the obligation of preparing areas not only suitable for sports
activities of all kinds, but provided with swimming pools as well.
Germany had come a long way from the sinks for washing one's face and
the dead tired workers, grown old before their time, crammed into
squalid courtyards during work breaks.
In order to ensure the natural development of the working
class, physical education courses were instituted for the younger
workers; 8,000 such were organized. Technical training would be
equally emphasized, with the creation of hundreds of work schools,
technical courses and examinations of professional competence, and
competitive examinations for the best workers for which large prizes
were awarded.
To rejuvenate young and old alike, Hitler ordered that a
gigantic vacation organization for workers be set up. Hundreds of
thousands of workers would be able every summer to relax on the
sea. Magnificent cruise ships would be built. Special trains would
carry vacationers to the mountains and to the seashore. The
locomotives that hauled the innumerable worker-tourists in
just a few years of travel in Germany would log a distance equivalent
to fifty-four times around the world!
The cost of these popular excursions was nearly insignificant,
thanks to greatly reduced rates authorized by the Reichsbank.
Didn't these reforms lack something? Were some of them flawed
by errors and blunders? It is possible. But what did a blunder amount
to alongside the immense gains?
That this transformation of the working class smacked of
authoritarianism? That's exactly right. But the German people were
sick and tired of socialism and anarchy. To feel commanded didn't
bother them a bit. In fact, people have always liked having a strong
man guide them. One thing for certain is that the turn of mind of the
working class, which was still almost two-thirds non-Nazi in 1933,
had completely changed.
The Belgian author Marcel Laloire would note: "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
red background, in the most populous districts." The Labor Front that
Hitler imposed on all of the workers and employers of the Reich was
for the most part received with favor.
And already the steel spades of the sturdy young lads of the
National Labor Service could be seen gleaming along the highways. The
National Labor Service had been created by Hitler out of thin air to
bring together for a few months in absolute equality, and in the same
uniform, both the sons of millionaires and the sons of the poorest
same discipline, even the same pleasures and the same physical and
moral development. On the same construction sites and in the same
living quarters, they had become conscious of their commonality, had
come to understand one another, and had swept away their
old prejudices of class and caste. After this hitch in the National
Labor Service they all began to live as comrades, the workers knowing
that the rich man's son was not a monster, and the young lad from the
wealthy family knowing that the worker's son had honor just
like any other young fellow who had been more generously
favored by birth. Social hatred was disappearing, and a socially
united people was being born.
so-called Right before him would have risked doing, and hold forth to
the mob of workers, tens of thousands of them at a time, as in the
Siemens works. In contrast to the von Papens and other country
And in my heart of hearts, I have remained what I was then." In the
course of his twelve years in power, no incident ever occurred at any
factory Adolf Hitler ever visited. When Hitler was among the people,
he was at home, and he was received like the member of
the family who had been most successful."
Topaz
Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
"Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the
multitude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and
personal efficiency."
"Does anybody honestly believe that human progress originates in
the composite brain of the majority and not in the brain of the
individual personality?"
"The devastating influence of the parliamentary institution might
not easily be recognized by those who read the Jewish Press, unless
the reader has learned how to think independently and examine the
facts for himself. This institution is primarily responsible for the
crowded inrush of mediocre people into the field of politics.
Confronted with such a phenomenon, a man who is endowed with real
qualities of leadership will be tempted to refrain from taking part in
political life; because under these circumstances the situation does
not call for a man who has a capacity for constructive statesmanship
but rather for a man who is capable of bargaining for the favour of
the majority. Thus the situation will appeal to small minds and will
attract them accordingly."
"One truth which must always be borne in mind is that the majority
can never replace the man. The majority represents not only ignorance
but also cowardice. And just as a hundred blockheads do not equal one
man of wisdom, so a hundred poltroons are incapable of any political
line of action that requires moral strength and fortitude."
"It is not the aim of our modern democratic parliamentary system
to bring together an assembly of intelligent and well-informed
deputies. Not at all. The aim rather is to bring together a group of
nonentities who are dependant on others for their views and who can
be all the more easily led, the narrower the mental outlook of each
individual is. That is the only way in which a party policy, according
the the evil meaning it has to-day, can be put into effect. And by
this method alone is it possible for the wirepuller, who exercises the
real control, to remain in the dark, so that personally he can never
be brought to account for his actions."
"Such people would raise an outcry, if, for instance, anyone
should attempt to set up a dictatorship, even though the man
responsible for it were Frederick the Great and even though the
politicians for the time being, who constituted the parlimentary
majority, were small and incompetent men or maybe even on a lower
grade of inferiority; because to such sticklers for abstract
principles the law of democracy is more sacred than the welfare of the
nation."
"the best form of government is that which makes it quite natural for
the best brains to reach a position of dominant importance and
influence in the community."
Viejo Vizcacha
> Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
>
> "Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the
> multitude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and
> personal efficiency."
>
> "Does anybody honestly believe that human progress originates in
> the composite brain of the majority and not in the brain of the
> individual personality?"
>
And yet, if anyone were to characterize Nazism, they would say it was
a crowd political movement. Even those who defend Nazism do not do so
on the basis that it was a movement promoting individualism. On the
contrary, the whole premise of Nazism, and its main goal, was to move,
convince, promote, and subdue, entire ethnic groups, populations
numbering the millions. Even neo-Nazi literature and websites do not
promote the image of a solitary Nazi inside a laboratory, or a
workshop, writing, thinking, investigating, or testing. On the
contrary, the front page of any self-respected Nazi website or
magazine has people wearing uniforms.
And uniforms are called uniforms for a reason.
Pepe Le Jew
<50dd7979-e36e-4f0e...@z3g2000prz.googlegroups.com>,
Siobhan Medeiros <shanb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 25, 5:51 pm, Pepe Le Jew <Peps...@zionet.com> wrote:
> > In article <ouvbm6hap16leb23tqeppdns5u26jtm...@4ax.com>,
> >
> > Republicans-Are-THIS-Fucking-Stu...@America.com wrote:
> > > By Ole Ole Olson
> >
> > > NEWS JUNKIE POST
> > > Feb 20, 2011 at 10:07 pm
> > > May 1933: Hitler Abolishes Unions
> >
> > > On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
> > > halls and labor leaders were arrested.
> >
> > In February, 2011 Union groups occupied the Wisconsin capitol, they're
> > still there, un-arrested.
> >
> > > Trade Unions were outlawed by
> > > Adolf Hitler, while collective bargaining and the right to strike was
> > > abolished.
> >
> > Trade unions are legal in America, and Hitler didn't ban unions,
>
> Um, yeah, he did.
>
> > he
> > created state unions.
>
> Suuuurrrreeeeee. That's why he arrested the union leaders.
Well, he was consolidating under the government, so private enterprise
would stop ripping people off, sound familiar?
> > Nazis appealed to the lower/lower middle class
> > middle and lower class, moved church socialism to the state.
> >
>
> Funny then how Germany's money men were all in love with him.
Yes, funny how that works. I realize the gist of your lament is that
Republicans are actually nazis, but you keep implicating Obama and the
Democrats.
Did you look at Obama's contributors?
> Church socialism to the state...that's one of the stupidest ideas I've
> heard yet. I haven't heard of a church who wanted to invade Poland.
>
> > They were just early democrats.
>
> Funny then that it was Democrats that shut them down in the end.
Yes, we recall the alliance between Stalin and the democrats. The
remnants of that alliance are with us today - note the Stalinist
approach to free speech by the left, for instance.
> > The reason unions are declining is because people don't need them
> > anymore,
>
> Like the wolf saying that we don't need shepherds.
You seem to believe a great majority of Americans need the protection of
unions, yet the vast majority has no use for them. This is 2011, not
1930.
> > not because they're being brownshirted by nazi goons. The goons
> > in this case are the unionistas marching all over the place because
> > their folks lost the election.
>
> You're thinking of the Tea Party crowd. The people who you're talking
> about are trying to keep their right to bargain collectively.
Looking at videos, I'm not sure how any reasonable observer can see them
as the same behavior. The unionistas are primarily white, angry,
threatening, racist, violent, intimidating, the tea party rallies are
not.
But maybe you avoid those videos because the obvious truth messes with
the narrative.
Dave Heil
> by James Buchanan
>
> Let's say the Germans merely removed the Jews from positions of
> political power and banned them from the legal profession.
We can't say that. It isn't what took place. It's a giant lie.
Topaz
<nats_u...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>And yet, if anyone were to characterize Nazism, they would say it was
>a crowd political movement. Even those who defend Nazism do not do so
>on the basis that it was a movement promoting individualism. On the
>contrary, the whole premise of Nazism, and its main goal, was to move,
>convince, promote, and subdue, entire ethnic groups, populations
>numbering the millions. Even neo-Nazi literature and websites do not
>promote the image of a solitary Nazi inside a laboratory, or a
>workshop, writing, thinking, investigating, or testing. On the
>contrary, the front page of any self-respected Nazi website or
>magazine has people wearing uniforms.
>
>And uniforms are called uniforms for a reason.
>
Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
"Hence all inventions are the result of the creative faculty of
the individual. And all such individuals, whether they have willed it
or not, are the benefactors of mankind, both great and small. Through
their work millions and indeed billions of human beings have been
provided with means and resources which facilitate their struggle for
existence.
"Thus at the origin of the material civilization which flourishes
to-day we always see individual persons. They supplement one another
and one of them bases his work on that of another. The same is true
in regard to the practical application of those inventions and
discoveries. For all the various methods of production are in their
turn inventions also and consequently dependant on the creative
faculty of the individual. Even in purely theoretical work, which can
not be measured by a definite rule and is preliminary to all
subsequent technical discoveries, is exclusively the product of the
individual brain. The broad masses do not invent, nor does the
majority organize or think; but always and in every case the
individual man, the person."
"Therefore not only does the organization possess no right to
prevent men of brains from rising above the multitude but, on the
contrary, it must use its organizing powers to enable and promote that
ascension as far as it possibly can. It must start out from the
principle that the blessings of mankind never came from the masses but
from the creative brains of individuals, who are therefore the real
benefactors of humanity. It is in the interest of all to assure men of
creative brains a decisive influence and facilitate their work. This
common interest is surely not served by allowing the multitude to
rule, for they are not capable of thinking nor are they efficient and
in no case whatsoever can they be said to be gifted. Only those should
rule who have the natural temperament and gifts of leadership."
"Though all human civilization has resulted exclusively from the
creative activity of the individual, the principle that it is the mass
which counts--through the decision of the majority-- makes its
appearance only in the administration of the national community
especially in the higher grades; and from their downwards the poison
gradually filters into all branches of national life, thus causing a
veritable decomposition. The destructive workings of Judaism in
different parts of the national body can be ascribed fundamentally to
the persistent Jewish efforts at undermining the importance of
personality among the nations that are their hosts and, in place of
personality, substituting the domination of the masses. The
constructive principle of Aryan humanity is thus displaced by the
destructive principle of the Jews. They become the 'ferment of
decomposition' among nations and races and, in a broad sense, the
wreckers of human civilization.
"Marxism represents the most striking phase of the Jewish
endeavor to eliminate the dominant significance of personality in
every sphere of human life and replace it by the numerical power of
the masses. In politics the parliamentary form of government is the
expression of this effort. We can observe the fatal effects of it
everywhere, from the smallest parish council upwards to the highest
governing circles of the nation. In the field of economics we see the
trades union movement, which does not serve the real interests of the
employees but the destructive aims of international Jewry."
"If the National Socialist Movement should fail to understand
the fundamental importance of the essential principle, if it should
merely varnish the external appearance of the present State and adopt
the majority principle, it would really do nothing more than compete
with Marxism on its own ground."
"The best constitution and the best form of government is that
Topaz
Let's say the Germans merely removed the Jews from positions of
http://www.ihr.org/ http://www.natvan.com http://www.nsm88.org
http://heretical.com/ http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/
Phil
>
> - Show quoted text -
Socialists Lenin and Stalin crushed Russian unions. Does that make
them pro-capitlist?
Viejo Vizcacha
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:45:42 -0800 (PST), Viejo Vizcacha
>
> >And yet, if anyone were to characterize Nazism, they would say it was
> >a crowd political movement. Even those who defend Nazism do not do so
> >on the basis that it was a movement promoting individualism. On the
> >contrary, the whole premise of Nazism, and its main goal, was to move,
> >convince, promote, and subdue, entire ethnic groups, populations
> >numbering the millions. Even neo-Nazi literature and websites do not
> >promote the image of a solitary Nazi inside a laboratory, or a
> >workshop, writing, thinking, investigating, or testing. On the
> >contrary, the front page of any self-respected Nazi website or
> >magazine has people wearing uniforms.
>
> >And uniforms are called uniforms for a reason.
>
> Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
>
Bullshit. I am not talking about quotes from a book. Marx said that
once the proletariat took power the power of the state would slowly
dwindle. Now, whatever your thoughts about communist countries, I
never heard anyone say that the pwer of the state had been waning the
longer the communist stayed in power.
So, I am talking about practical nazism, not what a rough brush
painter wrote in prison.
VV
Miles Davis
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:45:42 -0800 (PST), Viejo Vizcacha
>
> >And yet, if anyone were to characterize Nazism, they would say it was
> >a crowd political movement. Even those who defend Nazism do not do so
> >on the basis that it was a movement promoting individualism. On the
> >contrary, the whole premise of Nazism, and its main goal, was to move,
> >convince, promote, and subdue, entire ethnic groups, populations
> >numbering the millions. Even neo-Nazi literature and websites do not
> >promote the image of a solitary Nazi inside a laboratory, or a
> >workshop, writing, thinking, investigating, or testing. On the
> >contrary, the front page of any self-respected Nazi website or
> >magazine has people wearing uniforms.
>
> >And uniforms are called uniforms for a reason.
>
You know a discussion is over when pseudo-nazi toopee comes with his
moronic cut and paste.
What a loser.
big john whine
> On 26 Feb, 04:01, Topaz <mars1...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
>
> > hostile to the Social Democratic Party; but their defences were
> > repeatedly stormed and finally had to surrender. Yet this defeat was
> > due to the stupidity of the bourgeois parties, who had opposed every
> > demand put forward by the working class. The short-sighted refusal to
> > making an effort towards improving labour conditions, the refusal to
> > adopt measures which would insure the workmen in case of accidents in
> > the factories, the refusal to forbid child labour, the refusal to
> > consider protective measures for female workers, especially expectant
> > mothers--all this was of assistance to the Social Democratic leaders,
> > who were thankful for every opportunity which they could exploit for
> > forcing the masses into their net. Our bourgeois parties can never
> > repair the damage that resulted from the mistake that was made. For
> > they sowed the seeds of hatred when they opposed all efforts at social
> > reform. And thus they gave, at least, apparent grounds to justify the
> > claim put forward by the Social Democrats--namely that they alone
> > stand up for the interest of the working class.
> > "And this became the principle ground for the moral
> > justification of the actual existance of the Trades Unions, so that
> > the labour organizations became from that time onwards the chief
> > political recruiting ground to swell the ranks of the Social
> > Democratic Party."
>
> > "the Jew seized upon the manifold possiblities which the
> > situation offered him for the future. While on the one hand he
> > organized capitalistic methods of exploitation to their ultimate
> > degree of efficiency, he curried favour with the victims of his policy
> > and his power and in a short while became the leader of their struggle
> > against himself. 'Against himself' is here only a figurative way of
> > speaking; for this 'Great Master of Lies' knows how to appear in the
> > guise of the innocent and throw the guilt on others. Since he had the
> > impudence to take a personal lead among the masses, they never for a
> > moment suspected that they were falling prey to one of the most
> > infamous deceits ever practiced. And yet that is what it actually
> > was."
>
> >http://www.ihr.org/ http://www.natvan.com http://www.nsm88.org
>
> >http://heretical.com/ http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/
>
> people than anyone else's. His refusal to let much better military
> minds do their thing, resulted in a devastating war for the Germans.
> His idiocy around Jews led to their shame. His incest, his own
> shame.
>
> The guy was a terrible leader and a terrible person.
>
> Who cares what he thinks of trade unions?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
hitler was, i believe, the first (but not the last)
high-profile methedrine addict.
(History [hitler] Channel)
big john whine
yeh, man...
and how do you like them cute uniforms?
eh?
<smirk>
not that i would argue too much.
the reason there is so much debate in America
about what fascism is or isn't?
ppl can't see the Forest For The Trees.
hah-chah...
Roy
==
Why these idiots keep quoting "Mein Kampf" is beyond me. I have read
it before and have a copy right here on my computer. Piss off Nazi
whores.
==
ZNUYBV
> In article <810c1590-a73a-40f6-92b5-909d9e06a...@r4g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
>
> ZNUYBV <tjwilson6...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 22, 5:51 pm, Harry Hope <riv...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > >http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/02/20/may-1933-hitler-abolishes-unions/
>
> > > On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
> > > halls and labor leaders were arrested.
>
> > > Trade Unions were outlawed by Adolf Hitler, while collective
> > > bargaining and the right to strike was abolished.
>
> > That was about the same time that FDR banned collective bargaining
> > federal employees in this country.
>
> Really? In another nine years he would agree to imprison innocent Issei and
> Nisei.
>
> --
He just wanted to protect them from the big bad capitalists.
ZNUYBV
> On Fri, 25 Feb 2011 22:03:15 -0800 (PST), ZNUYBV
>
> <tjwilson6...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Feb 22, 5:51 pm, Harry Hope <riv...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >>http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/02/20/may-1933-hitler-abolishes-unions/
>
> >> On May 2nd, 1933, the day after Labor day, Nazi groups occupied union
> >> halls and labor leaders were arrested.
>
> >> Trade Unions were outlawed by Adolf Hitler, while collective
> >> bargaining and the right to strike was abolished.
> ><snip>
>
> >That was about the same time that FDR banned collective bargaining
> >for
> >federal employees in this country.
>
> the same dinbats that ruined today's economy
>
> See the connection
>
Obama wasn't born yet.
Repubs Lost Both Wars
> On Feb 26, 11:04 am, Miles Davis <1926mi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Why these idiots keep quoting "Mein Kampf" is beyond me.
The Republican goal should now be clear.
Ray Fischer
>On Feb 25, 11:44 pm, rfisc...@sonic.net (Ray Fischer) wrote:
>> Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Feb 25, 8:36 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> > Of course there's no response.
>> >Because it's a mindless slogan.
>>
>> >> Well, according to Glenn Beck, Nazis are Socialist.
>> >And according to Hitler himself....
>>
>> Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
>>
>> That's what they call themselves,
>You tards really love to play the definition name game.
You started it, rightard fascist. I just illustrated why
you're a moron.
--
Ray Fischer | Mendacracy (n.) government by lying
rfis...@sonic.net | The new GOP ideal
Archie
>
> ==
> Why these idiots keep quoting "Mein Kampf" is beyond me. I have read
> it before and have a copy right here on my computer. Piss off Nazi
> whores.
The thing about Mein Kampf is that it clearly shows that Adolph Hitler
was an idiot.
Dave Heil
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:45:42 -0800 (PST), Viejo Vizcacha
> <nats_u...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>> And yet, if anyone were to characterize Nazism, they would say it was
>> a crowd political movement. Even those who defend Nazism do not do so
>> on the basis that it was a movement promoting individualism. On the
>> contrary, the whole premise of Nazism, and its main goal, was to move,
>> convince, promote, and subdue, entire ethnic groups, populations
>> numbering the millions. Even neo-Nazi literature and websites do not
>> promote the image of a solitary Nazi inside a laboratory, or a
>> workshop, writing, thinking, investigating, or testing. On the
>> contrary, the front page of any self-respected Nazi website or
>> magazine has people wearing uniforms.
>>
>> And uniforms are called uniforms for a reason.
>>
>
> Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
>
Brilliant, Toothpaste.
Dave Heil
> by James Buchanan
>
> Let's say the Germans merely removed the Jews from positions of
> political power and banned them from the legal profession.
You could say that, but you'd be lying your evil ass off, Toe Jam.
Kixi
>
> The thing about Mein Kampf is that it clearly shows that Adolph Hitler
> was an idiot.
The German people didn't think AH was an idiot ... and I would think
they knew better than Archie.
And wasn't one of the main issues in 1933 election, the jewish
problem? The jews lost .... and a few weks later declared a global war
on Germany. We know of the esulting destruction.
Viejo Vizcacha
Not more than you going to the beer store with no money and being
unable to buy anything would make you a teetotaller.
VV
Viejo Vizcacha
> On Feb 26, 12:21 pm, Archie <akenn...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > The thing about Mein Kampf is that it clearly shows that Adolph Hitler
> > was an idiot.
>
> The German people didn't think AH was an idiot ... and I would think
> they knew better than Archie.
>
The majority of the German people did not vote for him, ever.
> And wasn't one of the main issues in 1933 election, the jewish
> problem?
No, it wasn't.
> The jews lost .... and a few weks later declared a global war
> on Germany. We know of the resulting destruction.
There was no Jewish party in the German elections of the 1930's. Not
then, not before, not now.
VV
sarge
> by James Buchanan
>
> Let's say the Germans merely removed the Jews from positions of
>
> http://heretical.com/ http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/
None of this matters, in context. We do know that Hitler fucked his
own country over. He devastated it, shamed it, was a terrible
military leader and an asshole.
Who cares what someone like him thinks?
He was so idiotic and destructive to what he claimed to love. You
want to deny he was effective against those he hated. Even if you
were right, he was so destructive towards his own team, his thoughts
should be considered the mullings of dangerous moron.
American Thinker
> Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >On Feb 25, 8:36 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Well, according to Glenn Beck, Nazis are Socialist.
> >And according to Hitler himself....
>
> Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
>
> according to the dumbass rightard.
Saddam Hussein was a Republican. He even called Iraq the Iraq
Republic and had his Republican Guard.
The Peoples Republic of China has over 1 Billion Republicans, no
unions and lots of slave labor. That must be why Bush sent so many
of our jobs there.
Chom Noamsky
The Nazi party never got more than 37% of the popular support. Hitler
was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg, he was not democratically elected.
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
> Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >On Feb 25, 11:44 pm, rfisc...@sonic.net (Ray Fischer) wrote:
> >> Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> >On Feb 25, 8:36 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> > Of course there's no response.
> >> >Because it's a mindless slogan.
>
> >> >> Well, according to Glenn Beck, Nazis are Socialist.
> >> >And according to Hitler himself....
>
> >> Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
>
> >> That's what they call themselves,
> >You tards really love to play the definition name game.
>
> You started it, rightard fascist.
posting I invited a crazy unhinged moron like you to respond.
>
> I just illustrated why you're a moron.
guarantee if you asked every other progressive in this group....all
would say they wished you would STFU and go away. You're an
embarrassment)
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
> rfisc...@sonic.net (Ray Fischer) wrote:
>
> > Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > >On Feb 25, 8:36 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> > Of course there's no response.
> > >Because it's a mindless slogan.
>
> > >> Well, according to Glenn Beck, Nazis are Socialist.
> > >And according to Hitler himself....
Conservative because he forced everyone to join his union....
>
> > Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
>
> > That's what they call themselves, so N. Korea must be a democracy
>
> Saddam Hussein was a Republican. He even called Iraq the Iraq
> Republic and had his Republican Guard.
>
> The Peoples Republic of China has over 1 Billion Republicans, no
> unions and lots of slave labor.
allowed to join. (Socialist(or whatever progressive name you want to
give them) don't like anyone muscling in on their racket)
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
ZNUYBV
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 11:02:45 -0800 (PST), ZNUYBV
> the Middle class was (and is) attributed to the policies of FDR
>
> The reagan "revolution" began the demise of the Middle class
>
> SNICKER
>
The unemployment rate was 30% when FDR was in power. FDR almost
ruined the middle class.
Phlip
> > Republic and had his Republican Guard.
>
> For morons like Ray Fischer...that would be the truth.
He's pointing out how stupid you are for calling Hitler a socialist
because he borrowed the name for his party.
And what happened to the factually Socialist Brownshirts, hmm?
Dave Heil
>
> No fucking wonder you can't help being laughed at.
Yijngris, you just can't help walking around with a full load of
ignorance, can you. I wrote nothing about Jews remaining "political
viable". I pointed out that the Nazis did far more than simply removing
Jews from political power and banning them from the legal profession.
Stop, read and think before you post.
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
standard for what's correct, smart, etc.
Wahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahaha...Wahahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahhahahahah :*D
>
> for calling Hitler a socialist
you want in your little word game, nobody cares....In the end he was a
typical leftist.
Again, who favors Nazi shit like the expansion of government into
every faucet of life, gun control, socialized medicine, supports a
centralized economy, abortion, eugenics, racial quotas, supports
controlled speech, legalized drug use, opposes inherited wealth,
supports population controls, hates the free market, supports purging
Christianity from daily life in exchange for their own religion,
supports spending vast sums on giving out free (re)education, opposes
unalienable rights, etc....Lefty or Righty?
>
> because he borrowed the name for his party.
Again, call him whatever you want in your little definition name
game...In the end he wasn't much different from Stalin or Mao. (He
delivered the typical lefty utopia and a shitload of dead bodies)
>
> And what happened to the factually Socialist Brownshirts, hmm?
More importantly, how old are you? (Because you remind me of a typical
13 year old know-it-all that knows nothing....)
SilentOtto
head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 26, 9:47 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:> He's pointing out how stupid you are
>
> Wahahahahahahaha, because you and Ray-Ray's opinions are the gold
> standard for what's correct, smart, etc.
> Wahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahaha...Wahahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahhahahahah :*D
>
> > for calling Hitler a socialist
>
> As I've said over and over again, you can mince whatever definition
> you want in your little word game, nobody cares....In the end he was a
> typical leftist.
>
> Again, who favors Nazi shit like the expansion of government into
> every faucet of life
Republicans grew government faster than anyone else in history.
, gun control,
Nazis didn't implement broad gun control.
socialized medicine,
Nazis didn't have socialized medicine. Health care was provided by
the employer.
> supports a
> centralized economy,
Republicans have centralized the economy as much as anyone else has.
>abortion,
Nazis tried to discourage abortion. They gave mothers extra rations.
> eugenics,
Republicans have done as much eugenics as anyone else has.
>racial quotas,
Nazis made sure they didn't have any racial quotas. The were
segregationists, just like you southern rightards are.
>supports
> controlled speech,
Republicans are definitely in favor of controlled speech. You try and
force kids to recite the pledge of allegiance and keep trying to pass
laws forbidding flag burning.
> legalized drug use,
Nazis didn't support legalized drug use. Being a drug addict could
get one tossed into a concentration camp. They used drugs themselves
of course. They were a lot like the republicans who rail against gay
sex and drugs, then get caught having a meth snorting romp with
homosexual prostitutes.
>opposes inherited wealth,
Nazis didn't oppose inherited wealth. They even passed a special law,
Lex Krupp, that allowed Alfried Krupp to inherit Krupp Works in Essen
without haveing to share it with his family or pay crippling taxes.
> supports population controls,
Nazis hated population controls. They actively encouraged women to
have many children and even passed out awards for those who had large
families.
> hates the free market,
Nazis didn't hate the free market. They encouraged business to do
what ever they wanted, including forming monopolies or cartels,
without government interference.
>supports purging
> Christianity from daily life in exchange for their own religion,
Nazis didn't discourage religion. They even build a chapel for the SS
guards at Auschwitz.
> supports spending vast sums on giving out free (re)education, opposes
> unalienable rights, etc....Lefty or Righty?
Republicans are the ones who keep trying to get political
indoctrination into the class room. From saying the pledge to
learning religious ideas in science classes, Republicans are always
trying to substitute indoctrination for education..
Yep.
Nazis and Republicans are almost the same people.
You remind me of a typical 10 year old who thinks he knows everything
but really knows nothing.
Heh heh...
Rightards...
Batshit crazy and dogshit stupid, every single last one of you.
Ray Fischer
>On Feb 26, 9:47 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> He's pointing out how stupid you are
>Wahahahahahahaha, because you and Ray-Ray's opinions are the gold
>standard for what's correct, smart, etc.
>Wahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahaha...Wahahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahhahahahah :*D
>>
>> for calling Hitler a socialist
>As I've said over and over again, you can mince whatever definition
>you want in your little word game, nobody cares....In the end he was a
>typical leftist.
Even though historians and political scientists all describe the nazis
as being right wing extremists, the fascist kook keeps trying to push
the stupid lie that Hitler was really a socialist and that Western
Europe is run by nazis.
--
Ray Fischer | Mendacracy (n.) government by lying
Ray Fischer
Rightard rule #1: lie, lie again, lie more, lie about lying.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/JOBSHISTORY09.html
Miles Davis
> On Feb 26, 11:04 am, Miles Davis <1926mi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > > On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:45:42 -0800 (PST), Viejo Vizcacha
>
> > > >And yet, if anyone were to characterize Nazism, they would say it was
> > > >a crowd political movement. Even those who defend Nazism do not do so
> > > >on the basis that it was a movement promoting individualism. On the
> > > >contrary, the whole premise of Nazism, and its main goal, was to move,
> > > >convince, promote, and subdue, entire ethnic groups, populations
> > > >numbering the millions. Even neo-Nazi literature and websites do not
> > > >promote the image of a solitary Nazi inside a laboratory, or a
> > > >workshop, writing, thinking, investigating, or testing. On the
> > > >contrary, the front page of any self-respected Nazi website or
> > > >magazine has people wearing uniforms.
>
> > > >And uniforms are called uniforms for a reason.
>
> > moronic cut and paste.
> > What a loser.
>
> ==
> Why these idiots keep quoting "Mein Kampf" is beyond me. I have read
> it before and have a copy right here on my computer. Piss off Nazi
> whores.
Toopee always cut and copy the same thing. He has a repertory of about
12 messages -always the same-.
He doesn't have the intelligence or the intellectual curiosity to
engage in a real discussion.
Hence the quotes from Mein Kampf (which he has certainly never read).
Miles Davis
Enters the other nazi.
Funny, toopee and kinky, whenever they see words like "Hitler" or
"nazi" in the subject line, they feel the need to send their moronic
rant.
Very pavlovian...
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
with Lefties and can be Lefties too....
<snip the rest of stupid silentotto lies and stupidity>
You have zero credibility and you've only got yourself to blame.
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:21:09 -0800 (PST), Anonymous Infidel - the
> anti-political talking head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >And, for morons like Ray Fischer, big Nanny State Hitler was a
> >Conservative because he forced everyone to join his union....
>
>
> a) ultranationalistic
>
> b) militaristic
>
> c) Predicated moral justification on God
>
> d) Anti-Immigrant
>
> e) anti-alien
>
> f) Racist
>
> g) a capitalist
Just putting random shit together, eh?
>
> ALL of the above were definitive progressive characteristics of both
> German beliefs and of American political progressivism
Your thought process is like that of a retarded six year old.
>
> Now I'm going to go suck some cock
It's no wonder that you don't archive your postings....Because you
really are one sick individual.
>
> >=============================================================
>
> On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:32:34 -0700 (PDT), Kurtis T. Nicklas of
> 1293 Westbrook Ave, Elon, NC 27244-9372"
>
> <nickl...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> >I don't pay much attention to him these days, but I'd wager he's not
> >happy.
>
> You sure as shit paid attention when you got caught
> making all those late-night hang-up phone calls, didn't
> ya, Nickkkkers?
>
> CLICK ! ! !
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
> as being right wing extremists,
for a Small Government with Limited Powers...Got a cite to back this
bs up?
Note: The fact that your grasping for some imaginary group to back up
your baseless assertions just shows your full of shit.
---------------------------------------
Who favors Nazi shit like the expansion of government into every
Phlip
head <messiah2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Even though historians and political scientists all describe the nazis
> > as being right wing extremists,
>
> All Historian and All Political Scientists describe the Nazis as being
> for a Small Government with Limited Powers...
You mean a huge war machine, and the power to kill all Jews
everywhere?
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA
Oh, wait, you meant "no power to regulate business". Absolutely!
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
> > > Even though historians and political scientists all describe the nazis
> > > as being right wing extremists,
>
> > All Historian and All Political Scientists describe the Nazis as being
> > for a Small Government with Limited Powers...
>
> You mean a huge war machine, and the power to kill all Jews
> everywhere?
>
> BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA
>
> Oh, wait, you meant "no power to regulate business". Absolutely!
This is pretty pathetic bs you've reduced yourself to....
ZNUYBV
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:32:55 -0800 (PST), ZNUYBV
>
> But it was that BEFORE FDR was elected, GOOFY
>
> Just like the unemployment was 10% BEFORE Obama took office, Goofy
>
> The growing middle class was instantly wiped out by the loss of
> savings and investments that had been placed in banks, manipulated by
> an UNREGULATED and "loonytarian" set of principes the nation was still
> operating under.
>
> Does Bernie Madoff parallel ring any bell, McSwill?
>
It was AFTER he was elected. The recession started in 1931. FDR
continually made it worse until it turned into a national depression.
He almost wiped out the middle class. The middle class had it's
rebirth in the Eisenhower administration.
Topaz
<nats_u...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Bullshit. I am not talking about quotes from a book. Marx said that
>once the proletariat took power the power of the state would slowly
>dwindle. Now, whatever your thoughts about communist countries, I
>never heard anyone say that the pwer of the state had been waning the
>longer the communist stayed in power.
>
>So, I am talking about practical nazism, not what a rough brush
>painter wrote in prison.
>
The leader should have the power to get things done. Otherwise money
talks, as in democracies.
By Walter Ruthard
I myself was brought up in a small village in the southwest of
Germany. In 1939, when the war broke out, we left for the less exposed
Odenwald area until the possible danger of a French invasion had
passed. Shortly after that my father was transferred to the Ruhr
region. He as requested work as a foreman for the Mauser arms factory.
The government, true to their claims to be national and socialist,
took their promises seriously and provided young people starting a
family, as well as those who already had children, with affordable
housing. The first child brought a reduction of the mortgage by 25
percent, and when the fourth child arrived the mortgage was no more.
My parents already had four children then and thus were eligible for a
free newly built house from the government.
This was but one of the many programs the government established in
order to improve the quality of life for its citizens..
Then there was the "Kinderlandverschickung" program. It was started
before the war and enabled mothers in need of recreation to spend some
time in rural settings together with their children..
Another very popular social program of the government was "Kraft
durch Freude" (strength through joy). Here deserving workers could
take all-inclusive tours on luxury liners that were built especially
for this purpose. On these ships there was only one class and
everybody was treated the same. They visited the Azores and
Spitsbergen among other places. Those ships were not allowed to dock
in and English port however. The reason was that the British
government did not want it's citizens to see what it also could have
done for them..
The most misinterpreted program in Germany was the so-called
"Lebensborn". It was the exact opposite of what people are made to
believe it was, or should I say, of what people like to believe.. The
Lebensborn was the institution to help unwed mothers who did not know
where to turn for help. They were taken care of during their
pregnancies and afterward as well. This was the Lebensborn, and any
other interpretation is plain hogwash..
My father was able to buy not one but three guns plus two pistols,
together with plenty of ammunition. All it took him was proof that he
was indeed a German citizen without a criminal record. Then in 1945,
when the French "liberated" us, they disarmed him. I know that he was
not the only one to have guns at home, because I saw the many, many
arms that were handed over to the French, and this was in a very small
village..
Then, after the war was over, we had our first experience with a real
democracy. The French introduced it and gave us some shining examples;
one was that the lived off the country and stole everything which
wasn't nailed down..
It was not until many years later that I learned that Hitler held at
least five plebiscites during the first half of his rule. In
democratic Germany, from 1945 until today there has never been a
plebiscite.
There were foreign workers employed in Germany during WWII. I knew
one of them. He worked on a farm and was treated exactly like the son
who was in the army. After the war he stayed on and married the
daughter of the house. He was a prisoner of war from Poland and I
never saw him guarded by any policeman. This is how foreigners were
treated in Germany. They earned the same wages as the Germans, they
took part in the social insurance program, had paid-for holidays
including free train fares, and many came back with friends who also
wanted to work for these "horrible" Germans. Today they are called
slave laborer.
Not everyone was entitled to go on to a university. Only good marks
and above-average performance in schools qualified. But good
performers were promoted with all means available. Today we are much
more democratic; everyone is entitled to a university education and if
the parents are wealthy enough, the son or daughter can study until
they are 35..
Germany was also the country to introduce, in 1933, the first-ever
comprehensive animal protection law. Farm animals had to be kept in
strictly natural environments and no animal factories were allowed. Of
course, no testing of products on animals was permitted, and no kosher
slaughter.
If new industrial facilities were built they had to conform to the
highest standards with adequate lighting and air inside, canteens
where the workers were served nutritious meals at affordable prices,
and beautiful lawns outside: all for the benefit of the workers.. In
national socialist Germany, no child labor was allowed as it still was
in other European countries.
And finally, although I could still go on for a while, I would like to
mention that on express orders from Hitler himself, it was strictly
forbidden to use corporal punishment in the army. He was of the
opinion that in was incompatible with the honor of a German to be
punished by such degrading means.
That was the Germany I grew up in, and I am glad that I did.
Topaz
Leon Degrelle
"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.
Topaz
Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
"The man who is not opposed and vilified and slandered in the
Jewish Press is not a staunch German and not a true National
Socialist. The best rule whereby the sincerity of his convictions, his
character and strength of will, can be measured is by the hostility
which his name arouses among the mortal enemies of our people.
"The followers of the movement, and indeed the whole nation,
must be reminded again and again of the fact that, through the medium
of his newspapers, the Jew is always spreading falsehood and that if
he tells the truth on some occasions it is only for the purpose of
masking some greater deceit, which turns the apparent truth into a
deliberate falsehood. The Jew is the Great Master of Lies. Falsehood
and duplicity are the weapons with which he fights.
"Every calumny and falsehood published by the Jews are tokens of
honor which can be worn by our comrades. He whom they decry most is
nearest to our hearts and he whom they mortally hate is our best
friend.
"If a comrade of ours opens a Jewish newspaper in the morning
and does not find himself vilified there, then he has spent yesterday
to no account. For if he had achieved something he would be
persecuted, slandered, derided and abused. Those who effectively
combat this mortal enemy of our people, who is at the same time the
enemy of all Aryan peoples and all culture, can only expect to arouse
opposition on the part of this race and become the object of its
slanderous attacks.
"When these truths become part of the flesh and blood, as it
were, of our members, then the movement will be impregnable and
invincible."
" Then I began to examine my favorite 'World Press', with that fact
before my mind. "The deeper my soundings went the lesser grew my
respect for that Press which I formerly admired. Its style became
still more repellant and I was forced to reject its ideas as entirely
shallow and superficial. To claim that in the presentation of facts
and views its attitude was impartial seemed to me to contain more
falsehood than truth. The writers were- Jews.
"Thousands of details that I had scarcely noticed before seemed
to me now to deserve attention. I began to grasp and understand
things which I had formerly looked at in a different light."
"Thus another weapon beside that of freemasonry would have to be
secured. This was the Press. The Jew exercised all his skill and
tenacity in getting hold of it. By means of the Press he began
gradually to control public life in its entirety."
Topaz
<walter_...@post.com> wrote:
>
>The Republican goal should now be clear.
Democrats are mainly for the Blacks. Republicans are mainly for the
Jews.
Topaz
Here are some quotes from Mein Kampf:
moment I discovered the Jewish activities in the Press, in art, in
literature and the theatre. All unctuous protests were now more or
less futile. One needed only to look at the posters announcing the
hideous productions of the cinema and theatre, and study the names of
the authors who were highly lauded there in order to become
permanently adamant on Jewish questions. Here was a pestilence, a
moral pestilence, with which the public was being infected. It was
worse that the Black Plague of long ago. And in what mighty doses
this poison was manufactured and distributed. Naturally, the
lower the moral and intellectual level of such an author of artistic
products the more inexhaustible his fecundity. Sometimes it went so
far that one of these fellows, acting like a sewage pump, would shoot
his filth directly in the face of other members of the human race. In
this connection
we must remember there is no limit to the number of such people. One
ought to realize that for one Goethe, Nature may bring into existence
ten thousand such despoilers who act as the worst kind of
germ-carriers in poisoning human souls. It was a terrible thought,
and yet it could not be
avoided, that the greater number of the Jews seemed specially
destined by Nature to play this shameful part.
"And is it for this reason that they can be called the chosen
people? "I began then to investigate carefully the names of all the
fabricators of these unclean products in public cultural life. The
result of that inquiry was still more disfavourable to the attitude
which I had hitherto held in regard to the Jews. Though my feelings
might rebel a thousand times, reason now had to draw its own
conclusions. "The fact that nine-tenths of all the smutty literature,
artistic tripe and theatrical banalities, had to be charged to the
account of people who formed scarcely one per cent of the nation-
that fact could not be gainsaid. It was there, and had to be
admitted. Then I began to examine my favorite 'World Press', with
that fact before my mind. "The deeper my soundings went the lesser
grew my respect for that Press which I formerly admired. Its style
became still more repellant and I was forced to reject its ideas as
entirely shallow and superficial. To claim that in the presentation
of facts and views its attitude was impartial seemed to me to contain
more falsehood than truth. The writers were- Jews.
"Thousands of details that I had scarcely noticed before seemed
to me now to deserve attention. I began to grasp and understand
things which I had formerly looked at in a different light."
"Making an effort to overcome my natural reluctance, I tried
to read articles of this nature published in the Marxist Press; but
in doing so my aversion increased all the more. And then I set about
learning something of the people who wrote and published this
mischievous stuff. From the publisher downwards, all of them were
Jews. I recalled to mind the names of the public leaders of Marxism,
and then I realized that most of them belonged to the Chosen Race-
the Social Democratic representatives in the Imperial Cabinet as well
as the secretaries if the Trades Unions and the street agitators.
Everywhere the same sinister picture presented itself. I shall never
forget the row of names- Austerlitz, David, Adler, Ellonbogen, and
others. One fact became quite evident to me. It was that this alien
race held in its hands the leadership of that Social Democratic Party
with whose minor representatives I had been disputing for months
past."
Topaz
After the death of Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Hitler called a
referendum to approve his assumption of full power as Fuehrer and
Chancellor of Germany. 90% of the voters approved Hitler's increased
powers.
Rudolf Hess gave this speech on 14 August 1934, shortly before the 19
August referendum:
"National Socialists! Fellow German citizens!
I have rarely given a speech as difficult as this one. It is a
challenge to attempt to prove the good of something as obvious as
Hitler's assumption of Hindenburg's position. For fourteen years I
have been convinced that he is the only man able to master Germany's
fate. This conviction has grown over the years, as the original
emotional feeling found new support in endless ways that have
demonstrated Adolf Hitler's remarkable leadership abilities. It is
hard for me, now that I see the realization of fourteen years of
hopes, to gather the various reasons that explain how Adolf Hitler has
become the highest and only Fuehrer of the German people.
Whether through good luck or providence, I found in the summer of 1920
a small room in the Sterneckerbräu in which one Adolf Hitler, whom I
had never heard of, gave a speech to a few dozen people. His clear,
logical and persuasive speech laid out a new political program. This
man expressed my own vague feelings as a veteran of the war, making
clear what was necessary for the nation's salvation. He outlined a new
Germany from the heart of a front soldier, a Germany that I suddenly
realized was the one that had to become reality!
This man had driving passion, persuasive logic, and astonishing
knowledge. A powerful faith streamed from him - I had never
experienced its like. What was most remarkable was that I and the
other entirely rational members of the audience did not laugh as he in
all seriousness explained that the flag of the new movement for which
he and his movement fought would one day fly over the Reichstag, over
the Palace of Berlin, indeed over every German building. It would be
the victorious symbol of a new, honorable, nationalist and socialist
Germany.
At that moment in the Sterneckbräu there were really only two
possibilities. Either I would leave this fool immediately, or - as I
did - accept the conviction: This man will save Germany, if anyone
can!
I pledged my conviction to a friend, and on that very evening become
the most passionate admirer and loyal follower of this Fuehrer.
In the long years that followed, the rest of the world laughed and
mocked us, and the newspapers spread their poison and scorn about this
"madman," but nothing could shake my faith and readiness to give my
all for this man, so long as he did not lose faith in himself or his
mission.
I remember well even today a visit I made to Hitler in the small room
he sublet in Munich. He raged against a Munich newspaper that mocked
him and his idea. "I will show them whether I am to be taken seriously
or not," he exclaimed.
Still, his opponents did not take him seriously then, or for many
years after. Luckily so! For the most serious error his enemies made
was that they did not recognize early enough what a danger he was to
them. They missed the opportunity to destroy him and his small
following when it was still possible. The mighty tree of today, able
to withstand any storm, was then only a tender plant.
But like so many other things in the Führer's life, fate probably
determined that those around him were blind enough to lose valuable
time by fighting him only with ridicule. Providence, of which the
Fuehrer often speaks with such faith, preserved him and his movement
from destruction, preserving both for its purposes.
I knew Adolf Hitler as he walked through the streets of Munich in a
shabby gray coat, often hungry, accompanied only by a few friends,
posting flyers. He was armed only with a thick oak walking stick,
which he only too often had to use when his opponents from the then
USPD, or the Spartakus Bund, or some middle class party found the
primitive truths on these flyers unpleasant.
I can still remember how he, at the head of his "whole party" broke up
a meeting of Bavarian separatists, always putting himself in the way
of the greatest danger. Astonishingly, amidst all the daily tasks and
annoyances, he never lost sight of the larger goal. He always
presented his vision vividly to his followers.
In later years I saw this man during the triumphs and defeats of his
movement. At the moments of the worst defeats when his followers often
were near desperation, it was always he who restored the faith of the
doubters, gave them new enthusiasm, new faith. I was with him in the
Landsberg prison, when all seemed lost and his movement disintegrated
as his subordinates fought. I remember when there was the danger that
his parole would be canceled and he would have to stay behind bars for
another four or five years! The chances of realizing his ideas seemed
absolutely nonexistent then, but at that very moment he laid out the
methods he would use to rebuild the movement under the new
circumstances and by rejecting illegal methods. Then as always he
proved himself a master at adapting to new situations, in breaking
radically with methods he saw as outdated or ineffective.
With the certainty of a great leader, in the middle of what seemed to
be the total collapse of all his efforts, he explained to me that he
would need several years to rebuild the movement, and that it would be
seven years before he had the power to force his enemies to bend to
his will. That was in the winter of 1924/25. Seven years later it was
1932!
That was the year in which the forces of the past attempted in vain to
stop the final victory of National Socialism, the year in which every
attempt to stop Adolf Hitler and his movement failed, in which in fact
every shameless lying attack worked in the end to his advantage.
The Fuehrer said more often than in the past: "The others can do what
they want. When an idea is right, when it is fought for consistently,
when the movement that fights for it is well organized, and when the
leadership is determined to go its way regardless of the difficulties,
one day with mathematical certainty it will be victorious! The longer
they succeed in holding back our victory, the more powerful it will
be! It will fall into our laps like overripe fruit!"
These words from the decisive year 1932 explain the sudden and total
National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, which so surprised the
rest of the world.
Looking back I am convinced that our delayed victory, the fourteen
years that sometimes seemed to us as if they would never end, was
fate's way of preparing our people for the seizure of power. It was a
necessity of fate, just as the early death of the Fuehrer's parents
acquainted him with bitter poverty. That poverty forced him to become
a construction worker. He came to understand the poverty of his fellow
human beings and the lot of the "proletariat." The daily struggle for
survival in the primitive cultural conditions of the era gave the
Führer a deep understanding of his fellow working class citizens.
It was also a necessity of fate that he served at the Front during the
World War, for he learned a contempt of danger. He became hard. The
war brought him together with all levels of the German people and
showed him the destructiveness of class and rank. Most importantly, it
taught him to understand the people and to speak their language.
The revolutionary year 1918 was a necessity of fate for Adolf Hitler,
for despite its criminal leadership it cleared away relics of the past
that later would have created difficulties for the National Socialist
Revolution. And the revolt of 1918 brought signs of collapse and
revealed with naked clarity the international forces and their
destructive effects on Germany in a way that created the psychological
prerequisites that enabled the hard measures of the later National
Socialist government to succeed.
The attempt to seize power in November 1923 was ordained by fate, just
as was its bloody collapse. If the Fuehrer had not acted then, the
masses would later have lost faith in him as a Fuehrer when he
constantly called for patience and postponed the seizure of power.
Only his willingness to act resolutely when necessary, as demonstrated
in November 1923, provided the proof that he would when necessary take
the most forceful course. It proved that he chose to renounce force in
the years before 1933 not because he was a coward. And National
Socialism could not have taken power in 1923, since the people were
not yet ready for National Socialism, nor was National Socialism ready
to lead the people. What was obvious to everyone in Germany in 1933
would have seemed arrogance in 1923. The supporters of the parties of
that day had not yet had sufficient time to recognize the weaknesses
of their leaders.
The narrowest chance of fate prevented the Führer from entering the
government in 1932. He would have been joined with men who inwardly
were still his enemies and would have caused great damage as members
of the government.
And surely it was providence that preserved the life of the old Field
Marshall and Reich President to enable his good name and protecting
hand to guard the young National Socialist government until Adolf
Hitler's abilities as a leader had been proven to everyone at home and
abroad, until his reputation was sufficient to assume the full
leadership of the Reich.
Providence has clearly been at work in Adolf Hitler's life. Only so
can we understand how this man, the son of a minor official, withstood
hunger and privation and fought unaided powerful enemies in the press
and business, powerful parties at home and abroad, to become the
Führer of one of the great nations of the world, chancellor of the
German Reich, holder of the office of Reich President. This is a
miracle without precedent in the history of the world. In the midst of
bitter need, a people finds the man to rescue it. There is a force of
history at work here which we still do not understand.
The need of our people was great. A great man was required to meet it.
Providence gave him the gifts and the strength to move on both in good
times and bad, enabling him over the course of time to reach his goal:
the salvation of Germany!
Providence works through in a way both inexplicable yet clear to all
who have the good fortune to be near to him. How often has he said to
me: "I know that my decision or action is correct. I cannot explain at
the moment why, but I feel that it is right and the future will prove
it so." Invariably the course of events proved that the inexplicable
feelings of the Führer led him down a sure path.
The great historian Treitschke held the ability to see things
correctly as the decisive ability of a statesman, more important even
than talent. What leader has ever had this ability more than Adolf
Hitler? The proof is in his speeches, even those from 1920. Rarely
have political conditions and developments been predicted more
accurately, seldom have conclusions been drawn more clearly, thanks to
his ability to see the fundamental nature of the most difficult and
complicated things.
The "simple understanding" of the genius is able to see the essential
and the obvious.
The Fuehrer adds to the ability to see correctly, which the historian
sees as more critical than talent, not only talent, but also genius.
The ability to see correctly, along with genius, to which must be
added the workings of providence, gives us an explanation for the
miracle that has happened before our eyes in the past few years,
particularly since Hitler's assumption of power.
Is not the transformation of our people a miracle! It shows itself in
its return to its essence, to the sources of its strength, in its
reawakening pride and honor, in its will to self assertion in the
world, in its ability to free itself from international poisons and
from signs of corruption in all areas of life! Is it a miracle that
Adolf Hitler won the battle against unemployment in so short a time?
That he put people to work to meet daily needs as well as to advance
culture? The great highways, canals and buildings will proclaim to
coming generations the Hitler Era of the German people. Is it not a
miracle that a nation once divided by class and rank, divided by petty
state pride in Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and elsewhere-now works
together with mutual understanding for the great common tasks and for
the preservation of the nation and its people?
As I said when I began, I cannot explain why Hitler, and only he, can
be the Fuehrer. Who could suggest someone worthier and more able to
fill the office of Reich President, the highest leader of the Reich?
Someone might say that it is not good to put all power in one hand.
Let me reply that in a difficult time the Romans gave full power to a
young and capable leader - and the Romans knew something about
governing! They knew that "men make history." They knew that in times
of crisis, strong personalities must guide the state, personalities
bound to the living essence of their people.
Someone may say that it is not good to put all power in one hand,
since Adolf Hitler might use his authority arbitrarily and
thoughtlessly!
To that I can only say: The conscience of a moral personality is a far
greater protection against the misuse of an office than is the
supervision of parliament or the separation of powers. I know no one
who has a stronger conscience, or is more true to his people, than
Adolf Hitler.
Over the years I have seem him struggle to make difficult decisions,
always checking again and again with the experts in the field until he
was certain that his decision was absolutely correct. I know how many
sleepless nights his decision to take Germany out of the League of
Nations cost him, how he listened to all who had objections. I know
that he was unable to rest until he had refuted them by clear logic.
Only then did he decide, and accepted the full responsibility.
The Fuehrer's highest court is his conscience and his responsibility
to his people and to history.
He will also from time to time allow the people itself to pass
judgment on his general policy. This will regularly reaffirm his
leadership.
He knows that both his honor and his work are at risk. He cannot pass
the responsibility for his decisions to irresponsible parliamentary
majorities, as do the statesmen of all other nations. That also means
that his freedom of action is not restricted or watered down by
parliamentary bodies or other forces. This above all is why in
desperate times people and nations need an absolute leader - assuming
he possesses the necessary abilities - and why such a leader can be
necessary to the continued existence of the government and people.
Treitschke said that absolute leadership is either the best or the
worst form of government, depending on the personality of the leader.
We know that Adolf Hitler is both born and called to be a leader, and
that he has shown himself through all his actions to be a morally
upright person. As sole ruler he is the best possible form of
government for Germany - and Heaven knows that in its current crisis
Germany needs the best possible form of government!
A Fuehrer whose goal is to serve his people is in times of crisis a
better guarantee of peace to other nations than is a parliamentary
majority, which may lack the will at the critical moment to keep its
people from stumbling into misfortune, as Lloyd George suggested the
nations stumbled into the World War. In recent weeks, Adolf Hitler has
made rapid and firm decisions advancing the cause of peace in Europe
that demonstrate his statesmanship. Those states who today oppose us
may not be willing to admit it, but history will.
German citizens! Consider with all seriousness the international
significance of the referendum on 19 August. Talk with everyone in
your circle of acquaintances-family members, workmates, relatives,
with everyone you come in contact with. Remember that the world is
watching to see if a united German people will be loyal to its
Fuehrer.
Hundreds of thousands of journalists are waiting to announce the
expected collapse of National Socialism to their readers. They will do
this if even a few less Germans go to the polls than did on 12
November of last year. They hope for a collapse of National Socialism,
for they know this would mean the collapse of Germany.
By voting yes on 19 August, the German people will demonstrate to the
world that we see in Adolf Hitler the Fuehrer given to us by
providence. We Germans approve of what he has done at home and abroad
for Germany and trust his decisions for the future. Germany sees Adolf
Hitler as Hindenburg's proper successor. The entire German people now
gives Hitler the name of honor that the National Socialist movement
has long given him: the Fuehrer!
This word is more that a title, it is a confession and a certainty: My
Fuehrer!
Furthermore, the entire German people says to the world: Adolf Hitler
is and will remain our Fuehrer, because his policies are the policies
of the entire German nation. His rule guarantees Germany's stability.
Through him and his movement, Germany has become a unified Reich.
Since we want to remain a united German Reich, we want Adolf Hitler at
our head. Since we know that power struggles between individuals or
interest groups are unthinkable and impossible under his leadership,
we want him as Germany's leader.
Through him, Fate realizes its purpose: Saving Germany from the hunger
of misery of Bolshevism. We firmly believe that saving Germany from
Bolshevism also rescued Europe from the danger of red annihilation. We
Germans see it as our duty to thank Fate by affirming this man as the
Fuehrer of Germany.
One more thing the German people want to say to the world on 19
August: We want the work begun in Hitler's name to continue: the
battle against unemployment, the freeing of our conscience, the moral
renewal of Germany's youth, the strengthening of our sense of honor.
We Germans know that Hitler wants what we all want: economic equality
with the other nations of the world, the political and military peace
with the other peoples of the world, a return to prosperity and
culture after decades of decline and decay.
This we say to our Fuehrer on 19 August: We are bound to you in an
indissoluble unity in the fight for Germany's future. With you, we
long for the preservation of peace and are prepared to follow your
command to defend our people's peace.
We are proud and happy to have one of history's greats, a son of our
people, among us during our life times. The yes that we give affirms
his leadership to the world, and thanks him at the same time.
German workers! I speak particularly to you. Be proud that you may on
19 August affirm as leader of Germany a man of the German working
class. Be proud that you may symbolically say to one of your own on 19
August: We want you, Adolf Hitler, as German Chancellor and German
Reich President, you, a German worker! Where once kings, Kaisers and
presidents ruled Germany, now by our will and the will of the German
people stands for the first time a German worker. He is a worker who
knows how hard the life of his former comrades still is, those who
must struggle daily for their basic needs, and whose goal is above all
to improve their lot as quickly as possible.
My fellow German citizens! You will vote yes for Adolf Hitler! And if
you are asked why you voted for him, you will be able to answer:
We voted for Adolf Hitler:
Because he is the man who from his experiences as a Front soldier
developed a world view that is the foundation for all that is
happening in Germany.
Because his fifteen year struggle against a hostile world is a model
of strength and courage.
Because he always acts at the right moment, thereby showing that he is
a heroic leader.
Because he does nothing for himself, but everything for Germany and
for the future of his people.
Because he has given all of us a new faith in Germany.
Because he has given our lives meaning once more by showing us why we
Germans are on the earth.
Because he is the instrument of the will of a higher power.
In sum, because he is a true Fuehrer!
With our yes votes, we Germans will say on 19 August:
To you, our Fuehrer, we pledge our loyalty - Adolf Hitler, we believe
in you!
Topaz
David Lloyd George, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, wrote
this:
"I have seen the famous German leader and also something of the
great change he has effected...
There can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvelous transformation
in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other, and
in their social and economic outlook.
It is not the Germany of the first decade that followed the war -
broken, dejected and bowed down with a sense of apprehension and
impotence. It is now full of hope and confidence. The people are more
cheerful. There is a greater sense of general gaiety of spirit
throughout the land. It is a happier Germany. I saw it everywhere, and
Englishmen I met during my trip and who knew Germany well
were very impressed with the change. One man has accomplished this
miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic and dynamic
personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will and a
dauntless heart.
He is not merely in name the national leader. He has made them safe
against potential enemies by whom they are surrounded. He is also
securing against the constant dread of starvation. which is one of the
most poignant memories of the last years of the War and the first
years of the Peace. Over 700,000 died of sheer hunger in those dark
years. The fact that Hitler has rescued his country from the fear of
repetition of that period of despair, penury and humiliation has given
him an unchallenged authority in modern Germany.
As to his popularity, especially among the youth of Germany, there
can be no manner of doubt. The old trust him; the young idolize him.
It is not the admiration accorded to a popular leader. It is the
worship of a national hero who saved his country from utter
despondence and degradation.
To those who have actually seen and sensed the way Hitler reigns
over the heart and mind of Germany, this description may appear to be
extravagant. All the same it is the bare truth. This people will work
better, sacrifice more, and, if necessary fight with greater
resolution because Hitler asks them to do so. Those who do not
comprehend this central fact cannot judge the present possibilities of
modern Germany.
That impression more than anything I witnessed during my short visit
to the new Germany. There was a revivalist atmosphere. It had an
extraordinary effect in the unifying of the nation. Catholic and
Protestant, Prussian and Bavarian, employer and workman, rich and
poor, have consolidated into one people. Religious, provincial and
class origins no longer divide the nation. There is a passion of unity
born of dire necessity."
Topaz
Here is part of Hitler's speech at Rheinmetall-Borsig Works, Berlin,
on December 10, 1940:
"In this Anglo-French world there exists, as it were, democracy, which
means the rule of the people by the people. Now the people must
possess some means of giving expression to their thoughts or their
wishes. Examining this problem more closely, we see that the people
themselves have originally no convictions of their own. Their
convictions are formed, of course, just as everywhere else. The
decisive question is who enlightens the people, who educates them? In
those countries, it is actually capital that rules; that is, nothing
more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth and,
as a consequence of the peculiar structure of their national life, are
more or less independent and free. They say: 'Here we have liberty.'
By this they mean, above all, an uncontrolled economy, and by an
uncontrolled economy, the freedom not only to acquire capital but to
make absolutely free use of it. That means freedom from national
control or control by the people both in the acquisition of capital
and in its employment. This is really what they mean when they speak
of liberty. These capitalists create their own press and then speak of
the 'freedom of the press.'
In reality, every one of the newspapers has a master, and in every
case this master is the capitalist, the owner. This master, not the
editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the editor
tries to write other than what suits the master, he is ousted the next
day. This press, which is the absolutely submissive and characterless
slave of the owners, molds public opinion. Public opinion thus
mobilized by them is, in its turn, split up into political parties.
The difference between these parties is as small as it formerly was in
Germany. You know them, of course - the old parties. They were always
one and the same. In Britain matters are usually so arranged that
families are divided up, one member being a conservative, another a
liberal, and a third belonging to the labor party. Actually, all three
sit together as members of the family, decide upon their common
attitude and determine it. A further point is that the 'elected
people' actually form a community which operates and controls all
these organizations. For this reason, the opposition in England is
really always the same, for on all essential matters in which the
opposition has to make itself felt, the parties are always in
agreement. They have one and the same conviction and through the
medium of the press mold public opinion along corresponding lines. One
might well believe that in these countries of liberty and riches, the
people must possess an unlimited degree of prosperity. But no! On the
contrary, it is precisely in these countries that the distress of the
masses is greater than anywhere else. Such is the case in 'rich
Britain.'
She controls sixteen million square miles. In India, for example, a
hundred million colonial workers with a wretched standard of living
must labor for her. One might think, perhaps, that at least in England
itself every person must have his share of these riches. By no means!
In that country class distinction is the crassest imaginable. There is
poverty - incredible poverty - on the one side, and equally incredible
wealth on the other. They have not solved a single problem. The
workmen of that country which possesses more than one-sixth of the
globe and of the world's natural resources dwell in misery, and the
masses of the people are poorly clad.. In a country which ought to
have more than enough bread and every sort of fruit, we find millions
of the lower classes who have not even enough to fill their stomachs,
and go about hungry. A nation which could provide work for the whole
world must acknowledge the fact that it cannot even abolish
unemployment at home. For decades this rich Britain has had two and a
half million unemployed; rich America, ten to thirteen millions, year
after year; France, six, seven, and eight hundred thousand. Well, my
fellow-countrymen - what then are we to say about ourselves?
It is self-evident that where this democracy rules, the people as such
are not taken into consideration at all. The only thing that matters
is the existence of a few hundred gigantic capitalists who own all the
factories and their stock and, through them, control the people. The
masses of the people do not interest them in the least. They are
interested in them just as were our bourgeois parties in former times
- only when elections are being held, when they need votes. Otherwise,
the life of the masses is a matter of complete indifference to them.
To this must be added the difference in education. Is it not ludicrous
to hear a member of the British Labor Party - who, of course, as a
member of the Opposition is officially paid by the government - say:
'When the war is over, we will do something in social respects'?
It is the members of Parliament who are the directors of the business
concerns - just as used to be the case with us. But we have abolished
all that. A member of the Reichstag cannot belong to a Board of
Directors, except as a purely honorary member. He is prohibited from
accepting any emolument, financial or otherwise. This is not the case
in other countries.
They reply: 'That is why our form of government is sacred to us.' I
can well believe it, for that form of government certainly pays very
well.. But whether it is sacred to the mass of the people as well is
another matter.
The people as a whole definitely suffer. I do not consider it possible
in the long run for one man to work and toil for a whole year in
return for ridiculous wages, while another jumps into an express train
once a year and pockets enormous sums. Such conditions are a disgrace.
On the other hand, we National Socialists equally oppose the theory
that all men are equals. Today, when a man of genius makes some
astounding invention and enormously benefits his country by his
brains, we pay him his due, for he has really accomplished something
and been of use to his country. However, we hope to make it impossible
for idle drones to inhabit this country.
I could continue to cite examples indefinitely. The fact remains that
two worlds are face to face with one another. Our opponents are quite
right when they say: 'Nothing can reconcile us to the National
Socialist world.' How could a narrow-minded capitalist ever agree to
my principles? It would be easier for the Devil to go to church and
cross himself with holy water than for these people to comprehend the
ideas which are accepted facts to us today. But we have solved our
problems.
To take another instance where we are condemned: They claim to be
fighting for the maintenance of the gold standard as the currency
basis. That I can well believe, for the gold is in their hands. We,
too, once had gold, but it was stolen and extorted from us. When I
came to power, it was not malice which made me abandon the gold
standard. Germany simply had no gold left. Consequently, quitting the
gold standard presented no difficulties, for it is always easy to part
with what one does not have. We had no gold. We had no foreign
exchange. They had all been stolen and extorted from us during the
previous fifteen years. But, my fellow countrymen, I did not regret
it, for we have constructed our economic system on a wholly different
basis. In our eyes, gold is not of value in itself. It is only an
agent by which nations can be suppressed and dominated.
When I took over the government, I had only one hope on which to
build, namely, the efficiency and ability of the German nation and the
German workingman; the intelligence of our inventors, engineers,
technicians, chemists, and so forth. I built on the strength which
animates our economic system. One simple question faced me: Are we to
perish because we have no gold; am I to believe in a phantom which
spells our destruction? I championed the opposite opinion: Even though
we have no gold, we have capacity for work.
The German capacity for work is our gold and our capital, and with
this gold I can compete successfully with any power in the world. We
want to live in houses which have to be built. Hence, the workers must
build them, and the raw materials required must be procured by work.
My whole economic system has been built up on the conception of work.
We have solved our problems while, amazingly enough, the capitalist
countries and their currencies have suffered bankruptcy.
Sterling can find no market today. Throw it at any one and he will
step aside to avoid being hit. But our Reichsmark, which is backed by
no gold, has remained stable. Why? It has no gold cover; it is backed
by you and by your work. You have helped me to keep the mark stable.
German currency, with no gold coverage, is worth more today than gold
itself. It signifies unceasing production. This we owe to the German
farmer, who has worked from daybreak till nightfall. This we owe to
the German worker, who has given us his whole strength. The whole
problem has been solved in one instant, as if by magic.
My dear friends, if I had stated publicly eight or nine years ago: 'In
seven or eight years the problem of how to provide work for the
unemployed will be solved, and the problem then will be where to find
workers,' I should have harmed my cause. Every one would have
declared: 'The man is mad. It is useless to talk to him, much less to
support him. Nobody should vote for him. He is a fantastic creature.'
Today, however, all this has come true. Today, the only question for
us is where to find workers. That, my fellow countrymen, is the
blessing which work brings.
Work alone can create new work; money cannot create work. Work alone
can create values, values with which to reward those who work. The
work of one man makes it possible for another to live and continue to
work. And when we have mobilized the working capacity of our people to
its utmost, each individual worker will receive more and more of the
world's goods.
We have incorporated seven million unemployed into our economic
system; we have transformed another six millions from part-time into
full-time workers; we are even working overtime. And all this is paid
for in cash in Reichsmarks which maintained their value in peacetime.
In wartime we had to ration its purchasing capacity, not in order to
devalue it, but simply to earmark a portion of our industry for war
production to guide us to victory in the struggle for the future of
Germany...
One thing is certain, my fellow-countrymen: All in all, we have today
a state with a different economic and political orientation from that
of the Western democracies.
Well, it must now be made possible for the British worker to travel.
It is remarkable that they should at last hit upon the idea that
traveling should be something not for millionaires alone, but for the
people too. In this country, the problem was solved some time ago. In
the other countries - as is shown by their whole economic structure -
the selfishness of a relatively small stratum rules under the mask of
democracy. This stratum is neither checked nor controlled by anyone.
It is therefore understandable if an Englishman says: 'We do not want
our world to be subject to any sort of collapse.' Quite so. The
English know full well that their Empire is not menaced by us. But
they say quite truthfully: 'If the ideas that are popular in Germany
are not completely eliminated, they might become popular among our own
people, and that is the danger. We do not want this.' It would do no
harm if they did become popular there, but these people are just as
narrow-minded as many once were in Germany. In this respect they
prefer to remain bound to their conservative methods. They do not wish
to depart from them, and do not conceal the fact.
They say, 'The German methods do not suit us at all.'
And what are these methods? You know, my comrades, that I have
destroyed nothing in Germany. I have always proceeded very carefully,
because I believe - as I have already said - that we cannot afford to
wreck anything. I am proud that the Revolution of 1933 was brought to
pass without breaking a single windowpane. Nevertheless, we have
wrought enormous changes.
I wish to put before you a few basic facts: The first is that in the
capitalistic democratic world the most important principle of economy
is that the people exist for trade and industry, and that these in
turn exist for capital. We have reversed this principle by making
capital exist for trade and industry, and trade and industry exist for
the people. In other words, the people come first. Everything else is
but a means to this end. When an economic system is not capable of
feeding and clothing a people, then it is bad, regardless of whether a
few hundred people say: 'As far as I am concerned it is good,
excellent; my dividends are splendid.'
However, the dividends do not interest me at all. Here we have drawn
the line. They may then retort: 'Well, look here, that is just what we
mean. You jeopardize liberty.'
Yes, certainly, we jeopardize the liberty to profiteer at the expense
of the community, and, if necessary, we even abolish it. British
capitalists, to mention only one instance, can pocket dividends of 76,
80, 95, 140, and even 160 per cent from their armament industry.
Naturally they say: 'If the German methods grow apace and should prove
victorious, this sort of thing will stop.'
They are perfectly right. I should never tolerate such a state of
affairs. In my eyes, a 6 per cent dividend is sufficient. Even from
this 6 per cent we deduct one-half and, as for the rest, we must have
definite proof that it is invested in the interest of the country as a
whole. In other words, no individual has the right to dispose
arbitrarily of money which ought to be invested for the good of the
country. If he disposes of it sensibly, well and good; if not, the
National Socialist state will intervene.
To take another instance, besides dividends there are the so-called
directors' fees. You probably have no idea how appallingly active a
board of directors is. Once a year its members have to make a journey.
They have to go to the station, get into a first-class compartment and
travel to some place or other. They arrive at an appointed office at
about 10 or 11 A.M. There they must listen to a report. When the
report has been read, they must listen to a few comments on it. They
may be kept in their seats until 1 P.M. or even 2. Shortly after 2
o'clock they rise from their chairs and set out on their homeward
journey, again, of course, traveling first class. It is hardly
surprising that they claim 3,000, 4,000, or even 5,000 as compensation
for this: Our directors formerly did the same - for what a lot of time
it costs them! Such effort had to be made worth while! Of course, we
have got rid of all this nonsense, which was merely veiled
profiteering and even bribery.
In Germany, the people, without any doubt, decide their existence.
They determine the principles of their government. In fact it has been
possible in this country to incorporate many of the broad masses into
the National Socialist party, that gigantic organization embracing
millions and having millions of officials drawn from the people
themselves. This principle is extended to the highest ranks.
For the first time in German history, we have a state which has
absolutely abolished all social prejudices in regard to political
appointments as well as in private life. I myself am the best proof of
this. Just imagine: I am not even a lawyer, and yet I am your Leader!
It is not only in ordinary life that we have succeeded in appointing
the best among the people for every position. We have
Reichsstatthalters who were formerly agricultural laborers or
locksmiths. Yes, we have even succeeded in breaking down prejudice in
a place where it was most deep-seated -in the fighting forces.
Thousands of officers are being promoted from the ranks today. We have
done away with prejudice. We have generals who were ordinary soldiers
and noncommissioned officers twenty-two and twenty-three years ago. In
this instance, too, we have overcome all social obstacles. Thus, we
are building up our life for the future.
As you know we have countless schools, national political educational
establishments, Adolf Hitler schools, and so on. To these schools we
send gifted children of the broad masses, children of working men,
farmers' sons whose parents could never have afforded a higher
education for their children. We take them in gradually. They are
educated here, sent to the Ordensburgen, to the Party, later to take
their place in the State where they will some day fill the highest
posts....
Opposed to this there stands a completely different world. In the
world the highest ideal is the struggle for wealth, for capital, for
family possessions, for personal egoism; everything else is merely a
means to such ends. Two worlds confront each other today. We know
perfectly well that if we are defeated in this war it would not only
be the end of our National Socialist work of reconstruction, but the
end of the German people as a whole. For without its powers of
coordination, the German people would starve. Today the masses
dependent on us number 120 or 130 millions, of which 85 millions alone
are our own people. We remain ever aware of this fact.
On the other hand, that other world says: 'If we lose, our world-wide
capitalistic system will collapse. For it is we who save hoarded gold.
It is lying in our cellars and will lose its value. If the idea that
work is the decisive factor spreads abroad, what will happen to us? We
shall have bought our gold in vain. Our whole claim to world dominion
can then no longer be maintained. The people will do away with their
dynasties of high finance. They will present their social claims, and
the whole world system will be overthrown.'
I can well understand that they declare: 'Let us prevent this at all
costs; it must be prevented.' They can see exactly how our nation has
been reconstructed. You see it clearly. For instance, there we see a
state ruled by a numerically small upper class. They send their sons
to their own schools, to Eton. We have Adolf Hitler schools or
national political educational establishments. On the one hand, the
sons of plutocrats, financial magnates; on the other, the children of
the people. Etonians and Harrovians exclusively in leading positions
over there; in this country, men of the people in charge of the State.
These are the two worlds. I grant that one of the two must succumb.
Yes, one or the other. But if we were to succumb, the German people
would succumb with us. If the other were to succumb, I am convinced
that the nations will become free for the first time. We are not
fighting individual Englishmen or Frenchmen. We have nothing against
them. For years I proclaimed this as the aim of my foreign policy. We
demanded nothing of them, nothing at all. When they started the war
they could not say: 'We are doing so because the Germans asked this or
that of us.' They said, on the contrary: 'We are declaring war on you
because the German system of Government does not suit us; because we
fear it might spread to our own people.' For that reason they are
carrying on this war. They wanted to blast the German nation back to
the time of Versailles, to the indescribable misery of those days. But
they have made a great mistake.
If in this war everything points to the fact that gold is fighting
against work, capitalism against peoples, and reaction against the
progress of humanity, then work, the peoples, and progress will be
victorious. Even the support of the Jewish race will not avail the
others.
I have seen all this coming for years. What did I ask of the other
world? Nothing but the right for Germans to reunite and the
restoration of all that had been taken from them - nothing which would
have meant a loss to the other nations. How often have I stretched out
my hand to them? Ever since I came into power. I had not the slightest
wish to rearm.
For what do armaments mean? They absorb so much labor. It was I who
regarded work as being of decisive importance, who wished to employ
the working capacity of Germany for other plans. I think the news is
already out that, after all, I have some fairly important plans in my
mind, vast and splendid plans for my people. It is my ambition to make
the German people rich and to make the German homeland beautiful. I
want the standard of living of the individual raised. I want us to
have the most beautiful and the finest civilization. I should like the
theater - in fact, the whole of German civilization - to benefit all
the people and not to exist only for the upper ten thousand, as is the
case in England.
The plans which we had in mind were tremendous, and I needed workers
in order to realize them. Armament only deprives me of workers. I made
proposals to limit armaments. I was ridiculed. The only answer I
received was 'No.' I proposed the limitation of certain types of
armament. That was refused. I proposed that airplanes should be
altogether eliminated from warfare. That also was refused. I suggested
that bombers should be limited. That was refused. They said: 'That is
just how we wish to force our regime upon you.' ...
Topaz
Berlin-Lankwitz,
D�rkheimerstrasse 14,
GERMANY.
August 7th, 1933.
Dear Ken:
Don't think that I am going to be taken to an insane asylum nor
that the world is coming to an end. This is not so, and I must object
very sincerely if the fact of my sitting down again after only several
months write a letter to you gives you such impressions. The reason
for this outstanding event is much rather the hotheaded criticism
about Hitler and his Government which you gave us in your recent
letter to Ruth, and which indeed surprised me very much. However,
before giving you my point of view on the new turn that has taken
place in Germany I should like to ask you to in the first place do me
the favor of keeping your shirt on, otherwise it is you who is making
"an ass of himself". One should never speak the language of a truck
driver, no matter how much one likes it. Now, don't be mad, but calm
down. You did not hurt Ruth's or my feelings at all, but there are two
reasons why I feel I should answer you. The first reason is that your
remarks are very unfair to Hitler and his new Government, and the
other is that I intend to do my share in preventing the American
generation to which you belong to be equally as ignorant as the
generation of the whole world was which tumbled into the last war.
What makes you believe and in such a definite way state that we
are unable to see the things as they are, since, as you write, we are
hypnotized by Hitler. It is not true, that you and all those of your
friends who you claim take the same viewpoint as you are taking are
basing your opinion upon reports and comments of American newspapers
and perhaps upon interviews of American visitors who recently have
been in Germany, and while you are willing to disregard certain
exaggerations you readily accept the rest as the truth? Is it not
possible that thus you are receiving but one side of the story?
You know that the American Press endeavoring to please the so
called taste for sensational news of the American Public is working
according to the countrywide newspaper principal: All the news that's
fit to print, and be it even lies. I do not belong to those who claim
that it is the American people who have such taste, but instead it is
the American Press which in order to obtain the attention of the
reader considers any means good enough to beat competition. You will
never find such crookedness among decent business. Such business
spirit is identified all over the world with the jewish business
spirit. You must not misunderstand me. Such spirit can be found among
Christian Jews as well as among Jewish Christians, if you get what I
mean. Nevertheless it is all over the world condemned as the jewish
spirit. You will not doubt this, I suppose? Perhaps in this connection
you will find it interesting to recall that the inventor of the most
unchivalrous means to fight the enemy, namely the father of all
newspaper liars, Lord Northcliffe was a Jew. When comparing the basis
of your knowledge about present day Germany with the basis of our
knowledge, don't you think that ours at least is a broader basis?
Don't you think that the possibility of witnessing present
developments in Germany combined with the ability of reading and
understanding American newspapers can represent an ideal basis of
knowledge for such person who - and this is the important thing - is
free of all feelings of hatred against either one of the two
countries?
The Berlin Correspondents of the American newspapers are not such
persons. Many of them are jews and many have taken a hostile attitude
towards Germany long before Hitler ever appeared on the stage of
German Public Life. This includes also Mr. Mowrer of the Chicago
Herald Tribune who, as I saw from the New York Times received this
years Pulitzer Prize of Journalism for his "excellent" articles on the
German development. A year ago a German Democrat, mind you, not a
Nazi, expressed astonishment that I should like to call upon Mr.
Mowrer, since this "excellent" American reporter has long enjoyed the
reputation even among German Democrats of being a German hater. This
hostility towards Germany on the part of American Correspondents in
Berlin indeed could much more entitle me to claim that it is you who
is hypnotized namely by the American Press in general.
Dear Kenneth, not until today in August 23rd could I find time to
continue this letter. When rereading what I so far have said above I
doubt if it is of any use to speak to you the way I did. I know you
are not anti-German, and yet while having received your school
education at a time of outright hostility towards Germany your mind is
only to readily inclined to accept any piece of news about Germany as
true and the correct version as long as this piece of news is
presented in such form which is free from obvious sensational
exaggeration. Since, however no piece of news published in the
American papers is reporting favorably on the German National
Socialistic Revolution your mind is systematically kept from turning
pro-German. This is the work of jewish influence in the American
Press. In face of such mental attitude of yours you naturally hesitate
to accept as the correct version anything which is told you by someone
who on one hand is not even a 100% American Citizen and on the other
hand is, as you know pro-German. For this reason I doubt if I can
change anything of your attitude towards Hitlerite Germany and of the
attitude of those of our friends who, as you claim take the same
viewpoint as you are taking. When, however, after reconsideration I
continue this letter it is, because even if I should not convince you
I wish to do my share in trying to destroy this hostile spirit of the
American People towards Germany and especially to contribute to making
the young Americans a more broadminded generation.
In the following I am going to copy part of my last letter to Mr.
Houston. The article I sent him months ago interested him very much.
Unfortunately he told me it was not written in good enough English. I
naturally am rather disappointed that my English still is too poor.
But even if my English had been correct there would have been no
possibility to place my article, Mr. Houston wrote, not saying of
course that any favorable viewpoint is prevented from publication in
the American Press. Here is what I answered him.
" --- Whereas the American papers beyond doubt are carrying a
tremendous amount of material about Germany from their regular
correspondents, and no number of interviews from all kinds of people
who recently have been in Germany, all this material, and be it even
just a report, is skillfully presented in such form which seemingly
intentially aims at being equally offensive for Hitler and his new
Government through ridiculing his deeds as giving nourishment to
anti-German sentiment. Most of the recent American visitors in Germany
seem to be of the type of jews whose hatred towards Hitlerite Germany
is a fanatical one. They of course are not in a position to give a
true picture to their countrymen of what they have seen or heard. Mr.
Michael Williams, editor of The Commonweal, president of the Calvert
Association, and a member of the Committee appointed by the American
Committee on Religious Reports and Minorities to go to Germany and
investigate conditions published a report (New York Times of June
14th) of his own private visit, since the committees visit was
postponed. He claimed to have spent "nearly" two weeks in Berlin
interviewing members of the Hitler Government, leading business and
professional men, both German and American, as well as Protestant,
Catholic, and Jewish leaders. Not one single name is mentioned in his
report. "One of the most prominent German political leaders"(?) told
him that the outlawing of the Jews was a mistake comparable only to
the invasion of Belgium at the outbreak of the World War. It is plain
that such a remark, if it really was made, could be made only by a
person equally hostile towards Germany as Mr. Williams himself. Maybe
this interview took place at a concentration camp. When returning to
America these people cry: Democracy is at an end in Germany. But they
are anxiously concealing the truth that before Hitler came jewish
democratic corruption has brought Germany on the verge of Communism.
Such "Democracy" indeed is at an end now in Germany. All this
excitement about democracy being at an end and about "persecutions"
and outlawing of the German Jews who amount to but 1% of the total
German population seems very strange indeed when compared with the
calmness with which the world took the cruelty and terrorism of the
Russian Revolution which, as everyone knows, was prepared and created
by Jews and by jewish money.
Too bad that Mr. James G. McDonald, chairman of the Foreign Policy
Association, can find nothing better for him to do than to call upon
all American Christians to step into line with Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, as
I see from the New York Times of June 15th and July 11th. He too has
recently been in Germany, and on July 11th the New York Times
published his address in Chautauqua, N.Y. dealing with his visit in
Germany and with the situation there as it existed more than three
months ago, namely on April 1st, at the time of the (24 hours)
anti-Jews boycott. The report in the paper was headed by the remark:
Statements that Jews are not being cruelly treated in Germany were
termed "an insult to the intelligence" by James G. McDonald. Thus the
American Public is made to believe that Mr. McDonald is furnishing an
up-to-date denial for all new reports about improving conditions in
Germany. Such is the way matters about Germany are twisted in the
American Press. Senator Wagner too has stepped into line with Rabbi
Wise as I have noticed. I regret it, but I am convinced that many
people have done so because of absolute misinformation about present
day Germany. People trying to argue in favor of Hitlerite Germany, as
Mr. Bernard Ridder tried to do, are quickly being ridiculed as one may
see from the New York Times comment of June 14th, and I doubt if the
well known Radio announcer Douglas Brinkley who during his visit in
Germany in Berlin Talkies expressed his admiration for Hitler and this
new Germany ever again will be allowed to broadcast in America.
The Berlin correspondents of the American Press fall in line with
the above mentioned general attitude towards Germany. I suppose they
have to in order to keep their jobs. This might be easy for them,
since many of them are Jews and some are known to be hostile towards
Germany long before Hitler ever appeared in front of German Public
Life. Under such circumstances it seems plain to me that any viewpoint
favorable for Germany would today not be considered by the big
American papers, since jewish influence in the American Press is much
too strong.
Dear Mr. Houston, when in the above I have given you my opinion
about American Public Opinion it was done, because I feel confident
that you will not misunderstand me. When I am arguing for Hitler and
in favor of present day Germany it is not only because of the many
great deeds of Hitler (uniting the German people, crushing Communism,
successfully fighting unemployment) but also because I positively know
that the only way to serve the purpose of German American friendship
is to bring about mutual respect between the people of the two
countries. To accomplish this one must fight for mutual respect
between Opinion in America and in Germany. German Public Opinion and
the German People are showing this respect for America. Everyone here
is speaking of the courage and leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt in
terms of admiration. It is up to American Public Opinion to give honor
where honor is due.
So much about my letter to Mr. Houston. Now I shall give you part of
my article which I sent to Mr. Houston and which he showed to Dr.
Wilbur Thomas, the Director of the Carl Schurz Foundation, and to Dr.
Carl Ackerman, the Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia
University. Although, as I said above it is not written in good
English, Mr. Houston as well as the two other gentlemen found the
article very interesting. Here is what I said back in May 1933.
After a short introduction I wrote: "The world war was won not with
the sword but with the pen. This is a German opinion which is shared
also by a good many Americans. Apart from now one might think on this
subject nobody today would deny the fact that the pen, if used as a
weapon, can prove to be a mighty deadly sword. If now we wish to
liquidate the world war, if we seriously endeavor to promote world
peace, to promote good relationship between the nations of the world
it seems to be absolutely essential that we should stop using war
weapons and stop tolerating warlike propaganda. In other words, we
should do all we can to prevent endangering good relationship between
countries. Claiming to be well acquainted with German political
troubles of past years as well as with the mentality of the German
People I feel that the American newspaper reader is not at all put in
a position to get a clear and true conception about Germany. Above all
it is to my mind equally silly as it is preventing the education of
the American people if the American newspaper reader is left to
believe that the Germans are a barbaric nation. The absurdity of such
statements does not make them less dangerous to good relationship
between the American and the German people. If in the following I am
dealing with the fundamental achievement and the fundamental aim of
the German national socialistic revolution I am doing it for the
benefit of a better understanding between the American and the German
people. This better understanding is the more necessary the more we
wish to prevent that a few years of animosity between the two
countries should be permitted to destroy a century old friendship
between the American and the German people.
Contrary to political custom Hitler said in his address to the
masses on the Tempelhof field on May 1st that he is not going to tell
the workman how important for the Nation the labourman and his work
are, and turn around and speak to the intelligent class of people as
if to the cream of the Nation, and turn around again and speak to the
peasant telling him how valuable he is. On the contrary he is going to
demonstrate to one class of people the importance and the value of the
other. This attitude is not only wise, but it also reveals the mystery
of this sudden sense of unity that has come over the German people.
When I am going to apply the same methods while writing to America
about Germany, it is because making one people understand and respect
another people might equally well prove to be the best method to bring
about the much longed for mutual understanding between the nations of
the world.
The German national socialistic revolution beginning on January
30th, still in full swing today, and going to be carried out
furthermore for an indefinite time to come is a revolution of mind. It
is a revolution of the national mind as well as of the social mind of
the people. Only a short time ago American Correspondents and
traveling newspapermen used to report from Germany that the growing of
the Hitlerite Party was the outcome of general dissatisfaction and
hardship. If this had been the case, if Hitler had gained support
merely on the ground of promising the same bread and work with all of
his
(page missing)
possibility of such development before taking place in Germany, Hitler
succeeded in changing the minds of his followers from the Communist
rank and file. They no more are Communists, but National socialists.
They have killed in themselves that hatred they felt towards the rich
and towards the white-collar-man, in general to an equal extent as
this white-collar-man and this rich man have been made to no more look
down upon the workman or anybody doing manual labor. It is true, not
all of Germany has turned to national socialism. However while for
this very reason Hitler's revolution still is in full swing, and will
be carried out furthermore until such time when this final aim is
reached, a new election, if held today, might well show an increase of
the nationalsocialsit vote from 17.5 million on March 5th to close to
30 million out of a total electorate of about 44 million votes.
Hitler's revolution of mind, as I have tried to explain it, in no
way is representing a danger to world peace, and again it seems
strange that Hitler's assurances to keep peace frequently are ignored
in reports printed in the foreign Press. As impressive as this German
revolution of mind might be to the foreign observer who knows Germany
and the German people it is only reasonable that it cannot be equally
impressive to those Americans who not yet have had a chance to visit
and get acquainted with Germany. After all, this new German spirit is
nothing new to us in America. Republicans and Democrats, both call it
the true democratic spirit. The workman in America always has been as
much respected as the white-collar-man, and our boys have long been
working their way through College through manual labor. However, for
this very reason it seems to me that no people is better equipped
mentally to understand this new Germany and its leader than the
American people.
If when writing about the Germany nationalsocialistic revolution I
would fail to touch the jewish problem in Germany the reader indeed
would miss an important explanation to a new German attitude which has
created worldwide interest and partly even new animosity. Endeavoring
to from and impartial point of view seek an explanation for this
change in Germany one must realize two outstanding facts. One is that
the percentage of Jews in Germany indeed is exceptionally small and
the other is that this small percentage in postwar years has enjoyed
an undue large share of public influence. While moreover a great many
Jewish names are connected with all kinds of affairs of administrative
corruption of postwar Germany thus making it all the easier for Hitler
and his followers to gain countrywide support when calling for a
radical reduction of the Jewish influence, it is wrong to regard this
attitude as an affront to the Jewish religion. This it is not. Instead
this attitude is directed against a postwar political system which has
discredited the Marxist parties in Germany and the Jews, since many of
them have played such prominent part in cooperation with those parties
and the many cases of disloyalty and dishonesty they have been
connected with. When I said above that the small percentage of Jews in
Germany in postwar years so far have enjoyed an undue large share of
public influence, this was possible because of their close cooperation
with the Marxist parties. In other words it was not superior ability
which entitled them to such share but political pull. Until recently
conditions in Germany indeed were of such kind that many a Christian
student would cease studying, since he had to realize that his road of
future was blocked by political interests, whereas the jewish student
would keep on studying knowing perfectly well that his father,
although perhaps a businessman and not a politician, nevertheless had
sufficient political pull to pave his way. In such development the new
Germany sees a controlling increase of the Jewish element in the field
of education which the Jewish population percentage in Germany does
not justify.
Hand in hand with this development the possibility of marrying has
thus been made so much easier for the young Jewish generation, which
fact in turning no doubt is contributing to increasing the population
percentage of the German Jews to the disadvantage of the other
confessions. Such developments are of no little importance for
Germany, and while today under the Hitler Government a radical change
is being made this radicalism is not directed against each single
Jewish citizen. On the contrary the form in which the new laws are
being applied show a liberal spirit and reveal the truth that the
attitude of Hitler Germany towards this Jewish problem ought to
correctly be regarded as directed against a political system of
corruption with which the German Jews unfortunately so impressively
have identified themselves."
So much from my article. I hope I have put it clear enough to
realize that the Jewish problem in Germany is a question of life or
death of the German race. If such development as was tolerated before
Hitler came should be permitted to continue it should be obvious for
everyone that in the course of time the face of the German population
would change considerably. Germany, as you know, has a population of
66 million people. Among these 66 million are but about 600,000 Jewish
citizen. Under those circumstances as described above this small
percentage in the course of time could increase rapidly because of
conditions of life being more protected against all hardship,
marriages being made easier because of professional and business
protection which safeguard in turn enables the Jewish woman to give
birth to children. Moreover it should be easy to realize that favoring
the Jewish element to such an extent as was done before Hitler came
necessarily leads to giving away the top positions in Government,
industry, and education to Jews, while on the other hand the German
race of Protestant and Catholic confession is being pushed back into
positions of no influence which in turn in the course of time will
make them unable to lead their own country because of being deprived
the necessary educational training in matters of administration, big
business, and education. At the same time their population percentage
of now 99% is rapidly decreasing because of the German woman through
hardship of life and uncertainty because of the German woman through
hardship of life and uncertainty of the husbands future being unable
to give birth to children.
Dear Kenneth, my English might be very poor, but I hope you get what
I am trying to explain. I hope you see that Hitler's anti-Semitism is
not directed against the Jewish religion nor against each single Jew.
No Jewish citizen here is being molested. News to the contrary are
lies and nonsense. Such news naturally are being spread by Jews, since
the Jews realize very well, as the newspaper "Jewish Chronicle"
published in South Africa recently admitted, that the Jewish fight for
world control through the Hitler Revolution in Germany has received a
setback of 100 years of strenuous work. The Jewish citizen in Germany
shall continue to enjoy a peaceful living as he did before Hitler came
with the only exception that he shall enjoy no influence beyond the
frame of his own population percentage. In the interest of the German
race I do not hesitate to call such attitude, as queer as it might
seem to you, a "democratic persecution" and I regard it as very sound.
The Jewish citizen who does not like such democratic persecution might
leave the country and immigrate somewhere else. And when I say
immigrate somewhere else you perhaps will realize how harmful it was
and still is that the USA for such a long time had kept its doors open
especially at times of business prosperity. In America the Jew saw a
vast country with tremendous resources and no end of business
possibilities. But he had no intention to go out and work. You will
find no Jew being busy as farmer. No, such common work is good enough
for the children and grandchildren of the Christian pilgrims of
German, French and English birth who alone have built up the country
which is called the United States. The Jew was doing the business of
his own race, namely lending out money and waiting in his armchair for
the return. Thus he gradually got hold of this and that business
undertaking, thus he gradually got hold of the entire country. There
is today no country in the whole world with a more powerful influence
of the Jewish element except perhaps England, than the USA. The fact
that such a powerful Christian businessman as Henry Fold is flatly
denying everything he said in his book against the Jews speaks for
itself. The German element among the American population used to have
a great influence in the country. And when I recall the name of
Steuben do you doubt that such influence was for the benefit of the
country? Where are the Steubens of today? Don't tell me there are
none. That is not correct. But it is true that in the course of time
the German American element has been degraded to the influence of a
butcher and grooceryshopowner. Where there are exceptions you will
possibly find that the exception is a Jew. The USA was not governed by
Washington but by Wall Street. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the first
President to challenge this. It remains to be seen if the power he has
been given is sufficient for the success. You may be absolutely sure
that Washington and Berlin are in perfect accord although this
sometimes does not seem so.
Washington is not fighting against Hitler, but instead is watching
Hitler's experiment with the Jewish problem with very keen interest
knowing perfectly well that this experiment might lead the whole
world. Watch Ireland, watch the increase of fascism in England, watch
the change in France that will come, remember the American Postmaster
Generals order forbidding anti-German boycott stamps on the back of
envelopes.
October 2nd 1933.
Dear Kenneth: Not until today could I find time to continue this
letter, and I must admit that since your last letter arrived which
again was full of insulting remarks about Adolf Hitler I feel little
inclined to do so. I must state that you have changed greatly. You
were much more grown-up when in May 1932 you left us. I don't know
whose influence it is and I don't care. I only know that while you
were with us you grew accustomed to argue in a serious way seeking
effect only through the sincerity of your argument and not through a
strong language. The letter method is used only by children and
hysteric women and men. If I wanted to argue with you on the basis of
your last letter I indeed could easily come back and picture a great
many Americans who have been making an ass of themselves and still are
making an ass of themselves, and I could speak much more convincing,
since I know America, whereas you in your highhatted ignorance are
adopting nothing but what jewish reporters publish and you fall for
any line of talk as long as the lies are presented in a somewhat
plausible form. You need not boast about not having Nationalsozialism
in America. It is quite doubtful if such is an advantage, and the fact
that the American Democratic system given to the country by men who
justfully can be called great Americans has grown into a system of
rotten corruption might bring about American Nationalsozialism quicker
than you think.
Any system of government stands and falls with its leaders. Are the
leaders rotten the system will turn to be rotten too. Such was the
case in Germany, and such might be the case in America too. Moreover
America some day might be happy to turn to Nationalsozialism instead
of turning to Communism. However as long as there are many of young
Americans thinking the way you do, namely from one moving picture to
another I see great trouble ahead for the country, trouble which will
be far more serious than the Russian revolution was. When in face of
your calling us being hypnotized I answer you that I am a great
admirer of Adolf Hitler I am doing so in order to warn you to remain
as narrow-minded as you now are. You never will hear the truth about
present day Germany, for America at present is a jewish country.
Jewish influence is dominating, and sooner or later the American
Aryans will realize what they shall have to fight for.
Nationalsozialism would never come to America from Germany but from
the Aryan population in America and such will bring about a rebirth of
Washington's United States.
Why cry about the poor little children who are called upon to join
Hitler's junior leagues, when they themselves are crazy to do so.
Little Jobi has joined and he is tickled to death about it. Why throw
out your chest and condemn militarism when there is no country on the
face of the earth more militaristic than the United States? Or do you
deny that American boys in their small years even are receiving
military training? Is such a sign that America intends to go to war?
You say: No. Well, I answer you, Germany won't either. A picture of
Hindenburg and Hitler published in an American paper was called: A
business conference between H. and H., whereas truly it was a picture
of the celebration of the battle of Tannenberg. Such shows how much
even in matters of minor importance American newspapers are making an
ass of themselves. Even if you don't like it, Adolf Hitler is one of
the greatest and at the same time one of the most modest men Germany
has ever had. Future will show that I am right. Goodbye now, and don't
think that I am sore, I am just a little disappointed in you.
Hearty greetings,
Topaz
"I know you expect no deep expression of feelings, for feelings cannot
be clothed in words. But please imagine this: jobless, without any
money. For two years! For four years! For six years! A desperate
woman, broken in body and soul, with three young children.
How often did I see their hungry eyes looking toward me with vain
expectation. Nothing is more tortuous than such looks from children.
My faith in him, the fanatical fighter, was what kept me and mine from
what lured us - and anyone else in our situation - Suicide!
And today?
A happy mother who is always singing with her children. No one can see
in her the miserable, desperate woman she once was. Instead of three
unhappy hollow-cheeked children, four little devils making noise far
and wide.
Look at them! There may be families with better behaved children, but
none with children as cheerful and happy! That is what the F�hrer
means to me and mine.
I turned my back very early to a foreign worldview because it left my
whole life meaningless. The F�hrer gave me his worldview a firm place
to stand, for it is nothing but a knowledge of the eternal laws that
are behind the universe.
His deeds are a joyful fulfillment of these laws. His successes do not
seem to me, as one hears all too often, the result of good luck,
rather as the natural consequences of his nature. This faith, no, this
certainty, enables me to understand the F�hrer when his actions would
otherwise require blind confidence.
Such obvious confidence is the most wonderful feeling that I can
imagine. Admiration? Recognition? Thanks? They are nothing when
compared to the full understanding of a people of 80 million for the
mission of its F�hrer. That alone would be crowning of his sacrificial
struggle.
This fulfillment of this wish is my prayer for the F�hrer."
Fred. Ch., Poppelau
"The F�hrer is everything to us, he is our faith, security and hope.
As a bearer of the blood medal, I have always believed in this man,
who guided and inspired us, who led us in the fight for Germany's
greatness. We, me, my wife and our seven children, believe only in
him, Adolf Hitler. Is there a belief more understandable, more real,
more natural than this?
Has the F�hrer not done everything for us that one could do for the
good of a family? Did he not give me a job and the ability to decently
feed and clothe my family? Has he not given my children a future that
no other country could so easily give?
The F�hrer is with us in every situation! Look, sometimes the world is
hard on a family. There are difficult situations that cannot be
overcome. In just such hours I go to my living room, and there is a
picture of my F�hrer.
I look Adolf Hitler in the face and remember his great struggle, his
great will and accomplishments, and my miserable mood is gone and
thinking of the F�hrer gives me new strength.
How can I fail when I see the greatness in and around Adolf Hitler?
My children know the F�hrer as the man who rules all, arranges all,
who built their world. The F�hrer is the embodiment of what people had
such difficulty describing to us children before. But this is the
enormous difference: The F�hrer moves among the people so that one can
celebrate him, so that our love for him is rewarded through his ever
new deeds.
The F�hrer is hope for us in every situation. Look, my dear comrade,
according to the F�hrer's own words, raising seven children is a great
responsibility to the state and a holy duty.
To form these young souls, to raise them to be decent adults, is such
a wonderful task only because the F�hrer has given us the sure
foundations that are necessary. He is our hope, for only through his
generous measures are we with many children also able to "lead an
decent life," as anyone should be able to do. He protects our strength
through the NSV, through subventions for children, through the support
the state gives women and children, through the high status he gave
children.
Once people mocked those with many children. Today people honor them.
Now my wife and I have become respected members of the state. That is
why we have such hope for the future of our children, for the F�hrer
has provided all that is necessary for them so that they too will be
able to establish families and contribute to the security and
protection of the great Fatherland.
Is it not wonderful to know what a wonderful future awaits our
children. One cannot but remember our own youth during the postwar
period, during the inflation, the days of hunger and so much that had
terrible effects on our youth and development.
Our children have no fears of such things, for they know that our
F�hrer plans everything, foresees everything, and prepares the best
for us.
Is it not obvious why the F�hrer means everything to us?"
Toni Dominik Sch., Unterammergau
"I can still remember the first time I saw and heard the F�hrer in
1920 in the Zirkus Krone in Munich. This was the introduction: "Adolf
Hitler will speak!" A somewhat slight young man stood before me, with
a short coat, soft collar and crumpled tie, poorly clothed. I was
curious to hear what this man had to say to me.
As I heard his voice, the passion of his words (something unheard of
at the time), the growing tension of his words, it became clear to me:
This man or no one! To this day, this inner feeling has not left me.
The greatness of this man, his deeds, his historic successes seem
enormous to me. But yet I always see him as a man of the people, one
of us in my mind's eye. It fills me with pride that Providence choice
one of our brothers to fulfill German history.
I honor the great figures of German history, but my feelings for the
F�hrer are different. I believe that love is the best word to describe
them.
One of us, who came from the people, has done amazing deeds, yet
remained the same from the first day I saw him until today.
I admire this man so much that I would defend him even if he were in
the wrong, but he cannot be wrong since he is truth and justice
themselves."
Gr. F., Munich
Dave Heil
> ZNUYBV<tjwils...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Feb 26, 11:28 am, Yoorg...@Jurgis.net wrote:
>
>>>> Obama wasn't born yet.
>>>
>>> Sure, and that's why from the early 30's until the 80's the rise of
>>> the Middle class was (and is) attributed to the policies of FDR
>>>
>>> The reagan "revolution" began the demise of the Middle class
>>>
>>> SNICKER
>>>
>> The unemployment rate was 30% when FDR was in power.
>
> Rightard rule #1: lie, lie again, lie more, lie about lying.
From the bastion of conservative thought, UCLA:
"Unemployment persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2
percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still
remarkably high."
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
quote
FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate
By Meg Sullivan August 10, 2004 Category: Research
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression
dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously
thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and
Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed
into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great
mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always
worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,"
said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found
that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with
ill-conceived stimulus policies."
In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy,
Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures
that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.
"President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible
for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension
reducing employment and demand for goods and services," said Cole, also
a UCLA professor of economics. "So he came up with a recovery package
that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry
to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to
demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been,
given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery,
but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies."
Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages
and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By
adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use
the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been
during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt's policies not gone
into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and
wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.
In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies,
wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they
otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment
was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in
productivity.
Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where
they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and
services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and
the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it
otherwise might have been.
"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to
everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian
said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall
when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal
policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."
The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act
(NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they
agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly
raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but
ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries
took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries,
which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural
employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called
for under NIRA.
Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60
percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that
the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they
believe the slump actually ended: 1943.
Roosevelt's role in lifting the nation out of the Great Depression has
been so revered that Time magazine readers cited it in 1999 when naming
him the 20th century's second-most influential figure.
"This is exciting and valuable research," said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the
1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished
Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. "The
prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of
macroeconomics, and if we can't understand what happened in the 1930s,
how can we be sure it won't happen again?"
NIRA's role in prolonging the Depression has not been more closely
scrutinized because the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional
within two years of its passage.
"Historians have assumed that the policies didn't have an impact because
they were too short-lived, but the proof is in the pudding," Ohanian
said. "We show that they really did artificially inflate wages and prices."
Even after being deemed unconstitutional, Roosevelt's anti-competition
policies persisted — albeit under a different guise, the scholars found.
Ohanian and Cole painstakingly documented the extent to which the
Roosevelt administration looked the other way as industries once
protected by NIRA continued to engage in price-fixing practices for four
more years.
The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell
from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of
6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had
become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained
of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257
different occasions between mid-1935 and mid-1936. The bids were not
only identical but also 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices.
Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14
percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome
practices, the UCLA economists calculate.
NIRA's labor provisions, meanwhile, were strengthened in the National
Relations Act, signed into law in 1935. As union membership doubled, so
did labor's bargaining power, rising from 14 million strike days in 1936
to about 28 million in 1937. By 1939 wages in protected industries
remained 24 percent to 33 percent above where they should have been,
based on 1929 figures, Cole and Ohanian calculate. Unemployment
persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2 percent, down
somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still remarkably high.
By comparison, in May 2003, the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was the
highest in nine years.
Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped
enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor
suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.
"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations
of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to
recover from depressions and that significant government intervention
was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work
shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government
not intervened."
unquote
Dave Heil
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 11:09:37 -0800 (PST), Repubs Lost Both Wars
> <walter_...@post.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> The Republican goal should now be clear.
>
> Democrats are mainly for the Blacks. Republicans are mainly for the
> Jews.
I don't suppose you realize just how unintelligent you look.
JLS
> On 2/27/2011 08 40, Ray Fischer wrote:
>
> >> On Feb 26, 11:28 am, Yoorg...@Jurgis.net wrote:
>
> >>>> Obama wasn't born yet.
>
> >>> Sure, and that's why from the early 30's until the 80's the rise of
> >>> the Middle class was (and is) attributed to the policies of FDR
>
> >>> The reagan "revolution" began the demise of the Middle class
>
> >>> SNICKER
>
> >> The unemployment rate was 30% when FDR was in power.
>
> > Rightard rule #1: lie, lie again, lie more, lie about lying.
>
> From the bastion of conservative thought, UCLA:
>
> "Unemployment persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2
> percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still
> remarkably high."
>
>
> quote
> FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate
> By Meg Sullivan August 10, 2004 Category: Research
>
> Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression
> dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously
> thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
You rightards love to speculate on few or no facts, Heiloon. I don't
know that I believe any of this BS, and there ARE conservatives at
UCLA, Heiloon.
If the New Deal is so bad, I wonder why it has been so successful in
Germany's Social Democracy, which has had a booming GDP the last
several quarters much higher than ours, despite all its powerful labor
and trade unions and progressive income taxes; expensive social
programs like free healthcare, free tuition, 6-weeks mandatory paid
vacations; and wages and hours which are the envy of the world's
workers.
ZNUYBV
The fact that the recession turned into the worst Depression in our
time should be proof enough that the policies of the New Deal caused
it.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
JLS
> On Feb 27, 5:50 am, Yoorg...@Jurgis.net wrote:
> > Does Bernie Madoff parallel ring any bell, McSwill?
>
> It was AFTER he was elected. The recession started in 1931. FDR
> continually made it worse until it turned into a national depression.
> He almost wiped out the middle class. The middle class had it's
> rebirth in the Eisenhower administration.
Herbie Hoover and the Repugs and their unregulated greedy thieving
banker cronies caused the Great Depression. Sheesh. So many
revisionists; so little time to bitch-slap them.
The war put everybody back to work. Even housewives joined the
workforce during the war.
One concession you can give Eisenhower: he was way off to the left of
the repugs of today, to the left of Nixon, to the left of Reagan, and
damn waaay to the left of the crazy repugs we have in Congress. BTW,
Eisenhower appointed a Democrat to the Supreme Court, and do you know
who else he appointed?: The bane of every klucker, Dixiecrat,
McCarthyite, and repooplikan ----Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Eisenhower on unions and collective bargaining:
*"Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain
collectively with their employers. And a strong, free labor movement
is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society."
*"Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their
right to join the union of their choice."
*"Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security,
unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs,
you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There
is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these
things, but their number is negligible and they are stupid."---
Republican President Dwight Eisenhower