Chapter III. Folk and State

Folk, state, churches and army have stood in very different ratios of power to one another during the course of our history. The victory of Roman Christianity signified the abandonment of the organic Germanic ideas of the king as a measuring rod of worldly action. We have, in its stead, the ethereal idea of emperor which was arrogated by the church as the legacy of ancient Rome. A thousand years passed until—beginning with Henry the Lion or Heinrich der Löwe, and continued by Brandenburg—the Nordic kingdom renewed itself while the Roman Emperorship declined in the swamp of the House of Habsburg. Admittedly, the Staufers were also self sufficient enough to declare their IMPERIVM as German and independent of Rome. At the meeting at Besancon, for example, the Papal delegates, who described the IMPERIVM as a Papal endowment, were beaten half dead by the counts and dukes of Friedrich II. Nevertheless, this self consciousness was not built upon a doctrine firmly laid down in principle of the predominance of emperor over pope. Thus it was not a tradition or a perpetuated, type forming, force.

Rome had falsified its claim to power, beginning with the forgeries known as The Donation of Constantinus about 750. The fact that Constantinus was baptised as an Arianist, is suppressed. Pope Hadrianus I lied to Charlemagne when he asserted that this Decretal was to be found in the Vatican archives. The deluded king of the Franks accepted in principle the predominance of the Roman bishop, despite the fact that in the year 800 the pope had thrown himself on his knees before Charlemagne.

The subsequent popes, on the basis of these falsified documents, laid claim to their legal and traditionally established predominance. This happened despite the fact that these documents were proven forgeries. An entire literature was devoted to the establishment of the prime rights of the church over the crown. These claims were accepted until the high tide mark was reached in the Bull VNAM SANCTVM issued by Pope Bonifacius VIII. In this document Bonifacius declared that

It is a requirement of salvation that every creature be subject to the Roman pope.

This Bull was expressly described by the Jesuit General Werntz, who died in 1914, as a ‘definition of dogma which solemnly recorded the relationship between church and state for eternity. Other church teachers passed judgement in exactly the same way. As a result other pronouncements followed concerning oaths to the state. The Jesuit Lehmkuhl, counsellor of the German centre party, declared that it was clear that state civil oaths could never be binding as a duty if they were opposed to church law. Since, however, this right called for the subordination of the state to the church, then what Rome had demanded was that no oaths be recognised which are not sanctified by the church. The Jesuit Sanchez attributed to the church the power to declare oaths null and void, and the Jesuit Lehmkuhl openly defended military desertion. Indeed, he obligated catholics to do this in the event they were forced to participate in an unjust war—such as 1866 and 1870.

This unequivocal position of the Roman church toward the state represents a natural counterpiece seen from the standpoint of the idea of the German folkish state.

After the collapse of absolute monarchy in 1789, Democratic principles struggled with the National idea. Separated from the start, and later bringing both movements into rigidity, a new doctrine of power alien to the blood was formulated which reached its peak in Hegel. It was then taken over in renewed falsification by Karl Marx, who equated state with class rule. Today, we confront the problem. The state has delivered itself and the people to the dishonourable forces of trade. It has appeared to the broad masses more and more as a soulless tool of violence. The views of Hegel concerning the absolutist state in itself became predominant during recent years in Germany, and not only in Germany. The official moved more and more into a position of master, and forgot, thanks to the identical attitude of those ruling, that he was nothing other than a representative of the entire folk whose duty it is to fulfil the technical or political needs of the folk. The state and the state official thus became separated from the organic body of the people, and appeared as a special mechanical apparatus toward the latter, in order to lay claim to control over life. Millions took a hostile attitude against this development, but since no opponent dared to appear openly in the national camp, those who were discontented moved to the side of international social democracy, although they inwardly really were not Marxists.

The revolt of 1918 altered nothing in all this because the Marxists naturally had really nothing in common with the German people. They strove only for the establishment of fixed international principles, using the old technical apparatus, and the state in itself appeared again in active opposition to the enemies of the state. The roles were all exchanged and the soulless essence remained. But this essence had become far more distinct after 1918, because the state had earlier, on occasion, stood in the way of open enemies of the people; but now, in the person of its judges, the state was forced to imprison men whose lives and actions were devoted only to service and sacrifice for the people.

State and folk thus often confronted each other openly as enemies. From 1918 to 1933 they even appeared as deadly enemies. Our destiny will be shaped according to the manner in which this inner conflict is resolved.

Today, the state is no longer a separated idol before which we are all supposed to lie in the dust. The state does not even have a purpose unless it acts to preserve the concept of folk. The state is only one means to do this. Church, law, art and science must do likewise. State forms change and state laws pass away, but the folkish concept remains. It follows from this that the nation is the first and last consideration to which everything else is to be subordinated. And it also follows from this that there can be no state judges, only people’s judges. Unless this be true the entire legal foundation of life would alter. The only other possible result would be such degrading conditions as have been common during the last decade. One and the same state attorney had earlier to represent the Kaiser’s state, then the Republican. An independent judge was likewise dependent upon one basic system. Thus it is possible that, on the basis of Roman law,, the state attorney as servant of the state in the name of the people hindered the folkish guiding of the people. Abstract popular sovereignty of Democracy and the contemptuous words of Hegel—The people is that part of the state which does not know what it wants—have produced the same insubstantial scheme of so called state authority.

But the authority of the folkhood stands higher then this authority of state. Whoever does not regard this as so is an enemy of the people, even if it be the state itself. Such was the situation until 1933.

This was the view from one side, but it must be said concerning the content of the other, that an unconditional conformity is just as The Myth of the 20th Century 117

unfolkish as the old state law. The question of the monarchy—and of the monarch—is also a question of utility—in all events in the highest sense—and not a dogmatic one. Those who regard it as such do not differ essentially in their character structure from the Social Democrats who, in a certain sense, are conformist Republicans who have no consideration for what might otherwise happen to the entire people. Thus, the correct, awakening instinct of the German people shows everywhere today. Thus it will ultimately become evident. The Republic will need to become folkish or vanish. And a monarchy which, in advance, does not rid itself of certain old prejudices, could likewise not last, for it must necessarily perish from the same causes as the empire of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The spirit of the future has today finally announced its demands. From the 30th of January, 1933 onward, its rule has begun.

In the 17th century the retreat of the pope began. The days of papal control over a world state were ended. In 1789, the dynasty, as an absolute value, made room for styleless liberalism. In 1871, the state began to make itself independent of the people; people which had actually first created it. Today, the people finally begins consciously to lay claim to the place rightfully befitting it.

The demand for freedom as well as the call for authority and type have almost everywhere been falsely posed and inorganically answered. Authority was demanded in Europe in the name of an abstract state principle or in the name of Liberal individualism and church universalism. In each case the claim was laid that all races and peoples had to subordinate themselves to this god given authority and its forms. The answer to this rigid dogma was the cry for unrestricted freedom—for anarchy. Rome and Jacobinism—in its old forms and in its later purest shaping in Babeuf and Lenin—actually condition one another inwardly.

The idea of freedom and the recognition of authority possess a completely different character within the present day racially spiritual outlook on the world. The idea of folkdom is certainly not only of one race. It is also characterised by factors of a historical and spatial kind. However, it is nowhere the consequence of a uniform mixture of elements of different races. A state is always characterised by the supreme value, art, culture and style of the dominant race. Adding other races for variety advances nothing and loses much. These racial dominants demand the creation of a type. Truly organic freedom is only possible within such a type. This limitation is racially conditioned. Race is the outward image of a definite soul.

With this, the circle is closed. Jewish internationalism of a Marxist or Democratic kind likewise lies outside this true Germanic organism. Judaism operates in the same way as Roman authority with its claim to international validity together with all church claims to power.

In the deepest innermost sense, the longing for personality and type is the same. A strong personality has an effect, style forming, but the type—regarded metaphysically—is already given before it. Thus, personality is only its purest outward imprint. This eternal longing takes on another form in every epoch.

Around the turn of the 19th century we experienced the appearance of a great number of personalities who, with the blossoming of our entire culture, marked that era with an unforgettable stamp. For a long time the era of the machine destroyed personality ideals as well as powers, type forming. The milieu, the factory, became master. A concept of mixed causality triumphed over true science and philosophy. Marxist sociology—through its mass delusion, quantity doctrine—strangled the concept of quality in research. The stock exchange became the idol of the materialistic sickness of the times.

Nietzsche embodied the despairing cry of millions against the latter. His wild exclamations about the Superman were a violent extension of his subjected personal life which had been strangled by the material pressure of the times. Now, at least one man suddenly destroyed all values in fanatical rebellion. He raged wildly. A feeling of relief passed through the souls of all searching Europeans. That Nietzsche became insane, is symbolic. An enormous blocked up will to creation forged a path like a storm flood. The same will, inwardly broken long before, could no longer attain shape. An era, enslaved for generations, understood in its powerlessness only the subjective side of the great will and vital experience of Friedrich Nietzsche. It falsified the deepest struggle for personality into a cry for the unleashing of all instincts.

The Red standards then joined the banner of Nietzsche, and the nomadic wandering Marxist preachers—the sort of men whose doctrine scarcely anyone else had unmasked with such derision as Nietzsche himself. In his name, racial pollution through Syrians and Blacks was sanctified, although Nietzsche, in fact, strove for selective racial breeding. Nietzsche has fallen to the dreams of overheated political whores, which is worse than falling into the hands of robbers. The German people heard only of a release from all bonds, subjectivism, personality, and nothing about discipline and inward building up. Hear Nietzsche’s beautiful words:

From the future come winds with secret beat of wings, and to sensitive ears comes good news.

These words represented an apprehension filled with longing in the midst of an insane world in which he, alongside Lagarde and Wagner, lived as almost the only ones with foresight.

This epoch of insanity now is finally dying. The strongest personality today no longer calls for personality, but for type: the folkish, earth rooted lifestyle. A new type of German man, rectangular in body and soul, arises. The shaping of this man is the task of the 20th century. The true personality of today seeks to shape those features in their best form and to proclaim loudly those ideas which are a part of the new, and yet primordial, German type of man; a man who will become free, not from, but for, something!

type, like subjective personality, is not a schema. type is the time bound plastic form of an eternal racially spiritual content. It is a life commandment, not a mechanical law. Such are eternal truths. The will to type is also the will to accept strict formative state discipline. Our generation has become rigidly undisciplined and conventional, and it must accept, or be subject to, rigid discipline.

With the vital experience of the type, that is, with the birth of the recognition of the Myth of our entire history, we witness the birth of the Nordic race soul and the inward recognition of its supreme values as the guiding star of our entire existence.

We would like to observe and affirm that the intangible idea of folkish honour has its roots in the strongest grounds of all, in the most material of all reality; in the farmland of a nation, in its living space.

The idea of honour is inseparable from the idea of freedom. Although one encounters versions of this idea, what is metaphysically deepest is undoubtedly the German creed founded by Eckehart, Luther, Goethe and Chamberlain. Their ideas shine so brilliantly for our times. In admitting that natural law and freedom are parallel ideas, coexisting necessarily in the human being, we come to the conclusion that this puzzle is incapable of solution or explanation. When our exterior is subjected to causal agents, we respond just like other The Myth of the 20th Century 118

organic essences. When stimulations and motives are inside us, when our vision is linked with the will, our being remains untouched and untouchable. This is true, however much it may be hindered purely mechanically by outward effects. For this reason alone men dispute this inward freedom, but this proves that the will and freedom are present in men.

The greatest catastrophe of our intellectual life consisted in a sinful shift in the interpretation of the concept of freedom in German life, brought about by blood poisoning. This view came increasingly in vogue, as if freedom was synonymous with economic individualism. True freedom of research, thought and creativity was destroyed. Vision and will become more and more the servants of speculation and impulse. This movement of the new freedom into organic processes necessarily revealed an alienation from nature. Abstract and schematic economic and political doctrines no longer listened to the laws of nature, but followed its impulse to isolate the individual. Thus a seemingly small perceptively critical displacement has brought enormous material misfortune all over the world. Day after day, a merciless nature takes its revenge until it will climax in the coming catastrophe. Then the so called world trade together with its artificial, unnatural substructure, will collapse in a world catastrophe. If an external pressure does not need to break a strong personality it will at least destroy it mechanically. Such an attitude and pressure can poison a people. This was perpetrated against the German people when our leaders failed to provide adequate living space. In the 19th century our arable area became smaller and smaller. This was a crime against the still earth linked farmers. The number of landless, propertyless Germans grew. Closely pressed, millions pushed into the world cities, and the human flood ever increased. Our directionless leaders called for industrialisation, for export and world trade. In their need, they fell under the influence of Syrian conspirators who wished to turn the millions of the propertyless not into men hungry for living space, but into the Marxist Jewish revolutionary proletariat. It sought also to incorporate those who still owned property. These parasites sought to exploit them through an unattainable will o’ the wisp international world peace movement. With the theft of the idea of living space, the poisoning of our soul was achieved. The idea of folkish honour suddenly appeared as an insubstantial phantom. The prophets of the struggle for space were stamped as imperialist enemies of the people. Our just struggle for freedom was falsified, misled by Marxists, in order to end despairingly in the swamp of international communism.

The truly creative idea of freedom can only fully blossom within the totality of the folk, when our race has air to breathe and land for farming. An effective vital honour will therefore only be seen at work in a nation which has sufficient living space at its disposal. Where the idea of national honour is elevated, the demand for space will be deeper. For this reason neither Jewry, alien to the soil, nor Rome, equally alien to the soil, recognises the idea of honour. More precisely, they do not recognise this idea because there is no longing active within them for farmland. It is farmland upon which a strong and happy race scatters its fruit bringing seed. Today, all the enemies of Germany attack our honour, and they have also stolen Germany’s living space. For these reasons, in the final analysis, the metaphysical struggle revolves around the innermost values of character. It signifies a struggle for living space. One strengthens and reinforces the other. With sword and plough! For honour and freedom! So runs the battlecry of a generation which wishes to erect a new Reich and which seeks standards of value by which it can judge its actions and its fruitful strivings. This battlecry is nationalistic. And socialistic!

Socialism generally describes an ideology which demands the subordination of the individual to the will of a collective, be this class, church, state or people. But this fixed idea is completely devoid of content and allows free play to all arbitrary connotations since the essential content of the word is ignored. If social activity signifies private enterprise for the purpose of individual salvation from spiritual and material collapse, then socialism signifies the safeguarding of the individual essence carried through by a collective, or in entire communities, from every exploitation of their work.

Not every submission of the individual to the command of a collective is socialism, any more than every socialisation signifies state control or nationalising. One could regard monopoly as a kind of socialism which is what Marxism does in practice. Through its antilife doctrine, Marxism helps socialism to increase so that it concentrates power in a few hands. Such a concentration of power places the so called dictatorship of the proletariat in control in the place of rule by the great world exploiters. Fundamentally, this signifies no alteration of circumstances. It is only world capitalism under other symbols. For this reason Marxism everywhere marches with democratic plutocracy. In the short run capitalism is the stronger.

If a measure is socialistic, it can be designed to be a preventive or revolutionary—disruptive—kind. What is determinative is collective, in whose name it establishes socially economic instruction. The bourgeois parliamentary state legislates thousands of socialistic encroachments. It inflicts tragedy by favouring reparations on all enterprises through compulsory mortgages. It regulates tolls, loan interest and division of labour. In spite of this it is a class state, whose ruling parties do not pass socialistic measures. Rather, it lays its burden upon the entire people. Just as little can Marxism, which carries on its class struggle from below, lay claim to power for itself. The millions of people standing under Marxism’s triumph are not treated as a totality. To a great degree they are mere objects, exploited by the Marxist oriented members of the community. The work state was erroneously used under heretofore existing political conditions. The state stands neither in service of the bourgeoisie nor of the Marxist class struggle. Thus, it does not exist at all, however much its substitute demands worship. However much confessionalism and this double sided class struggle may strive, neither of them can pass and carry out a truly socialistic measure. This can only be done by the representative of a system which is able to grasp the people as an organism, which regards the state as a means to their external security and inner peace, to whom the totality nation is thus the measuring rod for the individual and smaller collective restricting actions. Out of this thought process, for which the world has finally become ripe, we are witnessing the great struggle between nationalism and socialism.

The old nationalism was manifoldly not sincere. It was a mere cover for large agrarian and industrial, and later, finance capitalist, private interests. For this reason, the words, Patriotism is the last refuge of great scoundrels (Doctor Samuel Johnson) could frequently be justified. Moreover, Marxism in the guise of social democracy was openly the adherent of plutocracy. The communistic folkish destructive ravings against the property values of all nations are making real socialism possible. The result was not a struggle, but an equation of real nationalism with real socialism, a synopsis with foundations. Germany has to thank Hitler for fabricating this synthesis.

A model socialistic measure was the transfer to state ownership of the German Reich Railways (Reichsbahn). As a result, these facilities were withdrawn from arbitrary private control. In operational safety this act represented a folkish preserving prerequisite which The Myth of the 20th Century 119

was for the good of every German. Another real socialistic measure was the communalising of the electricity works and of the city water supplies, whose services are available to all without difference of class and religious creeds. Socialistic institutions are city mass transport, the police, the public libraries, and so on. It is a matter of complete indifference whether these institutions were developed in a monarchy or a republic. The monarchy, as the examples of the German Reich railways and the Reichsbank show, was fundamentally more socialistic than the Weimar republic which, after the signing of the Dawes dictate and other documented subjugations, brought much—bank and the railroad included—completely under the control of private—even foreign—financiers.

The struggle for existence and private welfare—often, a clever symbiosis—determine human public life. The first is a process of natural selection. The second is a purely human one established through deep, noble Christian good will toward one’s neighbour. Both factors left on their own would signify the death of every culture, of every real folkish state. Therefore, there exists no natural, and just as little no Christian, idea of state. The real state of Germanic conception consists in that struggle for influence which is linked to definite prerequisites, allowing it to develop only under the rule of character values. Modern economic individualism as a principle of state therefore signifies the equating of a successful swindler with a man of honour. And so, after 1918, the usurper triumphed everywhere. Caritas for its part—as the alms of a dictator to oppressed millions, or as a personal act of good will—heals no wounds. It merely covers pustulent sores. It is the counterpiece to unrestricted exploitation. Occasionally, the greatest swindler even builds hospitals for his victims whom he has plundered over decades. He then has himself celebrated as a philanthropist by his newspapers.

Thus whoever wishes to be a nationalist today, must also be a socialist. The socialist of the field grey front of 1914-1918 wishes to have his life in the state. Without the state, Marxism will never be overcome and international capitalism will also never be made harmless. For these reasons it is understandable that a real socialistic measure—to be interpreted as such from its consequences—will be neutral toward the idea of private property. It will recognise it where it ensures a security for the whole, and will restrict it where it conceals dangers. For this reason, for example, the demand for state ownership of the railways and for personal real estate are both socialistic and nationalistic demands. Both serve the economically oppressed, in order to provide them with the prerequisite for cultural and state creations.

Therefore, from this standpoint, a completely different kind of light will shine upon many expressions of life which will benefit broad layers of the folk.

We can directly follow the connection on the one hand between individualism and economic universalism during the past 100 years in the political domain and, on the other hand, in the democratic and Marxist movements. The latter started out to establish the happiness of the individual and, at the same time, it proclaimed a culture of mankind which aimed at a pan Europe. In the final analysis it seeks a world republic, whether it be a republic of the men of the stock exchange or a dictatorship of the proletariat. The latter would become a protective form of dictatorship headed by the world bourse. The Dawes Plan and the Young Plan are both symbols of this combination of universalism with bloodless individualism. The result is that only reciprocal actions are recognised as organic between ego (individual) and society, between individual and nation. In this concept of society, of a humanly organised one, the organically, blood linked bond is included for us through character values and ideals. Out of this fundamental outlook has grown an entire new system of ideas and state based on the recognition that it is not an abstract individualism, abstract universalism or abstract socialism falling down out of the clouds, so to speak, which forms people, but conversely, that healthy, blood conditioned peoples do not recognise individualism or universalism as a measuring rod. Individualism and universalism are, regarded fundamentally and historically, the world outlooks of decadence; in the best cases they create an unfortunate man who is split apart by certain circumstances and who flees to a last rigid dogma in order to escape from an internal collapse.

From this entire experience of a new birth, from the recognition of primal eternal values and from the new version of the organic contrasts, there suddenly emerges for us a radiant bright light. We find this if we survey the development of the last historical epochs. We see, if this important point is singled out again, two great movements—nationalism and socialism—struggling with one another through the entire 19th century into the 20th.

The fact is that at the basis of both of them there is an organically healthy core. This organically healthy drive, which necessarily lies, completely irrespective of what men and system may have gained, in the mastery of these forces, will end the dispositions of thought during the course of time. We see the old German Nationalism after its upsurge in the Wars of Liberation—after its deepest foundation through Fichte, and its explosive appearance through Blucher, Freiherrn von Stein and Ernest Moritz Arndt, and embodied in its military power by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau—pass over into the hands of an inwardly outlived but organisationally still strong generation such as was represented most acutely of all by the Metternich system. The flourishing, upward surge of nationalism thus passed immediately after its origin into a fateful bond with dynasticism.

The value of the king or Kaiser as an institution had stood higher than the entire people. We see a court economy become great which would earlier had to have collapsed if the powerful strength of Bismarck had not undertaken to weld together monarchy and nation into a block under a dynastic leadership. But while King Frederick the Great embodied this unity even in the gravest days of destiny, his successor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had already lost this faith when he declared that he wished to spare his people a civil war and crossed over the frontier. As a result, he released the dynastic concept from the folkish totality and, on November 9th, 1918, the dynastic ideas of state collapsed. Soon all conscious German Nationalist circles came to realise the days of kingship were over.

German Nationalism of the 19th century was also closely linked with liberal democracy. The strength of that system increased with the growth of industrial trusts, more world trade, the wholesalers and the world banks. The economic interests of these trusts were frequently represented as national interests. Thus, for example, the German Bank and its profits in Turkey were falsely presented as folkish interests of the German Reich. During the war we concluded that the war effort of the nation, which had been spearheaded by the cry that the ground and soil which had been conquered by the German folkish army should now become German possession, had been betrayed. For many years there had been talk about the ore mines of Briey and Longwy. The interests of industry and profit were places above the interests of the entire nation. Today, German Nationalism dies from this unnatural union. It had stood order and rank on its head. Only a new vitality can create a new nationalism. It must link itself consciously and unconsciously with all previous Germanic The Myth of the 20th Century 120

struggles for freedom, and, above all, with the unconditional greatness of those men who, in 1813, led Germany out of the depths.

In exactly the same way as the nationalism of the 19th century was poisoned by Marxist Liberal forces, so has this also been the case with socialism. We established, in the preceding passages, that socialism is a measure of state carried through for the protection of the entire people from all exploitation, and further, it offers a measure of state protection of the individual from private lust for profit. However, here it is not only a matter of a formal action in itself. An act becomes socialistic only in relation to its outward effect. For this reason it is possible that a socialistic action does not bring with it, as was likewise established, a formal state nationalisation, as it can, on the contrary, even signify a personification, a liberation of individual forces if this liberation brings with it a strengthening of the totality.

When Bismarck was attacked from the conservative side as a socialist, he declared that the concept of socialism did not terrify him in certain circumstances. He socialised the railways and he recalled the act of emancipation of the peasants by Reichsfreiherr von Stein, which likewise represented a socialistic measure. Here, our own view is in the deepest accord with that of Bismarck. The act of the Reichsfreiherr von Stein signified the liberation of hundreds of thousands of peasants from a monstrously oppressive rule. Through this liberation of the creative forces, the welfare and character of the people were elevated. This act by the Reichsfreiherr von Stein remains until today one of the greatest milestones in the history of German socialist freedom.

Our new idea places folk and race higher than the existing state and its forms. It declares protection of the people to be more important than protection of a religious creed, a class, of the monarchy or the republic. It sees in betrayal of the people a greater betrayal than high treason. As a result, the German renewal movement lays claim to the same freedom as Rome when confronting the formal state. It sees the opponent of the state who, suffering for his people and their honour, goes to prison and jail, not as a criminal but as a nobleman. It recognises no inner obligation toward a structure. No struggle is illegal for us if it proceeds against the members of a doctrine politically falsifying true religion, which could proclaim betrayal of the country as its fundamental faith. An unjust struggle is a struggle against folk comrades. Deadly enemies of a German people and of a coming German state are therefore those forces which make religious creed or class into a declaration of war on fellow members of the German people.

A retreat from or a struggle against the state in itself can, occasionally, bear a justified antinational stamp when it is in fact led by masterful racially conscious characters and not by slavish natures under whom the rights to ownership of the soil has been preempted. We witnessed this for 14 years, when the moneyed democratic rabble, after the expropriation of mobile property, also stretched out its hand against immovable property and indirectly robbed farmers and estate owners through mortgages, market anarchy, and so on. Bismarck once said that a state which took away his property from him was no longer his Fatherland. This was the assertion of a master. Motivated by similar feelings, Germans, robbed of soil, migrated to all parts of the world to acquire property. The ultimate turning away from the ancient homeland which occurred rested on the new bond with property acquired by struggle. But the cry property is theft was the battle cry of an uncreative slavish nature. It was no wonder that the Syrian Marx took up this cry and placed it at the head of his desolate teaching. However, everywhere that Marxism became dominant, it was unmasked as false. The greed for property has appeared particularly with its extremists. Therefore, in face of the earlier theft from the people, the battle cry for all proletarians ran: Creation of new property, struggle for new living space.

The new Reich requires from each German in public life not an oath to a state form, but an oath to recognise German national honour according to his power and capacity. This honour must become the supreme value for each German. If an official cannot provide such an oath, then he necessarily loses all rights to occupy a public post. This right of citizenship, which hitherto everyone received as a gift upon his 21st birthday, must be acquired by effort in a new state—an idea which the National Socialist program already represents. Citizenship can be acquired through blameless conduct in educational institutions and in practical life. A German who offends the honour of the nation abandons his claim to receive rights of any kind from this people. Men who for reasons of conflict of conscience are unable to make an oath to the German people will not be persecuted by the state. But it is self evident that, as a result, they must lose any claim to the rights of state citizenship. Therefore, they may not become teachers, preachers, judges, soldiers, and so on.

The liberal ideology—as a consequence of its folkish hostile absence of barriers—introduced the idea that by the doctrine of freedom of mind and the doctrine of equal rights for all, activity of a political and instructive nature was interpreted completely without any relation to a shaping centre. Therefore equal rights were allowed not only to a fighter against the state form but, beyond this, to an agitator against the folkdom. The latter had the same rights as one who had risked his life a hundred times in the trenches. The intellectualising liberal bastard even regarded it as particularly humane to cultivate international world ideas while arrogantly deriding every expression of the rights of his own people. It is self evident that chaos must follow.

It is also self evident that there will always be and must exist very different personalities and groups within a people. A people of brothers is utopian and not at all beautiful. Complete brotherhood signifies the levelling out of all grades of value, of all tensions, of all dynamics of life. Struggle remains the life producing spark. But all these ideals should be reflected within one ideal. They must be tested as to their value on a measure of value, namely, to ascertain if the ideas preached and the measures demanded are suited to ennoble and to strengthen the German folkhood, to strengthen the race, to elevate the consciousness of the nation’s honour. Political parties, which base their activity upon international class solidarity or international church interests, can be strengthened, but they have no justification in a German state. The activity of such folkish hostile parties in the past as well as in the present has eaten away at and lacerated the soul of Germans. On the one side, the adherents of Marxism and of the centre still remained German, while on the other, they had to recognise values found outside of Germany as their highest values. The problem of the coming Reich as fulfilment of a German longing thus consists in preaching a new world view to these tormented, falsely led millions, to present to them—on the basis of this new Myth—a new supreme value.

The new world view will purify the value of the folkhood and national honour which have slept within the dross of centuries. The new idea will accept the whole of life in its symbol. Only when this has occurred can a German Reich arise. Otherwise, all promises are empty.

The state apparatus can only carry through its work of typifying of the people in an imperfect manner. State laws can only be of a rounding off or restricting, not of a vital, nature. The state can and must, for example, suppress a Bolshevist Fatherlandless party. But it The Myth of the 20th Century 121

can only do that in the long run if a strong life renewing will and creative social labour stand behind it. A consciously built up league of men will have to carry through this work.

Since 1933 we have known with what aid of what forces the unstate of November, 1918 has been replaced by a German one. We have known for years the man who would raise high a new banner on the towers of German cities. We know, and today finally experience, the powers of the race soul awaken from deep sleep, which this man had to carry by necessity. It is the task of this founder of the new state to shape a league of men, let us say, a German Order, which is composed of personalities who have had a leading participation in the renewal of the German people.

The members of this German Order will be appointed by the first head of state after the foundation of the new Reich, from all strata of the people. A precondition of this are achievements in the service of the folkdom, irrespective of domain. The council of the appointed German Order will, in this manner, be replenished by new appointments upon the death of a member. The supreme head of the state—President, Kaiser or King (we say the Leader) determines his successor for the ruling council of the German Order. In this technical aspect a pattern is provided by the organisation of the Roman church as a continuation of the ancient Nordic Roman Senate. As a result, on the one side, the folkish serving forces of the council of the German Order rise from all strata of the nation, upward by way of city and district associations, in each case conditioned through outstanding personal achievements. The connection between folk and leadership thus remains preserved. A castelike apartness, such as appeared after 1871, will be avoided. On the other side, however, the boundless democracy and demagoguery which are always linked with it will be removed and replaced by the Council of the best.

Admittedly, a hereditary monarchy occasions the wearer of the crown to balance, even out of self interest, the interests of the people to his home policy. Nevertheless, the danger of the decay of a dynasty remains in every generation. As a result, a kind of Byzantinism would appear, without the office of king being represented in a dignified way. As a consequence of these conditions there ensues the opposite of consistency in state life. This, of course, was always the goal of a hereditary monarchy. The degeneration of the monarchy brings unrest and revolution.

Today the people can only rarely see a great man directly. To achieve this, catastrophes are necessary. Following a crisis, one breaks out of a shell and struggles forth. Therefore in ordinary life, the choice of President or King, as chosen directly by 70 million, is only determined by money bags. It follows from this that in 99 out of 100 cases no real folkish Leader arrives at the head. Therefore, in the coming first German folkish state, there must finally be a break with this deceitful democratic demand. Democracy spawns only as a tool of capitalism and the moneyed classes.

It also follows that a true parliamentary government may come into existence through the intoxication of the masses. Such is the case in the immoral Democratic parliamentary systems. Beyond the borders of the village community, of the medium sized town, the average man loses sight of any measuring rod for his judgements. It is self evident that he is then able to evaluate a personality as to its value only if he is in a position to judge the latter’s effect on the spot. This is impossible where party groups influence the elections of mostly unknown men. It therefore follows that in democracies, party lists, not personalities, are decisive in the elections.

For this reason in a German Reich of the kind we long for, the present form of election must gradually give way to the principle of appointment of responsible leaders through the Leader by folk and state. Those appointed to the highest posts will then appoint those in the lesser posts. As a result every group will be considered in relationship to the whole in the manner appropriate to it. In this respect, freely creative activity can appear and be provided for without divisive separatist outbreaks.

The Wehrmacht must be given special consideration in this total structure. It must admittedly hold itself aloof from all party political conflicts, but its political alienation, such as capitalist and democratic journalists strove for, must cease once and for all in the coming Reich. The army is not there merely to be pushed wordlessly into the battlefield. Also it was not created so that it could be betrayed and disarmed by cowardly Pacifist Democrats who operate in name of the state. The frightful experiences of the world war stand before us here as an admonishing example for all times. They must never be repeated again. This has been ensured through the successful personal union of Leader, Reich Chancellor and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht.

Bismarck described the secret ballot as un Germanic. So it is. Through this anonymity the cowardice of the individual is recognised as a mode of thought. Among other things, the feeling of responsibility is deliberately undermined. Applied to an entire people, it signifies the cultivation of spiritual vagabondage. Human feelings, however, will be unavoidable even in the best state. A rejected candidate will only too easily hold as an enemy anyone who rejects him out of purely objective reasons. Such would be unsuitable and bring about many undesirable difficulties as a consequence. It is something different when it is not a matter of the usual elections but of great questions of destiny affecting every German. Here there will not be an appeal to impossible judgements in individual technical matters, but to the instincts, to the folkish character itself. In such cases the Leader has, after 1933, already frequently called up this now awakened will to self preservation. These pronouncements have also given him further strength.

The future Germany must reveal in what form this grave problem of the connection between authority and the will of the folk can henceforth be handled. See, in this connection, my address, The German state order, in Blood and honour (München, 1934).

Under the sign of the old parliamentarianism every individual member was less responsible for his actions and behaviour than an absolute monarch. A parliamentary cabinet referred in its decisions to the celebrated principle of majority government. If a political program is successful, then the parliamentary minister is a great man. If it fails, then the minister concerned, at least in the most extreme cases, withdraws without having to be held responsible. This fact encourages the most unscrupulous parliamentarians in accordance with their nature to recommend themselves anew as ministers. This would not be the case if any real responsibility existed, as is presupposed as self evident with an army leader. The parliamentary minority cultivated through this honourless system naturally describes this condition as an expression of the familiar progressive spirit. In reality, it is a shabby, bestial product of the cowardice of the majority which wishes to insolently sit in judgement over each and all, but which crawls irresponsibly behind the mass of parliamentary members. The parliamentarian is not even to be called to give an account before his electors. He is elected by the entire people, as the language of the democratic Marxist swindler runs. Thus, a firmly outlined circle of electors is not legally established. These things would change if the ministers at fault could be called to account by the head of the Reich before a political court in the same way as a The Myth of the 20th Century 122

defeated general before a court martial. Then ministerial rivalry would become significantly rarer, and only really responsible men would strive for those positions. Under the democracy of 1918 even the most ordinary subjects could squint with the fullest prospects of success and nonpunishments for failures and betrayals.

These thought processes have as a goal the conquest of a dogma. Such dogma is today worshipped by all like a golden calf. This dogma is the unrestricted freedom of movement. Today, one sees a folkish murdering stream flowing away from the land and the rural areas to the great cities. The latter swell in size, unnerve the folkdom, destroy the threads which link men with Nature, entice adventurers and business speculators of all shades, and promote racial chaos. From the city, as the centre of a civilisation, a system of advanced posts for Bolshevist decline has grown within the world cities. Unnatural, witless, cowardly intellectuality links itself with the brutal, typeless rebellious fury of bastardised slaves. The enslaved who are still of good race and folkish strata fight on false fronts—led by Marxism—for their freedom.

Spengler prophesied cities with 20 million inhabitants and an impoverished countryside. Such was to be our fate. Rathenau described stony deserts and the wretched inhabitants of German cities as the future, who would provide mercenary services for powerful foreign countries. The motivations of these men were certainly different. But together they inculcate into the German people the idea of the impossibility of change. Subject to destiny, this is the name of the new expression for weakness of will or cowardice; but it has even become the words of solution from those political criminals who wish to manoeuvre our people into the misery of a Fellahinlike final condition! This is ensured according to plan by the press of international Marxism. These Reds unite a willless herd of millions behind them as the faithful retinue, as a mass ready for revolution. Weak willed philosophers thus provide the enemies of the people with the ideological foundation, in order to perfect a long prepared work of destruction. That Spengler, in spite of this, preached power, power, power, merely shows a lack of logic.

At bottom of all these oracular cries about the irreversibility of development lies the un German, coercive dogma of unrestricted freedom of movement as a guarantee of personal freedom. But this apparently unshakeable doctrine is a problem of will. The rejection in principle of the right to freedom of movement signifies a prerequisite for our entire future life. It must therefore be established even if such a claim to power is felt by millions at first to be a grave damaging of personality. There remains only one choice. One must perish miserably on the asphalt, or he must seek to regain health on the land or in a medium sized city. This choice has already been made in the sense of elimination of freedom of movement. At first there will be considerable resistance in the hearts of many.

All joint stock companies, cartels, and so on, need not be concentrated in two or three cities. They need not take over the entire apparatus of government. It is not true that more and more new factories must arise in Berlin in order to tie new hundreds of thousands there. It is false that supply and demand, as is often said, must rule life. The task of a real folkish state consists in directing the values and establishing an order of forces that are today controlled by others.

The capital city with its glitter, its cinemas and stores, its stock exchange, and its night cafes, hypnotises the land. Under the sign of freedom of movement, the best blood streams unhindered into the blood poisoning capital city. Our farmers seek work. They found businesses. They earn cash beyond their dreams. The mania of immigration reinforces anew. This disastrous cycle can only be solved by a strictly handled blocking of increases in population.

Salvation does not lie in the building of dwellings in the capital city for which there is so great a call. This actually promotes decline. We find salvation in the elimination of the liberal folkish destructive freedom of movement. Immigration without approval into cities of over a hundred thousand inhabitants must be unconditionally banned in the future. Money for new dwellings can only be approved in urgent cases for such cities. This money is best distributed instead among the smaller towns. New factories may then be erected in cities of approximately a hundred thousand inhabitants if the object of exploitation lies on the spot, for example, newly discovered coal stocks, salt deposits, and so on. Present day transport possibilities shape the distribution of forces. Decentralisation must occur in the whole of economic life. Not only will it not damage our economy but it will strengthen it. This can be accomplished through our racial strength and folkish health alone. We can succeed by applying our most important capital which we possess generally.

In the United states, the concentration of capital has proceeded at a most rapid tempo. Giant grain mills and mammoth slaughter houses to which raw materials stream from over the whole land overburden the railway network. Freight costs increase the price of ready made goods. These problems could have been avoided by the erection of fewer large centres from the start.

Ford, for example, rightly demanded that cotton mills should not be built in the capital cities, but laid out in the neighbourhood of the cotton fields themselves. An unrestricted development of human freedom of movement and of storage of goods defeats in its own object. The protests increase which, without yet risking change to the insane dogma of freedom of movement, nevertheless soberly recognise the natural necessity of decentralisation. Out of purely economic reflections they arrived at the same conclusions that I do from the idea of racial protection.

The farmer, who is still the greatest producer today, is not simultaneously the greatest purchaser. He is dependent on those intermediary stages which process his products before they arrive on the market. He cannot change them on the spot into ready goods, but must burden the transport system with raw materials. This fateful development attempts to uproot the farmer stock, the strongest support of every people, a stock that never dies (Chamberlain). This trend has been consciously protected by democracy and by Marxism in order to enlarge in this way the proletarian host. A true folkish policy must proceed in exactly the opposite way. The deproletarianisation of our nation—and of every other—is conceivable only through the conscious demolition of our great cities and the foundation of new centres. To speak of bringing a sedentary life and nationalisation in the midst of giant heaps of stone, is insanity.

An unusual American idea, salvation with the aid of the automobile, has been attempted in the United states of America. It manages only to squander power and lose time. The millions who daily travel into New York from outside and who are spewed out again in the evening, overload transport and make the whole of life more expensive than would have been the case through a strict damming up and guiding of the human flood. In place of perhaps a hundred large folkish poisoning centres, ten thousand culture promoting ones could be created if strong willed heads had determined our destiny instead of Marxism and Liberalism.

In terms of draughtsmanship, our life proceeds today upon only one line: backward and forward. In the future it must rotate around The Myth of the 20th Century 123

organically established centre points. If the number of inhabitants of a city approaches the figure of a hundred thousand, then an outlet must be looked for. New settlers must be directed to smaller places or settled upon the land. They must not be permitted to live in the cellars of our cities, as democracy encourages.

It must not be assumed that we are still left with choices. One needs only to look at the troubles of New York, which touch upon the very vital nerves, to know at once that all is at stake. In order to control the ever increasing traffic a giant staff of architects and technicians are working day and night. Things have now gone so far that the erection of multilevel streets has been proposed. Roads for cars have to be laid under the houses and pedestrian stairways arranged above these in passages. Bridges must span one side of the street to another. An entire complex of stairs, passageways and permanently artificially lighted thoroughfares, is planned. The new American three zone law allows a higher development of houses. New designs surpass anything known before, as we see in the work of architects like H. Ferris, R. Hood, M. Rusell and Crosell. The aim of all these technical efforts, which reveal perfect freedom of movement as the foundation of their world view, is a heap of mammoth stone pyramids in which all human life must become desolate, rigid, and must finally perish. Such a foundation for a world view must be cleared away. Only then will the path be clear for the surpassing of technology through technology itself. The great city created ease of transport. It must die from this ease of movement if we do not wish to perish racially and spiritually. The Polis created Greek culture. The small town, the middle sized city made every folkish civilisation in Europe. The expanding vision of the former individual peasant grasped the idea of a state, without losing itself into infinity. In this alone could an organic cultural structure arise.

The ease of communication, the press (if decently directed), the radio, and personal observation, make possible to every grownup today the judgement of the things of a city, provided that the number of inhabitants does not go much beyond a hundred thousand. The citizen is in a position to correct reports coming from outside through his own observations. The activity of communal politicians in relation to the good of the state must correspond to the daily concerns of the industrial worker and to the worker in all professions. The way also stands open for the real judgement of achievements. In such communal elections we create the possibility of a preliminary election. Broad masses of the people can choose among personalities and need not rely upon lists. Candidates will be proposed by guilds, associations and by the German Order through its local representatives. As a result, the electors of parliament will rest upon a broad folkish foundation, not upon a nameless mass. The voting rights of women will also remain in communal elections. A folkish will, adapted to visible personalities and coming from below, will thus meet the ruling will from above. Absolute monarchy knew only the direction from above to below. Chaotic democracy only knew mass stagnation from below. The German city of the future, realised through the act of power of individuals, will not subject the type creating personalities to any election mood and moneyed deceit. It will maintain them under the state director in power, and it will renew them again and again through education, bringing them German order. Through the election process outlined, an unhindered method of advancement will be offered to creative personalities. The coming Reich is thus, as elaborated, Nationalist and Socialist. This means that it is not founded on mere votes, but on type welding passion and racially linked mankind. Nationalism in the most passionate form is the prerequisite and final goal of action. Socialism is state safeguarding of the individual under the mark of recognition of his individual honour and in favour of racial protection.

Restrictions have to be made in order to overcome the folkish murdering capital city. Simultaneously, efforts must be made to abolish the city in itself, in order to divide up Germany into small cities and towns. There are those who would have no cities larger than 12,000 inhabitants. Those who hold for such an enticing view are poor students of history. This is a visionless, if principled, position. In order to become a totality, eighty million people need nodal points of life, large enough to provide many strong personalities with sufficient intellectual air to breathe, but also sufficiently restricted in shaping as not to perish in the chaos of the many millions who are concentrated together and yet splintered. Culture only forms itself in the town; only the town can provide a focal point of conscious national life, collect existing energies, adapting to the whole and making that political world vision possible, which Germany in particular, open as a state to so many directions, needs more than all others. Several centres up to 500,000 and many up to 100,000 are thus a spiritual necessity. It is quite possible to go too far in pursuit of reasonable decentralisation.

Completely apart from the conscious renunciation of liberal freedom, it is the compulsive military political situation itself which compels us to abandon the large cities. Future wars will be strongly determined by air fleets. The aim of gas and fire bombs will always be the great cities. The more scattered factories and cities are, the less the danger of damage from air attacks. Destiny compels today, as in earlier times, that the entire people must take part in battle, or its existence. Earlier, the lord in his castle built a wall around his citizens’ houses and the inhabitants, which as a totality had to participate in all battles. The liberal epoch trained professional armies. The burghers were defended by the soldiers, although, at the same time, they arrogantly cursed militarism. This false idyll is over. Technology which had once drawn a steel wall around an entire state, has broken through again and restored the age old organic relationship between people and war. As a result, world view and destiny commend in common the demolition of the great cities and the erection of towns and roads according to strategic viewpoints. If in the past castles were defiantly built upon mountain heights, today everything important must be concealed under the earth in concrete casements. An entire city of skyscrapers becomes insanity. This recognition will also compel definite state architectural conclusions.

Those are some basic outlines of the new state political systems, as they result of themselves from the supreme values of our people. Other measures which are beyond the scope of this book and which are of a purely technical nature are dictated by these considerations.

Future generations will consider it insane that the state could be regarded as an arena for unplanned movement of peoples. By the same token, we will just as all others regard the demands of political liberalism as insane.

None of us knows if the coming Reich will adorn itself in the garb of Kaiserism, of kingship, or of a republic. We cannot sense in advance all the individual features of this future form. The old Imperial crowns have rolled in the dust. The Republic arose from actions of which Germans will be ashamed for a thousand years. Only the ancient Germanic idea of kingship has—so it appears—preserved its mythic glitter through to the present. It formed the organic backbone at a time when the Roman Emperorship expanded boundlessly all over the world. It formed the basis of the new Reich founded in 1871. Kindred feeling still cultivates its idea even today. The 23 dynasties have fallen; they cannot return unless Germany is to fall anew into fearful internal discord. The Länder (states) must close The Myth of the 20th Century 124

their own state parliaments (Landtage), and each one broaden its honourable ideas of dynastic royalty. The idea of IMPERIVM adheres to the old Imperial concept. Pomp and power are its sole content. The idea of a king is more inward, earth linked. The simple Bavarian thinks of his king in just as lively a manner as the true Prussian. The Kaiser was for the people an abstraction who held office by god’s grace. We are more than sick of the operettalike behaviour of the times prior to 1914; but we are really disgusted at the spiritual impoverishment, linked with the fawning upstarts of democracy. In fact, we wish to see in a German king a man like ourselves who is also the embodiment of an heroic Myth. Just as in place of the glittering spiked helmet, the grey steel helmet appeared in the storm of battles, so will the future also find the form of a German National Socialist folkish leadership through the birth of a state based upon order of rank as the embodied longing of the present generation for the coming Reich, as fulfilment of the sacrifice of those two millions who gave their lives for Germany.

From the one demand to place the folkish honour and racial protection into the centre of organic state life, a world picture results which differs from the chaos of the 19th century, like day from night. From the dishonourable trader ideal arose the blood red world war, world revolts, followed by the vilest bloodsucking of the peoples. The 19th century gave birth to Bolshevism as its fullest fruit, the most devastating pestilence of Oriental spirit since the Inquisition spread its poisonous clouds over Europe. From the one inner transformation the dream vision of a new state arises clearly drawn in all its great outlines. Already millions today experience a new longing for type and law, earth linked and borne by honour. The way is clear. To draw a clear track is the task of eternal pulsating, progressive life. Meister Eckehart said:

It is the deepest wells which carry the highest water.

In 1918 the German people through its own guilt fell into the deepest abysses, and for the length of fifteen years was punished and tortured by its internal and external enemies in a most undignified manner. Nevertheless forces have been rediscovered which arrived from the depths of life. Newly discovered here, the eternal primal wellsprings of the German peoples find strength. And now, ready for battle, they carry these experiences and perceptions through the misery of the time. What the 19th century in bourgeois avariciousness, criminal Marxist insanity, and broadest lack of ideas violated, the present 20th century has to make good again in the midst of a hostile world, such as Germany has never before faced in such concentrated power.

Therefore the new teaching of life is no soft sermon, but a hard and austere demand, for we know that the doctrine of humanity attempted to counteract the natural process of selection, and that Nature, as a result, avenged herself, so that it will one day smash to pieces all these democratic and other attempts. The essence of German renewal therefore consists in fitting oneself into the eternal, natural, aristocratic laws of the blood and not in the promotion of the selection of the weak. On the contrary, through the practice of conscious selection guided by the strength of will, we can produce what is creative. We can do this without looking back at what remains behind.

Today we seek, in looking over the German past—for example, if we walk through Dinkelsbuhl or Rothenburg—a self contained picture of Germanic culture which appears before us. It is a picture of unequalled creative strength and defensive capacity. We know that the Thirty Years War destroyed a feeling of life forever. The 17th and 18th centuries lie in between like deep abysses. Only with the strengthening of the Prussian state has a completely new life begun to arrive again. In the wars of liberation of 1813 and in its men we saw the concept arise of a new German who shaped life. We men of today link ourselves to the leaders of this war of liberation, to the first founders of a new idea of state and to a new feeling of life.

We think of the great Freiherrn von Stein, who recognised only one Fatherland whose name was Germany. It was he who declared:

At this moment of great development, we are completely indifferent to dynasties. They are merely tools. It is my wish that Germany become great and strong, in order to again obtain its independence and nationality and to assert both of these in its position between France and Russia. Old, collapsed and rotten forms cannot be preserved on the way.

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