Germany is overrun by Marxism

From the first day of its foundation the new movement took its stand on the principle that its ideas had to be propagated by intellectual means but that, wherever necessary, muscular force must be employed to support this propaganda.

In accordance with their conviction of the paramount importance of the new doctrine, the leaders of the new movement naturally believe that no sacrifice can be considered too great when it is a question of carrying through the purpose of the movement.

I have emphasized that in certain circumstances a movement which is meant to win over the hearts of the people must be ready to defend itself with its own forces against terrorist attempts on the part of its adversaries. It has invariably happened in the history of the world that formal State authority has failed to break a reign of terror which was inspired by a WELTANSCHAUUNG.

It can only be conquered by a new and different WELTANSCHAUUNG whose representatives are quite as audacious and determined.

The acknowledgment of this fact has always been very unpleasant for the bureaucrats who are the protectors of the State, but the fact remains nevertheless. The rulers of the State can guarantee tranquillity and order only in case the State embodies a WELTANSCHAUUNG which is shared in by the people as a whole; so that elements of disturbance can be treated as isolated criminals, instead of being considered as the champions of an idea which is diametrically opposed to official opinions.

If such should be the case the State may employ the most violent measures for centuries long against the terror that threatens it; but in the end all these measures will prove futile, and the State will have to succumb.

The German State is intensely overrun by Marxism. In a struggle that went on for seventy years the State was not able to prevent the triumph of the Marxist idea. Even though the sentences to penal servitude and imprisonment amounted in all to thousands of years, and even though the most sanguinary methods of repression were in innumerable instances threatened against the champions of the Marxist WELTANSCHAUUNG, in the end the State was forced to capitulate almost completely. The ordinary bourgeois political leaders will deny all this, but their protests are futile. Seeing that the State capitulated unconditionally to Marxism on November 9th, 1918, it will not suddenly rise up tomorrow as the conqueror of Marxism. On the contrary. Bourgeois simpletons sitting on office stools in the various ministries babble about the necessity of not governing against the wishes of the workers, and by the word ‘workers’ they mean the Marxists. By identifying the German worker with Marxism not only are they guilty of a vile falsification of the truth, but they thus try to hide their own collapse before the Marxist idea and the Marxist organization.

In view of the complete subordination of the present State to Marxism, the National Socialist Movement feels all the more bound not only to prepare the way for the triumph of its idea by appealing to the reason and understanding of the public but also to take upon itself the responsibility of organizing its own defence against the terror of the International, which is intoxicated with its own victory.

I have already described how practical experience in our young movement led us slowly to organize a system of defence for our meetings. This gradually assumed the character of a military body specially trained for the maintenance of order, and tended to develop into a service which would have its properly organized cadres. This new formation might resemble the defence associations externally, but in reality there were no grounds of comparison between the one and the other.

As I have already said, the German defence organizations did not have any definite political ideas of their own. They really were only associations for mutual protection, and they were trained and organized accordingly, so that they were an illegal complement or auxiliary to the legal forces of the State. Their character as free corps arose only from the way in which they were constructed and the situation in which the State found itself at that time. But they certainly could not claim to be free corps on the grounds that they were associations formed freely and privately for the purpose of fighting for their own freely formed political convictions. Such they were not, despite the fact that some of their leaders and some associations as such were definitely opposed to the Republic. For before we can speak of political convictions in the higher sense we must be something more than merely convinced that the existing regime is defective. Political convictions in the higher sense mean that one has the picture of a new regime clearly before one’s mind, feels that the establishment of this regime is an absolute necessity and sets himself to carry out that purpose as the highest task to which his life can be devoted.

The troops for the preservation of order, which were then formed under the National Socialist Movement, were fundamentally different from all the other defence associations by reason of the fact that our formations were not meant in any way to defend the state of things created by the Revolution, but rather that they were meant exclusively to support our struggle for the creation of a new Germany. In the beginning this body was merely a guard to maintain order at our meetings. Its first task was limited to making it possible for us to hold our meetings, which otherwise would have been completely prevented by our opponents.

These men were at that time trained merely for purposes of attack, but they were not taught to adore the big stick exclusively, as was then pretended in stupid German patriotic circles. They used the cudgel because they knew that it can be made impossible for high ideals to be put forward if the man who endeavours to propagate them can be struck down with the cudgel. As a matter of fact, it has happened in history not infrequently that some of the greatest minds have perished under the blows of the most insignificant helots. Our bodyguards did not look upon violence as an end in itself, but they protected the expositors of ideal aims and purposes against hostile coercion by violence. They also understood that there was no obligation to undertake the defence of a State which did not guarantee the defence of the nation, but that, on the contrary, they had to defend the nation against those who were threatening to destroy nation and State.

After the fight which took place at the meeting in the Munich Hofbräuhaus, where the small number of our guards who were present won everlasting fame for themselves by the heroic manner in which they stormed the adversaries; these guards were called THE STORM DETACHMENT. As the name itself indicates, they represent only a DETACHMENT of the Movement. They are one constituent element of it, just as is the Press, the propaganda, educational institutes, and other sections of the Party.

We learned how necessary was the formation of such a body, not only from our experience on the occasion of that memorable meeting but also when we sought gradually to carry the Movement beyond Munich and extend it to the other parts of Germany. Once we had begun to appear as a danger to Marxism the Marxists lost no opportunity of trying to crush beforehand all preparations for the holding of National Socialist meetings. When they did not succeed in this they tried to break up the meeting itself. It goes without saying that all the Marxist organizations, no matter of what grade or view, blindly supported the policy and activities of their representations in every case. But what is to be said of the bourgeois parties who, when they were reduced to silence by these same Marxists and in many places did not dare to send their speakers to appear before the public, yet showed themselves pleased, in a stupid and incomprehensible manner, every time we received any kind of set-back in our fight against Marxism. The bourgeois parties were happy to think that those whom they themselves could not stand up against, but had to knuckle down to, could not be broken by us. What must be said of those State officials, chiefs of police, and even cabinet ministers, who showed a scandalous lack of principle in presenting themselves externally to the public as ’national’ and yet shamelessly acted as the henchmen of the Marxists in the disputes which we, National Socialists, had with the latter.

What can be said of persons who debased themselves so far, for the sake of a little abject praise in the Jewish Press, that they persecuted those men to whose heroic courage and intervention, regardless of risk, they were partly indebted for not having been torn to pieces by the Red mob a few years previously and strung up to the lamp-posts?

One day these lamentable phenomena fired the late but unforgotten Prefect Pöhner–a man whose unbending straightforwardness forced him to hate all twisters and to hate them as only a man with an honest heart can hate–to say: “In all my life I wished to be first a German and then an official, and I never wanted to mix up with these creatures who, as if they were kept officials, prostituted themselves before anybody who could play lord and master for the time being.”

It was a specially sad thing that gradually tens of thousands of honest and loyal servants of the State did not only come under the power of such people but were also slowly contaminated by their unprincipled morals. Moreover, these kind of men pursued honest officials with a furious hatred, degrading them and driving them from their positions, and yet passed themselves off as ’national’ by the aid of their lying hypocrisy.

From officials of that kind we could expect no support, and only in very rare instances was it given. Only by building up its own defence could our movement become secure and attract that amount of public attention and general respect which is given to those who can defend themselves when attacked.

As an underlying principle in the internal development of the Storm Detachment, we came to the decision that not only should it be perfectly trained in bodily efficiency but that the men should be so instructed as to make them indomitably convinced champions of the National Socialist ideas and, finally, that they should be schooled to observe the strictest discipline. This body was to have nothing to do with the defence organizations of the bourgeois type and especially not with any secret organization. My reasons at that time for guarding strictly against letting the Storm Detachment of the German National Socialist Labour Party appear as a defence association were as follows: