8. Beginning of My Political Activity
By the end of November, 1918, I was back in Munich. I went to the reserve battalion of my regiment, which was in the hands of “Soldiers’ Councils.” The whole business was so repugnant to me that I decided at once to depart if possible. With a faithful comrade of the campaign, Ernst Schmiedt, I got to Traunstein, and remained there until the camp was broken up.
In March of 1919 we went back to Munich.
The situation was untenable, and inescapably forced a further continuation of the Revolution. Eisner’s death only hastened the development, and finally led to the dictatorship of the Councils, or, more accurately put, to a temporary Jewish domination such as had originally been the goal of the creators of the whole Revolution.
Plans chased one another endlessly through my head at that time. For days I puzzled over what could possibly be done; but the result of every train of thought was the sober realization that, being nameless, I had not the slightest equipment for any useful action. I shall have something to say later about the reason why I could not even then make up my mind to join one of the existing parties.
In the course of the new Revolution of the Councils I behaved for the first time in such a way as to draw the displeasure of the Central Council. I was to be arrested early in the morning of April 27, 1919—but the three fellows, faced with the muzzle of a rifle, had not the necessary nerve, and decamped as they had come.
A few days after the liberation of Munich I was ordered before the Commission of Investigation on the revolutionary events in the Second Infantry Regiment. This was my first more or less purely political activity.
Within a few weeks I received orders to attend a “course” which was being held for members of the defense forces. Here a soldier was supposed to acquire a definite foundation for his thinking as a citizen. The value of the whole performance to me was that I had a chance to make the acquaintance of a few like-minded comrades with whom I could thoroughly discuss the situation of the moment. We were all more or less firmly convinced that Germany could no longer be saved from the coming catastrophe by the parties of the November crime, i.e. the Center and the Social Democrats, but that even with the best will in the world the so-called “bourgeois-nationalist” organizations could never make good what had been done, either. A whole series of essentials was lacking here without which such a task could not succeed. Time has since proved that our view was correct.
In our little circle, therefore, we discussed the formation of a new party. The basic ideas we had in mind were the same that were later realized in the “German Workers’ Party.” The name of the movement which was to be founded must give us a chance from the very beginning to get at the broad masses; for without this possibility the whole task seemed senseless and unnecessary. We hit upon the name “Social Revolutionary Party,” because the social views of the new organization actually constituted a revolution.
But the deeper reason lay in the following:
Attentive as I had always been to economic problems, still it had been more or less confined to the limits resulting from the consideration of social questions as such. Not until later were the bounds extended as a result of my examination of the German alliance policy. This was, after all, very largely the result of a mistaken valuation of the economic system, as well as of vagueness about the possible basis on which the German people could be sustained in the future. But all these ideas rested on the opinion that capital was never anything but the product of labor, and, like it, subject to correction by all those factors which either help or hinder human activity. And in fact the national importance of capital would then be that it depended so completely on the greatness, freedom and power of the State, that is of the nation, that this dependency must in itself lead to active support of State and nation by this capital, simply from the instincts of self-preservation and of further increase. The forced reliance of capital upon the independent free State would compel capital on its part to work for this freedom, power, strength, etc., of the nation.
But this made the duty of the State toward capital a comparatively simple and clear one: it had only to take care that capital remained a servant of the State, and did not fancy itself the master of the nation. The expression of this attitude could then remain within two boundary lines: preservation of a healthy national and independent economy on one side, security of the social rights of wage-earners on the other.
So far I had not recognized with proper distinctness the difference between this pure capital as the final result of creative work and a capital whose nature and existence rests solely on speculation. I had simply not happened to get the first push in the right direction.
This was now well taken care of by one of the various gentlemen who lectured to the above mentioned course: Gottfried Feder.
For the first time in my life I heard a basic arraignment of international finance and loan capital.
When I heard Feder’s first lecture, the idea instantly flashed through my head that I had now found my way to one of the prime essentials for the foundation of a new party.
In my eyes it was Feder’s merit to have shown with ruthless brutality the speculative as well as the economic character of finance and loan capital, and to have laid bare its invariable prerequisite, interest. His explanations of all the basic questions were so sound that from the start his critics did not so much dispute the theoretical rightness of the idea as doubt the practical possibility of carrying it out. But what others considered a weakness in Feder’s arguments I thought was their strong point.
The task of the program-maker is not to distinguish the varying degrees to which a cause can be realized, but to expound the cause as such. That is to say, he should be concerned less with the method than with the goal. But there the essential verity of an idea is the deciding factor, not the difficulty of carrying it out. The moment the program-maker attempts to take into account so-called “expediency” and “reality” instead of absolute truth, his work will cease to be a pole star of seeking humanity, and will become instead a formula for every-day use. The program-maker of a movement must determine its goal; the politician must attempt to reach it. Accordingly the thinking of the one is determined by eternal truth, the action of the other by the practical reality of the moment. The greatness of the one lies in the absolute abstract correctness of his idea, that of the other in his proper approach to the given facts and his expedient use of them; here the goal set up by the program-maker must serve as his guiding star. Whereas the test of a politician’s importance may be considered the success of his plans and actions—that is, their becoming a reality—, the final intention of the program-maker can never be realized. Human thought can indeed grasp truths, and set up goals as clear as crystal, but their complete fulfilment will be prevented by the universal imperfection and inadequacy of man. The more true in the abstract and thus the more tremendous the idea may be, the more impossible is its perfect fulfilment so long as it depends on human beings. And for that reason the importance of the program-maker cannot be measured by the attainment of his aims, but by their rightness and the influence they have upon the development of humanity. If this were not so, the founders of religion could not be counted among the greatest men on this earth, since the fulfilment of their ethical purposes can never even approach perfection. Even the religion of love is in its effect only the pale reflection of the will of its noble founder; but its importance is in the tendency which it attempted to impart to the general development of human culture, ethics, and morals.
This complete differentiation between the tasks of the program-maker and the politician is also the reason why the two are almost never found united in one person. It is true particularly of the so-called “successful” politician of no great stature, whose activity usually is in fact but “the art of the possible,” as Bismarck rather too modestly defined politics in general. The more such a “politician” keeps himself free of great ideas, the easier and usually the more obvious, but always the quicker, his successes will be. True, they have therefore but an earthly and fleeting life, and often do not survive the death of their begetters. Taken by and large, the work of this sort of politicians is of no importance to posterity, since its present successes depend solely on staving off all really great and crucial problems and ideas, which as such would have been valuable even for later generations.
The carrying-out of purposes which will have value and meaning for distant ages is usually unrewarding for their champions, and seldom finds favor with the great masses, who understand reductions in beer and milk prices better than far-seeing plans for the future, whose realization cannot but be slow, and whose profit will certainly be reserved for posterity.
For reasons of vanity (always a near relative of stupidity), therefore, the great majority of politicians will hold aloof from any really difficult schemes for the future, to avoid losing the momentary favor of the crowd. The success and importance of such a politician then lie entirely in the present, and, so far as posterity goes, do not exist. This usually troubles small brains but little; they are satisfied.
The program-maker is a different matter. His importance almost always lies solely in the future, since he is frequently what we call “unworldly.” For if the art of the politician be considered actually as the art of the possible, then the program-maker is one of those of whom it is said that they please the gods only when they demand the impossible. Almost always he will have to renounce the recognition of the present, but in its place, if his ideas are immortal, he gathers glory among posterity.
Once in a long stretch of human history it may happen that the politician and the program-maker are united. But the more intimate this fusion, the greater the resistance which the politician’s efforts must meet. He is no longer working for necessities obvious to any middle-class voter, but for purposes which few can understand. And so his life is torn between love and hatred. The protest of the present, which does not understand the man, struggles with the admiration of posterity, for which, after all, he is working.
For the higher the future holds a man’s work, the less the present can grasp it, the harder is the battle, and the rarer the success. But if it does smile on one man in centuries, a glimmer of the coming glory may possibly surround him in his old age. Even so, these great men are but the Marathon runners of history: the laurel wreath of the present rests but upon the brow of the dying hero.
Among these we must count the great warriors of this world, those not understood by the present, who are nevertheless ready to fight through to the end for their ideas and ideals. They it is who some day will be closest to the people’s hearts; it almost seems as if each individual felt the personal duty of making good to the past the sins which the present once committed against the great man. Their life and work are studied with touchingly grateful admiration, and have the power, especially in times of distress, to lift up shattered hearts and despairing souls.
But among these men we must count not only the really great statesmen, but all the other great reformers. Beside Frederick the Great we have Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.
When I heard Gottfried Feder’s first lecture on “Breaking the Slavery of Interest” I knew at once that this was a theoretical truth which must be of immense importance for the future of the German people. Sharp separation of finance capital from the national economy made it possible to oppose the internationalization of German economy without threatening the whole foundation of independent national self-preservation in the process of fighting against capital. I saw Germany’s development far too clearly not to have known that the hardest struggle would have to be fought not against hostile peoples, but against international capital. In Feder’s lecture I heard a mighty watchword for this coming struggle.
And here too subsequent developments showed how right our feeling was. Today we are no longer laughed at by our sly-boots bourgeois politicians; today even they (so far as they are not deliberate liars) see that international finance capital not only took the lead in fostering the war, but now especially, after the struggle is ended, is leaving nothing undone to make the peace into a Hell.
The struggle against international finance and loan capital has become the most important point in the program of the German nation’s struggle for its economic independence and freedom.
So far as the objections of so-called practical men are concerned, we may answer them thus: all fears of the terrible economic results of “breaking the slavery of interest” in practice are unnecessary; for in the first place previous economic panaceas have sat but ill upon the German people, and the comments on questions of self-preservation strongly remind us of the verdict of similar experts in earlier days—for instance of the Bavarian Medical Faculty upon the question of introducing the railroad. It is known that none of this exalted body’s fears have since been realized; travelers in the trains of the new “steamhorse” did not become dizzy, spectators were not made ill, and the board fences to render the new invention invisible have been given up—only the blank walls before the heads of all so-called “experts” being preserved for posterity.
But in the second place we should remember this: any idea, even the best, becomes dangerous if it supposes itself an end in itself, while in reality it is but a means to an end—and for me and all true National Socialists there is but one doctrine: people and Fatherland.
What we must fight for is to assure the existence and the increase of our race and our people, to feed its children and keep its blood pure; we must fight for the freedom and independence of the Fatherland, so that our people may ripen toward the fulfilment of the mission assigned it by the Creator of the Universe.
Every thought and every idea, every teaching and all knowledge must serve this purpose. From this point of view we must judge everything, and use it or discard it according to its fitness for our purpose. In this way a theory can never harden into a deadly doctrine, since it must all serve the purposes of life.
Thus the insight of Gottfried Feder led me to deep study of a field with which I had been but little familiar.
I resumed the process of learning, and so came to realize for the first time what it was that the life work of the Jew Karl Marx was directed toward. Now I really began to comprehend his Capital, as well as the struggle of Social Democracy against the national economy, a struggle meant solely to prepare the ground for the rule of truly international finance capital.
But in another respect too these courses had a great effect upon my subsequent life.
One day I asked for the floor in discussion. One of the men attending the course felt called upon to break a lance for the Jews, and defended them at great length. This provoked me to a reply. The overwhelming majority of those present took my side. The result was that a few days later I was detailed to join a Munich regiment as a so-called “education officer.”
The discipline of the troops at that time was still fairly weak. I was suffering from the after-effects of the Soldiers’-Council period. Only very slowly and cautiously could one begin to introduce military discipline and subordination again in place of “voluntary obedience”—as the pigsty under Kurt Eisner was so aptly called. And the troops themselves must learn to be nationalist and patriotic in thought and feeling. My new activity was pointed in those two directions.
I began my task with delight. Here all at once I had an opportunity to speak before large audiences; and what I had always assumed, simply as a matter of feeling, without knowing it to be so, now proved true: I could “speak.” And my voice had improved enough so that people could always understand me, at least in the small barrack room.
No task could have made me happier than this: now, before being discharged, I could do useful service for the institution which had been so close to my heart—the army.
And I could truthfully speak of success: in the course of my lectures I led back hundreds, probably thousands of my comrades to their people and Fatherland. I “nationalized” the troops, and was able in this way to help strengthen the general discipline.
And in the process again I became acquainted with a number of like-minded comrades, who later began to form part of the center of the new movement.