This session of the Reichstag takes place on a date which is full of significance for the German people. Four years have passed since the beginning of that great internal revolution which in the meantime has been giving a new aspect to German life. This is the period of four years which I asked the German people to grant me for the purpose of putting my work to the test and submitting it to their judgment. Hence at the present moment nothing could be more opportune than for me to render you an account of all the successes that have been achieved and the progress that has been made during these four years, for the welfare of the German people. But within the limits of the short statement I have to make it would be entirely impossible to enumerate all the remarkable results that have been reached during a time which may be looked upon as probably the most astounding epoch in the life of our people. That task belongs rather to the press and the propaganda. Moreover, during the course of the present year there will be an Exposition here in Berlin which is being organized for the purpose of giving a more comprehensive and detailed picture of the works that have been completed, the results that have been obtained and the projects on which work has been begun, all of which can be explained better in this way than I could do it within the limits of an address that is to last for two hours. Therefore I shall utilize the opportunity afforded me by this historic meeting of the Reichstag to cast a glance back over the past four years and call attention to some of the new knowledge that we have gained, some of the experiences which we have been through, and the consequences that have resulted therefrom—in so far as there have a general validity. It is important that we should understand them clearly, not only for our own sake but also for that of the generations to come.
Having done this, I shall pass on to explain our attitude towards those problems and tasks whose importance for us and for the world around us must be appreciated before it will be possible to live in better relations with one another. Finally I should like to describe as briefly as possible the projects which I have before my mind for our work in the near future and indeed in the distant future also.
At the time when I used to go here and there throughout the country, simply as a public speaker, people from the bourgeois classes used to ask me why we believed that a revolution would be necessary, instead of working within the framework of the established political order and with the collaboration of the parties already in existence, for the purpose of improving those conditions which we considered unsound and injurious. Why must be have a new party, and especially why a new revolution?
The answer which I then gave may be stated under the following headings: —
(1) The elements of confusion and dissolution which are making themselves felt in German life, in the concept of life itself and the will to national self-preservation, cannot be eradicated by a mere change of government. More than enough of those changes have already taken place without bringing about any essential betterment of the distress that exists in Germany. All these Cabinet reconstructions brought some positive advantage only to the actors who took part in the play; but the results were almost always quite negative as far as the interests of the people were concerned. As time has gone on the thought and practical life of our people have been led astray into ways that are unnatural to them and injurious. One of the causes which brought about this condition of affairs must be attributed to the fact that the structure of our State and our methods of government were foreign to our own national character, our historical development and our national needs.
The parliamentary-democratic system is inseparable from the other symptoms of the time. A critical situation cannot be remedied by collaborating with the causes of it but by a radical extermination of these causes. Hence under such conditions the political struggle must necessarily take the form of a revolution.
(2) It is out of the question to think that such a revolutionary reconstruction could be carried out by those who are the custodians and the more or less responsible representatives of the old regime, or by the political organizations founded under the old form of the Constitution. Nor would it be possible to bring this about by collaborating with these institutions, but only by establishing a new movement which will fight against them for the purpose of carrying through a radical reformation in political, cultural and economic life. And this fight will have to be undertaken even at the sacrifice of life and blood, if that should be necessary.
In this connection it is worthy of remark that when the average political party wins a parliamentary victory no essential change takes place in the historical course which the people are following or in the outer aspect of public life; whereas a genuine revolution that arises from a profound ideological insight will always lead to a transformation which is strikingly impressive and is manifest to the outside world.
Surely nobody will doubt the fact that during the last four years a revolution of the most momentous character has passed like a storm over Germany. Who could compare this new Germany with that which existed on the 30th. of January four years ago, when I took my oath of loyalty before the venerable President of the Reich?
I am speaking of a National Socialist Revolution; but this revolutionary process in Germany had a particular character of its own, which may have been the reason why the outside world and so many of our fellow-countrymen failed to understand the profound nature of the transformation that took place. I do not deny that this peculiar feature, which has been for us the most outstanding characteristic of the lines along which the National Socialist Revolution took place—a feature which we can be specially proud of—has hindered rather than helped to make this unique historic event understood abroad and among some of our own people. For the National Socialist Revolution was in itself a revolution in the revolutionary tradition.
What I mean is this: Throughout thousands of years the conviction grew up and prevailed, not so much in the German mind as in the minds of the contemporary world, that bloodshed and the extermination of those hitherto in power—together with the destruction of public and private institutions and property—were essential characteristics of every true revolution. Mankind in general has grown accustomed to accept revolutions with all these consequences somehow or other as if they were legal happenings. I do not mean that people endorse all this tumultuous destruction of life and property; but they certainly accept it as the necessary accompaniment of events which, because of this very reason, are called revolutions.
Herein lies the difference between the National Socialist Revolution and other revolutions, with the exception of the Fascist Revolution in Italy. The National Socialist Revolution was almost entirely a bloodless proceeding. When the party took over power in Germany, after overthrowing the very formidable obstacles that had stood in its way, it did so without causing any damage whatsoever to property. I can say with a certain amount of pride that this was the first revolution in which not even a window-pane was broken.
don’t misunderstand me however. If this revolution was bloodless that was not because we were not manly enough to look at blood.
I was a soldier for more than four years in a war where more blood was shed than ever before throughout human history. I never lost my nerve, no matter what the situation was and no matter what sights I had to face. The same holds good for my party colleagues. But we did not consider it as part of the program of the National Socialist Revolution to destroy human life or material goods, but rather to build up a new and better life. And it is the greatest source of pride to us that we have been able to carry through this revolution, which is certainly the greatest revolution ever experienced in the history of our people, with a minimum of loss and sacrifice. Only in those cases where the murderous lust of the Bolsheviks, even after the 30th of January, 1933, led them to think that by the use of brute force they could prevent the success and realization of the National Socialist ideal—only then did we answer violence with violence, and naturally we did it promptly. Certain other individuals of a naturally undisciplined temperament, and who had no political consciousness whatsoever, had to be taken into protective custody; but, generally speaking, these individuals were given their freedom after a short period. Beyond this there was a small number who took part in politics only for the purpose of establishing an alibi for their criminal activities, which were proved by the numerous sentences to prison and penal servitude that had been passed upon them previously. We prevented such individuals from pursuing their destructive careers, inasmuch as we set them to do some useful work, probably for the first time in their lives.
I do not know if there ever has been a resolution which was of such a profound character as the National Socialist Revolution and which at the same time allowed innumerable persons who had been prominent in political circles under the former regime to follow their respective callings in private life peacefully and without causing them any worry. Not only that, but even many among our bitterest enemies, some of whom had occupied the highest positions in the government, were allowed to enjoy their regular emoluments and pensions.
That is what we did. But this policy did not always help our reputation abroad. Just a few months ago we had an experience with some very honorable British world-citizens who considered themselves obliged to address a protest to me because I had some criminal protégés of the Moscow regime interned in a German concentration camp. Perhaps it is because I am not very well informed on current affairs that I have not heard whether those honorable gentlemen have ever expressed their indignation at the various acts of sanguinary violence which these Moscow criminals committed in Germany, or whether they ever expressed themselves against the slogan: “Strike down and kill the Fascist wherever you meet him”, or whether, for example, they have taken the occasion of recent happenings in Spain to express their indignation against slaughtering and violating and burning to death thousands upon thousands of men, women and children. If the revolution in Germany had taken place according to the democratic model in Spain these strange apostles of non-intervention abroad would probably find that there was nothing which they need to worry about. People closely acquainted with the state of affairs in Spain have assured us that if we place the number of persons who have been slaughtered in this bestial way at 170.000, the figure will probably be too low rather than too high. Measured by the achievements of the noble democratic revolutionaries in Spain, the quota of human beings allotted for slaughter to the National Socialist Revolution would have been about 400.000 or 500.000; because our population is about three times larger than that of Spain. That we did not carry out this mass-slaughter is apparently looked on as a piece of negligence on our part. We see that the democratic world-citizens are by no means gracious in their criticism of this leniency.
We certainly had the power in our hands to do what has been done in Spain. And probably we had better nerves than the murderer who steals upon his victim unawares, shunning the open fight, and who is capable only of murdering defenseless [sic] hostages. We have been soldiers and we never flinched in the face of battle throughout that most gruesome war of all times. Our hearts and, I may also add, our sound common sense saved us from committing any acts like those which have been done in Spain.
Taking it all in all, fewer lives were sacrificed in the National Socialist Revolution than the number of National Socialist followers who were murdered in Germany by our Bolshevik opponents in the year 1932 alone, when there was no revolution.
This absence of bloodshed and destruction was made possible solely because we had adopted a principle which not only guided our conduct in the past but which we shall also never forget in the future. This principle was that the purpose of a revolution, or of any general change in the condition of public affairs, cannot be to produce chaos but only to replace what is bad by substituting something better. In such cases, however, something better must be ready at hand. On the 30th. of January four years ago, when the venerable President of the Reich sent for me and entrusted me with the task of forming a new Cabinet, we had already come through a strenuous struggle in our efforts to obtain supreme political control over the State. All the means employed in carrying on that struggle were strictly within the law as it then stood and the protagonists in the fight were the National Socialists. Before the new State could be actually established and promulgated, the idea of it and the model for its organization had already existed within the framework of our party. All the fundamental principles on which the new Reich was to be constructed were the principles and ideas already embodied in the National Socialist Party.
As a result of the constitutional struggle to win over our German fellow-countrymen to our side the party had established its predominance in the Reichstag and for a whole year before it actually assumed power it already had the right to demand this power for itself, even according to the principles of the parliamentary-democratic system. But it was essential for the National Socialist Revolution that this party should put forward demands which of themselves would involve a real revolutionary change in the principles and institutions of government hitherto in force.
When certain individuals who were blind to the actual state of affairs thought that they could refuse to submit to the practical application of the principles of the movement which had been entrusted with the government of the Reich, then, but not until then, the party used an iron hand to make these illegal disturbers of the peace bend their stubborn necks before the laws of the new National Socialist Reich and Government.
With this act the National Socialist Revolution came to an end. For as soon as the party had taken over power, and this new condition of affairs was consolidated, I looked upon it as a matter of course that the Revolution should be transformed into an evolution.
The new development which now set in, however, meant that there had to be a new orientation not merely of our ideas but also in regard to the practical policy which we had to carry out. Even today certain individuals who have fallen in the march of events refuse to adapt themselves to this change. They cannot understand it because it is beyond their mental horizon or outside the sphere of their egotistic interests. Our National Socialist teaching has undoubtedly a revolutionizing effect in many spheres of life and has interfered and acted under the revolutionary impulse.
The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute therefore the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood. A very simple statement; but it involves a principle that has tremendous consequences.
This is probably the first time and this is the first country in which people are being taught to realize that, of all the tasks which we have to face, the noblest and most sacred for mankind is that each racial species must preserve the purity of the blood which God has given it.
And thus it happens that for the first time it is now possible for men to use their God-given faculties of perception and insight in the understanding of those problems which are of more momentous importance for the preservation of human existence than all the victories that may be won on the battlefield or the successes that may be obtained through economic efforts. The greatest revolution which National Socialism has brought about is that it has rent asunder the veil which hid from us the knowledge that all human failures and mistakes are due to the conditions of the time and therefore can be remedied, but that there is one error which cannot be remedied once men have made it, namely the failure to recognize the importance of conserving the blood and the race free from intermixture and thereby the racial aspect and character which are God’s gift and God’s handiwork. It is not for men to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize the fact that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation.
Unspeakable suffering and misery have come upon mankind because they lost this instinct which was grounded in a profound intuition; and this loss was caused by a wrong and lopsided education of the intellect. Among our people there are millions and millions of persons living today for whom this law has become clear and intelligible. What individual seers and the still unspoiled natures of our forefathers saw by direct perception has now become a subject of scientific research in Germany. And I can prophesy here that, just as the knowledge that the earth moves around the sun led to a revolutionary alternation in the general world-picture, so the blood-and-race doctrine of the National Socialist Movement will bring about a revolutionary change in our knowledge and therewith a radical reconstruction of the picture which human history gives us of the past and will also change the course of that history in the future.
And this will not lead to an estrangement between the nations; but, on the contrary, it will bring about for the first time a real understanding of one another. At the same time, however, it will prevent the Jewish people from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations.
We feel convinced that the consequences of this really revolutionizing vision of truth will bring about a radical transformation in German life. For the first time in our history, The German people have found the way to a higher unity than they ever had before; and that is due to the compelling attraction of this inner feeling. Innumerable prejudices have been broken down, many barriers have been overthrown as unreasonable, evil traditions have been wiped out and antiquated symbols shown to be meaningless. From that chaos of disunion which had been caused by tribal, dynastic, philosophical, religious and political strife, the German nation has arisen and has unfurled the banner of a reunion which symbolically announces, not a political triumph, but the triumph of the racial principle. For the past four-and-a-half years German legislation has upheld and enforced this idea. Just as on January 30th, 1933, a state of affairs already in existence was legalized by the fact that I was entrusted with the chancellorship, whereby the party whose supremacy in Germany had then become unquestionable was not authorized to take over the government of the Reich and mould the future destiny of Germany; so this German legislation that has been in force for the past four years was only the legal sanction which gave jurisdiction and binding force to an idea that had already been clearly formulated and promulgated by the party.
When the German community, based on the racial blood-bond, became realized in the German State we all felt that this would remain one of the finest moments to be remembered during our lives. Like a blast of springtime it passed over Germany four years ago. The fighting forces of our movement who for many years had defended the banner of the Hooked Cross against the superior forces of the enemy, and had carried it steadily forward for a long fourteen years, now planted it firmly in the soil of the new Reich.
Within a few weeks the political debris and the social prejudices which had been accumulating through a thousand years of German history were removed and cleared away.
May we not speak of a revolution when the chaotic conditions brought about by parliamentary-democracy disappear in less than three months and a regime of order and discipline takes their place, and a new energy springs forth from a firmly welded unity and a comprehensive authoritative power such as Germany never before had?
So great was the Revolution that its intellectual foundations are not even yet understood but are superficially criticized by our contemporaries. They talk of democracies and dictatorships; but they fail to grasp the fact that in this country a radical transformation has taken place and has produced results which are democratic in the highest sense of the word, if democracy has any meaning at all.
With infallible certainty we are steering towards an order of things in which a process of selection will become active in the political leadership of the nation, as it exists throughout the whole of life in general. By this process of selection, which will follow the laws of Nature and the dictates of human reason, those among our people who show the greatest natural ability will be appointed to positions in the political leadership of the nation. In making this selection no consideration will be given to birth or ancestry, name or wealth, but only to the question of whether or not the candidate has a natural vocation for those higher positions of leadership. That was a fine principle which the great Corsican enunciated when he said that each one of his soldiers carried a marshal’s baton in the haversack. In this country that principle will have its political counterpart. Is there a nobler or more excellent kind of Socialism and is there a truer form of Democracy than this National Socialism which is so organized that through it each one among the millions of German boys is given the possibility of finding his way to the highest office in the nation, should it please Providence to come to his aid.
And that is no theory. In the present National Socialist Germany it is a reality that is considered by us all as a matter of course. I myself, to whom the people have given their trust and who have been called to be their leader, come from the people. All the millions of German workers know that it is not a foreign dilettante or an international revolutionary apostle who is at the head of the Reich, but a German who has come from their own ranks.
And numerous people whose families belong to the peasantry and working classes are now filling prominent positions in this National Socialist State. Some of them actually hold the highest offices in the leadership of the nation, as Cabinet Ministers, Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter. But National Socialism always bears in mind the interests of the people as a whole and not the interests of one class or another.
The National Socialist Revolution has not aimed at turning a privileged class into a class which will have no rights in the future. Its aim has been to grant equal rights to those social strata that hitherto were denied such rights. We have not ruined millions of citizens by degrading them to the level of enslaved workers. Our aim has been to educate slaves to be German citizens. One thing will certainly be quite clear to every German; and this is that revolutions as acts of terror can only be of short duration. If revolutions are not able to produce something new they will end up by devouring the whole of the national patrimony which existed before them. From the assumption of power as an act of force the beneficial work of peace must be promptly developed. But those who abolish classes for the purpose of putting new classes in their place sow the seeds of new revolutions. The bourgeois citizen who has the ruling power in his hands today will become a proletarian if he is banished to Siberia tomorrow and condemned to enforced lab our there. He will then yearn for his day of deliverance, just as did the proletarian of former times, who now thinks that his turn has come to play the despot. Therefore the National Socialist Revolution never aimed at bringing in one class of the German people and turning out another. One the contrary, our objective has been to make it possible for the whole German people to work, not only in the economic but also in the political field, and to guarantee this possibility by organizing the various classes into one national unit.
The National Socialist Movement, however, limits its sphere of internal activity to those individuals who belong to one people and it refuses to allow the members of a foreign race to wield an influence over our political, intellectual, or cultural life. And we refuse to accord to the members of a foreign race any predominant position in our national economic system.
In this folk-community, which is based on the bond of blood, and in the results which National Socialism has obtained by making the idea of this community understood among the public, lies the most profound reason for the marvelous success of our Revolution.
Confronted with this new and vigorous ideal, all idols and relics of the past which had been upheld by dynastic interests, tribal affiliations and even party interests, now began to lose their glamour. That is why the whole party system of former times completely collapsed in a few weeks, without giving rise to the feeling that something had been lost. They were superseded by a better ideal. A new movement took their place. A reorganization of our people into a national unit that includes all those whose lab our is productive simply pushed aside the old organizations of employers and employees. The symbolic emblems of the recent past, which was a period of disintegration and disability, were banished, not—as in 1918 or 1919—through a resolution voted by a committee appointed to invent a new symbol for the Reich, as if the choice were to depend on the results of a prize competition. But all these old emblems were now displaced by that flag which symbolized the militant period of the National Socialist Movement and which was borne by us on the day of Germany’s resurgence. Since that day it has become the consecrated symbol of his national resurgence on land and sea and in the air.
There could be no more eloquent proof of how profoundly the German people have understood the significance of this change and new development than the manner in which the nation sanctioned our regime at the polls on so many occasions during the years that followed. So, of all those who like to point again and again to the democratic form of government as the institution which is based on the universal will of the people, in contrast to dictatorships, nobody has a better right to speak in the name of the people than I have.
Among the results of this phase of the German Revolution I may enumerate the following: —
(1) Since that time there is only one trustee of supreme power among the German people and that trustee is the whole people itself.
(2) The will of the people finds its expression in the Party, which is the political organization of the people.
(3) Therefore there is only one legislative body.
(4) There is only one executive authority.
Anyone who compares this state of affairs with the condition of Germany before January 1933 will realize what a tremendous transformation is indicated by these few short statements.
But this transformation is only a result that has followed from carrying a fundamental axiom of the National Socialist doctrine into practical effect. This axiom is that the only reasonable meaning and purpose of all human thought and conduct cannot be to create or to maintain structures, organizations or functions made by men, but only to preserve and develop the innate character of the people itself; for Providence has given us this character as the groundwork of all our constructive efforts. Through the successful issue of the National Socialist Movement the people as such was placed above any organization, construction or function, as the sole element that is always there and will permanently abide.
The meaning and purpose which Providence had in mind when it created the different races cannot be investigated by us, human beings, and no theory about it can be laid down. But the meaning and purpose of human organizations and of all human activities can be measured by asking what value they are for the maintenance of the race or people, which is the one existing element that must abide. The people—the race—is the primary thing. Party, State, Army, the national economic structure, Justice etc, all these are only secondary and accidental. They are only the means to the end and the end is the preservation of this nation. These public institutions are right and useful according to the measure in which their energies are directed towards this task. If they are incapable of fulfilling it, then their existence is harmful and they must either be reformed or removed and replaced by something better.
