Chapter V: The World War
As A YOUNG SCAMP in my wild years, nothing had so grieved me as
having been born at a time which obviously erected its Halls of Fame only to
shopkeepers and government officials. The waves of historic events seemed to
have grown so smooth that the future really seemed to belong only to the
'peaceful contest of nations'; in other words, a cozy mutual swindling match
with the exclusion of violent methods of defense. The various nations began to
be more and more like private citizens who cut the ground from under one
another's feet, stealing each other's customers and orders, trying in every way
to get ahead of one another, and staging this whole act amid a hue and cry as
loud as it is harmless. This development seemed not only to endure but was
expected in time (as was universally recommended) to remodel the whole world
into one big department store in whose vestibules the busts of the shrewdest
profiteers and the most lamblike administrative officials would be garnered for
all eternity. The English could supply the merchants, the Germans the
administrative officials, and the Jews no doubt would have to sacrifice
themselves to being the owners, since by their own admission they never make
any money, but always 'pay,' and, besides, speak the most languages.
Why couldn't I have been born a hundred years earlier? Say at the
time of the Wars of Liberation when a man, even without a 'business,' was
really worth something?!
Thus I had often indulged in angry thoughts concerning my
earthly pilgrimage, which, as it seemed to me, had begun too late, and regarded
the period 'of law and order' ahead of me as a mean and undeserved trick of
Fate. Even as a boy I was no 'pacifist,' and all attempts to educate me in this
direction came to nothing.
The Boer War was like summer lightning to me.
Every day I waited impatiently for the newspapers and devoured
dispatches and news reports, happy at the privilege of witnessing this heroic
struggle even at a distance.
The Russo-Japanese War found me considerably more mature,
but also more attentive. More for national reasons I had already taken sides,
and in our little discussions at once sided with the Japanese. In a defeat of
the Russians I saw the defeat of Austrian Slavdom.
Since then many years have passed, and what as a boy had
seemed to me a lingering disease, I now felt to be the quiet before the storm.
As early as my Vienna period, the Balkans were immersed in that livid
sultriness which customarily announces the hurricane, and from time to time a
beam of brighter light flared up, only to vanish again in the spectral
darkness. But then came the Balkan War and with it the first gust of wind swept
across a Europe grown nervous. The time which now followed lay on the chests of
men like a heavy nightmare, sultry as feverish tropic heat, so that due to
constant anxiety the sense of approaching catastrophe turned at last to
longing: let Heaven at last give free rein to the fate which could no longer be
thwarted. And then the first mighty lightning flash struck the earth; the storm
was unleashed and with the thunder of Heaven there mingled the roar of the
World War batteries.
When the news of the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
arrived in Munich (I happened to be sitting at home and heard of it only-
vaguely), I was at first seized with worry that the bullets may have been shot
from the pistols of German students, who, out of indignation at the heir
apparent's continuous work of Slavization, wanted to free the German people
from this internal enemy. What the consequence of this would have been was easy
to imagine: a new wave of persecutions which would now have been 'justified'
and 'explained' in the eyes of the whole world. But when, soon afterward, I
heard the names of the supposed assassins, and moreover read that they had been
identified as Serbs, a light shudder began to run through me at this vengeance
of inscrutable Destiny.
The greatest friend of the Slavs had fallen beneath the
bullets of Slavic fanatics.
Anyone with constant occasion in the last years to
observe the relation of Austria to Serbia could not for a moment be in doubt
that a stone had been set rolling whose course could no longer be
arrested.
Those who today shower the Viennese government with reproaches on
the form and content of the ultimatum it issued, do it an injustice. No other
power in the world could have acted differently in the same situation and the
same position. At her southeastern border Austria possessed an inexorable and
mortal enemy who at shorter and shorter intervals kept challenging the monarchy
and would never have left off until the moment favorable for the shattering of
the Empire had arrived. There was reason to fear that this would occur at the
latest with the death of the old Emperor; by then perhaps the old monarchy
would no longer be in a position to offer any serious resistance. In the last
few years the state had been so bound up with the person of Francis Joseph that
the death of this old embodiment of the Empire was felt by the broad masses to
be tantamount to the death of the Empire itself. Indeed, it was one of the
craftiest artifices, particularly of the Slavic policy, to create the
appearance that the Austrian state no longer owed its existence to anything but
the miraculous and unique skill of this monarch; this flattery was all the more
welcome in the Hofburg, since it corresponded not at all to the real merits of
the Emperor. The thorn hidden in these paeans of praise remained undiscovered
The rulers did not see, or perhaps no longer wanted to see, that the more the
monarchy depended on the outstanding statecraft, as they put it, of this
'wisest monarch' of all times, the more catastrophic the situation was bound to
become if one day Fate were to knock at his door, too, demanding its
tribute.
Was old Austria even conceivable without the Emperor?!
Wouldn't the tragedy which had once stricken Maria
Theresa have been repeated?
No, it is really doing the Vienna circles an injustice to
reproach them with rushing into a war which might otherwise have been avoided.
It no longer could be avoided, but at most could have been postponed for one or
two years. But this was the curse of German as well as Austrian diplomacy, that
it had always striven to postpone the inevitable reckoning, until at length it
was forced to strike at the most unfavorable hour. We can be convinced that a
further attempt to save peace would have brought war at an even more
unfavorable time.
No, those who did not want this war had to have the
courage to face the consequences, which could have consisted only in the
sacrifice of Austria. Even then the war would have come, but no longer as a
struggle of all against ourselves, but in the form of a partition of the
Habsburg monarchy. And then they had to make up their minds to join in, or to
look on with empty hands and let Fate run its course.
Those very people, however, who today are loudest in
cursing the beginning of the war and offer the sagest opinions were those who
contributed most fatally to steering us into it.
For decades the Social Democrats had carried on the most
scoundrelly war agitation against Russia, and the Center for religious reasons
had been most active in making the Austrian state the hinge and pivot of
Germany policy. Now we had to suffer the consequences of this lunacy. What came
had to come, and could no longer under any circumstances be avoided. The guilt
of the German government was that in order to preserve peace it always missed
the favorable hours for striking, became entangled in the alliance for the
preservation of world peace, and thus finally became the victim of a world
coalition which countered the idea of preserving world peace with nothing less
than determination for world war.
If the Vienna government had given the ultimatum another
milder form, this would have changed nothing in the situation except at most
one thing, that this government would itself have been swept away by the
indignation of the people. For in the eyes of the broad masses the tone of the
ultimatum was far too gentle and by no means too brutal, let alone too
far-reaching Anyone who today attempts to argue this away is either a forgetful
blockhead or a perfectly conscious swindler and liar
The struggle of the year 1914 was not forced on the
masses- no, by the living God-it was desired by the whole people.
People wanted at length to put an end to the general
uncertainty. Only thus can it be understood that more than two million German
men and boys thronged to the colors for this hardest of all struggles, prepared
to defend the flag with the last drop of their blood.
To me those hours seemed like a release from the painful
feelings of my youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by
stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an
overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live
at this time.
A fight for freedom had begun, mightier than the earth had
ever seen; for once Destiny had begun its course, the conviction dawned on even
the broad masses that this time not the fate of Serbia or Austria was involved,
but whether the German nation was to be or not to be.
For the last time in many years the people had a prophetic
vision of its own future. Thus, right at the beginning of the gigantic struggle
the necessary grave undertone entered into the ecstasy- of an overflowing
enthusiasm; for this knowledge alone made the national uprising more than a
mere blaze of straw The earnestness was only too necessary; for in those days
people in general had not the faintest conception of the possible length and
duration of the struggle that was now beginning. They dreamed of being home
again that winter to continue and renew their peaceful labors.
What a man wants is what he hopes and believes. The
overwhelming majority of the nation had long been weary of the eternally
uncertain state of affairs; thus it was only too understandable that they no
longer believed in a peaceful conclusion of the Austro-Serbian convict, but
hoped for the final settlement.
I, too, was one of these millions.
Hardly had the news of the assassination become known in
Munich than at once two thoughts quivered through my brain: first, that at last
war would be inevitable; and, furthermore, that now the Habsburg state would be
compelled to keep its pact; for what I had always most feared was the
possibility that Germany herself would some day, perhaps in consequence of this
very alliance, find herself in a conflict not directly caused by Austria, so
that the Austrian state for reasons of domestic policy would not muster the
force of decision to stand behind her ally. The Slavic majority of the Empire
would at once have begun to sabotage any such intention on the part of the
state, and would always have preferred to smash the entire state to smithereens
than grant its ally the help it demanded. This danger was now eliminated. The
old state had to fight whether it wanted to or not.
My own position on the conflict was likewise very simple
and clear; for me it was not that Austria was fighting for some Serbian
satisfaction, but that Germany was fighting for her existence, the German
nation for life or death, freedom and future. The time had come for Bismarck's
work to fight; what the fathers had once won in the battles from Weissenburg to
Sedan and Paris, young Germany now had to earn once more. If the struggle were
carried through to victory, our nation would enter the circle of great nations
from the standpoint of external power, and only then could the German Reich
maintain itself as a mighty haven of peace without having, for the sake of
peace, to cut down on the daily bread of her children.
As a boy and young man I had so often felt the desire to
prove at least once by deeds that for me national enthusiasm was no empty whim.
It often seemed to me almost a sin to shout hurrah perhaps without having the
inner right to do so; for who had the right to use this word without having
proved it in the place where all playing is at an end and the inexorable hand
of the Goddess of Destiny begins to weigh peoples and men according to the
truth and steadfastness of their convictions? Thus my heart, like that of a
million others, overflowed with proud joy that at last I would be able to
redeem myself from this paralyzing feeling. I had so often sung 'Deutschland
uber Aloes' and shouted Neil ' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me
almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine
court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction. For
from the first hour r was convinced that in case of a war- which seemed to me
inevitable-in one way or another I would at once leave my books. Likewise I
knew that my place would then be where my inner voice directed me.
I had left Austria primarily for political reasons; what
was more natural than that, now the struggle had begun, I should really begin
to take account of this conviction. I did not want to fight for the Habsburg
state, but was ready at any time to die for my people and for the Reich which
embodied it
On the third of August, I submitted a personal petition
to His Majesty, lying Ludwig III, with a request for permission to enter a
Bavarian regiment. The cabinet office certainly had plenty to do in those days;
so much the greater was my joy to receive an answer to my request the very next
day. With trembling hands I opened the document; my request had been approved
and I was summoned to report to a Bavarian regiment. My joy and gratitude knew
no bounds. A few days later I was wearing the tunic which I was not to doff
until nearly six years later.
For me, as for every German, there now began the greatest
and most unforgettable time of my earthly existence. Compared to the events of
this gigantic struggle, everything past receded to shallow nothingness.
Precisely in these days, with the tenth anniversary of the mighty event
approaching, I think back with proud sadness on those first weeks of our
people's heroic struggle, in which Fate graciously allowed me to take
part.
As though it were yesterday, image after image passes before my
eyes. I see myself donning the uniform in the circle of my dear comrades,
turning out for the first time, drilling, etc., until the day came for us to
march off.
A single worry tormented me at that time, me, as so many
others: would we not reach the front too late? Time and time again this alone
banished all my calm. Thus, in every cause for rejoicing at a new, heroic
victory, a slight drop of bitterness was hidden, for every new victory seemed
to increase the danger of our coming too late.
At last the day came when we left Munich to begin the
fulfillment of our duty. For the first time I saw the Rhine as we rode westward
along its quiet waters to defend it, the German stream of streams, from the
greed of the old enemy. When through the tender veil of the early morning mist
the Niederwald Monument gleamed down upon us in the gentle first rays of the
sun, the old Watch on the Rhine roared out of the endless transport train into
the morning sky, and I felt as though my heart would burst.
And then came a damp, cold night in Flanders, through
which we marched in silence, and when the day began to emerge from the mists,
suddenly an iron greeting came whizzing at us over our heads, and with a sharp
report sent the little pellets flying between our ranks, ripping up the wet
ground; but even before the little cloud had passed, from two hundred throats
the first hurrah rose to meet the first messenger of death. Then a crackling
and a roaring, a singing and a howling began, and with feverish eyes each one
of us was drawn forward, faster and faster, until suddenly past turnip fields
and hedges the fight began, the fight of man against man. And from the distance
the strains of a song reached our ears, coming closer and closer, leaping from
company to company, and just as Death plunged a busy hand into our ranks, the
song reached us too and we passed it along: 'Deutschland, Deutschland uber
Alles, uber Alles in der Welt!'
Four days later we came back. Even our step had changed.
Seventeen-year-old boys now looked like men.
The volunteers of the List Regiment may not have learned
to fight properly, but they knew how to die like old soldiers
This was the beginning.
Thus it went on year after year; but the romance of battle
had been replaced by horror. The enthusiasm gradually cooled and the exuberant
joy was stifled by mortal fear. The time came when every man had to struggle
between the instinct of self-preservation and the admonitions of duty. I, too,
was not spared by this struggle. Always when Death was on the hunt, a vague
something tried to revolt, strove to represent itself to the weak body as
reason, yet it was only cowardice, which in such disguises tried to ensnare the
individual. A grave tugging and warning set in, and often it was only the last
remnant of conscience which decided the issue. Yet the more this voice
admonished one to caution, the louder and more insistent its lures, the sharper
resistance grew until at last, after a long inner struggle, consciousness of
duty emerged victorious. By the winter of 1915-16 this struggle had for me been
decided. At last my will was undisputed master. If in the first days I went
over the top with rejoicing and laughter, I was now calm and determined. And
this was enduring. Now Fate could bring on the ultimate tests without my nerves
shattering or my reason failing.
The young volunteer had become an old soldier.
And this transformation had occurred in the whole army. It had issued
old and hard from the eternal battles, and as for those who could not stand up
under the storm-well, they were broken.
Now was the time to judge this army. Now, after two or
three years, during which it was hurled from one battle into another, forever
fighting against superiority in numbers and weapons, suffering hunger and
bearing privations, now was the time to test the quality of this unique
army.
Thousands of years may pass, but never will it be possible to speak
of heroism without mentioning the German army and the World War. Then from the
veil of the past the iron front of the gray steel helmet will emerge,
unwavering and unflinching, an immortal monument. As long as there are Germans
alive, they will remember that these men were sons of their nation.
I
was a soldier then, and I didn't want to talk about politics. And really it was
not the time for it. Even today I harbor the conviction that the humblest
wagon-driver performed more valuable services for the fatherland than the
foremost among, let us say, 'parliamentarians.' I had never hated these
bigmouths more than now when every red-blooded man with something to say yelled
it into the enemy's face or appropriately left his tongue at home and silently
did his duty somewhere. Yes, in those days I hated all those politicians. And
if it had been up to me, a parliamentary pick-and-shovel battalion would have
been formed at once; then they could have chewed the fat to their hearts'
content without annoying, let alone harming, honest, decent people.
Thus, at that time I wanted to hear nothing of politics, but I could
not help taking a position on certain manifestations which after all did affect
the whole nations and particularly concerned us soldiers.
There were two things which then profoundly angered me and
which I regarded as harmful.
After the very first news of victories, a certain section
of the press, slowly, and in a way which at first was perhaps unrecognizable to
many, began to pour a few drops of wormwood into the general enthusiasm. This
was done beneath the mask of a certain benevolence and well-meaning, even of a
certain solicitude. They had misgivings about an excess of exuberance in the
celebration of the victories. They feared that in this form it was unworthy of
so great a nation and hence inappropriate. The bravery and heroic courage of
the German soldier were something self-evident, they said, and people should
not be carried away too much by thoughtless outbursts of joy, if only for the
sake of foreign countries to whom a silent and dignified form of joy appealed
more than unbridled exultation, etc. Finally, we Germans even now should not
forget that the war was none of our intention and therefore we should not be
ashamed to confess in an open and manly fashion that at any time we would
contribute our part to a reconciliation of mankind. For that reason it would
not be prudent to besmirch the purity of our army's deeds by too much shouting,
since the rest of the world would have little understanding for such behavior.
The world admired nothing more than the modesty with which a true hero silently
and calmly forgets his deeds, for this was the gist of the whole
argument.
Instead of taking one of these creatures by his long ears, tying him
to a long pole and pulling him up on a long cord, thus making it impossible for
the cheering nation to insult the aesthetic sentiment of this knight of the
inkpot, the authorities actually began to issue remonstrances against '
unseemly ' rejoicing over victories.
It didn't occur to them in the least that enthusiasm once
scotched cannot be reawakened at need. It is an intoxication and must be
preserved in this state. And how, without this power of enthusiasm, should a
country withstand a struggle which in all likelihood would make the most
enormous demands on the spiritual qualities of the nation?
I knew the psyche of the broad masses too well not to be
aware that a high 'aesthetic' tone would not stir up the fire that was
necessary to keep the iron hot. In my eyes it was madness on the part of the
authorities to be doing nothing to intensify the glowing heat of passion; and
when they curtailed what passion was fortunately present, that was absolutely
beyond me.
The second thing that angered me was the attitude which
they thought fit to take toward Marxism. In my eyes, this only proved that they
hadn't so much as the faintest idea concerning this pestilence. In all
seriousness they seemed to believe that, by the assurance that parties were no
longer recognized, they had brought Marxism to understanding and
restraint.
They failed to understand that here no party was
involved, but a doctrine that must lead to the destruction of all humanity,
especially since this cannot be learned in the Jewified universities and,
besides, so many, particularly among our higher officials, due to the idiotic
conceit that is cultivated in them, don't think it worth the trouble to pick up
a book and learn something which was not in their university curriculum. The
most gigantic upheaval passes these 'minds' by without leaving the slightest
trace, which is why state institutions for the most part lag behind private
ones. It is to them, by God, that the popular proverb best applies: 'What the
peasant doesn't know, he won't eat.' Here, too, a few exceptions only confirm
the rule.
It was an unequaled absurdity to identify the German worker with
Marxism in the days of August, 1914. In those hours the German worker had made
himself free from the embrace of this venomous plague, for otherwise he would
never have been able to enter the struggle. The authorities, however, were
stupid enough to believe that Marxism had now become national; a flash of
genius which only shows that in these long years none of these official guides
of the state had even taken the trouble to study the essence of this doctrine,
for if they had, such an absurdity could scarcely have crept in.
Marxism, whose goal is and remains the destruction of all
non-Jewish national states, was forced to look on in horror as, in the July
days of 1914, the German working class it had ensnared, awakened and from hour
to hour began to enter the service of the fatherland with ever-increasing
rapidity. In a few days the whole mist and swindle of this infamous betrayal of
the people had scattered away, and suddenly the gang of Jewish leaders stood
there lonely and forsaken, as though not a trace remained of the nonsense and
madness which for sixty years they had been funneling into the masses. It was a
bad moment for the betrayers of the German working class, but as soon as the
leaders recognized the danger which menaced them, they rapidly pulled the
tarn-cap ' of lies over their ears, and insolently mimicked the national
awakening.
But now the time had come to take steps against the whole
treacherous brotherhood of they Jewish poisoners of the people. Now was the
time to deal with them summarily without the slightest consideration for any
screams and complaints that might arise. In August, 1914, the whole Jewish
jabber about international solidarity had vanished at one stroke from the heads
of the German working class, and in its stead, only a few weeks later, American
shrapnel began to pour down the blessings of brotherhood on the helmets of our
march columns. It would have been the duty of a serious government, now that
the German worker had found his way back to his nation, to exterminate
mercilessly the agitators who were misleading the nation.
If the best men were dying at the front, the least we
could do was to wipe out the vermin.
Instead of this, His Majesty the Raiser
himself stretched out his hand to the old criminals, thus sparing the
treacherous murderers of the nation and giving them a chance to retrieve
themselves.
So nova the viper could continue his work, more
cautiously than before, but all the more dangerously. While the honest ones
were dreaming of peace within their borders,l the perjuring criminals were
organizing the revolution.
That such terrible half-measures should then be decided
upon made me more and more dissatisfied at heart; but at that time I would not
have thought it possible that the end of it all would be so frightful.
What, then, should have been done? The leaders of the whole movement
should at once have been put behind bars, brought to trial, and thus taken off
the nation's neck. All the implements of military power should have been
ruthlessly used for the extermination of this pestilence. The parties should
have been dissolved, the Reichstag brought to its senses, with bayonets if
necessary, but, best of all, dissolved at once. Just as the Republic today can
dissolve parties, this method should have been used at that time, with more
reason. For the life and death of a whole nation was at stake!
One question came to the fore, however: can spiritual
ideas be exterminated by the sword? Can 'philosophies' be combated by the use
of brute force?
Even at that time I pondered this question more than
once: If we ponder analogous cases, particularly on a religious basis, which
can be found in history, the following fundamental principle emerges:
Conceptions and ideas, as well as movements with a definite
spiritual foundation, regardless whether the latter is false or true, can,
after a certain point in their development, only be broken with technical
instruments of power if these physical weapons are at the same time the support
of a new kindling thought, idea, or philosophy.
The application of force alone, without the impetus of a
basic spiritual idea as a starting point, can never lead to the destruction of
an idea and its dissemination, except in the form of a complete extermination
of even the very last exponent of the idea and the destruction of the last
tradition. This, however, usually means the disappearance of such a state from
the sphere of political importance, often for an indefinite time and some-times
forever; for experience shows that such a blood sacrifice strikes the best part
of the people, since every persecution which occurs without a spiritual basis
seems morally unjustified and whips up precisely the more valuable parts of a
people in protest, which results in an adoption of the spiritual content of the
unjustly persecuted movement. In many this occurs simply through a feeling of
opposition against the attempt to bludgeon down an idea by brute force.
As
a result, the number of inward supporters grows in proportion as the
persecution increases. Consequently, the complete annihilation of the new
doctrine can be carried out only through a process of extermination so great
and constantly increasing that in the end all the truly valuable blood is drawn
out of the people or state in question. The consequence is that, though a
so-called 'inner' purge can now take place, it will only be at the cost of
total impotence. Such a method will always prove vain in advance if the
doctrine to be combated has overstepped a certain small circle.
Consequently, here, too, as in all growth, the first
period of childhood is most readily susceptible to the possibility of
extermination, while with the mounting years the power of resistance increases
and only with the weakness of approaching old age cedes again to new youth,
though in another form and for different reasons.
Indeed, nearly all attempts to exterminate a doctrine and
its organizational expression, by force without spiritual foundation, are
doomed to failure, and not seldom end with the exact opposite of the desired
result for the following reason:
The very first requirement for a mode of struggle with the
weapons of naked force is and remains persistence. In other words: only the
continuous and steady application of the methods for repressing a doctrine,
etc., makes it possible for a plan to succeed. But as soon as force wavers and
alternates with forbearance, not only will the doctrine to be repressed recover
again and again, but it will also be in a position to draw new benefit from
every persecution, since, after such a wave of pressure has ebbed away,
indignation over the suffering induced leads new supporters to the old
doctrine, while the old ones will cling to it with greater defiance and deeper
hatred than before, and even schismatic heretics, once the danger has subsided,
will attempt to return to their old viewpoint. Only in the steady and constant
application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This
persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual
conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base,
will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a
fanatical outlook. It emanates from the momentary energy and brutal
determination of an individual, and is therefore subject to the change of
personalities and to their nature and strength.
Added to this there is something else:
Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political
nature- and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine-fights less for
the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than for the positive
promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less defensive than offensive. It
therefore has the advantage even in determining the goal, since this goal
represents the victory of its own idea, while, conversely, it is hard to
determine when the negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be
regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the philosophy's
offensive will be more systematic and also more powerful than the defensive
against a philosophy, since here, too, as always, the attack and not the
defense makes the decision. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of
violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes the support, the
herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doctrine.
Thus, in summing up, we can establish the
following:
Any attempt to combat a philosophy with methods of
violence will fail in the end, unless the fight takes the form of attack for a
new spiritual attitude. Only in the struggle between two philosophies can the
weapon of brutal force, persistently and ruthlessly applied lead to a decision
for the side it supports.
This remained the reason for the failure of the struggle
against Marxism.
This was why Bismarck's Socialist legislation finally
failed and had to fail, in spite of everything. Lacking was the platform of a
new philosophy for whose rise the fight could have been waged. For only the
proverbial wisdom of high government officials will succeed in believing that
drivel about so-called 'state authority' or 'law and order' could form a
suitable basis for the spiritual impetus of a life-and-death struggle.
Since a real spiritual basis for this struggle was lacking, Bismarck
had to entrust the execution of his Socialist legislation to the judgment and
desires of that institution which itself was a product of Marxist thinking. By
entrusting the fate of his war on the Marxists to the well-wishing of bourgeois
democracy, the Iron Chancellor set the wolf to mind the sheep.
All this was only the necessary consequence of the
absence of a basic new anti-Marxist philosophy endowed with a stormy will to
conquer.
Hence the sole result of Bismarck's struggle was a grave
disillusionment.
Were conditions different during the World War or at its
beginning? Unfortunately not.
The more I occupied myself with the idea of a necessary
change in the government's attitude toward Social Democracy as the momentary
embodiment of Marxism, the more I recognized the lack of a serviceable
substitute for this doctrine. What would be given the masses if, just
supposing, Social Democracy had been broken? There was not one movement in
existence which could have been expected to succeed in drawing into its sphere
of influence the great multitudes of workers grown more or less leaderless. It
is senseless and more than stupid to believe that the international fanatic who
had left the class party would now at once join a bourgeois party, in other
words, a new class organization. For, unpleasant as it may seem to various
organizations, it cannot be denied that bourgeois politicians largely take
class division quite for granted as long as it does not begin to work out to
their political disadvantage.
The denial of this fact only proves the effrontery, and
also the stupidity, of the liars.
Altogether, care should be taken not to regard the masses
as stupider than they are. In political matters feeling often decides more
correctly than reason. The opinion that the stupid international attitude of
the masses is sufficient proof of the unsoundness of the masses' sentiments can
be thoroughly confuted by the simple reminder that pacifist democracy is no
less insane, and that its exponents originate almost exclusively in the
bourgeois camp. As long as millions of the bourgeoisie still piously worship
their Jewish democratic press every morning, it very ill becomes these
gentlemen to make jokes about the stupidity of the 'comrade' who, in the last
analysis, only swallows down the same garbage, though in a different form. In
both cases the manufacturer is one and the same Jew.
Good care should be taken not to deny things that just
happen to be true. The fact that the class question is by no means exclusively
a matter of ideal problems, as, particularly before the elections, some people
would like to pretend, cannot be denied. The class arrogance of a large part of
our people, and to an even greater extent, the underestimation of the manual
worker, are phenomena which do not exist only in the imagination of the
moonstruck.
Quite aside from this, however, it shows the small
capacity for thought of our so-called 'intelligentsia' when, particularly in
these circles, it is not understood that a state of affairs which could not
prevent the growth of a plague, such as Marxism happens to be, will certainly
not be able to recover what has been lost.
The 'bourgeois' parties, as they designate themselves,
will never be able to attach the 'proletarian' masses to their camp, for here
two worlds oppose each other, in part naturally and in part artificially
divided, whose mutual relation 1 can only be struggle. The younger will be
victorious-and this is Marxism.
Indeed, a struggle against Social Democracy in the year
1914 was conceivable, but how long this condition would be maintained, in view
of the absence of any substitute, remained doubtful.
Here there was a great gap.
I was of this opinion long before the War, and for this
reason could not make up my mind to join one of the existing parties. In the
course of events of the World War, I was reinforced in this opinion by the
obvious impossibility of taking up a ruthless struggle against Social
Democracy, owing to this very lack of a movement which would have had to be
more than a 'parliamentary' party.
With my closer comrades I often expressed myself openly on
this point.
And now the first ideas came to me of later engaging in
political activity.
Precisely this was what caused me often to assure the
small circle of my friends that after the War, I meant to be a speaker in
addition to my profession.
I believe that I was very serious about
this.
Chapter VI: War
Propaganda
EVER since I have been scrutinizing political events, I have taken a
tremendous interest in propagandist activity. I saw that the Socialist-Marxist
organizations mastered and applied this instrument with astounding skill. And I
soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has
remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the
Christian-Social movement, especially in Lueger's time, achieved a certain
virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its successes.
But it was not until the War that it became evident what immense
results could be obtained by a correct application of propaganda. Here again,
unfortunately, all our studying had to be done on the enemy side, for the
activity on our side was modest, to say the least. The total miscarriage of the
German 'enlightenment ' service stared every soldier in the face, and this
spurred me to take up the question of propaganda even more deeply than
before.
There was often more than enough time for thinking, and the enemy
offered practical instruction which, to our sorrow, was only too good.
For what we failed to do, the enemy did, with amazing skill and
really brilliant calculation. I, myself, learned enormously from this enemy war
propaganda. But time passed and left no trace in the minds of all those who
should have benefited; partly because they considered themselves too clever to
from the enemy, partly owing to lack of good will.
Did we have anything you could call propaganda?
I
regret that I must answer in the negative. Everything that actually was done in
this field was so inadequate and wron
from the very start that it certainly
did no good and sometimes did actual harm.
The form was inadequate, the substance was
psychologically wrong: a careful examination of German war propaganda ca: lead
to no other diagnosis.
There seems to have been no clarity on the very first
question: Is propaganda a means or an end?
It is a means and must therefore be judged with regard to
its end. It must consequently take a form calculated to support the aim which
it serves. It is also obvious that its aim can vary in importance from the
standpoint of general need, and that the inner value of the propaganda will
vary accordingly. The aim for which we were fighting the War was the loftiest,
the most overpowering, that man can conceive: it was the freedom and
independence of our nation, the security of our future food supply, and-our
national honor; a thing which, despite all contrary opinions prevailing today,
nevertheless exists, or rather should exist, since peoples without honor have
sooner or later lost their freedom and independence, which in turn is only the
result of a higher justice, since generations of rabble without honor deserve
no freedom. Any man who wants to be a cowardly slave can have no honor) or
honor itself would soon fall into general contempt.
The German nation was engaged in a struggle for a human
existence, and the purpose of war propaganda should have been to support this
struggle; its aim to help bring about victory.
When the nations on this planet fight for existence-when
the question of destiny, 'to be or not to be,' cries out for a solution-then
all considerations of humanitarianism or aesthetics crumble into nothingness;
for all these concepts do not float about in the ether, they arise from man's
imagination and are bound up with man. When he departs from this world, these
concepts are again dissolved into nothingness, for Nature does not know them.
And even among mankind, they belong only to a few nations or rather races, and
this in proportion as they emanate from the feeling of the nation or race in
question. Humanitarianism and aesthetics would vanish even from a world
inhabited by man if this world were to lose the races that have created and
upheld these concepts.
But all such concepts become secondary when a nation is
fighting for its existence; in fact, they become totally irrelevant to the
forms of the struggle as soon as a situation arises where they might paralyze a
struggling nation's power of selfpreservation. And that has always been their
only visible result.
As for humanitarianism, Moltke said years ago that in war
it lies in the brevity of the operation, and that means that the most
aggressive fighting technique is the most humane.
But when people try to approach these questions with
drivel about aesthetics, etc., really only one answer is possible: where the
destiny and existence of a people are at stake, all obligation toward beauty
ceases. The most unbeautiful thing there can be in human life is and remains
the yoke of slavery. Or do these Schwabing 2 decadents view the present lot of
the German people as 'aesthetic'? Certainly we don't have to discuss these
matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume.
Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of the
Lord's image.
And since these criteria of humanitarianism and beauty
must be eliminated from the struggle, they are also inapplicable to
propaganda.
Propaganda in the War was a means to an end, and the end
wvas the struggle for the existence of the German people; consequently,
propaganda could only be considered in accordance with the principles that were
valid for this struggle. In this case the most cruel weapons were humane if
they brought about a quicker victory; and only those methods were beautiful
which helped the nation to safeguard the dignity of its freedom.
This was the only possible attitude toward war propaganda
in a life-and-death struggle like ours.
If the so-called responsible authorities had been clear
on this point, they would never have fallen into such uncertainty over the form
and application of this weapon: for even propaganda is no more than a weapon,
though a frightful one in the hand of an expert.
The second really decisive question was this: To whom
should propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia or
to the less educated masses?
It must be addressed always and exclusively to the
masses.
What the intelligentsia-or those who today unfortunately often go by
that name-what they need is not propaganda but scientific instruction. The
content of propaganda is not science any more than the object represented in a
poster is art. The art of the poster lies in the designer's ability to attract
the attention of the crowd by form and color. A poster advertising an art
exhibit must direct the attention of the public to the art being exhibited; the
better it succeeds in this, the greater is the art of the poster itself. The
poster should give the masses an idea of the significance of the exhibition, it
should not be a substitute for the art on display. Anyone who wants to concern
himself with the art itself must do more than study the poster; and it will not
be enough for him just to saunter through the exhibition. We may expect him to
examine and immerse himself in the individual works, and thus little by little
form a fair opinion.
A similar situation prevails with what we today call
propaganda.
The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific
training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain
facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first
time placed within their field of vision.
The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that
everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the
necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity
in itself, since its function, like the poster, consists in attracting the
attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or
who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part
must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the
so-called intellect.
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level
must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed
to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its
purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for
sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid
excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be
exerted in this direction.
The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more
exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more
effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or
unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success in pleasing a few
scholars or young aesthetes.
The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional
ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form,
the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact
that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and
conceited they are.
Once we understand how necessary it is for propaganda to
be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:
It is a mistake
to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for
instance.
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited,
their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In
consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very
few points and must harp on these in sloans until the last member of the public
understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you
sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away,
for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way
the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.
Thus we see
that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics
must be psychologically sound.
For instance, it was absolutely wrong to make
the enemy ridiculous, as the Austrian and German comic papers did. It was
absolutely wrong because actual contact with an enemy soldier was bound to
arouse an entirely different conviction, and the results were devastating; for
now the German soldier, under the direct impression of the enemy's resistance,
felt himself swindled by his propaganda service. His desire to fight, or even
to stand film, was not strengthened, but the opposite occurred. His courage
flagged.
By contrast, the war propaganda of the English and Americans was
psychologically sound. By representing the Germans to their own people as
barbarians and Huns, they prepared the individual soldier for the terrors of
war, and thus helped to preserve him from disappointments. After this, the most
terrible weapon that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his
propagandists had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in the truth of
his government's assertions, while on the other hand it increased his rage and
hatred against the vile enemy For the cruel effects of the weapon, whose use by
the enemy he now came to know, gradually came to confirm for him the 'Hunnish'
brutality of the barbarous enemy, which he had heard all about; and it never
dawned on him for a moment that his own weapons possibly, if not probably,
might be even more terrible in their effects.
And so the English soldier could never feel that he had
been misinformed by his own countrymen, as unhappily was so much the case with
the German soldier that in the end he rejected everything coming from this
source as 'swindles' and 'bunk.' All this resulted from the idea that any old
simpleton (or even somebody who was intelligent ' in other things ') could be
assigned to propaganda work, and the failure to realize that the most brilliant
psychologists would have been none too good.
And so the German war propaganda offered an unparalleled
example of an 'enlightenment' service working in reverse, since any correct
psychology was totally lacking.
There was no end to what could be learned from the enemy
by a man who kept his eyes open, refused to let his perceptions be ossified,
and for four and a half years privately turned the stormflood of enemy
propaganda over in his brain.
What our authorities least of all understood was the very
first axiom of all propagandist activity: to wit, the basically subjective and
one-sided attitude it must take toward every question it deals with. In this
connection, from the very beginning of the War and from top to bottom, such
sins were committed that we were entitled to doubt whether so much absurdity
could really be attributed to pure stupidity alone.
What, for example, would we say about a poster that was
supposed to advertise a new soap and that described other soaps as
'good'?
We would only shake our heads.
Exactly the same applies to political
advertising.
The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh
and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one
right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective
study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before
the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always
and unflinchingly.
It was absolutely wrong to discuss war-guilt from the
standpoint that Germany alone could not be held responsible for the outbreak of
the catastrophe; it would have been correct to load every bit of the blame on
the shoulders of the enemy, even if this had not really corresponded to the
true facts, as it actually did.
And what was the consequence of this
halfheartedness?
The broad mass of a nation does not consist of diplomats,
or even professors of political law, or even individuals capable of forming a
rational opinion; it consists of plain mortals, wavering and inclined to doubt
and uncertainty. As soon as our own propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of
right on the other side, the foundation for doubt in our own right has been
laid. The masses are then in no position to distinguish where foreign injustice
ends and our own begins. In such a case they become uncertain and suspicious,
especially if the enemy refrains from going in for the same nonsense, but
unloads every bit of blame on his adversary. Isn't it perfectly understandable
that the whole country ends up by lending more credence to enemy propaganda,
which is more unified and coherent, than to its own? And particularly a people
that suffers from the mania of objectivity as much as the Germans. For, after
all this, everyone will take the greatest pains to avoid doing the enemy any
injustice, even at the peril of seriously besmirching and even destroying his
own people and country.
Of course, this was not the intent of the responsible
authorities, but the people never realize that.
The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine
by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and
actions far less than emotion and feeling. And this sentiment is not
complicated, but very simple and all of a piece. It does not have multiple
shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth
or lie never half this way and half that way, never partially, or that kind of
thing.
English propagandists understood all this most brilliantly-and acted
accordingly. They made no half statements that might have given rise to
doubts.
Their brilliant knowledge of the primitive sentiments of the broad
masses is shown by their atrocity propaganda, which was adapted to this
condition. As ruthless as it was brilliant, it created the preconditions for
moral steadfastness at the front, even in the face of the greatest actual
defeats, and just as strikingly it pilloried the German enemy as the sole
guilty party for the outbreak of the War: the rabid, impudent bias and
persistence with which this lie was expressed took into account the emotional,
always extreme, attitude of the great masses and for this reason was
believed.
How effective this type of propaganda was is most strikingly shown
by the fact that after four years of war it not only enabled the enemy to stick
to its guns, but even began to nibble at our own people.
It need not surprise us that our propaganda did not enjoy
this success. In its inner ambiguity alone, it bore the germ of
ineffectualness. And finally its content was such that it was very vunlikely to
make the necessary impression on the masses. Only our feather-brained
'statesmen' could have dared to hope that this insipid pacifistic bilge could
fire men's spirits till they were willing to die.
As a result, their miserable stuff 1 was useless, even
harmful in fact.
But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield
no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and
with unfiagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat
them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first
and most important requirement for success.
Particularly in the field of propaganda, we must never
let ourselves be led by aesthetes or people who have grown blase: not by the
former, because the form and expression of our propaganda would soon, instead
of being suitable for the masses, have drawing power only for literary teas;
and of the second we must beware, because, lacking in any fresh emotion of
their own, they are always on the lookout for new stimulation. These people are
quick to weary of everything; they want variety, and they are never able to
feel or understand the needs of their fellow men who are not yet so callous.
They are always the first to criticize a propaganda campaign, or rather its
content, which seems to them too old-fashioned, too hackneyed, too out-of-date,
etc. They are always after novelty, in search of a change, and this makes them
mortal enemies of any effective political propaganda. For as soon as the
organization and the content of propaganda begin to suit their tastes, it loses
all cohesion and evaporates completely.
The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting
distraction for blase young gentlemen, but to convince, and what I mean is to
convince the masses. But the masses are slowmoving, and they always require a
certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the
simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember
them.
When there is a change, it must not alter the content of what the
propaganda is driving at, but in the end must always say the same thing. For
instance, a slogan must be presented from different angles, but the end of all
remarks must always and immutably be the slogan itself. Only in this way can
the propaganda have a unified and complete effect.
This broadness of outline from which we must never
depart, in combination with steady, consistent emphasis, allows our final
success to mature. And then, to our amazement, we shall see what tremendous
results such perseverance leads to-to results that are almost beyond our
understanding.
All advertising, whether in the field of business or
politics, achieves success through the continuity and sustained uniformity of
its application.
Here, too, the example of enemy war propaganda was
typical; limited to a few points, devised exdusively for the masses, carried on
with indefatigable persistence. Once the basic ideas and methods of execution
were recognized as correct, they were applied throughout the whole War without
the slightest change. At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent
that people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the
end, it was believed. After four and a half years, a revolution broke out in
Germany; and its slogans originated in the enemy's war propaganda.
And in England they understood one more thing: that this
spiritual weapon can succeed only if it is applied on a tremendous scale, but
that success amply covers all costs.
There, propaganda was regarded as a weapon of the first
order, while in our country it was the last resort of unemployed politicians
and a comfortable haven for slackers.
And, as was to be expected, its results all in all were
zero.
As A YOUNG SCAMP in my wild years, nothing had so grieved me as
having been born at a time which obviously erected its Halls of Fame only to
shopkeepers and government officials. The waves of historic events seemed to
have grown so smooth that the future really seemed to belong only to the
'peaceful contest of nations'; in other words, a cozy mutual swindling match
with the exclusion of violent methods of defense. The various nations began to
be more and more like private citizens who cut the ground from under one
another's feet, stealing each other's customers and orders, trying in every way
to get ahead of one another, and staging this whole act amid a hue and cry as
loud as it is harmless. This development seemed not only to endure but was
expected in time (as was universally recommended) to remodel the whole world
into one big department store in whose vestibules the busts of the shrewdest
profiteers and the most lamblike administrative officials would be garnered for
all eternity. The English could supply the merchants, the Germans the
administrative officials, and the Jews no doubt would have to sacrifice
themselves to being the owners, since by their own admission they never make
any money, but always 'pay,' and, besides, speak the most languages.
Why couldn't I have been born a hundred years earlier? Say at the
time of the Wars of Liberation when a man, even without a 'business,' was
really worth something?!
Thus I had often indulged in angry thoughts concerning my
earthly pilgrimage, which, as it seemed to me, had begun too late, and regarded
the period 'of law and order' ahead of me as a mean and undeserved trick of
Fate. Even as a boy I was no 'pacifist,' and all attempts to educate me in this
direction came to nothing.
The Boer War was like summer lightning to me.
Every day I waited impatiently for the newspapers and devoured
dispatches and news reports, happy at the privilege of witnessing this heroic
struggle even at a distance.
The Russo-Japanese War found me considerably more mature,
but also more attentive. More for national reasons I had already taken sides,
and in our little discussions at once sided with the Japanese. In a defeat of
the Russians I saw the defeat of Austrian Slavdom.
Since then many years have passed, and what as a boy had
seemed to me a lingering disease, I now felt to be the quiet before the storm.
As early as my Vienna period, the Balkans were immersed in that livid
sultriness which customarily announces the hurricane, and from time to time a
beam of brighter light flared up, only to vanish again in the spectral
darkness. But then came the Balkan War and with it the first gust of wind swept
across a Europe grown nervous. The time which now followed lay on the chests of
men like a heavy nightmare, sultry as feverish tropic heat, so that due to
constant anxiety the sense of approaching catastrophe turned at last to
longing: let Heaven at last give free rein to the fate which could no longer be
thwarted. And then the first mighty lightning flash struck the earth; the storm
was unleashed and with the thunder of Heaven there mingled the roar of the
World War batteries.
When the news of the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
arrived in Munich (I happened to be sitting at home and heard of it only-
vaguely), I was at first seized with worry that the bullets may have been shot
from the pistols of German students, who, out of indignation at the heir
apparent's continuous work of Slavization, wanted to free the German people
from this internal enemy. What the consequence of this would have been was easy
to imagine: a new wave of persecutions which would now have been 'justified'
and 'explained' in the eyes of the whole world. But when, soon afterward, I
heard the names of the supposed assassins, and moreover read that they had been
identified as Serbs, a light shudder began to run through me at this vengeance
of inscrutable Destiny.
The greatest friend of the Slavs had fallen beneath the
bullets of Slavic fanatics.
Anyone with constant occasion in the last years to
observe the relation of Austria to Serbia could not for a moment be in doubt
that a stone had been set rolling whose course could no longer be
arrested.
Those who today shower the Viennese government with reproaches on
the form and content of the ultimatum it issued, do it an injustice. No other
power in the world could have acted differently in the same situation and the
same position. At her southeastern border Austria possessed an inexorable and
mortal enemy who at shorter and shorter intervals kept challenging the monarchy
and would never have left off until the moment favorable for the shattering of
the Empire had arrived. There was reason to fear that this would occur at the
latest with the death of the old Emperor; by then perhaps the old monarchy
would no longer be in a position to offer any serious resistance. In the last
few years the state had been so bound up with the person of Francis Joseph that
the death of this old embodiment of the Empire was felt by the broad masses to
be tantamount to the death of the Empire itself. Indeed, it was one of the
craftiest artifices, particularly of the Slavic policy, to create the
appearance that the Austrian state no longer owed its existence to anything but
the miraculous and unique skill of this monarch; this flattery was all the more
welcome in the Hofburg, since it corresponded not at all to the real merits of
the Emperor. The thorn hidden in these paeans of praise remained undiscovered
The rulers did not see, or perhaps no longer wanted to see, that the more the
monarchy depended on the outstanding statecraft, as they put it, of this
'wisest monarch' of all times, the more catastrophic the situation was bound to
become if one day Fate were to knock at his door, too, demanding its
tribute.
Was old Austria even conceivable without the Emperor?!
Wouldn't the tragedy which had once stricken Maria
Theresa have been repeated?
No, it is really doing the Vienna circles an injustice to
reproach them with rushing into a war which might otherwise have been avoided.
It no longer could be avoided, but at most could have been postponed for one or
two years. But this was the curse of German as well as Austrian diplomacy, that
it had always striven to postpone the inevitable reckoning, until at length it
was forced to strike at the most unfavorable hour. We can be convinced that a
further attempt to save peace would have brought war at an even more
unfavorable time.
No, those who did not want this war had to have the
courage to face the consequences, which could have consisted only in the
sacrifice of Austria. Even then the war would have come, but no longer as a
struggle of all against ourselves, but in the form of a partition of the
Habsburg monarchy. And then they had to make up their minds to join in, or to
look on with empty hands and let Fate run its course.
Those very people, however, who today are loudest in
cursing the beginning of the war and offer the sagest opinions were those who
contributed most fatally to steering us into it.
For decades the Social Democrats had carried on the most
scoundrelly war agitation against Russia, and the Center for religious reasons
had been most active in making the Austrian state the hinge and pivot of
Germany policy. Now we had to suffer the consequences of this lunacy. What came
had to come, and could no longer under any circumstances be avoided. The guilt
of the German government was that in order to preserve peace it always missed
the favorable hours for striking, became entangled in the alliance for the
preservation of world peace, and thus finally became the victim of a world
coalition which countered the idea of preserving world peace with nothing less
than determination for world war.
If the Vienna government had given the ultimatum another
milder form, this would have changed nothing in the situation except at most
one thing, that this government would itself have been swept away by the
indignation of the people. For in the eyes of the broad masses the tone of the
ultimatum was far too gentle and by no means too brutal, let alone too
far-reaching Anyone who today attempts to argue this away is either a forgetful
blockhead or a perfectly conscious swindler and liar
The struggle of the year 1914 was not forced on the
masses- no, by the living God-it was desired by the whole people.
People wanted at length to put an end to the general
uncertainty. Only thus can it be understood that more than two million German
men and boys thronged to the colors for this hardest of all struggles, prepared
to defend the flag with the last drop of their blood.
To me those hours seemed like a release from the painful
feelings of my youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by
stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an
overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live
at this time.
A fight for freedom had begun, mightier than the earth had
ever seen; for once Destiny had begun its course, the conviction dawned on even
the broad masses that this time not the fate of Serbia or Austria was involved,
but whether the German nation was to be or not to be.
For the last time in many years the people had a prophetic
vision of its own future. Thus, right at the beginning of the gigantic struggle
the necessary grave undertone entered into the ecstasy- of an overflowing
enthusiasm; for this knowledge alone made the national uprising more than a
mere blaze of straw The earnestness was only too necessary; for in those days
people in general had not the faintest conception of the possible length and
duration of the struggle that was now beginning. They dreamed of being home
again that winter to continue and renew their peaceful labors.
What a man wants is what he hopes and believes. The
overwhelming majority of the nation had long been weary of the eternally
uncertain state of affairs; thus it was only too understandable that they no
longer believed in a peaceful conclusion of the Austro-Serbian convict, but
hoped for the final settlement.
I, too, was one of these millions.
Hardly had the news of the assassination become known in
Munich than at once two thoughts quivered through my brain: first, that at last
war would be inevitable; and, furthermore, that now the Habsburg state would be
compelled to keep its pact; for what I had always most feared was the
possibility that Germany herself would some day, perhaps in consequence of this
very alliance, find herself in a conflict not directly caused by Austria, so
that the Austrian state for reasons of domestic policy would not muster the
force of decision to stand behind her ally. The Slavic majority of the Empire
would at once have begun to sabotage any such intention on the part of the
state, and would always have preferred to smash the entire state to smithereens
than grant its ally the help it demanded. This danger was now eliminated. The
old state had to fight whether it wanted to or not.
My own position on the conflict was likewise very simple
and clear; for me it was not that Austria was fighting for some Serbian
satisfaction, but that Germany was fighting for her existence, the German
nation for life or death, freedom and future. The time had come for Bismarck's
work to fight; what the fathers had once won in the battles from Weissenburg to
Sedan and Paris, young Germany now had to earn once more. If the struggle were
carried through to victory, our nation would enter the circle of great nations
from the standpoint of external power, and only then could the German Reich
maintain itself as a mighty haven of peace without having, for the sake of
peace, to cut down on the daily bread of her children.
As a boy and young man I had so often felt the desire to
prove at least once by deeds that for me national enthusiasm was no empty whim.
It often seemed to me almost a sin to shout hurrah perhaps without having the
inner right to do so; for who had the right to use this word without having
proved it in the place where all playing is at an end and the inexorable hand
of the Goddess of Destiny begins to weigh peoples and men according to the
truth and steadfastness of their convictions? Thus my heart, like that of a
million others, overflowed with proud joy that at last I would be able to
redeem myself from this paralyzing feeling. I had so often sung 'Deutschland
uber Aloes' and shouted Neil ' at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me
almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine
court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction. For
from the first hour r was convinced that in case of a war- which seemed to me
inevitable-in one way or another I would at once leave my books. Likewise I
knew that my place would then be where my inner voice directed me.
I had left Austria primarily for political reasons; what
was more natural than that, now the struggle had begun, I should really begin
to take account of this conviction. I did not want to fight for the Habsburg
state, but was ready at any time to die for my people and for the Reich which
embodied it
On the third of August, I submitted a personal petition
to His Majesty, lying Ludwig III, with a request for permission to enter a
Bavarian regiment. The cabinet office certainly had plenty to do in those days;
so much the greater was my joy to receive an answer to my request the very next
day. With trembling hands I opened the document; my request had been approved
and I was summoned to report to a Bavarian regiment. My joy and gratitude knew
no bounds. A few days later I was wearing the tunic which I was not to doff
until nearly six years later.
For me, as for every German, there now began the greatest
and most unforgettable time of my earthly existence. Compared to the events of
this gigantic struggle, everything past receded to shallow nothingness.
Precisely in these days, with the tenth anniversary of the mighty event
approaching, I think back with proud sadness on those first weeks of our
people's heroic struggle, in which Fate graciously allowed me to take
part.
As though it were yesterday, image after image passes before my
eyes. I see myself donning the uniform in the circle of my dear comrades,
turning out for the first time, drilling, etc., until the day came for us to
march off.
A single worry tormented me at that time, me, as so many
others: would we not reach the front too late? Time and time again this alone
banished all my calm. Thus, in every cause for rejoicing at a new, heroic
victory, a slight drop of bitterness was hidden, for every new victory seemed
to increase the danger of our coming too late.
At last the day came when we left Munich to begin the
fulfillment of our duty. For the first time I saw the Rhine as we rode westward
along its quiet waters to defend it, the German stream of streams, from the
greed of the old enemy. When through the tender veil of the early morning mist
the Niederwald Monument gleamed down upon us in the gentle first rays of the
sun, the old Watch on the Rhine roared out of the endless transport train into
the morning sky, and I felt as though my heart would burst.
And then came a damp, cold night in Flanders, through
which we marched in silence, and when the day began to emerge from the mists,
suddenly an iron greeting came whizzing at us over our heads, and with a sharp
report sent the little pellets flying between our ranks, ripping up the wet
ground; but even before the little cloud had passed, from two hundred throats
the first hurrah rose to meet the first messenger of death. Then a crackling
and a roaring, a singing and a howling began, and with feverish eyes each one
of us was drawn forward, faster and faster, until suddenly past turnip fields
and hedges the fight began, the fight of man against man. And from the distance
the strains of a song reached our ears, coming closer and closer, leaping from
company to company, and just as Death plunged a busy hand into our ranks, the
song reached us too and we passed it along: 'Deutschland, Deutschland uber
Alles, uber Alles in der Welt!'
Four days later we came back. Even our step had changed.
Seventeen-year-old boys now looked like men.
The volunteers of the List Regiment may not have learned
to fight properly, but they knew how to die like old soldiers
This was the beginning.
Thus it went on year after year; but the romance of battle
had been replaced by horror. The enthusiasm gradually cooled and the exuberant
joy was stifled by mortal fear. The time came when every man had to struggle
between the instinct of self-preservation and the admonitions of duty. I, too,
was not spared by this struggle. Always when Death was on the hunt, a vague
something tried to revolt, strove to represent itself to the weak body as
reason, yet it was only cowardice, which in such disguises tried to ensnare the
individual. A grave tugging and warning set in, and often it was only the last
remnant of conscience which decided the issue. Yet the more this voice
admonished one to caution, the louder and more insistent its lures, the sharper
resistance grew until at last, after a long inner struggle, consciousness of
duty emerged victorious. By the winter of 1915-16 this struggle had for me been
decided. At last my will was undisputed master. If in the first days I went
over the top with rejoicing and laughter, I was now calm and determined. And
this was enduring. Now Fate could bring on the ultimate tests without my nerves
shattering or my reason failing.
The young volunteer had become an old soldier.
And this transformation had occurred in the whole army. It had issued
old and hard from the eternal battles, and as for those who could not stand up
under the storm-well, they were broken.
Now was the time to judge this army. Now, after two or
three years, during which it was hurled from one battle into another, forever
fighting against superiority in numbers and weapons, suffering hunger and
bearing privations, now was the time to test the quality of this unique
army.
Thousands of years may pass, but never will it be possible to speak
of heroism without mentioning the German army and the World War. Then from the
veil of the past the iron front of the gray steel helmet will emerge,
unwavering and unflinching, an immortal monument. As long as there are Germans
alive, they will remember that these men were sons of their nation.
I
was a soldier then, and I didn't want to talk about politics. And really it was
not the time for it. Even today I harbor the conviction that the humblest
wagon-driver performed more valuable services for the fatherland than the
foremost among, let us say, 'parliamentarians.' I had never hated these
bigmouths more than now when every red-blooded man with something to say yelled
it into the enemy's face or appropriately left his tongue at home and silently
did his duty somewhere. Yes, in those days I hated all those politicians. And
if it had been up to me, a parliamentary pick-and-shovel battalion would have
been formed at once; then they could have chewed the fat to their hearts'
content without annoying, let alone harming, honest, decent people.
Thus, at that time I wanted to hear nothing of politics, but I could
not help taking a position on certain manifestations which after all did affect
the whole nations and particularly concerned us soldiers.
There were two things which then profoundly angered me and
which I regarded as harmful.
After the very first news of victories, a certain section
of the press, slowly, and in a way which at first was perhaps unrecognizable to
many, began to pour a few drops of wormwood into the general enthusiasm. This
was done beneath the mask of a certain benevolence and well-meaning, even of a
certain solicitude. They had misgivings about an excess of exuberance in the
celebration of the victories. They feared that in this form it was unworthy of
so great a nation and hence inappropriate. The bravery and heroic courage of
the German soldier were something self-evident, they said, and people should
not be carried away too much by thoughtless outbursts of joy, if only for the
sake of foreign countries to whom a silent and dignified form of joy appealed
more than unbridled exultation, etc. Finally, we Germans even now should not
forget that the war was none of our intention and therefore we should not be
ashamed to confess in an open and manly fashion that at any time we would
contribute our part to a reconciliation of mankind. For that reason it would
not be prudent to besmirch the purity of our army's deeds by too much shouting,
since the rest of the world would have little understanding for such behavior.
The world admired nothing more than the modesty with which a true hero silently
and calmly forgets his deeds, for this was the gist of the whole
argument.
Instead of taking one of these creatures by his long ears, tying him
to a long pole and pulling him up on a long cord, thus making it impossible for
the cheering nation to insult the aesthetic sentiment of this knight of the
inkpot, the authorities actually began to issue remonstrances against '
unseemly ' rejoicing over victories.
It didn't occur to them in the least that enthusiasm once
scotched cannot be reawakened at need. It is an intoxication and must be
preserved in this state. And how, without this power of enthusiasm, should a
country withstand a struggle which in all likelihood would make the most
enormous demands on the spiritual qualities of the nation?
I knew the psyche of the broad masses too well not to be
aware that a high 'aesthetic' tone would not stir up the fire that was
necessary to keep the iron hot. In my eyes it was madness on the part of the
authorities to be doing nothing to intensify the glowing heat of passion; and
when they curtailed what passion was fortunately present, that was absolutely
beyond me.
The second thing that angered me was the attitude which
they thought fit to take toward Marxism. In my eyes, this only proved that they
hadn't so much as the faintest idea concerning this pestilence. In all
seriousness they seemed to believe that, by the assurance that parties were no
longer recognized, they had brought Marxism to understanding and
restraint.
They failed to understand that here no party was
involved, but a doctrine that must lead to the destruction of all humanity,
especially since this cannot be learned in the Jewified universities and,
besides, so many, particularly among our higher officials, due to the idiotic
conceit that is cultivated in them, don't think it worth the trouble to pick up
a book and learn something which was not in their university curriculum. The
most gigantic upheaval passes these 'minds' by without leaving the slightest
trace, which is why state institutions for the most part lag behind private
ones. It is to them, by God, that the popular proverb best applies: 'What the
peasant doesn't know, he won't eat.' Here, too, a few exceptions only confirm
the rule.
It was an unequaled absurdity to identify the German worker with
Marxism in the days of August, 1914. In those hours the German worker had made
himself free from the embrace of this venomous plague, for otherwise he would
never have been able to enter the struggle. The authorities, however, were
stupid enough to believe that Marxism had now become national; a flash of
genius which only shows that in these long years none of these official guides
of the state had even taken the trouble to study the essence of this doctrine,
for if they had, such an absurdity could scarcely have crept in.
Marxism, whose goal is and remains the destruction of all
non-Jewish national states, was forced to look on in horror as, in the July
days of 1914, the German working class it had ensnared, awakened and from hour
to hour began to enter the service of the fatherland with ever-increasing
rapidity. In a few days the whole mist and swindle of this infamous betrayal of
the people had scattered away, and suddenly the gang of Jewish leaders stood
there lonely and forsaken, as though not a trace remained of the nonsense and
madness which for sixty years they had been funneling into the masses. It was a
bad moment for the betrayers of the German working class, but as soon as the
leaders recognized the danger which menaced them, they rapidly pulled the
tarn-cap ' of lies over their ears, and insolently mimicked the national
awakening.
But now the time had come to take steps against the whole
treacherous brotherhood of they Jewish poisoners of the people. Now was the
time to deal with them summarily without the slightest consideration for any
screams and complaints that might arise. In August, 1914, the whole Jewish
jabber about international solidarity had vanished at one stroke from the heads
of the German working class, and in its stead, only a few weeks later, American
shrapnel began to pour down the blessings of brotherhood on the helmets of our
march columns. It would have been the duty of a serious government, now that
the German worker had found his way back to his nation, to exterminate
mercilessly the agitators who were misleading the nation.
If the best men were dying at the front, the least we
could do was to wipe out the vermin.
Instead of this, His Majesty the Raiser
himself stretched out his hand to the old criminals, thus sparing the
treacherous murderers of the nation and giving them a chance to retrieve
themselves.
So nova the viper could continue his work, more
cautiously than before, but all the more dangerously. While the honest ones
were dreaming of peace within their borders,l the perjuring criminals were
organizing the revolution.
That such terrible half-measures should then be decided
upon made me more and more dissatisfied at heart; but at that time I would not
have thought it possible that the end of it all would be so frightful.
What, then, should have been done? The leaders of the whole movement
should at once have been put behind bars, brought to trial, and thus taken off
the nation's neck. All the implements of military power should have been
ruthlessly used for the extermination of this pestilence. The parties should
have been dissolved, the Reichstag brought to its senses, with bayonets if
necessary, but, best of all, dissolved at once. Just as the Republic today can
dissolve parties, this method should have been used at that time, with more
reason. For the life and death of a whole nation was at stake!
One question came to the fore, however: can spiritual
ideas be exterminated by the sword? Can 'philosophies' be combated by the use
of brute force?
Even at that time I pondered this question more than
once: If we ponder analogous cases, particularly on a religious basis, which
can be found in history, the following fundamental principle emerges:
Conceptions and ideas, as well as movements with a definite
spiritual foundation, regardless whether the latter is false or true, can,
after a certain point in their development, only be broken with technical
instruments of power if these physical weapons are at the same time the support
of a new kindling thought, idea, or philosophy.
The application of force alone, without the impetus of a
basic spiritual idea as a starting point, can never lead to the destruction of
an idea and its dissemination, except in the form of a complete extermination
of even the very last exponent of the idea and the destruction of the last
tradition. This, however, usually means the disappearance of such a state from
the sphere of political importance, often for an indefinite time and some-times
forever; for experience shows that such a blood sacrifice strikes the best part
of the people, since every persecution which occurs without a spiritual basis
seems morally unjustified and whips up precisely the more valuable parts of a
people in protest, which results in an adoption of the spiritual content of the
unjustly persecuted movement. In many this occurs simply through a feeling of
opposition against the attempt to bludgeon down an idea by brute force.
As
a result, the number of inward supporters grows in proportion as the
persecution increases. Consequently, the complete annihilation of the new
doctrine can be carried out only through a process of extermination so great
and constantly increasing that in the end all the truly valuable blood is drawn
out of the people or state in question. The consequence is that, though a
so-called 'inner' purge can now take place, it will only be at the cost of
total impotence. Such a method will always prove vain in advance if the
doctrine to be combated has overstepped a certain small circle.
Consequently, here, too, as in all growth, the first
period of childhood is most readily susceptible to the possibility of
extermination, while with the mounting years the power of resistance increases
and only with the weakness of approaching old age cedes again to new youth,
though in another form and for different reasons.
Indeed, nearly all attempts to exterminate a doctrine and
its organizational expression, by force without spiritual foundation, are
doomed to failure, and not seldom end with the exact opposite of the desired
result for the following reason:
The very first requirement for a mode of struggle with the
weapons of naked force is and remains persistence. In other words: only the
continuous and steady application of the methods for repressing a doctrine,
etc., makes it possible for a plan to succeed. But as soon as force wavers and
alternates with forbearance, not only will the doctrine to be repressed recover
again and again, but it will also be in a position to draw new benefit from
every persecution, since, after such a wave of pressure has ebbed away,
indignation over the suffering induced leads new supporters to the old
doctrine, while the old ones will cling to it with greater defiance and deeper
hatred than before, and even schismatic heretics, once the danger has subsided,
will attempt to return to their old viewpoint. Only in the steady and constant
application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This
persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual
conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base,
will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a
fanatical outlook. It emanates from the momentary energy and brutal
determination of an individual, and is therefore subject to the change of
personalities and to their nature and strength.
Added to this there is something else:
Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political
nature- and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine-fights less for
the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than for the positive
promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less defensive than offensive. It
therefore has the advantage even in determining the goal, since this goal
represents the victory of its own idea, while, conversely, it is hard to
determine when the negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be
regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the philosophy's
offensive will be more systematic and also more powerful than the defensive
against a philosophy, since here, too, as always, the attack and not the
defense makes the decision. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of
violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes the support, the
herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doctrine.
Thus, in summing up, we can establish the
following:
Any attempt to combat a philosophy with methods of
violence will fail in the end, unless the fight takes the form of attack for a
new spiritual attitude. Only in the struggle between two philosophies can the
weapon of brutal force, persistently and ruthlessly applied lead to a decision
for the side it supports.
This remained the reason for the failure of the struggle
against Marxism.
This was why Bismarck's Socialist legislation finally
failed and had to fail, in spite of everything. Lacking was the platform of a
new philosophy for whose rise the fight could have been waged. For only the
proverbial wisdom of high government officials will succeed in believing that
drivel about so-called 'state authority' or 'law and order' could form a
suitable basis for the spiritual impetus of a life-and-death struggle.
Since a real spiritual basis for this struggle was lacking, Bismarck
had to entrust the execution of his Socialist legislation to the judgment and
desires of that institution which itself was a product of Marxist thinking. By
entrusting the fate of his war on the Marxists to the well-wishing of bourgeois
democracy, the Iron Chancellor set the wolf to mind the sheep.
All this was only the necessary consequence of the
absence of a basic new anti-Marxist philosophy endowed with a stormy will to
conquer.
Hence the sole result of Bismarck's struggle was a grave
disillusionment.
Were conditions different during the World War or at its
beginning? Unfortunately not.
The more I occupied myself with the idea of a necessary
change in the government's attitude toward Social Democracy as the momentary
embodiment of Marxism, the more I recognized the lack of a serviceable
substitute for this doctrine. What would be given the masses if, just
supposing, Social Democracy had been broken? There was not one movement in
existence which could have been expected to succeed in drawing into its sphere
of influence the great multitudes of workers grown more or less leaderless. It
is senseless and more than stupid to believe that the international fanatic who
had left the class party would now at once join a bourgeois party, in other
words, a new class organization. For, unpleasant as it may seem to various
organizations, it cannot be denied that bourgeois politicians largely take
class division quite for granted as long as it does not begin to work out to
their political disadvantage.
The denial of this fact only proves the effrontery, and
also the stupidity, of the liars.
Altogether, care should be taken not to regard the masses
as stupider than they are. In political matters feeling often decides more
correctly than reason. The opinion that the stupid international attitude of
the masses is sufficient proof of the unsoundness of the masses' sentiments can
be thoroughly confuted by the simple reminder that pacifist democracy is no
less insane, and that its exponents originate almost exclusively in the
bourgeois camp. As long as millions of the bourgeoisie still piously worship
their Jewish democratic press every morning, it very ill becomes these
gentlemen to make jokes about the stupidity of the 'comrade' who, in the last
analysis, only swallows down the same garbage, though in a different form. In
both cases the manufacturer is one and the same Jew.
Good care should be taken not to deny things that just
happen to be true. The fact that the class question is by no means exclusively
a matter of ideal problems, as, particularly before the elections, some people
would like to pretend, cannot be denied. The class arrogance of a large part of
our people, and to an even greater extent, the underestimation of the manual
worker, are phenomena which do not exist only in the imagination of the
moonstruck.
Quite aside from this, however, it shows the small
capacity for thought of our so-called 'intelligentsia' when, particularly in
these circles, it is not understood that a state of affairs which could not
prevent the growth of a plague, such as Marxism happens to be, will certainly
not be able to recover what has been lost.
The 'bourgeois' parties, as they designate themselves,
will never be able to attach the 'proletarian' masses to their camp, for here
two worlds oppose each other, in part naturally and in part artificially
divided, whose mutual relation 1 can only be struggle. The younger will be
victorious-and this is Marxism.
Indeed, a struggle against Social Democracy in the year
1914 was conceivable, but how long this condition would be maintained, in view
of the absence of any substitute, remained doubtful.
Here there was a great gap.
I was of this opinion long before the War, and for this
reason could not make up my mind to join one of the existing parties. In the
course of events of the World War, I was reinforced in this opinion by the
obvious impossibility of taking up a ruthless struggle against Social
Democracy, owing to this very lack of a movement which would have had to be
more than a 'parliamentary' party.
With my closer comrades I often expressed myself openly on
this point.
And now the first ideas came to me of later engaging in
political activity.
Precisely this was what caused me often to assure the
small circle of my friends that after the War, I meant to be a speaker in
addition to my profession.
I believe that I was very serious about
this.
Chapter VI: War
Propaganda
EVER since I have been scrutinizing political events, I have taken a
tremendous interest in propagandist activity. I saw that the Socialist-Marxist
organizations mastered and applied this instrument with astounding skill. And I
soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has
remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties. Only the
Christian-Social movement, especially in Lueger's time, achieved a certain
virtuosity on this instrument, to which it owed many of its successes.
But it was not until the War that it became evident what immense
results could be obtained by a correct application of propaganda. Here again,
unfortunately, all our studying had to be done on the enemy side, for the
activity on our side was modest, to say the least. The total miscarriage of the
German 'enlightenment ' service stared every soldier in the face, and this
spurred me to take up the question of propaganda even more deeply than
before.
There was often more than enough time for thinking, and the enemy
offered practical instruction which, to our sorrow, was only too good.
For what we failed to do, the enemy did, with amazing skill and
really brilliant calculation. I, myself, learned enormously from this enemy war
propaganda. But time passed and left no trace in the minds of all those who
should have benefited; partly because they considered themselves too clever to
from the enemy, partly owing to lack of good will.
Did we have anything you could call propaganda?
I
regret that I must answer in the negative. Everything that actually was done in
this field was so inadequate and wron
from the very start that it certainly
did no good and sometimes did actual harm.
The form was inadequate, the substance was
psychologically wrong: a careful examination of German war propaganda ca: lead
to no other diagnosis.
There seems to have been no clarity on the very first
question: Is propaganda a means or an end?
It is a means and must therefore be judged with regard to
its end. It must consequently take a form calculated to support the aim which
it serves. It is also obvious that its aim can vary in importance from the
standpoint of general need, and that the inner value of the propaganda will
vary accordingly. The aim for which we were fighting the War was the loftiest,
the most overpowering, that man can conceive: it was the freedom and
independence of our nation, the security of our future food supply, and-our
national honor; a thing which, despite all contrary opinions prevailing today,
nevertheless exists, or rather should exist, since peoples without honor have
sooner or later lost their freedom and independence, which in turn is only the
result of a higher justice, since generations of rabble without honor deserve
no freedom. Any man who wants to be a cowardly slave can have no honor) or
honor itself would soon fall into general contempt.
The German nation was engaged in a struggle for a human
existence, and the purpose of war propaganda should have been to support this
struggle; its aim to help bring about victory.
When the nations on this planet fight for existence-when
the question of destiny, 'to be or not to be,' cries out for a solution-then
all considerations of humanitarianism or aesthetics crumble into nothingness;
for all these concepts do not float about in the ether, they arise from man's
imagination and are bound up with man. When he departs from this world, these
concepts are again dissolved into nothingness, for Nature does not know them.
And even among mankind, they belong only to a few nations or rather races, and
this in proportion as they emanate from the feeling of the nation or race in
question. Humanitarianism and aesthetics would vanish even from a world
inhabited by man if this world were to lose the races that have created and
upheld these concepts.
But all such concepts become secondary when a nation is
fighting for its existence; in fact, they become totally irrelevant to the
forms of the struggle as soon as a situation arises where they might paralyze a
struggling nation's power of selfpreservation. And that has always been their
only visible result.
As for humanitarianism, Moltke said years ago that in war
it lies in the brevity of the operation, and that means that the most
aggressive fighting technique is the most humane.
But when people try to approach these questions with
drivel about aesthetics, etc., really only one answer is possible: where the
destiny and existence of a people are at stake, all obligation toward beauty
ceases. The most unbeautiful thing there can be in human life is and remains
the yoke of slavery. Or do these Schwabing 2 decadents view the present lot of
the German people as 'aesthetic'? Certainly we don't have to discuss these
matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this cultural perfume.
Their whole existence is an embodied protest against the aesthetics of the
Lord's image.
And since these criteria of humanitarianism and beauty
must be eliminated from the struggle, they are also inapplicable to
propaganda.
Propaganda in the War was a means to an end, and the end
wvas the struggle for the existence of the German people; consequently,
propaganda could only be considered in accordance with the principles that were
valid for this struggle. In this case the most cruel weapons were humane if
they brought about a quicker victory; and only those methods were beautiful
which helped the nation to safeguard the dignity of its freedom.
This was the only possible attitude toward war propaganda
in a life-and-death struggle like ours.
If the so-called responsible authorities had been clear
on this point, they would never have fallen into such uncertainty over the form
and application of this weapon: for even propaganda is no more than a weapon,
though a frightful one in the hand of an expert.
The second really decisive question was this: To whom
should propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia or
to the less educated masses?
It must be addressed always and exclusively to the
masses.
What the intelligentsia-or those who today unfortunately often go by
that name-what they need is not propaganda but scientific instruction. The
content of propaganda is not science any more than the object represented in a
poster is art. The art of the poster lies in the designer's ability to attract
the attention of the crowd by form and color. A poster advertising an art
exhibit must direct the attention of the public to the art being exhibited; the
better it succeeds in this, the greater is the art of the poster itself. The
poster should give the masses an idea of the significance of the exhibition, it
should not be a substitute for the art on display. Anyone who wants to concern
himself with the art itself must do more than study the poster; and it will not
be enough for him just to saunter through the exhibition. We may expect him to
examine and immerse himself in the individual works, and thus little by little
form a fair opinion.
A similar situation prevails with what we today call
propaganda.
The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific
training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain
facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first
time placed within their field of vision.
The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that
everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the
necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity
in itself, since its function, like the poster, consists in attracting the
attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or
who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part
must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the
so-called intellect.
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level
must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed
to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its
purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for
sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid
excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be
exerted in this direction.
The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more
exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more
effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or
unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success in pleasing a few
scholars or young aesthetes.
The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional
ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form,
the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact
that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and
conceited they are.
Once we understand how necessary it is for propaganda to
be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:
It is a mistake
to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for
instance.
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited,
their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In
consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very
few points and must harp on these in sloans until the last member of the public
understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you
sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away,
for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way
the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.
Thus we see
that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics
must be psychologically sound.
For instance, it was absolutely wrong to make
the enemy ridiculous, as the Austrian and German comic papers did. It was
absolutely wrong because actual contact with an enemy soldier was bound to
arouse an entirely different conviction, and the results were devastating; for
now the German soldier, under the direct impression of the enemy's resistance,
felt himself swindled by his propaganda service. His desire to fight, or even
to stand film, was not strengthened, but the opposite occurred. His courage
flagged.
By contrast, the war propaganda of the English and Americans was
psychologically sound. By representing the Germans to their own people as
barbarians and Huns, they prepared the individual soldier for the terrors of
war, and thus helped to preserve him from disappointments. After this, the most
terrible weapon that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his
propagandists had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in the truth of
his government's assertions, while on the other hand it increased his rage and
hatred against the vile enemy For the cruel effects of the weapon, whose use by
the enemy he now came to know, gradually came to confirm for him the 'Hunnish'
brutality of the barbarous enemy, which he had heard all about; and it never
dawned on him for a moment that his own weapons possibly, if not probably,
might be even more terrible in their effects.
And so the English soldier could never feel that he had
been misinformed by his own countrymen, as unhappily was so much the case with
the German soldier that in the end he rejected everything coming from this
source as 'swindles' and 'bunk.' All this resulted from the idea that any old
simpleton (or even somebody who was intelligent ' in other things ') could be
assigned to propaganda work, and the failure to realize that the most brilliant
psychologists would have been none too good.
And so the German war propaganda offered an unparalleled
example of an 'enlightenment' service working in reverse, since any correct
psychology was totally lacking.
There was no end to what could be learned from the enemy
by a man who kept his eyes open, refused to let his perceptions be ossified,
and for four and a half years privately turned the stormflood of enemy
propaganda over in his brain.
What our authorities least of all understood was the very
first axiom of all propagandist activity: to wit, the basically subjective and
one-sided attitude it must take toward every question it deals with. In this
connection, from the very beginning of the War and from top to bottom, such
sins were committed that we were entitled to doubt whether so much absurdity
could really be attributed to pure stupidity alone.
What, for example, would we say about a poster that was
supposed to advertise a new soap and that described other soaps as
'good'?
We would only shake our heads.
Exactly the same applies to political
advertising.
The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh
and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one
right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective
study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before
the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always
and unflinchingly.
It was absolutely wrong to discuss war-guilt from the
standpoint that Germany alone could not be held responsible for the outbreak of
the catastrophe; it would have been correct to load every bit of the blame on
the shoulders of the enemy, even if this had not really corresponded to the
true facts, as it actually did.
And what was the consequence of this
halfheartedness?
The broad mass of a nation does not consist of diplomats,
or even professors of political law, or even individuals capable of forming a
rational opinion; it consists of plain mortals, wavering and inclined to doubt
and uncertainty. As soon as our own propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of
right on the other side, the foundation for doubt in our own right has been
laid. The masses are then in no position to distinguish where foreign injustice
ends and our own begins. In such a case they become uncertain and suspicious,
especially if the enemy refrains from going in for the same nonsense, but
unloads every bit of blame on his adversary. Isn't it perfectly understandable
that the whole country ends up by lending more credence to enemy propaganda,
which is more unified and coherent, than to its own? And particularly a people
that suffers from the mania of objectivity as much as the Germans. For, after
all this, everyone will take the greatest pains to avoid doing the enemy any
injustice, even at the peril of seriously besmirching and even destroying his
own people and country.
Of course, this was not the intent of the responsible
authorities, but the people never realize that.
The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine
by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and
actions far less than emotion and feeling. And this sentiment is not
complicated, but very simple and all of a piece. It does not have multiple
shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth
or lie never half this way and half that way, never partially, or that kind of
thing.
English propagandists understood all this most brilliantly-and acted
accordingly. They made no half statements that might have given rise to
doubts.
Their brilliant knowledge of the primitive sentiments of the broad
masses is shown by their atrocity propaganda, which was adapted to this
condition. As ruthless as it was brilliant, it created the preconditions for
moral steadfastness at the front, even in the face of the greatest actual
defeats, and just as strikingly it pilloried the German enemy as the sole
guilty party for the outbreak of the War: the rabid, impudent bias and
persistence with which this lie was expressed took into account the emotional,
always extreme, attitude of the great masses and for this reason was
believed.
How effective this type of propaganda was is most strikingly shown
by the fact that after four years of war it not only enabled the enemy to stick
to its guns, but even began to nibble at our own people.
It need not surprise us that our propaganda did not enjoy
this success. In its inner ambiguity alone, it bore the germ of
ineffectualness. And finally its content was such that it was very vunlikely to
make the necessary impression on the masses. Only our feather-brained
'statesmen' could have dared to hope that this insipid pacifistic bilge could
fire men's spirits till they were willing to die.
As a result, their miserable stuff 1 was useless, even
harmful in fact.
But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield
no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and
with unfiagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat
them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first
and most important requirement for success.
Particularly in the field of propaganda, we must never
let ourselves be led by aesthetes or people who have grown blase: not by the
former, because the form and expression of our propaganda would soon, instead
of being suitable for the masses, have drawing power only for literary teas;
and of the second we must beware, because, lacking in any fresh emotion of
their own, they are always on the lookout for new stimulation. These people are
quick to weary of everything; they want variety, and they are never able to
feel or understand the needs of their fellow men who are not yet so callous.
They are always the first to criticize a propaganda campaign, or rather its
content, which seems to them too old-fashioned, too hackneyed, too out-of-date,
etc. They are always after novelty, in search of a change, and this makes them
mortal enemies of any effective political propaganda. For as soon as the
organization and the content of propaganda begin to suit their tastes, it loses
all cohesion and evaporates completely.
The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting
distraction for blase young gentlemen, but to convince, and what I mean is to
convince the masses. But the masses are slowmoving, and they always require a
certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the
simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember
them.
When there is a change, it must not alter the content of what the
propaganda is driving at, but in the end must always say the same thing. For
instance, a slogan must be presented from different angles, but the end of all
remarks must always and immutably be the slogan itself. Only in this way can
the propaganda have a unified and complete effect.
This broadness of outline from which we must never
depart, in combination with steady, consistent emphasis, allows our final
success to mature. And then, to our amazement, we shall see what tremendous
results such perseverance leads to-to results that are almost beyond our
understanding.
All advertising, whether in the field of business or
politics, achieves success through the continuity and sustained uniformity of
its application.
Here, too, the example of enemy war propaganda was
typical; limited to a few points, devised exdusively for the masses, carried on
with indefatigable persistence. Once the basic ideas and methods of execution
were recognized as correct, they were applied throughout the whole War without
the slightest change. At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent
that people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the
end, it was believed. After four and a half years, a revolution broke out in
Germany; and its slogans originated in the enemy's war propaganda.
And in England they understood one more thing: that this
spiritual weapon can succeed only if it is applied on a tremendous scale, but
that success amply covers all costs.
There, propaganda was regarded as a weapon of the first
order, while in our country it was the last resort of unemployed politicians
and a comfortable haven for slackers.
And, as was to be expected, its results all in all were
zero.