Nietzsche and the Nazis Page 10

  8. Any further immigration of non-Germans is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after August 2, 1914, be forced to leave the Reich without delay.

  9. All citizens are to possess equal rights and obligations.

  10. It must be the first duty of every citizen to perform mental or physical work. Individual activity must not violate the general interest, but must be exercised within the framework of the community, and for the general good.

  THEREFORE WE DEMAND

  11. The abolition of all income unearned by work and trouble.

  BREAK THE SLAVERY OF INTEREST

  12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices of life and property imposed by any war on the nation, personal gain from the war must be characterized as a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

  13. We demand the nationalization of all business enterprises that have been organized into corporations (trusts).

  14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises.

  15. We demand the generous development of old age insurance.

  16. We demand the creation and support of a healthy middle class, and the immediate socialization of the huge department stores and their lease, at low rates, to small tradesmen. We demand that as far as national, state, or municipal purchases are concerned, the utmost consideration be shown to small tradesmen.

  17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national needs, and the creation of a law for the expropriation without compensation of land for communal purposes. We demand the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

  18. We demand a ruthless battle against those who, by their activities, injure the general good. Common criminals, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death, regardless of faith or race.

  19. We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist world order, be replaced by German law.

  20. To open the doors of higher education—and thus to leading positions—to every able and hard-working German, the state must provide for a thorough restructuring of our entire educational system. The curricula of all educational institutions are to be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. As soon as the mind begins to develop, the schools must reach civic thought (citizenship classes). We demand the education, at state expense, of particularly talented children of poor parents, regardless of the latters’ class or occupation.

  21. The state must see to it that national health standards are raised. It must do so by protecting mothers and children, by prohibiting child labor, by promoting physical strength through legislation providing for compulsory gymnastic by the greatest possible support for all organizations engaged in the physical training of youth.

  22. We demand the abolition of the mercenary army and the creation of a people’s army.

  23. We demand legal warfare against intentional political lies and their dissemination through the press. To facilitate the creation of a German press, we demand:

  (a) that all editors of, and contributors to, newspapers that appear in the German language be racial comrades;

  (b) that no non-German newspaper may appear without the express permission of the government. Such papers may not be printed in the German language;

  (c) that non-Germans shall be forbidden by law to hold any financial share in a German newspaper, or to influence it in any way.

  We demand that the penalty for violating such a law shall be the closing of the newspapers involved, and the immediate expulsion of the non-Germans involved.

  Newspapers which violate the general good are to be banned. We demand legal warfare against those tendencies in art and literature which exert an undermining influence on our national life, and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand.

  24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations, provided they do not endanger the existence of the state, or violate the moral and ethical feelings of the Germanic race.

  The party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, without, however, allying itself to any particular denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can be achieved only from within, on the basis of

  THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST

  25. To implement all these points, we demand the creation of a strong central power in Germany. A central political parliament should possess unconditional authority over the entire Reich, and its organization in general.

  Corporations based on estate and profession should be formed to apply the general legislation passed by that Reich in the various German states.

  The leaders of the party promise to do everything that is in their power, and if need be, to risk their very lives, to translate this program into action.

  Munich, February 24, 1920.

  Appendix 2: Quotations on Nazi socialism and fascism

  Socialism against individualism

  “National socialism is the determination to create a new man. There will no longer exist any individual arbitrary will, nor realms in which the individual belongs to himself. The time of happiness as a private matter is over.”

  —Adolf Hitler[137]

  “The concept of personal liberties of the individual as opposed to the authority of the state had to disappear; it is not to be reconciled with the principle of the nationalistic Reich. There are no personal liberties of the individual which fall outside of the realm of the state and which must be respected by the state. The member of the people, organically connected with the whole community, has replaced the isolated individual; he is included in the totality of the political people and is drawn into the collective action. There can no longer be any question of a private sphere, free of state influence, which is sacred and untouchable before the political unity. The constitution of the nationalistic Reich is therefore not based upon a system of inborn and inalienable rights of the individual.”

  —Ernst Rudolf Huber,[138] official spokesman for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 1939

  “[O]ur German language has a word which in a magnificent way denotes conduct based on this spirit: doing one’s duty [Pflichterfüllung]—which means serving the community instead of contenting oneself. We have a word for the basic disposition which underlies conduct of this kind in contrast to egoism and selfishness—idealism. By ‘idealism’ we mean only the ability of the individual to sacrifice himself for the whole, for his fellow men.”

  —Adolf Hitler,[139] 1925

  “The State must act as the guardian of a millennial future in the face of which the wishes and the selfishness of the individual must appear as nothing and submit.”

  —Adolf Hitler[140]

  “[S]ocialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”

  —Joseph Goebbels[141]

  “THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST.”

  —NDSAP Program, Point 24, 1920

  “We must rouse in our people the unanimous wish for power in this sense, together with the determination to sacrifice on the altar of patriotism, not only life and property, but also private views and preferences in the interests of the common welfare.”

  —Friedrich von Bernhardi,[142] 1912

  Socialist economics

  “To put it quite clearly: we have an economic programme. Point No. 13 in that programme demands the nationalisation of all public companies, in other words socialisation, or what is known here as socialism. ... the basic principle of my Party’s economic programme should be made perfectly clear and that is the principle of authority ... the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners. If you say that the bourge
oisie is tearing its hair over the question of private property, that does not affect me in the least. Does the bourgeoisie expect some consideration from me? ... The bourgeois press does me damage too and would like to consign me and my movement to the devil. You are, after all a representative of the bourgeoisie ... your press thinks it must continuously distort my ideas. ... We do not intend to nail every rich Jew to the telegraph poles on the Munich-Berlin road.”

  —Adolf Hitler,[143] to R. Breiting, “bourgeois” newspaper editor, 1931

  “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”

  —Adolf Hitler,[144] 1927 speech

  On “the money pigs of capitalist democracy”: “Money has made slaves of us.” “Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.”

  —Joseph Goebbels, [145] 1929

  “The worker in a capitalist state—and that is his deepest misfortune—is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker. He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.”

  —Joseph Goebbels, [146] 1932 pamphlet

  “‘Private property’ as conceived under the liberalistic economic order ... represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests ... German socialism had to overcome this ‘private,’ that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.”

  —Ernst Rudolf Huber,[147] official Nazi Party spokesman, 1939

  National Socialism, according to some later commentators

  “Hitler was never a socialist.”

  —Ian Kershaw[148]

  “Bastard movements like the National Socialism (Nazism) of twentieth-century Germany and Austria ..., save for the bare fact that they enforced central control of social policy, had nothing of socialism in them.”

  —Margaret Cole,[149] under “Socialism,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  “Stalinism is a pathology of socialism, Hitlerism being the apposite example for capitalism.”

  —Robert Heilbroner,[150] popular socialist author, 1980

  “If there is one thing all Fascists and National Socialists agreed on, it was their hostility to capitalism.”

  —Eugen Weber,[151] historian of fascism

  “[A]nti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism.”

  —Sidney Hook,[152] socialist philosopher

  “It is significant that the most important ancestors of National Socialism—Fichte, Rodbertus, and Lassalle—are at the same time acknowledged fathers of socialism.”

  —F. A. Hayek,[153] 1944

  Socialism and authoritarianism

  “The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper.”

  —Adolf Hitler[154]

  “Our present political world-view, current in Germany, is based in general on the idea that creative, culture-creating force must indeed be attributed to the state.”

  —Adolf Hitler,[155] 1925

  “The first foundation for the creation of authority is always provided by popularity.”

  —Adolf Hitler[156]

  “The advantage of ... an unwritten constitution over the formal constitution is that the basic principles do not become rigid but remain in a constant, living movement. Not dead institutions but living principles determine the nature of the new constitutional order.”

  —Ernst Rudolf Huber,[157] official spokesman for the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party, 1939

  Against capitalism

  “We German National Socialists have recognized that not international solidarity frees the peoples from the ties of international capital, but the organized national force. …The National Socialist German Workers’ Party asks you all to come … to a GIANT DEMONSTRATION against the continued cheating of our people by the Jewish agents of the international world stock-exchange capital.”

  —Nazi Poster,[158] 1921

  “It is not to save capitalism that we fight in Russia … It is for a revolution of our own. … If Europe were to become once more the Europe of bankers, of fat corrupt bourgeoisies ... we should prefer Communism to win and destroy everything. We would rather have it all blow up than see this rottenness resplendent. Europe fights in Russia because it [i.e., Fascist Europe] is Socialist. ... what interests us most in the war is the revolution to follow ... The war cannot end without the triumph of Socialist revolution.”

  —Léon Degrelle,[159] leading National Socialist figure, speaking on behalf of the Nazi SS in occupied Paris, 1943

  “[W]e will do what we like with the bourgeoisie. … We give the orders; they do what they are told. Any resistance will be broken ruthlessly.”

  —Adolf Hitler,[160] 1931

  “The internal and international criminal gang will either be forced to work or simply exterminated.”

  —Adolf Hitler,[161] 1931

  “Today I will once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers, inside and outside Europe, succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”

  —Adolf Hitler,[162] 1939

  Historical roots: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  “Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.”

  —Bertrand Russell,[163] 1945

  “Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all goods in his possession.”

  —Jean-Jacques Rousseau[164]

  “Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.”

  —Jean-Jacques Rousseau[165]

  “The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it … is, for all members of the state … the rule of what is just or unjust.”

  —Jean-Jacques Rousseau[166]

  “The State dominates the Nation because it alone represents it.”

  —Adolf Hitler[167]

  The state “ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members.” “We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.”