April 1927
Should it go on like this?
I
In picnic spots, huntsmen had to use firearms in self-defence against National Socialists. Unsuspecting Jewish passers-by were stabbed by National Socialists in broad daylight in Cologne. The report of the Berlin ambulance station 7 stated that the Polish citizen Dr Adolf Con, who was attacked by National Socialists on the Sunday of the parade, had lost a tooth, suffered a wound to his left eye, a severe skull injury, dislocated his hand and broken his nose (Welt am Montag, No. 13, 28 March 1927). The son of the former Czechoslovakian Minister for War, Klosatsch, was severely beaten. A number of innocent people out for a walk were bloodily beaten (C.V. Zeitung No. 12, 25 March 1927). Again, injuries to two Jewish businessmen were reported from Cologne. And Adolf Hitler, who “drums up” his faithful for the “liberation of Germany”, speaks night after night, today in Nuremberg and tomorrow in Munich, now in Koburg, and now in Augsburg.
Strasser[1] promises “Redemption” through the “red swastika banner” in Halberstadt and hurries on with this “message of salvation” to the eastern land of upland farmsteads and valleys. Dr. Ley[2], the glorious hero of Rastätten[3], rages against the Jewish “pack of criminals” in the shadow of Cologne Cathedral, and Dr. Goebbels[4], to whom the disgrace of the bloody March Sunday confers no begrudging responsibility, ceaselessly harangues the Greater Berlin labour force with meetings, newspapers and leaflets. The second and third ranks of National Socialist speakers are fully deployed. The medium-sized and small towns and rural regions are assigned to them. Their zealous work is reported from the various parts of the Reich.
II
How to agitate?
The well-known political writer Richard May[5] wrote to us recently:
“For the attentive observer, there is a change that demands reflection. This is especially true of the National Socialists, whose very name expresses it clearly enough. Social demands have come to the fore. They are trying to exploit the plight of the German people as a last resort. These Völkisch are now distinctly anti-capitalist, and their proposals often trump those of the communists. If they were once called right-wing Bolsheviks or swastika communists, that was more than just their catchphrase.
In any case, experience has proved the justification of this label. The only difference between them and the communists is their so-called national, in reality nationalist, attitude. But if we look at it closely, this difference also becomes blurred. Both parties see in Russia the fifth ally against the capitalist Western powers. Only the goal is not the same. Some want to strengthen the German Reich in this alliance, the others want to blur the borders.”
How often and loudly are assurances made now in the National Socialist evening speeches, in order to promote communist workers and the unemployed, that the difference between communism and National Socialism is small, in the end “actually” non-existent. With communism, the battle against capitalism must strike at the heart. So the resourceful National Socialists, concludes the objective observer, lie down, so to speak, in the bed made (by the communists). A half-truth: the eager National Socialist masters themselves smooth the blankets and sheets of their spiritual sleeping place.
One reads: “The past two years have shown that the National Socialist German Workers’ Party is on the right road, that it is marching, that the unbroken and unbreakable social revolutionary energy is inherent within it.”
Nevertheless, the favourite child in the National Socialist family remains hatred of the Jews. It has recently become so exaggerated in the National Socialist press, surely not without intention, that some of the excerpts seem to come more from lunatics than from halfway sane creatures of this world. The well-travelled German will cast away such outpourings of revulsion and slander into the corner. The great crowd of the immature and adolescents, for whom Hitler is Allah and his messenger in one, is unrestrainedly indoctrinated to regard the Jews and all “Jewish servants” as the supposed sons of Satan. And steel rods, brass knuckles, daggers, revolvers will one day give vent to this stored-up rage one day on the bodies of innocents in ever increasing bloody increments.
The following passages are found in nationalist newspapers and leaflets:
“Marxism in SPD and KPD is to the Jew a protective guard for the present situation, destined in case of need, as the precedents of the last months clearly prove, to bludgeon down with violence and blood even the slightest stirring of a German will for freedom.” (recent Berlin leaflet)
“And everywhere the will for liberation is rising powerfully and violently. For the liberation of the honest working people from the hands of their Jewish tormentors.
The Jew knows this. He feels it and clutches the fear into his cursed soul. The Jew sees the day coming. The day of the German People’s Court.” (Nuremberg Stürmer, No. 12 March 1927.)
“That is one side of German humiliation. The other side is far worse… On the other side it is the deliberate desecration of German women, according to the precepts of so-called religious teachings, such as the Talmud, the Jewish Code, represents.” (Palatine Iron Hammer, No.12, March 1927.)
“Like scales it fell from our eyes (in Rastätten), all that was German recognised as the only enemy, murderer and criminal – the Jew”… “But you, German youth, come to us before it is too late. The Jew murders the German, he locks the best of the people in the prisons, their families starve and decay, do you want to stand idly by any longer? On the barricades of freedom, united with your blood comrades fight for Germany’s future! The German Blood League is Germany’s destiny!” (Cologne “Westdeutscher Beobachter”, 20 March 1927.)
In an essay: “The Blood Night” (Purim): The Jews turned away from the corpse of the Persian people and went on deceiving and murdering through the world. At present the Russian people are bleeding to death under their butcher’s knife.” … “A translator of Hebrew prayers writes that during the festival of Purim the Jews implore their God to let the day come when the blood of the Christians will again splash against the wall as it did that night in Persia.” (Nuremberg “Stürmer” No. 11, March 1927).
IV
It is not always the one who is right who is wrong, but also, to a large extent, the one who perseveres,” Dr. Goebbels, who wants to bring salvation to Berlin, recently revealed to us. Hitler’s disciples possess plenty of this ” endurance ” in the incitement of the basest passions. And they also have a good portion of ruthlessness, which would be impressive if it were used for a better cause. But will this perseverance bring victory? Dead and wounded already lie along the way.
Will the authorities now finally take strong action against all the gross violations of the law that the völkisch press takes the liberty of committing daily against Jewish German citizens? Will the state governments and city councils now be constantly informed about the dangerous and brutal aims of National Socialism, draw their conclusions from this and intervene in a suitable form where the welfare of the state, but not the welfare of the Jews, requires it? Will influential non-Jewish personalities, even on the political right of the German people, rise up in order, in genuine concern for the internal health and the external reputation of the fatherland, to expose these repulsions, in which we see a grave moral danger, as they surely deserve?
How great are the tasks of our Centralverein! Why don’t even some of our supporters raise their voices differently when they hear the challenges addressed to each and every one of us? Increase your energy tenfold! Stand together in this struggle for Jewish dignity, for the German homeland.
The Reich Chancellor celebrated Beethoven, before whom the world now sinks to its knees. “The German people,” he writes, “these days will not only indulge in the exultation of joyful pride, but above all listen to those other voices which the master so often sounded, exhorting to serious contemplation.” Retreat! The word is missing from the völkisch dictionary. “Death to the Jews” is the slogan of the national socialist leaders. As true Germans, let us pledge in the spirit of our powerful Berlin rally last Sunday: “Humanitati” For true humanity!
Alfred Wiener
[1] Gregor Strasser (1892-1934) an early prominent Nazi official, who was murdered during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Strasser
[2] Robert Ley (1890-1945) German politician and union leader went on to hold many senior positions in the Nazi party. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ley
[3] Reference to an incident in this small town on the Rhine in which a train full of Nazis attacked the Jewish population- reported in the C.V. Zeitung in the previous monthly edition.
[4] Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) became chief propagandist for the Nazi Party
[5] Richard May (1886-1970) German Jewish journalist, editor of Deutsche Einheit and Süddeutsche Zeitung