# Mein Kampf (Stackpole Sons)/Volume 2/Chapter 10

10. Federalism as a Disguise
In the winter of the year 1919 and still more in the spring and summer of 1920, the young Party was forced to take a position about a question which had already arisen to extraordinary significance during the War. In the first volume in the short description of the symptoms of the threatening German collapse which had become evident to me personally, I pointed to the special type of propaganda which was being spread from the English as well as from the French side for the purpose of tearing open the old cleft between North and South. In the spring of 1915 systematic incendiary pamphlets against Prussia as the one guilty party in the War appeared. Up to the year 1916 this system had arrived at a state of complete development, just as clever as vile. The incitement of the South German against North Germans, which was aimed at the basest instincts, even began in a short time to bear fruit. It is a reproach which one must launch against the authoritative positions of that time in the government as well as in the army, or better in the Bavarian positions of command, and a reproach which these people cannot shake from themselves: that they in a complete forgetfulness of duty did not proceed against it with the necessary determination. Nothing was done! On the contrary in various positions they appeared to look upon it not at all with disfavor and were perhaps stupid enough to think that through such propaganda not only would the development toward unity of the German people be checked, but that at the same time a strengthening of the federative powers would have to arise automatically. Hardly ever in history has a malicious neglect been more maliciously avenged. The weakening which they thought to attribute to Prussia struck all Germany. Its ​consequence however was the hastening of the collapse which nevertheless devastated not only Germany, but in the first instance even the individual states themselves.
In the city in which the artificially stirred-up hatred against Prussia raged most violently, there broke out first of all the revolution against the hereditary Royal House.
To be sure it would be wrong to believe that the fabrication of this anti-Prussian feeling was to be ascribed alone to the hostile war propaganda, and that there was at hand no reason for pardoning the people seized by it. The incredible type of organization of our military economy which in an almost mad centralization represented the entire realm and—swindled it, was a chief reason for the growth of that anti-Prussian feeling. Since for the normal little man the military societies which now had their headquarters in Berlin were identical with Berlin, and Berlin itself synonymous with Prussia. That the organizers of this predatory institution, the so-called military societies, were neither Berliners nor Prussians, indeed were not Germans at all, hardly entered upon the consciousness of the individual at that time. He saw only the crass faultiness and the constant encroachments of this hateful arrangement in the capitol, and of course transferred his entire hatred at the same time to this capitol and Prussia, all the more since from a certain side not only was nothing undertaken against it, but in quiet such an interpretation was even smirkingly welcomed.
The Jew was much too clever not to understand even at that time that the infamous raid of plunder which he organized beneath the cloak of the military societies against the German people would, indeed, must invoke opposition. As long as this opposition did not spring at his own throat he did not need to fear it. In order, however, to prevent in this direction an explosion of the masses driven to despair and revolution there could be no better recipe than to let their rage flame up at a distance, and so in this way to use it.
Let Bavaria go on fighting against Prussia and Prussia against Bavaria, the more the better! The most arduous contest of the ​two meant for the Jew the most secure peace. The attention of the public was by that means completely diverted from the international maggot of the nations; one seems to have forgotten it. And if ever the danger seemed to arise that enlightened elements (of which there were numerous ones in Bavaria too) would admonish insight and contemplation and reserve, and through that the embittered struggle would threaten to die down, then the Jew in Berlin only needed to set a new provocation on the scene and to await its success. Immediately all of the profiteers of the conflict between the North and the South pounced upon every such occasion and blew upon the flame until the glow of revolution had again risen to bright fire.
It was a clever, subtle game which the Jew played at that time for the purpose of constantly occupying and diverting the various German peoples in order to be able to plunder them in the meantime all the more thoroughly.
Then came the Revolution.
If now up to the year 1918, or more correctly, up to November of that year, the average man, but especially the poorly cultivated philistine and worker, could not yet fully comprehend the actual process and the inevitable consequences of the conflict among the German peoples, above all in Bavaria, then at least that group which called itself “national” would have had to comprehend it on the day of the outbreak of the Revolution. For hardly had the action succeeded when in Bavaria the very leader and organizer of the revolution became the representative of “Bavarian” interests. The international Jew, Kurt Eisner, began to play off Bavaria against Prussia. It was obvious however that precisely this oriental who had constantly wandered about here and there in the rest of Germany as a journalist would be perhaps the last to be called upon to safeguard Bavarian interests, and that precisely Bavaria could be the most indifferent thing to him in God’s wide world.
While Kurt Eisner gave the revolutionary uprising in Bavaria a completely conscious spearpoint against the rest of the nation, he did not act in the least from the Bavarian point of view, but ​only as a commissioner of Jewry. He made use of the instincts and inclinations of the Bavarian people at hand in order to be able more easily to destroy Germany by means of them. The devastated nation would have indeed easily become the booty of Bolshevism.
The tactics employed by him were continued even after his death. Marxism, which had bathed the individual states and their princes in Germany with the bloodiest mockery suddenly appealed as “an independent party” to those feelings and instincts which had their strongest roots in princely houses and individual states.
The struggle of the Soviet Republic against the advancing contingents of liberation was written up with much propaganda in the first instance as a “struggle of Bavarian workers” against “Prussian militarism.” Only on that basis is it comprehensible why in Munich, quite apart from other German regions, the overthrow of the Soviet Republic did not lead to deliberation on the part of the broad masses, but much more to a still greater embitterment and resentment toward Prussia.
The skill with which the Bolshevistic agitators understood how to represent the disposal of the Soviet Republic as a “Prussian-militaristic” victory against the “anti-militaristic” and “anti-Prussian”-minded Bavarian people bore rich fruits. While Kurt Eisner on the occasion of the elections did not summon up even ten thousand followers in the legislative Bavarian provincial diet in Munich, and the Communist party remained even under three thousand, both parties had arisen together after the collapse of the Republic to approximately a hundred-thousand voters.
Just at this time my personal struggle against the insane incitement of the German peoples against each other began.
I think I have never in my life begun a more unpopular business than my opposition to the baiting of Prussia at that time. In Munich there had already taken place during the Soviet period the first mass assemblies in which the hatred against the rest of Germany, especially, however, against Prussia, was whipped up to such a boiling point that it was not only linked with mortal ​danger for a North German to attend such a meeting, but that the close of such demonstrations usually concluded quite openly with the insane shout: “Free from Prussia!”—“Down with Prussia!”—“War against Prussia!” a mood which an especially brilliant representative of Bavarian sovereign interests in the German Reichstag summed up in the battle cry: “Rather die a Bavarian than go to ruin a Prussian!”
One must have experienced the gatherings of that time in order to understand what it meant for me when I for the first time, surrounded by a handful of friends, set out in a gathering in the Loewenbräukeller in Munich to warn against this madness. They were war comrades who afforded me support then, and perhaps one can project himself into our sensations when an irrational mob roared at us and threatened to strike us down, a mob which, during that period when we had defended the Fatherland had wandered around for the most part as deserters and shirkers in army bases or at home. To be sure these appearances had this good fortune; that the band of my faithful felt itself really bound with me for the first time and soon were sworn to me to the death. These battles, which were always repeated and which extended through the whole year 1919, seemed even to be augmented right after the year 1920. There were meetings—I remember especially one in Wagner Hall in Sonnenstrasse in Munich—, in which my group, which in the meantime had grown much larger, had to endure very serious fights ending not rarely in the maltreatment of dozens of my followers who were beaten, kicked and finally thrown out of the halls more dead than alive.
The battle which I as an individual had begun, supported only by my war companions, now was carried on by the young movement as a holy task.
I am proud to be able to say today that we at that time—forced to rely almost exclusively upon our Bavarian supporters—nevertheless slowly but surely put an end to this mixture of stupidity and treason. I say stupidity and treason because I can not give the organizers and instigators credit for such simplicity, convinced as I am of the really goodnatured but stupid followers. I ​considered and still consider them today to be traitors hired and paid by France. In one case, the case of Dorten, history has already spoken its judgment.
What really made it especially dangerous at that time was the cleverness with which they concealed the real tendencies by pushing into the foreground federalist intentions as the only motive for such activity. That the stirring up of hate against Prussia has nothing to do with federalism is, of course, obvious. Similarly does a (federative activity) which attempts to dissolve or divide another federal state seem unusual. For a genuine federalist for whom the quoting of the Bismarck conception of the Empire does not represent an untruthful phrase, could not in the same breath wish to separate parts from the Prussian State created by or at least perfected by Bismarck, or even openly support such separatist efforts. How they would have shouted in Munich if a conservative party had favored or openly desired and promoted the release of Franconia from Bavaria. One could feel sorry only for the genuinely federalist-minded people who did not see through this reprehensible swindling; for they were first of all the ones who were deceived. By burdening the federalist idea to such an extent, its own supporters were actually digging its grave. One can not promote a federative formation of the Empire if one besmirches and insults the most important member of such a state-structure, namely Prussia. This was all the more unbelievable since the battle of these so-called federalists was directed against that Prussia which had least connection with the November democracy. The insults and attacks of these federalists were not directed against the fathers of the Weimar Constitution, who for the most part were South Germans or Jews, but against the representatives of the old conservative Prussia, the antipodes of the Weimar Constitution. It is not surprising that one avoided particularly attacking the Jews, but it is probably the key to the solution of the whole riddle.
Just as before the Revolution the Jew knew how to divert the attention from his War-associations or more exactly from himself, and understood how to change the attitude of the masses, ​particularly of Bavaria, against Prussia, so now after the Revolution he had somehow to cover up the new and now ten times greater raid. And again in this case he succeeded in inciting the so called “nationalist elements” of Germany against each other; conservative Bavaria against equally conservative Prussia. He did this in the most cunning manner, while holding the fate of the Empire in his hands, he provoked such crude and tactless encroachments that he made the blood of the affected ones boil. Never against the Jew, but always against his German brother. The Bavarian did not see the Berlin of four million busily working, industrious people but he saw the rotten decomposed Berlin of the west side! But his hate was not directed against this west side of Berlin, but against the “Prussian” city.
It was often enough to drive one to dispair.
This cleverness of the Jew in diverting the public attention from himself one can study again today.
In the year 1918, it was impossible to speak of a systematic anti-semitism. I can still recall the difficulties one encountered simply in mentioning the word Jew. One was either stared at or he encountered the most violent resistance. Our first attempts to point out to the people the real enemy seemed at that time to be practically hopeless, and only very slowly did things take a turn for the better. Although the Protective Society (Der Schutz-und Trutzbund) was organized on a faulty plan it nevertheless deserved much credit for having reopened the Jewish question. In any case there began to take root in the winter of 1918 something approaching anti-semitism. Later to be sure, the National-Socialist movement brought the Jewish question to the fore in a much different manner. It succeeded especially in raising this question out of the narrow circle of upper and lower bourgeois classes and to change it into the leading motiff of a great national movement. Hardly had they succeeded in giving to the German people the great uniting idea of combating this question, when the Jew already made a counter attack. He used his old method. With remarkable speed he hurled the burning torch of contention into the popular movement and sowed the seeds of dissention. In ​raising the ultramontane question and in the mutual attack of Catholicism and Protestanism growing out of it there lay, as things were then, the only possibility of occupying the public attention with other problems in order to stave off the concentrated attack upon Jewry. The men who cast this question among our people have sinned so grievously against it that they will never be able to make restitution for their sin. The Jew, however, attained the goal he wished; Catholics and Protestants carried on a very nice war together and the arch-enemy of Aryan humanity and of the whole Christendom laughs up his sleeve.
Just as he had once been able to occupy public opinion for years with the struggle between federalism and unitarianism, and to incite it to take sides in this struggle, while the Jew was bartering away the freedom of the nation and betraying our Fatherland to international high finance, he succeeds again in getting the two German confessions to fight against each other, while the foundations of both are being destroyed and undermined by the poison of the international Jew.
Let one keep in mind the destruction which the Jewish bastardization commits upon our people every day and consider that this poisoning of the blood can be removed from the German people only after centuries, if at all; and consider further how this racial disintegration pulls down or even destroys the last Aryan values of our German people, so that our national strength as a bearer of civilization is visibly on the decline, and we run the danger, at least in our big cities, of reaching the point which Southern Italy already has reached. This infection of our blood which hundreds of thousands of our people seem to disregard is carried on by the Jew today according to a regular plan. According to plan these black parasites of nations ravish our inexperienced blond young girls and in so doing destroy something which in this world can never be replaced. Both, yes, both Christian confessions observe with indifference this desecration and destruction of a noble and unique creature given to this world by the grace of God. For the future of the world it is not important whether the Protestants conquer the Catholics or vice versa, but ​whether Aryans will be preserved or will die out. And yet the two confessions are not fighting against the destroyer of this Aryan, but they try to destroy one another. It would seem that the nationally minded person would have as his holy duty, each in his own confession, to see to it that one does not always outwardly discuss the will of God but actually also does the will of God, and does not let God’s work be desecrated. For the Will of God once gave to mankind its form, its being, and its capacities. Whoever destroys His work declares war upon that which God created, upon Divine Will. Therefore, let everybody, really everybody, be active in his own confession, and let everyone consider it his first and holiest duty to oppose him who in his actions, by word or deed, steps out of the framework of his own church community and attempts to pry his way into the other community. For to fight against the idiosyncrasies of a confession within our once-existing religious split, will in Germany of necessity lead to a war of destruction between the two confessions. We can not compare the conditions here with say, those in France, Spain or, least of all, Italy. One can for instance in all three countries promote a battle against clericalism or Ultramontanism without running the danger that in so doing the French, Spanish or Italian people as such would disintegrate. In Germany, however, this may not be done, for certainly here the Protestants would also take part. Therefore the defense would in Germany at once assume the character of an attack of Protestanism by Catholicism which elsewhere would only be carried on by Catholics against attacks of a political nature upon their own leaders. That which is tolerated, even though unjust, by members of one’s own confession is immediately most vigorously rejected from the start, if the antagonist belongs to another confession. This is carried to such extremes that even people who without ado would be ready to stop an apparent grievance within their own religious community, at once go away from it and turn their resistance outward when such a correction is recommended or even demanded by an office not belonging to their community. They consider it an unjustifiable and inadmissable, even indecent attempt to mix ​into affairs which do not concern them. Such attempts are not even pardoned when they are justified according to the higher right of the interests of the national community, because today religious feelings are still deeper than all national and political expediency. Nor is this changed if the two confessions are driven into a bitter war against each other. This could only be changed by giving to the nation by means of mutual compatibility a future which in its greatness would have a conciliatory effect in this domain also.
I do not hesitate to declare that I see in these men who today draw the populist movement into the crisis of religious controversies worse enemies of my people than any Communist on an international basis. For to convert this Communist is the mission of the National-Socialist movement. He who, however, separates these people from their own ranks, from their real mission, acts most outrageously. He is, whether consciously or unconsciously—it makes no difference—a fighter for Jewish interests. For it is today the interest of the Jews to let the populist movement drain away its blood in a religious struggle in that moment when it begins to become dangerous for the Jew. And I emphasize expressly the word, “let drain away its blood;” for only a man completely unversed in history can imagine himself capable of solving today with this movement a question on which centuries and great statesmen have been shattered.
For the rest the facts speak for themselves. The gentlemen who in the year 1924 suddenly discovered that the supreme mission of the populist movement was the struggle against Ultramontanism did not break Ultramontanism, but ripped to bits the populist movement. I too must see to it, that in the ranks of the populist movement some immature intelligence does not think himself capable of that which even a Bismarck could not do. It will always be the supreme duty of the administration of the National-Socialist movement to oppose most sharply every attempt to place the National-Socialist movement in the service of such struggles, and to remove propagandists with such a purpose immediately from the ranks of the movement. Actually it had succeeded ​without exception up to the Fall of 1923. In the ranks of our movement the most pious Protestant could sit beside the most pious Catholic without ever having to get into the least conflict of conscience with his religious conviction. The mighty struggle which the two together carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had taught them on the contrary to respect and to appreciate each other. And exactly at the same time in these years the movement fought out its sharpest struggle against the Center, never, to be sure, on the basis of religion, but exclusively on the national, racial and economic basis. Success spoke then in our favor just as today it testifies against those “who know better.”
Often in the last years it went so far that populist circles in the God-forsaken blindness of their confessional squabbles did not recognize the insanity of their action in this point: that atheistic Marxist newspapers, according to need, suddenly became the magistrates of religious congregations, in order through the mediation of statements, often really too stupid, to defame the one or the other side, and in that way to make the fire blaze.
Among a people like the Germans, in whose history it has so often been shown capable of carrying on wars for phantoms until the very end, such a call to battle will be mortally dangerous. Our people were always in that way diverted from the really true questions of their existence. While we devastated ourselves in religious controversies, the rest of the world was parcelled. And while the populist movement considers whether the Ultramontane or the Jewish danger is the greater, or vice versa, the Jew destroys the racial principles of our existence and annihilates thereby our people forever. Insofar as this type of “popularist” fighter is concerned, I can only wish the National-Socialist movement and with it the German people most sincerely: Lord guard it against such friends and then it will certainly settle with its enemies.
The dispute between federalism and a national state that had been propagated by the Jews in such a cunning way during the years 1919–1921, and even later, compelled the National Socialist movement, though it belonged to the opposition, to clarify its ​attitude in reference to its fundamental problems. Is Germany to be a confederation of states or one national state, and what constitutes a practical definition of both? It seems to me that the second question is the more important one, since it is not only fundamental for the understanding of the whole problem, but is also in itself of a clarifying and conciliatory nature.
What is a confederation of states?
According to our understanding, a confederation of states is a union of sovereign states which unite voluntarily and by virtue of their sovereignty. In doing so they assign such particular sovereign rights to the corporate body that will make possible and safeguard the existence of such a mutual union.
Practically, this theoretical definition does not apply unreservedly to any existing confederation of states. To the American Union it applies least of all, since most of these individual states originally never possessed any sovereignty whatsoever but most of them were gradually drawn, as it were, into the framework of the whole Union. Therefore the various states of the American Union constitute in most instances smaller or larger territories that were formed for technical administrative reasons, their borders having been frequently drawn with a ruler. Previously these states had never had any sovereignty of their own, because practically that would have been impossible, for these states did not create the Union, but it was rather the Union that created these so-called states. The comprehensive autonomous rights that were relinquished, or rather granted to the different territories, are not only in harmony with the whole character of this confederation of states, but also with the vastness of its area and dimensions, almost attaining those of a continent. Thus, in referring to the states of the American Union, one cannot speak of their state sovereignty, but only of their constitutionally guaranteed rights, or rather privileges.
Likewise neither does the above given definition apply fully and completely to Germany. There is no doubt that originally the individual states in Germany had existed as sovereign states, from which the Empire was formed. The formation of the Empire, ​however, did not take place by virtue of the free will or joint cooperation of the individual states, but it was the result of one state, Prussia, having achieved hegemony over the others. The very difference in the territorial size of the German states alone does not permit any comparision with the formation of, for instance, the American Union. The difference in size between the erstwhile smallest German federal states and the larger one, or better the largest of them, is evidence of the inequality of their achievements as well as of the varying degrees of their share in the founding of the Empire and the formation of the confederation of states. As a matter of fact, one cannot speak of most of these states as having enjoyed real sovereignty, unless one deprive the word of all other meaning but that of an official phrase. In reality, not only the past but also the present generation has done away with numerous of these so-called “sovereign states”, thus proving definitely the weakness of these “sovereign” units.
It is not our purpose to go into a detailed historical account of the formation of these various states, but we merely point out the fact that their borders were in no case coinciding with the ethnological borderlines. They are purely political phenomena and most of their roots reach back into the saddest period of weakness of the German Empire which caused and finally brought about the division of our German Fatherland.
All this was at least partially taken into account by the constitution of the old Empire in so far as it did not grant the same representation to the individual states in the Federal Council at the time of the founding of the Empire, but provided for a graduation according to the size and actual importance, as well as the achievements of the individual states.
The sovereign rights which the individual states renounced in order to make possible the formation of the Empire were surrendered voluntarily only in a small measure. In most cases these rights were already practically non-existent, or they had simply been taken away from them under the pressure of Prussia’s superior strength. Bismarck, however, was not guided in this by the principle of taking away anything that could be taken away ​from the individual states; he demanded them to surrender only that which was absolutely essential to the Empire. It was a moderate as well as wise principle, since on the one hand it took into consideration customs and traditions, and on the other secured for the Empire from the very outset a great measure of love and enthusiastic cooperation. It is a great mistake, however, to ascribe this course of Bismarck, for instance, to his conviction that the Empire was thus acquiring sovereign rights sufficient for all time. Bismarck never had such a conviction; on the contrary, he intended to leave to the future what would have been hard to accomplish and to bear at the moment. He hoped for the gradual balancing effect of time and for the pressure arising from natural development which he reasoned would ultimately exert more power than an attempt to break existing resistance of the separate states. Thus he gave a demonstration and the best proof of his great ability as a statesman. As a matter of fact the sovereignty of the Empire has continually increased at the expense of the sovereignty of the individual states. Time had fulfilled all of Bismarck’s expectations.
As a matter of course these developments have been hastened by the German collapse and the destruction of the monarchic form of state. Since the individual German states ascribed their existence less to ethnological reasons, but to purely political causes, the importance of these individual states was bound to cease at the very moment of the elimination of the monarchic form of state and its dynasties, they being the very embodiment of the political development of these states. Thus a large number of these “state-patterns” lost the basis of their internal structure to such a degree, that they automatically gave up their separate existence and united with others for purely practical purposes, or consented to be absorbed by larger states; the most striking proof of the exceptional weakness of the actual sovereignty of these small states and of the light esteem they were held in by their own citizens.
The removal of the monarchial form of state and its representatives was a hard blow to the federative character of the Empire, ​but the assumption of the obligations resulting from the “Peace” Treaty was a harder blow still.
It was natural and obvious that the different states which had up to that time controlled their own finances, lost this perogative to the Reich at the very moment when the Empire was subjected to a financial obligation on account of the lost war, which could never have been met by separate treaties with the individual states. Also the further steps leading to the taking over of postal and railway service by the Reich were natural results of the gradual enslavement of our people, brought about by the Peace Treaties. The Reich was compelled to take full possession of more and more sources of revenue in order to meet the obligations incurred by further extortions.
Though the forms under which this process of unification with the Reich took place were frequently absurd, the process itself was logical and a matter of course. The parties and the men who formerly had failed to do everything in their power in order to end the war victoriously were to blame for it. As far as Bavaria is concerned, primarily those parties were to blame which during the war had refused to think of the Reich because they were pursuing selfish purposes, all of which they had to pay for it tenfold after the war was lost. Avenging history! Seldom did Heaven’s judgment follow the act of sinning as rapidly as in this case. The same parties which only a few years previously had placed the interest of their own states above the interests of the Reich—this was particularly the case in Bavaria—were now compelled to witness the throttling of the existence of the individual states by the interests of the Reich, which situation was brought about by the pressure of events.
It is an unparalleled hypocrisy towards the electorate (with which alone the agitation of our present parties is concerned) to deplore the loss of sovereignty by different states, while at the same time these very parties endeavored to outbid each other in pursuing a fulfillment policy, the consequences of which were bound to lead to far-reaching internal changes in Germany. Bismarck’s Reich was externally free and unbound. At that time ​the Reich did not have such heavy as well as totally unproductive financial obligations as are being born by the Dawes-Germany of today. Even in its domestic affairs it was confined to a few and absolutely necessary expenditures. It was therefore well able to get along without having any financial supremacy and to live on the contributions made by the individual states. It goes without saying that the possession of their own sovereign rights on the one hand, and the comparatively small financial contributions to the Reich on the other hand were great factors in the contentment of the states to be a part of the Reich. It is incorrect, and even dishonest, however, to propagate the assertion that any existing lack of satisfaction to belong to the Reich must solely be attributed to the financial obligations of the individual states to the Reich. No, indeed! The situation is entirely different. The vanishing joy at the thought of the Empire must not be attributed to the loss of sovereign rights by the various states, but it is the result of the miserable way in which the German nation is at present represented by its State. In spite of all Imperial Flag and Constitution Festivals, the present Reich has not found a place in the heart of any class of the people. Republican protective laws may be able to frighten people from violating republican institutions, but they will never be able to gain the love of even one single German. The enormous zeal to protect the Republic against its own citizens by means of laws and jails is the most annihilating criticism and disparagement of the whole institution.
There is a further reason to brand as untrue the assertion made today by certain parties that the vanishing joy of being a part of the Reich is due to encroachments of the Reich upon certain sovereign rights of the states. Supposing the Reich had not expanded its authority, it would be wrong to believe even then that the love of the different states for the Reich would have been thereby increased, for the total sum of assessments would have remained the same it is now. On the contrary, if the various state were today under obligation to pay the amount of assessments needed by the Reich to fulfill the enslaving dictates, ​the animosity towards the Reich would be exceedingly greater. It would not only be very difficult to collect the contributions to the Reich from the states, but they would have to be obtained by distraint. The Republic is bound to fulfill the obligations of the Peace Treaties, since it has accepted them, and has neither the courage nor the intention of breaking them. And again the blame rests solely upon the parties, which incessantly preach to a patient electorate the sovereignty of the states, and at the same time foster a policy for the Reich which as a matter of course must bring about the abolition of even the last of these so-called “sovereign rights.”
I say as a mater of course, because the present Reich has no other way of shouldering the burdens by which it is being weighed down as a result of a rotten domestic and foreign policy. In this case too one nail drives out another; every new obligation which the Reich assumes as a result of its criminal foreign representation of German interests must be compensated for by a stronger downward pressure: this again requires the gradual elimination of all sovereign rights in the different states, lest they might become or remain germ-cells of resistance.
There is one characteristic difference between the past and present Reich’s policies: the old Empire granted freedom internally and showed power in its foreign affairs, while the Republic displays weakness in foreign affairs, while at home it is suppressing its citizens. In both cases we can see cause and effect. The powerful national state does not need so many domestic laws, since its citizens love it and are attached to it. The international slave state can resort only to compulsory means, in order to make its subjects do forced labor. Thus it is one of the greatest atrocities of the present regime to speak of “free citizens”; such could only be found in the old Germany. The Republic, as a slave-colony of foreign countries, has no citizens, but at best subjects. For that very reason it has no national flag, but only a trade-mark introduced and guarded by official decrees and regulations. This symbol is felt to be like a Gessler’s hat put up by the German democracy, and it will therefore always remain ​alien to the heart of our people. The day will come when the Republic will be astonished to see how superficially its subjects honor its own symbols, after they have thrown the symbols of the past into the gutter without any respect whatsoever for tradition and greatness. The Republic has given itself the character of just an intermezzo in German history.
Thus for reasons of self-preservation the State is forced today to curtail more and more the sovereign rights of the different states, not only from material but also from the ideological point of view. For, seeing that it drains the last drop of blood out of its citizens by its tactics of financial extortion, it is bound to take away from them even the last of their rights unless it is prepared to witness the general discontent some day turn into open revolution.
Reversing the above statement, we National Socialists find the following basic principle: A powerful national Empire that takes care of and protects its citizens in the widest sense by its foreign policy, is able to offer liberty at home without harboring any fear as to the solidity of the State. On the other hand a powerful national government may encroach considerably upon the liberty of individuals as well as of the different states, and assume the responsibility for it, without weakening the Empire idea, if only every citizen recognizes such measures as means for making his nation greater.
There is no doubt that all the states in the world are headed for a certain unification of their internal organization. Germany too will be no exception in this respect. Even today it is a folly to speak of the “state sovereignty” of the different states. The ridiculous size of these units in itself makes such an idea baseless. In the province of communications as well as in that of technical administration, the individual states are being more and more deprived of their importance. Modern communication and modern technique are constantly causing distance and space to shrivel. What was once considered a state represents today only a mere province, and states of today were formerly regarded as equal to continents. From a technical standpoint it is not more ​difficult to administer a state like Germany today than it was to administer the province of Brandenburg a hundred and twenty years ago. The distance from Munich to Berlin has nowadays become shorter than the distance from Munich to Starnberg a hundred years ago. And the whole territory of the Reich today is, in comparison with the communication facilities of those days, smaller than any average German federated state at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Anybody who refuses to face the consequences of given facts, does not march with the times. There have always been such people and they will be found in the future too. But they can hardly slow up the ‘wheel of history’ and they can never arrest it.
We National-Socialists must not be blind to the consequences of these truths. We must not allow ourselves to be caught by the phrases used by our so-called national bourgeois parties. I use the expression “phrases” firstly, because these parties themselves do not seriously believe in the possibility of carrying out their intentions, and secondly, because they themselves are partly or rather chiefly to blame for the present development. Especially in Bavaria the cry for a decrease in centralization is nothing but a party manoeuver, without any serious purpose. Whenever there arose an opportunity for these parties to practise what they preach with their phrases, they failed pitifully, without exception. Each time the Bavarian State suffered a so-called “robbery of sovereign rights” on the part of the Reich, it was, except for some repulsive yelping, practically accepted without any resistance. But if anybody did dare seriously to oppose this crazy system, then the same parties would outlaw and condemn him as “one who is not in harmony with the present State,” and they would persecute him until he was silenced either by landing in prison or by illegal suppression of free speech. This very situation should be the greatest help to our partisans in recognizing the inner untruthfulness of these so-called federalistic circles. They use the federalist state idea in the same way as they often use religion, namely as a means of furthering their frequently dirty party interests.
​Even if certain unification, especially in the domain of communications, may appear to be a natural process, yet we as National-Socialists may be obliged to register our vehement protest against such a development in the present State. Such is, for instance, the case when these measures serve the sole purpose of covering up a disastrous foreign policy and thus making it possible. The very fact that the Reich of today has assumed control of railways, postal service, finances, etc., not for reasons of higher national viewpoints, but solely to acquire the means and pledges for carrying out an unlimited fulfilment-policy, should urge us National-Socialists to do everything to hinder and if possible to prevent the carrying out of such a policy. This must include the fight against the present centralization of institutions vital to people, which has but one object: to make the billions in money and other pledges, the payment of which was assumed by our post-war policy, available for the benefit of countries abroad.
This is the reason for the opposition of the National-Socialist movement to any such attempts.
The second reason for opposing a centralization of this sort is the fact that it might help more firmly to establish the domestic power of that system of government which has by all its activities brought the greatest disaster upon the German nation. The present Jewish-democratic Reich, which has become a real curse to the German nation, attempts to render impotent the criticism of those individual states that have not yet fully imbibed this spirit of today by relegating them to complete insignificance. In contrast to this tendency, we National-Socialists have every reason to provide for the opposition of these individual states not only the basis for a promising power of state, but to make their fight against centralization the expression of a higher, national, general German interest. While the Bavarian People’s Party, for narrow, particularistic reasons, endeavors to obtain “special privileges” for the Bavarian State, we must use this privileged position in the service of a higher national interest, directed against the present November-Democracy.
The third reason that influences us in fight against the present ​centralization is the conviction that a good deal of the so-called “assumption of control by the Reich” is no unification and under no circumstances a simplification. Frequently it is only a case of taking powers away from the sovereign rights of the states, in order to make them available later to those who are especially interested in the revolutionary parties. Never in German history has there been witnessed a more shameless favoritism than that in the democratic Republic. A good share of the present craze for centralization must be charged to the account of those parties which once promised to pave the way for every efficient man, yet considered only their partisans when it came to filling an office or a position. Especially the Jews have, since the founding of the Republic, overflowed in incredible numbers the economic institutions and administrative offices, which had been hastily thrown together by the Reich, so that today both have become domains of Jewish activities.
For tactical reasons it is especially this third consideration which makes it our duty to study most thoroughly each further measure on the road to centralization, and, if necessary, to oppose it. But our standpoint must always be that of a higher national policy and never become narrow or particularistic.
This latter observation is necessary, lest our adherents form the opinion that we National-Socialists were denying that the Reich has a right to exercise a higher sovereignty than the individual states. Among us this right should not and cannot be questioned. Since to us the State is but a vessel, the essential being its contents—the nation, the people—it is clear that everything else must be subordinated to their sovereign interests. In particular we connot permit any single state within the nation and its representative, the Reich, to enjoy political sovereignty and state supremacy. The nuisance of several federated states maintaining so-called legations at home and abroad must be stopped. As long as such conditions exist we must not be surprised if foreign countries continue to doubt the stability of the structure of the Reich and act accordingly. The folly of maintaining such legations is all the greater, since besides doing harm they are ​perfectly useless. If the interests of a German living abroad cannot be looked after by the ambassador of the Reich, they most certainly cannot be taken care of by the ambassador of a small state, the size of which looks ridiculous within the framework of the present world order. These little federated states are indeed nothing but an excuse for efforts to disintegrate the Reich within and without, efforts which are still being welcomed especially by one of the states. At National-Socialists we must further not show any understanding, when some senile aristocratic family tree wants to give a new fertile soil to one of its usually rather withered branches. Even in the days of the old Empire our diplomatic representation abroad was so deplorable that it is certainly very undesirable to continue these experiences.
The influence of the individual states will necessarily be shifted in the future to the cultural domain. The monarch who did the most in fostering the importance of Bavaria, wsa not some stubborn partisan with anti-German tendencies, but Ludwig I, a man with a great feeling for art and with the ideal of a greater Germany. Since he used the powers of the state primarily for the extension of Bavaria’s cultural position and not for the strengthening of its political position, he has rendered a better and more lasting service than would otherwise have been possible. By elevating Munich in his day from an unimportant provincial residence to the position of a German metropolis of art, he created a spiritual center which even today keeps the essentially different Frankonians attached to this state. Suppose Munich had remained what it once was? Then Bavaria would have passed through experience similar to that of Saxony, with the only difference that the Bavarian Leipzig, Nuernberg, would have become a Frankish town instead of a Bavarian one. It was not the agitators who cried: “Down with Prussia” who made Munich famous; instead the town became important through the efforts of the King, who wanted to give the German nation thereby a treasure of art that would have to be seen and noted. And it was seen and noted. This holds also for the future. The importance of the individual states will no longer lie in the state ​and the domain of power politics. I see it either in the regional domain or in the sphere of cultural politics. Even here time will show its balancing effect. Modern communications throw men together in such a way that slowly but steadily the provincial boundaries are being blurred, and thus even the cultural picture gradually begins to become more uniform.
The army must definitively be kept away from all influences of the individual states. The future National-Socialist State shall not repeat the mistake of the past and assign to the army a task which it does not and should not have. It is not the purpose of the German army to be a school for the preservation of provincial peculiarities, but rather a school for the mutual understanding and adaptation of all Germans. Whatever may be of a disrupting character in the life of a nation is to be made into a unifying factor by the army. Furthermore it should lift each individual young man above the narrow sphere of his own little country and make him conscious of being a member of the German nation. He must learn to see the boundaries of his Fatherland rather than those of his own provincial community, for it is the boundaries of his Fatherland that he will some day have to protect. It is therefore a folly to let the young German stay in his home state, but it is more useful to show him all of Germany during his military service. Today this is all the more necessary, since the young German does not go journeying as he used to do, thus broadening his horizon. In view of this fact is it not contrary to reason to leave the young Bavarian if possible in Munich, the Frankonian in Nuernberg, the man of Baden in Karlsruhe, the man from Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart, etc.? Would it not be more reasonable to show the young Bavarian the Rhine and the North Sea, the man from Hamburg the Alps, the East Prussian the German central chain of mountains, etc.? A small troop may preserve its provincial character, but not so the whole garrison. We may disapprove every attempt of centralization, but we approve when the army is concerned! On the contrary, even if we could not welcome any such general attempt, we would be glad to see this particular one made. Aside from the fact that with ​the size of the present Reich’s army it would be absurd to maintain separate groups representing the different states, we see in the unification of the Reich’s army that has been undertaken, a course which we must never abandon, even in the future when the national army will be reinstated.
At any rate, a young triumphant idea must avert every fetter which paralyzes its active power to advance its ideology. National Socialism must claim as a matter of principle, the right, to force upon the entire German nation its principles, (without consideration to the former boundaries of the federated states) and to educate it to its ideas and thoughts. The National-Socialist idea finds itself just as unencumbered by the respective state territories of our Fatherland as the churches feel thmeslves not bound and limited by political boundaries.
The National-Socialist doctrine is not the servant of the political interests of individual federates states, but is to be ruler of the German nation. It has the life of a people to destine and to regulate anew, and therefore it must positively claim the right to ignore boundaries, drawn by evolutionary forces, which we reject.
The more complete the victory of the National-Socialist doctrine, the greater may be the particular freedom which it offers at home.