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Chapter 2
BRIEF DAYS OF GLORY
“Nirgends auf der Welt gibt es eine derart fanatische Liebe von Millionen Menschen zu einem . . .”
—Dr. Otto Dietrich1
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“Deutschland, erwache!”
—Dietrich Eckart2
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There was a time when the personality of Adolf Hitler dominated European consciousness; when his voice stirred millions; when he used to pass by, on solemn occasions, cheered by millions—the idol of the nation whom he had raised from the abyss to unparalleled greatness. There was a time when Germany was prosperous, strong, full of self-confidence; when her reborn people, well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed, were happy to work together for a future in which they believed; when they lived, as they had yet never lived before, under the firm and wise rule of the Leader who loved them as no man ever had.
One can hardly believe it today. It all seems so unreal—like a wonderful story from another world. And yet, it is true. There really was such a time, and that, not long ago. Collective enthusiasm was then as general in Germany as fear and bitterness have become since. Military parades, youth demonstrations, and enormous mass gatherings were usual occurrences. One watched the Brown battalions march past one’s house, and listened to the inspiring music of the Horst Wessel Song as a matter of course. One saw portraits of the Führer wherever one went. And one greeted one’s colleagues in offices and factories, and one’s friends in the street, in trams and buses, everywhere, with one’s right arm outstretched and with the two magic words that expressed all one’s love and reverence for the godlike Leader, all one’s hopes, all one’s dreams, all one’s pride—all the joy of those splendid days: “Heil Hitler!”
The German ambassador had greeted the King of England—at that
1 “Nowhere in the world is there such a fanatical love of millions of men for one.”—Ed.
2 “Germany, awake!”—Ed.
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time, also Emperor of India—with those triumphant words and that gesture. England was amazed, but said nothing. Could say nothing, for there was nothing to be said. There was only a fact to be faced: the fact that Hitler ruled over eighty million people who adored him, and that, in those people, a new soul was rapidly taking birth—or rather, that the old, real, everlasting Aryan Soul was re-awakening in them. “Deutschland, erwache!”—“Germany, awake!” These words of the early poet of National Socialism had not only the honour of becoming one of the battle-cries of the Movement; not only were they written upon the standards of the Party formations, but they had rung through the hearts of the German people as a supernatural signal calling the dead to life. And Germany had awakened indeed.
And the people of the earth were watching her—some, already, with hateful envy, and fear; many with genuine admiration; some with love; with the certitude that Hitler’s New Order was the first step towards the sort of world they had always wanted. Glorious days!
* * *
Without war, by the sole pressure of that strength that the certitude of her rights had given her, Germany had now taken back within her boundaries practically all the people of her blood. Saarland, Austria, and finally Sudetenland had become part and parcel of the Third Reich. Danzig, and the impossible “corridor” linking Poland to the sea through German territory, were soon to follow. But then England declared war on Germany.
Why war? To keep that German town, Danzig, from calling itself German? No. In England’s eyes, at least, the town was not worth it. To “protect Poland,” then? No, surely not, however much the hypocrites might say so, and however much the fools might believe it. Poland could well do without the impossible “corridor.” And if she could not, who cared? No. War was waged upon Germany to crush Germany; not for any other reason. The unseen, all-powerful Jew, who governed—and still governs—England, had decided that Germany should be crushed, had to be crushed, because he hated her. And he hated her not because she had grown free, strong, and proud and was a “threat” to the peace of Europe (which she was not) but because she was National Socialist Germany, Hitler’s Germany, the herald of the awakening of the Aryan soul all over the world, and a very positive threat to the continuation of the unseen rule of the Jew behind all so-called “national” governments.
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But Germany was not easy to crush. She answered the attack of the Jew and of his allies by a series of victories which filled the world with amazement. Her onward march in all directions seemed irresistible. And one could believe, in the middle of 1942, that the New World Order, expansion of the New Order in Europe, was at hand. From the northernmost shores of Norway, facing the Pole, to the Libyan desert, and from the Atlantic to the Caucasus and the Volga, the Führer’s word was now the law—while Germany’s efficient and brave ally in the Far East, Japan, already mistress of the Pacific, of Indonesia, and practically the whole of Burma, was expected at any moment to thrust her armies across the Indian border and to capture Calcutta. There was yet no sign of ill-luck in Russia. And it was natural to expect that the German hosts would continue their triumphant march through that endless land and beyond; continue their march—the age-old march of the Aryans to the East and to the South—and meet their allies in imperial Delhi.
With profound sadness one looks back today to that great lost dream: the resounding of the Horst Wessel Song in the majestic rocky solitude of the Khyber Pass, the reception of Adolf Hitler—Weltführer—in the historic eastern capital. It was not impossible. At one time it even seemed—to the observer in India at least—the only logical conclusion of the Second World War. The tide of events had not yet turned in favour of the forces of disintegration. And few people, if any, even in Europe, even in apparently well-informed circles, could foretell that it was to turn so soon and so completely. These were still great days—days of confidence, days of hope; days in which, in spite of the immensity of the struggle, one felt strong and happy, wherever one happened to be; days in which one believed that all hardships, all sufferings would soon be forgotten in the joy and glory of “after victory.”
* * *
But, for that very reason one did not know—one could not know—in those days, who was a true National Socialist and who was not: nor, in the wide world outside “the Party,” who was a sincere believer in Hitler’s ideology and a true friend of National Socialist Germany, and who was only pretending to be.
Up till 1942, the whole of Germany seemed to be heart and soul with the Führer. The whole of Europe obviously was not—since there was a war going on—but it appeared that, also in the occupied
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countries, a growing number of people were realising that the coming of the New Order was unavoidable and that the best they could do was to collaborate with victorious Germany. In Asia, with the sure, elemental perception of primitives or the superior intuition of highly evolved souls, increasing millions strongly felt the importance and the value that Hitler’s victory would have for the whole world. They felt it would mean a better world from their point of view also—the end of long-detested dominations; the end of the rule of money; and also, in some cases, the triumph of the age-old ideas that they accepted as a matter of tradition; the triumph of a spirit familiar to them for millenniums. And they wanted it. If the war had ended in 1942 by the defeat both of Communist Russia and the Western Democracies, and the meeting of the Axis armies of East and West in Delhi, then not only would the whole of Germany have rejoiced, as one can well imagine, but the entire world (with the exception of the Jews and of a stubborn minority of Democrats and Marxists) would have burst into one immense cry of happiness: “Heil Hitler!” The magic words would have rung triumphantly from Iceland to Indonesia.
But one would never have known how far they came from every man’s heart or were just an effect of mass suggestion. The weaklings and the hypocrites—the time-servers—would never have “changed their opinion”; the potential traitors, in Germany itself, would have remained loyal. The actual traitors would have taken good care to keep their fruitless underground activities forever unknown. Nay, more than one of those scoundrels would have been honoured—and remembered—as a prominent member of the ruling hierarchy and an organiser of the victory—for there were such ones even in the midst of the Nazi Party!
They began to reveal themselves as soon as the tide of events definitely took a bad turn. They ceased to take so much trouble to hide their shadowy doings, so much so that some of them got found out. One is only amazed at the fact that more of them were not found out sooner. A traitor of first magnitude like Admiral Wilhelm Canaris remained unsuspected in his high position as chief of German Intelligence until 1944. Even such a penetrating eye as that of Dr. Goebbels could not see through him. And had it not been for that monstrous conspiracy against the Führer’s life, in July 1944, in which he took part, who knows if the man would ever have been discovered? Others were not until after the war—after the disaster, when it paid to tell the world that one was an enemy of National Socialism, and to prove it. If the war had been won, a fellow such as Hjalmar Schacht
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would still be seen in the solemn Party gatherings, wearing upon his arm the badge of the Swastika; standing by the genuine Nazis as though he were one of them. Now—in 1948—he has written his Abrechnung mit Hitler1 and proved what a faithless man he is—and was, all those years.
There were thousands of creatures of that type, in the golden days. And there were millions of weak people, neither good nor bad, whose devotion to the Man they had so often frantically acclaimed was skin-deep and gave way under the hardships of “total war.” But there were those, too, whose faith was unshakable, whose fortitude knew no limits; whose National Socialism was the outcome of thought and experience, rooted in the depth of life.
There was gold, base metal, and slime among the so-called National Socialists of the days of glory. Now, after all is lost, the slime has gone over to the Democracies’ side—the right people in the right place. The base metal exists, but no longer counts; no longer claims to stand for any ideology. The gold alone is left—and is more plentiful in Germany, today, than the world imagines. It can also be found among the few—very few—foreign National Socialists who have remained faithful to Adolf Hitler and his ideals after Germany’s defeat; among such men as Sven Hedin and a handful of others, less well-known, of different nationalities.
1 Hjalmar Schacht, Abrechnung mit Hitler [Settling Accounts with Hitler] (Berlin: Michaelis, 1948)—Ed.
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