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INTRODUCTION


There is one thing that many Germans (and practically all non-Germans) seem to forget, when venturing forecasts about the evolution of the West, and that is the fact that National Socialism is infinitely more than a mere political creed; the fact that it is a way of life; a faith, in the fullest sense of the word — one could say a religion, however different it may, at first sight, appear, from every existing system thus labelled in current speech. Religions are not as easy to uproot as mere political creeds. And a religion that expresses, both in collective — in “political” — and in individual life (in life as an organic whole) the lasting aspirations of the noblest section of mankind, can never be uprooted. That is what we, National Socialists, intend to prove, in the long run. That is what we are already proving by our day to day stand — our silent, but inexorable refusal to deny our scale of values — after these eight long years of trial.1 And this story of my visit to several places connected with the birth, growth and persecution of our Movement, and these episodes of my life in Germany (after my return there in spite of the decree of expulsion issued against me by the Occupation Authorities) merely stress once more, as glaringly as ever, that nothing can “de-Nazify” us. While the apparently strange title I have given this book — “Pilgrimage” — illustrates, as accurately as human speech possibly can, my attitude towards Germany, my spiritual home.

“Adolf Hitler has raised Germany to the status of a holy Land in the eyes of every worthy Aryan of the world.” I have written these words in other books of mine. And they were not, — and they are not — a metaphor, but the very expression of the truth as I feel it in the depth of my heart. And I have visited these places forever famous: Linz, Leonding, Braunan am Inn, Berchtesgaden, Obersalzberg, Munich, Landsberg am Lech, Nuremberg (to mention only the main ones) neither on account of their natural beauty, nor for the sake of


1 These lines were written in 1953.

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their importance in the eyes of the student of history, but in a pious mood — as real Christians visit Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem; as true Mohammedans go to Mecca and to Medina from the ends of the earth. I have visited them solely because they are, to me, — to us — sacred places; spots of holy Land, inseparable from the early history of that modern form of the perennial Religion of Life: the Hitler Faith; my faith; — our faith.

* * *

Such an attitude to a system that has played — and that is (I hope) again to play, — a very definite part in the political life of the West, needs a few words of explanation. It is surely not the attitude of the world at large, to our creed. It is, nay, — unfortunately, — anything but the attitude of all Germans. Still, it is that of a conscious and active, and particularly intelligent minority of German National Socialists, of whom I have the honour of knowing several personally. And I can honestly feel no difference whatsoever between their approach and mine to our common faith in the Swastika and in the Greater German Reich. And, to the extent they know me, I do not believe that they feel any such difference either.

Loyalty to Adolf Hitler, alive forever; loyalty to Aryan blood; loyalty to Greater Germany as to the natural Leader of all people of Aryan blood, binds me to them, and them to me, above ever-changing manmade frontiers.

Certain people outside our Movement insist, however, that there must be an irreducible difference between our attitudes: a difference due to the fact that I am not a German. That fact — which I have so spontaneously forgotten, both in the pride of the great days and (perhaps even more) in the mental agony which I have lived in and after 1945, and in the constant service of the great Reich of our common dreams, — can possibly stand in my way in connection with material advantages in a future National Socialist Germany. It could not, — and it can never — prevent me from linking my destiny to that of future Germany, in the name of my pan-Aryan faith, regardless of all imaginable administrative hindrances. While limiting my “rights” during the short span of years I yet have to tread this earth, — while making me a second class,

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or perhaps even a third class citizen in the glorious new world for the establishment of which I have striven all my life, — it has forced me to live and to fight with greater detachment, greater selflessness, remembering that I had — and have — nothing to expect, and that I did, and do, not count. It has forced me to live and fight with impersonal enthusiasm, exclusively for the eternal goal of our Movement: not for the “happiness” of any individual; not for the salvation of the Individual, but for the strengthening, defence and expansion of the godlike élite of mankind, here and now, and forever, feeling that this lofty goal is mine in spite of all; mine, as much as any German’s; mine, because I want it to be attained at any cost; mine, because I love Germany, my Führer’s beloved country and the first Aryan Nation wide-awake in our times.

* * *

“Loyalty to Adolf Hitler, alive forever; loyalty to Aryan blood, and to Greater Germany as to the natural Leader of all people of Aryan blood,” that is, I repeat, the substance of National Socialism — our faith. It is, no doubt, an essentially German faith, and an essentially earthly one, too, — a faith that has nothing to do with those metaphysical problems that worry people for whom our living world is not sufficient. It is, however, a faith that transcends Germany, and this earth itself, and our times, as I once declared before the Military Tribunal in Düsseldorf, and already in Cologne, before those who first cross-examined me after my arrest in 1949.

We National Socialists have no opinion about and no interest in questions that cannot be answered with absolute certainty and which have, moreover, no bearing upon our lives. We speak only of that which we know. We worship that which we can see and feel — or at least, that of which we can see and feel the day to day expression. We do not know whether we can expect or not, after death, any sort of conscious, personal immortality (any sort of immortality of the kind so many people crave for). But we do know that those who have children of the same blood as themselves live in their children. And we believe in the immortality of those races that keep their blood pure, conscious of the Godhead

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that lies within them. We believe in the immortality of our own Aryan race as it has survived in its purest representatives, in Germany in particular and in the North of Europe at large, and wherever else in the world it has retained both its physical and moral characteristics. And we do know, also, that those who leave useful or beautiful works live in their works. We believe in impersonal, selfless immortality through creative work — in the immortality of the anonymous artist who chiseled a perfect detail in the decoration of a building; in that of the anonymous labourer who helped to pave a road; of the man who planted a tree or composed a popular tune; and especially of all those who lived and fought and suffered to enable Germany to bring about the materialisation of Adolf Hitler’s programme; of all those who, now, in absolute effacement, are keeping our faith alive within their hearts, thus enabling it to reassert itself, one day, at the first opportunity. That immortality, — of which we are sure, — is sufficient for us.

We do not know whether there exists such a thing as a God endowed with personality. But we do know that life exists. And we do know that Order, and Rhythm, which is the essence of Order, are inherent in Life. And we find Order and Rhythm essentially beautiful. And we worship Life on account of that inherent beauty of Order and Rhythm, which displays itself in the Laws of Life. We worship Life with its inexorable Laws, expressions of inner Order; with its inexorable Rhythm of birth and death, creation and destruction, love and hate — its everlasting interaction of opposites; its everlasting, merciless, sinless, impersonal Struggle, which is also Order. We accept the fact that we are part and parcel of the Cosmic Dance, instruments of its rhythm. We accept the Law of Struggle, which is inseparable from existence in Time; we say “yes” to Life, because we are healthy beings, well-adapted to our destiny as creators and fighters; because we like the everlasting Struggle — and would, doubtless, find the world boring, without it. Our God is Life Itself — Life as it emerges, purified and strengthened, again and again, out of the everlasting Struggle against the forces of disintegration.

We love all forms of life . . . in their place. But our own eyes, our own experience compel us to assert that there exists nothing higher, nothing more valuable on earth, than the natural

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aristocracy of the Aryan race, which is, at the same time, the natural aristocracy of mankind. We do not hate the men who stand in the way of the free development of that élite, but we fight them, with merciless detachment, and we destroy them — when we can, — with all the thoroughness of our hearts, as the enemies of higher Creation — our natural opponents in the Cosmic Play of Forces.

That is our creed — philosophically speaking. It is a cosmic creed, with its roots in this earth.

* * *

But that is not all.

One cannot say that representatives of the God-ordained aristocracy of mankind are to be found in Germany alone. Sven Hedin, Knut Hamsun, Vidkun Quisling, were not Germans, and yet, who would deny them a place in the very first ranks of the Aryan élite? Members of that natural élite are to be found in all lands — including Persia and India, — where there are be it a few racially conscious men and women of unmixed Aryan blood.

Yet, it is a fact that, among all nations of Aryan blood, Germany alone has made herself, in our times, the champion of those everlasting Aryan values for which we stand; the promoter of that joyous and merciless faith in health and physical perfection as well, as in manly ideals, in opposition to the sickly philosophy, centred around the so-called “dignity” of fallen mankind, which is the gift of the Jew to the Western world. It is a fact that, whether in Hermann, who cut the Roman legions to pieces, or in Wittukind and his Saxons, defenders of Germanic Heathendom against the Christian faith, or in her great Emperors of the Middle Ages, in constant conflict with the popes; or in the kings and statesmen of Prussia, with their one-pointed organising genius and political insight, put to the service of a unified Reich; or in thinkers such as Fichte, Nietzsche, or, nearer to us, Friedrich Lange,1 and, always and everywhere, in her people, with their


1 The leader of the “Deutsches Bund” whose Manifesto, issued in Heidelberg on the 9th of May 1894, could be signed by any true National Socialist.

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invincible will to live, Germany has been, throughout her history, the healthy force in the West, — the force that has, stubbornly, stood against all forms of internationalism, whether political, religious or philosophical; against all forces of decadence, whether imperial Rome (no longer an Aryan power in the days of Augustus) or Christianity, that oldest and most successful invention of the Jew to emasculate the Aryan race, or the French Revolution, that grand-scale achievement of Freemasonry, or Napoleon, (that warlord whose dream was to unite all Europe, not under the rule of the best, in the name of any higher wisdom, but simply under the government of a large Corsican family, in the name of his personal ambition.)

It is a fact that the interest of the German Reich is, — and, which is more, always was, — the interest of Western Aryandom, and that, in particular, every Aryan who, during the Second World War, fought of his own free will against Germany, is a traitor to his own race. For the Second World War was not a war between rival States, but a war between incompatible faiths, — between the age-old Aryan scale of values and the Judeo-Christian one; both a religious and a racial war.

And it is also a fact that there is no hope for Western Aryandom save in the resurrection of the German Reich in Adolf Hitler’s spirit (if not under his personal leadership, if he still be alive) and in the unification of Europe — first step towards the unification of the Aryan race as a whole — under Germany’s leadership, according to National Socialist principles.

It matters little to what extent the “rights” of the non-German Aryans will be taken into consideration in that future West, — nay, in that future world, — for the establishment of which we are struggling. We are not struggling so that a few men and women, relatively better than most non-German Aryans inasmuch as they remained faithful to Adolf Hitler and to Germany in defeat, might acquire definite advantages after Germany’s revenge. We are struggling unconditionally for the coming of that revenge — for the resurrection and domination of Greater National Socialist Germany, — because we ardently believe in the justice of the German Cause; because we find it right that the Nation who staked her all, and underwent the actual experience of mass-martyrdom and death for

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the defence of the Aryan race at large and of the true Aryan ideals, should rise and take the lead of that race, and impose those ideals upon future generations forevermore. I at least am struggling unconditionally for that impersonal goal, whatever be my official nationality.

I am struggling for that goal because I believe in the new Mythos of Salvation, which the heavenly Powers are slowly and patiently evolving out of the unprecedented sufferings of the privileged Nation: the Mythos upon which, one day, — I hope, — the new faith of Europe will be founded; the Mythos of world-redemption (in the natural, earthly sense of the word) through the voluntary sacrifice and martyrdom of the German people during these last ten years (and who knows how many years more?).

For the first time in the history of religions, the perennial Saviour Who comes again, age after age, “to reinstall the reign of Righteousness,”1 has offered not only Himself but His beloved people in sacrifice, for the fulfillment of the highest purpose of Creation: the survival of superior mankind.

And for the first time also, salvation is looked upon not as an escape from this earthly life, but as its full realisation in health, strength and beauty; in visible, godlike perfection. For the first time salvation means achievement of perfection on the physical plane and then, through the development of the natural capacities and virtues of the race, on other planes also; attainment of supermanhood deeply rooted in the earth — faithful both to this earth and to the Sun, Principle of earthly life and power. And the privileged Nation — Germany — conscious of her mission as ever before; purified in spirit through these long years of persecution, is to teach the racial élite of the world (her blood-brothers, and also her noblest allies of other races) the message of the Doctrine of Life in health and joy and honour; the Law of blood-purity; the duty of obedience to that immanent Godhead — Life-Energy — which abides in the Sun and in living Nature and in us, and which “has put every man in his place” and “divided the foreign peoples from one another.”2


1 The Bhagawad-Gita, IV, verse 8.
2 Longer Hymn to the Sun, composed by Akhnaton, King of Egypt, early 14th century B.C.

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And just as all India reveres to this day the descendants of the Aryan invaders of old — the Brahmins — as “gods on earth”1) so will the Aryan world as a whole, one day, — we hope — revere the pure-blooded descendants of the modern Germans: the children of those millions who, along with Adolf Hitler and for the love of Him, laid down, in our times, the foundations of the new civilisation of the West, and who suffered and died for Aryandom to flourish.

* * *

And thus, through Adolf Hitler, — the first Man to integrate traditional Pan-Germanism into a deeper, worldwide Pan-Aryanism, — the perennial Religion of Light and Life and of superior mankind as the culmination of Life’s creative effort upon this planet, has found its expression in the cult of Germany.

This explains and justifies, as I have already said, the title of this book. This explains and justifies also my whole attitude to my German comrades and superiors, with whom I have identified myself in this struggle for the resurrection of the Greater German Reich. This foreshadows also — I hope, — the feelings of those racially-conscious Aryans of the future who will come to this Land as to a place of pilgrimage — the Holy Land of the West, — in the same spirit as myself, while continuing to work for the strengthening and expansion of that Greater Reich of our dreams which, in my own very words, “has no boundaries.”2 This foreshadows the slow but steady formation of a true brotherhood of Aryan blood and of Nietzschean faith, forever loyal to its natural leaders: Nietzsche’s countrymen and disciples; Adolf Hitler’s everlasting people.

Heil Hitler!


Emsdetten in Westfalen (Germany)
3 June 1953


1 Bhudêva (in Sanskrit).
2 “Defiance,” p. 578.