The four castes were established by Me, by the different distribution of natural characteristics and capacities.
—Bhagavad-Gita1 [1]
When society reaches a stage where property confers rank, where wealth becomes the only source of virtue, passion the sole bond between man and wife, falsehood the source of success in life, sex the only means of enjoyment, and when outer trappings are confused with inner religion . . . then we are inthe Kali Yuga—the Dark Age.
—Vishnu Purana2 [2]
Es mag hier natürlich der eine oder andere lachen, allein dieser Planet zog schon Jahrmillionen durch den Äther ohne Menschen, und er kann einst wieder so dahinziehen, wenn die Menschen vergessen, daß sie ihr höheres Dasein nicht den Ideen einiger verrückter Ideologen, sondern der Erkenntnis und rücksichtslosen Anwendung eherner Naturgesetze verdanken.
—Adolf Hitler3 [3]
Given the poor quality—not to say the hopeless quality—of mankind taken en masse anywhere in the world in our epoch, there can be no doubt that if the main aim of propaganda is to win over the greatest possible number of people, irrespective of race, health, character, and intellectual capacity—irrespective of physical and mental worth—Communism has immense advantages over National Socialism, and far greater chances of immediate success.
First, it appeals to the most elementary, not to say elemental, aspiration of man: to the desire to “live well,” i.e., to live in comfort and plenty. “Workers of the world, unite!” say the Communists. Unite to what end? To wrest power from the hands of those who now exploit you, and to better your lot; to eat every day to satisfaction; to live in healthier conditions; to have an increasing share in that wealth which you have been producing, up till now, only for others to enjoy. And when you once have all that, what then? Then, you will “live”—eat, drink, and breed for your individual satisfaction and enjoyment. Individual enjoyment, provided it is not an obstacle to the next door neighbour’s equally legitimate pleasure, is the supreme aim, the great end of life, in this philosophy centred around man as an economic unit. The one thing that counts, in the eyes of the Communists, is neither country nor race but “mankind”—the sum total of all human individuals who, just because they are “human,” i.e., because they have two legs only and no tails, have “equal rights” and equal duties; the right to “enjoy”; the duty to work in order to earn that enjoyment. And the economic problem, on the solution to which depends, finally, the possibility of enjoyment for all individuals in the world, is the main, nay, the only problem, as well-being (material, or anyhow, always conditioned by material circumstances alone) is an end in itself.
It is so because man, in the light of the Communist Weltanschauung, is just a privileged animal—believers in a certain theory of biological progress say: the remote descendant of a monkey. (I would say—if I could, as the Communists do, consider the whole of mankind as one mass of interchangeable units—the degenerate descendant of the Gods, in the more or less rapid process of becoming a monkey.)
It seems strange, at first sight, that the upholders of such a philosophy put at least as much stress as the Christians upon the unbridgeable abyss between man—the one creature towards which we are supposed to have “duties”—and animal. The Communists, of course, do not attribute the difference to man’s immortal “soul” but rather to his capability for speech and to his “reason.” The fuss they can make over that precious “reason,” which so many Communist recruits from the inferior races (and often also, alas, from the superior ones) seem to lack so hopelessly, is indeed incredible.
But the more one thinks of it, the less this appears strange. Christianity, humanitarian Free Thought—that half-way reaction against Christianity, in other words, that decadent form of Christianity—which supply the philosophical basis of both modern Democracy and Communism, are essentially man-centred creeds. Islam is also. Obviously all creeds directly or indirectly derived from Judaism or from Judaic inspiration—and perhaps, also, most creeds of non-Aryan origin, even when they have no connection whatsoever with Judaism—are man-centred. It would be more difficult to tell for certain whether all life-centred creeds, ancient and modern, are of Aryan origin or, at least, ultimately traceable to Aryan inspiration. If one could prove that they are, one would thereby put forward the most eloquent of all arguments in favour of the inherent superiority of the Aryan race, that fundamental National Socialist dogma, debated and criticised with such bitterness everywhere outside our circles. Anyhow, many of the historic life-centred religions and philosophies, if not all, are most definitely of Aryan origin.4 [4]
The Jewish origin of Communism—Marxism—is no secret to anyone. One must therefore expect such a philosophy to be man-centred. The fact that it is, perhaps, more cynically so than any other—especially than the otherworldly creeds that stress so strongly the dignity of man’s “soul”—makes it all the more repellent in the eyes of the real artist, but all the more attractive to the human beasts, i.e., the majority of men.
The human beast—the human being of our times, in the process of becoming a beast—is only too glad to be told that his tendency to beastliness is natural and commendable, and that his superiority over other animals lies only in the fact that, through “reason,” he can enjoy the goods of the world better than they, and, in particular, exploit them (the beasts) better than any of them can the species on which it preys. The average man of the superior races feels it is generous of him to be a Communist. He might spontaneously believe in a duty of kindness towards all life, but his centuries of Christian upbringing are there to influence his subconscious mind and suggest to him that he surely “must” devote himself “first” to “all men.” The fellow from the inferior races is delighted to be offered an equalitarian, man-centred philosophy that gives him the illusion that nothing is above him, while the whole of subhuman living Nature lies under him, in his power, existing only for his needs and for his pleasure. By the way, man-centred philosophies always had more success in this world than life-centred ones. Inferior races who are taught to believe in life-centred religions never live up to them, as a rule. The treatment of animals—even of the cow—among the low castes of India, is a typical illustration of this fact. And the superior races themselves, I am sorry to say, have often given up life-centred religions for man-centred ones, as the wholesale conversion of Northern Europe to Christianity proves only too well.
The appeal of Communism, today, is, in many ways, similar to that of Christianity fifteen hundred years ago. Its reign will not last so long—fortunately—for we are now nearer to the end of the present historical Cycle, and both events and thought currents succeed one another more rapidly. Moreover, the form under which the eternal Religion of hierarchised life will finally reassert itself and win, namely National Socialism, is already in existence. Nevertheless, in the short period of trial and preparation in which we are living just now, Communism is bound to obtain a considerable amount of cheap success.
* * *
Another great point in favour of such immediate success is that Communist propaganda addresses itself not to an élite, but to all men of every race, of every civilisation, of every tradition, and especially to those who have reasons to feel themselves exploited and downtrodden, i.e., to the immense majority of mankind. Following the example of Christianity and Islam—the two great international religions of equality sprung from Judaism—and of the Democratic creed popularised by the French Revolution for “the liberation of all peoples,” Communism states that there are, between human beings, no natural, irreducible differences, due to blood, but only artificial differences due to environment and education—due, ultimately, to economic factors. In other words, our bitterest opponents believe that a young Negro, a young Chinese, a young Eskimo, and a young Jew, brought up together from early childhood in England or Germany, and educated in the same English or German schools and Universities, will have, in the same circumstances, practically the same reactions as any Englishman or German who received the same education. The apparently unlimited adaptability of quite a number of non-Aryan races to what is commonly termed “modern” life—i.e., to organised life, as evolved by the scientific genius of the European Aryan—is greatly responsible for the credit given to that absurd belief among thousands of people who should know better. How superficial, how purely external that adaptability is, nobody seems to care, either because people have lost the capacity of distinguishing between the essential and the secondary, or, rather because the external—the secondary—alone matters in their eyes; because they consider that to be the essential, reversing spontaneously, in their consciousness, the natural scale of values—another sign of universal decay in our times.
The most “adaptable” man—outwardly—whether in the West or in the East, is, naturally, the Jew. Whether in India or in Iceland, everywhere he goes, he wins the same praise for that extraordinary suppleness, from the population in the midst of whom he settles and thrives: “He is like one of us”—which means that, in Iceland, he eats Icelandic food and shows a taste for winter sports—and for Icelandic girls—while in India he manages to become the “pal” of the worst type of Indian—of the casteless product of uncritical “western” education—and pretends to relish everything Indian, from Sanskrit philosophy (the spirit of which he is the last person to be able to share, however much of a scholar he be) down to curry sauce and Indian sweets and gregarious life. In addition to that, he is a remarkable linguist. The result is, everywhere, the illusion that the Jew can become a native of the place where he chooses to live, and an outcry of horror at the assertion of the contrary by a handful of racially conscious, intelligent, and proud Aryans. The internationalist myth, and the legend of the “poor Jew,” go hand in hand with the belief in “man” as a mentally homogeneous species in which any unit contains the same possibilities as the other, whether Jew or Gentile, Negro, Chinese, Maltese, or Scotch, or pure German or Swede. Communism is based and thrives upon that lie. Nothing analogous could have thriven a few millenniums ago. Each race had, then, its pride; was conscious of its unique position in the broad scheme of creation, of its irreplaceable character. But now that two thousand years of Christianity—another Jewish product—have subtly but surely deprived most people of their sense of racial dignity in the name of an otherworldly ideal; and now that years of Democratic education have filled the simpletons with an unhealthy admiration for “intellect” and a no less unhealthy aspiration towards “individualism,” the world is ready for the next step: the universal levelling of mankind through mixture of blood on the largest possible scale, in the name of a philosophy that no longer crushes the body (as early Christianity did) but despises it; that looks upon it purely as an economic unit—a producer and consumer of food—and an instrument of personal enjoyment; that reduces it to something of lesser account than the animal body, in a way, for the Communists who proclaim that all men have equal possibilities and equal rights, and deny the natural hierarchy of races among human beings, will admit, on the other hand, without difficulty, that a thoroughbred Persian kitten, for instance, or a pedigree puppy, has a greater potentiality for beauty—greater inherent value—than an ordinary one and represents a natural feline or canine aristocracy.
But the natural human aristocracy is a small minority. And those of its members who are conscious of their value as representatives of a superior race are fewer still. The great majority of men and women—especially those of the inferior races—like a philosophy that denies racial aristocracy and reduces the exceptional individual (who can never be denied) to a product of purely economic factors coupled with the play of circumstances. They like it, because it flatters them. Because each human worm who accepts it is entitled to think himself the potential equal of anybody, and to say to himself: “If only circumstances had been a little different, who can tell what a great person I would have become?” The insignificant “I” of millions of nonentities at once looks less insignificant in the eyes of each one of them. A lovely theory! Not merely the economic salvation of all men, but the moral salvation of the worthless in their own estimation; an illusion of greatness appealing both to the stomachs and to the vanity of the subhuman masses—the proper Weltanschauung for inferior races. No wonder the inferior races rush to it like flies to honey—and, along with them, quite a number of kind-hearted “humanitarians,” and of uncritical victims of clever propaganda belonging to the superior races, unfortunately.
These would not be in such a hurry to respond to it, if they could fathom the grim reality that lies at the back of that resounding appeal “to all men”; at the back of that talk about freedom, about unhampered personal development, material welfare, “education,” and enjoyment. That grim reality, the workers of the Russian Zone of Germany—many of whom, in their Communist zeal, at first welcomed the Russians as “liberators”—will all tell you what it is: the worst type of servitude; compulsory work, without the redeeming satisfaction of feeling oneself useful to anything or anybody one loves; work for some distant, abstract, ever-grabbing foreign power; compulsory leisure, filled with standardised amusements; compulsory standardised “culture”; the lowering of the level of life, not only for the capitalist and the “bourgeois” or so-called such, but for those labourers themselves who happened to have tasted some kind of material civilisation; the creation of an artificial and detested equality between them and people who have always lacked the very elements of modern comfort. On the other hand, the death of all originality, of all creative thought.
The labourers and working women of the Russian Zone will tell you that the Russian invaders were dumbfounded at the sight of the “luxury” which the humblest mechanic enjoyed in National Socialist Germany. They had always been told that, outside the USSR, all was misery, hunger, oppression of the proletariat and so forth. When, even in her material collapse, Nazi Germany gave them a glaring proof that it was not so, they could not believe their own eyes. With childish naivety, they took all Germans for “capitalists.” The German labourers took them for savages, and their system for something hateful, the likes of which they could not have imagined in the most awful nightmare.
But, of course, the German labourers—and the English, and the Scandinavian, and the Dutch, and the French—are, numerically, a negligible minority in the wide world. The Communists, following the example of the Democratic parliamentarians, rely upon numbers to bring about their triumph. Minorities, however inherently valuable, do not count in their eyes when they are minorities of opposition. Numbers—our enemies hope—will soon crush them out of importance if not out of existence. The German labourers might grumble, or rather (for grumbling is forbidden in the Russian zone) feel indignant in their hearts, and curse Communism. But the Chinese coolie, the wretched Indian sweeper, the man who digs coal out of the mines of Giriya, the woman who collects cow dung in the streets of Calcutta and sells it a few annas a basket, for fuel; the labourer who toils in the tea plantations of Assam, in the rubber plantations of Malaya and Indochina, in the sugar plantations of Java; the docker and the rickshaw driver of Singapore, Saigon, and the ports of the Yellow Sea, all welcome—or will soon welcome—the message of Communism and its application as something wonderful. And who can blame them? Who, but a supremely intelligent and astonishingly well-informed person would not do so in their place?
And one must not forget that, wretched as they might seem, and worthless as they might be, taken individually, they are the majority; they are the “workers of the world” to whom the famous call for union is addressed; they are the “humanity” for whom Communism is preparing a better life. Our Weltanschauung of the natural élite, our message of pride and power, our dream of a godlike humanity, is not, and can never be, addressed to them. The Communist Manifesto is. The first, the sine qua non conditionto be a National Socialist, is to be an Aryan, and a healthy, intelligent, fully conscious one, in addition; a worthy specimen of higher humanity. The only condition one needs, in order to be a Communist, is to be a “human being”—a mammal walking on two legs, without a tail, capable of speech, and assumed to be “reasonable,” whether or not so in reality, it matters very little.
Now, two-legged mammals without anything to recommend them, outnumber pure-blooded Aryans, bodily and mentally worthy of the name of “human élite,” by a hundred to one. And even among the pure Aryans, those who are susceptible of being misled by “humanitarian” propaganda—because of centuries of Christianity, followed by a long Democratic education have killed in them all sense of racial pride—outnumber by far those who have retained the capacity to think for themselves, and to think as Aryans. Is it any wonder, if we were unable to get a permanent hold upon so-called “world-opinion,” quite apart from the disastrous effect of the calumnies which Jewish propaganda poured out against us under every possible form? And is it any wonder that the Russians won the war through Communism, and are now rising in power at the expense of their idiotic dupes, the degenerate Aryans of the West, already docile servants of the Jews for many decades?
Not only is this no wonder, but it is, as I have tried to point out in another book,5 [5] within the natural order of things.
One cannot understand the significance of the momentous events of our times, in particular of the temporary defeat and persecution of National Socialism, if one does not constantly bear in mind the fact that we have been, for the last six thousand years or so, living in the last of the four great periods into which the wise men of olden days agreed to divide every complete historical “Cycle,” i.e., every complete creation, or rather manifestation in time, from its beginning in perfection to its final dissolution. One cannot realise the meaning of contemporary happenings unless one realises also that we have now come to the last part of that last, shortest, and fiercest period in the natural development of our Cycle—to the end of what the Sanskrit Scriptures call the “Kali Yuga,” i.e., the Dark Age, and that there is no hope until this humanity, as we know it only too well, meets its doom in some final crash. Until then, man as a whole is bound to become more and more monkeyish, and to follow the latest suggestion of the death forces with increasing zeal. Communism is the most thorough, the most complete, the typical expression of man’s lure of disintegration; the most logical, the most extreme philosophy of death. Democracy, and older Christianity—of which, as I said, Democracy is only the decadent form—are also products of the death forces, but less cynical, and less masterful ones. The “Kali Yuga” was not yet so “advanced” when they were invented. There was place, in them, for some redeeming inconsistency. In the Medieval Christian Church, there was still place for racial pride (although this was, really, against the grain of the faith); and in modern Democratic civilisation one enjoyed, until 1939, the possibility of expressing, at least, one’s adhesion to the philosophy of natural values—the Philosophy of the Swastika—without running the risk of being imprisoned for it. That possibility still exists, to a very small extent, outside unfortunate occupied Germany. Though it is practically impossible to publish books, or to make public speeches in praise of the Nazi ideology, one can stand for it privately, to the knowledge of all one’s neighbours, even of those who are against it—the last shadow of freedom.
Under a Communist Government, even that shadow would vanish. It has vanished wherever the logical Weltanschauung of disintegration inspires the all-powerful ruling machinery. And this is natural; this is within the merciless logic of historical evolution. It cannot be otherwise. And it is also natural—and unavoidable—that a degenerate humanity such as the one we know should prefer the yoke of Communism to our call to real freedom. Being what it is, it is incapable of appreciating that which we understand by “freedom”—just as apes would be unable to appreciate the membership of a learned society, if such an honour were offered to them.
The Communists will win; must win—for the time being—whether by force of arms or through the effect of their propaganda, it makes little difference. This is also natural—unavoidable.
But this should not distress us. They—the exponents of the philosophy in accordance with the tendency of Time—will win, and pass: be annihilated by Time. We, the followers of Him Whom I called, in other writings of mine, “the Man against Time”6 [6]—the exponents of a Golden Age philosophy—will rise upon their ruins and rule, once more, a world, not of apes, but of regenerate, godlike men, Aryans in the full sense of the word.
* * *
For, if Communism has many advantages over National Socialism from the point of view of immediate success—if it centres its propaganda around man’s elemental needs and lusts; if it admits all men to its fellowship; if it uses deceit as its strongest weapon, giving people the illusion of freedom, while enslaving them more completely than any ancient absolutism has ever done—still it is doomed, in the long run. What is not founded in eternity is always doomed. And of all modern “isms,” alone our Hitler’s beautiful teaching—the Philosophy of the Swastika—is founded in eternity. It alone can stand the test of persecution and, which is more, the test of time.
It is, I repeat, a Golden Age philosophy in the midst of our age of gloom; the philosophy of those who stand heroically against the downward current of history—against Time—knowing that history, that moves in circles, will one day forward their lofty dreams; the philosophy of those few who, instead of allowing themselves to be drawn along by the general downward rush, forgetful of the hope of eternal Return, prefer to fight an impossible battle and to fall, if necessary, but to feel, when the new dawn comes, that they have called it, in a way, through the magic virtue of action for the beauty of action; who, if the dawn is not to shine in their lifetime, will still act against the growing tide of mediocrity and vulgarity, for the sole joy of fulfilling the inner law of an heroic nature.
The characteristics that appear, today, the most disadvantageous to our creed, from the standpoint of worldly success, are the very ones that justify its claim to be the latest expression of everlasting truth, and that will assure its triumph and domination, in the long run. First among these, is its Aryan exclusivity; its appeal to the best, to the élite of mankind alone—to which all its adherents belong by birthright—and, to the most generous, the most heroic, the most disinterested feelings in each one of its adherents, according to that principle of natural hierarchy, and therefore of discrimination, of natural privilege, upon which it is founded: the principle of Race and Personality.
It would be, no doubt, absurd to say that National Socialism does not appeal also to man’s legitimate aspiration to healthier as well as more pleasant material conditions of life. It does. It always did, from the beginning. The immediate solution which Hitler gave to the appalling unemployment problem that was threatening the whole economy of Germany in the 1920s and early ’30s, did, perhaps, more for the success of the Movement than anything else. And the material prosperity of Germany under Nazi rule, and the excellent social laws that were then promulgated and enforced (the laws for the welfare and education of children, for instance) are remembered to this day, in the martyred Land, like features of a lost paradise. “In Hitler’s days, we lived well.” “In Hitler’s days, we could have as many children as we liked: the State helped us to bring them up, or rather brought them up for us, and so beautifully!” “In Hitler’s days, food was cheap, and laws were wise, and well applied; there was plenty, then, and there was order. Those were splendid days.” “We never were so happy as under Adolf Hitler,” such talk one hears today everywhere, in every “Zone,” as soon as one enjoys the people’s confidence. And I am sorry to say that, from what I gather from their talk, there are quite a number of Germans for whom nostalgia for the National Socialist régime seems to be nothing else but the nostalgia for a period of material happiness—of cheap and good food, fine clothes, lovely lodgings, wealth and merriment. But such people are not—and never were—National Socialists. They are—and were already in the days they used to hail the Führer in the streets—but members of that immense animal-like majority of human beings who can, and do, “live on bread alone,” and who have no real allegiance to anybody or anything but their stomachs. They are not to be neglected, or despised. Many of them have been useful, and many more will again be so, when better times come back. The fact alone that they can breed healthy children of pure blood, capable of fighting for higher ideals, one day; the fact that they can themselves fight for that better mankind of which they represent the physical side, is a great point in their favour. But don’t call them National Socialists. They are not. The National Socialist ideology appeals, in man, to far more than such people contain in their mental and emotional makeup. It appeals to the finest elements of character: to absolute selflessness: to the thirst of sacrifice for something infinitely greater than one’s little individuality; to courage, fortitude; to uncompromising love of truth for truth’s own sake; to the love of better mankind—of the higher brotherhood of Aryan blood—for the sake of its inherent value, of its all-round beauty and endless possibilities. It appeals to intelligence—real intelligence; not the mere smearing of bookish information—to one’s capacity to think for one’s self and to draw one’s conclusions from the facts of life; to one’s capacity to read the meaning of the world in the unfolding of universal history, and to detect, in the tragedy of all past ages, the basic everlasting truths which Adolf Hitler proclaimed in our times. It appeals to one’s sense of beauty; to one’s aspiration towards that perfect comeliness and that integral truth which are one and the same, on all planes, and in all walks of life.
In other words, while any German could be a member of the NSDAP, and while any Aryan could, and can still, take pride in the National Socialist Weltanschauung as the natural creed of his race, only superior individuals of Aryan blood—men and women without blemish—can be real, full-fledged Nazis. Stupidity, shallowness, meanness, pusillanimity—weaknesses of any kind—are incompatible with our glorious faith.
I was once told that there are not more than two or three million absolutely reliable National Socialists in the whole of Germany. It may be that there are not more than ten thousand in the rest of Europe, and not more than two hundred among the non-German Aryans of the rest of the globe. But that fact—if it be a fact—will never induce us to lower the moral and physical standard up to which a person is to live, if he or she is to have the right to be called a National Socialist. For in this age of the exaltation of quantity, we are the only ones who consistently put forward the Golden Age ideal of quality before all. And to forsake that ideal, or even to compromise with the contrary current outlook on life, would be to deny ourselves, to deny our Movement, and the very mission of our godlike Führer.
Individual value—personality—is rare enough. But many people who do not possess it are pleased to believe that they do. And therefore a philosophy that would put stress on personality alone would not be thoroughly unpopular—on the contrary. But our creed puts emphasis upon blood also. It is, as I have said in the beginning of this book, the eternal creed of Life and Light, viewed in our modern world of technical achievements, from the standpoint of the Aryan race of which the Nordic or Germanic people are, today, the purest representatives. It is an essentially Nordic philosophy; there is no getting away from that fact. And it is that, more than anything else, which has made it so unpopular, not merely among a great number of non-Aryan Orientals, but also among many Europeans who, though untainted by any admixture of Jewish blood whatsoever, are obviously anything but pure “Nordics.” People, as a rule, resent being told—or given to understand—that they are by nature inferior to any privileged aliens. To a philosophy such as ours, they are bound to prefer Communism and its indiscriminate appeal to all men of all races. Every vain individual from any one of the numerous varieties of inferior mankind, feels that he (or she) can “get somewhere” with such a convenient Weltanschauung, while in a world dominated by us, he would always remain outside the privileged minority. “In his place,” we say. But one of the characteristics of the Dark Age—of our age of decay—is precisely that both worthless individuals and inferior races are less and less willing to remain “in their places”—and more and more indignant at the idea of being put back there by force. Consequently, the children of all the Untermenschen of the world, from the aborigines of Central Africa to those of the hills of Assam, to whom the Christian missionaries have taught the doctrine of the “equal dignity” of all human souls, the Latin alphabet, and discontent, are the first to jump at the new opportunity offered to them by the Communists. Communism appears to them—or will soon appear to them—as applied Christianity. And who can blame them? They are right. Christianity carried to its logical limits, under modern material conditions, can lead nowhere except to Communism. The Jewish doctrine of Marx is, at our stage of historical evolution, the prolongation of the doctrine of Jesus “son of David,” King of the Jews. True, the Kingdom of Jesus was “not on earth,” while the Communist paradise is (in theory at least). But that too is natural. For, as I said, history follows a downward evolution.
The truth is that vanity is the pet defect of nearly all men and women, while the capacity to face facts with detachment and to stand for truth even against one’s interest, is the privilege of an infinitesimal minority. In reality, National Socialism does address its message to all men—it would to all thinking creatures outside mankind, if there were any on our planet—for it is true. And truth is independent of the qualifications of whoever might grasp it. It is men’s personal or collective vanity that stands in the way of their proper appreciation of it. Their vanity, and their jealousy, too; that hatred of their betters that has also its origin in wounded vanity.
* * *
I have said: only an all-round superior individual of Aryan blood can be a real Nazi; and alone people of Aryan blood can look up to National Socialism as something theirs by birthright. But all thinking men and women can acknowledge the soundness of our principles; the eternity of that natural order in harmony with which our Führer has planned the socio-political structure of new Germany. Even a non-Aryan can admit it; and some do, if very few. But he would have to be not merely a fine individual of his race but an exceptional one, or, at least, a person brought up within the pale of a true tradition, entirely different from that which has imposed itself upon Europe, through Christian civilisation; a tradition based, precisely, upon our age-old principles of divinely ordained racial hierarchy.
A sincere National Socialist who is neither a German nor even a Northern European—a pure Aryan, say, from the Mediterranean shores, who readily admits that an unmixed Nordic type of man or woman is a finer specimen of the race than he himself and three quarters of his compatriots—is rare enough. For such an objective attitude implies more detachment than most people can afford. But a non-Aryan capable of admitting the biological truths laid down in Mein Kampf, knowing fully well that he (or she) can never expect even a second rate place amidst the natural élite of mankind, should be, in all probability, still more unusual. And yet such people can be found. I have recalled, in the beginning of this book, the story of that young Indian servant of the Maheshya caste of West Bengal who told me, in the second year of this war “Memsaheb, I too admire your Führer, not merely because he is triumphant but because he is struggling to replace, in the West, the Bible by the Bhagavad-Gita”—which was, of course, amazingly true if taken to mean: the spirit of the Judeo-Christian tradition by that of ancient wisdom, rooted in the idea of racial hierarchy.
“But,” said I to the boy, “you are not an Aryan; only Brahmins and Kshatriyas count as such among Hindus. What is that to you?”
And the illiterate village lad of Bengal answered: “Maybe I am not an Aryan, but I know my place. All souls are reborn into bodies at the level they deserve. That does not alter the fact that the Scriptures are true and that men are divided into different castes—different races—the first duty of each one of which is to keep its blood pure. If I do my duty faithfully now, in this life, maybe I shall one day be reborn among the high castes, provided I become worthy to be an Aryan.”
More than seven years later, in a luxurious restaurant in Stockholm, I met a pure Nordic woman—the finest type of Aryan, physically—who asked me, when she noticed the Wheel of the Sun—the sacred Sign of National Socialism—gleaming on each side of my face, “Why do you wear that ‘symbol of evil’? Those earrings of yours are ‘horrid.’” Immediately, I recalled the swarthy face of the lad of the Tropics, and his words—profession of faith of many primitive millions living for thousands of years under a social system based upon the self-same principles as National Socialism: “I am not an Aryan, but I know my place—and I know the truth; and I admire your Führer.” Never, perhaps, did I so bitterly hate that religion of equality, sprung from Judaism and first preached by Jews, that has, for so many generations, silenced the old pride of Nordic humanity. Never perhaps did I feel so keenly what a shame it is for Aryans—and especially, for those of pure Germanic stock—to deny their own God-ordained superiority, and renounce their privileges, while in caste–ridden India, millions of non-Aryans lucky enough to have escaped the influence both of Christianity and of democratic education, still believe in the natural hierarchy of races and look upon the Aryan as the lord of creation.
* * *
A racially hierarchised world in which every man would “know his place”—and, like the Indian lad, look up to the Man who, standing alone against the current of dissolution, proclaimed anew, in our times, the everlasting principles of the natural order—is not impossible. In fact, it is bound to come after the final period of chaos that will, one day, close this cycle; the period of chaos that it is the very business of Communism to bring about.
In such a world, every nation, whether Aryan or not, would be organised under a national State. Every race would have its pride and its sense of duty, and would avoid intermixture as the greatest source of physical and moral evil. The noblest non-Aryan races would be the allies of the Aryan, in view of the creation and maintenance of a world order inspired by a deep sense of obedience to the eternal decrees of Nature. The alliance of Germany and Japan, during this war, was a symbol foreshadowing such a collaboration in friendship and dignity, but necessary aloofness in the domain of breeding; a mutual understanding, a knowledge of each other’s culture, to the extent that is possible, without the slightest desire of ridiculous imitation on either side. The “internationalist” tendencies of our decadent age would be—will be one day—in a world evolved anew according to our principles, replaced by something which seems now entirely utopian—impossible—the mentality of the “nationalist of every land.”
I remember how I surprised the psychiatrist sent to examine me before my trial when, in answer to the question as to “why” I had thought it worthwhile to risk my freedom, if not my life, for a country that was “not mine,” I replied describing myself first as “an Aryan, grateful to Germany for having staked her all for the awakening of Aryan consciousness and pride in every worthy person of my race,” and then as “a nationalist of every land.” And yet, in this strange expression lies all the difference between the non-Russian Communist and the non-German National Socialist; the secret of the immediate success of Communism as opposed to the temporary failure—but to the triumph, in the long run—of National Socialism.
The German Nazi is a German patriot before all. The Russian Communist might be an “internationalist” but might also be—and, from reports from Soviet Russia, often is—a Russian patriot using the Communist ideology, so popular outside Russia, for the benefit of Russian imperialism; thinking, in a mistaken manner, that such an ideology can be used in such a spirit.
But the foreign Communist is preeminently an “internationalist”; a believer in “mankind” before nationhood, in mankind as a privileged species, united (at the cost of never mind what disgraceful blendings) in view of the ever-increasing exploitation of living Nature for the greatest enjoyment of the greatest number of human beings—which means, ultimately, the cheapest and coarsest enjoyment. While the foreign Nazi is either just an Aryan in whom the consciousness of race dominates and absorbs the narrower consciousness of fatherland or else—in the case of a minority within a minority—that, of course, and at the same time, a “nationalist of every land”; a person who, in a clear vision of world history, admires the working of those everlasting principles which Hitler has proclaimed over and over again; who, through his understanding of many cultures of different times, feels, with direct intuitive certitude, that man can reach his higher goal—which is to reflect the eternal, individually and collectively—only through oneness with his nation, i.e., with his race; that only by developing in himself the soul of his race can he expect to know and understand and love the soul of other races and, ultimately, the soul of multifarious, hierarchised mankind and of the whole scheme of life, ordinate in its various manifestations, one in its infinite diversity. He (or she) is also a person who looks up to Germany as to the Führer’s Land; the one Aryan Nation who bore witness to these truths in the midst of the hostile, decadent world of our age, at the cost of her very existence on the material plane. A person who, for that reason, would welcome German leadership as the expression of the divine right of these Aryans who proved themselves the worthiest.
Needless to say, there are many more non-Russian Communists than non-German Nazis, and there always will be until, out of the ruins of the present world order, the new Day dawns—“the Day for freedom and for bread,” to quote the words of the Horst Wessel Song, giving them a symbolic meaning; the Day both of material prosperity and healthy beauty, manly thought, and manly joy—true freedom within order—the Day of the rule of best, for the coming of which National Socialist Germany fought and died (in appearance), and will rise in glory from the dead.
Then, many will feel for Hitler’s beloved people the same admiration as I and a few other foreigners do now, in the darkest days of persecution.
* * *
But it is not only its aristocratic conception of life and racial exclusivity that make our Ideology unpopular. It is also our blunt frankness about our aims and objects—and methods; the fact that we never tried to conceal what we really wanted, nor what we are prepared to do (or have already done) in order to attain our ends in the shortest time possible.
National Socialism being, as I said before, a Golden Age philosophy, and this present-day humanity being at the last stage of its downward process towards degradation—in the gloomiest period of the Age of Gloom—it is clear that what we want is not what nearly all other people want.
What nearly all people want is a “secure” world—a world in which every one can pursue his petty pleasures in peace. What we want is, pre-eminently, a beautiful world. The two conceptions often clash. Let them clash. We do nothing to hide the fact that they are bound to clash as long as our contemporaries remain, physically and mentally, what we know them to be. We do nothing to win their sympathy and collaboration by telling them lies. In order to maintain such a co-operation, we would have to continue lying until, in the end, some of us might begin to lose sight of the glaring, uncompromising ideal of truth set before us. The collaboration of the submen is not worth our taking that risk. Moreover, we hate lies as a weapon—save when they are absolutely indispensable. We much prefer bare, brutal, force, the weapon of true warriors. When true warriors are temporarily exhausted, or wounded, or in chains, the only thing for them to do is not to try deceit, but to prepare themselves in silence to become strong once more—and to wait.
We never tried to hide or to excuse our ruthlessness, which is a consequence of our earnestness. On the contrary, we have always said we would stop at nothing in pursuit of the mission appointed to us by Nature, which is, to bear witness to our Golden Age truth against the spirit of these degenerate times. And we have proved it. We have done what we said. And we are ready to do it again.
People do not like that trait in us. They say we are “awful,” if not “odious.” The Communists are not “awful” because they never say what they wish to do, and never do what they say. Also because they never tell their opponents how much they hate them or despise them, before they have crushed them. They do not defy them before fighting them, as warriors have always done.
What they—or rather what the Jews who inspired their movement—want, and what most people want, is also not exactly the same thing. “Security,” yes; the Jews, and those Communists who serve Jewish interests without knowing it, and the average man in the street, all want that. But the man in the street wants it that he might enjoy his insignificant little life without worries; the Communist wants it as the supreme goal of a humanity for which the economic side of life is everything, because he loves such a humanity as it is, or—if he be a Russian Communist—perhaps because he fears the German National Socialists’ “Ostpolitik,” Germany’s natural expansion at his expense in the struggle for vital space. The Jew wants “security” so that, amidst docile, unthinking, and ever-content masses, he and his race might forever remain “at the top.” It is not at all the same thing. But it can be, and is, called by the same name, and presented in such a manner as to look the same thing.
In fact, the whole power technique both of the Communists and of the Democrats consists in making people feel “free” while prompting them, quietly, to behave like obedient puppets; in making them believe that they think for themselves and act according to the dictates of their own feelings, while, all the time, they only think and feel what the guiding force of the system suggests to them through the press, the radio, the films, and other channels, and act as it wants them to. The guiding force of the system is the unseen Jew.
I would say more: this is, under one form or another, the natural power technique of all Weltanschauungen of disintegration. It was, and still is, the secret of the hold of the Christian Churches upon people. For Christianity is also such a Weltanschauung. Like Communism, like Democracy, it is based upon lies and, what is more, upon Jewish lies. A notoriously anti-Nazi English authoress7 [7] once told me—before she knew who I was—about what she calls “the main lies of the Jews”: first, that they are the Chosen People; second, that the Bible is entirely theirs; third, that a man of their race is “the only Son of God.” The woman was clever enough to detect these impostures. But other Jewish lies had so thoroughly influenced her mind without her even suspecting them, that she was incapable of freeing herself from all the Christian and Democratic twaddle about the “dignity of all men” and so forth, and about the “horror” of brutal force (but of course, only when we use it). And she was violently against us.
Communism is only, perhaps, still a little more deceitful than the earlier philosophies of Jewish inspiration and that, even when it is no longer used by Jews but by Russian imperialists. Still then, its Jewish character sticks to it. It is the source of its strength, as opposed to our philosophy. Not only the man in the street, but the better type of foreign Communist will run forth to fight for hidden Russian imperialism as readily as others do for hidden Jewish capitalism—without knowing it. While the foreign Nazi who is prepared to fight and die for the Germans because they are Hitler’s compatriots and first collaborators, knows fully well what he (or she) is doing.
But, if it be an advantage now, from the standpoint of numbers, this deceit upon which Communist power is established will prove fatal to it in the long run and, perhaps, help to prepare the coming of our day. True, millions are ready to die for something which does not interest them at all, provided they do not know it, and remain convinced that they are dying for something else, which they do value. But, “one cannot deceive all people for all times”—not even great numbers of people for all times. A day is bound to come when they will find out that they are being tricked. Some seem to have found it out already, to a greater or lesser extent. There have been repeated “purges” in the Communist party, since Stalin has come to power and, curiously enough, an impressive proportion of the eliminated members were Jews—“Trotskyists,” putting stress upon “world revolution” rather than upon the immediate interests of the Soviet State. The Marxist principles are, doubtless, there still, rammed into everyone’s head. Principles are not so easily disposed of as people. Yet, there is a definite tendency, if not towards “Russian nationalism” in the sense that word might have had once, at least towards the systematic strengthening of that particular Euro-Asiatic Bloc (more Asiatic than European) that constitutes the Soviet Union—a tendency that might well, one day, end in a pan-Mongolian policy, to the disappointment of many simple Marxist “idealists” both of Aryan and of Jewish blood.
On the other hand, the nationalist attitude of certain German Communists is still more significant. It does not tally at all with their professed faith. As for the racial discriminations which, I am told, a few German “Communist” circles are beginning to admit today, well . . . what is Communism with racial discriminations amongst an overwhelmingly Aryan population, if not, as I remarked before, National Socialism in disguise? That hated National Socialism! Surely history—in all times but especially in ours—is “the greatest of ironists.”8 [8]
In the long run—and perhaps much sooner than we ourselves dare to believe—our consistent frankness will pay. Our Führer has once said: “One day the world will know that I was right.” And his words will receive in time a glaring confirmation, however widely unpopular we and our Weltanschauung might still be today.
* * *
One has always to come back to the cyclic theory of history for a satisfactory understanding of the momentous happenings of our epoch. I repeat—believing one can never put too much emphasis upon the fact—our outlook on life, our socio-political views, our conception of government are not “out of time,” but pre-eminently “against time,” which is quite different. However strange this might sound to those who judge it from a narrow, purely political angle, National Socialism is the everlasting Religion of Life—the unshakable truth about life which in a Golden Age would appear to everybody as evident as daylight—applied, on the material plane, at the very epoch which is the remotest from the Age of perfection: at the end of a great historical Cycle. It was bound to be misunderstood, hated, betrayed, reviled, rejected; in all appearance, to fail. And the age-old death tendency, the lust for disintegration inherent in all evolution in time, was bound to triumph today in Democracy; is bound to triumph, still more completely, tomorrow, in Communism, the logical and ruthless outcome of the Democratic principles in a technically advanced age; the system based upon the precedence of quantity over quality; upon economics at the expense of biology; upon the ideal of “man” as a producing machine for the greatest material benefit of the greatest number of worthless human units, as opposed to that of man as a warrior fighting to impose his faith in superhumanity upon the racial élite of mankind and the rule of that élite upon the world. The forces of disintegration were and are bound to win, I say. But only for the time being—only until this wretched humanity meets its unavoidable doom, and the new Day dawns.
For nothing can break the endless cycle of life and death, death and life: the law of everlasting Return, true on the socio-political plane as on all others. As surely as the Sun will rise tomorrow morning, National Socialism will come to power once more. As surely as spring will bring forth its green grass, its violets and its fruit blossoms and its tender blades of growing corn after the apparent death of Nature in winter, so will our ideal—of health, strength and beauty, of order and manly virtues—Adolf Hitler’s ideal—again inspire the natural aristocracy of the world. As surely as birth follows death in the everlasting cosmic Dance of destruction and creation, martyred Germany will rise once more from her ashes, and again take the lead of the Aryan race. United, in spite of all efforts to dismember her; fully aware of her value and of her divine mission; in possession of the strength of eternal youth—of that “will to power” that has characterised her people from the far-gone ice age to the present day—again she shall stand, and again she shall march, exultant, defiant, irresistible. And again the Horst Wessel Song, now forbidden in its very birthplace, shall resound along the great international highways, and in the streets of conquered capitals.
We who believe in Adolf Hitler and in his mission need fear nothing from a Communist victory in the coming titanic conflict between our persecutors of East and West. The technically undeveloped races of Asia and Africa might well find Communism wonderful for a change. But in a world dominated by Communism, the growing discontent of the people of Northern Europe and, in general, of all the technically more advanced and also more thinking nations of Aryan blood, would be enough to provoke, in our favour, such a reaction as no amount of coercion could halt. A complete Democratic victory, won without our help (supposing that it were possible) would be far worse: it would amount to a much more subtle and more demoralising enslavement. But the strength of Communism is so great in the world that even a dubious victory of the Democracies would be impossible without our collaboration. And our collaboration would mean the overthrow of the Democratic order immediately after the war—or perhaps before—and the reinstallation of our socio-political order, stronger than ever. In other words, in the near future, the Democracies will just have to choose between our iron rule and that of the Communists. And we will be the ultimate victors in any case; the victors in a ruined world, no doubt; the only men erect, and composed—nay, beaming with joy, after all our sufferings—amidst the remnants of a scattered and frightened pack of monkeys. But who cares? Triumph will be just as sweet, just as elating to us. For we count; not the monkeys. And Germany, once so prosperous, which they tore and smashed, could hardly be more ruined than she is already, whatever happens.
We will not try to “convert,” “reform,” “re-educate” the submen. Oh, no! Of that, their prototypes, our present-day persecutors, can remain quite sure. Remembering all we suffered since 1945 under the rule of our inferiors—the rule of deceit and slander, of threat and bribery—remembering the torture of our comrades in their concentration camps; the agony and death of the martyrs of Nuremberg, and the victims of a hundred other iniquitous “war crimes” trials; the martyrdom of all Germany; the mental agony of our beloved Führer who witnessed those horrid days, facing alone the frenzied hatred of the ungrateful world he had wanted to save, we shall just broadcast to the survivors of that world our supreme ultimatum: “Hitler, or hell!” and make it hell for all those who will still think themselves clever enough to resist us, openly or secretly. But not as long a hell as that which we endured, and are still enduring. For they will not have, to sustain them, a faith in their cause comparable with our faith in National Socialism. Nor such a horrible one either. For we shall afford the luxury of mercy, when we rule the earth: we will despatch the troublesome fools as quickly as possible.
And then, when the last opposition is broken—if there be any opposition; for all I know, after the Third World War there might not be any—then, I say, our era; the actual Golden Age of a new Cycle; a hierarchised world (in which every regenerate race and every animal species shall be healthy and happy and beautiful) governed by a minority of living Aryan gods, according to the everlasting Nazi principles. And our beloved Führer—whether in the flesh, as I dare hope, or in spirit only—Weltführer, even more completely and more lastingly than if, pushing through Russia and High Asia and further still at the head of the German Army in 1942, he had entered Delhi and received the sworn allegiance of East and West in the glittering marble hall in which once stood the famous Peacock Throne.
* * *
Is this a superb but insane dream? Many would think so, as they look around and behold the present-day wretchedness of the dismembered Land—the “Land of fear,” in which Adolf Hitler’s beloved name is uttered only in whispers. I would think so myself, if I did not firmly believe in the cyclic Law of Time, and if I were not convinced that the end of this degenerate humanity and the following new beginning are drawing nigh. The study of world history has more and more confirmed me in that belief. And that belief has helped me to bear the sight of the ruins of Germany without losing heart. “Mortar and stone,” as I said once, “it can all be rebuilt. As long as the Nazi spirit remains alive, nothing is lost.”
I have tried to keep that spirit alive against the dictates of our persecutors, in the name of the dictate of my heart, of the inner law of an unbending nature, and of the birthright of the superior races to thrive and to rule. In appearance, I failed—as we failed. All I have done is to win for me a sentence of three years’ imprisonment. But an all-powerful inner certitude tells me I have not failed (any more than we have); tells me that in three hundred years to come—perhaps much sooner—the whole of the Aryan world will look up to Adolf Hitler as I have done all my life, and render homage to this nation of his to whom I have come, in these atrocious times, to show a sign of love. I am, today, the first fruits of the love and reverence of future Aryandom for its Saviour; the first fruits of the world’s grateful tribute to National Socialist Germany.
Once, on one of the vine-clad hills that border the river Saar, I stood alone, my right arm outstretched, upon the ruins of a “bunker” blown up three years before by the invading Americans—the “crusaders to Europe,” champions of the Christian and Democratic values against National Socialist Heathendom, Aryan Heathendom. I stood, facing the east—facing Germany—and sang the immortal Song: “Standards high! Close the ranks! Storm Troopers, march with a calm and firm step! Comrades whom the Red Front and the Reaction have shot, march in spirit within our ranks!”
The Sun shed His rays upon me. And the joy of defiance shone in my face. Also, the joy of future triumph. The “crusaders” of the dark forces had blown up that “bunker” and hundreds of others; poured fire and brimstone over all Germany. But could they keep the martial words of the forbidden Song from resounding under the blue sky, over the sunlit landscape? Could they keep me—a non-German Aryan—from remaining faithful to Hitler’s Germany in her defeat and ruin and martyrdom? Could they suppress, one day, in the future, the allegiance of a better world to the Führer and to his ideals and to the people he loved so much—that allegiance which I foreshadowed and symbolised in my humble way?
The music of the Song poured out of me as a magic spell—as the death warrant of Germany’s persecutors in the name of the higher justice of future Aryan humanity.
The Aryan world’s future justice is that justice to which I appeal today, against the decrees of those who hate us. The Aryan world’s future allegiance to the Führer, is my life-long love, on a scale of millions of people, and for centuries—the greatest “German miracle.”
I might have failed, materially, and for the time being. But I am the first sign of that miracle, sent to Germany by the Gods, as a token of love; the promise of the endless admiration of the best, in near and distant times to come. In the midst of her temporary defeat and humiliation, I am Nazi Germany’s living, lasting victory.
In spite of all contrary appearances, we did not fail; we cannot fail. Truth never fails.
Heil Hitler!
(Finished in cell no. 49 of the Werl prison, on the 16th of July, 1949)