Jozef Gebbels - The "Nazi-Sozi": Questions and Answers for National-Socialists

1. Germany is your Fatherland; love it above all, and more in deeds than in words.

2. Germanys enemies are your enemies; hate them with all your heart.

3. Every national comrade, even the lowliest, is part of Germany; love him as you love yourself.

4. Demand only duties for yourself; then Germany will also regain rights and privileges.

5. Be proud of Germany; you have a right to take pride in a Fatherland for which millions gave their lives.

6. He who abuses Germany abuses you and your deceased; repay him with your fists!

7. Repay like with like and then some. If you are denied your just rights, remember: you can secure them again only through your own political movement.

8. Do not be a hooligan anti-Semite but beware of the Berliner Tageblatt!

9. Live your life in such a way that one day you will not need to stand ashamed before a new Germany.

10. Have faith in the future; only thus will you win it.

No, no! Keep away from me with politics. Thats nothing more than swindle and deception anyhow. After the Revolution it was still possible to ensnare foolish people with all these empty phrases, but those times are over. I no longer believe in any of that stuff. I do my work and pay no attention to politics any more. And thats all there is to it!

Forgive my saying so, but then our mutual enemy by whatever name you want to call him: Capitalism, the Jews, Parliament Democracy or Marxism has achieved what he wanted!

Why? I dont understand.

He has ensured that the German people are not interested in politics. They can slave away and work their fingers to the bone and the Jews make their politics for them.

Youre relentless. But I ask you: whom can I trust in this day and age? Name just one party, of the left or the right, that hasnt stuffed us full of empty phrases and promises ever since 1918, and name one that ever had even the slightest intention of fulfilling even a fraction of those promises.

Youre right. All the parties have lied to and cheated the people. Not a one was honest and even tried to put into practice what they promised us in theory. They only knew their people at election time. But do Germanys political parties, and the disappointment at their betrayals, need to be synonymous with despair of our future? If the parties are no good, then lets leave the parties and go against them!

Oh no! Its too late for that now. We no longer have the courage, the faith or the determination to proclaim a new Germanys will to live not under the conditions we are faced with today.

You would do well to say I, not we. We have the courage, the faith and the determination to do it. And you? How do you imagine the future?

There is one factor in which I still see a spark of hope. Our economy. I believe that the indestructible industriousness of the German people will triumph in the end. Work and the economy are what decides our fate. We must work more and do less talking!

Very good! I suggest that you go to our 3 million unemployed and preach to them, like some voice crying in the wilderness: We must work more and do less talking! Maybe then someone will show you the folly of your platitudes a bit more clearly than I can and want to right now.

The economy is what decides our fate! Walther Rathenau said the same thing when he made the first large-scale attempts to fit the German production process into the international syndicate concept of American high finance. You believe in the economy. But what is the economy, if not a national life factor in direct interaction with politics? Name just one people in all of history that established or even maintained a productive economy without having a healthy, purposeful political system! And vice versa, name just one people with a clear and instinctively confident system of politics which did not find a way. by means of these politics, to establish an economy that assured the continued existence of the people!

Your opinion is utter nonsense, of a kind such as only mercenary Jewish scoundrels or notoriously bourgeois Germans could possibly suggest. Not the economy is the fate of a people politics are! Healthy politics create the necessary economy. A healthy economy without the firm foundation of a strong political system is completely unthinkable.

In such a case, however, politics are something quite different from that which todays so-called German states-men practice.

Politics may be defined as responsible activity in the service of the people, with the goal of creating for these people such conditions as enable them to preserve and defend their existence in this our harsh world, to multiply, and to ensure liberty and a living for themselves and their descendants.

And that is the political idea you want to practice with your movement? With greenhorns who have barely got a whiff of real life? With riots and insurrections? With street-fighting and the intimidation of anyone who thinks differently than you? With this unscrupulous fight against the State and its natural foundations?

Yes indeed! We want to practice these politics because no-one else does. Neither the experienced, mature leaders of the people, who cant complain enough about us greenhorns today, nor the well-bred bourgeois forces of education and the intelligentsia, nor the timid, sickly-pale stay-at-home would-be politicians! Neither the State nor those who make the politics of the State.

But you must permit me some minor corrections: if we practice our politics with the greenhorns youth, German youth is what we call them among ourselves then we do so in the proud and happy awareness that Germanys youth has found the path leading out of the poison of our present times and to a new Germany. Whether or not this youth has got little more than a whiff of life is of no matter to us. Certainly, youve seen much of life: but you havent a clue about politics. I know 18-year-old lads in our SA who could put you to shame at every turn. Our politics are not based on riots, but where riots are necessary, we are not so cowardly as to avoid them. The average citizen scolds against the riots until he is hoarse, perhaps because no-one bothers to riot for his nation any more. And we resort to intimidation wherever we ourselves meet up with it. In that case we dont run for the police like the veterans associations and rifle clubs, and we dont huddle behind the curtains trembling in fear like cowards, waiting submissively for whatever fate has decreed for us. Instead, we go out into the streets and meet intimidation head-on. And that is when we turn the theoretical concept of opposition to the middle-class one-class State into practice!

That means that youve become a party supporting the class struggle! You called yourself the Workers Party! That was the first step. You called yourself Socialist. That was the second. Now youre talking about a middle-class one-class State. Thats the third and last step.

Is there even anything left now to set you apart from Marxism?

Really, theres nothing more hypocritical than a well-fed citizen protesting against the working class idea of class struggle.

You made it through the winter all snug and comfortable. Your very person is provocative of class struggle. What gives you the right to puff yourself up, all swelled with the pride of national responsibility, against the struggle of the working class? For almost 60 years, has the middle-class State really been anything other than an organized one-class State which, out of compelling historical necessity, itself gave rise to the working class concept of class struggle? Didnt you pay the price of this one-class State on November 9, 1918? And arent you at this very moment busily exploiting the peoples despair of the insanity of Marxism in order to re-establish the same old reactionary middle-class nonsense as before?