The Struggle with the Red Front

The Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red FrontThe Struggle with the Red Front

In 1919-20 and also in 1921 I personally attended bourgeois meetings They always made the same impression on me as in my youth the prescribed spoonful of cod-liver oil You've got to take it, and it's supposed to be very good, but it tastes terrible If the German people were tied together with cords and pulled forcibly into these bourgeois 'demonstrations,' and the doors were locked till the end of the performance and no one allowed to leave, it might lead to success in a few centuries Of course, I must frankly admit that in this case I should probably lose all interest in life and would rather not

be a German at all But since, thank the Lord, this cannot be done, we have no need to

be surprised that the healthy, unspoiled people avoid 'bourgeois mass meetings' as the devil holy water

I came to know them, these prophets of a bourgeois philosophy, and I am really not surprised I understand why they attribute no importance to the spoken word In those days I attended meetings of the Democrats, the German Nationalists, the

German People's Party, and also the Bavarian People's Party (Bavarian Center) What struck you at once was the homogeneous solidity of the audience It was almost

always solely party members that took part in one of these rallies The whole thing was without any discipline more like a yawning bridge club than a meeting of the people which had just been through their greatest revolution

The speakers did everything they could to preserve this peaceful mood They spoke, or rather, as a rule, they read speeches in the style of a witty newspaper article

or of a scientific treatise, avoided all strong words, and here and there threw in some feeble professorial joke, at which the honorable committee dutifully began to laugh; though not loudly, provocatively, but in a dignified, subdued, reserved fashion

And what a committee!

Once I saw a meeting in the Wagner-Saal in Munich it was a demonstration on the occasion of the anniversary of the Battle of Nations at Leipzig The speech was

delivered or read by a dignified old gentleman, a professor at some university On the platform sat the committee To the left a monocle, to the right a monocle, and in

between one without a monocle All three in frock coats, so that you got the

impression either of a court of justice planning an execution or of a solemn baptism,

in any case more of a religious solemnity The so-called speech, which might have cut

a perfectly good figure in print, was simply terrible in its effect After only three

quarters of an hour the whole meeting was dozing along in a state of trance, which was interrupted only by the departure of individual men and women, the clattering of the waitresses, and the yawning of more and more numerous listeners Three workers, who, either from curiosity or because they had been commissioned to attend, were present at the meeting, and behind whom I posted myself, looked at each other from time to time with ill-concealed grins, and finally nudged one another, whereupon they very quietly left the hall You could see that they did not want to disturb the meeting at any price And in this company it was really not necessary Finally the meeting

seemed to be drawing to its end After the professor, whose voice had meanwhile

grown steadily softer and softer, had finished his lecture, the chairman of the meeting, sitting between the two monocle-bearers, arose and roared at the 'German sisters' and 'brothers' present how great his gratitude was and how great their feelings on this order must be for the unique lecture, as enjoyable as it was thorough and deeply

penetrating, which Professor X had given them, and which in the truest sense of the word was an 'inner experience,' in fact, an 'achievement.' It would be a profanation of this solemn hour to add a discussion to these lucid remarks; therefore, speaking for all those present, he would dispense with any such discussion and instead bid them all rise from their seats and join in the cry: 'We are a united people of brothers,' etc

Finally, to conclude the meeting he asked us all to sing the Deutschland song

And then they sang, and it seemed to me that even at the second verse the voices were becoming somewhat fewer and only swelled mightily at the refrain, and at the third verse this impression grew stronger, and I believed that not all of them could have been quite sure of the text

But what does this matter if such a song rings to the heavens in all fervor from the heart of a German National soul

Thereupon the meeting scattered; that is, everyone rushed to get out quickly, some

to their beer, others to a cafe, and still others into the fresh air

Yes, indeed, out into the fresh air, at all costs out That was my own one feeling, too And this was supposed to serve for the glorification of a heroic struggle on the part of hundreds of thousands of Prussians and Germans? Phooey, I say, and again phoney!

The government, of course, may like this kind of thing Naturally this is a

'peaceful' meeting The minister for law and order really has no need to fear that the waves of enthusiasm will suddenly burst the legal measure of bourgeois propriety; that suddenly in a frenzy of enthusiasm, the people will pour forth from the hall, not to hurry to a cafe or tavern, but to march through the streets of the city in rows of four with measured tread, singing 'Deutschland hoch in Ehren,' thus creating

unpleasantness for a police force in need of rest

No, with such citizens they can be well pleased

By contrast, it must be admitted, the National Socialist meetings were not ' 'peaceful.' There the waves of two outlooks dashed, and they did not end with the insipid rattling off of some patriotic song, but with a fanatical outburst of folkish and national

passion

From the very beginning it was important to introduce blind discipline in our meetings and absolutely to guarantee the authority of the committee in charge For what we said in our speeches was not the feeble bilge of a bourgeois 'speaker,' but in content and form was always suited to provoke a reply from our opponents And

opponents there were in our meetings! How often they came in dense crowds,

individual agitators among them, and all their faces reflecting the conviction: Today we'll make an end of you!

How often, indeed, they were led in, literally in columns, our Red friends, with exact orders, poured into them in advance, to smash up the whole show tonight and put an end to the whole business And how often it was touch and go, and only the ruthless energy of our people in charge and the brutal activism of our guards was able again and again to thwart the enemy's purpose

And they had every reason to feel provoked

The red color of our posters in itself drew them to our meeting halls The run-of-the-mill bourgeoisie were horrified that we had seized upon the red of the Bolsheviks, and they regarded this as all very ambiguous The German national souls kept

privately whispering to each other the suspicion that basically we were nothing but a species of Marxism, perhaps Marxists, or rather, socialists in disguise For to this very day these scatterbrains have not understood the difference between socialism and Marxism Especially when they discovered that, as a matter of principle, we greeted in our meetings no 'ladies and gentlemen' but only 'national comrades,' and among

ourselves spoke only of party comrades, the Marxist spook seemed demonstrated for many of our enemies How often we shook with laughter at these simple bourgeois scare-cats, at the sight of their ingenious witty guessing games about our origin, our intentions, and our goal

We chose the red color of our posters after careful and thorough reflection, in order to provoke the Left, to drive them to indignation and lead them to attend our meetings if only to break them up, in order to have some chance to speak to the

people

It was really a treat in those years to follow the perplexity and helplessness of our adversaries in their perpetually vacillating tactics First they called on their adherents

to take no notice of us and to avoid our meetings

And on the whole this advice was followed

But since in the course of time individuals came notwithstanding, and this number slowly but steadily increased and the impression made by our doctrine was obvious, the leaders gradually became nervous and uneasy and became obsessed with the

conviction that they must not forever stand idly by and watch this development, but must put an end to it by terror

Thereupon came appeals to the 'class-conscious proletarians' to attend our

meetings in masses and strike the representatives of 'monarchistic, reactionary

agitation' with the fists of the proletariat

All at once our meetings were filled with workers, three quarters of an hour in advance They were like a powder barrel that could blow up at any moment, with a burning fuse already under it But it always turned out differently The people came in

as our enemies, and when they left, if they were not our supporters, at least they had

grown thoughtful, indeed critical; they had begun to examine the soundness of their own doctrine But gradually it transpired that after my speech lasting three hours adherents and adversaries fused into a single enthusiastic mass Then any signal to smash up the meeting was in vain Then the leaders really began to be afraid, and they turned back to those who had previously come out against this tactic and who now, with a certain semblance of justification, emphasized their opinion that the only

correct method was to forbid the workers to attend our meeting on principle

Then they stopped coming, or at least there were fewer of

them But after a short while the whole game began again from the beginning The prohibition was not observed; more and more of the comrades came, and again the adherents of the radical tactic were victorious Our meetings must be broken

up, they decided

Then, after two, three, or often eight and ten meetings it turned out that to break up the meetings was easier said than done; and the result of every single meeting was a crumbling away of the Red fighting troops Suddenly the other watchword was back again: 'Proletarians, comrades! Avoid the meetings of the National Socialist agitators! ' And the same, eternally vacillating tactic was found in the Red press Sometimes they tried to kill us by silence, then becoming convinced of the uselessness of this effort and again trying the contrary Every day we were 'mentioned' somewhere,

usually with the intent of making the absolute absurdity of our whole existence clear

to the workers But after a certain time the gentlemen could not help but feel that not only did this do us no harm, but on the contrary benefited us, since naturally many individuals could not help but ask themselves why so many words were devoted to this phenomenon if it was absurd The people became curious Then there was a

sudden shift, and they began for a time to treat us as humanity's biggest criminals Article upon article, in which our criminality was explained and proved again and again, and scandalous stories, even if pulled out of the air from A to Z were expected

to do the rest But after a short time they seem to have convinced themselves of the inefficacy of these attacks; essentially all this only helped really to concentrate the general attention upon us

At that time I adopted the standpoint: It makes no difference whatever whether they laugh at us or revile us, whether they represent us as clowns or criminals; the main thing is that they mention us, that they concern themselves with us again and again, and that we gradually in the eyes of the workers themselves appear to be the only power that anyone reckons with at the moment What we really are and what we really want, we will show the wolves of the Jewish press when the time comes One more reason why, as a rule, our meetings were not directly broken up in those days was the absolutely incredible cowardice of the leaders of our adversaries In all critical cases they sent little rank-and-filers ahead, at most waiting outside for the results of the disturbances

We were almost always very well informed with regard to the intentions of these gentry Not only because, for reasons of expediency, we had left many party comrades within the Red formations, but because the Red wirepullers themselves were afflicted with a talkativeness which in this case was very useful to us, and which,

unfortunately, is very frequently found among the German people in general They couldn't keep it to themselves when they had hatched out such a plan, and as a rule they began to cackle even before the egg was laid And so, many and many a time, we had made the most comprehensive preparations and the Red shock troops hadn't so much as a suspicion how close they were to being thrown out

The times compelled us to take the defense of our meetings into our own hands; one can never count on protection on the part of the authorities; on the contrary,

experience shows that it always and exclusively benefits the disturbers For the sole actual result of intervention by the authorities-that is, the police-was at best to

dissolve, in other words, to close the meeting And that was the sole aim and purpose

of the hostile disturbers

In this connection the police has developed a practice which represents the most monstrous form of injustice that can be conceived of If through some sort of threats it becomes known to the authorities that there is danger of a meeting being broken up, they do not arrest the threateners, but forbid the others, the innocent, to hold the

meeting, and what is more, the run-of-the-mill police mind is mighty proud of such wisdom They call this a 'precautionary measure for the prevention of an illegal act.' Thus, the determined gangster is always in a position to make political activity and efforts impossible for decent people In the name of law and order, the state authority gives in to the gangster and requests the others please not to provoke him And so if National Socialists wanted to hold meetings in certain places and the unions declared that this would lead to resistance on the part of their members, the police, you may rest assured, did not put these blackmailing scoundrels behind the bars, but forbade our meeting Yes, these organs of the law even had the incredible shamelessness to inform us of this innumerable times in writing

If we wanted to defend ourselves against such eventualities, we had, therefore, to make sure that any attempt at a disturbance was forestalled 1 in the bud

In this connection the following had also to be considered: Any meeting which is protected exclusively by the police discredits its organizers in the eyes of the broad masses Meetings which are guaranteed only by the presence of a large police force do not attract support, since the presupposition for winning the lower strata of a people is always a strength that is visibly present

Just as a courageous man can more easily conquer women's hearts than a coward,

a heroic movement will sooner win the heart of a people than a cowardly one which is kept alive only by police protection

Especially for this last reason, the young party had to make sure of defending its own existence, of protecting itself and of breaking the enemy terror with its own hands

The protection of meetings was based:

(1) On an energetic and psychologically sound conduct of the meeting.2

If we National Socialists held a meeting in those days, we were its masters and no one else And every minute, uninterruptedly, we sharply emphasized this master right Our opponents knew perfectly well that anyone creating a provocation would be mercilessly thrown out, even if we were only a dozen among half a thousand

1 'schon in Keim unmöglich gemacht Garde.'

2 In the first edition this series concludes abortively with No

1 The second edition inserts: '(2) On an organized monlior

troop.'

In the meetings of those days, especially outside of Munich, there would be five, six, seven, and eight hundred adversaries to fifteen or sixteen National Socialists But nevertheless we tolerated no provocation, and those who attended our meetings knew full well that we would rather have let ourselves be beaten to death than capitulate And it happened more than once that a handful of party comrades heroically fought their way to victory against a roaring, flailing Red majority

In such cases these fifteen or twenty men would in the end have assuredly been overcome But the others knew that previously at least twice or three times as many of them would have had their skulls bashed in, and this they did not gladly risk

Here we tried to learn from the study of Marxist and bourgeois meeting technique, and learn we did

The Marxists had always had a blind discipline, so that the idea of breaking up a Marxist meeting, by the bourgeoisie at least, could not even arise But the Reds busied themselves all the more with such intentions Gradually they had not only achieved a certain virtuosity in this field, but ultimately in large sections of the Reich they went

so far as to designate a non-Marxist meeting as such as a provocation of the

proletariat; especially when the wirepullers sensed that the meeting might draw up the catalogue of their own sins and unmask the treachery with which they deceived and lied to the people Then, as soon as such a meeting was announced, the whole Red press raised a furious outcry, and these men who in principle despised the law were not seldom the first to turn to the authorities, with the urgent and threatening request that this 'provocation of the proletariat' be prohibited at once, 'in order to prevent worse things from happening.' They chose their language and achieved their success according to the dimensions of the official bonehead But if, in an exceptional case, there was a real German official in such a post, not an official toady, and he rejected the shameless imposition, there followed the well-known summons not to suffer such

a 'provocation of the proletariat,' but on such and such a date to attend the meeting en

masse, and 'put a stop to the disgraceful activity of the bourgeois creatures, with the horny fist of the proletariat.'

You need to have seen such a bourgeois meeting, you need to have seen its leaders

in all their miserable fear! Often, upon such threats, a meeting was simply called off And always the fear was so great that instead of eight o'clock the meeting was seldom opened before a quarter to nine or nine o'clock The chairman then endeavored, with twenty-nine compliments, to make it clear to the 'gentlemen of the opposition' present, how pleased he and all the others present were at heart (a plain lie!) with the visit of men who did not yet stand on the same ground, because after all only mutual

discussion (to which he thereby most solemnly consented in advance) could bring them closer, arouse mutual understanding, and throw a bridge between them And in passing he gave assurance that it was by no means the purpose of the meeting to turn people away from their previous views No, indeed, let each man be happy in his own fashion, but let him not interfere with the happiness of others; and so he requested the audience to let the speaker complete his remarks, which would not be very long

anyway, so that this meeting should not present to the world the shameful spectacle of German brothers quarreling among themselves Brrr!

But the brethren on the Left usually had no understanding for this; no, before the speaker had even begun, he had to pack up his things amid the wildest abuse; and not seldom you got the impression that he was thankful to Fate for quickly cutting off the painful procedure Amid a monstrous tumult such bourgeois meeting-hall toreadors left the arena, except when they flew down the steps with gashed heads, which was actually often the case

And so, you may be sure, it was something new to the Marxists when we National Socialists organized our first meetings, and especially how we organized them They came in convinced that, of course, they would be able to repeat on us the little game they had so often played 'Today we'll finish you off!' How many a one boastfully shouted this sentence to another on entering our meeting, only to find himself outside the hall in the twinkling of an eye, even before he could shout his second interruption

In the first place, the committee in charge was different with us No one begged the audience graciously to permit our speech, nor was everyone guaranteed unlimited time for discussion; it was simply stated that we were the masters of the meeting, that

in consequence we had the privilege of the house, and that anyone who should dare to utter so much as a single cry of interruption would be mercilessly thrown out where

he came from Thai, furthermore, we must reject any responsibility for such a fellow;

if there was time left and it suited us, we would permit a discussion to take place, if not, there would be none, and the speaker, Party Comrade So-and-So, had the floor This in itself filled them with amazement

In the second place, we disposed of a rigidly organized house guard In the

bourgeois parties this house guard, or rather monitor service, usually consisted of gentlemen who believed that the dignity of their years gave them a certain claim to

authority and respect But since the Marxist-incited masses did not have the least regard for age, authority, and respect, the existence of this bourgeois house guard was for practical purposes nullified, so to speak

At the very beginning of our big meetings, I began the organization of a house guard in the form of a monitor service, which as a matter of principle included only young fellows These were in part comrades whom I knew from military service; others were newly won party comrades who from the very outset were instructed and trained in the viewpoint that terror can only be broken by terror; that on this earth success has always gone to the courageous, determined man; that we are fighting for a mighty idea, so great and noble that it well deserves to be guarded and protected with the last drop of blood They were imbued with the doctrine that, as long as reason was silent and violence had the last word, the best weapon of defense lay in attack; and that our monitor troop must be preceded by the reputation of not being a debating dub, but a combat group determined to go to any length

And how this youth had longed for such a slogan!

How disillusioned and outraged was this front-line generation, how full of disgust and revulsion at bourgeois cowardice and shilly-shallying!

Thus, it became fully clear that the revolution had been possible thanks only to the disastrous bourgeois leadership of our people The fists to protect the German people would have been available even then, but the heads to play the game were lacking How many a time the eyes of my lads glittered when I explained to them the necessity

of their mission and assured them over and over again that all the wisdom on this earth remains without success if force does not enter into its service, guarding it and protecting it; that the gentle Goddess of Peace can walk only by the side of the God of War; and that every great deed of this peace requires the protection and aid of force How muck more vividly the idea of military service now dawned on them! Not in the calcified sense of old, ossified officials serving the dead authority of a dead state, but

in the living consciousness of the duty to fight for the existence of our people as a whole by sacrificing the life of the individual, always and forever, at all times and places

And how these lads did fight!

Like a swarm of hornets they swooped down on the disturbers of our meetings, without regard for their superior power, no matter how great it might be, without regard for wounds and bloody victims, filled entirely with the one great thought of creating a free path for the holy mission of our movement

As early as midsummer, 1920 the organization of the monitor troop gradually assumed definite forms, and in the spring of 1921 little by little divided into hundreds, which themselves in turn were split up into groups

And this was urgency necessary, for in the meanwhile our public meeting activity had steadily increased Even now, to be sure, we still often met in the Festsaal of the

Munich Hofbräuhaus, but even more often in the larger halls of the city The Festsaal

of the Bürgerbräu and the Münchener Kindl-Keller saw mightier and mightier mass meetings in the fall and winter of 1920-21, and the picture was always the same: rallies of the NSDAP even then usually had to be closed by the police even before beginning, because of overcrowding

The organization of our monitor troop clarified a very important question Up till then the movement possessed no party insignia and no party flag The absence of such symbols not only had momentary disadvantages, but was intolerable for the future The disadvantages consisted above all in the fact that the party comrades lacked any outward sign of their common bond, while it was unbearable for the future to dispense with a sign which possessed the character of a symbol of the movement and could as such be opposed to the International

What importance must be attributed to such a symbol from the psychological point

of view I had even in my youth more than one occasion to recognize and also

emotionally to understand Then, after the War, I experienced a mass demonstration of the Marxists in front of the Royal Palace and the Lustgarten A sea of red flags, red scarves, and red flowers gave to this demonstration, in which an estimated hundred and twenty thousand persons took part, an aspect that was gigantic from the purely external point of view I myself could feel and understand how easily the man of the people succumbs to the suggestive magic of a spectacle so grandiose in effect

The bourgeoisie, which in its party politics neither represents nor advocates any outlook at all, had therefore no flag of its own They consisted of 'patriots' and

therefore ran around in the colors of the Reich If these had been the symbol of a definite philosophy, it would have been understandable that the owners of the state viewed its flag as the representative of its philosophy, since the symbol of their

philosophy had become the flag of the state and the Reich through their own activity But this was not the case

The Reich had been formed without any move on the part of the German

bourgeoisie, and the flag itself had been born from the womb of war Hence it was really nothing but a state flag and possessed no meaning of any sort in the sense of a special philosophical mission

Only in one spot of the German language area was anything like a bourgeois party flag in existence - in German Austria By choosing the colors of 1848, black, red, and gold, for its party symbol, a part of the national bourgeoisie in that country had

created a symbol, which, though without any meaning in a philosophical sense,

nevertheless had a revolutionary character, politically speaking The sharpest enemies

of this black, red, and gold flag were then - and today this should not be forgotten- the Social Democrats and the Christian Social Party, or Clericals It was precisely they who in those days reviled, befouled, and soiled these colors, just as later, in 1918, they

dragged the black, white, and red into the gutter At all events, the black, red, and gold

of the German parties of old Austria were the colors of 1848; that is, of a time which may have been fantastic, but which was represented by the most honorable individual German souls, though the Jew stood in the background as the invisible wirepuller Therefore, it was high treason and the shameless selling-out of the German people and German treasure which made these flags so agreeable to the Marxists and the Center that today they honor them as their most sacred possession and create organizations of their own for the protection of the flag they once spat upon

And so, up to 1920, Marxism was actually confronted by no flag which

philosophically would have represented its polar opposite For even if the best parties

of the German bourgeoisie after 1918 would no longer consent to take over the

suddenly discovered black, red, and gold flag as their own symbol, they themselves had no program of their own for the future to oppose to the new development; at best they had the idea of a reconstruction of the past Reich

And it is to this idea that black, white, and red banner of the old Reich owes its resurrection as the flag of our so-called national bourgeois parties

It is obvious that the symbol of a state of affairs, which could be overcome by Marxism under conditions and attendant circumstances that were anything but

glorious, is ill-suited for a symbol under which to annihilate this same Marxism

Sacred and beloved as these old and uniquely beautiful colors, in their fresh, youthful combination, must be to every decent German who has fought under them and beheld the sacrifice of so many, the flag is worthless as a symbol for a struggle for the future Unlike the bourgeois politicians, I have, in our movement, always upheld the standpoint that it is a true good fortune for the German nation to have lost the old flag What the Republic does beneath its flag, can remain indifferent to us But from the bottom of our hearts we should thank Fate for having been gracious enough to

preserve the most glorious war flag of all times from being used as a bedsheet for the most shameful prostitution The present-day Reich, which sells itself and its citizens, must never be permitted to fly the black, white, and red flag of honor and heroes

As long as the November disgrace endures, let it bear its own outer covering and not try to steal this like everything else from a more honorable past Let our bourgeois politicians remind their conscience that anyone who desires the black, white, and red flag for this state is burglarizing our past Truly, the former flag was suited only to the former Reich, just as, God be praised and thanked, the Republic chose the one suited

to it

This was also the reason why we National Socialists could have seen no

expressive symbol of our own activity in hoisting the old Bag For we do not desire to awaken from death the old Reich that perished through its own errors, but to build a new state

The movement which today fights Marxism with this aim must therefore bear the symbol of the new state in its very flag