National Socialism and Animal Rights

Posted by Bogumil

“Cruelty against animals will and must disappear…” Hermann Göring’s polemical attack against vivisection, and the full text of the Reich Animal Welfare Act of 1933

There is an interesting segment in Rudolf Jung’s 1922 treatise on National Socialist ideology, in the chapter titled “The Tasks of Municipal Policy,” where the author suggests various grass-roots reforms which the National Socialist movement should pursue. Included among the predictable suggestions for improved housing, sanitation, road repair, social measures, etc., is a section on “Animal Welfare” in which Jung posits that “animal welfare is also human welfare” since “animal abusers above all have a predisposition towards criminality.” The inclusion of animal welfare among core policy demands is curious but does not derive from any idiosyncrasy on Jung’s part, being a consequence instead of the fact that some of National Socialism’s ideological roots lay within the racial völkisch movement, which itself had evolved out of the ‘life-reform movement’ (Lebensreformbewegung) of the late 19th century – a very loose collection of social-reformist groups whose disparate adherents had advocated a wide variety of often-faddish causes (temperance, athletics, nudism, vegetarianism, homeopathy, paganism, communal living, astrology, land reform, animal rights, etc.) as a means of improving the German people’s quality-of-life. National Socialism inherited from the völkisch and life-reform movements a utopian reverence for the natural world, a powerful suspicion of urbanization, and the ‘progressive’ view that man was an animal like any other – a “domesticated animal,” to be sure, but still an animal. The combination of these perspectives led to a general rejection of the Christian teaching that man possessed a higher status than animals; for National Socialists, it was the acceptance of such a notion which had helped alienate man from his natural surroundings, opening the door to highly destructive forces (capitalism, materialism, unchecked industrialization and urbanization) and to the development of a harmful moral code entirely divorced from the Natural Order that guided all other living things. As a result it was man’s duty to protect and to respect animals wherever he could, a principle which the NSDAP rather strikingly put into practice after achieving power in 1933 by making Germany one of the first nations in the world to introduce comprehensive national legislation protecting animals from abuse and regulating their general treatment. Translated below are two examples of this somewhat neglected aspect of National Socialist ideology. The first is a transcript of Hermann Göring’s famous radio broadcast of August 1933, in which Göring outlines in detail the NS movement’s vehement opposition to vivisection (experimentation on living animals) and the measures the Hitler government proposed to take against it. The second is the complete text of the Reichstierschutzgesetz (Reich Animal Protection Act) of November 1933, which sets out the government’s provisions for the treatment of animals and the punishments to be dispensed towards those who abuse them.

The Struggle against Vivisection
Hermann Göring
Radio broadcast speech of 28th August, 1933.

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“To equate the animal with an inanimate object and to grant the owner absolute right of disposal over it is not in accordance with German sensibilities; above all it it not in accordance with the National Socialist worldview as the intellectual outlook of the German people.”

Folk-comrades! Since the day on which I first issued my decree against the cruelty to animals that is vivisection, I have received a flood of telegrams and letters expressing great delight and the most spirited approval for the fact that aggressive steps have finally been taken to combat this abuse against animals.¹ My decree striking so suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, may have come as something of a surprise. The struggle against vivisection has been going on for years. Much has been said and quarreled about it, in both scientific and unscientific forms, but nothing has yet been done. From day one the National Socialist government was clear that energetic measures had to be taken against it, yet that it would take months before such a law, with all of its preparation, could be passed.

In order to prevent the torture of animals from spreading any further during this period of preparation, I have now intervened with this decree and have exercised my vested right to impose protective custody in a concentration camp upon those who still believe that they can treat animals as inanimate commodities.

The German Volk have always had a particular affection for animals, and have always treated the issue of animal welfare with special attention. They have always regarded animals as God’s creatures, especially those which for thousands of years have been their companions at home and on the farm, yes, in some respects one could say their coworkers and – one need only consider horses here – their comrades-in-arms. Animals, for the German people, are not only living beings in the organic sense, but creatures that lead their own emotional lives, that feel pain and show joy, loyalty, and devotion. It would never have been in accordance with our national sentiment to equate the animal with an inanimate, lifeless, and unfeeling thing, to regard the animal merely as an insentient and soulless object of exploitation, as an implement of labor that can perhaps be utilized for reasons of utility, and that can also be tormented or destroyed on the same utilitarian grounds. The fables and legends of the Aryan peoples, particularly those of the German Volk, demonstrate this spirit of solidarity shown by Aryan man. Continue reading →

Woman in the National Socialist State

Posted by Bogumil

NSDAP activist Dr. Sofia Rabe’s 1932 pamphlet on German women and their rights and responsibilities under National Socialism

A common criticism levelled against National Socialism during the interwar years was that the NS movement’s outlook on women tended to be somewhat backward, and therefore potentially harmful to its political success. A frequent enough accusation was that National Socialism was intent on transforming women into “breeding machines,” docile house-slaves whose sole purpose in life would be to deferentially serve their husbands while pumping out an ever-growing flock of Aryan children. In light of some of the attitudes expressed by male party members at times, this charge is perhaps somewhat understandable; a 1926 letter-writer to the Völkischer Beobachter, for example, once argued that, “It is further asserted that man wants to reduce women to a ‘breeding machine’…. Nature has given this role in its wisdom and for the good of humanity to women… It is therefore the absolute duty to her race of every normal woman to give birth to seven, but at least six, children…” Yet this particular perspective did not really reflect the reality of movement life for most National Socialists. In Austria and the Sudetenland, women National Socialists had been actively involved in party and electoral work since before the War, and the 1918 Vienna Programme had explicitly advocated “legal and political equality for women.” Even in Germany proper, where movement culture tended to be somewhat more conservative and much more overtly militant and masculine, women were actively involved in street politics: handing out leaflets, pasting up posters, attending rallies, providing first aid, hiding weapons, acting as SA ‘scouts’. The NSDAP was a broad church on many issues, including the topic of women’s rights, and while the polar extremes were represented by the radical “NS feminists” on one side and retrograde advocates of “breeding machines” on the other, the majority within the party tended towards the view that women deserved some level of agency as individuals, even if motherhood was still undeniably accepted as being their primary, intrinsic duty towards their Volk. Clarifying the party’s stance on this subject became especially important in the early 1930s, when electoral victory seemed much more attainable; women constituted a hugely important voting bloc, and tended on the whole to lean towards conservative and nationalist parties. The pamphlet translated below, written by NS-Frauenschaft member Dr. Sofia Rabe and produced by the NSDAP’s central publishing house, is an example of some of the intellectual work the party directed at women in this period. It constitutes an attempt by the author to combat negative perceptions of the National Socialist stance on women and to set against it a view of women’s emancipation in which women are to be emancipated from the workforce, not from men – while still ultimately retaining their right to independent work and education under National Socialism, if that is where their strengths lead them.

Woman in the National Socialist State
Dr. Sofia Rabe, 1932

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All other parties have repeatedly reproached female National Socialists [Nationalsozialistinnen] for failing to take a clear stance on the role which they would have to fulfill within the NSDAP: that they would simply become slaves to an ideology which is rooted in blind faith in a leader. These issues have been raised again and yet again, along with the assertion that the influx of women into National Socialism is based solely upon complete ignorance of the fate which would befall them within the Third Reich.

These allegations are expansive in number, though not in relevance nor in factual knowledge. Our opponents have written entire books about the position of women in National Socialism, all of which culminate in a single sentence: National Socialism wishes to degrade women into breeding machines, so that women in National Socialism will only have a biological function to fulfill.

At the same time, Adolf Hitler and [Alfred] Rosenberg have been quoted – in sentences taken completely out of context – and those quotations twisted and turned as needed and desired.

We women National Socialists have only one response to this: For us there is no Frauenfrage¹ along such lines, we know of only one goal: to serve our Volk and to aid in the great struggle for the liberation of Germany, and in so doing to integrate ourselves into the whole of the Volk as its welfare demands.

On one side we see that old (not in years) generation who like to regard everything today as being good and right; whose ideal exhausts itself in working for its own sake; who allow themselves in their inadequacy to be set upon the wrong path.

Opposite them we see the young generation who stand today within the ranks of the NSDAP. For them the misery of women is a part of that great misery of the German Volk, and can only be solved in conjunction with it. Continue reading →

Why the German Workers’ Party? What Does it Want?

Posted by Bogumil

The first propaganda pamphlet of the (National Socialist) German Workers’ Party, written by Anton Drexler in February 1920

General poverty was the main condition under which the Munich-based German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP) operated during its early months of existence. When Hitler first joined the DAP he was shocked to find (as he related in Mein Kampf) that the party had “nothing, no programme, no leaflet, no printed matter at all, no membership cards, not even a miserable rubber stamp, only obvious good faith and good intentions.” The organization’s entire treasury amounted to barely more than a small handful of marks, with the sum total of these funds kept by members within a cigar box. That the party managed to expand its membership throughout the second half of 1919 and to acquire some actual resources was largely the result of Hitler’s own drive and organization, particularly the pressure he placed upon the DAP’s leaders to undertake the risk of holding public meetings at which the party could raise funds by charging entrance fees. So successful was Hitler’s choice of strategy that, in late December 1919, the German Workers’ Party was able to afford to rent its first party office, a back room in the Sterneckerbräu tavern. Furthermore, the DAP was finally able to look towards diversifying its propaganda strategy by putting out printed material, something which had previously been beyond its means in light of the high cost of paper in Germany’s unstable, rationing-afflicted, post-War economy. February 1920 thus saw not only the appearance of the German Workers’ Party’s new party programme, but also the printing and distribution of its first-ever propaganda document, translated below. This four-page pamphlet was authored by Anton Drexler, then First Chairman of the party, and focused on outlining to readers the miserable conditions under which the new German Republic was supposedly laboring, with the blame for these afflictions laid by the author firmly at the feet of both the ‘false socialism’ of the Marxists and the financial rule of global (“Jewish”) capitalism. Naturally enough Drexler’s document depicts the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as being (in contrast to the Social-Democrats) the way back to prosperity, the only real guarantor of an “honest and true socialism” capable of genuinely saving the working-class and of restoring German greatness. As the first-ever propaganda work published by the DAP/NSDAP the document bears some notable historical significance, even if the style of its writing and presentation is a little prosaic in comparison with the more sophisticated material put out by the National Socialists in later years. Drexler’s authorship of the pamphlet is also somewhat curious in light of the fact that Hitler was the party’s Werbeobmann (propaganda chief) at this point. Possibly it was felt that the honor of producing such a publication should be reserved for the party’s original founder and current leader, even if Drexler’s talent for writing tended to be more workmanlike than gifted overall.

Why Did the German Workers’ Party Have to Come About?
What Does it Want?
Anton Drexler, February 1920

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The German Volk have suffered terribly as a consequence of World War, revolution, and fratricidal conflict. Those men who, after the storms of November, grandstanded under the finest promises as being the only people capable of saving Germany, have now governed us to death. All ties of order, justice, and custom have been broken. The freedom which was promised to us manifests itself instead in an unprecedented proliferation of common criminality, such as privileged usurers and the exploiters of our people [Volksausbeuter]. The old order collapsed – and now destruction grins, while no new life blossoms among the ruins! It must be stated clearly: “It was not a change of systems that occurred in the late autumn days of 1918, but rather the old system’s coronation. Before the German Revolution, the capitalist constitution ruled behind the scenes; with the Revolution it replaced every objectionable person with its cronies, and continued to misrule us until, through hardship, hunger, and misery, we became the willing slaves of world capitalism – whose representatives are also situated within Germany.”

1.35% foreign races = a 79% share in government.
98.67% ethnic Germans¹ = a 21% share in the government of their own native land.
These numbers say it all!

German industrial- and working-capital amounted to twelve billion [Marks]. Whereas loan- and stock-market-capital totaled 250 billion.

But only working-capital was combated, which – in the form of tools, machines, ships, and every kind of manufacturing equipment – was the working Volk’s meal ticket.

Loan-capital, on the other hand, which weighs down upon our own land and soil, upon our buildings, houses, and tenements, was not only not combated – it was actually promoted. The representatives and agents of capitalism set themselves at the head of the combat troops which they themselves had organized against capitalism, and they steered the struggle against the working-capital which stood in their way. The working Volk are bound up with working-capital for better or for worse, and this capital must – while preventing any exploitation of the labor force – be protected. Continue reading →

The Programme of the NSDAP

Posted by Bogumil

Content and context of the 1920 basic programme of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, drafted by Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler

So far, when transcribing or translating material for this blog, my general rule has been to try and focus on texts which aren’t otherwise widely-available or well-known, at least in English. Occasionally, however, there is a need to make exceptions. Over the past couple of years I have been involved in tracking down as many National Socialist political programmes as I can find – it has always interested me that National Socialism was in fact a fairly broad movement, with a number of National Socialist parties actually existing before or alongside the more well-known NSDAP. As a result I’ve made an effort of seeking out and translating the programmes of these various groups, with one of my goals for this blog being that it should serve as a repository for these programmes and manifestos as I come across them. In order for the blog to be as complete a repository as possible, however, this does require that I also host a document which it is otherwise very easy to find online already: the 25-point “basic programme” of the NSDAP. One detriment which I have discovered in the wide availability of the NSDAP party programme, at least, is that many of the available translations seem almost deliberately inaccurate. Point 17 of the programme in particular is frequently translated rather oddly, with the party’s call for the elimination of ground-rent (“Abschaffung des Bodenzinses,” lit. “abolition of land-interest”) often incorrectly rendered as a demand for a ban on “taxes on land.” Anybody who has read Rudolf Jung’s book on NS ideology, which covers the subject of ground-rent fairly extensively, would know that this was not what National Socialists meant when discussing its abolition – they were not calling for an end to taxation on land, but for the elimination of a particular form of unearned income (ground-rent is the rent payable on ‘raw land’ to landholders; National Socialists believed it should devolve to the community, since its value was driven by the community’s “collective work”). My hope is that my translation of the programme, on this point and on others, will at least help clear up some common misunderstandings and inaccuracies. Alongside it, and in order to make this update a little more interesting to those already familiar with the 25 Points, I have included a number of other short, related documents, namely a couple of articles and a letter from the period, as well as two short excerpts from National Socialist publications (one pro-Hitler, one anti-Hitler) from the 1930s, all of which discuss the programme to varying degrees and which should help provide a little historical flavor to how it was received within the movement initially and in retrospect a decade later.

Basic Programme of the National Socialist
German Workers’ Party

The German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP), after its founding on 5 January, 1919, was for many months a party without a programme. A set of ideological Guidelines had been drafted by Anton Drexler and read out at the DAP’s first meeting in the Fürstenfelder Hof, but this short document was regarded by early party members as inadequate, as a simple stopgap outline for the party pending the drafting of a proper, detailed programme. After Adolf Hitler joined the party in October his talents as a propagandist saw him swiftly inducted into the DAP’s leadership committee, and at a party meeting on 16 November the decision was made to set up a commission for drafting a proper programme in which Hitler (alongside Drexler, Karl Harrer, Gottfried Feder, and Dr. Paul Tafel) was to be involved. In actuality the programme which was eventually produced for the party appears to have largely been the work of Hitler and Drexler alone, composed by the two men over several “long nights together in the workers’ canteen at Burghausenerstrasse 6,” as Drexler recalled many years later. Feder is often suggested as a possible co-author, although there appears to be no direct evidence for this beyond the inclusion of some of his theories (of which Hitler and Drexler were already very familiar) within the document’s economic proposals. The new programme was first presented to the public on 24 February, 1920, at a tumultuous meeting of over 2,000 people at the Hofbräuhauskeller tavern in Munich. Hitler’s reading of the programme, point by point, above the yells and heckles of Communists and Social-Democrats dispersed among the crowd, was an event which acquired legendary status within the National Socialist movement over the following years. – Bogumil

The programme of the German Workers’ Party¹ is a programme of its time. Its leaders have no intention, once the aims laid out in the programme have been achieved, of drawing up new ones solely for the purpose of facilitating the continued existence of the party by artificially increasing the discontent of the masses.

1. We demand the union of all Germans, on the basis of the self-determination of peoples, within a Greater Germany.

2. We demand equal rights for the German Volk vis-à-vis other nations, and the revocation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.

3. We demand land and soil (colonies) in order to feed our people and to settle our surplus population.

4. Only he who is a folk-comrade can be a citizen of the state. Only those who are of German blood, regardless of creed, can be a folk-comrade. Accordingly, no Jew can be a folk-comrade.

5. Whoever is not a citizen shall only be able to live in Germany as a guest, and must be subject to legislation relating to foreigners.

6. The right to determine the leadership and laws of the state shall belong to citizens of the state alone. We demand therefore that every public office, no matter of what type, whether in Reich, province, or municipality, may only be held by citizens.

We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of filling posts solely according to party considerations and without consideration for character or ability. Continue reading →