Paetel on the NSDAP and Red Revolution

Posted by Bogumil

Red Front, Brown Front: Karl Otto Paetel’s 1930 article on revolutionary political fronts and the NSDAP’s approach to a potential communist uprising

Three_Amigos The essay “Clear Fronts!” was written by social-nationalist intellectual Karl Otto Paetel in that brief 1929-30 period when he was organizer of the ‘Young Front Working Circle’, an informal pressure group whose guiding ideal was the promotion of stronger ties and closer cooperation between radical groups on the far-left and far-right. The bulk of the Young Front’s propaganda efforts were focused on the NSDAP, a party which Paetel and his associates viewed at the time as the most promising vehicle for the achievement of a revolution that would be both socialist and nationalist. While Paetel was never a member of the NSDAP, he nonetheless fostered close ties with it in this period – many of his friends were members of the Party’s radical Berlin-Brandenburg branch, and both the Young Front and its successor organization (the ‘Group of Social-Revolutionary Nationalists’, founded in May 1930) drew much of their membership from disaffected members of the NSDAP’s Strasser faction. Paetel’s relationship with the National Socialists was strong enough that he was a frequent contributor to Party publications despite his lack of membership, primarily to those published by the Strasser-owned Kampfverlag publishing house. The article reproduced below is a good example of this, as its original publication was in the Nationalsozialistiche Briefe, a Kampfverlag theoretical journal. While not technically an official Party publication (the Kampfverlag and its output were kept formally independent in order to distance their association with Hitler) the NS-Briefe was, alongside the official Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, the primary intellectual publication of the German National Socialist movement, and was fairly widely read by nationalist radicals. Paetel’s article calls on these readers not to “misrepresent” the Red ‘front’ and to recognize that the System, rather than the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), is the real enemy of the German Revolution. The author’s criticisms of the KPD and his apparent faith in the NSDAP were not to last. By the end of the year, disillusioned by the NSDAP’s ‘bourgeois’ drift and enthused by the KPD’s apparent ‘nationalist’ course, Paetel would switch his allegiance to the KPD and begin advocating a position more in line with that later expressed in his National Bolshevist Manifesto.

Clear Fronts!
By Karl Otto Paetel Symbol

First published in the Nationalsozialistische Briefe, vol. 18, 15 March 1930

Political coalitions or settlements can be the product of rational consideration or tactical measures, but they can also be provided by the political situation itself. Opinions on other political forces only have real value for a movement, one which somehow knows itself to be an exponent of a fundamental spiritual philosophy that is the feature of its time (for only in such movements can one think of being compelled to politics), if they are to a certain degree already in the air and represent the essential concretization of its ideal knowledge.

German Socialism is today faced with two such determinations. Domestically, it is faced with the issue: How should it conduct itself if one day the KPD’s subversive activity, which is ever more clearly being carried out in accordance with Moscow’s directives, attempts to foment “unrest” somewhere as the basis for a proletarian revolution, and the guardians¹ of Weimar call out for youth and guns to fight for “peace and order”, to face down “Bolshevism”, and thus to once again pull the chestnuts out of the fire under the black-white-red flags of the Weimar and Versailles dictatorship.

One should be adamantly clear about one thing: If social-revolutionary nationalism and its exponent to the masses, the NSDAP, follows these slogans, then it will have failed in its historical mission of reintegrating the displaced proles into the shared German destiny by ruthlessly implementing a socialist-corporatist system, based on the German nature, via the conflict of the class struggle of labor against international and anti-national capital. A false start in domestic policy in such a situation – an example being compliance under any circumstances with “peace-and-order” slogans – would instead imprint the mark of Cain once and for all upon German Socialists, marking them as the willing or gullible shield-bearers of that finance-capital which dominates the current system even in the judgement of the Democrat Haas,² and forever blocking that access to the productive proletariat which socialism demands. Continue reading →

SA and German Revolution

Posted by Bogumil

“A new Germany, reborn in a spiritual revolution of nationalist and socialist intent!” Ernst Röhm’s 1933 article on the SA’s role as vehicle for the ‘German Revolution’

The article by Ernst Röhm below was first published in the June 1933 edition of Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, a monthly political and cultural journal produced by the NSDAP for the purposes of advancing the theoretical foundations of the National Socialist movement. The article constitutes an interesting, early artifact of the tumultuous early period of 1933-34, when the government was still finding its footing and when the paramilitary SA was still an untethered, unpredictable force advocating for a ‘second revolution’. The months leading up to the article had been frequently punctuated by violence on the SA’s part, engendered partly by disillusionment over the lack of rapid economic reforms (many Stormtroopers were unemployed and hoped to receive official positions in nationalized, state-run enterprises) and suspicion that the revolution had been co-opted by the same bourgeois reactionaries the Party had always so vociferously fought against. It was not uncommon at the time for bored, disgruntled, and frequently drunk SA-men to take out their frustrations on the general public (particularly the bourgeoisie) or on members of the Stahlhelm and other still-legal nationalist paramilitaries. The massive influx of new members into the SA (the organization grew from 400,000 members in 1932 to at least 4million by 1934) also led to problems, with common criminals joining a Sturm to provide political cover for looting, burglary, and other crimes. Röhm tried to reign his men in when their behaviors became too indefensible, but he also sympathized with them, and at times helped fan the flames of dissatisfaction with speeches and articles like that below. Röhm, contemptuous of the Party’s political cadres and even more dismissive of the bourgeois civil service, saw the SA as the basis for Germany’s future government administration. Such a massive transformation would not be achieved if the German Revolution stabilized and petered out, if the Bildungsbürgertum in the political offices and economic institutions were not forcefully dislodged from their positions to make way for revolutionary new blood. Röhm’s radical position, and the fear it caused in the army that he was a destabilizing element and the catalyst for a potential civil war, would ultimately cost him his life.

SA and German Revolution
Ernst Röhm, SA Chief-of-Staff

First published in Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, vol. 4, no. 39, June 1933

A victory has been achieved by means of the German Revolution.

The swastika banner flutters upon every bastion of state power, over every place of work, and from every business office of the economy.

The organizational forms of Marxism in Germany have been smashed. The Festival of German Labour,¹ that day of mutual confession from the nation to the worker and from the worker to the nation, has sounded the death knell for the insanity of proletarian class-hatred. Adolf Hitler’s iron will has guided the thinking of the Volk with compelling force to the amalgamation of national spirit with socialist will.

A tremendous victory has been achieved. But not absolute victory!

The new state has had no need to disown the bearers of the revolutionary uprising’s will, as the November-men² had to do with the red gangs who were the fellow-travelers of their revolt born of cowardice and treason. In the New Germany the disciplined brown storm-battalions of the German Revolution stand side by side with the armed forces.

Not as part of them.

The Reichswehr has its own clear task: it is incumbent upon it to defend the the borders of the Reich, insofar as its modest numbers and wholly inadequate armaments enable it to do so.

The police are expected to hold down lawbreakers.

Alongside them there is the new state’s third power-factor with their own specific tasks, the SA and SS.

The Führer and Chancellor of the German Volk needs them, given that the mighty work of German renewal still lies before him.

For the SA and SS are the cornerstone of the coming National Socialist state. Their state, for which they have fought, and which they will claim. The SA and SS are the militant-spiritual bearers of the will of the German Revolution! Continue reading →

A National Socialist Feminist Writes to Hitler

Posted by Bogumil

Sophie Rogge-Börner’s memorandum of February 18, 1933, requesting Hitler consider establishing the Third Reich on a foundation of sexual equality

Berufstatige_Frauen

Despite its reputation as a totalitarian movement, there was a significant degree of intellectual diversity within German National Socialism; Hitler was reasonably comfortable with dissenting perspectives being expressed within the boundaries of the NSDAP so long as those expressing them remained completely loyal to his leadership. Within the Party there could be widely-varying opinions on issues such as socialism, religion, Jews, and the Frauenfrage – the ‘woman question’, the debate over the role of women within the movement and their social position in the future Third Reich. Opinions on this topic ranged from those of paternalist radicals who saw women as little more than ‘breeding machines’ of future Aryan soldiers, to ‘feminists’ who believed in the innate equality of German men and women. These ‘feminists’ (a term they generally rejected) themselves expressed a diverse range of viewpoints, but they were united in their veneration for a semi-mythical Nordic Golden Age of sexual equality and their belief that a true Volksgemeinschaft based on harmony and class comradeship was impossible if the state continued to discriminate against half of the German population. One of the most prominent of the NS-feminists was teacher & writer Sophie Rogge-Börner. Rogge-Börner never officially joined the NSDAP (although she had been a member of various other völkisch groups, including the National Socialist Freedom Movement), but she was a supporter of National Socialism, was very active within the völkisch literary movement, and like so many nationalists she greeted the new Hitler government in 1933 with enthusiasm. The memorandum translated below, written by Rogge-Börner shortly after Hitler attained the Chancellorship, expressed the author’s plea to the new leadership that the coming Third Reich would be revolutionary in terms of gender as well as race, politics, and economy. She was not just speaking for herself. Her memorandum was soon published as the lead article of newly-established NS-feminist journal Die deutsche Kämpferin (The German Female Fighter, or The German Warrioress), and later it was compiled with multiple similar articles into the 1933 book Deutsche Frauen an Adolf Hitler (German Women Address Adolf Hitler). Rogge-Börner’s memorandum of course accomplished little, although it did receive brief written acknowledgement from Prussian Reich Commissioner Göring. Die deutsche Kämpferin was eventually banned in 1937 and Rogge-Börner forbidden from writing, but nonetheless she remained (mostly) supportive of Hitler and National Socialism even after the War.

Memorandum
to the Chancellor of the German Reich, Herr Adolf Hitler,
and to the Vice-Chancellor, Herr Franz von Papen

NS_Frauenschaft

First published in Die deutsche Kämpferin, vol. 2, May (‘Maimond’) 1933

The gradual onset of the state’s reorganization makes it essential that German women of the völkisch-national way-of-life earnestly call the attention of the leading men to the fact that the state should not be allowed to once more be organized into a Man’s State, but must be established instead as the Lebensraum of the entire German people, comprising both men and women.

If we peer into the depths out of which emerge the spiritual driving forces behind contemporary events, then the route along which the path of destiny of white people has run becomes clear. Mankind’s first sociological age was a matriarchal order, as evidenced by its maternal family.¹ After long periods of transition, of centuries (or perhaps millennia) of fluid boundaries and uncertain divisions of power, the progression to the second stage, to the patriarchal order, was fulfilled. Until, as matriarchy once had done, it too overstepped the bounds of its exclusive claim to power to such an extent that, around the middle of the 19^th century, the women’s liberation-movement emerged within the Germanic countries. A Volksgemeinschaft of Germanic blood cannot in the long run be unilaterally led and directed through male dominance. The three generations presently living are drawn via an unambiguous gesture of the Creator’s will to the third of the stages: the social order of unified,² holistic human beings.

The relationships which the sexes have with one another and with the community are intimately and directly bound to the racial essence, to the blood origin of a Volk. Because we Germans derive our origins from the Nordic race, it is essential to get a clear understanding of the validity of both sexes among our early Nordic ancestors and to draw from this the practical application for our way of life in the 20th century. The lore we have preserved draws a clear, sound picture of civilized behavior which I can only intimate here in broad outlines: Continue reading →

Hitler Purges the ‘Salon Bolsheviks’

Posted by Bogumil

Adolf Hitler’s brief letter of 30 June, 1930, instructing Joseph Goebbels to “ruthlessly purge” the NSDAP of Strasserist “salon Bolsheviks”

Hitler_und_Goebbels

A couple of months ago I published a translation of the infamous July 4, 1930 article by Otto Strasser announcing the departure of the ‘socialists’ from the NSDAP. Otto’s article and his decision to withdraw himself and his supporters from the Party were the culmination of a long series of incidents stretching all the way back to Otto’s first entry into the National Socialist movement in 1925; I described these to a very brief extent in that article’s introduction. Mentioned in Otto’s article was a June 30 letter from Adolf Hitler to Gau Berlin-Brandenburg leader Joseph Goebbels, ordering the Gauleiter to effect a “ruthless purge” of all “salon Bolsheviks” (i.e. Strasserists) from local Party organizations. This short letter has now also been translated, and is provided for reading below. Hitler’s letter comprised the ‘final straw’ of the ‘Strasser crisis’, the internal Party conflict between Otto Strasser, Goebbels, and their respective factions which raged throughout the early months of 1930. In my earlier article I described how the spark which lit the conflict, which had been steadily brewing for years over personality issues and questions of doctrine & tactics, was Otto’s decision to start a newspaper that would directly compete with Goebbels’s Der Angriff. Like all good feuds, however, there are multiple potential sources of conflagration – another likely cause was the decision by Eugen Mossakowsky, one of Otto’s prominent disciples, to start publicly casting doubt on Goebbels’s claim to have been arrested and flogged by Belgian troops for participation in the Ruhrkampf in 1924. Openly accusing the ‘Little Doktor’ of dishonesty led to Mossakowsky being brought before the local USchlA (Party arbitration committee) and quickly forced to resign from the NSDAP. Thus began a process of expulsion of Strasser’s leading spokesmen from the Party, while in the background a propaganda campaign of speeches and articles was waged by the Goebbels faction (backed by the leadership) and Otto’s oppositionists against one another. Hitler’s letter marked the final end to the dispute, accusing the Strasserists of being disruptive elements with ‘Jewish-liberal-Marxist’ tendencies, and giving Goebbels full authority to start purging them wholesale from the Party.

Adolf Hitler’s Letter to Joseph Goebbels
Regarding the 1930 ‘Strasser-Crisis’

Munich, 30^th June 1930

Dr. Joseph Goebbels,
Gauleiter of Berlin,
Berlin.

For months now, as responsible leader of the NSDAP, I have been watching attempts to bring discord, confusion, and insubordination into the ranks of the movement. Under the mask of desiring to fight for socialism an attempt is being made to advocate a policy which fully corresponds with the policy of our Jewish-liberal-Marxist opponents. What is demanded by these circles is the wish of our enemies, from the Red Flag through to the Frankfurt Stock-Exchange Gazette.¹ I now consider it necessary to ruthlessly and without exception eject these destructive elements from the Party.

So long as I lead the National Socialist Party it will not become a debating club for rootless literati or chaotic salon-Bolsheviks, but will remain what it is today, an organization of discipline which was not created for the doctrinaire tomfoolery of political wanderers,² but to fight for a future Germany in which the concepts of class have been shattered and a new German Volk determine their own destiny! Continue reading →