Hitler in Salzburg

Posted by Bogumil

A rare, early speech by Adolf Hitler, delivered on 7 August 1920 to the 2nd Inter-State Representatives’ Conference of the National Socialists of Greater Germany in Salzburg, Austria

Over 7-8 August 1920, representatives from the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP), the German Socialist Party (Deutschsozialistische Partei, DSP), and the Czech, Polish, and Austrian branches of the German National Socialist Workers’ Party (Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei, DNSAP) gathered together in Salzburg, Austria for the 2nd Inter-State Representatives’ Conference of the National Socialists of Greater Germany. Among the various attendees who met in Salzburg to discuss tactical questions and points of theory was a certain delegate of the NSDAP who, at the time, was still largely unknown outside völkisch circles in Munich: a rabble-rousing young orator and propagandist named Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s appearance at the Salzburg Conference would turn out to be an important moment in the history of his career. The speech he delivered to the assembled representatives made a significant impression upon those present, leading to Hitler’s statements being mentioned in the DNSAP party press and also to the DNSAP leadership extending him an eager invitation (which he accepted) to undertake a speaking tour of Austria in support of the party’s upcoming electoral campaign. There is even a story (possibly a piece of hagiographical propaganda) that, upon the speech’s conclusion, Czechoslovakian DNSAP delegate Rudolf Jung turned to his secretary and declared: “One day he will be our greatest.” Regardless of the veracity of Jung’s reaction, the reaction of the broader National Socialist movement was certainly enthusiastic, and following the conference’s conclusion DNSAP branches across Austria clamored for a visit of their own from Hitler, evidence of a growing international recognition of his talents and of an influence which was beginning to extend beyond the confines of Munich’s beer-halls. Hitler’s speech at Salzburg thus arguably marks the first beginnings of the Führer myth, in which Hitler was to be gradually elevated from the movement’s evangelistic ‘drummer’ to the role of overarching Leader – first of the cross-border National Socialist movement, then ultimately of every member of the German Volk wherever they might reside. The speech was considered significant enough that a transcript of it was preserved by attendees and survives to this day within the German Bundesarchiv in Berlin, although unfortunately it is in terrible condition, barely legible in some areas due to faded type. My translation of Hitler’s Salzburg speech – the only complete translation in English, so far as I’m aware – has been made from historian Eberhard Jäckel’s reconstruction of the transcript. Jäckel put a considerable amount of effort into locating National Socialist newspaper articles and historical works which mentioned the Salzburg Conference, using their quotations from Hitler to reconstruct those portions of the text which are virtually unreadable in the original transcript. Some words were unfortunately still indecipherable (these have been marked [illegible] in my translation), but for the most part the speech is otherwise now available in full. Considering the sorry state of the original transcript, Jäckel’s work deserves commendation – I would not have been able to make a translation of the speech without it.

Speech to the 2nd Inter-State Representatives’ Conference of the National Socialists of Greater Germany
By Adolf Hitler
Delivered 7 August 1920 in Salzburg, Austria

NS_Swastika

Dear folk-comrades! [Liebe Volksgenossen und Volksgenossinnen!]

I am almost ashamed that only today, after so many years, has that same movement which began in German-Austria as early as 1904 begun to gain a foothold in the German Reich.¹ And it is tragic that only the great misfortune which has befallen us was able to demonstrate to our Volk that they must above all forsake personal interests, that the class conflict which differentiates only between proletarians and non-proletarians must come to an end, and that ultimately a distinction must someday be made between folk-comrades who produce honestly, and the drones and scoundrels.² (Applause). The collapse had to come first, and it did not occur because seven, eight, or nine Jews made a revolution for us, it came because we were genuinely morally indolent inside, because we had forgotten and forsaken the numerous principles which a Volk must acknowledge if it wishes to achieve self-determination for itself at all. We have enveloped ourselves in class arrogance on the one hand and in class-conscious proletarian conceit on the other, and we have forgotten that there is no difference between physical and intellectual workers, that together we must [illegible] the state or thereby bring it to ruin. We have also forgotten that such a state must possess moral foundations, and that it is lunacy when in such a state, at the very moment in which thousands of folk-comrades are being forcibly bled to death, others are merely giving money to the state at interest and doing nothing but trading with the [illegible]. We have forgotten that it should have been a social and a moral duty – in a situation where thousands of others were making sacrifices for the highest good; where families at home were enduring hardship, sorrow, and poverty; where unscrupulous, sordid fellows were running rampant among this [illegible] Volk and ignoring the fact that a Volk which is not national ultimately pronounces the death sentence upon itself – to keep clear in our minds that there can be only one goal, to be national, or else to perish in the maelstrom of internationalism. (Applause). And we have forgotten a further truth, that a Volk can and should be led only by its folk-comrades. We have forsaken the fundamental law and fundamental truth of [illegible] that only he who is a [illegible]³ can be a citizen of the state, and that it is madness to introduce foreign races into the [illegible] citizenship rights and eventually to entrust to them the entire [illegible] and to place the leadership of the Volk into their hands. As a result, what had to happen happened – we collapsed. And out of that collapse came disillusionment. Then came the pressure of the Entente, which day by day weighs more and more heavily upon the German Volk, and which increasingly sparks the conviction that the provision of relief through small measures, via minor reforms, is no longer productive. The system of the bourgeoisie and the system of the proletariat have outlived themselves, and that is how our party was born. We should not reproach one another, for the same thinking and the same hardship caused the same movement to arise at all ends of the Reich. Naturally we were independent of one another. Hence nobody in Düsseldorf even realized that things were also the same with us, and Munich did not realize that it was also thus in Kiel; and this road to a solution which we have found is proof that our programmes, although they arose independently from one another, ultimately say the same thing. Continue reading →

The Salzburg Conference and the National Socialist Party of the German Volk

Posted by Bogumil

National Socialism across borders: the programme and proceedings of the 2nd Inter-State Representatives’ Conference of the National Socialists of Greater Germany, held in Salzburg, Austria over 7-8 August 1920

In 1904 the German Workers’ Party in Austria (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in Österreich, DAPÖ) was founded in Trautenau, Bohemia, by representatives from Austria-Hungary’s various ethnic-German trade-unions and workers’ associations. In May 1918, as part of a general post-War restructuring, the members of the DAPÖ voted to adopt a new name for their organization: the German National Socialist Workers’ Party (Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei, DNSAP). When in November 1918 the Treaty of St. Germain awarded the territories of the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia and Austrian Silesia to Poland, the DNSAP consequently found itself divided into three separate national branches; in an effort to keep the party unified and coordinated under these new circumstances, the first ‘Inter-State Representatives’ Conference of the National Socialists of Greater Germany’ was held by the DNSAP in December 1919 in Vienna, with delegates attending from party branches across Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The following year the 2nd Inter-State Congress was held in Salzburg, Austria, over 7-8 August, with this meeting in particular proving to be a significant event in the early history of National Socialism. The DNSAP in 1919 had established contact with two nascent political parties in the German Republic: the German Socialist Party (Deutschsozialistische Partei, DSP), most active in northern Germany, and the Munich-based National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP). Although neither group had attended the first Inter-State Congress, both were acknowledged by the DNSAP as National Socialist “brother-parties” and both dispatched formal delegations to the 2nd Congress in Salzburg, where unity was the central topic of conversation. Delegates at Salzburg voted to establish an ‘Inter-State Chancellery’ in Vienna to act as a liaison organization between them, and it was further agreed that the five brother-parties would unite as constituent parts of a single cross-border association, the National Socialist Party of the German Volk (Nationalsozialistischen Partei des deutschen Volkes, NSPDV), in which they would maintain their own programmes and independence while being subordinated to the broader programme of the NSPDV – the eventual aim being formal unification as a single party in a united Greater Germany. To that end, DSP and NSDAP delegates also agreed to divide Germany into respective ‘spheres of influence’ as a prelude to their own unification at the DSP’s upcoming party conference. Although made with great enthusiasm and pursued vigorously by National Socialists in their relations with one another over the next few years, these decisions ultimately proved ineffective. A young and still largely unknown delegate at Salzburg named Adolf Hitler would, through his eventual ascension to the NSDAP leadership, ultimately be their undoing, jettisoning the concepts of consensus-based leadership and merger-as-equals in favor of subordination to the NSDAP and centralized diktat from Munich. The five documents translated below, consisting of articles and reports by National Socialists describing the discussions at Salzburg and the programme of the NSPDV, provide an insight into this early period of ‘inter-state’ National Socialism, when the movement had a more democratic caste and when its leading figures were labor activists from Austria and the Sudetenland, rather than Hitler and his supporters.

The Salzburg Conference in Overview
The Deutsche Arbeiter-Presse of 14 August, 1920.

NS_Swastika

The article below first appeared in the Deutsche Arbeiter-Presse, the central party-organ of the Austrian DNSAP, on 14 August 1920. It provides a thorough synopsis of the events of the Salzburg Conference, its various attendees, and the topics discussed and voted upon by the conference’s delegates, and thus serves as an excellent introductory overview of the conference and of its significance to the early National Socialist movement. Although the article is unsigned, it is nonetheless probable that Dr. Walter Riehl, the chairman of the Austrian DNSAP at the time, was responsible for its authorship – Riehl was also the editor of the Deutsche Arbeiter-Presse and so would have been behind many of the newspaper’s editorials and unsigned pieces. Furthermore, the article was translated from Dr. Alexander Schilling’s biography of Dr. Walter Riehl (Dr. Walter Riehl und die Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus, 1933), which reproduces a significant number of Riehl’s articles from the course of his long political career. (Schilling, incidentally, was also a longstanding National Socialist, and he attended the Salzburg Conference as a delegate for the DNSAP branch in Bielitz, Poland). The article is particularly notable for its mentions of Hitler, probably the first references to the future Führer within the National Socialist press outside Germany. – Bogumil

The Greater German Representatives’ Conference of all National Socialists in Salzburg.

It cannot be denied that we awaited today’s conference, to which völkisch-socialists from across the Reich were invited for the first time, with great trepidation. To our great joy, to the jubilant enthusiasm of the old National Socialists from the German Sudetenland and of we German-Austrians, the conference not only brought us the reconciliation of two larger groups within the German Reich which had previously stood in opposition to one another (the German Socialist Party – headquartered in Hanover; and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – headquartered in Munich),¹ but also the long-awaited goal, the merger of our groups and of the new Reich-German groups to form the

National Socialist Party of Greater Germany.²

The conference enjoyed excellent attendance, not only from the German-Austrians, who by exercising their full rights of representation sent 180 representatives from all local groups, including almost every member of the party-leadership – party-chairman and Landtag deputy Dr. Riehl;³ the Salzburg Landtag deputies Prodinger⁴ and Wagner;⁵ Ertl, the chairman of the Trade-Union of German Railwaymen;⁶ Gattermayer, chairman of the Trade-Union Council;⁷ Schulz, vice-chairman of the German Postal Workers’ Union;⁸ Legmann, director of the district DHV;⁹ Heiduk, chairman of the Reich Association of German Working Youth and paymaster of the national party-leadership¹⁰ – but also representatives from abroad. This time, the German National Socialists of Czechoslovakia sent not only our revered theoretician, Prague parliamentary deputy Ing. Rudolf Jung,¹¹ as at previous conferences, but also the first chairman of the National Socialists of Czechoslovakia, deputy Hans Knirsch,¹² editor Dr. Schilling,¹³ and the chairman of the German-Bohemian provincial party-leadership, Galle,¹⁴ as well as Bornemann from Znaim,¹⁵ all of whom were sorely missed at the last conference. For the German Socialist Party (headquartered in Hanover), Ing. Brunner (Düsseldorf)¹⁶ and Dr. Runge (Leipzig)¹⁷ appeared, as well as five other representatives of this tendency, which is located chiefly in the north of Germany. Exceptionally numerous were the delegates from the second group, which has sought its adherents primarily in Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden: the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. This was represented by its first chairman, the metalworker Drexler from Munich, and by its outstanding popular Munich agitator, Adolf Hitler. Altogether the Inter-State Conference was attended by 235 authorized representatives. About a hundred external guests turned out, among them a member of the German National Assembly, National Councillor Geisler from Berlin,¹⁸ and a representative of the Greater German Freedom Party in Berlin,¹⁹ as well as representatives from Reich-German newspapers and from German newspapers in the successor states²⁰ and in German-Austria.

Continue reading →

Rudolf Jung’s “National Socialism”

Posted by Bogumil

The “Das Kapital” of National Socialism… kind of

Slightly over a year ago, I began work on translation of Rudolf Jung’s 1922 work National Socialism: Its Foundations, Development, and Goals, the first book which sought to offer a full, systematic exposition of the entire breadth of the National Socialist ideological worldview. I can now announce that the translation is complete – it can be downloaded directly from WordPress using this link: Jung – National Socialism – Its Foundations, Development, and Goals (2nd ed., 1922)

Alternatively, I’ve also uploaded a copy for access via the Internet Archive.

One of the first articles I ever posted on this blog was a profile of Jung, so I won’t go into too much detail about his personal background here. People who are interested in knowing more about Jung’s life can read that article, or they can read the introduction I included within the translation. The book itself is significant for a number of reasons. Primarily this is because, as mentioned, it constituted the first genuine attempt by a member of the National Socialist movement to actually set out the theoretical aspects of National Socialist doctrine on any kind of comprehensive, intellectual level. Articles or pamphlets had been written on NS ideology in the past, but nothing of the range or scope (or length) of Jung’s book. Jung’s ambition was to be the ‘Karl Marx’ of National Socialism, and his stated hope to those who knew him was that his book would serve as the movement’s Das Kapital. Some historians tend to be fairly dismissive of this aspiration, claiming that Jung’s book is intellectually shallow in comparison with Marx’s works. While it’s true that Jung’s book isn’t on the same level as Kapital (for one thing, Kapital comprises three pretty dense volumes of critique and theory – National Socialism is a pamphlet by comparison), I don’t think the dismissive attitude affected by some writers is really warranted. There are interesting historical arguments in National Socialism, some thought-provoking analyses of capitalist economics and property relations (a good chunk of the book is focused on outlining the bases of NS economic theory, particularly issues relating to land ownership), and Jung’s book is (at least in my opinion) far more readable than Marx’s. The intellectual foundations of Jung’s work are solid enough for their purpose, even if they don’t have quite the grandeur that the author may have hoped for or intended. In any event, now that the book is available in English, readers will be able to make such assessments for themselves. Continue reading →

The National Socialist Conception of Freedom

Posted by Bogumil

National Socialist theoretician Rudolf Jung explains the concept of freedom and its place within National Socialist ideology

National Socialism, like Marxism, has its own conception of freedom, one separate from the individualist ideal central to liberal-democracy. In some respects there are similarities between the two movements and their perceptions of freedom; certainly members of the NSDAP would have agreed with Marx and Engels that, “Only in the community… is personal freedom possible.” Fundamentally, though, each interpretation was built on different ideological ground. For Marxists, freedom is determined by material economic conditions; those without the money or resources to live a safe, comfortable, fulfilling life are not genuinely free, regardless of which individual rights they might have on paper. For National Socialists, conversely, freedom is ultimately determined by race as well as material circumstance; each racial group has different cultural values, a different outlook on the world, and hence a different conception of the form of freedom appropriate to them as a united people. Freedom and a Volk’s capacity for defending themselves are intrinsically bound together: only by finding the style of freedom best suited to them as a people would a race thus be in the best position to fight and defend themselves as a people. Individualism was the form most suited to the English, with their mercantile, “piratical” spirit. Anarchy was most suited to the chaotic, tumultuous French. And for the Germans, with their supposedly natural inclination towards collectivism? A marriage of the spirit of Prussia in the north with the spirit of the “Baiuvarii” in the south: duty and order, the totality before the individual, but shorn of unthinking submission and centralistic authoritarianism, tempered by a respect for freedom of conscience. At least this is how National Socialist writer and politician Rudolf Jung explained it in his book National Socialism: Its Foundations, Development, and Goals, the earliest major programmatic work of National Socialist theory. Whether or not Jung’s description of National Socialist freedom matches the conditions which later developed in the Third Reich is up for debate, particularly as Hitler arguably represented a more authoritarian strand of NS ideology. The translated excerpt below consists of almost the entire chapter from Jung’s book which covers the subject; the only part I have cut is the introductory paragraph, an excerpt from the DNSAP programme which can be already be read in its entirety here. This translation is of the 1922 2^nd edition of Jung’s book, which I have been working on for the past five or six months. The complete translation is probably still a few months away from being finished, but it will be posted on the blog when I am done.

The National Socialist Conception of Freedom
From the chapter ‘The Concept of Freedom and Defensive Readiness’, in
Rudolf Jung’s “National Socialism,” 1922 (2nd ed.)

“Freedom, that which I love, that which fills my heart,”¹ sang the poet, thereby telling us that freedom is something which cannot be explained rationally, but is something which must be felt. Now, because freedom is a matter of emotion, it will be different for every Volk. English, French, Germans, Czechs, etc., all feel differently, and therefore all also interpret the concept of freedom differently. There are even different gradations within the individual races. Let us take the Germans, for example. Does the supposedly revolutionary communist – who is certainly imbued with the conviction that he is a thoroughly free-thinking person, standing far above the arch-reactionary bourgeoisie – truly have a feeling for freedom when he, as is so often the case in the German Reich, runs to the representatives of the Entente in order to sabotage his differently-minded countrymen? Or when, for the same reason, he calls upon the help of the Czech authorities, who are thoroughly imbued with the police spirit and are, moreover, capitalist? Is not the exact same question relevant in regards to those bourgeois elements who, in their anxiety over their property, appeal to alien peoples to protect them? And what about press censorship, the prohibition on the publication of newspapers, as well as the forcible integration of people into organizations?

In light of all the things which have happened to the German Volk since the days of the Revolution, after all the lamentable manifestations of servility and indignity, all the errors of an overstretched centralism, one might well doubt the very existence of a feeling of freedom. However, we need to keep in mind that every great upheaval – and such is indeed what we are presently in the middle of – is full of confusion and atrocities, and that brutal people, who tend to be the most involved in these phenomena, are generally cowards within the depths of their souls and are therefore not free at all, but are instead merely of a servile disposition. Only the courageous are truly free. Alien to them is the pitiful fear of death which makes cowardly people tremble, and hence makes them servile. That is why courage and the feeling of freedom, and therefore also one’s readiness to defend themselves,² belong together. One is inconceivable without the other. But defensive readiness – if that is to serve as our touchstone – must be voluntary and not coerced, because courage cannot be forced. Continue reading →