There never had been a more propitious moment for such a solution. On
the one side an act of high treason had been committed against the
country, openly and shamelessly. On the other side a nation found itself
delivered over to die slowly of hunger. Since the State itself had
trodden down all the precepts of faith and loyalty, made a mockery of
the rights of its citizens, rendered the sacrifices of millions of its
most loyal sons fruitless and robbed other millions of their last penny,
such a State could no longer expect anything but hatred from its
subjects. This hatred against those who had ruined the people and the
country was bound to find an outlet in one form or another. In this
connection I shall quote here the concluding sentence of a speech which
I delivered at the great court trial that took place in the spring of
1924.
"The judges of this State may tranquilly condemn us for our conduct at
that time, but History, the goddess of a higher truth and a better legal
code, will smile as she tears up this verdict and will acquit us all of
the crime for which this verdict demands punishment."
But History will then also summon before its own tribunal those who,
invested with power to-day, have trampled on law and justice, condemning
our people to misery and ruin, and who, in the hour of their country's
misfortune, took more account of their own ego than of the life of the
community.
Here I shall not relate the course of events which led to November 8th,
1923, and closed with that date. I shall not do so because I cannot see
that this would serve any beneficial purpose in the future and also
because no good could come of opening old sores that have been just only
closed. Moreover, it would be out of place to talk about the guilt of
men who perhaps in the depths of their hearts have as much love for
their people as I myself, and who merely did not follow the same road as
I took or failed to recognize it as the right one to take.
In the face of the great misfortune which has befallen our fatherland
and affects all us, I must abstain from offending and perhaps disuniting
those men who must at some future date form one great united front which
will be made up of true and loyal Germans and which will have to
withstand the common front presented by the enemy of our people. For I
know that a time will come when those who then treated us as enemies
will venerate the men who trod the bitter way of death for the sake of
their people.
I have dedicated the first volume of this book to our eighteen fallen
heroes. Here at the end of this second volume let me again bring those
men to the memory of the adherents and champions of our ideals, as
heroes who, in the full consciousness of what they were doing,
sacrificed their lives for us all. We must never fail to recall those
names in order to encourage the weak and wavering among us when duty
calls, that duty which they fulfilled with absolute faith, even to its
extreme consequences. Together with those, and as one of the best of
all, I should like to mention the name of a man who devoted his life to
reawakening his and our people, through his writing and his ideas and
finally through positive action. I mean: Dietrich Eckart.
EPILOGUE
On November 9th, 1923, four and a half years after its foundation, the
German National Socialist Labour Party was dissolved and forbidden
throughout the whole of the REICH. To-day, in November 1926, it is again
established throughout the REICH, enjoying full liberty, stronger and
internally more compact than ever before.
All persecutions of the Movement and the individuals at its head, all
the imputations and calumnies, have not been able to prevail against it.
Thanks to the justice of its ideas, the integrity of its intentions and
the spirit of self-denial that animates its members, it has overcome all
oppression and increased its strength through the ordeal. If, in our
contemporary world of parliamentary corruption, our Movement remains
always conscious of the profound nature of its struggle and feels that
it personifies the values of individual personality and race, and orders
its action accordingly--then it may count with mathematical certainty on
achieving victory some day in the future. And Germany must necessarily
win the position which belongs to it on this Earth if it is led and
organized according to these principles.
A State which, in an epoch of racial adulteration, devotes itself to the
duty of preserving the best elements of its racial stock must one day
become ruler of the Earth.
The adherents of our Movements must always remember this, whenever they
may have misgivings lest the greatness of the sacrifices demanded of
them may not be justified by the possibilities of success.
THE END
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