Gold in the Furnace

by Savitri Devi

  The Nazi policy of racial regeneration was buttressed, from the beginning, by a parallel system of education comprising “first, the cultivation of healthy bodies”207 and then the development of mental capability. At the same time as it pursues the policy of healthy birth which I have tried to describe, “the State must see to raising the standard of health of the nation by protecting mothers and infants, prohibiting child-labour, increasing bodily efficiency by compulsory gymnastics and sports, laid down by law, and by extensive support of clubs engaged in the bodily development of the young”208 says Point Twenty-One of the Party Programme. And anyone who ever was even slightly acquainted with National Socialist Germany knows how faithfully that ideal was put into practice, and with what splendid results. I have already spoken of the physical perfection of the German youth trained under the Third Reich.

  But that is not all. Next to the formation of strong and beautiful bodies comes the formation of character, the cultivation of the natural Aryan virtues: courage, self-reliance, will-power and determination, readiness to assume responsibility, readiness to self-sacrifice; fortitude, self-control, truthfulness; and absolute devotion to one’s ideals and to one’s leaders. Kindness, too, is to be encouraged; not weakness, not sentimentality, not that hypocritical squeamishness which disgusts us so much in our enemies the Democrats, but real kindness; the culmination of manly qualities, as Nietzsche himself says; the natural generosity of the strong. Even our opponents have to concede that this is true. Aldous Huxley, in his The Perennial Philosophy—that most disappointing book, of which many passages never would have been written, had the war taken a different turn—admits that the teaching of love and kindness towards living creatures was stressed in Nazi education. The love of woods, of flowers, of Nature in all her beauty—of the concrete body of the Fatherland—was also stressed; for our Weltanschauung is, as I have said before, the modern and Nordic form of the everlasting Religion of Life.

  Contrarily to the educational ideals prevailing to this day in the capitalistic world—and already in medieval Christian education—strictly intellectual training is to come, according to our programme, only after the formation of character and the cultivation of bodily perfection. It is to come in its proper place, in the natural order, for man is first an animal of a particular species and race; then, a man with the moral possibilities of his race, and then only, a “cultured” man, adding to his other sound qualities the final touch of acquired knowledge, not as an end in itself but as a help and a stimulus to creative thought. We are, here, brought back to this basic idea which I have tried to express previously and which is a part and parcel of our philosophy (as of every sane outlook on life): the important thing is not what one knows, or even does, but what one is. This is true from the national as well as from the individual standpoint. “The national State,” writes our Führer, “must act on the presumption that a man of moderate education, but sound in body, firm in character, and filled with joyous self-confidence and power of will, is of more value to the community than a highly educated weakling.”209

  Another extremely important feature of our Nazi education (and of our whole system) is its absolute opposition to the pernicious “feminism” of our epoch—that product of decadence, of which the effect is nothing less than a still further lowering of the level of the race.

  We hate the very idea of “equality” of man and woman, forced upon the Western world more shamelessly than ever since the time of the First World War. For one, it is nonsense. No male and female of the same living species endowed by Nature with complementary abilities for the fulfilment of complementary destinies, can be “equal.” They are different, and cannot be anything else but different, however much one might try to give them the same training and make them do the same work. It is also a nefarious idea; for the only way one can, I do not say make man and woman “equal”—that is impossible—but force them, willy-nilly, into the same artificial mould; accustom them to the same type of life, is by robbing woman of her femininity and man of his virile qualities, i.e., by spoiling both, and spoiling the race.210 I do not deny that there are and always have been isolated instances of women more fitted for manly tasks than for motherhood, or equally capable of both. But such exceptions need no “feminism” in order to win for themselves the special place that Nature, in her love of diversity, has appointed to them. Around about 3200 before Christ, Azag-Bau, a wine merchant in her youth, managed to raise herself to such prominence as to become the founder of the Fourth Dynasty of Kish.211 In those days, women did not vote—nor did men, by the way—any more in Sumeria than elsewhere. Nor did they, in general, compete with men in all or nearly all walks of life, as in modern England and the USA. Curiously enough, the most fanatical female feminists are, as a rule, those in whom virile qualities are the most lacking. Masterful women, as Nietzsche remarks, are not feminists. Most remote Azag-Bau, or Queen Tiy of Egypt, or Agrippina, or, nearer our times, the little known but most fascinating virile feminine figure of Mongolian history, Ai Yuruk, who spent her life on the saddle and, along with her father Kaidu,212 “held the grazing lands of mid-Asia for nearly forty years,”213 all would have burst out laughing at the idea of “women’s emancipation” and all the twaddle that goes with it—in fact, at all the typically democratic institutions that our degenerate world so admires.

  But exceptions need no special education; or if they do, they educate themselves. Our National Socialist education for the present and future welfare of a healthy community, was—and will still be, when the time comes to enforce it once more—based upon the acceptance of the fact that men and women have entirely different parts to play in national life, and that they need, therefore, an entirely different training; that “the one aim of female education must be with a view to the future mother.”214 We did not “force” every woman to become a mother. But we gave every healthy woman of pure blood the necessary training and every opportunity to become a useful one, if she cared to. Girls were taught to consider motherhood as a national duty as well as an honour—not as a burden. They were trained to admire manly virtues in men, and to look upon the perfect warrior as the ideal mate, as is natural. Not every girl, also, could marry every man, even within the Party. The greater the man’s qualifications, the greater were the woman’s to be. For instance, a girl who wished to become the wife of an SS man—a great honour—had not only to prove that she was of unmixed Aryan descent (as every marriageable German was expected to) but also to produce a diploma attesting that she was well-versed in cooking, sewing, housekeeping, the science of child welfare, etc., in one word, that she had been tested and found fit to be an accomplished housewife.

  This does not mean that, in a National Socialist state, women are not to be taught anything else but domestic sciences and child welfare. In new Germany, they were given general knowledge also. And Point Twenty of the Party Programme, which stresses, among other things, that “the understanding of the spirit of the state (civic knowledge) must be aimed at, through school training, beginning with the first awakening of intelligence,”215 is to be taken into account in the education of girls as well as of boys. Also, seldom was there, on the part of any State, a more sincere and serious attempt to provide every child with the maximum possibilities of development and advancement. “We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class and occupation, at the expense of the State,” said the Führer, again in the same Point of his programme. And he kept his word to the letter and gave the German people, in that line as in others, even more than he had promised, as his enemies themselves are forced to admit.

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  If one were to define its aim and its spirit, and its essential contribution to the regeneration of mankind, in one sentence, one should say that National Socialism has set up the conception of the natural and therefore eternal aristocracy of blood and of personal value, against that of the artificial aristocracy of class and capital; that it stands for the divinely decreed human hierarchy, agains
t all the false barriers established by man. For that is the meaning of the doctrine of race and personality, those “two pillars supporting the whole edifice”216 of the National Socialist Weltanschauung.

  There is, properly speaking, no nationhood apart from racial homogeneity. A country of many races is not and can never be a nation in the sense we understand that word. To call it one might be expedient, if one wishes to give the whole population the temporary illusion of unity in view of some definite practical purpose217 (in view, for instance, of coalescing different races against forces which one has, one’s self, good reasons to fight). But that will not alter the fact that this feeling of unity will remain an illusion so long as the population consists of separate races.

  In a racially homogeneous nation—a real nation—any idea of class, whether based upon acquired nobility, or upon wealth, or learning, is artificial and anti-national. It only hinders the spontaneous feeling of racial solidarity, on which healthy nationhood rests, for “one can only be proud of one’s nation, if there is no class of which one must feel ashamed.”218 Hence National Socialism, the most aristocratic of all political philosophies, presents itself, in practice, in any homogeneously Aryan country at least, as the philosophy of a pre-eminently popular movement, standing for the rights of the workman and of the peasant as much, if not, in reality, much more, than Communism.

  It would indeed do good to most Communists of Aryan blood, before they foolishly insult him and fight us, to acquaint themselves with all that our Führer has done in Germany for the rehabilitation of manual work, and the welfare and happiness of the labourers. It would do them good to know that the German factory worker, miner, mechanic, engine-driver, was—in general—and is still a better National Socialist than the doctor, lawyer, or University professor. As a foreign working woman who had the good luck to live in Germany before the war once told me, it was the people—not the “bourgeois,” not the self-styled “intelligentsia”—“who lifted their right arms the most spontaneously, the most sincerely. As for the capitalists—they always looked upon Hitler with suspicion, if not with definite enmity.”

  The truth is that, in order to understand the depth and philosophical soundness of National Socialism, to appreciate its eternal value, one needs a broader and more living culture, as well as a more synthetic type of intelligence, and more sensitiveness to beauty than the average doctor, lawyer, or professor—let alone the average capitalist—generally possesses. While, on the other hand, one does not need to understand the depth of National Socialism in order to love Adolf Hitler. One needs only to feel the power of his love. And that is exactly what the humble folk of Germany did. To them he was—and is—their benefactor, their friend, their saviour; the one man, within centuries, who had really loved them more than himself, more than anybody or anything, and who had done for them what only love (when allied to genius) can do. Most “intellectuals” were not alive enough, not instinctively, spontaneously responsive to vital forces, human and superhuman, to a sufficient degree, to feel the same. (Those few who were, and are so, in spite of being “intellectuals,” are the Führer’s best followers.) As for the capitalists, they knew, with the sure instinct of worldly-wise, businesslike men, that the triumph of National Socialism meant the end of their power, of their class, of their world order, forever—far more certainly and more completely than even the triumph of Communism ever would.

  The strength of National Socialism lies in its appeal to the very best of Aryan men and women in and outside Germany, and in its hold on the German masses. It owes the former to Hitler’s personality and to its own objective value—both theoretical and practical—as a doctrine. It owes the latter to Hitler’s personality, and to the prosperity and happiness that the German people enjoyed under his régime, and that they have not forgotten; to the fact that, thanks to his unbending determination, the magnificent programme which he had set before the world on the 24th of February 1920, was carried out to the full—contrarily to those, far less radical and far less exalted, of so many politicians.

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  Apart from the policy of racial regeneration through marriage regulations, health regulations, and that new educational system of which I have spoken, what did the programme comprise? In one word, the liberation of the people from the thraldom of capitalism, through a series of laws concerning income, property, production. No régime—not even that of Soviet Russia—has done more than ours to exalt useful and honest work as the sacred duty of every man and woman. None has done more to make work an obligation for all. And, especially, none has done as much to render that obligation, at the same time, a pleasure.

  “It must be the first duty of every citizen of the State to work with his mind or with his body. The activity of the individual should not clash with the interest of the community, but must proceed within the frame of the community and for the general good,”219 states Point Ten of the Party Programme. And Point Eleven is but the logical corollary of it: We therefore demand “the abolition of all incomes obtained without work and without toil.”220

  Not just any work, but, as I have said before, useful, constructive work that has some value; that is neither a mere drudgery—reluctantly accepted because it is the only means to keep the individual’s body and soul together, while it is, every minute, resented as a loss of time and energy—nor some activity, however “interesting” it be, of which the only positive result is an increase of the individual’s bank balance; still less some form of exploitation of other people’s weaknesses or of other people’s vices, for the financial benefit of a few “clever” ones; but solid production of useful or beautiful material goods or of wholesome ideas, or some activity forwarding the necessary organisation of production, or that of national uplift or national defence; work of which the result is, ultimately, the nourishment and strengthening of men’s bodies, or the formation of men’s character, and of culture, such was “the first duty of every citizen of the State” in National Socialist Germany—and such will again be, I hope, the first duty of every man and woman in a future National Socialist Europe. Every law or regulation in connection with labour of any sort, was inspired by this idea. And every law was efficiently enforced.

  The abolition of the “slavery of interest”221 put forward as an article of the Party Programme, in Point Eleven and following; the “ruthless confiscation of war gains,” stressed in Point Twelve, on the ground that “personal enrichment during a war must be regarded as a crime against the nation”;222 the nationalisation of big business;223 the sharing out of the profits of wholesale trade;224 the “extensive development of provision for old age”225 by the State, and the Land Reform, of which I shall say a few words, as well as the drastic prosecution and “punishment with death of usurers, profiteers, etc.,”226 were not merely desiderata, intended to impress the public in political meetings, during the struggle of National Socialism for power. They became realities, as soon as Hitler became the uncontested head of the Third Reich; with the immediate result that, in a cleansed atmosphere, a new life started for the German people. Not only were the six and a half million Germans, up till then unemployed, given a livelihood, but an immense—unprecedented—enthusiasm for public welfare, a spirit of healthy competition in disinterested service for the good of others, filled everyone’s heart and, in particular, the hearts of the young men and girls. And within an amazingly short time, the war-torn, downtrodden Germany of the 1920s was once more a leading power—nay the leading power in Europe.

  Work in the fields, in the mines, in the factories recently wrested from oppressive foreign control; work along those magnificent Autobahnen, the building of which will remain, forever, one of the grand material achievements of the Third Reich; work in the home, where the women felt themselves useful to the whole nation as they never had before; work in the schools, in which for the first time, a programme of education in the right national spirit was at last set forth; work in every useful line, was compulsory. Compulsory on paper, and in practice al
so. Anyone who just did not want to do his bit was forced to do it—and a little more, in addition—in a concentration camp—unless he chose to leave the country. But there was hardly anyone who did not want to do his bit; who did not joyfully come forward to do it. Never was “compulsory” work so little of a burden, so much of a pleasure. For now the Germans felt, as they never had before, that they—and not a gang of idle rich men; and especially not a parasitic gang of rich aliens (not even Aryans, let alone Germans)—were the lords of their own land and of their own destiny.

  Just as, in most countries, every male citizen has to spend a year or two (or more) in the army, so, in the Third Reich, every able-bodied young man or woman between sixteen and eighteen was expected to join some section of the “Arbeitsdienst” (labour service) for six months, and thereby to offer some positive contribution to the nation’s welfare, in addition to that which his or her usual activities might have constituted. Students, for instance, would go, under a leader, to work in the fields, along with the farm lads—to plant potatoes, to help bring in the harvest—or, in the case of girls, to help housewives with large families in their cooking, washing, and other domestic work. This was compulsory, no doubt. But it was anything but a drudgery—so much so that, apart from the general “Arbeitsdienst” that was for all young people, the students had a voluntary one of their own, whose members would, for a time, work as factory labourers, tramway drivers, etc., for the sheer sake of experience and service. I have spoken to many men and women who were enrolled in that regular army of peace. Not one of those I met has anything but pleasant memories of those months of non-professional service. And many have told me that they were “unforgettable months,” “the best time they ever had.” The work was done joyfully, nay, enthusiastically—as play would have been. Indeed, the general atmosphere of the country was one of joyous earnestness, of wholehearted, youthful activity. The self-confidence, the uncompromising spirit and the hopes of youth, had taken the place of the hesitations, the doubts, the pessimism and “defeatism” of bygone years. And work—no longer a curse even when compulsory—had become play; pleasure.