Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil

by Tell the Truth

  The other track concerned German foreign trade. The German Reich concluded bilateral contracts with 25 countries with weak currencies in Southern Europe, the Near East and South America, involving trade free of payment, i.e. without foreign currencies, in other words, goods for goods, for instance, Chilean lentils against German locomotives. The exchange of goods between Germany and its partners was settled on a monthly basis, without the payment of foreign currencies and without the need to pre-finance trade through loans and interest-bearing money. In this way, Germany constructed for itself an informal special economic zone between 1932 and 1936, a German preferentialism....

  However—and this is the catch—the USA, Britain and France lost important sectors of the market, which they had hitherto dominated, particularly the USA in South America. Moreover, New York and London lost their credit business through the pre-financing of foreign trade in the countries which now engaged in barter with Germany.

  It appeared as if Germany was developing from a financial dwarf into an economic giant, namely at the expense of the victors of the First World War. President Roosevelt was now concerned about Germany’s success in South America, that US credit business in South America was declining and, lastly, that the German “model” was becoming attractive in the USA and could affect his—Roosevelt’s—popularity. After all, Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank and Minister for Trade, and Hitler’s politics had succeeded in dismantling unemployment in Germany and in doubling the people’s income, while Roosevelt with his New Deal, despite thriving foreign trade, was still faced with 10.4 million unemployed.

  Britain too was affected by Germany’s independent path. Although the Ottawa-countries cordoned themselves off and thus prevented free trade, Germany’s way of excluding the international capital markets and of exploiting, through preferential rules, the markets of 25 other countries was in their view unacceptable. After the war, English historian General Fuller wrote concerning German-English relations: “Hitler’s dream was thus an alliance with Great Britain...such an alliance was however impossible mainly because, immediately after Hitler’s takeover, his economic policy of direct barter and of export premiums dealt British and American trade a deadly blow.”

  U.S. President Roosevelt expressed the same more briefly, when he said to his son, Elliot, on the day he decided to lead the USA at Britain’s side into the war: “Would anyone maintain that Germany’s attempt to dominate trade in Central Europe was not one of the main reasons for the war?”

  The methods which the nations used between the global economic crisis and the war profited the users and damaged all competitors, whether protective tariff, currency devaluation, raised interest rates, preferential status, barter or import quotas. They were all instruments of finance and trade of a technical nature. However, the USA as well as Great Britain wrapped these instruments with a moral cloak. They called their own methods of competition “peaceful and free” trade. Finally, the pound, franc and mark were coupled to the dollar, which was covered by 0.7 grams of gold until 1971 and thereafter by nothing at all. From then on the USA could finance its imports with dollars which they printed themselves, while all other nations had to earn their imports first, mainly in dollars. The path to this U.S. victory began in the Thirties, and the war against the German Reich was a step on this path. (deutsche-zukunft.net/hintergrundwissen, author‘s translation)

  ***

  I then converted everything to the concept of labour output in exchange for labour output, raw materials in exchange for labour output, farm products against industrial products. I succeeded over years of work in gradually creating a certain domestic economy at least in Europe. Alone against this domestic economy, England, which felt the germ of an eventual political collaboration, immediately resumed its familiar struggle. Thus began simultaneously the opposition of the whole of global Jewry which, through the deactivation of its hitherto speculative trading methods, perceived a loss which could affect not only Europe, but perhaps the whole world one day. For the methods with which we worked were not patented. Other countries began to turn to these methods and gold began to lose its allure. (Hitlers Geheimrede, May 30, 1942)

  Consider these questions. For example, did Hitler have a sense of humour?

  Not only did he have a sense of humour, he was not above making fun of himself, as he does in this introduction to a speech he made before a gathering of “Old Fighters” in Munich, in February 1938:

  “Ich werde mich am heutigem Abend erst so allmählich daran gewöhnen müssen, vor diesen alten Forum zu sprechen. Im Laufe der Jahre wird man nicht nur klug und weise, sondern man nimmt vor allem sehr viel von den Gepflogenheiten seiner Umgebung an. Nun hat mich das Schicksal dazu bestimmt, in den letzten fünf Jahren, mich in einer wenigstens äusserlich sehr vornehmen Umgebung bewegen zu dürfen. Man spricht dort nicht immer das aus, was man denkt. Früher war meine Stärke darin, nie etwas anderes zu denken, als was ich redete. Ich muss also jetzt wieder versuchen mich in diese alte Zeit zurückzulegen.”

  Freely translated, this reads: “This evening, I am first going to have to accustom myself gradually to speaking before this old forum. Over the years, one becomes not only shrewd and wise, one assumes above all very many of the customs of one’s environment. Now, fate has determined that I should be allowed, over the last five years, to move in, at least outwardly, very respectable circles. One doesn’t always say what one thinks there. Formerly, my strength lay in never thinking anything but what I said. So I must now try to return to those old times.”

  Loud guffaws of delight from his audience met this very casually delivered opening. Here was a man completely at ease, who could not only afford the luxury of saying exactly what he liked, but who could judge himself and his phenomenal progress with detachment.

  Did he respond to beautiful things, to art, architecture, to music, to books?

  He had dropped out of high school at 16 and, thenceforward, was almost entirely self-taught. That is, his information, insights and mental training came from books, which he read voraciously at local libraries and then, when he could afford them, bought by the hundred. His personal library is estimated to have encompassed 16,300 books (Hitler’s Private Library, Timothy W. Ryback, Knopf, 2008). According to one authority, when he had the time, he bound damaged books himself. Piles of books on his bedside table, whether at his homes in Berchtesgaden or Munich or at the front, or on the corners of his desk at the chancellery, testified to this absorption. He read late into the night and rose correspondingly late.

  He was immune from the blandishments of unearned recognition:

  Already after the national revolution of 1933, German universities endeavoured to award Hitler honorary doctorates. On May 4, 1933, Hitler’s chancellery declined the honorary doctorate proposed him by the Technical University of Stuttgart, “as he fundamentally did not contemplate accepting honorary doctorates.” (Manfred Overesch: Das III. Reich 1933-1939. Eine Tageschronik der Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur. Weltbild Verlag 1982, Ausgabe 1990)

  As he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease already in 1940 (E. Gibbels, Hitler’s Parkinson-Syndrome. Eine Analyse von Aufnahmen der Deutschen Wochenschau aus den Jahren 1940-1945, Wiss. Film, Gesch./Publiz. 8, 1995), among other ailments (D. Irving, “The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor,” Grafton, 1990), Hitler suffered under the pressure of time, believing that if he did not accomplish his self-imposed mission before he died, no successor would.

  No more suitable individual could have led a country, particularly Germany, at that time. No member of an established section of society could have succeeded where he did; he was unrestrained by any and all conventions and codes. On the one hand, an ordinary soldier who had risked his life to defend his country, and had been wounded and decorated; on the other, a visionary and autodidact, with an extraordinary ability to synthesize what he had learnt, and to come to a logical conclusion. His conversation at mealtimes ranged from state ownership of resources and the preservation of private p
roperty, through alternative energy, the importance of assuring the next generation of German singers, admiration for Britain and the fatality of her WWI debt, to his advocacy of a “people’s car” for 975 Reichsmark, and a united Europe of nations, in which Germany would be the first among equals. (Henry Picker, Hitler’s Tischgespräche, Ullstein 2003)

  The breadth and variety of these subjects, and the consideration he had put into each stand in stark contrast to the lies so assiduously spread about him, and to the empty-headed posturing of today’s leaders. He evoked an ardent loyalty in his closest subordinates, many of whom stayed with him until the end.

  Hitler’s sketch for a people’s car, 1932

  Adolf Hitler reckoned, as it now turned out, as so often in earlier years, with rationality, he reckoned not only as a German, but as a European. He truly reckoned in the interest of a higher humanity, which he wished to see put into effect in ethnically-based communities.

  ***

  Before these 30 parties there was a German people, and the parties will disappear and after them our people will still remain. And we do not want to be the representatives of a profession, a class, a social rank, a belief or a state, rather we want to educate Germans so that they all first and foremost realize that there is no life without justice, and that there is no justice without power, and that there is no power without strength, and that all strength must reside in the people. (Hitler election speech, 27 July, 1932)

  ***

  I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. (Thomas Jefferson)

  ***

  National Socialism was a European answer to the question of the century. It was the noblest cause in which a German could employ the strength given to him. It was a genuinely socialist ideology and an ideal of blood-related cultural purity. I cannot therefore at the hour of need of what has also been my life’s principle, renounce the ideal of a socially peaceful Germany and of a Europe which recognizes its values, and I remain loyal to it. (Alfred Rosenberg, early champion of National Socialism and minister, 31 August, 1946, shortly before his execution on October 16, 1946)

  ***

  The true national community which National Socialism created must be preserved; the madness of the parties as it was prior to 1933 must never gain ground again. (Remark in Doenitz’s diary, May 15, 1945, from “The Doenitz Government – The Last Days of the Third Reich,” Walter Lüdde-Neurath. First publication 1951, as Booklet 2 of the Göttinger Beiträge für Gegenwartsfragen, Völkerrecht, Geschichte, Internationalpolitik, hrsg. vom Institut für Völkerrecht an der Universität Göttingen. Druffel-Verlag 1981. S. 197)

  ***

  The Führer is not dead! He lives on in the creation of his God-proximate spirit. It will outlive the lives of those who were damned by fate not to understand the Führer while he still lived. They will sink into their graves and be forgotten. The spirit of the Führer however will work through time and become the saviour of his enslaved people and of ensnared mankind. (Julius Streicher: Politisches Testament)

  ***

  We cannot express our thanks in words, my Führer. Neither can words record our loyalty and affection. All the thanks, the love for and the glowing trust in you, my Führer, shines towards you in hundreds of thousands of eyes. An entire people, a whole nation, feels strong and fortunate today because this people recognizes in you not only its leader but also its saviour. (Hermann Goering)

  ***

  I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations. (Winston Churchill in The London Times, Monday, November 7, 1938)

  ***

  Those who have met Herr Hitler face to face in public business or on social terms have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism. (Churchill, Great Contemporaries, 1937)

  ***

  Never mind what they may say to-day, Germany in 1936 was thriving and happy. On its face was the bloom of a woman in love. And the Germans were in love — in love with Hitler. And to be sure there was much to be grateful for. Hitler had banished unemployment and brought them a new prosperity. He had given his Germans a new sense of national strength and national mission. (Sefton Delmer, Trail Sinister - An Autobiography. Secker & Warburg 1961 p. 282) (Impacts and Influences: Media Power in the Twentieth Century, p.91)(Die Deutschen und ich – Hamburg 1961, S. 288)

  ***

  I have just returned from a visit to Germany. I have now seen the famous German Leader and also something of the great change he has effected. Whatever one may think of his methods - and they are certainly not those of a parliamentary country - there can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvellous transformation in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other, and in their social and economic outlook.

  He rightly claimed at Nuremberg that in four years his movement has made a new Germany. It is not the Germany of the first decade that followed the war - broken, dejected, and bowed down with a sense of apprehension and importance. It is now full of hope and confidence, and of a renewed sense of determination to lead its own life without interference from any influence outside its own frontiers.

  There is for the first time since the war a general sense of security. The people are more cheerful. There is a greater sense of general gaiety of spirit throughout the land. It is a happier Germany. I saw it everywhere and Englishmen I met during my trip and who knew Germany well were very impressed with the change.

  One man has accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic, dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will and a dauntless heart.

  He is not merely in name but in fact the national Leader. He has made them safe against potential enemies by whom they were surrounded. He is also securing them against that constant dread of starvation, which is one of the poignant memories of the last years of the War and the first years of the Peace. Over ٧٠٠,٠٠٠ died of sheer hunger in those dark years. You can still see the effect in the physique of those who were born into that bleak world.

  The fact that Hitler has rescued his country from the fear of a repetition of that period of despair, penury and humiliation has given him unchallenged authority in modern Germany. As to his popularity, especially among the youth of Germany, there can be no manner of doubt. The old trust him; the young idolise him. It is not the admiration accorded to a popular Leader. It is the worship of a national hero who has saved his country from utter despondency and degradation.

  He is as immune from criticism as a king in a monarchical country. He is something more. He is the George Washington of Germany - the man who won for his country independence from all her oppressors. To those who have not actually seen and sensed the way Hitler reigns over the heart and mind of Germany this description may appear extravagant. All the same, it is the bare truth. This great people will work better, sacrifice more, and, if necessary, fight with greater resolution because Hitler asks them to do so. Those who do not comprehend this central fact cannot judge the present possibilities of modern Germany.

  Hitler fought in the ranks throughout the war, and knows from personal experience what war means. He also knows too well that the odds are even heavier today against an aggressor than they were at that time. (Excerpts from “I Talked to Hitler,” Lloyd George, London Daily Express, November 17, 1936)

  ***

  For 14 years, the Parties of decay, of November, of the Revolution led and abused the German people, 14 years long destroyed, degraded and dissipated. It is not presumptuous, if today I stand before the nation and testify before it: German People, give us four years time, then judge us and sentence us! German People, give us four years, and I promise you: As
we and as I took on this task, then so I will go. I did not do it for the salary or for remuneration; I did it for your own sake.

  It was the most difficult decision of my life. I ventured it because I believed that it had to be. I ventured it because I am convinced that now we must no longer hesitate. I ventured it because I am convinced that now the German people will once again come to its senses. And that even if we are unjustly judged today, even if millions may curse us, one day the hour will come when they will march behind us because they will understand that we really only wanted the best. (Hitler speech, Sportspalast, February 10, 1933)

  This hour-long speech is recommended to anyone who understands German. Its passionate condemnation of all that was wrong then rings as true now as it did in 1933 and is therefore a telling indictment of the false progress civilization has made since then. Its ardent faith in a better future is overwhelmingly convincing.

  At various times in his life, he expressed regret that the obligations of a patriotic politician had been thrust upon him when he would have preferred to be an architect. This fascination with architecture led to his friendship with Albert Speer, with whom he planned not only the future “Germania,” as Berlin was to be called, but also numerous opera houses, art galleries, bridges, monuments, etc. to be built all over Germany and Austria. All exteriors were to be clad in granite, to guarantee durability.