Mein Kampf (Stackpole Sons)/Volume 1/Chapter 7
7. The Revolution
Enemy propaganda had begun on us in 1915; from 1916 on, it became more and more intensive, to swell by the beginning of 1918 to a veritable inundation. The effects of this fishing of souls were to be seen at every step. The army gradually learned to think as the enemy wished it to.
The German counter-efforts were a complete failure.
In the leader whose mind and will then guided the army, there no doubt existed the intention and decisiveness to take up the struggle in this direction as well as elsewhere; but the necessary instrument was lacking. And it was a mistake, even psychologically, for the army itself to undertake this enlightenment upon the troops. If it was to be effective, it had to come from home. Otherwise it was impossible to count on success among men whose immortal deeds of heroism and endurance during nearly four years had been performed for that very homeland.
But what did come from home?
Was the failure stupidity or villainy?
In mid-summer of 1918, after the retreat from the southern bank of the Marne, the German press had begun to behave with such wretched ineptness, in fact with such criminal stupidity, that I asked myself with daily increasing chagrin whether there was really no one to put an end to this intellectual squandering of the army’s heroism.
What happened in France when we swept into the country in 1914 in an unparalleled whirlwind of victory? What did Italy do while her Isonzo front was collapsing? What did France do in the spring of 1918, when the assaults of the German divisions seemed to be unhinging the French positions and the far-reaching arm of the heavy long-distance batteries was pounding upon the gates of Paris?
How the boiling heat of national passion was hurled in the faces of the retreating regiments! How propaganda and inspired skill at influencing the masses labored to pound into the hearts of the broken fronts a belief in the final victory, now more than ever!
And what was happening on our side? Nothing, or worse than nothing.
I was often carried away with anger and indignation when I received the latest newspapers, and saw the psychological mass murder they were committing.
More than once I was tortured by the thought that if Providence had put me in place of these incompetent or criminal could-nots and would-nots in our propaganda service, war would have been declared on Destiny in a different fashion.
During those months I felt for the first time the full force of the malicious fate which kept me at the front, in a spot where the chance gesture of any negro might shoot me down, while in another place I might have done very different service for the Fatherland.
Even then I was presumptuous enough to believe I would have succeeded. But I was a nameless one among eight millions; so it was better to hold my tongue, and to do my duty as well as possible where I was.
In the summer of 1916 the first enemy leaflets fell into our hands.
Although with some changes of form, their substance was almost invariably the same: Distress in Germany was growing ever greater; the war would last forever, while the chance of winning it was vanishing; and for that reason the people at home were longing for peace, but “militarism” and the “Kaiser” would not permit it; the whole world—which well realized this—was therefore not making war on the German people, but exclusively upon the sole guilty party, the Kaiser; the struggle would not come to an end until this enemy of peaceable mankind was eliminated; but after the termination of the war, the peaceful and democratic nations would receive the German people into the League of eternal world peace which was assured from the moment that “Prussian militarism” was destroyed.
To illustrate these claims, “letters from home” were frequently printed which appeared to confirm these statements.
At that time everybody just laughed at these attempts. The leaflets were read and then sent to the rear to the higher staffs, and mostly forgotten until the wind brought down another load into the trenches; for it was usually airplanes which served to bring over the leaflets.
There was one striking thing about this sort of propaganda, namely that in every sector where there were Bavarians an attack on Prussia was pushed with extraordinary persistency, asserting on the one hand that Prussia was solely guilty and responsible for the whole war, and on the other hand that there was not the slightest enmity for Bavaria in particular—though of course there was nothing to be done for Bavaria so long as it continued to serve under, and pull the chestnuts out of the fire for, Prussian militarism.
As a matter of fact this method of influence actually began to have a certain effect as early as 1915. Feeling against Prussia among the troops increased quite noticeably—without producing the slightest counter-measures from above. This was more than a mere sin of omission; sooner or later there were bound to be most grievous results, and not for the “Prussians” but for the German people, of which Bavaria is no inconsiderable part.
In this direction enemy propaganda began to have definite results by 1916.
The complaining letters from home had also long since begun to take effect. It was no longer necessary for the enemy to send them into our front by means of leaflets, etc. Here too, nothing was done in “governmental quarters” except for a few psychologically half-witted “admonitions.” The front was constantly flooded with this poison which empty-headed women cooked up at home, naturally not dreaming that this was the way to strengthen the enemy’s confidence to the limit, and hence to prolong and increase the sufferings of their loved ones at the battle front. The silly letters of German women eventually cost hundreds of thousands of men their lives.
Even by 1916 there were various alarming signs. The men at the front cursed and “groused,” were discontented in many respects, and often very justly indignant. While they were starving and suffering, and their families at home were in misery, elsewhere there was abundance and riotous living. Even at the front itself all was not as it should have been in this respect.
Even then, that is, there were faint warnings of crisis—but these were all still internal matters. The same man who growled and cursed would silently do his duty a few minutes later as if it were a matter of course. The same company that was feeling discontented would dig into the section of trenches it had to defend as if Germany’s fate depended upon this hundred yards of mud-holes. It was still the front formed by the old, magnificent army of heroes!
I was to experience the difference between it and home in glaring contrast.
At the end of September, 1916, my division entered the battle of the Somme. For us it was the first of the monstrous battles that now followed, and the impression it created is hardly to be described. It seemed more like Hell than a war.
In the whirlwind tattoo of the guns for weeks at a time the German front held out, sometimes being pushed back, then advancing again, but never giving way.
On October 7, 1916, I was wounded.
I arrived safely at the rear, and was ordered to Germany by transport train.
Two years had passed since I had seen home—an almost endless stretch of time under such circumstances. I could hardly imagine how Germans who were not in uniform would look. When I was in the base hospital at Hermies, I started as if in alarm when the voice of a German woman, a nurse, addressed a man lying next to me. A sound like that for the first time in two years!
But the nearer to the border the train came which was bringing us home, the more restless each man became. All the towns moved past which we had ridden through, two years before, as young soldiers: Brussels, Louvain, Liège; and finally we thought we recognized the first German house by its high gables and its handsome shutters.
The Fatherland!
In October 1914 we had been aflame with wild enthusiasm when we crossed the border; now stillness and emotion reigned. We were all happy that Fate allowed us to see once more what we were defending so fiercely with our lives; and each of us was almost ashamed to let anyone look him in the eye.
Almost on the anniversary of my departure I arrived in the hospital at Beelitz near Berlin.
What a transformation! From the mud of the Battle of the Somme into the white beds of this marvelous structure! At first one hardly dared lie on them.
But unfortunately this world was new in other respects also.
The spirit of the army at the front seemed not to dwell here. For the first time I heard a thing as yet unknown at the front: someone boasting of his own cowardice. One did indeed hear cursing and grumbling at the front, but never to encourage dereliction in duty, let alone to glorify the coward. No: the coward was a coward still, and nothing more; and he was treated with a contempt as universal as the admiration that was felt for a true hero. But here in the hospital, conditions already were partly almost the reverse: the most unprincipled trouble-seekers took the floor, and tried with every resource of their sorry eloquence to make the ideas of the decent soldier ridiculous and the coward’s lack of character a model.
A few contemptible fellows in particular set the tone. One of them boasted that he had stuck his own hand into the barbed wire in order to get into the hospital; despite this ridiculous injury he seemed to have been here an endless length of time, and in fact it was only by a dodge that he had got into the transport train for Germany at all. This poisonous fellow went so far as to exhibit his own cowardice brazenly as the result of a bravery higher than the heroic death of the honest soldier. Many listened in silence, others walked away, but a few actually agreed.
I was disgusted within an inch of my life, but the trouble-maker was calmly tolerated in the hospital. What could one do? The office surely must, and in fact did, know who and what he was. Yet nothing happened.
When I could walk properly again, I got leave to go to Berlin. Privation was obviously very severe everywhere. The city of millions was suffering from hunger. Discontent was rife. In various homes which the soldiers visited, the tone was like that of the hospital. It looked very much as if these fellows deliberately sought out such spots in order to spread their views.
But things were even worse, much worse in Munich itself. When I was discharged from the hospital after my recovery, and was assigned to the reserve battalion, I hardly recognized the city again. Anger, disgust and abusive talk wherever one went. In the reserve battalion itself the spirit was absolutely beneath contempt. One factor here was the utterly inept treatment of the active soldiers by old training officers, who had never spent a single hour in the field, and for this reason, if for no other, were able only in part to establish a decent relationship with the old soldiers. These old soldiers did have certain peculiarities which were explained by service at the front, but which were quite incomprehensible to the heads of the reserve troops, while an officer who had himself come from the front was at least not puzzled by them. Such an officer of course received a very different sort of respect among the men from that given the officers at the rear.
But quite aside from this the general temper was dreadful; shirking began to be thought almost a sign of higher wisdom, and faithful endurance as the earmark of inner weakness and purblindness. The government offices were full of Jews. Almost every clerk was a Jew, and every Jew a clerk. I was astonished at this wealth of warriors of the chosen people, and could not help comparing it with their sparse representation at the front.
The situation in business was yet worse. Here the Jewish people had actually become “indispensable.” The spider was slowly beginning to suck the blood through the people’s pores. In the war corporations an instrument had been found with which gradually to sweep away the national, free economy.
The necessity of unrestricted centralization was emphasized. And in fact by 1916–1917 almost all production was under the control of financial Jewry.
But at whom did the people now direct its hatred?
At that time I was horrified to see a doom approaching which, if not averted in time, was bound to lead to a collapse.
While the Jew was plundering the whole nation and thrusting it under his domination, people were agitating against the “Prussians.” As at the front, so at home nothing was done from above against this poisonous propaganda. Nobody seemed to dream that the collapse of Prussia was far from meaning a boom in Bavaria, and that on the contrary the fall of the one must inevitably drag the other with it into the abyss.
This behavior caused me infinite pain. In it I could see nothing but the Jew’s most inspired trick to distract general attention from himself to others. While Bavarians and Prussians were quarreling, he sneaked the livelihood from under the nose of both; while the Bavarians were damning the Prussians, the Jew organized the Revolution, and shattered Prussia and Bavaria together.
I could not stand this accursed feud among the German clans, and was glad to get back to the front, to which I asked to be transferred immediately after my arrival in Munich. And by the beginning of March, 1917, I was back with my regiment again.
Toward the end of 1917 the deepest point of the army’s depression semed to be past. After the Russian collapse, the whole army took fresh hope and fresh courage. The conviction that the struggle would yet end with a German victory began to grow on the troops more and more. Singing was to be heard again, and croakers were fewer. People believed again in the future of the Fatherland.
The Italian collapse especially, in the Autumn of 1917 had had a marvelous effect; in this victory people saw a proof of the possibility of breaking through the front at other places beside the scene of the Russian campaign. A splendid faith flooded back into the hearts of the millions, and made it possible for them to hold out for the spring of 1918 with relieved assurance. The enemy, on the other hand, was visibly dejected. That winter things were somewhat calmer than usual. It was the calm before the storm.
But just as the front was making the final preparations to terminate the endless struggle at last, as endless transport-trains of men and supplies were rolling toward the Western Front and the troops were being groomed for the great attack, in Germany the greatest blackleg trick of the war broke out.
Germany must not win. At the last moment, when victory threatened to follow the German banner, a means was resorted to which seemed calculated at a blow to throttle the German spring attack at birth, and to make victory impossible.
The munitions strike was organized.
If it succeeded, the German front would collapse, and the wish of the Vorwạ̄erts newspaper that victory might not follow the German banner this time would be fulfilled. From lack of munitions the front would be broken through in a few weeks; the offensive would be prevented, the Entente saved, and international capital made master of Germany—this then was the inner goal of the Marxist swindle upon the peoples something which the honorable gentlemen succeeded in. Destruction of the national economy in order to establish the rule of international capital—thanks to the stupidity and credulity of one side and the fathomless cowardice of the other.
So far as starving the front for armaments went, the munitions strike did not, it is true, have the full success that was hoped for: it collapsed too early for the munitions shortage in itself to condemn the army to destruction, as was planned. But haw much worse was the moral damage that was done!
Firstly, what was the army still fighting for, if people at home did not even want a victory? For whom the enormous sacrifices and privations? The soldier is sent out to fight for victory, and at home they strike against it!
But secondly, what was the effect upon the enemy?
In the winter of 1917–18 dark clouds rose for the first time on the Allied firmament. For almost four years they had tilted against the German giant, and had been unable to overthrow him; and yet he had only his shield-arm free for defense, while the sword had to swing now to the East, now to the South. Now at last the giant was free behind. Rivers of blood had flowed before he succeeded in definitely smashing one of his adversaries. Now the sword would join the shield in the West, and if the enemy so far had not succeeded in breaking down the defense, the attack now was to fall upon him himself. People dreaded him, and feared the victory.
In London and Paris one conference crowded on the heels of the next, but on the front a drowsy silence reigned. The gentry had suddenly lost their impudence. Even the enemy propaganda was having a struggle; it was no longer so easy to prove the impossibility of a German victory.
But the same thing was likewise true of the front itself. They too began to see an uncanny light. Their inner attitude toward the German soldier had changed. Thus far they might have thought him a fool marked for defeat; but now they were faced with the annihilator of their Russian ally. Born of necessity, the confinement of German offensives to the East now seemed a piece of inspired strategy. For three years the Germans had charged upon Russia, at first apparently without the slightest effect. People almost laughed at this futile undertaking; for, after all, the Russian giant with his superiority of numbers must be the victor at last, while Germany would break down from loss of blood. Fact seemed to justify this hope.
Starting in September, 1914, when the endless masses of Russian prisoners from the battle of Tannenberg first began to swell toward Germany along highways and railroads, the stream scarcely stopped—but for every army beaten and annihilated, a new one arose. Inexhaustibly the vast Empire kept giving the Tsar new soldiers, and the war its new victims. How long could Germany last in this race? Must not the day come, after a last German victory, when the Russian armies—not even yet the last ones—would array themselves for the final battle? And then what? In all human probability Russia’s victory might be postponed, but come it must.
Now all these hopes were done with; the ally who had laid the greatest blood-sacrifices on the altar of the common interests was at the end of his strength, and lay at the feet of the implacable attacker. Fear and horror crept into the hearts of the soldiers, hitherto blind in their faith. They feared the coming spring. For if they had not succeeded in breaking the German when he could give but part of his energy to the Western Front, how could they still count on victory with the entire strength of the mighty hero state apparently gathering itself for an attack?
The shadows of the South Tyrolean mountains sank uneasily upon the imagination; as far away as the fogs of Flanders, the beaten armies of Cadorna conjured up gloomy specters, and belief in victory gave way to fear of the coming defeat.
There—just as people seemed in the cool nights to hear the steady rumble of the advancing shock troops of the German army, and were looking forward in uneasy dread to the coming judgment day, suddenly a glaring red light blazed from Germany, throwing its flare into the last shell-hole of the enemy front.
At the moment that the German divisions were having their final training for the great assault, the general strike broke out in Germany.
For a moment the world was speechless. But then, with a sigh of relief, the enemy propaganda snatched at this help in the twelfth hour. At one blow the means was found to bring back the ebbing confidence of the Allied soldiers, to describe the probability of victory as conceivable again, and to change the uneasy dread of coming events into confident determination. Now the regiments awaiting the German attack could go into the greatest battle of all time with the conviction that the end of the war would be decided not by the daring of the German assault but by the tenacity of its defense. Let the Germans win as many victories as they pleased, at home the Revolution was marching in, not the victorious army.
This belief English, French and American newspapers began to plant in the hearts of their readers, while infinitely skillful propaganda drove on the troops at the front.
“Germany on the eve of Revolution! Victory of the Allies inevitable!” This was the best medicine to set the wavering Poilu and Tommy on their feet. Now rifles and machine-guns could be got to firing again, and instead of a flight in panic terror, there was hopeful resistance.
This was the result of the munitions strike. It strengthened the enemy peoples’ faith in victory, and swept away the paralyzing despair of the Allied front—for which thousands of German soldiers afterward paid with their lives.
The originators of this basest of all villainy were those who expected the highest State offices in the Germany of the Revolution.
The visible effects of this deed on the German side could, it is true, be apparently overcome for the time being; but on the enemy side the results were not long in coming. The resistance had lost the aimlessness of an army that has given everything up for lost, and in its stead appeared the bitter intensity of a struggle for victory.
For in all human probability victory must come, if the Western Front could but hold out a few months against the German attack. The parliaments of the Entente recognized the possibilities of the future, and voted stupendous sums to continue the propaganda which would undermine Germany.
It was my good fortune to have a share in the first two and the last offensives.
They are the most tremendous impressions of my life—tremendous because now for the last time the struggle, as in 1914, lost the character of defense, and took on that of attack. The men in the trenches and dugouts of the German army drew a deep breath now that the day of retribution, after more than three years’ dogged hanging-on in the enemy inferno, was at hand at last. Once more the victorious battalions shouted exultantly, and they hung the last wreaths of immortal laurel on the standards amid the lightning flashes of victory. Once more the songs of the Fatherland roared heavenward along the endless marching columns, and for the last time the Lord’s mercy smiled on His ungrateful children.
In mid-summer of 1918 sultry heat lay over the front. At home people were quarreling. Over what? Many stories circulated among the various divisions of the army in the field. The war was now hopeless, they said, and only fools could still believe in victory. The people had no further interest in continued resistance; only capital and the Monarchy had. That was the story from home, and it was discussed at the front as well.
At first there was scarcely any reaction. What did we care for universal suffrage? Was that what we had fought four years for? It was a piece of vile banditry thus to steal the war’s goal from the dead heroes in their graves. It was not with the cry, “Long live universal secret suffrage,” that the young regiments had gone to their deaths in Flanders, but with the shout, “Germany above everything in the world”—a small but not altogether insignificant difference. But those who were shouting for suffrage had for the most part never been there when now they wished to fight for it. The whole political party mob was a stranger to the front. One saw only a fraction of the Honorable Parliamentarians in the place where decent Germans, if they had but sound limbs, were then residing.
The old backbone of the front, therefore, was also against this new war aim of Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann, Barth, Liebknecht, etc. and showed but little interest. People could not see why the slackers should all at once have the right to arrogate the authority in the State to themselves over the army’s head.
My personal attitude was settled from the start: I hated the whole pack of wretched, nation-swindling party scoundrels intensely. I had long since realized that with this gang it was a question not of the nation’s welfare, but of filling empty pockets. For this purpose they were now even willing to sacrifice the whole people, and if necessary to let Germany go to her doom. In my eyes they were ready for the noose. Having regard for their wishes meant sacrificing the interests of the working people in favor of a set of pickpockets; those wishes could be fulfilled only if one were ready to give up Germany.
And so the great majority of the fighting army still thought. Only the reinforcements from home swiftly grew worse and worse, so that their arrival weakened, instead of strengthening, the fighting power. The young reinforcements in particular were largely worthless. Often it was hard to believe that these were sons of the same people which had once sent out its youth to the battle of Ypres.
In August and September the symptoms of disintegration swiftly increased, despite the fact that the enemy attack was not to be compared with the horrors of our earlier defensive battles. By contrast the Somme and Flanders were part of a horrible past.
At the end of September my division came for the third time to the places which we had once stormed as young volunteer regiments.
What a memory!
There, in October and November of 1914, we had received our baptism of fire. With love of Fatherland in its heart and song on its lips our young regiment had gone to battle as if to the dance. The most precious blood was joyfully given in the belief that this would preserve independence and freedom for the Fatherland.
In July of 1917 we trod this soil, sacred for us all, for the second time. Here slept the best of our comrades, children almost, who had gone bright-eyed to death for the Fatherland which alone they loved.
We veterans, who had marched out with the regiment long ago, stood with profound reverence at this altar of “faithfulness and obedience unto death.”
The regiment had stormed this ground three years before; now it was to defend it in a bitter battle of resistance.
With three weeks of drum-fire the Englishman prepared for the great Flanders offensive. Now the spirits of the fallen seemed to come alive; the regiment braced itself in the filthy mud, and dug into the shell-holes and craters, unyielding, unwavering, and grew ever smaller and thinner, just as once before at this spot, until at last the Englishman’s attack let go on the 31st of July, 1917.
Early in August we were relieved.
What once had been the regiment was now a few companies; they staggered back, covered with mud, more like ghosts than men. But except for a few hundred yards of shell-holes, the Englishman had won nothing but death.
Now, in the fall of 1918, we stood for the third time on the stormed ground of 1914. Comines, the little town where we once had been quartered, was now our battlefield. But if the battleground was the same, the men had changed; the troops now talked politics too. The poison from home began to take effect here as everywhere else. The younger reinforcements were absolutely useless—they came from home.
On the night of October 13th–14th the English gas attack on the Southern Front before Ypres broke loose; they used Yellow Cross gas, whose effect was still new to us as far as personal experience was concerned. I was to find it out for myself that very night. The evening of October 13th, on a hill south of Wervick we got into a drum-fire of gas grenades lasting several hours, and continuing more or less violently all night. By midnight half of us were knocked out, some of our comrades forever. Toward morning I was gripped by more and more violent pains as the minutes passed; and at seven o’clock in the morning, my eyes aflame, I stumbled and staggered to the rear, taking with me my last report in the war as I went.
Within a few hours my eyes had turned to red-hot coals, and all was dark around me.
Thus I arrived in hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania, and there I had to experience the greatest infamy of this century.
There had been something vague but repulsive above the atmosphere for some time. The gossip was that “things” were going to pop in the next few weeks—only I could not imagine what they meant by “things.” My first thought was of a strike, like that of the spring. Unpleasant rumors were constantly coming from the navy, which was supposed to be in a state of ferment. But even this seemed to me rather the creature of a few scattered rascals’ brains than an affair of any large mass of people. In hospital of course everyone talked about the termination of the war, which they hoped would be soon; but no one counted on it at once. Newspapers I could not read.
In November the general tension increased.
And then suddenly and unexpectedly one day the catastrophe was upon us. Sailors came in trucks, rousing us to the Revolution; a few Jew-boys were the “leaders” in this struggle for the “freedom, beauty and dignity” of our people’s life. None of them had been at the front. By way of a so-called “clap hospital” the three orientals had been sent home from behind the lines. Now they ran up the red rag there.
By that time my condition had begun to improve somewhat. The piercing pain in the hollows of my eyes grew less; gradually I could distinguish my surroundings in rough outline again. I had hopes of getting my eyesight back at least enough so that I would be able to pursue some occupation. I could not, however, hope ever to be able to draw again. Still I was on the road to improvement when the monstrous thing happened.
My first hope was that this high treason was a more or less local affair. I tried to cheer up some of my comrades in that belief. My Bavarian hospital-mates in particular were more than receptive. Their temper was anything but “revolutionary.” I could not imagine that the madness would break out in Munich as well. I thought the devotion to the venerable House of Wittelsbach was pretty sure to be stronger than the will of a few Jews. So I could not help believing it was a matter of a revolt in the navy, which would be put down in the next few days.
The next few days came, and with them the most horrible certainty of my life. Ever more alarming grew the rumors. What I had thought a local matter was to be a general Revolution. On top of it all came the shameful news from the front. They were going to capitulate. Could any such thing be possible?
On the 10th of November the pastor came to the hospital for a short address; now we found out the whole story.
Intensely excited, I went to hear his brief speech. The dignified old gentleman seemed to be trembling like a leaf as he informed us that the House of Hollenzollern could no longer wear the crown of the German Emperors, that the Fatherland had become a “Republic,” that our Fatherland would surely be exposed to heavy oppressions in the future. That we must beg the Almighty not to refuse his blessing to the transformation and not to forsake our people in time to come. He could not refrain from saying a few words about the Royal House; he tried to speak in appreciation of what it had done for Pomerania, for Prussia, nay for the German Fatherland—and here he began to weep softly. Profound dejection came upon every heart in the little hall, and I believe there was not a single eye which could keep back the tears. But when the old gentleman tried to continue, and began to tell us that we should now have to end the long war, and that in future (since the war was lost and we were throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the victors) our Fatherland would be liable to grievous oppression, that the Armistice was to be accepted, our trust being put in the magnaminity of our enemy—I could stand it no longer. It was impossible for me to remain. Everything went black before my eyes again, and I staggered and stumbled my way back to the dormitory, flung myself upon my cot, and buried by burning head in the blanket and pillow.
I had not cried since the day when I stood beside my mother’s grave. Whenever in my youth I was gripped by a pitiless Fate, my obduracy increased. When Death fetched dear comrades and friends from out of our ranks in the long years of the war, I would have thought it almost a sin to complain—were they not dying for Germany? And when I myself—in the very last days of the fearful struggle—fell victim to the creeping gas that began to eat into my eyes, and, in horror of going blind forever, I was ready for a moment to lose courage, the voice of conscience thundered at me: Miserable wretch, are you to snivel while thousands are a hundred times worse off than you? And so I bore my fate in dull silence. But now I could not help it. Now I realized for the first time how personal suffering disappears in face of the misfortune of the Fatherland.
So it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and starvation, in vain the hunger and thirst often of months without end, in vain the hours when, gripped by deathly terror, we nevertheless did out duty, and in vain the death of two millions who died as they did it. Surely the graves must open of all the hundreds of thousands who had marched out, believing in the Fatherland, never to return? Surely they must open and send forth the silent heroes, covered with mud and blood, as avenging spirits to the homeland which had so outrageously cheated them of the highest sacrifice that a man can offer to his people in this world? Was this what they had died for, the soldiers of August and September 1914; was this why the volunteer regiments followed their old comrades in the fall of the same year? Was it for this that these boys of seventeen had fallen upon the soil of Flanders? Was this the meaning of the sacrifice which the German mother made for the Fatherland when with aching heart she sent out her dearest boys, never to see them more? Was it all for this—so that now a mob of miserable criminals should dare to lay hands on the Fatherland?
Was it for this, then, that the German soldier, exhausted by sleepless nights and endless marches, hungry, thirsty and frozen, had stood fast through burning sun and driving snow? Was it for this he had gone through the inferno of drum-fire and the fever of gas attacks, never yielding, always remembering the single duty of guarding the Fatherland from the invasion of the enemy?
Truly, these heroes too deserved a stone:
“Stranger, tell in Germany that we lie here, faithful to the Fatherland and obedient to duty.”
And Germany—?
But was the supreme sacrifice all we must consider? Was the Germany of the past worthless? Had we no obligations to our own history? Were we still worthy to take unto ourselves the glory of the past? And how could this deed be offered for justification to the future?
Depraved and miserable criminals! The more I tried to come to a clear realization of the monstrous event, the more the flush of indignation and shame burned in my cheek. What was the agony of my eyes compared to this wretchedness?
There followed awful days and worse nights—I knew that all was lost. Only fools could hope for the mercy of the enemy—or liars and criminals. During those nights hatred grew up in me, hatred for the perpetrators of this deed.
In the next few days I became conscious of my own fate. I had to laugh when I thought of my personal future, which had caused me such grievous worry so short a time before. Was it not laughable to think of building houses on such ground? Finally I realized that the thing had merely happened which I had so often dreaded, but which emotionally I had never been able to believe.
Emperor William II had been the first German Emperor to offer the hand of reconciliation to the leaders of Marxism, not dreaming that scoundrels have no honor. While they still grasped the Imperial hand, with the other they were feeling for the dagger.
With the Jew there can be no coming to terms, but only the implacable “either—or.”
And I resolved to become a politician.