To The German Youth [by Dr. Walter Gross]

Rasp

Senior Editor
[From: National Socialist World, 2 (Fall, 1966)]


TO THE GERMAN YOUTH

by Dr. Walter Gross


The following is the translation of a short address which appeared in the December, 1935, issue of Neues Volk, the official publication of the Racial-political Department of the NSDAP. Dr. Walter Gross (Ph.D., Heidelberg, 1934), head of the Department, is the author of numerous books and articles on racial matters.

More than any other single aspect of the National Socialist ideology, the racial aspect has been deliberately misrepresented and distorted by the Jewish-democratic world press for the purpose of fomenting hatred against National Socialists and their beliefs. This brief address gives us a glimpse at the doctrine, as presented in Germany, which was and still is hysterically characterized as "preposterous," "virulent," "appallingly crude," "demented," and "sadistic."
[1] We leave it to the reader to judge who is demented. [Editor]


Dear German boys and girls:

When we speak today about race and blood, we touch upon a subject which stands at the focus of the intellectual and philosophical struggles of our times. You know, of course, that all the political and spiritual opponents of our movement have in the course of time had to admit that we are right in the fields of politics and economics, and today they can't get around admitting the accomplishments of National Socialism, however unwilling they are to do so. But as soon as the talk turns to the spiritual foundations of National Socialism, as soon as the idea upon which we base everything comes into question, objections arise. Now as ever, it is the racial ideas of National Socialism whose justification is doubted or even bluntly disputed. A glance in the foreign press will show us that; and we find it in discussions all the time with groups in our own country who feel even now that they cannot accept certain parts of the National Socialist philosophy.

I have already talked about what we mean by racial thinking in the most general sense, and have pointed out with emphasis that for us the teaching of blood and race does not mean primarily an important and interesting bit of biological science, but above all a political and philosophical principle which basically determines our attitude on many questions of life. The two most important facts which form the basis for this principle are knowledge of the powers of hereditary transmission and a recognition of the deep, even spiritual meaning of the racial differences within mankind. Because we are aware of dependence upon hereditary abilities and talents, we do not fall into the old error of overestimating educational measures and the effects of care and training; we are conscious of our responsibility to pass on our own heredity because only from it flows strength for the future. We are modest about every achievement of our own, for it has its roots in the abilities which we have received from our forebears without any doing on our part; and at the same time we're proud to see ourselves and our own short lives as links in the chain of generations and to feel that we are the bridge which leads from a great past into the most distant future.

And because we have learned, on the other hand, to recognize and respect the physical and spiritual individuality of the various human races, we have gotten away from the sickly ambition of striving for an indiscriminate "equalization" and a barren sameness in the areas of politics, economics, culture, and religion. We have recognized again the characteristics of our own race and wish to foster and preserve them, because they are the God-given form in which we live our lives as a nation and a people. At the same time we've gotten a better appreciation of the traits of this world's other races to the extent that we are no longer so anxious to make them follow our ways of thinking and feeling at any price, but we are convinced that they too can live and deal only according to the laws of their own nature.

That is about the content of racial thinking as we teach and learn it. And now when we ask ourselves why there is so much quarreling over such a simple and yet great idea, we find with closer examination that the reasons for this reaction have changed in many ways in the course of time. The opponents of our racial theories have remained firm in rejecting the new ideas, but they have repeatedly changed the grounds that they stand on themselves, and have forced us in the process to continually open and present these questions from a new position.

In the beginning, years ago in other words, when people first dared to speak of race in this rotten age of liberal-bourgeois thinking and Marxist corruption, they attacked the dangerous new ideas sharply on so-called scientific grounds. Some critics simply challenged the correctness of our biological findings. Armchair experts ridiculed racial knowledge and its teachers, and from lecterns, in editing rooms, and in meeting halls they tried to make it seem that they were dealing with only a handful of amusing fools and their wild imaginations. It is a good idea to look back today on that time and bring to mind once more the underhanded tactics of our ideology's foes. There were serious, experienced scientists even then who worked out the foundations of a completely new conception of things, while the opposition used all possible means of discrediting and slandering them, keeping up this barrage for years on end. The much-vaunted scientific freedom was trampled under foot because that suited the ruling powers of the time.

Now we have that part of the fight happily behind us.[2] Today it is clear to men in all camps and all countries of the world that one cannot seriously doubt the scientific and biological basis of our racial views, and all truly scientific discussions on this subject have for some time been devoted only to broadening our knowledge in individual areas, and the actual correctness of the basic ideas is no longer questioned. So things have quieted down in the world of science; the enemies of our beliefs have had to take up new positions in order to defend their old values against the modern age. They soon found a new slogan for the fight; "in the name of humanity and morality" people prepared to combat a view whose scientific merit could no longer be contested, but whose effects in national life might nevertheless be unbearable and even disastrous. You know what kind of accusations have come up in the course of months; for example, the theory of heredity is supposed to be dangerous because it relieves man of the responsibility for his own life and always gives him a chance to excuse his laziness, baseness, and weakness of character as inherited tendencies. Worried old maids of both sexes wrung their hands and watched an age of immorality and shamelessness roll in which they felt must be blamed on that false doctrine, the National Socialist race theory. We joined in the battle too, and may well say that we have already won it. For when such objections to our views are raised, it is really nothing more than a sly evasion of the facts.

Certainly we are not the masters of our destinies, because we are always dependent upon the form which we inherit, and that is determined by heaven. But that certainly doesn't mean that nothing more can be done with us, or other people, for that matter. On the contrary, what we do with our inherited talents for the good or bad depends entirely on us; we can let our abilities be wasted and misused, or we can train and develop them. We can lazily let our bad or useless traits grow more dominant or we can fight courageously all our lives to overcome them. This is a decision that each person has to make (and which society demands of everyone), so we place the great, difficult precept of individual responsibility next to knowledge of the hereditary determination of our characters.

This is a clear, understandable principle; even our enemies have gradually calmed down when faced with it. Today they must grudgingly admit the moral correctness of our interpretation, just as they had to credit our scientific accuracy. So now they are leaving also the second position in their running fight. But already there is a new battle beginning in a new and, frankly speaking, more important area. Now the objection arises that while the National Socialist racial theory may be completely correct and may also be educationally and morally sound, it must nevertheless be rejected in the name of faith, religion, and piety. It is said that we are on the point of putting blood in the place of God as a sort of idol, thereby replacing the human soul with a man-made theory, or at best with body and matter.

If we ask ourselves about the reasons why people always try to disturb the ideological unity of the German people on religious grounds, we come up with this very same reproach again and again, though with a thousand variations. It constitutes the last opposition to the victorious idea of our movement.

Dear boys and girls! We want to face these outmoded boogeymen again in this third round of the great struggle of the present day with our accustomed boldness and vigor. And with perfect reason, because no accusation can be more dishonest or stupider than the one we've just discussed. Nobody really has any idea of advocating empty materialism in connection with our racial teachings. Certainly nobody wants to turn the admitted fact of race into any kind of idol and to destroy real religious feeling with it. But we believe in any case that we have the right to demand more attention and respect for our racial views, just as the obviously irreligious and overbearing philosophies of the past have been able to do. If we bow again before the facts of creation instead of trying to argue them away with liberal or scholastic squabbling, is that somehow supposed to be anti-religious? If we recognize once more the way in which our own nature is regulated by hereditary characteristics dictated by the Almighty, do you call that human conceit and idolatry? If we humbly admit that as human beings we are bound by race and cannot do otherwise than to think, feel, and act according to the ways which our blood demands and which God Himself has established in us, is that heresy and disbelief, or isn't it rather a bit of piety in the truest sense of the word? Yes indeed, in the facts and precepts of race, we see something sacred and holy. This is not because we want to build up our own egos, but because we, being more honest than our opponents, recognize and admit the power of the Creator. This is something that has been very inconvenient for many political systems of the past. When we try to maintain the differences and special merits of the various races which heaven created, we thereby serve the Creator and obey His laws, and so act in better faith than the quarreling scholars who value their dull, ashen dogmas above the facts of real life. If the best men of all times and peoples have drawn the deepest, truest religious feeling from a look at the world's great order and nature, we acknowledge proudly yet humbly that to us the laws of blood and race, with their wonderful interrelationship and difficult demands, form a holy part of that great order in which we recognize the Almighty.

And so once again we raise the banner of Life against every doctrine of weakness and death, and we prepare for the future with a confession of faith: our blood is sacred to us as the thing that forms us in the image of God.


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[1] All these descriptions are applied by William L. Shirer in his all-too-well-known book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York, 1959).

[2] Unfortunately, this is not yet so. Dr. Gross did not reckon with the incredible arrogance of a loud and influential group of American-Jewish pseudo-anthropologists who still today noisily maintain that there really are no such things as distinct races and no evidence at all that there exist hereditary psychic or intellectual differences between the races. [Editor]
 
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