Background: The following material comes from Die Lage, published by the Nazi Party’s Central Propaganda Office. It had four editions (A, B, C, & D), which varied slightly depending on the group they went to. Edition D went to speakers. This one gives them instructions just after D-Day on how to keep the main focus on the battle against the Soviet Union. This material was then translated into thousands of speeches given throughout Germany.
The source: “Sprachregelung zum Thema ‘Bolshevismus’”, Die Lage, D — Nr. 3/44, 15 June 1944.
The Invasion on Moscow’s Orders
Just as before, Bolshevism is Enemy #1 for us. The critical battle that has begun in the west cannot be seen as an event independent of the Bolshevist danger that threatens us and all of Europe. The outcome of events in the west is of enormous significance to us, since on it depends whether we will fall prey to Bolshevism according to the plans of our plutocratic enemy, or whether we will overcome decisively their destructive desires.
If the Anglo-Americans were to be victorious on the Continent, it would mean that Europe would be delivered to Bolshevist power. The Anglo-Americans could not resist, even if they wanted to, since they would have nothing left but their democratic phrases and the remnants of their army, battered both in strength and morale. There is no doubt that the Americans and British, almost bled dry, could not summon the necessary strength to defeat Bolshevist might. They are fighting, after all, not for their existence, but for t he interests and profits of their plutocratic leadership. And the growing social problems will only be intensified by the burdens of war. It takes almost superhuman idealism to believe that, under such circumstances, British and American soldiers would be willing to oppose the Bolshevist war machine by defending the foreign continent of Europe, or that they could succeed in so doing.
We must therefore completely eliminate any idea that this might happen, particularly now that attention is being drawn to the west. The battle in the west is being fought by Moscow’s satellites. It is, therefore, a decisive battle against Bolshevism. We must see it this way to understand its full political significance.
Was the War against the Soviet Union Necessary?
The severity of the conflict in the east has led certain circles to ask if the battle against the Soviet Union could have been avoided. Such thoughts display a complete misunderstanding of our Bolshevist enemy; the war came not because of our good will, but rather from the innate aggressive nature of Bolshevism. Such ideas are intended to lead the German people to question the meaning of the hardest struggle in its history, thereby weakening its fighting power. We must decisively oppose such an idea.
From its beginnings, Bolshevism proclaimed its intent to expand by force beyond Russia’s borders. Over twenty-five years, Bolshevism has used cold calculation and every means to realize this intent. It sacrificed millions of lives to industrialize Russia, building a massive armory for communist world conquest upon its vast rural landscape. It used, and still uses, methods of unique brutality against its own people. There is no clearer proof of this than Lenin’s words:
“If today every Russian had to die to assure the success of the world revolution, I would desire the death of every Russian.”
His successors to the present day have consistently acted in the same way. In countless proclamations, they have attempted to use the war between us and the western powers to achieve their goals. Three years ago, they were prepared to stab us in the back at the decisive moment of the battle they expected between England and us. They signed the nonaggression pact with us for purely pragmatic reasons, with the goal of misleading us. As the center of Europe, Germany was always their first and most important target of conquest. Conquering Germany would mean conquering Europe, which is even more true today than it was then. Only the Führer’s determination then frustrated the Bolshevist plan to attack us in a treacherous manner. Only our victories in 1941 put us in a position to master the threatening danger. They reduced the Soviet military potential in time to prevent the further accumulation of force that Bolshevism would have turned on us. Our attack on the approaching threat displayed the greatest political foresight. Those short-sighted people who today overlook these facts would today in all probability find themselves rotting in Siberia had we not acted in 1941.
Since then, military developments in the east have completely closed off the Soviets. We have held our position against Bolshevism over three years of the heaviest fighting only because at each decisive moment, millions of troops were missing, troops the statesman and commander Adolf Hitler defeated at literally the last moment. That accomplishment will be of enormous significance for the outcome of this war, and does not pale before the exertions the war in the east has placed on us, and will continue to place.
Stalin
Our innate German desire for “objectivity,” often leads us into the most questionable conclusions and formulations, as we well know. We must, therefore, be on guard against seeing the Soviet dictator through these lenses. To speak of Stalin, this head of the most brutal system of suppression in all history, as a “leading personality,” as a terrible person with an “extraordinary will,” to speak of his “astounding achievements” or his “political cleverness,” is not only psychological self-deception, but also a dangerous disregard of the most cold-blooded and deadliest destructive force that Germany has ever faced. It is as if a person fighting for his very life against a powerful and deadly beast were to pause for a moment to think about the sleekness and guile of the predator that was attacking him. Such objectivity could hardly object as the unsentimental beast, true to its nature, objectively tore its victim apart, which is, after all, according to its nature. For us, Stalin is and remains a brutal criminal of historic proportions. He has not only brutally destroyed millions of his own people, but has vast plans for annihilation for us and all of humanity. To “appreciate” his achievements would mean one would have to honor the deeds of any other criminal operating outside of normal human rules, anyone willing to hold back nothing in order to achieve his perverse goals, as long as he is successful. Stalin’s methods along, insofar as we know them, show with whom the German people must deal, as well as the terrible ways in which Bolshevism’s “accomplishments” were achieved. There could be no more deadly “objectivism” on the part of our people than this, for it would lead to the most tragic conceivable consequences. We must constantly hammer this truth into people’s minds: Siberia, starvation, executions, mass misery, slavery. Stalin is the embodiment of this program of inhumanity.
The Concept of “Worldview”
Something similar is the case with any ideological comparison between National Socialism and Bolshevism. For us, there is no such thing as a Bolshevist “worldview.”
For us, a worldview is an organic understanding, the recognition of creative and moral laws in humanity and in the lives of nations. Such a significant concept cannot apply to a doctrine that intentionally aims at the extermination of moral and creative laws, forces, and desires, and that wants to destroy the things that we think are the most basic foundations of human order and the dignity of human life.
There is therefore no “relationship” between National Socialism and Bolshevism. When, for example, the war forces us to limit the freedom of the individual by various measures or demands, we do it because it is necessary to preserve the freedom of our people, and therefore of each individual, from a system that wants to subject each individual and each people to unprecedented slavery. All the privations that we have to endure today will protect us from this terrible fate. The very fact that we feel it to be a heavy burden is the best proof of the difference between us and Bolshevism. We know the value of a happy life and the blessing of free, independent work and achievement. The Bolshevist, on the other hand, has long had these driven out of him by a terroristic system. He has grown used to the heaviest burdens, as the polar bear has grown used to the ice and the hyena its carrion.
We we to place ourselves on the same level as Bolshevism, out battle would certainly lose its meaning. But for us, what is important is not the things of today, but rather those that will be tomorrow. They will justify our suffering and burdens today, not become permanent, or even increase to unbearable levels, which is what has happened in the Soviet Union for half of a human life span: The Bolshevist vegetates, but we want to live!
Bolshevism and Jewry
We must constantly stress that Bolshevism was invented by the Jews, that it is dominated by Jews, and that its goal is to subordinate the masses and peoples to the Jews. It provides the Jew with the role of ruler and exploiter that is his goal for the world. He pulls the strings, he whips up the passive masses of the Soviet Union to the bloodiest attacks of all times, and he has given Europe’s peoples in this system of pitiless horror and inhuman hatred the image of his race and its goals for the world. He drives the peoples we are fighting against us with force and lies, through terror and the most extreme agitation. The battle will one day reach its pinnacle against our hard resistance, the day when the peoples will cry out for the reason for their sacrifices. For our part, we know the reason: It is a matter of our existence. Only he for whom all is at stake is able to give all that he has.
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