And You Really Want to Vote for Me?

Background: The following essay was published in Der Angriff, 7 May 1928. Goebbels founded the newspaper in Berlin shortly after taking over as the party’s leader there. It was published just before the Reichstag election (in which Goebbels did get elected).

The source: “Mich willst du wählen?” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 74-76.

And You Really Want to Vote for Me?

by Joseph Goebbels

A citizen second class, with four convictions and eight pending cases? What a dreamer!

In an essay I wrote that each National Socialist should obey the states attorney “when there isn’t any way around it,” regardless of whether it was right or wrong. For that a court in Elberfeld fined me a hundred marks for inciting resistance against the states attorney.

When Hans Hustert, in jail for trying to kill Scheidemann [Chancellor in 1922], had his teeth ruined by lousy prison food, I started a collection so that this fiend could get his teeth fixed. A court in Munich fined me 50 marks for an illegal collection.

As one of my wounded comrades was going to be trephined by the Jewish doctor Levi, I organized a collection to bring this poor worker to a German doctor. A court in Munich fined me 150 marks, once again for an illegal collection.

At a mass meeting of the NSDAP, I suggested keeping an editor of Der Tag under close watch, since he had called a Hitler meeting a monkey house. The filthy fink Carlotto Graetz, who slandered the front soldier Adolf Hitler in the worst ways and tried to connect him with pimps and prostitutes, I called a Jewish pig, in order to force him to bring suit. He didn’t sue, but I got six weeks in prison anyway because of “incitement to violence without result.”

A case is pending against me because I am supposed to have called police chief Dr. Weiss “Isidor,” though his name is Bernhard.

A second case is pending because I caricatured the above named Bernhard Weiss as Nero in Der Angriff, with the caption “Bernhard only plays thankless roles.”

Then there is a third case, because the Angriffprinted a cartoon of Bernhard Weiss behind the mask of a donkey, “clearly recognizable,” with the text that “In the state of emergency, any ass can govern.”

A fourth case is pending to force me to say who Orje is [Orje was the star of an Angriff satirical column].

A fifth pending case alleges that I drove over the leg of a poor worker. Now that was a year ago. I’ve never driven a car in my life, and on the day in question wasn’t even in Berlin. But the state’s attorney thinks that the car had the number I A 2637, and I’m just the type to do something like that. My reply that I don’t know how to drive and have never had a license only made the charge more serious.

I informed a red bigwig, who by irrelevant heckling was trying to break up a meeting, that he was at a NSDAP meeting, and that if he didn’t shut up we would forgive the S.A. if, under the law, they threw him out. That led to a sixth pending case, for “incitement to violence.”

Then I am supposed to have said that the [Weimar] Republic is only a junk shop, in which the bidders, auctioneers, and politicians bitched. That led to the seventh case, for “endangering the Republic.”

The eighth case resulted because I said the day would come when the goal-conscious, decisive minority would march against this state of cowardly majorities, to put an end by force to usury and exploitation. This one was for “attempted treason.” (! !)

As I learn from reliable sources, four new cases are in the works. What they concern I don’t yet know. But that doesn’t make much difference. I only need to open my mouth or use my pen to give a state’s attorney of the Republic a month’s work.

I have never gotten a golden toothpick from Barmat [a Jew involved in a major financial scandal].

I don’t wear a silk bathrobe from him.

During the great inflation I didn’t get any guilders or dollars from him.

I have never trampled on the German people or their honor. But I have always fought those cowards who left our common fatherland in need.

The subway system will not give me a villa costing 120,000 marks in the foreseeable future.

No one has my signed photograph on his desk.

Under the conditions existing since 1918, I therefore have no chance of getting anything done.