Background: The following essay was published in Der Angriff, 21 November 1927. At the time, the Nazi Party in Berlin was still on shaky ground. Goebbels was doing all he could to persuade communists to become Nazis. Here Goebbels attacks Marxism, claiming it is in league with the Jews.
The source: “Heil Moskau!” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 236-238.
by Joseph Goebbels
Following the celebration of the ten year anniversary of the Russian Revolution, three young Berlin communists from the Köpernick district committed suicide after they had taken a touching farewell from their comrades. They explained calmly that they had lost faith in the future of the International.
It is said of Ernst Thälmann, the communist leader, that during the Hamburg uprising he laid stone drunk in his own vomit. In Berlin-Wedding a few weeks ago, Ruth Fischer spoke at a meeting of the KPD opposition, calling for a fight against the Third International. When a representative of the KPD began to speak he was shouted down by his former comrades and thrown out the door. The affair ended in a general melee.
The tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution was recently celebrated in Moscow. As the honored guests from the entire world who had gathered to praise Moscow’s principles watched, the opposition to the workers’ and peasants’ state stormed the gathering and took over the university. The end of the story: twelve leading Bolshevists, nearly all Jews of the old guard, were expelled from the Communist Party.
What does this all mean?
Things are becoming clear all over. The smoke of rhetoric is vanishing, and all that remains is a miserable remnant of fantasies that absolutely no one confuses with reality. The German proletariat is one hope poorer, perhaps its last one. Marx’s game is over. Nature is in charge once again, and it has made the eternal laws pitilessly and unmistakably clear: the laws of personality, struggle, and race.
Did things have to turn out this way?
Yes, a thousand times yes.
There was no other possible outcome. We have it prophesied a hundred times. If the Jews speak, the people must beware. The Jew is rootless, a ferment of decomposition. Whether he lives as a capitalist or a Bolshevist, his nature remains the same: Ahasver, the eternal destroyer. His gospel is chaos, and where he succeeds in fomenting revolution, he rises to the top. He brought the worker’s movement to its present deplorable state: a mixture of phrases, cowardice, terror and class hatred. What does the cause of the proletariat have to do with pacifism, protection of the republic, the elimination of personality and the destruction of national dignity and honor? Where is it written that utopias, wishes, programs and books rule the world instead of strength and the facts? Why do you demonstrate here for the national freedom of the oppressed colonial peoples, yet forget that Germany is a province of high finance? Why shout “China for the Chinese,” yet stand by in cowardice as the Jews sell Germany piece by piece and turn it over to the world dictatorship? You cry “Reaction” when one speaks of a lost fatherland. You smell treason when one names things by their right names. You retreat stubbornly and silently to your own troubles, and find that nothing remains but desperation and suicide.
Do not say that the First, Second or Third International is responsible! Found a new one, a Fourth! It will betray you just as its three predecessors did.
The International itself is in error. It is thought out, not lived. The Jew preaches it to you because it is his last chance to hold power. It has destroyed nations and peoples. It sets citizen against citizen, destroys and poisons the community, sows mistrust between the peoples. Above it all is the triumphant mocking laughter of your enemy, of our enemy: The eternal Jew!
You stand over hecatombs of corpses. The scent of blood surrounds you. Children beg, mothers weep, nations perish! What have you gained: Nothing but chaos, hopeless, hunger, and desperation!
It that the way you want things to remain?
Stand up and demand a Germany that belongs to you, one that is free of the chains of the oppressor. This is the historic mission of the German working class.
Freedom and prosperity!
This is the war cry against the rotting world of capitalism!
Away with the empty rhetoric! Risk looking cold reality in the face.
Hold out your hand, German working men! The day of freedom is coming, if only you want it!
Adolf Hitler is showing you the way!
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