Human Export Is Coming!

Background: I have a peculiar fondness for Fritz Reinhardt. My first published scholarly essay included a mention of his efforts to build the Rednerschule der NSDAP that trained about 6,000 Nazi speakers through correspondence courses in the years before 1933. In this pamphlet he claims that the Young Plan on German reparations would force the export of Germans to work for the French, making the astonishing and unsupported claim that 20 to 30 million Germans would be sent abroad.

The source: Fritz Reinhardt, Menschenexport in Sicht! (Herrsching am Ammersee: Verlag Fritz Reinhardt, October 1931).

I laid out the inevitable results of the provisions and methods that the Young Plan will have on our German people in the pamphlet Youngplan—Menschenexport in July 1929. The national opposition called our people’s comrades to battle against this plan that aims at the destruction of our ethnicity.

I have piles of newspapers in my files that back then had headlines like: “The Swindle of the Referendum,” “The National Socialist Swindle Machine,” “The Fairy Tale of Human Export,” “Against the Demagogues,” “The Pinnacle of Depravity,” “Slandering the Reich Government,” Reinhardt’s Crazy Idea,” etc. They demanded that the state attorney take action. We read in a long article provided by a central office to newspapers supporting the Young Plan:

The press of the Jews, the Social Democrats, the Center Party, and the other parties that support the Young Plan called for the Reich government to take action against “the political forger Reinhardt,” against “political liars,” “slanderers,” “popular agitators,” etc. They demanded that “that the slanders be demonstrated through court verdicts.”

What did the Reich government do? Ministers repeated the charges brought against us in radio addresses and public speeches. They called our claims “groundless slanders,” and did the same with everything else we said during the referendum campaign. [My copy is only partially legible here. I may not have the sentence quite right.]

However, they did not seize Youngplan — Menschenexport as all the newspapers of the parties supporting the Young Plan demanded, nor did they bring charges against Reinhardt for “slandering members of the Reich government,” nor did they begin “legal proceedings to demonstrate the slanders!”

I never claimed that the words “human export” literally could be found in the Young Plan, but rather I clearly said that the provisions and methods of the Young Plan would result in the export of Germans, and that that was its goal. It would be naive to think that the authors and string-pullers of the Young Plan were so dumb as to clearly write down their real goal and thus make our battle against exporting Germans easier. It took no great skill, however, for anyone who understands economics to see that the provisions and methods of the Young Plan would lead to this. Because I clothed this with the words “human export”, the Young Plan’s proponents wrote and said that “Mr. Reinhardt was no longer up to mathematical calculations,” that “Reinhardt’s idea was crazy.”

Two years have since passed. No one can seriously argue that even a single one of the promises and pledges of the Young Plan’s proponents has been realized. It is clear that the results of the Young Plan have been the direct opposite of what the Young Plan’s proponents promised and pledged, and that reality corresponds exactly to what we predicted would be the result of the Young Plan. Agreeing to the Young Plan did not bring “a major reduction in the financial crisis” promised by its proponents, but rather the new burdens and obligations we predicted. It did not result in the promised “opportunities to reduce taxation,” but rather the new and increased taxes we predicted would result from the Young Plan. The Young Plan resulted not in “new jobs for people,” but rather the catastrophic increase in unemployment that we predicted. The Young Plan’s proponents promised “economic and social improvements,” but we predicted complete economic and social misery. We also predicted a drying up of currency reserves and credit. Only a few more months will pass before the final result of the Young Plan comes to pass and the export of Germans becomes reality.

The Generalanzeiger für Dortmund, Nr. 311 of 12 November 1929 carried a lead article by Erich Koch, Reich Minister and chairman of the Democratic Party, member of the Reich Committee of the Reichsbanner and cofounder of the “State” Party. The article is headlined

We find the following in the Social Democratic newspaper Schleswig-Holsteinischer Volkszeitung, Nr. 53 of 4 March 1930:

Das Freie Wort, the organ of the Social Democratic Party’s leadership, Nr. 35, compared Germans to money and goods. It mentioned the possibility of exchanging surplus population. It mentioned, for example, an agreement between Brazil and the United States under which Brazil supplies the United States with a million sacks of coffee in exchange for 25 million bushels of wheat. In the same way, Germany should exchange its surplus population. We read:

According to this Social Democratic newspaper, the only way to get the German economy moving again is to exchange German workers for French capital!!!

On the eve of the meeting between the Frenchman Laval and Briand in Berlin, the central Social Democratic newspaper Vorwärts (Nr. 451 of 26 September 1931) said, among other things:

The following lead article was published in Germania, the central organ of the Center Party in Nr. 123 ( 29 May 1931) and Nr. 157 (9 July 1931). The headline:

is supposedly the key to reducing unemployment! Those for whom the present state cannot provide the means they need to survive by providing sufficient jobs and wages to feed themselves are to be helped to emigrate! That is the brilliant thinking of those in whom the masses of our people have trusted blindly for twelve years.

heard France’s Minister of Commerce on 17 September 1931 say, among other things:

The Frenchman Laval and Briand began such takes about “practical measures” in Berlin. Brüning and Curtius did not tell their French “guests” that Germany made its previous tribute payments not from its own resources, but rather from loans provided by foreign individuals, companies, and private banks, nor that Germany threatens to collapse in the coming winter from their burdens. They did not mention the fact that a provision of the Young Plan we accepted lifts the part of the Dawes Plan protecting Germany’s financial and economic resources (the transfer provision), which will be a disaster for German productivity. They did not mention that Germany has already paid far more than was necessary for “reconstruction.” And they did not mention the huge sums that Germany has paid to its opponents in the war since 1918 because of a lie, the war guilt lie, sums demanded of and paid by Germany. Instead, the Reich Chancellor repeated and re-emphasized to the French what he had said in his radio speech of 23 June 1931:

That means: Accepting the war guilt lie and the Treaty of Versailles, etc. In this regard we may perhaps refer to Nr. 176 of the Deutscher Zeitung (30 July 1931), which reported that Brüning’s Reich Chancellery had issued a ban on mass meetings against Versailles and the war guilt lie on 25 June 1931. The ban included the approaching anniversary of Versailles on 28 June. According to the ban:

French Minister President Laval issued a statement to the German and foreign press upon his arrival in Berlin in which he said, among other things:

The Frenchman Laval has proposed a method to the German government. The main purpose of his Berlin visit was to discuss this method.

An official communiqué reporting the results of the meeting was issued on the evening of 28 September 1931. The most important result was the formation of a

including representatives of the governments, industry, commerce, and labor. This commission will have a

and will meet in Berlin or Paris when necessary. It is the “foundation for German-French cooperation.”

The official communiqué on the results of the Berlin meeting, among other things, said this about the task of the German-French Economic Commission:

Clearly stated that means: The marketing opportunities are not being sought where other countries are already competing to sell their goods, but rather new markets will be established. That, however, is only possible if:

Unexploited or partially-exploited regions can be found overseas or perhaps in Europe, and companies established to develop or further develop such regions. French capital would be the primary source of funding of such companies, and only those regions that are directly or indirectly in the French interest will be chosen — which means primarily France’s North African colonies.
Germany will be required to show its good will by providing people for those areas to be developed to France’s advantage. This will have three results:
- A reduction in German imports, which will be necessary in any event because Germany will lack the foreign exchange to pay for those imports. The balance of payments will improve. The pace of improvement will depend on the number of people sent abroad;
- An increase in Germany’s exports. Those Germans who were unemployed and had to be supported will now be outside the German economic body. All of them will want German goods, especially machines, transportation facilities, and similar things. That will lead to an increase in Germany’s exports and therefore to an improvement in its balance of payments;
- The covering of foreign currency needs, which Germany cannot do because it lacks sufficient foreign currency reserves, must come from Germans working for foreign companies. This could happen through supplementary charges that exceeded the minimum dividends paid to stockholders, or through salary supplements. Since the foreign companies for which the emigrated Germans would work for use foreign currency, such supplements would be in foreign currency and could be applied to Germany’s tribute account.

This is not the first time we raise this matter. It is mentioned in the July 1929 pamphlet Youngplan—Menschenexport and in Hände weg vom Youngplan. Warum? and have been repeated over the past two years in the Wirtschaftlicher Beobachter [this was Reinhardt’s own publication].

The Jew Walter Goldstein had an article titled “The Commission” in the Berliner Tageblatt (Nr. 460 of 30 September 1931) in which he wrote, among other things:

The Berliner Tageblatt states openly that it is understandable that not all the details of the plan can be given now. Why is that understandable? That makes just as much sense as the Young Plan, which did not provide all the details of what was intended. Instead, it limited itself to ideas, methods, and statements that were clear to insiders, and to those who were able to figure out what those ideas, methods, and statements meant!

Social Democratic newspapers such as the Münchener Post (Nr. 224 of 29 September 1931) praised the results of the Berlin Conference in a subhead to the main story on the first page:

So, sending millions of unemployed Germans to French colonies is social democracy’s broad job creation program! That is the plan to create “jobs for people” that the Social Democrats promised would result first from the Dawes Plan, then from accepting the Young Plan!

Social Democratic Reichstag Representative Heinrich Ströbel published an article in Das andere Deutschland (Nr. 40 of 3 October 1931) titled “The Spirit is Necessary!” in which he wrote:

Even before Laval and Briand went to Berlin, insiders knew what the main goal of their Berlin visit would be.

An article in the Vossische Zeitung (Nr. 230 of 26 September 1931) carried the headline story:

The evening edition of the Berliner Tageblatt (Nr. 455 of 26 September 1931) carried a business supplement with this article:

This clearly states that French money will not flow to Germany to bring German workers and German industrial capacity together, but rather that French money would go to putting German labor to work in French colonies. This would realize plans that originally were “believed to have been created by the Young Plan for the financial instrument of the BJZ.”

The financial and commercial section of the Vossische Zeitung (Nr. 231 of 27 September 1931) we find this article:

There follows a discussion of other ways of economic “cooperation,” including such topics as “the armaments industry” and “subventions,” among others. Then comes the following key sentence:

Here it clearly stated that is a matter of providing France with “security.” The French fortifications along its eastern border are not enough, but rather — as is stated in the bolded sentence above — a “human surplus” is to be sent to African colonies, barren South American areas, and East Asia. In other words, twenty to thirty million Germans must leave German soil and German sovereignty and go to foreign soil under foreign sovereignty.

Those newspapers that supported the Young Plan attempted to respond to the claim in my July 1929 Youngplan — Menschenexport about the final results of the Young Plan for our people in this way: The only thing that could be intended by the plan is that German machinery, etc., would be supplied to develop France’s colonies, but that the machines would be build in Germany and Germans would be able to remain in Germany. Such remarks resulted either from the inability to see the economic consequences that would inevitably result from the details and methods of the Young Plan, from stupidity and confusion, or from duplicity.

The correctness of my claim in July 1929 that the end goal was Germans is proven by the comments emphasized above. We further refer to this sentence from the Berliner Börsenzeitung (Nr. 454 of 29 September 1931) in an article titled “Neither Warmth nor Sympathy”:

Unless we succeed in fundamentally changing the fate of our people in the near future, this “claim for Germans” will be fulfilled.

When we introduced the term “human export” to the masses in 1929, it was called the work of the mathematically incompetent Mr. Reinhardt” and “Reinhardt’s crazy idea.” Today — two years later — the same people are publicly promoting the idea and a “German-French Commission” with a “permanent secretariat” has been introduced to help implement wide-ranging French thinking. We are confident that in the near future we will hear about serious plans to replace unemployment compensation with emigration assistance, and all necessary preparations will be taken “on the grounds of necessity” to organize “collective emigration” to French colonies in North Africa, to South America, and to Australia and East Asia.

We call upon the masses of our people to compare the harsh reality of today:

We ask the masses of our people to ask themselves whether they would have followed the Social Democratic Party, the Center Party, the Bavarian People’s Party, The Farmers’ Federation, the Democratic Party, and the German People’s Party if they had known that the predictions and promises of these parties would result in the exact opposite. We ask them to ask themselves whether they followed these parties in the direction they wanted to go, or if they in blind faith were led in a direction entirely different than they wanted, in which they believed they were heading.

We ask them to ask themselves who has always been right and who has always clearly spoken the truth. Was it the proponents of the Young Plan, namely the Social Democratic Party, the Center Party, The Bavarian People’s Party, the Bavarian Farmers’ Federation, the German People’s Party, or we National Socialists. We ask the masses of our people to ask themselves if they would have stayed away from the referendum and plebiscite and followed the supporters of the Young Plan if they had known that accepting the Young Plan would mean giving up protection of the German financial and economic system that would inevitably lead us to the situation we now find ourselves in. We ask them to ask themselves if they would have followed the proponents of the Young Plan if they had known that the Young Plan would not bring lower taxes, but rather new taxes and higher taxes; not “new jobs” but rather a catastrophic increase in the unemployment rate; not “opportunities for economic and social progress,” but rather a catastrophic rise in economic and social misery. We ask them to ask themselves if they would have followed the Young Plan’s proponents if they had known that the Young Plan would necessarily lead to the export of Germans.

We ask all people’s comrades to draw conclusions from their answers to these questions and to join the front of National Socialist Germany. We must and will succeed in changing the fate of our people while there is still time. Each individual people’s comrade must use his abilities to join the fight and to hurry the pace and shorten the path. It is 5 minutes before 12. — — —

We ask each reader of this pamphlet to spread it to the masses by buying as many copies as he needs to distribute to his workmates and other acquaintances. The price is 12 RM per 100 copies, 50 RM for 500 copies, 75 RM for 1,000 copies, postage or shipping included. Individual copies 20 pfennig. Minimum order by post is 100 copies, payable in advance to postal checking account Nürnberg 7559 (Fritz Reinhardt, Herrsching am Ammersee).

Human Export Is Coming!

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