Background: The Nazi Party depended heavily on speakers to get its message across. Those speakers needed to be informed. The following is a translation of instructions to speakers in late December 1942. The “Beveridge Plan” proposal had just been released in England. Speakers are told to remind their audiences that Germany had had social insurance since the days of Bismarck, that it was probably only propaganda move to keep Britains fighting, and that since the British were allegedly fighting against German social policy, the Beveridge Plan, if they were serious about it, removed their grounds for war. The latter argument was rather dubious.

The source: Redner-Schnellinformation, Lieferung 49, 28 December 1942.

Speaker Express Information

A. Plutocratic Socialism — The “Beveridge” Plan

The press and radio have given broad coverage to the British plan for social insurance, named the Beveridge Plan after its originator. Our speakers should also take it up in detailed discussions, particularly in factory meetings.

The press and radio have provided a great deal of information. The most important is Reichsleiter Dr. Ley’s answer to this wretched British concoction. More details are in the VB [the Völkischer Beobachter, the official Nazi Party newspaper] of 3, 4, and 5 December. A detailed comparison of German and British social welfare policy should be avoided, since it is not the job of our speakers and propagandists to be objectivist fanatics comparing the pros and cons of the insurance systems of the two countries.

In handling this theme, the following points are to be emphasized:

1. For Germany and the working German people, this social insurance plan is an illuminating example of previous miserable social conditions in England. Germany has had such policies since Bismarck’s day, for more than half a century.

National Socialism made every effort after the takeover of power to improve social protections of workers and has already made significant improvements, whereas England is only now planning policies announced to the English people as “a reward for good behavior on behalf of the Jews and plutocrats during the war” and as promises for the time “after victory.”

British agitation presents the Beveridge Plan to the world as the greatest and grandest social welfare program of all time, which suggests that their main goal is to have a propaganda effect that will cover up all the well-known deficiencies and weakness of plutocracy. Beveridge himself presents the plan as a “British revolution” and celebrates it as a “world sensation. The News Chronicle goes so far as to claim that plan is a “general British attack on the five great evils of the world: squalor, disease, ignorance, want, and unemployment.”

We reply:

a) This British general attack comes a full generation too late, since as already said such social protection measures have existed in Germany for more than 60 years;

b) It is highly suspicious that England only now takes up such thinking and planning, because they declared war on us because of Germany’s advanced social development. The real cause for the hate, disfavor, and criminal destructive desires of the Jews, plutocrats, and Bolshevists that drove them to a war conspiracy is the socialism developed by Adolf Hitler though our party and state, which has earned respect throughout the world. It has given our national, economic, and cultural life new and undreamt of strength. If they now come with such plans, these plans are either an insidious way to deceive their people, which they do not mean seriously, or else the war they unleashed has become entirely meaningless, for they cannot say they have to fight against and destroy us in order to destroy what they want to do themselves.

2. How little they are serious about true socialism and the depth that democratic-liberal economic bankruptcy has already reached is the fact that the English plan assumes a continuing level of 1,500,000 unemployed.

Under National Socialist leadership Germany’s social work and development have led to a full recovery of the national economy that assures that the results of labor benefit the whole working community. The English, meanwhile are working on a plan that assumes the perpetual misery of 1,500,000 people. And they have a population of only 43,000,000, in contrast to Germany’s more than 80,000,000, which has a labor shortage and even during peace needed help from abroad for its strong, living economy.

3. It should be noted that the Beveridge Plan is already encountering great resistance from the entire plutocratic financial aristocracy. These dividend hyenas fear significant restrictions on their wild lust for profits and are already attempting to torpedo its minor social goals even before the plan is debated in parliament.

The plutocrats are afraid of this plan, even though it is only proposed for agitational reasons. They apparently fear that although today this plan only proclaims alluring visions of the future, it may take root in the wishes of their exploited people and in time these wishes could grow into strong demands. This proves the dishonesty of this world, which does not even think of bowing to the just demands of working people, but rather wants to keep workers in their own country as serfs to their greed, the same they do with all other politically enslaved peoples in the world.

4. A further salient feature of plutocratic greed should be mentioned. The Beveridge Plan is not a government form of social insurance, the community of all workers, but rather it proposes a private insurance company, a concern, or some other capitalist company. The big British capitalists and their Jews behind the scenes are not interested in socialism, but rather in business. The victim of this great coup is to be English workers.

5. As a curiosity, the USA hurried after the British announcement to make its own especially spectacular statement about future social plans in America that will leave the English behind. Roosevelt supposedly has a social plan better than anyone else’s in the world for the postwar period. It is striking that it took the war to persuade the richest nations, England that has territory all over the world and North America, to take up such ideas, while Germany with its cramped territory, lack of freedom, and the previous dependence on world markets took this step over 60 years ago as an obvious social goal, and National Socialism significantly expanded and improved German social institutions despite the short time it had available and the great burdens of its decisive constructive activity.

B. Growing Fear of U-boats in England and North America

The proud results of the war at sea in November, the most unfavorable month for waging war, of 1,035,200 BRT made an impression in England as well as America. The enemy attempted to eliminate the impression by announcing fantastic figures about U-boats destroyed. He naturally used the old method of unscrupulous lies. In fact, actual U-boat losses are far under the number that our own naval leadership planned on. This applies for the whole length of the U-boat campaign on all the oceans.

Such a miserable attempt to conceal the facts apparently has not worked in either country, since a stream of annoucements has appeared in recent days that clearly betrays the concerns resulting from these catastrophic losses.

Even leading persons in political and military life in England and the USA have recently made statements that fully confirm our continuing successes. The London correspondent of Svenska Dagbladet reported, for example, that the warning of the growing U-boat danger runs like a red thread through all the speeches and statements than one sees today in both countries. There are statements like:

“The German U-boat is the greatest and still unsolved military problem that Great Britain faces.” —

or:

“German U-boats are the greatest danger and cause England its most serious worries.”

These are indications of growing knowledge, but also of the fear about this development in England.

Lord Winster recently wrote in the Sunday Times:

“How much of the war material we have shipped to the front already lies at the bottom of the ocean? Are we not in danger of thinking too little of our own shipping losses? The core of our problem is to have enough ships and the ability to protect them at sea.”

Lord Winster and all of England ask in vain. Churchill carefully refrains from announcing the actual losses. He is doing exactly what was done during the World War. England never talked about the growing danger during the battle. Only afterwards did they admit: “The fate of England hung on a very slender thread.” We are convinced that England’s fate hangs on an even thinner thread today, but we are not waiting for it to break, but rather will keep at it until England meets its deserved fate.

We found the following statement recently in the Daily Herald:

“A mass of enemy U-boats operates on all the world’s oceans. more than ever before in this or in the previous war at any one time. Time is working against us because the number of U-boats is constantly growing. All previous methods of combatting them have failed.”

British Admiral Richmond wrote in the Economist: “The submarines, mines, and the Luftwaffe are together the main danger for British sea power. It is highly unsettling that the losses of Anglo-American shipping are again constantly increasing.”

Even the U.S.-American Secretary of the Navy Knox, who usually cannot do enough to spread fantastic illusions, said in a speech recently:

“Despite the heavy concentration of Axis U-boats near North Africa, German U-boars are still operating as before in the entire Atlantic.”

In a speech in New York on 2 December Knox further said that ship building in the United States has not met expectations. Above all, convoys are not provided with sufficient protection. He continued:

“We face a difficult period in the Atlantic. We must expect further losses. The next four to five months will be particularly difficult. The operations in North Africa have doubtllessly made our task more difficult. If we, as some say, were only ankle-deep in the war this year, we will be up to our necks in the coming year.”

All of these statements prove that our heavy blows at sea are striking at his vital nerve. We will not slacken, however, since these anxious statements show us the significance of this part of our war effort. Our speakers should always, therefore, make a point of praising the growing successes of our U-boats in their speeches.

[Page copyright © 2016 by Randall Bytwerk. No unauthorized reproduction. My e-mail address is available on the FAQ page.]

Go to the German Propaganda Home Page.