Background: As the war situation worsened, the party decided to attempt to increase party activity. In fall 1943 it began a major campaign to reactivate its membership, urging them to serve as models for the rest of the population. Whatever private doubts or worries they might have, they were to appear absolutely confident of victory, willing to sacrifice everything, before their fellow citizens. This page translates instructors to speakers who would address party meetings, giving them the propaganda line they were to follow in their speeches. It went to several thousand licensed Nazi speakers.

The source: Redner-Information, “Die Aktivierung der Partei!” Lieferung 70, 5 October 1943.

Speaker Information

Issue 70

Activating the Party!

“Neither time nor force of arms will ever defeat the German people.” Adolf Hitler

The Führer spoke these words four years ago to the German Reichstag. He proclaimed then his firm decision, and the will of the whole German people. The party is the guarantee of this unbreakable will.

Our plutocratic and Bolshevist enemy, behind which is the driving force of World Jewry, ceaselessly announces that it wants to physically destroy the German people. They hope to realize their infernal destructive goals, driven both by their political and economic envy as well as their Old Testament hatred, by shaking German war morale. After their political and economic efforts have faced almost unceasing shipwrecks over the past four years, they are now turning most strongly to “psychological warfare,” to agitation, in order to reach their goal. In the “war of words,” they are using the same means and the same method as in the last world war. Their unchanging psychological warfare reveals their deep hatred not only of Germany, but of Europe itself. They hope to gain through propaganda what they have been unable to achieve with their weapons in battle. They are depending on repeating what worked in the past, ever more so as their military speculations fail to have a decisive impact on the course of the war.

Previous German successes, and the fact that the war is being waged in regions far from Germany, give the German people trust and confidence. Each knows that this time, we will win the final battle.

Faith and trust are the foundation of victory, particularly when the path to victory is no longer clear because increasing difficulties seem to make our victory distant. No life without deeds; no victory without sacrifice.

At this moment, the German homeland must prove its courage and trust, its strong, fighting German spirit, its unshakable will for action, its firm spirit of community, and its joyful willingness to follow the Führer and his path.

This spirit, however, must be borne by the men and women who have taken an oath to the Führer’s banner.

“The party must be a model in all things!”

The Führer spoke those words on 10 September. They put a great responsibility on all party members. Our speakers and propagandists must ensure that they are ever conscious of this responsibility.

Therefore, the four fundamental principles of the National Socialist are to be covered in the coming weeks at every meeting, and made clear by practical examples.

The Four Fundamental Principles of the National Socialist

Principle 1:

Refer to the fundamental principle of National Socialism: “The common good comes before individual good.” This provides meaning and direction for the life of each party comrade. No party member, regardless of his position within the party, the state, or business, may feel separated from his people, or think that he can live within his own closed circle. National Socialism sprang from the people. Its closeness to the people gave it its original strength, its clear judgment, and its will for decisive action. The people provide the streams of power needed by the National Socialist government; the task of the party is to maintain that strength.

Each party comrade, therefore, must be a model in his conduct and life, in his work, and in his loyalty to the people. Each must be a helper, each must support other people’s comrades.

He who feels with the people and understands its worries and needs, will always find the right word and the right action to give courage and strength to others.

The party has always worked to maintain its ties with the people, particularly during war. To understand how our people’s comrades turn to the party with all their concerns and needs with trust and confidence, one need only listen in at some local group offices, or at the Women’s Society, or the NSV. That must be everywhere the case. Our people’s comrades must see in the party a helping, guiding, and caring leadership. They must always feel that they are understood, and spoken to as comrades. Then the people will stand with us, and we with the people. Then we will be able, with justice, to be its spokesperson.

It is vital to earn and maintain this trust. Our lives must be exemplary in every regard!

In our profession, and above all in the factory (since the party comrade there must work with many women and women of the people), our eagerness, our sense of duty our camaraderie, our achievements, our confidentiality, and our private lives must always be exemplary.

Our attitude to the demands of political life should remain completely positive, even when we ourselves are not entirely sure of the path and the goal. In such a case, we will get the clarification we need from the relevant superior. With our workmates and friends, however, we are always representatives of the political path and will of our leadership.

He who behaves in this way demonstrates the ability to be a willing follower. That is the meaning of the party’s political structure. We are to show the way. A people is always lead by the minority. The NSDAP is to be the finest of this minority in our people. It is obvious that they must be “the finest in the German and National Socialist sense.”

Therefore, let us remain with the people, going before them and leading them by our example in all things.

Principle 2:

Anything that makes victory harder is bad! Everything that advances our victory is good!

This principle is easy. To any question or decision we encounter, or any difficulty, we need only ask one question: “What would the Führer say about it?”

The Führer’s will and path knows but one goal: Germany! When he began his fight, as he decided, as his book Mein Kampf states, “to become a politician,” he, the unknown soldier of the First World War, was not moved by personal desire, by boastful arrogance, or foolish miscalculation. His decision was motivated only by deep concern about Germany, by an unshakable faith in the German people, and by the fanatic will to rescue the Reich of the Germans from the danger of final collapse, using the power of this people to rescue itself, then lead it to a new and happy national existence in freedom, independence, prosperity, and order.

Ever since, the Führer’s life as been an unbroken series of battles and worries, regardless of his personal life; constantly, he plans and takes risks for our people.

Now, the forces that he overcame over 14 years of battle within the Reich have joined throughout the world to destroy with brutal power his work of liberating our people and our Reich.

That we succeed in spite of it is the prerequisite of our life as individuals, as a people, and as a nation. The enemy, Judah and its allied Bolshevist and plutocratic forces, knows only blind hatred against everything German. Were our spiritual and moral force to suffer a decisive defeat, all the victories of the past four years would be in vain, and our ethnic, governmental, and private existence would end forever.

Therefore, we must apply all our strength, all our will, all our deeds, and particularly all our spiritual and moral values toward the single goal that we have today: German victory!

That is the law of our life today. Everything we say and do, think and want, must be governed by it. If we ask the question “Does that serve victory?” in everything we encounter, and in everything we ourselves decide, we will be following the right path to victory.

It is unnecessary to discuss how to handle every individual case of stupid chattering, grumbling, and complaining. They are attacks on our people’s spiritual and moral readiness for battle, and we must reject them. Our behavior and attitude must be positive. That does not mean that we must always and only be stubbornly serious. There are enough demands and tensions in which a light word and a happy experience can relax us, making us stronger and firmer in meeting the day’s demands.

Principle 3:

Each National Socialist is an untiring propagandist of our fanatic faith in victory!

Faith is the strongest force behind success. Even when our party was fighting for power our great and decisive successes were more the result of an unshakable faith in Adolf Hitler and his goal than in a positive knowledge of his will and his path. When we suffered a serious blow in support for the movement on 6 November 1932, and sank from 230 seats in the Reichstag to 196, many asked us: “How can you win now?” These were people who could see victory only in the cold light of facts and opportunities. These people were not persuaded by the idealistic strength of unshakable faith and a bitter, determined will. When we began the election campaign the tiny and apparently insignificant little state of Lippe on 15 January 1933, hardly anyone even in the fighting ranks of the movement realized that a success in this apparently distant corner would determine the fate of the entire country. The tremendous success of this election campaign was a victory of faith. From the beginning of his struggle, the Führer never for a moment doubted the final victory of his movement. The strength of his confident always gave him the power to decide, and a quiet confidence.

It is the same today. At home some worry about how we can win as we give up land in the East, face new and altered conditions in Italy, and endure air terror that two years ago we could not even have imagined. But the Führer stands, just as before, with quiet, thoughtful determination and activity, and guides our fate, unshaken in his confidence in final German victory. However difficult the challenges of the day may be, if we meet them with the determined strength of faithful hearts, steely wills, and iron determination, there can be no doubt about German victory.

That is the spirit that must shine from each party member. He must demonstrate this attitude, and his life must model it. They we will be able to say, with justice, that we are Adolf Hitler’s fighters.

Principle 4:

The National Socialist is always the most active fighter for total war!

Filled with faith in victory, unwilling to tolerate anything that hampers victory, and aware of the duty of our time, to live with the people, the party comrade must give his full strength, his full responsibility, and his personal effort to ensure that this war, our people’s decisive battle of fate, is supported by the whole people.

Every possibility for total war is important today. There are still a few customs that stand to the side of the war and the necessities of our battle with fate. Here we must consistently represent the Führer’s will, allowing no exception to our total commitment to our struggle. Our German men and women must realize the decisive importance of this:

Victory will give back to us what we today sacrifice in battle. What we surrender today for the war effort will return to us in the future, but we would lose it forever if we were defeated.

That is true of every material possession, for apartments, furniture, clothing, jobs and occupations, for everything that we, from habit, see today as essential. And that is true a million times over for our very lives themselves.

Italy’s example is very educational for us at the moment. The king’s betrayal, and that of his marshals, was supposed to spare the Italian people further sacrifices and all further losses. By a cowardly withdrawal from the war, they hoped to maintain as much military strength as possible, preserving their army, navy, and air force. They hoped to build a new order and a new existence for their nation. The result is exactly the opposite. Now they have lost everything, arms, ships, airplanes, their whole military, but even more than that, their national honor, which is the foundation of a people’s national and social existence. They believed that they could no longer bear the bombing of their cities, but now face the certainty that war wages in all its brutal horror and harshness in their land.

The same would happen to us if we weakened, hoping to preserve the values of our national, ethnic,and private life. But after victory, we will be able to rebuilt everything that the war has destroyed in a finer and more beautiful way.

The more we fight a total war today, the faster will come our hour of victory, and the faster will we gain back everything we have given up for the war.

Therefore, there is but one slogan for us today: Everything for victory!

In the past we often said these words, deeply moved and apparently ready to act:

“Whatever I am, and whatever I have, I give to you, my fatherland!”

In today’s war, we must act in that way.

[Page copyright © 2008 by Randall Bytwerk. No unauthorized reproduction. My e-mail address is available on the FAQ page.]

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