The Fight Was Not Easy For Us

The Hoover Institute recently released dozens of letters written by pre-1933 party members. The authors give some autobiographical details and explain why they joined the movement. Big credit to TPS forum member Landsknecht who translated this for Volkish.

IN THE YEAR of 1918, as the November Revolution swept over Germany, we were two boys left home alone. My older brother, who counted seventeen, and myself, sixteen years. Five others were away. Fallen, captured, in the sick bay — only one returned home by the end of the war. The others returned far later, except for one, who got buried in France.

Our joy over the end of the great manslaughter was overshadowed by the fact that now a time began, which dragged through the mire the Great and the Heroic of the of the World War, and elevated the lesser and evil as virtue. Separatism and bolshevik revolts took turns with communist riots. It was a great burden for those who had seen their sons and brothers enter the Great War with pride. Marxism celebrated orgies, everywhere it organized and wanted to snatch people and tried to turn them into Marxists, because in reality nobody is born a Marxist.

In businesses it bundled the employees into specific unions, which only sought to represent the special interests of those within. An immense pressure was put on each worker, so that one was forced, in order to keep one’s employment, to join a union. Berufsorganisation [professional association] they called it then!

So it came, that in 1919, prior to the election of the works committee, as a young man, I was elected to the election committee for my place of employment. Thank God I could now see clearly, how all officials of the christian, red and yellow unions, who fought each other viciously before the election, after the votes were counted, together squandered the pennies of each their members. Disgust came over me, as, in the very first collective meeting of those “worker representatives”, I could make that assessment. My decision was clear! My colleagues who haven’t yet fallen to the Marxist poison, I prevented from spending another penny on those vampires.

Some years later, in the court yard of a neighboring factories there stood a German worker from the surveyor’s office. He talked to workers who gathered around him, about a great Family of German workers, that shouldn’t know differences in status nor class among itself. A rude whistling and hooting was the answer! With any thinkable object the comrade was chased off and in a collective meeting of the members of the works committee the decision was made to demand from the administration the comrade’s immediate layoff.

Now a life of suffering began for this honest German worker! Not straight away, but steadily the administrations worked to remove from duty, this ‘thorn in the side’ of the Reichsbahn (German State Railways). Some time later he was fired. And later still, in October 1929, he pledged his life to the National Socialist Movement. It was Hein Bauschen, the railroad comrade from Duisburg, who already back then put the seed of National Socialism into the hearts of railroad workers, and like many SA comrades fell victim to the dagger of communist sub-humanity.

I myself was so fascinated by his speeches about National Socialism, that my sole wish was, to personally hear and see the leader of this movement, Adolf Hitler. One month later, after Hein Bauschen was laid to rest, in November 1929 I saw Adolf Hitler and hear him speak. From that hour onward I knew that only one man, Adolf Hitler, was capable to bridge the great differences that separated the individual German Volksgenossen (fellow Germans). But also that Adolf Hitler was capable to deliver to the German people, what others told him to bring, freedom and bread!

I decided already back then to work for the great Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) which the Führer preached. Open and freely we were not allowed to commit. Our hands were tied as employees in public enterprise. Not only the majority of work comrades, but also several administrators kept watch, so that no words were spoken about the National Socialist movement within the factories.

They did not even shy away from checking the waste bins, in case the “Nazis” were wrapping their buttered bread in newspapers or flyers containing National Socialist contents, in order to smuggle them into the factories. Today one could say, the prior authorities had all kinds of worries.

This administrative pressure could mean only one thing though! That by the end of 1930 I registered as a member with the NSDAP, to be able to openly act as party comrade for the Führer and his movement. However, what I feared occurred promptly. Not only administrative terror also ostracism by colleagues were the consequences. But nothing could turn me away from further advertising within colleagues and Volksgenossen (fellow Germans).

We SA men and party servants initially promoted Adolf Hitler and his movement through public appearances until the foundation of the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization — the NSBO — which gave us a chance and more so gave us the task, to win over the German worker to the idea of the Führer, from within the factories, in places where the call of the SA, “Deutschland erwache!” (Germany awaken!), did not penetrate and was drowned out by machine noises.

This struggle which had to be fought by us, the SA of the factories, was tough, almost tougher than on the outside. Hence we only made small steps forward. First off we had to do away with decades old opinions, had to teach the Marxist worker that what they believed and expected was nothing but grey theory which would never come into reality. In addition to that, the authorities now put special focus on factories themselves, because the fact that, through the public appearances of the SA and the big gatherings, all honest and forgeable forces of the German Volk which still had an enthusiastic heart in their breasts, were long won over to National Socialism, did not deter the red and black rulers from trying to hold their last bastions, the unions, for as long as possible. Because for them, not the question about the workers itself was in danger, no — they feared for their good sinecures. The fight of those hoodlums against the youngest weapon of the National Socialists thus became an existential struggle. Harshly and fiercely every single work comrade had to be contended for.

As we began this battle in the factories, we carried something in our hearts that was greater than all rational arguments which our enemies leveled against us. We had the conviction and the faith that the factories had to belong to us one day. That is why, and that is the only reason why, we were able to overcome every obstacle that was in our path and secure victory over the factories and hence the German workers.

The word of the Führer “The return of a ruler to his people means nothing — but the return of millions of German workers into the arms of the fatherland is the beacon for freedom” was our guiding star that shall remain for all eternity.

When after unspeakable struggle, on the 30 of January 1933, the reigns were put into the hands of the Führer, we then knew, that also we, through our struggle for the German worker also had contributed, when from now on the idea of the Führer became common property for the benefit of the entire German people. The beginning further expansion of the movement again and again made new demands of our work force, because now we had to put into practice what we had preached.

And really, it wasn’t easy for us. How much prejudice, how many false notions about true National Socialism had to be moved out of the way, and as everywhere else, the Führer was our greatest role model in that. Not overhasty and hurried, doing everything at its time, those were and are the biggest weapons of the Führer. And thus we have taken up the work and executed it in his image. We did not despair when something did not work out as smoothly as we may have dreamed, because something great comes forth from the Führer! Not looking at a single day, because everything we do has to stand the test of history. Some contemporaries may very well not understand us but we aren’t accountable to them, but to history — the future.

When today, when National Socialism can be regarded as solidified within the people, I look back at the contention and struggle over each individual German, I often think, was it necessary, that from a personal perspective, sometimes the best friendships were shattered, just because one revered National Socialism as his Weltanschauung (worldview), and the other, because he was bourgeois or however inclined, could not or did not want to understand the other? Was it necessary that even within the family, the nucleus of all völkisch life, the biggest differences occurred? The Führer Adolf Hitler had rendered all those contemplations irrelevant through one single deed: The creation of the true German Volks- und Schicksalsgemeinschaft (community of people and destiny) which encompasses all German Volksgenossen (fellow Germans).

If National Socialism had only really reached that single goal, I would see in it already the greatest and most beautiful reward for all the suffering during the times of battle, and be in the truest heart proud that I could contribute a small part in order for the gigantic struggle for the soul of the German people to succeed. So I thank fate that I was granted to fight for the unity of the German people in this dire time, and I’m proud that the biggest part of that struggle was fought for the poorest but also the most loyal German, the German worker.

Heil Hitler!”

— by Werner Kocks, written in 1934 and published in Theodore Abel’s Why Hitler Came into Power: An Answer Based on the Original Life Stories of Six Hundred of His Followers (1938)

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Source: Volkish