Faith and Action By Helmut Stellrecht For the Hitler Youth (1938) Blood You carry in your blood the holy inheritance of your fathers and forefathers. You do not know those who have vanished in endless ranks into the darkness of the past. But they all live in you and walk in your blood upon the earth that consumed them in battle and toil and in which their bodies have long decayed. §Your blood is therefore something holy. In it your parents gave you not only a body, but your nature. §To deny your blood is to deny yourself. No one can change it. But each decides to grow the good that one has inherited and suppress the bad. Each is also given will and courage. §You do not have only the right, but also the duty to pass your blood on to your children, for you are a member of the chain of generations that reaches from the past into eternity, and this link of the chain that you represent must do its part so that the chain is never broken. §But if your blood has traits that will make your children unhappy and burdens to the state, then you have the heroic duty to be the last. §The blood is the carrier of life. You carry in it the secret of creation itself. Your blood is holy, for in it God’s will lives. Race Race means to be able to think in a certain way. He who has courage, loyalty and honor, the mark of the German, has the race that should rule in Germany, even if he does not have the physical characteristics of the “Nordic” race. The unity of the noble and a noble body is the goal to which we strive. But we despise those whose noble body carries an ignoble soul. §A variety of related European races have merged in Germany. One trunk grew from these roots. Each race gave its best strength. Each contributed to the German soul We Germans have a fighting spirit, a look to the horizon, the “desire to do a thing for its own sake” of the Nordic race. Another racial soul gave us our cozy old cities and our depth. Yet another racial soul gave us mastery of the magical realm of music. Yet another gave us our ability to organize, and our silent obedience. §We can not hold it against anyone if he carries a variety of racial lines, for the German soul does as well, and created out of it the immeasurable riches which it possesses above all other nations. The greatness of our Reich grew out of this soul. §But the Nordic race must dominate in Germany and shape the soul of each German. It must win out in the breast of each individual. Today our ideal is not the artist or the citizen, but the hero. §Our highest treasure is the soul that we have been given. He who mixes his blood with that of foreign inferior races ruins the blood and soul that have been given to him to pass on in purity to his children. He makes his children impure and miserable, and commits the greatest crime that he as a National Socialist can commit. §But he who follows the laws of race fulfills the great commandment that only like should be brought together with like, keeping apart those things like fire and water which do not mix. Volk A People ( ) A people grows from god’s will. Woe to him who wishes to destroy the peoples and make people alike. God created the trees, the bushes, the weeds and the grass not so that they could merge into one species, but that each should exist in its own way. §Just as a tree, a people grows as a living whole from similar roots, but becoming one, the strongest of its kind. §All of the same blood belong to it. A people knows no state boundaries. It is bound by the ties of blood that bind all the sons of a single mother. The German people is a nation of a hundred million. Each German belongs to it, no matter where he may live. §A people cannot be destroyed as long as its roots draw on the strength of the earth. Summer and winter may come and go. But it always blooms anew in indestructible life and perfects itself in the strength that rises from its roots towards god’s will. §What does it mean when an individual dies? It is as if the wind blows leaves from a tree. New ones grow eternally every spring. §The peoples are the greatest and most noble creation of god on this earth. There is no institution in the world, no party and no church, that has the right to make them the same or to rob them of even the tiniest bit of their individuality. State A people gives itself its form through the state. There is only one natural form for each people, only one state. §In the natural process of growth, each people finds its form and its state, and finds them again when it has lost them, if only it wants to. §National Socialism has broken foreign compulsion and eliminated the unnatural. Germany once again grows into its own state and is once more itself. §The best rules, the Führer, and he carries the responsibility because he is best able to bear it. The parliament has ceased to exist. This form of Western democracy has been abolished. The German states established by the grace of counts or by Napoleon disappear. The Reich becomes one. The new state rises: “The day is coming when a single tent will cover all the German land.” Socialism Socialism means: “The common good before the individual good.” Socialism means: “Think not of yourself, but of the whole, of the people and the state.” Socialism means: “Not the same for everyone, but to each his own.” These sentences make clear what we call “German socialism.” No one is a socialist who does not live according to them. §A new order grows from these sentences. The sentence “To each his own” has killed the “mass,” the slogan of Marxism, and replaced it with the “community.” Every community grows around a leader. He is the center of its order, which forms around him. A number of these leaders form a larger community, and stand around their leader as a living order. It all grows from below—the number growing ever smaller—like a pyramid, and finds its epitome in the Führer of the Reich. All are bound by the community. Each community is a living order. The whole, the great living order, is the people’s community. It binds inextricably person to person, leader to leader. It does not give the same to everyone, but to each his own. It creates the socialist people in a socialist state. §Each has his task in the community, given to him according to his gifts. Never do all have the same task, but rather each his own. His task gives him a place in the community, If he fulfills it completely, he wins the esteem of the others. He is happy, even if his task is not large in the overall scheme of things. §Such communities grow in the field, in assault troops, in artillery battalions, in submarines, in S.A. units. Strong, bound forever together, wordlessly understanding each other, together until the end, sworn to a common goal. Strength grows from such communities, and from them grows the state. §We want community in Germany so that we can stand unshaken in the face of whatever may come. The mass is conquered by the community. It gives to each his own, to each his goal and his task, and everyone together one goal: the people’s community in the new state. Fatherland “Oh holy heart of the peoples, O Fatherland!” You were created from the endless forests and wide moors that the glaciers of the ice age left us. It was poor land only made fruitful through sweat and toil, in joy and sorrow, in endless work. §One passed you on to the next and laid down in your earth from which new life grew. In you rest the endless ranks of past generations, the seed for new sowing in the wide land. The blood of the noble and brave who defended you fell on you. You were fertilized by the best that you bore. §From you, castles and cathedrals rose to the heavens, as if the earth itself wished to rise up to the god it was seeking. From our earth, from the seed of our dead. §The land is broad. Under the care of industrious hands it became a garden. They protected it lovingly, like the mountains and valleys protect their villages. Proud cities by the rivers, displaying the splendor of the old Reich. The market fountain has flowed for hundreds of years here. The gates still stand through which once the Kaiser, the knights and the nobility passed. §The silver stream of fate winds through. On the other bank is land that was lost. The heart almost stops. How one wishes to stroke the distant forests as one would an old and beloved face. But the heart beats once more on the plains and the coasts that German colonists won. The castle of the knights stands in the east, an eternal testimony of strength and virtue. There are the fields from which Frederick’s eagle rose toward the sun, and there, far from the borders, is the wall of German dead, an eternal memorial of the nation that withstood the world as long as it believed in itself. §Everything is founded in and rests in you, Fatherland. Our strength and our greatness, but also our need and our misery. You are the ground that bore us and will bear those distant generations that will work and bleed for you. §No one can live without you, but each will gladly give his life back to you who gave it to him. Courage Courage is the most beautiful and noble trait a man can have. He who has no courage is not a man. §The “storming courage” of an attack is wonderful. The feeling of having risked all in service of a high ideal frees one and lets him charge forward with joy. Courage bears a man as if he had wings, and fills his heart. §The attack becomes the high point of life. When everything depends on one card, when one can lose everything, when one can win everything, life is at its best. He who has never charged and attacked, filled with courage, has never fully lived. §Alongside “stormy courage” is the “indomitable courage” of those facing hard fate. “Fate is great and powerful, but greater still is the person who bears it unshaken.” §Life is often harder than death. A coward holds on to it. No one faces a challenge greater than the strength he has been given to face it. Courage overcomes all. When one has done all in his power, good luck comes to show him a new way and help him along. But it is not really good luck. “Resist all powers, never give in, be strong, calls the army of the gods.” §Courage is needed not only by the man, by the soldier, a woman too needs courage. For the man battle, the attack is the greatest challenge. For the woman it comes when she gives a new person life. Men who no longer want to wage war cannot face the mothers who give new life at the risk of their own. §Courage is the noblest trait of a man or woman. It determines the battle and gives victory. Hardness Life demands hardness. One must strive with burning heart toward the ideal of hardness. To be hard for the sake of life, to become a fighter, to win the victory. §Our environment is a given. Burning heat in summer, biting cold in winter, long marches in the wet and cold. Working long at the factory, or behind a machine gun. Bearing hunger and thirst, sleeping on the bare earth, not surrendering in battle, never, never, no matter how hopeless everything sees, hurling an empty pistol in the face of the enemy, reaching for his neck without regard for oneself, even if it leads to death. To be a fighter, a fighter with faith in his cause, even if everyone says it is a false cause. That brings victory, the victory that belongs to him who is the harder. §You should never give up in battle or work. Even if you fail a thousand times, you must make the thousand and first attempt. In the end it will succeed and you will be the victor, even if almost bled dry, almost faint, but filled with the triumphant knowledge of having overcome. You are victor in your struggle and victor over yourself. §Each must prepare for his battle. Each must train as if he will one day fight the decisive battle for Germany. Each must be able to march, suffer hunger and thirst, sleep on bare ground, bear all privations, be a fighter, a soldier from the moment he can understand what is at stake. §We need men hard and tough as steel, harder than anything else in the world. Only they will master the great future of Germany. Do you want to be one of them, or stand aside as a weakling? §Germany will be the land of the brave and the strong. Either you belong to them, or you will no longer be a German. Will Will is the force inside you that commands. You may hesitate from weariness, anxiety, weakness. Will lifts you over every barrier and orders you to do what your feelings and understanding tell you to do. §A man without will is like a machine without power. It is useless. But “where there is a will, there is a way,” and where a will orders, it is obeyed, whether a person follows his own will or men follow the will of a leader. §Where there is faith that comes from strength, it is will that gives it the push. §Exercise your will so that it is as taut and ready as a drawn bowstring, ready to let loose in the moment it should, neither a second too late nor a second too early. Exercise your will in little things until it is strong enough to bring from you that which Germany expects. Self Control One expects that a person who drives a car is in control, and that he causes no accidents. One expects that a person who lives with other people will control himself, so that he does not endanger himself or others. §The forces within us can raise or lower us. It depends on the use we make of them, on whether we control them and therefore ourselves. §Hunger and thirst exist to be satisfied. But woe to him who eats for the sake of eating or drinks for the sake of drinking. He is lower than an animal that knows when it has had enough. But he to whom understanding has been given does not know it. We hate the gluttons and drunkards with bulging bodies and swollen eyes, people with no character or self control. We eat and drink to live, but we never live in order to eat and drink. §The body must be kept under iron discipline so that we are always in charge of it and it is always dependable. We also may never allow the sexual drive to control us. For adults it is not there to be satisfied, but rather a force that should be used to produce future generations healthy in both body and soul. A young person is given strength not to use in bed, but rather in the sun and the wind, on the sports field and countryside, until we have a body in front of us full of strength and speed, a body in which courage and faith are joined in a free soul, a body that is master of its passions, master of itself, the German person of the future. Out of it will grow the strength of a renewed people, the bearer of a future generation of nobility and freedom. §If you control yourself, you control life. §If you control yourself, you must be able to bear pain without uttering a sound. Men do not complain or cry, and boys who want to become men behave in the same way. §You should not give in to every little problem. Be open, be determined, never play the cripple, but control yourself. Be the master of your pain and problems. Force yourself to be cheerfully faithful. Then you will find strength you did not know you had. §You must practice self control. How often does duty call, but something distracts you? Command yourself so that you can master yourself. §Do something every day that you do not like to do, and avoid doing something every day that you would gladly have done. §Do everything you are ordered to do immediately, without thinking about it. You must in order to become a real man. §That is the secret of every great personality. It has gained all the strength it directs outwardly from overcoming itself. §But you should not be a meek person who gives up everything in order to live in a cave to receive a promised blessing. God does not want that for a person. He should have pleasure in his work. He should use it, but never misuse it, and should be the master of himself. Discipline Savages and half-savages have courage, but only advanced people have discipline. Discipline is the ability to fall in line. Discipline is carrying out an order without knowing the reason, without understanding. Discipline also means enduring injustice for the sake of a good cause. §Discipline is iron virtue and silent obedience. §Discipline comes from within yourself. You accept it because you follow a higher will. He who does not do this will be forced by steely necessity, which alone can overcome the lack of will and weakness of many, making of them useful members of the people and the state. §Discipline is a spiritual attitude. Law and command work through it for the good of all. Any weakening of discipline is the beginning of collapse. Each is called to ensure that he himself and the man next to him behaves in a disciplined way. Duty Duty is a hard word as long as one has not done it. Duty is a pleasant word as soon as one has done it. §Duty is the “you should” that you feel inside. Duty is that which family, people and the state demand of you. Doing one’s duty does not mean being controlled by the reins that rule a horse, but rather doing one’s duty means that one does it with joy, no matter how hard. §The fatherland grew from the duty done by our fathers and forefathers. From the duty we all do grows the present state and the future both of the individual and the whole. §Duty can also mean sacrifice, the sacrifice of one’s own life. Your people can demand of you what it has given you. But what does demand mean? The state, the fatherland dwell in your own breast. You demand it of yourself, and the path of highest duty is the way of greatest happiness, even if it leads to your death. § Justice comes from fulfilled duty. There is no other justice in the National Socialist state, just as there is no pay without labor. The greater the duty, the greater the justice. He who does the most for Germany has the greatest right to guide Germany and determine its fate. He is the Führer of the Reich, and others follow him according to the duty they have fulfilled. §A worker on the street can stand higher in the ranks than a government minister if he has better done his duty. §Fulfilling one’s duty to the utmost is required of each of us. Who will wait until the demand comes, until it is required? He who does his duty of his own free will, he is a free man and not a slave. Honor You live by honor, not by bread. Slaves believe that they only need food and drink to live. The free man knows that he needs honor first of all. §Your honor is your standing with your comrades and fellow citizens. It is just as much your standing with yourself. §To be honorable is to be courageous. To be honorable is to be selfless and loyal. To be honorable is to be in control of oneself. He who does great things for his fatherland is honorable. §Honor comes not from money and possessions. But he who creates new values or gives other work through his spirit or the work of his hands can thereby win honor. §It is also honorable to be the son of someone noble, someone who has done much for his people and his state. But the son is unworthy of his honor if he does not win it anew. §Inherited honor does not last forever, but always demands work and struggle. Honor is like a crown. He who ceases to live and act like a king loses it — and has lost it, even if he still wears it on his head. §Not everyone can take honor from another. The insult of a boy cannot harm one’s honor. But he who accepts an insult in a cowardly way loses honor before others. §We do not reply to an insult ourselves at first. That is why superior leaders and judges are there. But if someone hits you, hit back, and if someone strikes your face, strike him back. For we National Socialists in Germany today, there is only one honor, one concept of honor. There is no particular concept of honor for particular classes any longer. National Socialism has given us all a new common sense of honor. We know it. He who does not have it is not free, but a slave. The least important worker today can be free and honorable, the prosperous businessman a slave and a serf. §That is the new law, which gives honor only to the brave, the selfless, the loyal, the self controlled, those who do everything for Germany that they can. §The way to honor is open for every German. Loyalty Loyalty is a holy word. Speak it rarely. It must be as taken-for-granted as the air we breathe. §What exists exists because of loyalty. If that which exists ceases to be loyal, it returns to nothingness. That tears the bonds that hold everything together. It shatters camaraderie; it shatters leadership; it shatters honor; it shatters confidence in the law; it shatters the army; it shatters the state; it shatters everything that exists. §Germany collapsed in 1918 because disloyalty replaced loyalty. An “excess of loyalty” raised it again from the abyss. Now it stands on the foundation of loyalty, which must be stronger than the destructive forces of the world. §What is loyalty, comrade? §Your loyalty is that you never, never turn from the ideals to which you have sworn allegiance. National Socialism has raised them high, so that they live in you and will go into the grave with you. That is your first and deepest loyalty. §And you are true to your fatherland, called Germany. As its earth brought forth your blood, you belong to it forever. §The third claim on your loyalty is to follow the Führer both in the brightest and the darkest days. It is better for you to follow him ever into darkness and misery than that your loyalty weakens even once. §Fourth, you owe loyalty to your comrade. You will always help him in need and danger. He should always know that he can come to you, that he can rely on you entirely, as if you were his physical brother. §Sigfried and Hagen were loyal. Siegfried, the bright hero, fought battles for his king. His life was joy and jubilation and victory. Love and loyalty accompanied him, as if bearing him on their hands. §Hagen slew Siegfried not as a cowardly murderer, but rather because Siegfried invited guilt upon himself. The honor of the king was at stake. Siegried had to die. But Hagen took the guilt upon himself. His loyalty to his king was more to him than his own outward honor. He took the curse of a murderer on himself and was greater than all and he was loyal [This story is part of the Niebelung saga]. §The German warrior loyally followed his nobleman and did not return home without him. The knights loyally followed their lords and emperors. Prussia’s greatest sons were served their king loyally, even when they were better than he. They served not his person, but the crown that he bore. The millions who died in the World War loyally followed their leaders. In loyalty, they lie with them as a ring of dead around Germany. In loyalty, we all follow the Führer and his flag. The hand of each will hold the flag until death, the flag that leads Germany to new life. §We show loyalty in daily life as well. Once again, a man’s word is dependable. Promises must be kept and will be kept. We do not need a handshake and an oath. Each can depend on our word, because we again have become loyal. §Germany is the land of loyalty. It dwells in its vast forests. It dwells in its knights and soldiers. It dwells again in us. Loyalty is our honor. Who wants to be dishonorable amidst the brave and the heroes? Freedom There is no freedom in Germany to do whatever one wants, and there will be no such freedom, because otherwise Germany would not exist. §Freedom does not mean taking advantage of others, stealing from them, without being punished. Freedom does not mean living as one pleases. Nor does it mean preserving one’s life through cowardice. §Freedom is choosing to follow the path that duty requires. The others are slaves of themselves. He is the only free man: upright and proud, master of everything that might demean him, the best of the nation, the bearer of the state. He has elevated himself. He does his duty while others take a holiday. But his duty raises him above over his little ego and makes him free. §Somewhere in the middle of a hot summer, a village’s well dries up. Day and night, someone works hard to dig a new well. No one gave the order. But for him it is a happy duty to find water for women and children and comrades. The other does what he likes. The one is a free man amidst the hard work he has chosen to do. The other is the slave of his desires and passions. He is a rogue who may say in the pub that man is born free and can do whatever he wishes. §He who thinks of himself is a slave and bound; he who thinks of others is master and free. Faith Knowledge is that which can be measured by reason. Knowledge alone means nothing and is dead. §A wish that you can fulfill is called hope. Hope can easily come to nothing. §But faith can never fail, for faith is strength. Faith springs from your deepest feelings. It is that knowledge for which there is no explanation through reason. In faith the soul sees a part of the world order. It has a sense of that which should be, and sees through its eyes a part of the way that it should and can go. It knows that by going this way it fulfills god’s command and is working toward the great work that is immeasurable, incomprehensible. §Because faith sees this and can do it, it is more than human strength. It is a part of the enormous power that fills all life and all worlds. With faith, a person walks with the assurance of a sleepwalker. Who can resist him, for he follows the path of the highest will. He will succeed when he believes. No hand raised against him will divert him from his way. The bullet aimed at him will not hit as long has he has not finished his path, as long as he has not turned from it. §Thousands do not understand the believing person because their souls cannot see. But what do the faithful care about the opinion of others, what do those who can see care about the opinion of the blind, what do those who have become strong care about what the weak think. §The way of faith is the way of everything great. Before our eyes Adolf Hitler went the way fate led him. He was filled with it and believed what no reason of the reasonable could see. §The path of faith is before each of us. Even if it is not the path of fame and honor, it is still the path of duty and of greatest happiness. To find it means to gain a part of the eternal strength that moves the worlds. §Because faith is strength, it can do what seems impossible. It is the foundation for every deed. No one can do anything without faith. No one can even jump over a ditch if he does not believe he can do it. The highest and most important in a person is not knowledge and understanding, but rather his faith. Each is worth only as much as the faith he has. §This new Reich began with faith. The first party rally after the seizure of power was called “The Victory of Faith.” It grew and became great through faith. It no longer grew from the faith of one man, but from the faith of us all, and was borne by the strength of all. More than human strength was present. §Woe to those who do not believe. They are not on the side of the strength of creation, but rather annihilation. They are the destroyers of the Reich. §Faith is however stronger than all other powers that can be found in this world. Fate We do not believe in a blind fate that leads people through their lives. We do not believe that god’s angels protect us in every step that we take and keep us from falling. But we do believe in a godly will that gives meaning to each each life that is born. Not an arbitrary generally meaning, but rather each life has its own particular purpose and meaning. §In the depths of our souls we sense whether we act according to this meaning. One can call this conscience or something else. It is there. We probably know the right path. We need only ask. A voice within us gives the answer, and speaks of the godly will that shows us the path we should go. §This path is our fate. Each has but one proper path. To follow it makes one happy to the highest degree, even if it is a path that brings only poverty and toil. §Any path that leads away from the meaning and purpose of life is death and sin. And even if the path seems ever so pleasant, you will sin every day of your life. §But you have the freedom to decide which path you want to follow. No blind fate rules you. You go your own way. §If you follow the law in your own heart, it is the way to your god. It is the way that comes from eternity and goes to eternity; in all the world there is never an end, only transformation. There is no death that is not also a beginning. Everything is part of the enormous plan of the worlds, of which you are a part if you seek your path. Everything is in development. The joy of creation lives in each. for it belongs to the builders at work. There is no heaven of pleasure and blessedness. But work and life alternate in eternal form, whether in the realm of the body or the sphere of the spirit. §Those who fell for an idea of god — and people and fatherland are such — continue to