Ludendorff: What I Strive Towards (1933) I strive towards a strong and free Greater Germany that binds the people closely to their native earth and restores to them, in a German world-view, the firm union of blood (racial inheritance), faith, culture and economy. Battlesomeness and freedom necessitate a strong and characterful race, inspired with its divine task, proud of its blood and the achievements of its ancestors, conscious of its power, its duties and its rights. Battlesomeness and freedom require that both sexes be brought up in this spirit; that male youths be given a military education; that men exercise their right to national self-defence in a people’s army, following the introduction of universal, compulsory national service; and that, in times of war, national service be required of both sexes, whether on the front line or in the home. Battlesomeness means that, after the battle, soldiers must be honoured and warriors cared for, including both wounded men and bereaved dependents. A people is disgraced when its defenders are destituted. Freedom requires unhindered self-determination, and therefore the restoration of military autonomy. The German people are being throttled by the Treaty of Versailles, along with the other dictates, codicils and amendments concocted by the servants of that policy. Such agreements are null and void, for they are based on the lie that Germany was responsible for the World War. We must regain our silenced voice and throw off the yoke imposed on us by foreign nations and by supra-national powers, who have given us war and revolution and who now hold us in their grip. In its innermost essence, our struggle is with the global capitalists and their economic forms, such as socialism, fascism and Bolshevism; with their financial systems and their money-trading; with their ever-changing methods of stealing, from workers and producers, the fruits of their labour, of dispossessing owners and thereby collectivising peoples. Our struggle is with Jewry, which strives to achieve global rule over collectivised peoples via Freemasonry and Marxism in all their variants, through global capital and the imposition of serfdom, by means of racial pollution and insidious propaganda. The Jews would have the peoples of Europe, including the German people, labour for them in autonomous economic provinces of a Pan-Europa. With cunning and force, by means of the Christian religion, they would compel us to bow down before Yahweh, they would uproot the German people and transplant them to an utterly alien culture. Our struggle is with the catholic activities of the Roman Church, which for centuries has used every available means to enslave us, despoil us racially, and compel us to bow down at the throne of Peter. Our struggle is with any instrumentalisation of Christian teaching that weakens German vitality by means of the state and the church. Indeed, our struggle is to overcome Christianity itself; for if even a trace of it remains in the people, it will facilitate the rule of supra-national powers and imperil the formation of a racial community: a Volk. Yet we struggle, not by means of violence – which was once used against our ancestors and is now being deployed against us – but through education and by conducting ourselves ethically. In the same way, our task is to overcome the legal terminology of an alien power that came to us in the wake of Christianity, and which serves only too well the hegemony of the supra-national powers. Greater Germany should unite in a single state all the Germans of Central Europe and provide support and protection for Germans abroad. Within that nation, each of the tribes should stand side-by-side in freedom, equality and self-determination. This will put an end, not only to federal states and independent Länder, but also to the bureaucratic destruction of tribal idiosyncrasies. The state should be strong and ethical, its sole guideline the well-being of the people as a whole. Whether it be a monarchy or a republic in form is today of only secondary importance. All that matters is that a German man, answerable only to himself and the people, should hold the reigns of government. The Führer of the Reich will be in charge of the army and the administration; ministers and civil servants will be responsible to him alone. In accordance with the principles of meritocracy, the people are to be represented by the most meritorious Germans, who will bear full responsibility for their own actions. The administration of the tribes will take place according to an extension of the principles formulated by Stein. In line with the same principles, each community will develop a form of free, self-governing local administration. By such means, the un-German maladies of our times will disappear: parliamentarianism and bureaucratism — those irresponsible means to power, those feeding-stations of the supra-national powers and their dependents. Political rights will be granted in accordance with the principle of meritocracy; therefore, preference will be given to those who have carried out military service or achieved motherhood. Jews and other alien peoples may not become German nationals, nor may they hold any kind of office or exercise any kind of authority over Germans. Prohibited are: oaths of obedience or any kind of binding oath towards non-state superordinates or foreign authorities; and membership of any secret society with its own authority, for example Freemasonry or other secret orders of any kind. These are irreconcilable with the the duties of national sovereignty and the responsibilities of the state, which alone has the right to demand obedience from the citizen and to exercise legal judgement. The Volk is a living unity of German people, who — in self-preservation and beyond — serve one another through labour with head and hand, and who fulfil their divine task. Whatever their social position, those who do not fail in this task have the right to respect, fellow-feeling and the necessities of life. In this living unity of the Volk, man and woman stand side-by-side as equals who are yet differ in their essential natures. Woman should once again be granted the lofty position in Volk and family that she once enjoyed amongst our ancestors – before the penetration of alien attitudes and alien mores and morals. The family is the wellspring of strength for German life. As young people grow towards adulthood, they are guided by the example of their parents; a youth movement can complement this but never replace it. The home soil is the irreplaceable Fatherland of the Volk, grown part of its very substance. This unity of people and land will become even more intimate when love of the homeland is cultivated, when settlements and homes are created to rescue the immured denizens of the great cities. The Holy German Earth must never be a commodity to be bought and sold. For thousands of years, we were a happy peasant people; and, even today, under altered circumstances, we must find sustenance in the rural population, without therefore undervaluing any other class of the people. Our ancestors once knew the unity of blood, faith, culture and economy; by growing one with the soil, the Volk must regain that unity and thus survive, or else grow degenerate and die. Blood-consciousness and racial pride are the backbone of the Volk. Purity of the race is the sacred law by which its soul is maintained. To guard that purity is the highest duty of those who lead the people. The admixture of alien blood is the poisoning of the Volk. With the reawakening of racial consciousness, the arrogance and hubris of individual racial groups will also disappear. Care for the health of the race is a necessity in the maintenance of the race. It is an office of trust, held by physicians of the same blood, under the eyes of the people. In this task, the curing of disease is less important than the cultivation of physical strength and careful tending of the people’s genetic health. Though we respect any serious religious conviction, we oppose any limitation of the people’s freedom through the alien doctrines of Christianity. We reject as immoral the initiation of infants into religious communities and the lifelong religious binding of people who are incapable of choosing for themselves. Only adults are entitled to make such decisions. Culture is the product of faith in God, and of the moral ideals of the Volk. These are the sources of power and life that inform every branch of art and science, and indeed the entire educational system. Art and science will be freed from everything alien and restrictive; education and upbringing will be led by the state. Whatever poisons the people’s soul, whatever suppresses its opinions, whatever tames and trains the people’s minds by means of suggestion and “spiritual” exercises – all this will be more severely punished than physical assault or murder. A people’s dearest possession is its freedom to develop spiritually. The mother tongue, the script and the customs of a people are essential constituents of its culture, and sacred to it. German law must be rooted in German recognition of the godly and a German conception of the world; and must thereby also defend honour. Civilization and its progressive achievements must serve the welfare of the Volk; the labour of German researchers thereby acquires the people’s blessing. The economy should integrate itself into the ethical ideals of the people. Within the border-fence erected by these ideals, the economy can develop freely. The task of the economy is to supply the people’s requirements, at affordable prices, in abundance, and as independently as possible from foreign imports. Its bedrock is dependability. Excessive prices that favour single groups will be made impossible by strict state action. Private property is subject to the moral demands of the Volk community. The abolition of property is senseless, and would undermine both faith in the law and the pleasure taken in work. The reward for labour must be in accordance with the work done. Pleasure in work and peace in the workplace will be secured through the close involvement of each individual in his work, its intrinsic values and his own successes in performing it. Both the selfishness of employers and the response to it, the intransigence of the workforce: these are not the workings of a civilizational process, but the symptoms of a disease — the disease of degenerate economic forms in a deracinated people. The monetary system will be cleansed of all pollutions caused by foreign blood, and arranged in accordance with a German sense of justice. And the means of evaluating money will be located at home, untouchable from abroad. Financial increase by moral methods, and liberation from the yoke of interest laid upon us by global capital: these will bring prosperity to all Germans, end the unspeakable misery of struggling Germans in all classes of society, and re-integrate all Germans in the creative unity of the Volk. On this foundation, every free German can stand firm. Ludendorff ———————————— Read Ludendorff’s Volkswarte The journal strives to create a living Volk, and to establish the unity of racial genetic inheritance, faith, culture and economy. Monthly, 86 Pfennigs, incl. subscription fees ——————————————— General Ludendorff, as anti-Semitic as he was anti-Catholic. Pampered child of the Nazis.
