The Theory and Practice of Hell Read Free Page A

trainers o f the younger generation o f Ftihrers aspire to is a modern governmental structure on the model o f the ancient Greek city states . It is to these aristocratically run democracies with their broad economic basis o f serfdom that we owe the great cultural achievements o f antiquity . From five to ten per cent o f the people , their finest flower , shall rule; the rest must work and obey . In this way alone can we attain that peak per formance we must demand o f ourselves and o f the German people .
    “ The new Fiihrer class is selected by the SS—in a
    positive sense by means o f the National Political Education Institutes fNapola^ as a preparatory stage , o f the Ordensburgen as the academies proper o f the coming Nazi aristocracy , and o f a subsequent active internship in public affairs; in a negative sense by the extermination o f all racially and biologically inferior elements and by the radical removal o f all incorrigible political opposition that refuses on principle to acknowledge thephilosophical basis of the Nazi State and its essential institutions .
    “ Within ten years at the latest it will be possiblefor us in this way to dictate the law o f A dolf Hitler to Europe, put a halt to the other wise inevitable decay o f the continent, and build up a true community o f nations , with Germany as the leading power keeping order . ”

    I shall not here cite the arguments I marshaled against these propositions. If there was any need for further incriminating evidence against me, this incident earned me a place of honor on the first Gestapo black list when the Germans marched into Austria on March 12, 1938. What is of importance here is merely the extraordinary precision with which an SS leader was able to set forth the true aims of the Nazi State.
    It is the Schutz-Staffel 1 of Heinrich Himmler that must be regarded as the preordained guardian of the Nazi spirit, the elite on whom was to rest the ultimate exercise of Nazi power.

    Schutz-Staffel literally means “ Defense Echelon.*’ The term was univer sally abbreviated to SS, but the abbreviation could not be written in ordinary Roman or even Gothic letters. It was written as a double lightning Hash, z / z , in imitation of ancient runic characters. Ultimately even German typewriters had to carry this symbol on a special key. — Tr.
     

    THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 3

    Himmler, the son of a Bavarian official and a failure as a schoolteacher, had risen from the ranks of the “ Artamans,” an obscure branch of the German youth movement, dedicated to the glorification and arming of the German peasantry. Even then the Nazi symbols of blood, soil and the sword were foreshadowed. Looking at Himmler’s features, moreover, it is not surprising to find that his man was to become the disciple, the henchman and finally the most dogged protagonist of Adolf Hitler’s obsessions. Pince-nez clamped before his cynical eyes and rather stupid face, he was certainly not the prototype of the non-existent and thus all the more exalted “ Teutonic race.” None of the principal Nazi leaders were. Certainly not Alfred Rosenberg, a man without a drop of German blood, who yet presumed to play the part of the great German philosopher; nor Joseph Goebbels, about whose skull formation, stature and clubfoot few words need be wasted; nor the bloated Hermann Goring; nor, especially, their lord and master himself, Adolf Hitler, one of the receding forehead type, of whom his one-time press agent, the cynical “ Putzi” Hanfstaengel, once told foreign correspon dents that at least the hair in his armpits was fair.
    What Himmler, Hitler’s policeman, lacked in intelligence, he made up in unwavering pigheadedness. His character exhibited two essential German qualities, quite dissociated from each other: brutality, and a romantic streak. He was able to alternate them like shirts. He was fond of displaying the mystic rigmarole of his “ Sworn Fellowship” before the