Newsletter No 288

                                        ISSN 1440-9828
                                                   July 2006
                                                                                              No 288

I have been called upon to direct this appeal to my fellow-countrymen, even in this time of greatest spiritual confusion and unprecedented political teacher, to speak encouragement to the dulled-down, the indifferent, the resigned, the fence-sitters, the re-educated, and to the people of little faith, to once again fill them with Faith. Our Nation can be proud of its illustrious past and has a right to decide its very own future, just like any other nation.

It may be, that my origin and my career path in all its heights and depths, has prepared just me to make this appeal. For I have lived in the time of the Kaiser, during the Weimar Republic and also in Hitler's Third Reich, with all its vistas of light and shade.

As a member of one of Europe's richest aristocrat houses at the time, I could easily have stayed out of politics and solely worked towards the preservation and increase of my fortune. According to today’s thinking it certainly was a most irrational beginning when in 1928, at just 22 years of age, I went to seek out Hitler in Munich, in his ghastly lodging in Schelling Strasse to beg him to accept me as a member of his rather insignificant National Socialist German Workers Party. At that time this party was represented by 12 delegates in the “Reichstag” - Parliament.

No less irrational was the counsel Hitler gave me and for me NOT to heed it: to think deeply about my entry into a Workers Party – considering that I belonged to a house that until 1918 had been among our nation's ruling aristocracies.

Nevertheless I did join, not a “sober” decision in the sight of “modern” man and it does not give the same a useful example to follow in our present time.

Yet in 1933, when I was employed by the son of a bookkeeper from Reydt as an adjutant it was regarded as smart and well thought through. For this man's name was Dr. Joseph Goebbels and he was very much wooed by all, even by those, who 12 years later, when he was dead, threw stones at him and even worse, loaded him with filth.

From 1945 onward, in the first years after the war I once again defied all that is regarded as “common sense”, for I did not claim that my occupation in the service of the German Reich had been forced, or to prevent something worse from happening, or to offer resistance, rather I made it clear that I had acted out of conviction and served with devotion. This confession, which is already contained in my books, I now wish to repeat for the benefit of the younger generation from whom the truth has been withheld, the truth of the unique sacrifice of a people – our own nation! – and the historical achievements of their parents and grandparents. I will speak for those who are unable to be a witness to this truth. This present state (BDR/ DDR) to which our young people have no connection is not the result of free elections but of make-belief, a product of the victorious allied forces and their “German” underlings.

How did it begin in those days, in the so called Hour Zero? It started as the greatest man-hunt in all human history, and history cannot name any examples for the savage cruelties that ever raged against a defenseless people, such as had been done to the Germans after 8 May 1945.

To distract from these bestialities, which claimed millions of innocent victims, show trials were instigated against so called (German) war criminals. The mass murders committed by the victors came soon under a quickly proclaimed amnesty. Germany was at that time a gigantic concentration camp. Entire leagues and organizations were collectively arrested. Hundreds of thousands died from hunger or despair in the following years in camps designed to “break” people. Hunger rations pushed untold others over the brink. Approximately 15 Million Germans were hunted from their positions as “Nazis”.

We had become the slaves of a psychosis of hatred, and this hatred did not stem from crimes that the Germans were supposed to have committed. No, it was much older! It was the same hatred that dictated the shameful treaty of Versailles where a democratic Germany would destroy itself. This hatred raged in World War One against the Kaiser, the princes and the military and in World War Two against Hitler, against the NSDASP, and the Wehrmacht. It was this hatred that mobilized world opinion against Germany, when nobody as yet could claim any German war crimes. It was this same hatred that made the American Jew, Henry Morgenthau proclaim to the world on 1 February 1933: The USA has entered the section of World War Two, Fortland Journal 12. 2.1933).

It is still this same unforgiving hatred which acts against our nation and feeds the controversies. Even though no nation wanted World War One nor World War Two they let themselves be driven into it by the propaganda of hatred. Nobody will want World War Three, which must come as surely as the preceding two wars, that is, if we do not finally enter the correct path and recognize the true enemy of the nations and halt his progress. I must admit that even we recognized the true connections far too late.

We did not count on the power of that relatively small clique, which guarantees the human multitude absolutely the best business deal, which however is at odds with all eternal values and a thorn in the eye of nature itself. It is exactly this lobby group, which became dominant world wide through Marxist materialism, which elevated buying and selling to become its core-ideology. It mocked all ideals of labour, of property and possessions, which now have lost their entire ethical meaning. This Marxist international materialism, which is contrary to the very laws of nature, is what leads us all into the abyss.

Already we perceived this repulsive ideology destroyed by National Socialism, yet the avowed goal of these international conspirators was to once again deliver our people to this very pestilence. For this they needed war. And for this they required subordinates. Most of all they found these in the ranks of the Social Democrats. It has been said that you either become a Social Democrat because of stupidity or because of base character. If you consider the leading Sozis it surely stands true for the greatest part. The treacherous behaviour of the SPD during World War One and after fills entire volumes. Friedrich Stampfer, one of the leading functionaries wrote on 20 October 1918 in the party paper Vorwärts the following: “It is the decided aim of the socialists that Germany will forever lower its flags of war without for the last time having brought them home victoriously.”

Even in the Third Reich, especially during World War Two, these Sozis belonged to those aiding the enemies of our nation. Just like in 1918, so also in 1945 they stood in readiness to execute the will of the victors against their own fellow countrymen. To give truth its due I mention that to the few Social Democrats with national goals belonged the chairman Dr. Kurt Schumacher. (His verdict about the separatist Adenauer was: “The chancellor of the Allies”). But unforgettable too is the Sozi Hoegner, who gave his services to the Allied gangster justice as a witness to their many executions in Nürnberg.

When the Christian Democrats as stewards of the victors were at the end of their tether and began to involve the Sozis in the business, these were able to freely develop their well- known expertise. They continued where they left off on the 29January 1933. Once the take-over of the entire power base was achieved in the year 1969 they began systematically to demolish the remnant of the racial and moral substance, which had still remained after 2 ½ decades of re-education. Afterwards there was barely any area in our lives, which the Sozis had not changed into a cesspool.

Next they remembered old tried and true practices, persecuting those who thought differently, especially all nationalists. Just as they had done before 1933 they made the judiciary- and not only it- the whore of the political system and now they dare to speak of the: “Freest legal state of all time”.

They are the ones who claim to have suffered “NS- persecuted”, despite the fact that for most the part they only received what they deserved for their brutal, oppressive methods after Hitler took power. You only need to read the speech of the SPD delegate Otto Wells from 24March 1933 –Law of power seizure – and the answer Hitler gave. Their shameful exit in 1933 was the result of utter incompetence, together with the only remaining alternative: Communism or Hitler.

They too are the ones who were the most diligent pupils and executors of the re-education program, to induce in our youth a taste for serfdom. In this they truly even exceed their Zionist overlords, whose aims were clearly mapped out on the 1942 published book by Louis Nizer: What shall we do with Germany?

Of course they are not he only ones, but together with their Communist and Workers Union colleagues who also destroy our nation, they are the most dangerous ones. And even the most uninformed person can see how rigorous the policy of alienation of our people is promoted by exactly this group.

What the political charlatans of our days declare, whatever is preached from pulpits by all orientations and shades of faiths, is but hypocrisy and fraud on well meaning folk.

The touchstone separating the spirits is RUDOLF HESS. I think not so much of his jailers, whose unspeakable cruelty in the treatment of an innocent man exceeds all hitherto established measurements. Rather I think of the self-appointed guardians of the Holy Grail of Democracy and Christianity, the apostles of Humanity, who waffle about “Fellow Human Beings” as if our enemies would ever even consider regarding us in the light of that term. Had that been the case, apart from the war itself – at least at the end of the war – instead of giving only a one-sided amnesty they surely could have extended the same to their enemies as well. Then there would not now exist the denial for self-determination, the re-unification issue, nor the clause of the “enemy state”. The supposed reason for World War Two, namely the removal of Hitler and National Socialism, has been eliminated.

[A parallel with the US and its attack on Iraq using as a rationale the threat of WMDs/regime change – FT]

If we want to change this we have to start exactly here and in untiringly minute detail speak to the young people, for them to realise which danger threatens them and from which side. They need to know how they are being misused and misled by the ruling political powers. They need to know too that the present ideologies are only the means to further enslave the population and that these ideologies have no right to exist.

There is only one alternative: the decision for nature and the observance of its laws. The idea of natural politics is no new concept; it is the plumb line of our actions. Every action has to solely orientate itself according to the laws of nature and then everything will be in the correct order. There is no better teacher, there is no higher standard.

With this we again place the laws of nature in the right order, the eternal values of Mother, Family, Race, State, Nation, as well as respect for the differences between people (without judging these differences), the respect for achievements and role models and also respect for the realms of living things, mankind, animals and plants.

Whoever, if we want to present this to our young people convincingly we have to do this by leading them by example. Once again we have to avow ourselves to Germany, the land of our birth, without any ifs and but. Thanks to the self-sacrificing work of many unnamed men and women, thanks to the employment of truth-loving and courageous foreign historians it has been possible, time after time, to smash through the barricades of lies erected by slanderers of our nation, even in the face of many legal barriers.

Even the seeming impossibility to change the existing situation cannot deceive us. The truth cannot be repressed for ever and the day of reckoning for the falsifiers of history and the corrupters of our people must surely come.

For this we have every reason to sincerely and confidently do our duty. This applies all the more to the many – unfortunately all too many - of the younger wartime generation who cowered before the storm of the re-education flood and remained silent. Certainly many were too discouraged, after the valiant but seemingly fruitless struggle for their people during the war, to resist the sewer of lies which followed.

Yet they left thus – unthinkingly – their children without protection, when the anti-German schooling poisoned their souls. This, my appeal, is mainly directed at them and at the younger ones among us. It is directed at those whose natural senses have not been buried, at those who still think, feel and act as Germans. To everyone we must now show that our Fatherland still has some sovereign people.

Be an example everywhere because it is necessary: in the family, at your place of work, in your circle of friends, anywhere else. Only in this way will we succeed to create the necessary conditions for a future worth living for.

"I am not worthy to speak aloud of Adolf Hitler,
and his life and work are not suited to any sentimental talk.
He was a champion of mankind and a herald of the message of justice for all nations.
He was a reforming figure of highest rank, and his historic fate
was that he had to work at a time of unparalleled perfidy that ultimately beat him down."
Knut Hamsun

1. Introduction

The American sociologist Robert S. Lynd said: "It is easier to believe a lie one has heard a hundred times than a truth one has never heard before."

Since the beginning of this century, one campaign of lies after the other has been aimed at us Germans. No matter how often the great many untruths were refuted - it became clear that, unfortunately, it is much more profitable to spread lies than to stand up for the truth, especially if the liar had also been the victor in a war.

A country where it is dangerous to voice the truth is on the wrong path. In any case, I personally prefer to live in a country where it is advantageous to tell the truth.

But as the French author Marquis de Vauvenargues put it in his Maximes et Réflexiones: "Only few people are strong enough to tell the truth and to hear it."

When I write in order to help truth to victory it is frequently inevitable that this involves criticism. The two are often inseparable, and sometimes people are unintentionally hurt in the process.

There is no revolution, movement, organization or other association, no matter how good, which does not incorporate both "right" and "wrong", just as there are natural and indispensable opposites in evidence everywhere.

In Adolf Hitler's Movement as well, there was both light and shadow, and - a universal constant - people with strong as well as with weak points. Only a genius can really assess them both, see them for what they are, and employ them in accordance with their talents.

If I learned from Dr. Goebbels, or even from Hitler himself, which of the crucial men in the Party Vanguard were not "all right", then for the sake of truth this must not be hushed up even if the men in question had other merits to point to, without which they could not have risen to leading positions. It is a matter of calling attention to the morally upstanding, decent, honest colleagues and comrades-in-arms, even if doing so should draw criticism down on me for also shedding light on unpleasant matters in the process.

First and foremost, the issue is not individual persons - it is truth for the German people as a whole.

I will try to describe the leading men through their actions and behavior, even if the incidents are frequently relatively trivial ones. I have chosen them for events as typically human as possible, which render the person and thus his thoughts and actions easier to understand.

In their fundamental character, the German people are so decent that they have frequently been taken in by their enemies simply because they would not have thought them capable of evil - simply could not think it possible.

One judges others based on one's self - that's how it has always been, and that's how it continues to be with those who slander our nation! In instances where they themselves stepped into the scene - in revolutions and wars - they were particularly cruel and inhuman. It was never the people as a whole, always the "movers and shakers", the floor leaders. Just recall, for example, the French Revolution, the extermination of the Indians, the battle against the Boers, the Great Revolution of the Chinese and the Russians, the subjugation of India, etc.

We Germans differ from almost all of the major powers on our globe primarily in that we have never provoked revolutions or instigated civil wars in foreign countries, in other words on an international basis, and never tried to wear down other peoples through large-scale international campaigns of incitement.

I do not, of course, count those "Germans" who participated in the international anti-German incitement as members of our people! They who exploited the war in order to divide our people by mendacious propaganda and to play each side against the other, are the branded ones of our age.

In the course of my interrogation by the Chief Prosecutor in the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, this prosecutor claimed that the Germans living abroad must all be counted as part of the "fifth column" - that is, agents of Hitler, for the purpose of revolutionizing the world - and that this mighty organization had been under the control of Dr. Goebbels.

I told him that such an organization (as had in fact existed for decades, only against Germany) would be incredibly expensive. The indispensable buying-up of the press of foreign nations in itself would require gigantic sums of cash. He agreed with this statement. I then explained that I knew exactly how large the Reich Ministry of Propaganda's budget for foreign propaganda had been, at a time when foreign propaganda had still been possible - approximately until 1943. The largest annual budgetary allocation ever had been one million Reichsmark. This had to cover lecture tours, the tours of the great symphony orchestras and theatre companies, as well as those of the great performing artists. On top of this, there were also expenses for sports events and - "on the side ", so to speak - subsidies for newspapers of importance for cultural advertising. Altogether, therefore, it was a ridiculous, a paltry sum, just barely better than nothing at all.

Further, I remarked that Hitler himself had strictly forbidden the NSDAP to engage in any and all propaganda activities abroad, the only exception being Germans from the Reich temporarily residing abroad. I witnessed an instance once when Hitler angrily told a leading Party man that National-Socialism was not an "export article" and he himself no human panacea for the world's woes, and that his sole concern was to help the German people!

What the enemies of Germany accused us of in those days is what they themselves did to our detriment on a much greater scale, and with funds no doubt a thousand times greater than the budget of our Ministry of Propaganda.

The British believed a great deal of what the then famous Lord Haw-Haw told them over the air - but that did next to nothing to detract from their composure as a nation.

The Germans, on the other hand, could not believe what they saw refuted by everyday life - but as of March 1945, they began to flag in their composure as a nation. And this process is still ongoing.

It is my wish that this booklet may help to revive and strengthen in our people the sense that the defiled and much-maligned generation of our fathers did their best in the struggle for Germany's future, true to good old tradition, and holds the honorable position that is its due in the history of our people.

2. The masses readily become a hangman...

The Frenchman Gustave le Bon (1841-1931) was one of the foremost psychologists. He knew a great deal about the nature of human reactions, and so I will quote him at the outset: "It does not take much to turn the broad masses into a hangman, but just as little to make them a martyr."

We will have to recall le Bon a number of times yet, since for a long time now our people have been at the mercy of a cruel enemy of whom they still know next to nothing. If for no other reason than that, we must finally put our cards on the table, so that we Germans - all of us - will not slowly but surely become dehumanized by never-ending calumny.

Without wanting to admit it, our nation became a martyr long ago, perhaps precisely because it does not have what it takes to become a hangman. The Germans have always been too trusting, too decent and too honest, but most of all: too frank and open - especially when times were good for them. Then they have to virtually broadcast their good fortune. And that had unforeseeable consequences, as there is nothing more suited to arousing enmity in others. Soon there were those who turned this essentially harmless fact into the basis for a large-scale political racket: the world-wide slandering of our nation.

Le Bon writes "...that in intellectual terms, the masses are always subordinate to the person who stands alone. In terms of emotions and the actions brought about by them, however, they may be better or worse. It all depends on the kind of influence the masses are under."

In times of misfortune we Germans have always tended to look for the blame within ourselves. This throws the gates of opportunity wide open to slander.

Le Bon: "A person's nimbus always vanishes in the moment of failure. The hero whom the masses cheered yesterday will be reviled by them tomorrow if fate strikes him down. The greater the nimbus, the greater the backlash. The masses then regard the fallen hero as the likes of themselves and take revenge for the fact that they once submitted to superiority which they now no longer acknowledge. When Robespierre had his colleagues and a great number of his contemporaries beheaded, he possessed an incredible nimbus. A shift in only a few voices immediately deprived him of this nimbus, and the masses dogged his heels to the guillotine with as many curses as they had hurled at his victims the day before. The faithful always vent their fury by smashing the icons of their former gods.

"Misfortune rapidly cancels any nimbus. It can also be worn down, however, by discussion; that takes longer - but it is a more certain way. A nimbus discussed is no longer a nimbus. Idols and men who understood how to preserve their halo have never tolerated discussion. He that wants to be admired by the crowds must keep them at a distance."

Witnessing as I now do a fourth epoch of German history, I feel that I have seen an unusually great deal and certainly am in a position to compare. I hope that my readers will not consider it presumptuous of me to suggest that, in terms of this period of time, I am one of the very few people who are able, and entitled, to recount events from personal experience - and to judge them.

Now you will perhaps say: if that is so, then why are you speaking up only now, more than fourty years later?

For two reasons:

a) because I still believed that others were far more suited to this task, since their positions of particular responsibility ought to have afforded them greater insight, and

b) because I simply could not believe that one and the same people could be so terribly different. Unfortunately I have had to realize that it is no longer a matter of one and the same people. If it were, then a great many things would be different today in the German sphere of influence - better for everyone.

Therefore I feel that it is my duty to take up my pen in order to record what I have personally learned and seen, and make what testimony my personal experience enables me to make with a clear conscience, against the slanderers and for our people - for the sake of the truth.

I lived in the days of the monarchy, the son of a governing Prince. As a child I saw what close, honest and loyal ties our people had to our family, and vice versa, our family to the people. The clearest proof of this was the fact that only a few days before my eldest brother's abdication the Schaumburg-Lippean Landtag unanimously requested its sovereign not to step down. At that time the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) was the strongest party in Parliament! But the pressures exerted by the Emperor and the government of the Reich were too great, and our state too small, for continued independent statehood to be possible. National defence was given up, and the military as well as the provincial police forces withdrew. But I felt such solidarity with our citizens of Schaumburg-Lippe that I managed, with only my wife to help me, to carry out and win a petition for a referendum, so that the Landtag had to break off its almost completed negotiations with Prussia, and Schaumburg-Lippe remained a Free State until after 1945.

In the mid-1930s Hitler strove to put the Reich Reform into effect. This entailed amalgamating the small states with the large in order to render administration much cheaper and more efficient, thus strengthening the unity of the Reich. I asked to speak to him and recounted what I had successfully done for our Schaumburg-Lippe in 1928. He was so enthusiastic about it that he immediately summoned the Reich Minister of the Interior, stated verbatim: "This young Prince is the best democrat of us all, we must help him!", and ordered a prompt review of whether the sovereignty of Schaumburg-Lippe could be maintained.

Only a short time later, Hitler personally informed me that my homeland would remain a Free State, in other words, independent within the Reich. And our citizens of Schaumburg-Lippe were very happy. Hitler had made an exception to his Reich Reform, an exception to his own principle - was that dictatorship? I think it is rather the exact opposite.

Events such as this one, even if it was of no particular political import except for the little State and its citizens themselves, were never mentioned in Hitler's favor after 1945.

3. The "Dictator"

What kind of people were those who started the world-wide campaign of slander, and continue to disseminate lies to this very day? One can only begin to understand this matter if one asks: what is needed in order to slander someone on such a large scale? Unfortunately the answer can only be: a great deal of money, and unscrupulousness without compare.

People with a great deal of money and unscrupulousness can never live in their own homeland for very long. They would soon become known, attract attention, and get into trouble. Why should these people carry out their activities in exactly the place where they could most easily be watched?

No, such activities are the work of people who wanted to (or had to) leave their homeland for political reasons and who take revenge on the people of their native land by vilifying them whom they had to leave behind and whom they secretly envy. They suddenly discover that their old homeland wasn't really their home. And then they are free of any second thoughts.

The more they run down the land of their birth abroad, in conversation and soon in the press as well, the more they realize that such a "policy" can be lucrative, perhaps even very much so! It is just a matter of finding those who also have an interest in defaming the people from which they come.

Who was, and continues to be, the most sensitive towards German export trade? Without a doubt it is England and the United States, and in earlier days, France as well. Therefore there was no place where anti-German propaganda could be as profitably accommodated and even sold as in England and the United States. It is self-evident that of these two nations, the United States were and are much more attractive in this context. Only in the United States is there enough money available for such endeavours, only in the United States are there experts in worldwide operations of this sort, and only in the United States can one find the absolutely unscrupulous profiteers necessary for such an enterprise. And there are probably more emigrants in the USA than anywhere else in the world. Added to this is the fact that, especially since the Second World War, we Germans accord grotesquely inflated importance to anything and everything that comes to us from the United States.

In qualification I must add that those Americans with whom the Germans are so taken are generally those who have next to no connections with those social circles which have had prominence ever since the United States were founded - in other words, those to whom the United States owes her meteoric rise and hence her power and status in the global community.

Thanks to several trips to the States, I am very familiar with these conservative social circles of the South - and I hold them in high regard. They have nothing in common with the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, the Schlesingers, the Kissingers and the Rockefellers - no matter how wealthy these are, and how successful they have long been in their own way.

Wasn't it General Eisenhower who spent a fortune in buying up one of the most perfidious anti-German hate publications, and then distributed it to the senior members of the United States Army?

The last time I visited with some very conservative Americans near Lake Erie, a highly respected newspaper publisher said in his table talk at a luncheon given in honour of the famous Mr. Krips and myself:

"My dear Prince, when you have returned home again, tell your German fellow-countrymen that we Americans never had anything against the Germans. We never hated them - not even in war. But if your Germans continue to sit placidly by while being defamed so horribly, if they continue to do nothing to refute all those lies and to silence the liars, if, in short, they continue to do nothing to preserve the German nation's honour, then soon the Germans will no longer have a friend in the world!!!"

On the occasion of this same visit, a particularly popular minister, the head of a large parish - a former army chaplain in Nuremberg at the time of my detention there by the International Military Tribunal - invited me to give the sermon in his large, splendid church the following Sunday. When I asked which topic I would speak on - for in order to be able to speak in English without notes I would have to prepare - he said: "The topic I have announced is: 'The Injustice of Nuremberg'." I would have spoken on this topic only with the consent of my country's Embassy. He, the minister, had had to witness the hanging of our comrades in the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, and had always been against the injustice perpetrated there. His family was originally from Germany. -

In the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, as I was being led to the interrogation room, a tall Negro from the guards spoke to me on the sly, and said: "You, Prince - you're a slave and I'm a slave - we've got to stick together!"

We understood that it was not "the Americans" who were to blame, but rather a very specific kind of American citizen. These were emigrants to a man, most of them of Jewish extraction and many of these from Germany. Many of them worked as interrogators etc. in the offices of the IMT. The slanderers came and went freely there. When lies take on an official character, they can very easily turn into verdicts - even death sentences! Let's quote le Bon one last time:

"The nature of crimes committed by the mob is clear.

"A typical example is the murder of du Launay, the warden of the Bastille. After the capture of this fortress, the warden was attacked from all sides by the furious crowd surrounding him. Hang him, they shriek, behead him, or tie him to the tail of a horse! In his struggles to free himself, the warden accidentally kicks one of those closest to him. Immediately someone suggests - and the crowd cheers the suggestion - that the kicked man should cut the warden's throat.

"This man, an unemployed cook who had come to the Bastille half out of mere curiosity to see what was going on there, thinks, because this is the general public opinion, that this deed would be patriotic, and even believes he deserves a medal for killing a monster. He is handed a sabre, with which he slashes at the warden's bare throat. But since the sabre is blunt and will not cut, he now draws a small black-handled knife from his pocket and (since as cook he knows how to cut meat) finishes the job successfully."

The sum total of the victims of the Inquisition in Spain, Italy and France, of the British Revolution, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, as well as of the Marxist uprisings in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany in the days of the Weimar Republic can only be roughly estimated - but it may be assumed to exceed nine million. If we add to this all those Germans - men, women and children - who were killed by the various occupation forces in Italy, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the entire Reich territory etc., then this additional figure probably makes up far more than another 600,000.

After the armistice had been concluded, more than 10,000 mostly very young men from the Waffen-SS were killed without any trial, for no other reason than that they had their blood group tattooed on their arm, so that in case of injury the correct medical supplies could be used without delay. The "Chief Justice of the Waffen-SS and Police" already told me in Nuremberg, where I met him, that their number in fact probably exceeded the 50,000 mark. The testimony of this Chief Justice, Dr. Reinecke, at the IMT at Nuremberg was so damning for the victors that the Nuremberg Trial was suspended, until the order to proceed came from the United States. Unfortunately there were not enough Reineckes in Nuremberg, otherwise that great trial and the many others following in its wake could never have been carried out, since they were based to a considerable extent on the so-called incriminating evidence provided by German traitors only intent on saving their own skin.

Sometimes, when we were taken to be interrogated in Nuremberg, we happened to catch a glimpse of some of these "gentlemen"; they were former officials and diplomats who had at one time sworn allegiance to Adolf Hitler and had always been oh-so-eager to prove their "loyalty".

From several statements that Hitler made in the small circle of his closest friends, I know that he attached extraordinarily great value to a sworn oath. It was inconceivable to him that German officials or soldiers could break their oath. That is also why he would never have forced anyone to swear an oath. Furthermore, it was always made very clear to everyone that an oath sworn to the Fhrer was always also synonymous with an oath sworn to the Reich. So anyone who later deliberately broke his oath to the Fhrer also at the same time broke the oath he had sworn to the German Reich. This corresponded to the tradition of the former oath sworn to "the Kaiser and the German Empire".

There were also security reasons for not wanting to bind the validity of an oath to only one human life. Those who broke their oaths thus also betrayed the Reich, and in my opinion that has a great deal to do with the division of Germany. It is time for all Germans to remember this, and to take steps against the defamation of our people from this point of view as well.

And with this we have reached the heart of the problem, for the worldwide defamation of all things German did not by any means begin only in Hitler's time. It is not true that he, his Party, his plans and actions were what gave rise to it. The truth is that the defamation of the German Empire and people already began when the Idea of a unified Germany, inspired by Otto von Bismarck with the Prussian virtues of integrity, honesty, modesty etc., offered all German people a tremendous opportunity. The more the slanderers concentrated their hatred on the Emperor and his Princes - and later on Adolf Hitler and his Movement - the more it became their great and single goal to shatter the Reich and to strip the German people of all power.

The methodology of their slander shows this clearly time and again. Why else would these very same groups never so much as bat an eyelash when other nations, other political powers, other people do things much, much worse than the worst that has ever been imputed to our people?!

The history of the Germans contains nothing even remotely comparable to the Inquisition, the British and the French Revolutions, the Russian revolutions and all that was done to us Germans by certain victorious powers after the armistice - at which point I must stress that in my opinion even these victorious powers are not the ones to blame; rather, the guilty party is almost always that more or less anonymous power that fights its battles exclusively by means of calumny and incitement, and has done so for more than a century!

This is the power that works systematically, never for one country and from one country, but always internationally. The boundless abuses of democracy that take place in a great many nations on earth afford that international gang of agitators and calumniators every opportunity to terrorize large parts of the world's population, to the point where soon there will no longer be any individual nations, just "mankind as a mass" which will let itself be sold off at will.

Because our people were so good and capable and highly esteemed, they have been at the top of the slander hit list for decades. Europe without the German Reich is no longer "the Occident", but that is exactly what increasingly materialistic mankind needs.

"It is possible that the German may yet be swept from the world's stage; for he has all the qualities necessary for attaining Heaven, but not a single one for asserting himself on Earth, and all the nations hate him like the Evil One hates Good. But if they should ever really succeed in driving him out, conditions will ensue that will make them wish that they could dig him out of his grave again, even if it be with their bare and bleeding fingers."

Hebbel, Diaries, January 4, 1860

__________________

And that brings me to Hitler the "dictator". Today, thanks to enemy propaganda, he is considered the prototype of a dictator, an "autocrat". A dictatorship, wrote the Bertelsmann Encyclopaedia after 1945, may be exercised by one individual or by a group (party dictatorship):

"In accordance with its origins, which are to be found in the Roman Republic, a dictatorship is a valid form of government as a means of eliminating certain crises (war, civil war). Its duration is thus temporary and its implementation is bound by certain rules....

"In recent history, dictatorships are closely tied to the establishment of modern-day constitutions. In the British Revolution of 1642-49 as well as in the French of 1789-99, the originally liberal popular movements ended in dictatorships, which in these cases were exercised, not by individuals, but by certain groups, and not as authorized delegates, but high-handedly and with reference to religious motives or the right of popular sovereignty. In these cases as well, the dictatorships were originally regarded as a temporary measure for the establishment of a new ruling class and the eradication of the old, corrupt generation, but ended up as absolute dictatorship under a Cromwell or a Napoleon.

"...the fact is frequently overlooked that even modern Criminal Codes recognize temporary dictatorship as emergency measure. The Weimar Constitution (§ 48) is an example of this, also the Enabling Act....

"...a type of state in which the exercise of supreme authority is concentrated in one organ of the state - (e.g.) in the case of the Third Reich, initially in the State Cabinet, later in the Head of State; in the case of the Soviet Union, in the Parliament - in which a separation of powers is enacted for organizational reasons, although the principle of a restriction of power is not put into effect;....

"...Dictatorship is always totalitarian, but rarely absolute in modern times; rather, constitutional dictatorship predominates."

If in Hitler's case one could even speak of a "dictatorship", then in my opinion only of a constitutional dictatorship, since especially in important matters he never acted entirely on his own; on the contrary, in by far the most cases his actions were guided by pertinent laws and by agreement with the government of the Reich. It is known that in particularly pregnant cases (e.g. the Saarland, succession of Hindenburg, Enabling Act), he let the people themselves decide, and then acted according to the wishes they had expressed - either by plebiscite or through the Reichstag.

There is no doubt that he could have gained power in the Reichstag in 1933 even without a vote. But he subordinated himself and his government to the decision of the old Reichstag, and he received the vote of many a one who, like Theodor Heuss (later to become Federal President) and Federal Chancellor Adenauer, no doubt had good intentions and voted for Hitler without being a member of the NSDAP.

Hitler himself never felt that he had the power of a dictator. The comment he once made during the war - "...if one of us has the power of a dictator, then it's Roosevelt, he has a much greater say in his country than I have in mine..." - says a lot, I think. And he considered Stalin to be far more powerful than even Roosevelt.

______________

When Hitler moved into the Reich Presidential Palace, he ordered some architectural improvements. What bothered him the most was Hindenburg's terribly old-fashioned bathroom. He had the facilities modernized, and without running up a noteworthy bill for it. The Auditor-General's Office then told him that he would have to pay for the renovations himself and, furthermore, that he had not been authorized to effect the changes. - Hitler offered his opinion that the ancient bathroom facilities would have had to be replaced one way or another, and further, that surely the Fhrer and Chancellor of the Reich ought to be able to make an independent decision on the fate of an old bathtub so as not to waste the state's time. As far as I know, he then proceeded to pay the bill out of his personal funds. The Palace was, after all, state property.

This happened at about the same time that Hitler showed my wife and myself his bedroom, on our own request. It was a dark and somewhat plainly furnished room with a somewhat old-fashioned bed that could not have been very comfortable. On the wall above it hung a picture of his mother, which he had had painted, probably from a photograph. He said that it was a good likeness and one of his very few keepsakes from his family; it was very dear to him and not a day went by that he wasn't glad to have it. This rather spartan room was definitely no setting for excesses and debauchery such as unscrupulous profiteers have imputed to Hitler.

In the years from 1922 to 1935 my wife and I frequently visited him in his private residence, the so-called New Reich Chancellery, often at least one or two evenings a week. The residence was roomy but impersonal. He didn't like it. Company gathered at a large, low, round table, in easy or regular chairs, was served tea and biscuits and small sandwiches.

It is often claimed today that he never let others get a word in edgeways. In truth it was quite the opposite. He asked the others to speak, to recount events from their lives etc. He made jokes to liven up the conversation and to get others to join in. Only when all this failed and the others finally insisted that he should speak himself, as this would be much more interesting in many ways - then he would relent, and could talk for hours. And I must say that this was often a great experience, for this man had already lived a most interesting life. Speaking retrospectively, he viewed everything with incredible objectivity and, hence, amazing modesty.

I know that many will not believe me - but these are facts and I can't change them. I am not writing in order to do someone a favour, but rather to serve the purpose of truth. Can I help never having met the evil Hitler? Should I invent a worse man? Whom would that serve? Certainly not my people, and in the long run not our enemies either.

I was personally acquainted with a great many well-known and even famous artists, politicians, statesmen, several reigning monarchs - I could almost say, "around the world". I was friends with many of them - just as good friends as with many completely unknown labourers, farmers and soldiers. But - in my opinion there was never another man even remotely like Adolf Hitler.

It is very difficult to write about this without being laughed at or even suspected; but if I want to be completely honest - and that is my only aim, anything else would be not only pointless, but also evil - then I must say that he was certainly a most extraordinary person. I have often asked myself whether this man can even be compared with other people, or whether he must be considered from a completely different perspective.

_________

In a large old villa outside the gates of Vienna, overlooking the vineyards of the Kahlenberg, there is a cosy wine cellar where the higher-ranking American officers liked to get together of an evening after the Second World War. One might call it a tavern, with designs painted among the timberwork all round.

The proprietess, beautiful Princess Wittgenstein, showed me in and asked me to give a critical opinion on the paintings, and only afterwards to read the calligraphic inscriptions between them. I looked closely at everything and then said, without knowing anything further about it: "It seems to me that the artist had a feeling for architecture, especially for certain laws of nature, such as the 'golden section', since all of it goes together so well." - "That's very interesting," said the Princess, "and now read the inscriptions."

I read - and I cannot recall it verbatim, but the essence of it is still perfectly clear in my mind: "I know that my life will be an exceptional, an extraordinary one, but its end will be a catastrophe!" - The Princess, who was by no means a National-Socialist, then told me: "That was painted and written by an apprentice. Even the words, astonishing as they are, are his and his alone. And this is the receipted bill that I found among the old papers and which confirms that all work was done by a painter's apprentice by the name of Adolf Hitler."

These were ornaments, words and thoughts that have not the slightest bit to do with violence - they were the expression of a very deep emotional life or, to call it what it truly was: it was an element of the Faustian (Faustian: searching, striving, brilliant) in this man who ever remained an enigma.

Once, when a conversation between him and Dr. Goebbels happened to end up in a dispute about the "Faustian" quality in the German as a type, Hitler grew very solemn and almost melancholy, as I had never seen him before. A statement of Dr. Goebbels' came to mind: "Sometimes he's uncanny - as if he weren't of this world - and strangely enough, that's when he is the most fascinating. I'll never completely understand him - he is more than just a person. There is nobody who has studied him like I have. But who takes the time to really get to know this man - who? Who knows anything of his outstanding qualities, of his modesty towards fate - who even suspects any of it? No-one! If they realized that he does not wish to become their idol, not even their god, but that he lives solely for his mission that is not entirely 'of this world' - then they would fear him, because they do not understand the reality."

I have done my utmost to repeat Goebbels' words as accurately as possible from memory, and did not write them down until they were as vivid to me again as though I had heard him speak them then and there. Of course, the fact that in those days this topic interested me like no other, helped considerably.

In his Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1, chapter "The Heirs", Sir Houston Chamberlain wrote: "Asceticism increases the intellectual capacities and culminates, when carried out with absolute consistency, in the complete conquest of the senses; these may then continue, so to speak, as material for the imagination, to serve the mystical devotion of a Saint Theresa or the mystical metaphysics of the author of Chandogya; from that time forth they are senses rendered subject to will, elevated and purified by the power of the mind, and this the Hindoo teacher expresses when he writes: 'the man of understanding is already in his lifetime bodiless.'"

Elsewhere, Chamberlain wrote about this same topic: "The greatness of every extraordinary man lies not in that which he wanted to do, but in that which he had to do." What compelled the young painter's apprentice, Hitler, to inscribe those words amongst the decorations in the cellar bar of the Villa Kahlenberg? It would have been pointless to do that if he had not had to. Only a higher power could have given him the courage and determination for it. That he, the young Hitler, was the one who did that work is expressly confirmed on the bill by his master.

And these thoughts, which are so to the point in the case in question, draw attention to the fact that every true genius at least approximates to being a universal genius.

I myself witnessed how Hitler dominated in purely technical discussions with leading men of the Mercedes-Benz factory, in other words, was absolutely superior to an elite of engineers.

I also witnessed how, in a conversation with the Italian Minister of Justice who had attempted to precisely describe the Parthenon, Hitler disputed his architectural details. The point at issue was that Hitler had pointed out the mathematical perfection of the Parthenon's beauty, whereas the Minister would not concede it. Finally, Hitler asked me to bring him a sketch pad, ruler, and pencils - he declined an eraser.

A short time later he interrupted his conversation with the Minister in order to make a very rapid but detailed sketch of the Parthenon - off the top of his head, without any aids and completely without prior preparation, since nobody could have known that the conversation with the Italian would lead to this topic. When the sketch was finished, an encyclopedia was procured, in which the Parthenon's dimensions were given. Once converted to metric, they were identical with those indicated on Hitler's sketch. And then it was an easy matter for Hitler to prove to the Italian Minister the way in which the law of nature known as the "golden section" finds expression in the beauty of that glorious structure, the Parthenon.

In terms of business or politics I was certainly nothing special to Hitler. But in social terms, I believe, he liked us, my first wife Alexandra Countess of Castell-Rüdenhausen and myself, very much - until others kept us at a distance from him.

4. The fatal lack of understanding of human nature

I was not in Munich very frequently. One day, however, when I had business there, I happened to walk past the "Brown House". At that moment Hitler came out into the street, without any sort of escort or guard. He saw me, greeted me, and asked if I would like to come along. He was going to take a look at the building under construction next door; some alterations were necessary there. I was pleased, and accompanied him gladly.

On the construction site we met a few workers, who treated him as though he were one of them - just particularly popular. His relations with people on the whole always struck me as of a very special kind. Oswald Spengler, about whom he did not like to speak, wrote the following about this matter at the end of volume 1 of his Decline of the West:

"The final issue to which Faustian wisdom tends - though it is only in the highest moments that it has seen it - is the dissolution of all knowledge into a vast system of morphological relationships. Dynamics and Analysis are in respect of meaning, form-language and substance, identical with Romanesque ornament, Gothic cathedrals, Christian-German dogma and the dynastic state. One and the same world-feeling speaks in all of them. They were born with, and they aged with, the Faustian Culture, and they present that Culture in the world of day and space as a historical drama. The uniting of the several scientific aspects into one will bear all the marks of the great art of counterpoint. An infinitesimal music of the boundless world-space - that is the deep unresting longing of this soul, as the orderly statuesque and Euclidean Cosmos was the satisfaction of the Classical. That - formulated by a logical necessity of Faustian reason as a dynamic-imperative causality, then developed into a dictatorial, hard-working, world-transforming science - is the grand legacy of the Faustian soul to the souls of Cultures yet to be, a bequest of immensely transcendent forms that the heirs will possibly ignore. And then, weary after its striving, the Western science returns to its spiritual home."

Near the end of the Second World War there was an excellent book available by Kurt Pfister, about Emperor Friedrich II of Hohenstaufen, who in his own time was already called "transformer of the world". I knew that Hitler had liked and devoted a great deal of thought to this book. In 1945 my wife bought it for me - literally with her last few pennies - in order to send it to me at the prison camp. Since we prisoners there were forced to live in conditions that were in every respect beneath human dignity, she had to smuggle it into the camp at great personal risk. And I could only read it in secret. As she well knew, it was to be of decisive importance to me. Years later, she told me that she had noticed so many parallels in the book and that she had known that these would help me a great deal in clinging to life. And that was indeed how it was. There really are parallels, not only in political matters - the Reich Idea of the Occident - but also in purely human matters.

Bosshart once wrote: "A genius has something of the instinct of migratory birds." - It is quite meaningless if some then counter: "Yes, but Hitler resulted in the greatest catastrophe!" We humans are obviously not meant to know why we live, and what stands behind us. Perhaps knowing would only drive us insane. Our mission results from our duty, and our duty has its origin in the ethical laws inherent in nature. These are evident for each of us to see, within us and all around us. And the miracles of nature should be an incentive for us to choose the right way - that of the eternal order of nature.

There is a tendency today to be nothing short of criminally easygoing in passing judgment on even the most brilliant persons. People lie and cheat, not even for the sake of ideals, but for money. It is impossible to sink any lower. Ebb tide has reached its lowest point, it is high time for it to turn and rush over the foulness it has revealed, to wash all the filth onto the land where it may burn up in the sunshine and leave the water clear enough again so that, at least where we stand, we may see the bottom again.

It was not criticism and scientific analyses that helped me to recognize the person that Hitler was, it was the observation of his thought processes. I was so fortunate as to be able to see him without business obligations and without any prejudices. In terms of personal background I was probably his most extreme opposite. Each of us admitted that to the other with perfect frankness. This fact was probably the key to later understanding, which was mutual as well. I was interesting to him because of my background, namely because, as he told me later, he had discovered a revolutionary within me. I was an enigma to him at first - as he was to me. The trust he had in me developed in a way that was typical for him: it was based on his observation of how well my marriage worked. It was exactly what he had not expected from a person of my background.

He was always happy to see marriages that worked. I think that had something to do with the loving relationship he had had with his mother. Whenever he saw an unhappy marriage amongst his friends or comrades, he would not rest until he had reconciled the couple. The Goebbels marriage was a case in point. I witnessed many instances of this and sometimes, in my opinion, the couple in question were not at all worth the energy that the Head of State expended on them. In the case of the Goebbels's, however, it was a blessing that he did so. The human element was always more important to him than the political - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that things political carried only as much weight with him as seemed to be warranted by the human element.

And this brings us to his lack of knowledge of human nature. On a qualifying note I must add that the term "knowledge of human nature" is perhaps not quite correct, or at least needs an explanation. He knew very well how to tell a loyal person from a disloyal one, an industrious one from a lazy one, an honest from a dishonest, etc. But there were qualities to him that distracted him from the objective assessment of people. For example, in the case of persons who had stood loyally by him during hard times, he tended to be overly ready to overlook and to forgive objectionable qualities and actions that arose or occurred later on.

One of the most striking cases in this context was the Gauleiter of Central Franconia, Julius Streicher, who behaved in an increasingly reprehensible and, ultimately, a downright scandalous manner. Hitler frequently called him to account, and even removed him entirely from the political arena, only to rehabilitate him, as it were, years later - something that none of us, not even Dr. Goebbels, could make sense of. After all, Julius Streicher had long carried on a campaign of anti-Semitism by means of his publication "Der Stürmer" - a campaign which not only no longer had any resemblance to the official stance of the NSDAP but, beyond that, misrepresented all of us.

Goebbels repeatedly urged that Hitler should ban the "Stürmer", but a long time of grave mistakes went by before his requests met with success. A man like Streicher should have been punished with particular severity, exactly because he was one of the first and foremost Party members and had used to be a loyal follower of Hitler's. He was indeed removed from his position as Gauleiter, but that was not enough.

The matter of Dr. Robert Ley, the head of the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF), was no better. As early as 1929, when I personally told Hitler that Ley had cheated me and a number of others out of our money and had thus left us in very bad circumstances, Hitler answered: "I never advised you to lend Ley money - I deal only with Ley the Gauleiter, not with Ley the businessman - I'm sorry, I can't help you!" I objected: "But I only trusted Ley because I assumed that a Gauleiter is not a rascal." Hitler replied that he was not in a position to check up on the private lives of all his subordinates. "Just look at the other parties - each of the major parties has several Leys in its leadership - it's bad, but very difficult to change, and the change can only be brought about gradually. I promise you I will keep an eye on Ley - but you'll have to see about recovering your money yourself." I only succeeded to a small extent, years later.

The third case which I witnessed myself was that of Alfred Rosenberg, a man from the Baltic who had become Chief of the Foreign Affairs Office of the NSDAP. He carried on Baltic politics on his own initiative and to the detriment of Adolf Hitler's German politics. Some of his policies were not at all in accord with Hitler's. How could someone from the Baltic shape German foreign policy, anyhow?

In the "Time of Struggle", in other words before 1933, Rosenberg had been editor-in-chief of the Völkischer Beobachter, the largest of the party newspapers. During the war he served as "Reich Commissioner for the Occupied Eastern Territories" and was thus responsible for the horrible mistakes perpetrated on the Ukrainians, who had been so well inclined towards us.

Dr. Goebbels told me at that time that he had reason to believe that Rosenberg was a Russian spy - his girlfriend most certainly was. During the war Goebbels was very concerned that no connection whatsoever should develop between the staff of the Foreign Department of his own Ministry, and the so-called "Rosenberg Office".

Rosenberg, on the other hand, cultivated the closest ties possible to Martin Bormann, who at first held the position of Chief of Staff under the "Deputy Führer", Rudolf Hess. It is remarkable that on the occasion of Hess' mission to England, Hess' politically utterly insignificant adjutant was arrested, while Hess' politically most prominent Chief of Staff, Martin Bormann, was called in to the Reich Chancellery and promoted to Chief of the "Party Chancellery of the Führer and Chancellor of the Reich" - headquartered even in the Reich Chancellery! From 1943 to 1945, "Reich Leader" Bormann was the most powerful man in Germany, second only to Hitler. I know this from bitter personal experience as well as from Dr. Goebbels.

In early 1945 Goebbels, in my presence, described Bormann Bormann and Hitler's personal physician, Professor Morell, as "the criminals in the Reich Chancellery". As far as I know, Bormann also had relations with the Soviet Union dating back to earlier days, but, as Dr. Goebbels put it, those relations were "all the wrong ones."

To the best of my knowledge, Professor Morell admitted at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg that he had intended to kill Hitler. I am more inclined to believe, however, that with the injections he gave him, he attempted to make him the obedient pawn of a certain clique of leading politicians.

The fact that Hitler installed Martin Bormann, of all people (besides Goebbels), in the Reich government under Dönitz was, in my opinion, part of Hitler's last great plan: an alliance with the Soviet Union against the United States. Virtually five minutes before midnight, Hitler had still telegraphed the army group Kesselring: "Hold out at all costs, negotiations with the Russians against the Americans are pending."

I am certain that such an alliance would instantaneously have created a totally different political scene. It would have been child's play for Germans and Russians, united, to bring all of Europe under their control. At the very least there would still be a German Reich today, and no slander of our people - nobody would dare any such thing.

Germany - Europe - would be the dominant power on earth today - the Third Reich could have assumed the legacy of the First Reich, and International Capitalism would have been finished. Goebbels must still have had some grounds for hope, else he would not have spent almost an hour on the telephone to Marshal Shukov shortly before his death.

This shows clearly that the selfsame Hitler who in the course of the war had made four extremely fair peace offers to the enemy and had not even received a response, still found the resolve even at the last minute to turn completely about and attempt the extreme opposite. That was probably what he meant when he said in his last great address to the German people, that he hoped the people would understand if he were forced to take a most extraordinary chance.

In wartime, logically, too much depends on the enemy and his attitude and actions for someone to be able to assess one's own statesmen objectively and accurately. There is no doubt that Hitler, once private first class, was also a genius in his capacity as commander. None of his numerous Generals, many of whom were themselves of great talent and experience, ever disputed that, and many were full of admiration for him. In this context as well, he had a great deal of knowledge that he could never have learned. I don't know how often I heard Generals say about him: "Where did he get all the prerequisites for this? Is it only instinct, or something more?"

Hitler hated being lauded, and did not at all enjoy being idolized, as it were. But political propaganda wanted to use him as advertisement, and he could not dispute the importance of such advertising to the dissemination of his Idea of National-Socialism. Lao-tse said - and I think this is eminently apropos to Hitler: "The wise man puts his own self last - and see: it comes to the fore. He gives up his own self - and see: it is preserved."

And indeed, those people whom he helped without having to help them, ultimately proved to be his undoing. In this respect his fate is that of all truly great men. As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to his sister in 1885: "It seems to me that even with the best of intentions a person may do immeasurable harm if he is presumptuous enough to try to be of service to those whose spirit and will is hidden from him."

There can be no doubt whatsoever that Hitler did the German people and the Reich an inordinate amount of good. No serious and fair critic can help but see and admit that. It would be both pointless and harmful to all involved to deny it.

5. "Denazification Certificate trade" and self-deception

His idea of the fusion of nationalism and Socialism was doubtless a new and very good one. In this way he succeeded in balancing the major conflicts among the people as a whole and hence in bringing about an internal peace such as remains unparalleled in any nation on earth either both before and since. This unique condition lasted from approximately 1933 to the 1936 Olympics. From that point on, a change began to creep in which became clearly apparent only much later, towards the end of the war.

The first trigger was the removal of the SA from power, a process which began on June 30, 1934. It was a crucial blow against the National-Socialist Revolution. I got the first taste of this on the evening of June 30, 1934. My wife Alexandra and I were visiting the Goebbels' when Hitler, just arrived at Berlin, told us in detail how this fateful day had passed for him. He knew that I was a Troop Commander with the SA and one of three aides to the Senior Troop Commander of the SA Unit Berlin-Brandenburg, albeit only pro forma - excused from SA service to discharge my duties as ministerial aide.

In the course of conversation that distressing day, Hitler suddenly asked me: "Where were you today, anyway - your superior, Senior Troop Commander Ernst, was caught while attempting to escape - and has been executed!" I replied that I had been doing my work at the Ministry, as usual. "You were lucky. If you had been taken along with Ernst, I doubt I could have saved you." This statement was like a bucket of ice-water in my face. My wife was outraged as well; she never forgave him for this answer.

There can be no doubt that he was correct in taking severe measures against Röhm and the corrupt members of the higher-up SA leadership, and especially in taking these measures personally and at great risk to himself. But he should never have suffered his SA - the backbone of the Revolution, which he had trained to function with fantastic self-discipline - to be politically wiped out. In permitting this to happen, he put the Revolution at the mercy of very different powers - and that was the beginning of the end.

Among those executed - and unjustly so - were two of my closest friends: Troop Commander Schneidhuber and Brigadier General Baron von Wechmar.

Of course we, more than anyone else, asked ourselves for years why Hitler had acted as he had. Three factors had pushed him to it: the Party (later under the influence of Bormann), the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, who was in the process of establishing his own power base, and the former Chief of Staff of the SA, Hermann Göring, who believed that he would now be able to build up a National-Socialist air force as the focal point of domestic power.

Around 5 pm on June 30, 1934, when Adolf Hitler arrived from Munich at Tempelhof, a company of the Luftwaffe air force was assembled to salute the Führer for the first time. This was meant to surprise and please Hitler. But Hitler's face darkened, he all but ignored the Luftwaffe, and Goebbels was furious.

In the morning that same day, I had sat in my office on Wilhelm Square, waiting for my Minister, when Göring had suddenly come in. He greeted me, went directly to the large window, drummed against the glass with his fingers, and said, without looking at me: "Do you know what's going on?" I answered that I knew next to nothing. Then he said - and it made almost no sense to me at the time: "Chief of Staff Röhm is being executed today." Röhm, also a Reich Minister, shot himself, and rightly so, for as Chief of Staff of the SA he was utterly impossible, as well as a depraved character and hence a traitor. The Wehrmacht seems to me to have served in a double game.

The elimination of the SA automatically resulted in the neglect of the "old guard" of the NSDAP, since most of the members of the "old guard" had also been members of the SA for many years. Thus, June 30, 1934 slowly but surely led to the shut-down of the Revolution, which from that point on took place largely in private, so to speak.

And thus the path was cleared for all those who wished to join the Party as soon as they possibly could in order to profit somehow from the external success of this state and this people. The real National-Socialists scornfully called these people "the Nazis". With them and through them, the Party grew more and more bureaucratic. The "old fighters" no longer felt comfortable with it and retreated into the SA or the "old guard".

We perceived this to be all the more tragic because now the years came where the actual process of reconstruction and development could begin; for Hitler had created order, the people were as happy and as united as never before, industry was booming, export trade flourished, and at the center of it all was the German worker, both "of muscle" and "of intellect" - respected, and with a cheerful heart.

What do people strive for who live a free and happy life and take well-deserved pride in their and their nation's progress? A family, a home, and children! This is how it has been everywhere and at all times. A look at the statistics of the 1930s proves more clearly than any election results that the German people were very content at that time, and counted on a long time of peace. Anyone who claims that there was any considerable popular resistance against Adolf Hitler and his government before 1944 either lacks even the most basic understanding of those days - or is a contemptible liar!

In 1945-46 millions of Germans believed that only lies could save them. Day in, day out, the enemy served them clever and cunning falsehoods, either directly or in a roundabout way. This was also the origin of the atrocious "Persil note" racket, the denazification certificate scam by means of which millions "saved" themselves at the expense of the truth and the honour of the entire nation.

I doubt that there is any other place on earth where lies as numerous and as imaginative have been dreamed up as in post-war Germany - especially in West Germany. Since more or less all the Germans had supported the National-Socialist Reich in one way or another, especially during wartime, post-1945 reconstruction was quite inconceivable without these more than 90% of the people.

No doubt all those who provided the professional as well as the political know-how required for the reconstruction of the new state had previously acquired and applied their abilities under Hitler's regime. It is thus in no way an exaggeration to say that the courage, the determination, the team spirit and most of all the faith in Germany - all those qualities without which Germany could never have been resurrected from its rubble - had their origins in exactly that Germany that was henceforth to be so dreadfully calumniated.

We owe the reconstruction of Germany to a German people who had lived through the Thirties and who thus provided the consequent attitude towards nation and state, to life in general and to the mind-set resulting from it. If today's new generation were faced with the same task as the Hitler generation had faced between 1945 and 1952, the reconstruction efforts would be a sorry sight indeed. It is impossible to achieve something truly essential for one's nation and state in the absence of great and eternal ideals!

The first Federal Chancellor of post-war days, Dr. Konrad Adenauer - a close personal acquaintance of mine from my student days - was himself part of this. Under Hitler's regime he had made extraordinary efforts to regain the position of Mayor of a major German city (Cologne). Hitler did not doubt Adenauer's abilities, but he felt that because of his attitude in the days of Rhenish separatism he could not assign him such a privileged position now. He did, however, decree that Dr. Adenauer should receive an annual pension of 40,000 Reichsmark. Reich Minister Dr. Lammers told me this after the war. He had seen Hitler personally about this matter and was thus the best possible witness.

No doubt Federal Chancellor Dr. Adenauer as well as his successor Dr. Kurt Georg Kiesinger - who had served as liaison between Reich Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop and Reich Minister of Propaganda Dr. Goebbels - both knew enough of how things had really been, to be able to publicly counter the slander aimed at the German people - but they were careful not to do any such thing!

The "Persil notes", those denazification certificates, were the prerequisite for the army of slanderers. Through them, a situation was created where the events of the past were not clarified on a basis of conviction or of loyalty to people and state and for the sake of peace with the former enemy powers; rather, an atmosphere of million-fold fears regarding dependence on the enemy powers and the apparent hopelessness with respect to a peace agreement gave rise to a generalized, demoralizing complex of lies that strained any real attempts at German foreign relations to the utmost and thus rendered internal peace impossible for both ethical and moral reasons.

And the more the real contemporaneous witnesses die off, the less chance there is for this nation to find its way back to the whole truth about itself.

But for as long as a nation is burdened down like that - rightly or wrongly -, it cannot possibly be a free agent in its decision-making process, its politics, or ultimately in its life as a whole. For as long as the burden remains, it will be blackmailed by other nations - and the internal blackmail amongst the people themselves will also continue.

And what did the post-war governments of West Germany do about this? The wrongest thing they could possibly have done! They tried to beg and buy the honor of their people. But bowing and scraping, and payments rendered in hopes of appeasement, only ever exacerbate such a situation - they never remedy it, for every half-way sensible person in other countries cannot help but reason that anyone who bows and scrapes and pays up like that, has got to have a tremendously guilty conscience!

And when we say today: "What we are charged with isn't true at all - the greatest part of it, at least, is a total lie!", then the response we get is: "If that's the case - as we suspected it to be from the start, by the way - then you Germans of today are such a bad lot that we can't respect you at all anymore, because you're too cowardly to tell the truth and restore your honor - merely to safeguard your export trade!"

Mankind did itself a poor service indeed when it tried to crush a people, a state and most of all a Revolution which, with the proper support, could have done everyone a world of good. Today even more than in the 1920s, the nations of the highly civilized Western world suffer from standing in the service of unbridled materialism and hence of Capitalism, and they suffer from having lost the ability to think naturally, and from having thus lost themselves in ever more devastating excesses and lack of moderation. For decades these nations have been deceiving themselves while in fact offering themselves up for their total destruction. The governments have long been acting in accordance with the teachings of Emile Coue, in the true style of self-persuasion, effusively lauding our happy and fortunate lifestyle over and over again in spite of what reality tells them and in the face of the most glaring evidence to the contrary, and praising that progress which in the end will be our undoing.

During the worst of the bombing of Berlin I was able to leave all the furnishings which I had been able to salvage from my gutted house, standing in the street, completely unguarded, for eight days and nights without a single item being stolen. These furnishings included many valuable antique pieces of furniture, carpets and paintings. And this was by no means an exceptional case, but rather the rule in that nation and time now sneered at as "Hitler's Germany"!

Even in wartime, Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels and I were able to go for walks in Central Berlin, on Wilhelm Street and Unter den Linden, without ever meeting even one person who gave us anything but a friendly greeting.

In February 1945, in the staff headquarters of the "Feldherrnhalle", I saw four young soldiers crying with helpless rage because they had been caught trying without permission to sneak to the Front, to finally get their chance to fight for Germany. -

For me, one of the most devastating and at the same time one of the greatest experiences was Christmas Eve 1945, when we, some 6,000 captured National-Socialists, surrounded by watchtowers manned by guards with machine-guns, suddenly and without prior arrangement began to sing the song "I Pray to the Power of Love". All the American officers and many thousands of Germans gathered to see and hear us and to join in - and the American camp commander, a front-line officer, had tears in his eyes.

At the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, an Army General threw himself from the third floor down to the stone-paved corridor of the ground floor. There, in the central square of the great prison, he lay dead on the ground before our very eyes. It was not long before some of the men in their cells began to sing, and more and ever more joined in, until all of us - the imprisoned National-Socialists and the non-National-Socialists and even some foreigners - sang along, and the enormous vaults resounded with that song that had used to pass our lips so easily, and now came from the heart and soul one last time: "To you, Adolf Hitler, we pledged ---!" Among the singers were soldiers, officers, Generals, professors, clergymen, lawyers, judges, physicians etc., of whom dozens already knew that they would be hanged - because none of them were what the Ignorant Ones of then and now claim they were.

US infantry, armed to the teeth, arrived in droves, Allied tanks surrounded the prison, while night descended on that "prison of honor".

6. The system of slander

Certainly, all these are only small and isolated excerpts. They are just what I am able to recount from personal experience. But nevertheless - or perhaps, because of that - it shows, I think, what the people were really like before and right after May 8, 1945. From my own experience alone, I could give many more, similar accounts that show our people and all who belonged to it in a much better light than almost all of those who participated in the post-war incitement and slander have ever shown them.

A single individual may commit a crime. Abominable child-murderers are handled with kid gloves nowadays. One of the worst ever, Jürgen Bartsch, was even permitted to get married in prison, complete with a minister's services, with wedding feast, guests and champagne.

But a nation of 60 million souls, plucked out of the midst of its peaceful Revolution, its labours of reconstruction, its sense of community and contentment attained at long last, and forced more or less anonymously into a Second World War - such a nation must be cursed as "criminal" for decades, must remain fair game for slander and blackmail whenever someone feels like making some more enormous profits - a nation to whom all of mankind has owed an immense debt of gratitude for a millennium and even longer!!! No - things cannot go on like that! They must not! It does not benefit anyone in all the world - except the riffraff scoundrels who perpetuate the process.

It seems there is not a single bad trait that has not been alleged against our people at one time or another. This fact alone is proof that these allegations are mainly lies, for a people with none other than bad qualities does not exist, never has existed, is not provided for in the order of this world, and would not fit in.

As early as the 1920s and 1930s, we tried to find out which circles all this malice and mendacity originate in. We soon found that there is a method behind it. We noticed that the attacks are generally directed against individual persons, specifically against particular traits or characteristics of those persons; traits or characteristics which often were or are not even in fact present, but which are imputed to these people because doing so seems to be the only way to attack them.

For example, it was claimed that Adolf Hitler was a Czech. This trick was so successful that even the German President, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, was convinced of the truth of this assertion right until the day he first met Hitler. It was not until conversation had progressed for some time that Hindenburg began to wonder, and finally asked Hitler outright. The matter was cleared up easily enough: there is a town called Braunau in Czechoslovakia as well as in Upper Austria. The latter was Adolf Hitler's birthplace, but he was simply called "a Czech by birth". The town of Braunau in the so-called "Land of Braunau" is called Broumov in Czech, and always numbered many Germans among its population of 8,000. Braunau in Upper Austria, on the other hand, has a population of more than 12,000, and is an ancient German town. Even if Hitler had been born in Broumov he could very well have been of German descent, especially as there is nothing at all Czech about his name, which sounds typically Austrian. For decades now, however, this one downright absurd lie has done a great deal of harm to Hitler's reputation as well as to that of the German people, who allegedly sold themselves to "a Czech".

About three years ago, a major German daily, the Wiesbadener Kurier, published a front-page article and photograph claiming that during the Second World War the government of the German Reich had offered a bounty of 60,000 marks for the sinking of the huge British passenger ship "Queen Mary". I was outraged at such a lie and demanded to be told where this report had originated. The Wiesbadener Kurier informed me that the report had come from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), via the dpa (German Press Agency). I asked the highest officer of the Federal Marine, the chief officer in the Department of the Navy in the Federal Ministry of the Armed Forces, as well as Grand Admiral Dönitz to comment on this claim. All three assured me in writing that the German Navy had never offered monetary rewards for any purpose. All three officers rejected this report as outright fabrication.

I did not need any better proof than that. I informed the Wiesbadener Kurier of these findings and asked the editorial staff to immediately print a retraction in the same conspicuous place they had accorded their initial story, and to publish the truth. They told me that they would be willing to publish my statement as a letter to the editor, on my own responsibility. They themselves, however, would not take any action in the matter, since the report had originated with the BBC and had come to them via dpa.

In the course of a trip abroad, a high-ranking German diplomat once told me and my wife in great detail how terribly he had been made to suffer under Hitler's tyranny until, in a specified year, he had determined to emigrate and, thank God, had thus been spared the worst. We did not believe him, and later my wife and I calculated how old the man would have been at the time he had allegedly had to suffer so terribly under Hitler's regime: he had been about six years old at the time! -

Once, in the second half of the war, I had been called to report to the Chief of Staff of the SA in the Reich Chancellery, and was asked to wait in the adjutancy. I was in the midst of a conversation with the Head of the Adjutancy, SA Gruppenführer Girgensohn, when a good-looking officer came in and was greeted enthusiastically by the Gruppenführer. The officer was introduced to me and I learned that even before 1933, when he was a young officer in the German army, he had been reprimanded for marching, in uniform and with a swastika flag, at the head of an SA demonstration. When this officer was speaking to the Chief of Staff while I still had to wait, I learned that he was designated for a position in the Adjutancy because he was considered to be the most National-Socialist of the younger officers!

This was Count Stauffenberg, who later attempted to kill Hitler with a bomb in his quarters "Wolfsschanze". As we know, Hitler survived, but several high-ranking officers and civilians were injured or killed. Hitler arranged for the Chief of Police, General Dr. Martin, Head of the SS Unit for Central Franconia, to convey his (Hitler's) condolences to Count Stauffenberg's widow or mother - I think it was his mother - and had her presented with a huge bouquet of flowers. And since there was a great deal of outrage amongst the people against Count Stauffenberg, Hitler even ordered a guard for the protection of the family. Dr. Martin later recounted this to me in great detail in the prison camp of Hersbruck.

Enemy propaganda during and campaigns of slander after the war chose the SA as their preferential target - that organization, of all possible choices, whose members were trained to be exceptionally self-disciplined and which turned millions of men from the working class, and particularly Social-Democrats and Communists, from enemies into friends and comrades through personal conviction and sacrifice and personal moral decency. I can say this quite freely, because I witnessed it myself for years. I know that with the exception of a vanishingly few fellow-travellers, spies and agents provocateurs planted by the enemy, the SA had practically nothing at all to do with the 1938 persecution of the Jews. And those who were proved to have had a part in it were punished with especial severity, on Hitler's express orders.

The exemplary nature of the SA was brought home to me most vividly at the NSDAP Party Convention in Nuremberg in 1929. Hitler was in the Hall of the Cultural Association, giving his programmatic address to some 1,500 members of the Party and the SA, when suddenly we heard a tremendous uproar outside. Only a few minutes later we saw the great heavy door being burst open with brute force. Most of the people in the auditorium stood up to see what was going on behind them. Hitler called out, with striking calm: "Party comrades - what's happening back there isn't nearly as important as what I have to say up here. Please sit down again, listen to me and leave all the rest to our SA."

And indeed everyone resumed their seats and Hitler continued his address as though nothing had happened. Those who ha