Lies being taught;
Mein Kampf is unintelligible ravings of a
maniac.
Now the Truth; CHAPTER
VII Revolution;
Final Jewish Stab in the back;
Contd from Ch VIIb
The shadow of the events which had taken
place in South Tyrol, the spectre of General Cadorna's defeated armies, were
reflected in the gloomy faces of the Entente troops in Flanders. Faith in
victory gave way to fear of defeat to come.
Then, on those cold nights, when one almost
heard the tread of the German armies advancing to the great assault, and the
decision was being awaited in fear and trembling, suddenly a lurid light was
set aglow in Germany and sent its rays into the last shell-hole on the enemy's
front. At the very moment when the German divisions were receiving their final
orders for the great offensive a general strike broke out in Germany.
At first the world was dumbfounded. Then the
enemy propaganda began activities once again and pounced on this theme at the
eleventh hour. All of a sudden a means had come which could be utilized to
revive the sinking confidence of the Entente soldiers. The probabilities of
victory could now be presented as certain, and the anxious foreboding in regard
to coming events could now be transformed into a feeling of resolute assurance.
The regiments that had to bear the brunt of the Greatest German onslaught in history
could now be inspired with the conviction that the final decision in this war
would not be won by the audacity of the German assault but rather by the powers
of endurance on the side of the defence. Let the Germans now have whatever
victories they liked, the revolution and not the victorious army was welcomed
in the Fatherland.
British, French and American newspapers began
to spread this belief among their readers while a very ably managed propaganda
encouraged the morale of their troops at the front.
'Germany Facing Revolution! An Allied Victory
Inevitable!' That was the best medicine to set the staggering Poilu and Tommy
on their feet once again. Our rifles and machine-guns could now open fire once
again; but instead of effecting a panic-stricken retreat they were now met with
a determined resistance that was full of confidence.
That was the result of the strike in the
munitions factories. Throughout the enemy countries faith in victory was thus
revived and strengthened, and that paralysing feeling of despair which had
hitherto made itself felt on the Entente front was banished. Consequently the
strike cost the lives of thousands of German soldiers. But the despicable
instigators of that dastardly strike were candidates for the highest public
positions in the Germany of the Revolution. (They were all Jews or commies)
At first this gave rise to only very slight
reaction. What did universal suffrage matter to us? Is this what we had been
fighting for during four years? It was a dastardly piece of robbery thus to
filch from the graves of our heroes the ideals for which they had fallen. It
was not to the slogan, 'Long Live Universal Suffrage,' that our troops in
Flanders once faced certain death but with the cry, 'DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES IN
DER WELT'. A small but by no means an unimportant difference. And the majority
of those who were shouting for this suffrage were absent when it came to
fighting for it. All this political rabble were strangers to us at the front.
During those days only a fraction of these parliamentarian gentry were to be
seen where honest Germans foregathered.
The old soldiers who had fought at the front
had little liking for those new war aims of Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann, Barth,
Liebknecht and others. We could not understand why, all of a sudden, the
shirkers should abrogate all executive powers to themselves, without having any
regard to the army.
From the very beginning I had my own definite
personal views. I intensely loathed the whole gang of miserable party
politicians who had betrayed the people. I had long ago realized that the
interests of the nation played only a very small part with this disreputable
crew and that what counted with them was the possibility of filling their own
empty pockets. My opinion was that those people thoroughly deserved to be
hanged, because they were ready to sacrifice the peace and if necessary allow
Germany to be defeated just to serve their own ends. To consider their wishes
would mean to sacrifice the interests of the working classes for the benefit of
a gang of thieves. To meet their wishes meant that one should agree to
sacrifice Germany.
In the autumn of 1918 we stood for the third
time on the ground we had stormed in 1914. The village of Comines, which
formerly had served us as a base, was now within the fighting zone. Although
little had changed in the surrounding district itself, yet the men had become different,
somehow or other. They now talked politics. Like everywhere else, the poison
from home was having its effect here also. The young drafts succumbed to it
completely. They had come directly from home.
During the night of October 13th-14th, the
British opened an attack with gas on the front south of Ypres. They used the
yellow gas whose effect was unknown to us, at least from personal experience. I
was destined to experience it that very night. On a hill south of Werwick, in
the evening of October 13th, we were subjected for several hours to a heavy
bombardment with gas bombs, which continued throughout the night with more or
less intensity. About midnight a number of us were put out of action, some
forever. Towards morning I also began to feel pain. It increased with every
quarter of an hour; and about seven o'clock my eyes were scorching as I
staggered back and delivered the last dispatch I was destined to carry in this
war. A few hours later my eyes were like glowing coals and all was darkness
around me.
I was sent into hospital at Pasewalk in
Pomerania, and there it was that I had to hear of the Revolution.
In November the general tension increased.
Then one day disaster broke in upon us suddenly and without warning. Sailors
came in motor-lorries and called on us to rise in revolt. A few Jew-boys were
the leaders in that combat for the 'Liberty, Beauty, and Dignity' of our
National Being. Not one of them had seen active service at the front. Through
the medium of a hospital for venereal diseases these three Orientals had been
sent back home. Now their red rags were being hoisted here.
My first thought was that this outbreak of
high treason was only a local affair. I tried to enforce this belief among my
comrades. My Bavarian hospital mates, in particular, were readily responsive.
Their inclinations were anything but revolutionary. I could not imagine this madness
breaking out in Munich; for it seemed to me that loyalty to the House of
Wittelsbach was, after all, stronger than the will of a few Jews. And so I
could not help believing that this was merely a revolt in the Navy and that it
would be suppressed within the next few days.
With the next few days came the most
astounding information of my life. The rumours grew more and more persistent. I
was told that what I had considered to be a local affair was in reality a
general revolution. In addition to this, from the front came the shameful news
that they wished to capitulate! What! Was such a thing possible?
On November 10th the local pastor visited the
hospital for the purpose of delivering a short address. And that was how we
came to know the whole story. The reverend old gentleman seemed to be trembling
when he informed us that the House of Hohen-zollern should no longer wear the
Imperial Crown, that the Fatherland had become a 'Republic', that we should
pray to the Almighty not to withhold His blessing from the new order of things
and not to abandon our people in the days to come. In delivering this message
he could not do more than briefly express appreciation of the Royal House, its
services to Pomerania, to Prussia, indeed, to the whole of the German
Fatherland, and--here he began to weep. A feeling of profound dismay fell on
the people in that assembly, and I do not think there was a single eye that
withheld its tears. As for myself, I broke down completely.. It was impossible
for me to stay and listen any longer. Darkness surrounded me as I staggered and
stumbled back to my ward and buried my aching head between the blankets and
pillow and cried.
I had not cried since the day that I stood
beside my mother's grave. Whenever Fate dealt cruelly with me in my young days
the spirit of determination within me grew stronger and stronger. During all
those long years of war, when Death claimed many a true friend and comrade from
our ranks, to me it would have appeared sinful to have uttered a word of complaint.
Did they not die for Germany? And, finally, almost in the last few days of that
titanic struggle, when the waves of poison gas enveloped me and began to
penetrate my eyes, the thought of becoming permanently blind unnerved me; but
the voice of conscience cried out immediately: Poor miserable fellow, will you
start howling when there are thousands of others whose lot is a hundred times
worse than yours? And so I accepted my misfortune in silence, realizing that
this was the only thing to be done and that personal suffering was nothing when
compared with the misfortune of one's country.
So all had been in vain. In vain all the
sacrifices and privations, in vain the hunger and thirst for endless months, in
vain those hours that we stuck to our posts though the fear of death gripped
our souls, and in vain the deaths of two millions who fell in discharging this
duty. Think of those hundreds of thousands who set out with hearts full of
faith in their fatherland, and never returned; ought not their graves to open,
so that the spirits of those heroes bespattered with mud and blood should come
home and take vengeance on those who had so despicably betrayed the greatest
sacrifice which a human being can make for his country? Was it for this that
the soldiers died in August and September 1914, for this that the volunteer
regiments followed the old comrades in the autumn of the same year? Was it for
this that those boys of seventeen years of age were mingled with the earth of
Flanders? Was this meant to be the fruits of the sacrifice which German mothers
made for their Fatherland when, with heavy hearts, they said good-bye to their
sons who never returned? Has all this been done in order to enable a gang of
despicable criminals to lay hands on the Fatherland?
Was this then what the German soldier
struggled for through sweltering heat and blinding snowstorm, enduring hunger
and thirst and cold, fatigued from sleepless nights and endless marches? Was it
for this that he lived through an inferno of artillery bombardments, lay
gasping and choking during gas attacks, neither flinching nor faltering, but
remaining staunch to the thought of defending the Fatherland against the enemy?
Certainly these heroes also deserved the epitaph:
Traveller, when you come to Germany, tell the Homeland that we lie
here, true to the Fatherland and faithful to our duty. (Note 13)
[Note 13. Here again we have the defenders of
Thermopylae recalled as the prototype of German valour in the Great War.
Hitler's quotation is a German variant of the couplet inscribed on the monument
erected at Thermopylae to the memory of Leonidas and his Spartan soldiers who
fell defending the Pass. As given by Herodotus, who claims that he saw the
inscription himself, the original text may be literally translated thus:
Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passeth by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.]
And at Home? But--was this the only sacrifice
that we had to consider? Was the Germany of the past a country of little worth?
Did she not owe a certain duty to her own history? Were we still worthy to
partake in the glory of the past? How could we justify this act to future
generations?
What a gang of despicable and depraved
criminals!
The more I tried then to glean some definite
information of the terrible events that had happened the more my head became
afire with rage and shame. What was all the pain I suffered in my eyes compared
with this tragedy? To depend on the mercy of the enemy was a precept which only
fools or criminal liars could recommend. During those nights my hatred
increased- hatred for the orignators of this dastardly crime.
During the following days my own fate became
clear to me. I was forced now to scoff at the thought of my personal future,
which hitherto had been the cause of so much worry to me. Was it not ludicrous
to think of building up anything on such a foundation? Finally, it also became
clear to me that it was the inevitable that had happened, something which I had
feared for a long time, though I really did not have the heart to believe it.
Emperor William II was the first German
Emperor to offer the hand of friendship to the Marxist leaders, not suspecting
that they were scoundrels without any sense of honour. While they held the
imperial hand in theirs, the other hand was already feeling for the dagger.
There is no such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews. It
must be the hard-and-fast 'Either-Or.'
For my part I then decided that I would take
up political work. ”
Adolf Hitler;
Kaps
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