by Savitri Devi
There are, doubtless, exceptional individuals who are not physically sound and strong but who, in other ways, might be useful, very useful even, if they possess the right spirit, which is that of sacrifice for something greater than themselves. But these should remain exceptions, and never be allowed to mar the healthy average bulk of the community. In particular, they should never be allowed to breed, however clever or virtuous they might be, if they have not a perfectly healthy body or if they are not racially pure.
Had there been no war, or had this war not been lost, the National Socialist régime would be lasting still, unhindered since 1933 and extended by now to the whole of Europe. One can hardly imagine what a beautiful world would have evolved out of the West which we know after fifty, after a hundred years, of such a régime, provided our Führer’s successors abided strictly and firmly by the principles laid down by him. Out of the new policy of sex with a view to natural nobility of birth—blood purity, health and strength—would have emerged generations embodying more and more Nietzsche’s ideal of the Superman; human beings, but with Olympian bodies, and a mentality as far above that of the average man of today as the latter is supposed to be above that of the chimpanzee; the human species in its original perfection or—I am tempted to say—a new species; a species of living gods on earth.
Was not that glorious result well worth securing, be it through a certain amount of ruthlessness at the early stages of the struggle? To us, it was; to us, it is. And we are ready to resume the same course, at the next opportunity, for the sake of the same ideal.
Whatever our Führer achieved in Germany, he brought about not in fifty years, but in six—from 1933 to 1939 (when the war interrupted all constructive planning). Time was too short for one to see the consequences of the policy of healthy, noble breeding pursued by him so consistently. One could only see the effect of the National Socialist teaching upon the people already born—and, most of them, well out of childhood—at the time Adolf Hitler came to power. But that alone was something to marvel at. That alone was already the promising beginning of a new world—the formation of a real élite.
It will always remain my one great regret in life, that I did not come back to Europe in time to see the parades of the Hitler Youth through the streets of the German towns, and to be present at the great yearly Party Rallies—at that of Nuremberg, for instance, in September 1935—and to live in the uplifting atmosphere of the glorious days. I have only seen pictures of those days. But I know people who have lived through them. I have spoken to men who were between fifteen and twenty-five at the time, and who, themselves, have stood by the Party Standards on solemn occasions, and have greeted the Führer walking past between two delirious multitudes; men who still now, would give anything, do anything, to bring National Socialism back to power. And I have conversed with their faithful elders too, who were at the time between thirty and forty, or even more. The fact that they have all kept their convictions to this day proves that these were no mere product of youthful enthusiasm, or of “mass suggestion,” as our enemies pretend, but the outcome of something deeper. It proves that one can rely upon those followers of Adolf Hitler. Personally I have never and nowhere met such fine people, both physically and from the standpoint of character. They are the true élite of the world, and curious, incredible perhaps, as this might seem to many of my readers, an outwardly recognizable élite, in most cases.
I have often remembered, in their presence, those words—worthy of an ancient Greek—addressed to me somewhere in Saarland, by an SS man, in 1948: “The first duty of a Nazi is to be beautiful.” Strange words, at first hearing, but how true, when one starts to think of all they imply! For no human being, man or woman, can really be “beautiful” without health and strength; and these stand in the background of most of the virtues expected in one who shares our Ideology. I never met one representative of Germany’s faithful National Socialist minority who did not come up to a fairly high standard of manly beauty. And I met many whose appearance reminded one of the Greek gods of old, or—to stick to our times—of the statues of Arno Breker, full of strength, poise, and unaffected grace. I realised how completely that great sculptor’s whole creation expresses the new world that was taking shape all round him, with its new aspirations, its new soul; how, for example, his “Herald” is really the Herald of our New Order, projection, in immortal bronze, of Germany’s living youth.
That youth has not died. It has only ripened, during these four atrocious years; more than ever, it has become hardened, self-possessed, invincible. And it has, perhaps, grown still more contemptuous of its inferiors—of that enormous majority of mankind (including millions of Aryans) who had not the inclination, or the brains to think for itself and to admit that we “were right” but preferred to swallow whatever propaganda against us the Jews or their agents dished out to it, in the press and on the wireless, and in cinema shows, and to bring upon itself the chaos that everyone knows. The National Socialist minority watches and waits, in dignified silence, knowing that it will rise and rule once more, when the time comes.
Strictly speaking, it is not their physical appearance only that points out its representatives to the attention of the careful observer sitting, for instance, on the opposite bench in a café or in a waiting room. It is the radiance of their personality; the stamp of their worth, as superior men and women, upon their faces; the shine of intelligence and courage in their eyes. And that is true of their elder ones as well as those who were mere adolescents in 1933, and who went through the splendid physical training of new Germany. As I have said before, now that it no longer pays to call oneself a Nazi, those who have remained faithful to our ideals, firm and confident and ready, are those alone whose lifelong aspirations, whose whole personal philosophy could not possibly be anything else but ours: the morally no less than physically healthy, the strong and consistent, the fearless—the very best of the land. And, along with health and race, it is those qualities of character that give their faces such beauty and that make one feel, in their circle, that one is in the presence of men far above the rest of men. In the days National Socialism was triumphant, quite a number of Germans, even in high positions, did not reach that level—otherwise, all would have gone well, and the war would never have been lost. Now, those alone who are at that level remain, ready to form, tomorrow, the real, the invincible Party, worthy to govern the whole earth under Hitler’s leadership, forever.
* * *
I owe some of the most beautiful of all my memories to my short experience in the National Socialist struggle just slowly beginning again. And these are memories of the people with whom I came in touch; people of all social conditions—students, shopkeepers, workmen, men of liberal professions—and of all levels of education in the narrowly bookish sense of the word, but who form, in my eyes, a real aristocracy; the natural aristocracy of blood and of character, destined (I hope) to supersede the artificial aristocracy of money, position, or learning in our new world. How I love them!
We understood one another, whatever our level of education, first because the things we had to say were not, in general, to be found in books, and then, because there were a few basic books which we all had read. We did not necessarily agree on every minor point, nor was each one of us the replica of all the others—as so many of the Communists are, from what I know at least of the non-Russian ones—for he thought for himself; nor had we all come to National Socialism for the same main reasons; each one of us put stress on that which, in the Weltanschauung or its application, seemed to him the most attractive. But we agreed in all that is essential and, as I have said already, we all were—we all are—Heathens at heart, the whole lot of us, the faithful few. (There were, once, quite a number of inconsistent people who believed they could be both true Christians and Nazis at the same time. Defeat—and the subsequent intensive propaganda on the part of the Churches—has mightily helped such ones to recognise the incompatibility of the two philosophies as they stand, and to make up thei
r minds. Had our Weltanschauung remained triumphant without a break, it never would have occurred to them how inconsistent they were—or how “wrong” we are, from a Christian point of view!)
I remember—with that nostalgia one feels at the thought of one’s own lost possibilities—a remarkable young German of twenty-three or twenty-four, a student of physics whom I met in the train a month or so before my arrest. I admired the logic, knowledge, and self-assurance with which he was discussing with another student some point about alternating currents, and I stepped into the conversation after asking to be excused for doing so. (I was myself, once, a science student as well as a student of the arts.) We soon discussed other things than electricity, and I met the young man again, and came to know him better. He is a serious youngster, of few words but much thought and intense feelings, and a fine National Socialist, with all the virtues that such praise implies. I met his mother, a most lovable German woman also sharing our ideals, and I envied her for having given such a son to the Movement. His name is Herr F.
We were once walking down a steep road, leading from his house to the Rhine, and a great part of the town stretched before us. “You should have seen this place in ‘our days,’” the young man said to me. (The greater part of the town is now in ruins.)
“Yes,” I replied, “everything was beautiful ‘then’; was it not?”
“It was. And then we had something to live for. We were happy.”
He told me how, being then only eighteen, he had won the first prize in a fencing competition extending to the whole Kreis,173 in 1943. “But sports were not merely sports, for us. They were a part of a broader and higher training, of our training as Germans and as Aryans. Competing with one another in strength, skill, and endurance; working hard and well; going on picnics in the countryside, a hundred together, or more, and watching the Sun rise over the hills and woods of our Fatherland; marching through the streets and singing our beautiful manly songs, we were becoming a new people,” he said, “and we knew it; we felt it. We were so happy! Then the disaster came, and all seemed lost irretrievably . . . It was not our fault. Had it depended upon us, the young generation, the Führer would have been world-Führer long ago. But there were traitors among the elder generation.”
“I know only too well. But you don’t believe that everything is irretrievably lost, do you?”
“Goodness no! No force on earth can kill a healthy nation determined to live.”
And his dark eyes flashed as he spoke. I stretched out my hand to him and said: “I wish every German, nay, every Aryan, would speak as you do.”
“More than you seem to think, do,” he replied.
I asked him what most of his fellow students felt about the two dangers, Democracy and Communism.
“Who believes seriously in either?” he answered. “The only supporters of the former are those who draw or hope to draw some profit from the occupation—the good-for-nothing people, and those whom we chastised in our time and who now want an excuse to get back at us. The only supporters of the latter are those who have never lived in the Russian Zone.”
Herr F had lived in the Russian Zone up till recently. We decided that he would help me to cross the border clandestinely with a friend of his, and to pay a visit to the Eastern part of Germany. On my return, he would introduce me to a group of students with our views, and we could perhaps—cautiously—“start something.”
I was arrested before those grand projects could materialise.
I remember an elderly saleswoman, Fräulein E—who looks much younger than her age—and whom I also met during a journey. A very expressive face, showing great determination and great kindness (which are seldom found together) and thoughtfulness, also. Pale blue eyes, that can be extremely cold and distant, or brighten up into a flash of sunshine—according to what Fräulein E hears or says, or thinks about. She walked a few steps with me, as we both came out of a railway station somewhere in the French Zone. When I told her I was in Germany to write a book, she stopped and gazed at me.
“And you intend to write the truth?” she asked.
“Certainly.”
“Well, in that case . . .” she said, and broke off abruptly.
“What, ‘in that case’?” asked I.
She looked at me intently. “I know I should not tell you this,” she continued; “After all, I have only just met you. I don’t know who you are. It might be very foolish on my part—and dangerous for me—to speak. But you look as though you can be trusted. I have been in trade all my life and know faces. Well, I tell you: in your book . . . don’t write about things of which you are not perfectly sure . . . don’t be unfair to National Socialism.”
I felt my face brighten. But I tried to control myself. “What prompts you to tell me that?” I asked. “Do you imagine I intend to be unfair to anything or anyone?”
“No,” she said. “But many people are unfair without meaning to be, swayed as they are by various prejudices. And so much mud has already been thrown at us—so much!—by all the writers of the world! I only wished to tell you, you being a foreigner, ‘don’t throw any more.’”
I admired the woman’s fearlessness—for she did not know me yet. She had only seen my British-Indian passport when I had shown it to an inspector in the train.
“Are you a National Socialist?” I asked her. And she is the only person in Germany to whom I ever put that question in such a point- blank form. Her courageous talk had authorised me to do so. Her answer was no less bold. “Yes, I am,” she said.
“And so am I,” I replied. “Don’t fear that I might be impressed by lies against the Führer or against us; I have heard heaps, up till now, and spit at those who tell them. My book shall be the impeachment of our enemies.” I was moved beyond words as I spoke.
“Can I really believe you?” said Fräulein E, amazed and stopping and looking at me once more. “You, a foreigner, now—when all the world is against us!”
“I have no time for that world of monkeys and its supposed ‘opinion,’” I replied. “I know my words are difficult to believe. But you might believe my writing.”
And pulling one of my leaflets out of a roll, I took her to a lonely corner in the ruins (we were in a town where there are plenty such corners) and showed it to her. “I wrote it,” I said.
She believed me at last, and was visibly moved as she took my hands and told me: “I am happy to have met you, happier than I can say. But, my poor dear child, how dare you go about with all that dangerous stuff?”
“No German has betrayed me yet.”
“No true German ever will,” she answered. “But still, be careful. ‘They’ might find you out all the same. ‘They’ are probably watching you all the time. Anyhow, it is no use thinking of it beforehand. Come now, and I shall take you to some good friends of mine. They will be glad to make your acquaintance.”
“Tell me something about the great days,” said I, as we walked along a half-destroyed avenue. “I wish I had come then.”
“You would have been happy in Germany, then. You cannot imagine how lovely it was. Now, look at what ‘they’ have done—our Christian-like enemies; those who came to ‘reform’ us, to ‘re-educate’ us as they say.” And she pointed to one of the streets in which (as in more than one other street of the same town) not a single house is left erect. “Look at that!” said she. “But revenge will come, one day. And then Germany will rise once more out of her ruins and the great days will come back!”
Once more, for the millionth time, I admired the invincible Nazi spirit.
The woman showed me the ruins of what had once been her shop, at the corner of a main avenue opposite a church. The sight of the church reminded her of a man and of an incident. But before telling me about it, she asked me whether I were a Christian.
“I? Goodness no! I know there is nothing so opposed to ours as the Christian philosophy, and I look upon the church as our greatest enemy.”
“How right you are! I have always said that t
oo, although many disagreed with me. Then I shall tell you of my friend W, who was a clergyman, but a very peculiar one—a clergyman, and a fighter for the Movement at the same time, if you can picture such a combination of opposites; a man who would throw a priest’s robe over his brown uniform (jack boots and pistol and all) and run to church just in time to deliver a short address. The address was always thoroughly National Socialist in spirit, the word ‘amen’ at the end being practically the only thing in it that indicated that it was delivered from a pulpit. One day, what happened? Another preacher was speaking from the pulpit and my friend W—without his pious disguise, this time—was among the congregation. The preacher, who was a real Christian, not just someone trying to prepare the church-going crowds for the new times, started making certain hints against the régime. My friend W took a writing pad and a fountain pen which he always kept at hand, and noted carefully whatever the man said. Then, he waited for him at the church door, and stopped him on his way out.
“‘You made such and such a statement?’ said he.
“‘Jawohl, I did.’
“‘You implied that the policy of our Government is “nefarious”? See, I took down such and such words that you uttered.’
“‘I admit I did. But . . .’
“‘There is no “but.” Did you, or not?’
“‘I did.’
“‘And the “undesirable people” to whom you alluded without daring to be too clear, were, I suppose, the Führer and his collaborators?’
“‘Jawohl, they were, if you must know!’
“‘Good! . . . So that’s what you are—you swine!’
“And my friend W gave the fellow a slap that could be heard from the other side of the street. And then another. And another—‘paff! puff!’—and several more until finally he sent him rolling in the dust with a kick in the pants: ‘That will teach you, saying things against the Führer, you good for nothing rascal!’”