244 mother a woman from the Baltic States, a Lithuanian, I believe. Her father had known Sven Hedin. We talked about Sweden—where she had lived for a time—and about that great friend of Germany and of the Führer. Then, all of a sudden, after a long pause, she asked me: “Do you believe in the power of thought?” “I do,” I replied. “Then, think of me intensely this evening at about eight o’clock,” she said. “I shall then be on the border.” “You are going to the Russian Zone?” “Yes. And I am afraid.” “Why don’t you stay here, if you believe it is not safe for you to go?” “I once lived there,” she replied. “I could not stand the atmosphere, and came away. But I could not take my two children with me. They are there still. And I have had no news of them for a long time. I feel restless. I want to see them again at any cost.” There was controlled, but intense emotion in her voice, and tears in her large blue eyes appeared as she spoke. “I shall think of you, and pray for you with all my might this evening at eight o’clock,” said I. We were on the morning of the 26th of October 1948. Then I asked her about the Russian Zone. “Tell me,” I said, “how are things there; worse than here?” “Much worse.” In the course of our conversation, I had already made sure that she was a Nazi at heart. I asked her, nearly in a whisper: “How about the ‘old’ spirit, there?” She smiled faintly. “Outwardly, it looks as though it is dead,” she said. “But it lives in the secrecy of our hearts, even though we do not speak, even to one another, for fear of hidden listeners. Men who are—or pretend to be—drunk, sometimes sing the old songs. In such cases, the Russians say nothing.” “And how about Communism? Got many German adherents?” “None whom I know,” she replied. “Those it once had have changed their minds, after seeing what it meant in practice.” “So, if, one day, things took an unexpected turn, you would all be ready to welcome the rebirth of the New Order?” “Most certainly,” she said. And her face took on an expression of ineffable longing. “But when? When?” “Perhaps sooner than we think.” “Oh, if only you could be right!” she whispered. Very quietly, I gave her one of my leaflets. She slipped it into a

245 magazine and read it, pretending to be reading the magazine. “Where did you manage to get that printed?” she asked me, in a voice hardly perceptible, when she had finished. “Abroad,” said I. She squeezed my hand. “I wish I could take your whole stock with me,” she said. “But I dare not. I shall keep that one paper, however. We shall copy it over and over again, be sure. Thousands will read it.” “So,” said I, “you are alive, in the Russian Zone!” “How can it be otherwise? Did you imagine for a moment that we could forget? Never!” One of the sentences in my leaflet had caught her attention. She pointed it out to me. “You say so yourself, don’t you?” she whispered: “We are the gold in the furnace . . .” “You are indeed,” replied I. She looked at me intently and said: “We are—including yourself. Your turn too will come, to bear witness to the truth we stand for, in suffering, as all other genuine National Socialists.” I felt honoured far beyond my merits by that mark of confidence from one who had already lived three and a half years in the midst of persecution. I did not know that the woman’s words were prophetic. The following station was my destination. I got down, saluting my friend of an hour, for the last time, perhaps. And I thought of her on that evening, and many times since. Later on, on my way to Mainz, I met a student who had also lived in the Russian Zone, and after talking to him some time, I asked him the same question: “Is it really worse than in West Germany, as so many people say?” “Dear me,” exclaimed the youth; “I should think so!” “In the Western Zones it is bad enough,” I said. “Yes. But at least we can grumble.” “Only to a very small extent,” I replied. “Go and say, for instance, in any public place, that the National Socialist régime was wonderful and that you would like nothing better than to see it come back; and watch what happens—that is to say, if there is any policeman or police informer lurking about. Or just try to salute a friend at the corner of the street in the former manner . . .” “Yes,” said he, interrupting me, “of course, if you go that far. But one can express much of one’s feelings without going that far. And one does. We have, for example, been talking now, for over half an hour, and we understand each other, don’t we? You know me enough to trust me at least to some extent; your last words prove it. And I

246 think I know what you are.” “But, I said nothing at all.” “You don’t need to ‘say’ it. Nobody ever ‘says’ it. But again, you are allowed to let everybody know it, if you choose to do so. While ‘there,’ it is different.” “But,” I replied, “what precisely irritates me the most, not merely here, in the French Zone, but in the whole of Western Germany (I never was in the Eastern area), is that ban on my free speech; that reticence, that constant repression forced upon me.” “You say that because you come from the free world outside unfortunate Germany, and because you have never yet crossed the border between the Western Zones and the Eastern Zone. There, behind the ‘iron curtain,’ you could not say a quarter of what you have said now during our short conversation, without being asked to get down at the next station and to follow the policeman waiting there to take you up.” “But if nobody overheard me?” “In the Russian Zone, somebody always does overhear. There are informers everywhere, and you can never tell who is who. Parents cannot trust their own children, nor a brother his brother, nor a man his wife. Here, National Socialism is persecuted. There, it is crushed.” “Inwardly also?” “Outwardly. Inwardly, no power on earth is in a position to crush it.” “And how do the people react to this?” “They are quiet—outwardly; much quieter than here, in the Western Zones. They suffer more.” I asked him the same question as I had, some months before, to the woman in the train from Hanover: “How about the Communists, there?” The answer was the same: “There are no Communists, in the Russian Zone—save a handful of fellows who suck up to the Russians for what they expect to get out of them, materially. There would be none anywhere, in Germany, if only they all could have a taste of what Communism means, for six months or so, as we have had, for four years. Communism,” he added after a pause, repeating that which I have said myself so many times, “sounds like salvation, and is, indeed, perhaps, the nearest approach to salvation, for people who are both primitive and exploited, like the peasants of Russia—or China—were for centuries. If such people are, in addition to that, of an inferior stock, it will appeal to them all the more. But no highly-civilised, organised, and conscious people of a superior race, especially no

247 people who, like we, have once experienced National Socialism, can possibly take to such a system. Even the Russians who have had a glimpse of our régime during the short time their country was occupied by us, cannot help feeling all the difference between the Communist point of view and ours.” “And do you believe they would have been easily kept within the pale of a National Socialist world, if Germany had won this war?” “With time, and adequate propaganda, and education, why not?” said he. “And what about those social reforms which, they say, the Russians have introduced into the Russian Zone: the division of the land among the peasants and so forth, of which such a fuss is made abroad by Communist sympathisers?” “Oh, that!” said the student, with a wry smile, “another piece of deceit! The peasants of Eastern Germany fare worse, now, than they ever did before. Whether the land is supposed to be theirs or not, it makes no difference. They are slaves upon it. They are compelled to give up to the Government a certain amount of goods fixed beforehand, and the same whether the crops have been plentiful or scanty, with the result that, after a bad season, they have to buy food from peasants of more fortunate areas so that they can give the Government dues and still eat. Sometimes, they even have to buy from others the very goods—potatoes, for instance—that they are expected to give as a tax. You should visit the Zone yourself, and make a thorough inquiry.” “I would like to. But how can I go? I have no permit.” “If you are willing, I shall try to arrange for you to go on the sly, with relatives of mine returning there. Only when you have seen the place will you be able to understand how justified you are in your wholehearted praise of the German National Socialists of all the Zones. Only then will you know how right you are when you say: ‘Four Zones, but . . . still one people, and in that people’s heart one Führer—the Führer.’” I saw the young man again. I was received in his home. I had made up my mind to try my chance and do as he had suggested. But my arrest upset my plans. * * * There is a place not far from Hanover, called Celle. In the station, as in most German stations of any importance, there is a “Catholic

248 Mission” that provides food and shelter for the night to people who cannot afford to go to a hotel. That is one of the spots where one can watch the daily arrival of refugees from the Russian Zone. I spent a couple of nights there myself, as well as at the Catholic Mission of the Hanover station, and thus got in touch with many of them. I shall always remember a lad of fourteen, whom I met at Celle—an intelligent, but still childish face, with large pale blue eyes that looked up to me, full of tears, with heart-rending entreaty, as I put my hand upon his shoulder, in a gesture of sympathy. But I could do nothing for him. “He crossed the border two days ago,” the lady in charge of the Mission told me, “and now we are sending him back. What else can we do? He has no relatives, no friends who could take charge of him in the British or any other of the Western Zones; no work; no money.” (How gladly I would have taken charge of him, had I not been, myself, but a homeless wanderer, living and carrying on my activities, on the few scraps of jewellery I had left, with no prospects of finding any work however much I tried!) “What prompted him to come over?” I asked, when the unfortunate boy had eaten his last morsel and was taken to the train. “Fear,” said the lady in charge. “They were looking for him to send him to work in the mines, somewhere far away—‘in the Urals,’ he says. And he does not want to go. He wants to remain in Germany and continue to go to school.” “Who are his parents?” “People who both played an active part in spreading National Socialism in their town, in former days, apparently. His father was taken away to Siberia and never heard of again. His mother works and maintains him the best way she can. He has two young brothers.” “The same attempt to uproot National Socialism everywhere,” thought I; “the same savage persecution of the élite of the world, from one end of Germany to the other! And it does, definitely, look worse in the Russian Zone than in the Western area, I must admit.” Turning to the lady in charge I said: “And there was nothing, really, that you could have done for the kid? Absolutely nothing?” “Alas no.” “You could not have sent him to a refugee camp?” The lady in charge looked at me as one looks at a person who does not know what he or she is talking about. “Have you visited any of those refugee camps?” she asked me. “No,” said I. “I wished to. But I was told I needed a special permission. I was thinking of applying for one on the ground that I am

249 writing a book about Germany.” “. . . as a consequence of which you would never be granted a permit,” she replied, “. . . that is to say, not unless the Occupation authorities felt sure that you would shut your eyes to all that they wish to keep concealed concerning the conditions of life in their relief camps. But you are not a woman to shut your eyes to things, or to hide the truth when you know it. I can understand that, from your conversation during these two or three days. I can even understand more about you, I believe. A very, very definite reason for ‘them’ to give you no admittance to their ‘charitable’ institutions in this unfortunate land.” “What reason?” She hesitated. I knew her first impulse would have been to say: “You are a National Socialist.” But she did not say that, although she was practically sure it was true. She said: “You are a real friend of Germany”—which meant the same. “Our friend, and a writer; then surely no permit for you, my dear lady!” she added jokingly. “But if you could see some of those camps you would not think of sending a young boy there.” “Still, perhaps better than slave labour in the mines,” I ventured to say. “I am not so sure about that,” she replied enigmatically. “Moreover, there is no place in the refugee camps. Do you know how many people cross the border every week on an average?” “Five thousand, I was told in Hanover, by an Englishman in a responsible position in the Labour Department, at ‘Sterling House.’” “That is the official figure,” she said. “In fact, there are many more than that. And their position—and ours—is becoming more and more acute.” Two women stepped in at that moment—two more from the Russian Zone—and asked for something to eat. While they sat and ate, I talked to them. They were not refugees. They were people who lived with their families in the Russian Zone, and who came regularly to see relatives and to buy food across the frontier. I asked them, as I did every other person from the forbidden area, how they fared there. “Life is hard,” they told me, “not so much for such people whose sympathies were, from the beginning, actively and obviously with the Red Front, as for us, who were connected with the NSDAP.” “Connected only,” the other woman put in at once. “For had we distinguished ourselves by any special activity, or held any special

250 position in the Party, we would not even enjoy that small amount of tranquillity. My husband was an SS man. He fell a prisoner to the Americans during the last year of the war and only came home in ’47. Well, he is not allowed to take up his former job in civil life as an electrician. He must work on the roads—break stones and dig—for the sole reason that he was a militant Nazi.” “The Democrats do such things here, too,” I said. “Not that I want to defend the Reds. I never was a Communist, goodness me! But I can tell you many instances of similar oppression on this side of the Elbe.” “I believe you. Yet I doubt whether they could match those of the Russian Zone,” she replied unconvinced. “You have no idea what we suffer over there—all Germans, but especially we National Socialists.” During the time I remained in Celle we got to know one another better. One day, as we were alone, I took out of my pocket a padded jewel box, opened it, and placed it before my new friends. A pair of golden swastikas—the earrings I used to wear in Calcutta and in London—gleamed before their eyes on a background of dark blue velvet. The two women repressed a cry of joyous surprise. “How beautiful!” they exclaimed, almost together. “But where on earth did you get those?” “In India. One can buy any number of them in the jewellery shops, there. The swastika is a widespread religious symbol held in veneration by all Hindus—who dimly remember the Nordic origin of the civilisation they glory in to this day. It is the sacred Sign of the Sun.” “We too call it ‘Sonnenrad’—the ‘Wheel of the Sun.’ But you don’t wear those here, in Germany?” “I do . . . under a shawl thrown over my head, which I take off indoors, when I know that I can trust the people I am visiting.” “Do you know what would happen if you were caught with those in the Russian Zone?” “What?” “You would be sent off to Siberia at once.” I paused; and then, producing two of my leaflets, I said: “And what would they do to me if they caught me distributing these?” There was another cry of surprise and then, deep silence, while each of the two women read the words of defiance. “Never cross the border,” said finally one of my new friends; “‘they’ would kill you. How many of these did you distribute in the Western Zones?” “Ten thousand, up till now.” “Without getting into trouble! Marvellous! And how long have you

251 been doing that?” “Over eight months.” “You could not have done it eight days in the Russian Zone. ‘They’ have spies everywhere. ‘They’ are devils. Worse than the Western Democrats, I tell you. But you can give us some of your papers. We know whom to give them to.” “But how will you cross the border with them?” “No fear as far as we are concerned,” said the other woman. “We come and go every fortnight. The guards on the frontier know us.” “And I can trust you to distribute those leaflets at your own risk?” “Every German in the Russian Zone misses National Socialist rule, not just we, who supported it from the beginning. You can rely upon us.” I gave them each a couple of hundreds of my leaflets, as I had given several other sympathetic people returning to the forbidden area. When they had left, I showed my Indian earrings to the lady in charge of the Mission, a little cautiously. “I hope you don’t object to my having them,” I said: “You see . . . they are Indian . . .” Her face brightened as she saw the immemorial Sign. She smiled. But, along with joy, there was an ineffable nostalgia in her smile. She gazed at the symbol of National Socialism. “I, object?” she said at last. “You don’t know me. I too love that Sign . . .” “Do you, really?” I replied, overjoyed. “I had thought . . .” I had thought—and still think—that no consistent person can be a Catholic and “love that Sign.” And the woman would not have been in charge of this station mission had she not been, at least outwardly, a Catholic. So I wondered . . . She was probably no sincere Catholic after all. Or she lacked consistency—as so many people do. But she did not leave me time to wonder. “Shhush!” said she, in a whisper, putting her fingers to her mouth. “I am not supposed to talk frankly to you. And this is not the place. But when you come back to Celle, come to my house. If I cannot myself put you up, I know friends who will gladly do so. And then we shall talk. I am beginning to know you—and to like you.” But I was arrested before I could go back. I never saw the lady again. She must have read about my case in the daily papers—or heard of it on the wireless: “Sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for Nazi propaganda . . .” And she probably thought: “Not surprising.”

252 * * * But all these people, whether hundred percent National Socialists or not, had always been sympathetically inclined towards our régime; they were, at least, never hostile to it. Yet, there seem to be, in the Russian Zone no less than in Western Germany, quite a number of men and women who previously hated National Socialism but who, now, bitterly regret they did not support it with all their might. I repeat: I have not lived in the Zone. But I can assert that there are many such Germans among those who come across the border, whether with the intention of remaining in the Western areas, or on short periodical visits. I shall recall one instance only: that of a young woman whom I met at the “Catholic Mission” in the Hanover station. This woman could hardly have been more than thirty—thirty-five at the most. She had a frank, pleasant face. She told me she was living in the Russian Zone. I introduced myself as a writer, and told her of my intended journey over the border in order to complete my book on Germany. She gazed at me with genuine interest and said: “Don’t go! It is only courting trouble. You don’t know what a life we live, over there.” “That is just what I would like to see for myself,” I replied. “The knowledge is not worth the risk,” she answered. “You might never come back. You are English, aren’t you?” “Half-English.” “Whatever you be . . . You are not a Communist?” she asked. “Anything but one!” “Well, in that case, don’t go! They will seize on the slightest pretext to charge you with espionage on behalf of the Democracies and to send you off to some place whence you will never return.” “But I am no Democrat either!” said I. And then, realizing that I had perhaps spoken too much, I added: “I take no interest whatsoever in politics. As a writer, I am only concerned with men and women and their lives.” The lie was a clumsy one. But she did not seem to notice it. “If you care for people’s welfare, you should take interest in politics,” she replied. “But think twice before you support or fight any movement—weigh the pros and cons carefully.” And she added in a low voice: “Never do what I did. I betrayed my country without knowing what I was doing.” I suddenly had a glimpse of the whole tragedy of that woman’s life. She was one of those thousands whom I had hated so intensely; one of those of whom I had so often said: “They should all have been ‘liquidated’ in time.” But I controlled my feelings, looked at her with curiosity, and answered enigmatically:

253 “Many have betrayed their country without knowing what they were doing during this war, and not only among the Germans. And they have betrayed the Aryan race, which in my eyes is worse.” The woman looked strangely into my face and asked me, hesitatingly: “Are you also one of them?” “Oh, not I!” I burst out in protest—I could nearly say “in indignation.” “I knew where my duty lay. And there lay my heart also. I was on the right side from the beginning—years before the war.” “I see you are interested in politics after all,” said the woman, with a pinch of irony. But her face soon became serious, nay, sad, once more. “You were on the right side without being a German,” she resumed, “while I . . . Oh, had I only known!” “Is it indiscreet to ask what you did?” said I. “I fought against Hitler,” she replied; “I was in an underground organisation whose aim was to undermine his power and to bring about his downfall. We were deceived into believing that he was the cause of the war and the original source of all our misfortunes—he, our saviour! Oh, had I but known!” Every word of hers was like a knife-thrust into my heart. With implacable clearness, I pictured that woman busying herself with shadowy propaganda against the inspired Leader whom I so loved; I imagined her secretly informing the Russians of whatever she knew of his efforts to defend Germany (as so many other traitors had informed the Western Democracies)—doing her best to bring about the ruin of the National Socialist Order, the downfall of all I admired, revered, praised, defended, all those years. Did she perchance fancy that her tardy remorse would efface that criminal past of hers in my eyes? I hated her with bitter hatred. And my first impulse was to say: “Well, remain, now, under the darling Communists whom you yourself called and longed for, and enjoy them to your heart’s content! You don’t know how glad I am to behold that distress upon your face. You are not the first one I see—nor the last, I hope. I am only sorry I cannot meet the whole lot of you, one by one, and enjoy the sight of each one’s present-day misery. The Third Reich, which you betrayed, spared you. May those for the sake of whom you betrayed it not spare you, but slowly grind you out of existence, you and all the other wretched anti-Nazis! You don’t deserve to see the daylight!” But I did not utter these words. I only felt them spring from my heart in indignation and hatred, as I gazed at that woman. She was pretty, and well-built. She looked healthy. Under a broad,

254 intelligent forehead, her two large grey eyes were fixed upon me, while the curls of her glossy reddish-brown hair moved in the wind. There was such a depth of despair in those eyes that I shuddered. But still, I hated her. Then, in a flash of imagination, I recalled the stern and beautiful face of the Man she had betrayed—and probably reviled in speech, countless times—the Führer’s face, as sad as hers, but of a different sadness; a face conscious of the tragedy of the whole world led to its ruin by its own folly, and its enemies’ lies; conscious of the eternal tragedy of better mankind exploited by the clever rogues of an inferior nature, but aware, also, of the endless potentialities of the misled Aryan; the face of the Saviour who hoped because he loved, and who stands above defeat because he knows the everlastingness of the truth for which he fought. And I felt as though He stood between us—He, our loving Hitler—and was saying to me: “Don’t crush her still more under the weight of your indignation. Don’t hate her! For my sake, don’t! Whatever she might have done against me, she is one of my people. Help her to come back to me.” Tears filled my eyes; and I was a while without speech. Then, I said slowly: “What is done is done. But the endless future is there, before you. Germany is not dead; will never die. Tell me: what would you do now—tomorrow, next year—if the Führer came back?” “I would stand by him fanatically, in the new struggle, glad if an honourable death cleansed me of my shameful past activities,” she replied, her eyes also moist with tears. And she added with entreaty: “I know you can hardly believe me. You don’t trust me. You look upon me as a traitor, which I am, or rather which I was. But if you could realise what agony I have lived, all these four years, you would believe me. And you would not hate me.” A tear slowly rolled down one of my cheeks. “Who am I,” said I, “to hate you? I have no right to do so. As an Aryan and as a lover of truth, I came from the other end of the world to bear witness to my Führer’s greatness in this martyred Land. And you are one of his people. And you love him—now. Don’t you?” A flash of unearthly joy brightened her pale face—the joy of unexpected redemption. “I do!” she replied passionately. I took her to a place where nobody could watch us and asked her: “Would you like to do something for him?” “What can I do, now? It is too late.” “It is never too late, as long as the spirit is alive. Listen: can you

255 distribute a few of these among the men and women across the border who, like yourself, once fought against National Socialism, but now repent for what they have done?” And I took out of my bag a bundle of leaflets wrapped up in a fashion magazine. She read one and asked me: “Who wrote this?” “I.” “And you are sure he is alive?” “Practically sure. I know it from several sources.” “Oh,” said she, with infinite yearning, “if only you were right! I shall take as many of those leaflets as you can give me, and distribute them among my friends.” “Are you not afraid to cross the border with them?” “No. I am never searched now. The guards know me. Moreover, they know I have worked against all this in bygone years. But they do not know how I regret it.” I gave her the whole bundle. “Good luck to you,” said I. “I shall never forget our meeting in this station,” she replied. “I hope to see you again, one day, if I am not caught and sent to Siberia to work till I am dead. I don’t think I shall be. But one never knows. Well, if I am, I shall expiate my past.” “Don’t look to the past,” said I; “look to the future—for we have a future. I assure you we have. Auf wiedersehen!” She looked at me as though she wanted to say something more. She turned her head right and left to see whether anybody was paying attention to us from a distance. Then, she lifted her right hand in the ritual gesture, as I would have, myself, in a lonely place, in the presence of someone of our views. “Heil Hitler!” she said. It was perhaps the first time in her life that she greeted anyone sincerely with those words and that gesture. I replied with the same gesture, repeating the forbidden, sacred words: “Heil Hitler!” And I recalled in my heart the Führer’s sentence: “One day, the world will know that I was right.” And I was filled with an immense joy, as though I had played a part—a tiny part—in the making of a new Germany, more strongly, more genuinely united than ever under the sign of the Swastika. * * * I have said so before: they can dismember Germany, terrorise her

256 people, starve them, humiliate them, vilify them in the eyes of a world of charlatans and imbeciles; they can forbid the Horst-Wessel-Lied, and all the other songs of the glorious days; forbid the Nazi salute, and all external manifestations of love for Adolf Hitler. They can never kill the Nazi spirit, or the German soul—the first national soul awake in an Aryan nation, foreshadowing the birth of the future soul of Aryandom. Let them maintain four ‘Zones’ in the place of the one Reich—as long as the invisible Powers allow them to do so. Four Zones there might be but, still one people, one heart, one German consciousness and—whether alive or dead, in the flesh—one Führer, of whom nobody speaks (in public at least) but of whom everybody thinks and whom, more and more, everybody reveres. To the unsympathetic foreigner come to occupy their country and to try to “convert” them, the Germans might show but an extreme outward politeness, and an absolute indifference to the fate of National Socialism and of its Founder. But the intelligent occupants themselves are not deceived. A French official in Baden-Baden, Monsieur P, once told one that a paper in Cologne had published an article discussing the question whether the Führer is alive or not. “There was a ‘queue’ waiting to buy the paper on that day,” said he. “There would be! There is nobody but Hitler in their minds.” And, as soon as the Germans are really in distress, their thoughts automatically rush back to him, “not only the Leader of his people, but their Saviour,” as Hermann Göring once said.1 In the dark days of hunger and destitution, in Treves and several other towns, I was told, one found the two forbidden words written upon the walls: “Heil Hitler!” as though to say: “Yes, in ‘his’ time we were happy, while now . . .” And during the tragic blockade of Berlin, the crowd from the starving Western sectors, roused by prolonged hardships, did not oppose Communist power with newly learnt Democratic slogans. No. Those dead words, corresponding to nothing whatsoever in the German heart, if ever learnt at all for the sake of immediate expediency, were forgotten in the twinkling of an eye. And on the 13th of September 1948 the crowd marched to the Brandenburg Gate singing the Horst Wessel Song, and tore down the flag of the Hammer and Sickle shouting “Heil Hitler!”—despite the terrible penalties that awaited all those on whom the Russians managed to lay hands. “Heil Hitler!” is the cry of Germany’s heart to this day, in whatever “Zone” it be. 1 Speech at the “Parteitag” of Nuremberg, 15 September 1935.

257 * * * The feeling of bitterness and resentment that one encounters in those who live in the Russian Zone is partly due, no doubt, to the hard conditions of life that prevail there. But it is also, and more still, due to the knowledge of the thoroughness and stability of Communism, compared with Democracy; to the consciousness of its hold on a large section of mankind, and its irresistible expansion. The Germans of the Western Zones—I mean, not the docile slaves of the Jews, but the genuinely intelligent and wholeheartedly German people, i.e., the National Socialists—might be persecuted: not allowed to air their views freely; not allowed to greet one another publicly in the former manner, or to have pictures of the Führer on the walls, in their own houses; not allowed to hold certain posts, or even to work at all, if they are known to have been prominent or at least enthusiastic members of the NSDAP in recent years. Yet, they are too intelligent not to realise the weaknesses of Democracy; not to see how shallow, how inconsistent, nay, how childish is the “philosophy” upon which it lies, compared with ours; not to think: “Such a system cannot last. It carries in itself the germs of its own destruction. Its very inconsistency—or rather its hypocrisy—is its death-warrant.” The Democrats, even when they persecute us, are too stupid for us not to despise them, as I have already said many times. The naïveté with which they proceed to “reform” us would be sufficient to make anybody laugh. We know what they want us to say. We say it. And we are amused to see how readily they believe that we really mean it. We deny (outwardly) whatever we can of the acts of ruthlessness—the so-called “war-crimes”—attributed to us, letting the simpletons remain convinced that, if only we believed that such “crimes” really took place, we would be the first ones to renounce National Socialism. And when we see how firmly convinced they are of our fundamental “humanity”—when we see how readily they take all but the most obviously, the most blatantly thorough amongst us for lovers of half-measures like themselves—we think: “What fools!” As though we ever cared—as though we care, now—what acts of violence took place for the sake of our triumph; as though we mind a little ruthlessness, when it is expedient! In you, our persecutors of today, what revolts us is the hypocrisy, not the violence; the way you find excuses for your crimes, not your crimes themselves; the spirit in which you do things, not the things you do—not even your atrocities upon us; we would understand those, if only you called them acts of vengeance and not acts of justice. You don’t know us! You

258 never will. Continue to lull yourselves into believing that you have “converted” us—“awakened” in us the natural “humanity” that our “monstrous” Nazi education had silenced for a while—you bumptious imbeciles, you self-styled “crusaders to Europe,” and keep on being fooled, as long as we judge it expedient to nod our heads at your sermons! Tomorrow—next year, the year after—when our opportunity comes again, we will show you fast enough how silly of you it was to judge us by your own standards. We will teach you what Nazis are, if you do not know by now! In the meantime, keep your illusions. In the Russian Zone, things are different. There—from what I imagine from my few contacts with Germans who live there; for I repeat: I have not lived there myself—persecution seems to be not only more ruthless (it is ruthless enough in Western Germany) but more intelligent, and more difficult to avoid. The Communists know that we are as one-pointed, as purposeful, as uncompromising as themselves, and that therefore they cannot trust us, whatever we might tell them. They might try to “convert” a few of the younger ones among us. But they do not try for long. They do not believe in wasting their time. They either subdue us materially, and terrorise us into silence, or “liquidate” us. They understand us better than the Democrats ever will, and consequently, dislike us without reservations. As I said before, they, and not the Democrats—not the men spontaneously drawn to half-measures—are our real enemies. The National Socialists of the Russian Zone realise that only too well. And at times, under the heel of those real enemies, so well organised and so strong, they experience a feeling of dejection verging on despair. We have lost this war. We all know that. But in the West of Germany, many of us still believe that the Democracies and the Bolsheviks won it together. In the Russian Zone, we are all convinced, for the last four years, that the Bolsheviks alone are the victors. Moreover we feel—and that, not only in the Russian Zone, but also in the areas under Franco-Anglo-American control, and outside Germany—that we are, with Communism, in the presence of something altogether out of proportion with Western Democracy; of something grim and formidable, not the last sign of life in a dying world, but the swelling tide of a new, great wave in the history of man. And we feel—we know, from our intuition of history (and those of us who possess a sound historical background know it all the more definitely from logic as well as intuition)—that this new great movement in the evolution of man is unavoidable. We could not stop it. The Democracies will still less be able to do so. Nothing can stop it.

259 It has to come, whether one likes it or not, just as, sooner or later, night has to take the place of daylight. We know this is the last leap of mankind along its age-old, fated path towards disintegration—unavoidable doom. We know that doom must come, before resurrection. We—the children of resurrection—can do nothing, before the world has trodden the path of death to its very end. We can only be ready and wait—“hope and wait,”1 as the Gods, through my humble agency, told the German people. There is nothing else to be done. Our time of grand outward activity lies in the past and in the future. At present, we can only watch—keep our spirit alive—and pray; keep ourselves in contact with one another and with the eternal Source of our inspiration: the truth we stand for, and the godlike Exponent of that truth, our Führer, living forever, whether he be materially alive, or dead and immortal; somewhere on earth, or in Valhalla. And, while we know we can just now do nothing, we can see everywhere around us, near and far, increasing instances of that power of Communism which seems, at present, boundless. In the Western Zones we feel that, sooner or later, the Occupation will have to go. We can imagine the last lorry full of soldiers rolling across the frontier, and the general sigh of relief at the news. It might not be tomorrow morning, but every German, let alone every National Socialist, feels that it must be, that it will be one day. In the Russian Zone, at times at least, one feels that such a day might, perhaps, never come. Moreover, in the Western Zones, the end of military control would mean the end of control altogether, over Germany. Nothing can keep the country down, once the troops of occupation are gone. In the Russian Zone, even if the troops of occupation did go, a burdensome control would still remain, an effective control, like that over so many other countries in which “popular republics”— i.e., Russian-sponsored republics—have been established. For how long? As the Communists have taken over Russia and are ruling it still, after so much distrust and scepticism on the part of the world, in the early years of their régime, so they will take over Germany, the whole of Europe, the world—who knows?—and rule it, no one can tell for how long; one wonders, sometimes, in despair, if not forever. They seem to be thoroughly well organised, already, in the Russian Zone. That is to be expected. Communism—the latest great lie of the everlasting Jew; the last mass-onrush of mankind towards final decay and death, under the impulse of the age-old enemy of the natural order—is nothing but Democracy carried to its bitterest 1 “Hofft und wartet!”—the last words on the posters I stuck up in Germany.

260 conclusion; Democracy endowed with our merciless logic and our unbending thoroughness. It is, on the broadest possible scale, the display of our qualities and of our efficiency put to the service of the philosophy of death par excellence. Those same qualities were once used to forward the cause of Christianity in the days the Catholic Church was all-powerful. Democracy—the sickly régime of half-measures—is, to a great extent, devoid of them. For it is but the bridge between Christianity and Communism, or, if one prefers, the expression of Christian civilisation grown old and pining for rest—for “security”; that is the Democrats’ pet word—in reality, pining for disintegration and death. But Communism, the latest and, maybe, the last expression of the irresistible tendency of mankind towards disintegration, has taken on those qualities once more. And, thanks to them, it is everywhere undermining the artificial democratic structure, causing great alarm among the comfortably settled Jews of capitalistic countries. For although it is itself, undoubtedly, a Jewish product—Marx’s “historical materialism” applied to government—more and more numerous are the Jews who are experiencing genuine fear at the sight of its expansion. These Jews wanted Communism to destroy Christian civilisation, in order to bind the Aryan race more tightly than ever to their yoke. They did not imagine that the upheaval might drag them, also, to their doom, in the process. Now, they fear it might be so. “Communism is evolving,” they say; “it is no longer ‘genuine’ Communism.” And maybe it is not, in many instances. In 1930, a certain Keralian Communist was, to my knowledge, cut off from the Communist Party—excommunicated—for three years, for having called a man a “dirty Jew” in a Russian tramway car. Today—I hear—many Jews who had helped the Russians to fight Germany during this war were “liquidated” under one pretext or another as soon as the war was finished. Does this, perchance, mean that, in the eyes of many Russians at least, this war was not the struggle of Communism against National Socialism (as the Jews had wished) but just that of Russia against Germany—an ordinary war between two Aryan nations for vital space, as so many conflicts in the past, and no “crusade” whatsoever? And—I hear also—there are, in Germany today, Communist groups from which Jews are excluded.1 How is one to characterise such Communism that admits—and insists upon—racial distinctions? 1 An apparently well-informed Communist woman interned in Werl has told me so. I have not had the opportunity to check the truth of her statement.

261 Perchance, as a disguised form of National Socialism? And that is what the Jews fear. And that is what we hope. But in the meantime, there reigns an implacable tyranny in the Russian Zone—a tyranny aiming at the uprooting of National Socialism in the name of purely Marxist principles, no less ruthlessly than we would ourselves try to crush any Weltanschauung standing in our way, if we were in power; a tyranny, of which we can well envy the thoroughness while hating the purpose. * * * And beyond the boundaries of the Russian Zone and of Germany, and of Europe, the power of Communism is becoming every day more formidable, more irresistible. Who will oppose it? The Western Democracies, or their worthless tools, the less objectionable Oriental rogues who exploit the gullibility of the Democracies for the sake of sheer personal profits?—less objectionable, I call them, for they are at least frank enough to put forward no “ideology” at all; no justification of their unholy alliance with the world’s greatest deceivers. The Communists have conquered China. When, before that, they had tightened their hold on Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Western Democracies had become alarmed. Those “poor Czechs” and those “poor Poles” had already suffered so much from us “Nazi beasts!” It was really not fair that our deadliest enemies the Reds should continue our work—and (they say) improve upon it—after we were crushed! It made the Western Democracies feel as though they had fought their stupid war and defeated us for nothing. Or rather, it made things look as though they had fought it as complacent henchmen of the clever Communists, and as though the Communists had won it, and not they—which is, of course, the truth. As a consequence, they had been thoroughly alarmed. But Poland and Czechoslovakia are insignificant countries compared with China and its five hundred million people. True, the Chinese are not Europeans. But that should never come into account with broadminded gentlemen devoid of “racial prejudices”—believers in quantity, not in quality—as our persecutors the Democrats pretend to be. And China is far away. But that too is a blunt excuse for indifference. No country is far away, in our epoch. And the fact is that General Mao Tse-Tung’s victory is a very great event; the beginning of a worldwide change, the rising of a mostly if not entirely Communist Asia—and that, whether the short-sighted Democracies care to be alarmed or not.

262 For Communism in China means, very soon, Communism in Indo-China and in India, and perhaps in Japan. The Japanese, the victims of America’s first atom bomb and, since then, the object of endless humiliations under American occupation, have a great grudge against the Western Democracies. And who would not have, in their place? In Malaya, in Indonesia, the irresistible ideology of the Hammer and Sickle is spreading like wildfire. It is the end of the “white man’s burden,” forever. It would be lovely to revisit the East and hear what the white man thinks while packing his things to go away—that self-same white man who, during this war, used to talk with such naïve, undeviating hatred, about “Fascist beasts,” and “Nazi monsters.” Perhaps he is now beginning to wonder whether it would not have been better, after all, to support Hitler unwaveringly. How glad I would be to remind him of his recent propaganda of slander against us who did support him; to point out to him, mercilessly, all that he is now “in for,” and tell him with a sneer: “It serves you right!” I have no love for him. Let him and his friends in Europe and America—those who poured fire and phosphorus over Nazi Germany—bleed and groan for centuries under the whip of their ex-“gallant Allies!” “But what about us, Hitler’s faithful ones?” I hear, within my heart, the voices of my comrades say: “Do you want us also to perish, for the pleasure of gloating over our persecutors’ plight? The Communists too are our persecutors.” And I think of those genuine National Socialists whom I met in the stations near the border of the Russian Zone. If I were the Führer’s last follower, then, yes, I would desire nothing else but vengeance. I would live only to see, one day, and to enjoy, the annihilation of that Europe who hated and betrayed her Saviour; who tortured and killed those who loved him; who would have tortured and killed him, had she been able to lay hands on him in 1945. If I were the last Nazi, I would myself help the Communists to inflict upon the ungrateful continent all the suffering the Democrats inflicted upon us, and still more, if possible. I have more imagination than most people—even than most Orientals—and this could prove handy. But I am not the last—far from it. “There are millions like yourself, in martyred Germany,” Sven Hedin told me, on the 6th of June 1948. He was too courteous to say: “There are millions much better than you.” But I know there are. I have met them, in that Land of suffering and of glory—of death and resurrection—during my year’s stay. Rather than see one of those endure permanent servitude, I would, if I could, spare the whole continent—spare the people I hate or despise, in order to save those whom I love and admire; renounce

263 vengeance if, at the cost of that sacrifice, Hitler’s New Order can be given a chance to rise again out of the ruins of the world. There is no doubt that Communism will soon be the uniting force of the whole of Asia and of all the non-Aryan races in general. More so: millions among the Aryans have already adhered to it; millions more will. And the Democracies, in their coming struggle with their former allies, will have to reckon with a formidable Fifth Column force within their own people. Add to this the fact that, not being “totalitarian,” they possess none of those characteristics that make for strength in the Communists as well as in us. As a result, unless we step in against them and beat them, or at least come to some agreement with them, the Communists will win the battle and remain the masters of the world for good. There is no doubt about that. But why should we step in against them, if the outcome is to be a Democratic victory? Do we wish to help those hypocrites who only allow us to live on the condition they believe they will one day “convert” us, and who, up to this moment, persecute us—who, I am told, now, after four years, are sitting as judges in Hamburg in a new “war crimes trial” over thirty-five more German women, formerly in service at Ravensbrück; who look as if they intend to pursue their “de-Nazification” campaign forever? Most certainly not. How distressing life would be for us in a Communist world, we all know from the instance of the Russian Zone of Germany. And yet, a permanently Democratic world—in which, like now, all (including the Communists) would enjoy freedom of expression, save we—would be no better, if not still worse. The real reason why the Germans feel, perhaps, less inclined, at times, to despair in the Western Zones than in the Eastern, is not that Democracy is better than Communism, or even that it allows them more freedom; it is just that we feel that Democracy is weaker and less stable than Communism. Hell is less horrible—seems less horrible—when one knows, or thinks, it is soon to come to an end. It is the hope of Democracy’s unavoidable downfall and of our resurrection that sustains our spirit under the triple oppression of the French, British, and Americans. In the Russian Zone, we feel the formidable power not only of Communist Russia, but of Communist Asia, hanging over us; the threat of the masses of inferior humanity brought together and increasingly organised, mechanised, made supremely efficient for the work of disintegration appointed to them by the Gods in the last days of the last historical Cycle; the threat of the powers of Darkness coalesced, not against Democracy which will be

264 easily crushed anyhow, but against our survival, and our possible rule in the future. But that is surely no reason why we should help our Western enemies, the Euro-American Plutocracies, to crush the power of Russia so that they might continue exploiting the world for themselves and for their real masters the Jews. Why on earth should we? We despise them. We loathe them. Their rule—the rule of the Control Commission in West Germany—if less harsh, is even more humiliating than that of the Russians. We shall not help them against the Russians, nor the Russians against them, unless . . . it is expedient from our point of view. Which attitude will be expedient, when the time comes? That, none—or very few—of us can tell, just now. All we can do, at present, is to remain firm in our National Socialist faith, and to wait. To wait for the hour of the Gods. Our faith is unshakable. We know we are right. We know our dreams are in accordance with the unchangeable dictates of Nature and that we are, in all our activities, “co-workers with the Creator,” to quote a scriptural expression. We know nothing can stand in our way, in the long run. Still, we feel, sometimes, that the way is long, and our lives short. Will those of us who are now in their forties live long enough to see “the Day of freedom and of plenty”—the rise of a National Socialist world out of the ruin and desolation brought by the coming struggle between our enemies? Nobody knows. In the meantime, the shadow of the Communist danger no longer looms on the horizon. It is approaching. The absorption of China by the Communist forces, six months ago, is the beginning of the end of Democratic capitalism. A blessed good riddance! But for whose benefit, ultimately: that of Communism, the race-levelling order, the rule of quantity to a no lesser degree than Democratic capitalism itself, the system of the “common man” of all races? Or ours? That of the eternal Jew—whom the bastardised “common man” will gladly serve, under an illusion of freedom—or that of higher humanity? “For the future of the world, the important question is . . . whether Aryan humanity will hold its own or die out.”1 Never have those words of our Führer rang so true as today. 1 “Für die Zukunft der Erde liegt aber die Bedeutung . . . darin, ob der arische Mensch ihr erhalten bleibt oder ausstirbt” (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, II, x, p. 630; cf. Mannheim, p. 562).