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To The Front-Line Fighters Of the First World War
By Rudolf Hess
No greater man of peace than Rudolf Hess ever lived, as is evidenced by his daring flight to Britain in an effort to avert war between the United Kingdom and Germany. This is the gist of a speech presented at Königsberg by Rudolf Hess, Hitler's right-hand man and himself a former front-rank fighter. Date uncertain, it is reproduced here for its historical value.
Today our people have the good fortune to be led by soldiers who have fought in the front-line trenches and who have brought over into the leadership of the state those virtues which they learned at the front. They are carrying out the rebuilding of the Reich in the spirit of the trenches; because it was the spirit of the trenches which created National Socialism.
While in the trenches they were everywhere confronted with death; and in the face of this terror all feeling of class distinction or differences of calling broke down. In the common sorrows and joys that they shared while in the trenches there developed a spirit of comradeship between fellow countrymen such as had never been known before. In the trenches the common destiny stood out before all eyes in gigantic form above the destiny of the individual.
And yet another thing arose in those trenches, despite all the bitterness and ruthlessness of the struggle. This was a certain feeling that between the men in the front lines on the opposite frontiers of No-Man's-Land there was a certain bond of union which arose from the fact that on both sides they had to endure the same suffering, to stand in the same mud and face the same death.
And this feeling of a common bond has remained up to the present day. Is it not so? When soldiers of the front-line trenches who fought on the opposite sides now find themselves together they naturally speak of the world war; but one hope that is constantly glittering through their conversation is the hope of Peace. And therefore it is that the men who fought in the front-line trenches are now called upon to throw a bridge of understanding across the gulf that separates nation from nation, if the politicians cannot find the means of doing so.
We who have fought in the trenches are determined that an incompetent diplomacy shall not be the cause of our stumbling into another catastrophe. The front-line soldiers would have to bear the brunt of the suffering once again.
The soldiers who fought in the trenches, no matter on which side, feel free of all responsibility for the last war. We want to work together to prevent a new catastrophe. We desire in common to build up in peace what in common we destroyed in war.
It is high time that now at last a real understanding should be reached among the nations. This must be an understanding based on mutual respect for one another; because only such an understanding can endure. It must be founded on the same kind of mutual respect as those who fought on opposite sides of the front-line trenches have always had for one another.
For there must be no doubt about this:
Most of the Great Powers have accumulated more war materiel now than ever before.
But war materiel, which is in danger of deteriorating, is perilous stuff in the midst of a world which has been in a spirit of unrest ever since the war and among nations that have the highest mistrust of one another today. An insignificant epi sode, like the unfortunate shot that was fired in Serajevo in 1914-perhaps an ex plosion from the pistol of a fool-might suffice, even against the best will of the nations concerned, to set millions of people over against one another in armed conflict. Such an episode might be sufficient to plow up whole sections of countryside through tens of thousands of cannons of all calibers and ranges, to blow towns and villages into the air in a sea of flames and to smother all life in clouds of poison gas.
Those who took part in the world war had a foretaste of what a modern war would signify today with more fully perfected weapons. I appeal to the front-line comrades of the war, on all sides. Be honest. Of course we once stood out there in the proud feeling that we were doughty men-soldiers, warriors, liberated from the everyday routine of our former existence. We probably experienced a temporary pleasure in a kind of life that was a crude contrast to the languid existence which modern civilization and hyper-civilization brings with it. We felt ourselves worthier men than those who were far from the front and had nothing to do with the destiny that was being decided there. We felt that we were defending the life of our nation and that we were the trustees of its future.
But let us be honest. The smell of death was always in our nostrils. We have seen death in more fearful and mangled shapes than any men before our time. We squatted and crouched in our dug-outs, waiting to be crushed to pieces. We listened with stilled breath as our trained ear heard the hiss of the shell above us, as the mine exploded before our feet. Our ears throbbed as if they would break to pieces when we sought cover in vain against the deadly rattle of the machine gun. With our gas masks on, we felt ourselves suffocating to death in midst of the gas clouds. We stumbled along in the water-logged trenches. We lay out in shell craters through the freezing nights. For days and weeks together the horror of battle passed over us. We were frozen and hungry and often on the verge of madness. The cries of the heavily wounded men were in our ears. We met blinded men staggering back and we heard the death rattle in the throats of the dying. Among the heaped up corpses of our dead comrades we lost all hope of life. We saw the misery of the refugees behind the lines. We saw the widows and the orphans, the cripples and the suffering, the sick children and the hungry women at home.
Let us be honest. Did not each of us then and there often ask: Why all this? Must it be? Can humanity not be spared all this in the future?
But we held out, on all sides, as men of duty and discipline and loyalty, as men who despised cowardice.
Today I take up anew the question we then asked and I send it out to ring as a summons through the world. As one who fought in the front-line trenches to other front-line soldiers throughout the world, as a leader of the German nation to the leader of other nations, I ask: Must it be? With goodwill and cooperation cannot we save humanity from this?
Today I can speak, because a man of my own people has re-established the honor of that people before the world.
Today I can speak because the leader of my people has himself offered the hand of peace to the world. Today I can speak be cause the courageous stand of one man, Adolf Hitler, is a guarantee against my being misunderstood or accused of making common cause with the pacifist poltroons.
Today I raise my voice, because I wish also to warn the world against mistaking the Germany of today, the Germany of peace, for the Germany of the pacifists.
For this must be proclaimed and made known: Although the men of the old front line have the thousand-fold horrors of the war still before their minds, and although the post-war generation wants war as little as the older generation does, yet: The road is not open for an "excursion" into our country.
Just as in the Great War, the French people defended every rod of their soil with all their might and would defend it again any day against a renewed attack, so would the German people do in like manner today. The French front-line soldier will especially understand us when we tell those who are constantly playing with the idea of another war-which, of course, would have to be waged on the front by others than the professional hate mongers: "If you dare to attack us, if you dare to march into the new Germany, then shall the world learn what the spirit of the new Germany is. It would fight for the inviolability of its freedom as scarcely any other people in history ever fought."
The French people know how one defends one's native soil. Every scrap of wood, every hill, every farmstead would have to be conquered with the outpouring of blood. Old and young would dig themselves into their native soil. They would defend themselves with a fanaticism unparalleled in the world's history.
And even though the superiority of armament should turn out victorious, the way through the Reich would be a road of gruesome sacrifice also for the invader; because there never was a nation so filled with the sense of its right, as our nation is, and the sense of its duty to defend itself to the last against every attack.
The soldiers of France recognize how tenaciously the German soldiers fought for four-and-a-half years against superior forces.
The soldiers of the old front line want peace.
The people want peace.
The German government wants peace.
History will certainly bestow more laurels on the men who, in these difficult times, will have worked to bring about an understanding among the nations, and thus to save civilization, than on those who think that by aggressive political and military measures they can win victories that will really be victories. The people themselves will be grateful to those leaders who will have assured peace to them; because unemployment, with all its social misery, is ultimately attributable to a meager interchange of goods between the various nations. And this in exchange is kept at a low level by the absence of mutual trust.
It is an indubitable fact that an understanding between Germany and France would not only help those nations, looked upon as a whole, but also each single individual among the populations of both. To put the matter concretely, every French man and every German would thereby be assured a higher income permanently or a higher permanent wage.
The war, and the continuation of it by other means under the name of peace, brought no good to civilization or the well-being of the nations. As little as the war profited us all, so much more will a real peace benefit us all.
Teal peace and honest mutual trust between the nations will make possible the reduction of armaments, which today are a heavy drain on a large section of the in come of the nations, therewith detracting from the wealth of the individual citizens.
Again and again Adolf Hitler has as serted that Germany demands equality of rights in all spheres, including that of armament. Once such an understanding as I have been speaking of shall have been arrived at between Germany and her neigh bors, Germany can easily be content with the minimum amount of armament which is necessary for her own internal security and the guaranteeing of peace.
The front-line soldiers who are now in the German government honorably de mand peace and understanding. I appeal to the ex-servicemen of all nations, and even to their governments, to give us their combined support in striving toward this goal.
From the sacred soil of East Prussia I send out this appeal to the soldiers of the world who fought in the war. Here on this German borderland began the great world struggle which brought with it such terrible sacrifices, sacrifices from which the nations that took part in the struggle have not yet recovered. I hope that the spirits which hover over this historic battlefield from which I send out this cry of peace will help to make it effective.
In the memory of its dead, many of whom fell here in East Prussia, Germany's will to peace will continue to grow stronger and stronger. Would that the nations which stand on the other frontiers of Germany might guarantee a greater degree of security for their own people and ours through friendly pacts of mutual understanding rather than by the heaping up of war materiel. That is our hope. v
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