14 August 1941, midday
Plutocracy and the Saxon proletariat—An incredibly stupid bourgeoisie.
There’s nothing astonishing about the fact that Communism had its strongest bastion in Saxony, or that it took us time to win over the Saxon workers to our side. Nor is it astonishing that they are now counted amongst our most loyal supporters. The Saxon bourgeoisie was incredibly narrow-minded. These people insisted that we were mere Communists. Anyone who proclaims the right to social equality for the masses is a Bolshevik! The way in which they exploited the home worker was un- imaginable.
It’s a real crime to have turned the Saxon workers into proletarians. There was a ruling plutocracy in those parts comparable to what still exists to-day in England. Recruiting for the Wehrmacht enabled us to observe the progressive lowering of the quality of the human material in this region. I don’t blame the small man for turning Communist; but I blame the intellectual who did nothing but exploit other people’s poverty for other ends. When one thinks of that riff-raff of a bourgeoisie, even to-day one sees red.
The masses followed the only course possible. The worker took no part in national life. When a monument was unveiled to the memory of Bismarck, or when a ship was launched, no delegation of workers was ever invited—only the frock-coats and uniforms. For me, the top hat is the signature of the bourgeois. When war came, the harm had been done, and it was too late to go into reverse. Moreover, people were too cowardly to crush Social Democracy.
Our pact with Russia never implied that we might be led to adopt a different attitude towards the danger within. Taken by themselves, I find our Communists a thousand times more sympathetic than Starhemberg, say. They were sturdy fellows. Pity they didn’t stay a little longer in Russia. They would have come back completely cured.