“Self Control”

From Faith and Action (1938) by Helmut Stellrecht for the Hitler Youth:


One expects that a person who drives a car is in control, and that he causes no accidents. One expects that a person who lives with other people will control himself, so that he does not endanger himself or others.

§ The forces within us can raise or lower us. It depends on the use we make of them, on whether we control them and therefore ourselves.

§ Hunger and thirst exist to be satisfied. But woe to him who eats for the sake of eating or drinks for the sake of drinking. He is lower than an animal that knows when it has had enough. But he to whom understanding has been given does not know it. We hate the gluttons and drunkards with bulging bodies and swollen eyes, people with no character or self control. We eat and drink to live, but we never live in order to eat and drink.

§ The body must be kept under iron discipline so that we are always in charge of it and it is always dependable. We also may never allow the sexual drive to control us. For adults it is not there to be satisfied, but rather a force that should be used to produce future generations healthy in both body and soul. A young person is given strength not to use in bed, but rather in the sun and the wind, on the sports field and countryside, until we have a body in front of us full of strength and speed, a body in which courage and faith are joined in a free soul, a body that is master of its passions, master of itself, the German person of the future. Out of it will grow the strength of a renewed people, the bearer of a future generation of nobility and freedom.

§ If you control yourself, you control life.

§ If you control yourself, you must be able to bear pain without uttering a sound. Men do not complain or cry, and boys who want to become men behave in the same way.

§ You should not give in to every little problem. Be open, be determined, never play the cripple, but control yourself. Be the master of your pain and problems. Force yourself to be cheerfully faithful. Then you will find strength you did not know you had.

§ You must practice self control. How often does duty call, but something distracts you? Command yourself so that you can master yourself.

§ Do something every day that you do not like to do, and avoid doing something every day that you would gladly have done.

§ Do everything you are ordered to do immediately, without thinking about it. You must in order to become a real man.

§ That is the secret of every great personality. It has gained all the strength it directs outwardly from overcoming itself.

§ But you should not be a meek person who gives up everything in order to live in a cave to receive a promised blessing. God does not want that for a person. He should have pleasure in his work. He should use it, but never misuse it, and should be the master of himself.