Category: Hitler Youth

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


The divine is powerful in its creatures. It dwells not in walls that people build. They may be witnesses of its will, but god is in the living.

§ Our ancestors went into the forests to find or to honor god. They greeted his light rising in the morning. That was more to them than a lamp in a man’s hand. They stood on mountain tops because his greatest work, the starry sky, was nearest there, not covered by a roof of stone. The great spring flowing from the mountain was more genuine and nearer to god than anything that could flow from a bottle held by a human hand.

§ Who dares to say that they were not close to the living god?

§ Other peoples may seek refuge in the stone walls of their cities or seek their god in caves. The true German senses god with holy fear in the life of creation. He prays to god by honoring his great works.

§ Who dares to say that God is nearer to us in that which human beings have built?

§ The faith of our fathers remains strong in us. Still today the German wanders through his countryside and is moved by the beauty of the land god has given him. The summits of his mountains give freedom. He feels eternity amidst the sea. Flowing water is to him the image of eternal change.

§ He protects the forest and the tree and the bush as if they were his comrades. He loves the animals that are tortured and tormented in other countries. What to him is part of his household is elsewhere only a possession.

§ He sees and honors in everything god’s creation, in the holy earth, in the wandering wind, in the flickering flames, in which there is always change. Ever again we stand on the summits of the peaks and wave the torch and feel the magnificent and the ineffable.

§ Who dares chide us because our eyes are open?

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


Birth and death are the same; they are the two sides of one door. To enter one room always means leaving another. It depends on which room or which life we are in as to whether we say “entrance” or “exit,” life or death.

§ For he who understands it, death holds no terrors. But he who did not go his proper way in life and sinned will see his guilt in death. But there is after death no place of torture, no hell. To see one’s guilt is the severest judgment and at the same time the greatest penalty. Judgment and punishment are within yourself.

§ Neglected work can only be made up by double effort. It will once more be your choice, either to work toward the world plan, or to be its enemy. That is the only death that there is, to become a force for destruction rather than for creation, and this death is not physical. It is your free choice to decide on which side you belong, on god’s or, to use an old term, “the devil’s.”

§ What we call birth and death is only the door between two worlds. There is no birth and no death, only change, and we can go confidently through the door, for all the worlds were created by one hand.

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

Knowledge is that which can be measured by reason. Knowledge alone means nothing and is dead.

§ A wish that you can fulfill is called hope. Hope can easily come to nothing.

§ But faith can never fail, for faith is strength. Faith springs from your deepest feelings. It is that knowledge for which there is no explanation through reason. In faith the soul sees a part of the world order. It has a sense of that which should be, and sees through its eyes a part of the way that it should and can go. It knows that by going this way it fulfills god’s command and is working toward the great work that is immeasurable, incomprehensible.

§ Because faith sees this and can do it, it is more than human strength. It is a part of the enormous power that fills all life and all worlds. With faith, a person walks with the assurance of a sleepwalker. Who can resist him, for he follows the path of the highest will. He will succeed when he believes. No hand raised against him will divert him from his way. The bullet aimed at him will not hit as long has he has not finished his path, as long as he has not turned from it.

§ Thousands do not understand the believing person because their souls cannot see. But what do the faithful care about the opinion of others, what do those who can see care about the opinion of the blind, what do those who have become strong care about what the weak think.

§ The way of faith is the way of everything great. Before our eyes Adolf Hitler went the way fate led him. He was filled with it and believed what no reason of the reasonable could see.

§ The path of faith is before each of us. Even if it is not the path of fame and honor, it is still the path of duty and of greatest happiness. To find it means to gain a part of the eternal strength that moves the worlds.

§ Because faith is strength, it can do what seems impossible. It is the foundation for every deed. No one can do anything without faith. No one can even jump over a ditch if he does not believe he can do it. The highest and most important in a person is not knowledge and understanding, but rather his faith. Each is worth only as much as the faith he has.

§ This new Reich began with faith. The first party rally after the seizure of power was called “The Victory of Faith.” It grew and became great through faith. It no longer grew from the faith of one man, but from the faith of us all, and was borne by the strength of all. More than human strength was present.

§ Woe to those who do not believe. They are not on the side of the strength of creation, but rather annihilation. They are the destroyers of the Reich.

§ Faith is however stronger than all other powers that can be found in this world.

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


There is no freedom in Germany to do whatever one wants, and there will be no such freedom, because otherwise Germany would not exist.

§ Freedom does not mean taking advantage of others, stealing from them, without being punished. Freedom does not mean living as one pleases. Nor does it mean preserving one’s life through cowardice.

§ Freedom is choosing to follow the path that duty requires. The others are slaves of themselves. He is the only free man: upright and proud, master of everything that might demean him, the best of the nation, and the bearer of the state. He has elevated himself. He does his duty while others take a holiday. But his duty raises him above over his little ego and makes him free.

§ Somewhere in the middle of a hot summer, a village’s well dries up. Day and night, someone works hard to dig a new well. No one gave the order. But for him it is a happy duty to find water for women and children and comrades. The other does what he likes. The one is a free man amidst the hard work he has chosen to do. The other is the slave of his desires and passions. He is a rogue who may say in the pub that man is born free and can do whatever he wishes.

§ He who thinks of himself is a slave and bound; he who thinks of others is master and free.