THE WEST'S DARKEST HOUR – Page 129 – — National Socialism after 1945

Byzantine discussions

about Roe v. Wade

In the Spanish language, the expression Byzantine discussion means a useless discussion in which each side can never succeed in proving its assertions to the opposing side. It is equivalent to the expression ‘discussing the sex of angels’, as this was the subject that the Byzantines were discussing in a serious way when the Ottomans laid siege to Constantinople, and this fact is considered to be the closest origin of the expression Byzantine argument. Not only the Byzantines, but also in Europe the medieval nominalists considered it weird that there could be a single thing existing in several places at the same time. By contrast, the realists held that all instances of green are held together by the relation of participation or imitation, but this relation cannot be explained.

In other words: without rejecting the theological presuppositions of Christianity, white intellectuals wasted their intellect in completely useless discussions, and precisely because of their inability to apostatise from their religion.

The same can be said today when we look at the forums of white nationalism. On the hot topic, Roe v. Wade, one of the leading nationalists on the Christian side said yesterday: ‘Some White Nationalists would do almost anything except convert to Christianity and have kids to return to those demographics. Human sacrifice sure isn’t moving the ball’. His secular counterpart, who in my eyes is a typical neochristian, wrote in his webzine: ‘I believe that White Nationalism is completely consistent with respecting the rights of other human beings. We can’t just murder millions of people because it is convenient. That may be fine for liberals, but the New Right occupies higher moral ground’.

Higher moral ground, really? I will still dedicate this day to finish correcting the syntax of the third book of my trilogy in Spanish, which I will start translating into English when I can. I believe it can greatly help noble whites (not the ignoble ones who say things like the above) to save their race by abandoning all vestiges of Christian ethics, which includes the ‘human rights’ of the French revolutionaries.

Note that, for the Nazis, abortion of Aryans was forbidden and only abortion of non-Aryans was legal. The Christianity and neochristianity of the white nationalists discussing the implications of Roe v. Wade these days is patent in that they are incapable of thinking like them. Not for nothing does the Spanish section of this site now advertises four books of which three are openly anti-Christian: Evropa Soberana’s which was originally published on a now-censored blog; Ferdinand Bardamu’s which was originally published on this site (Bardamu disappeared and his email no longer works); and Catharine Nixey’s, the only one published by a regular publishing house.

But in my books I go further. If we follow in the footsteps of the leading philosopher of a post-1945 National Socialism, Savitri Devi, we would no longer even think as the Nazis thought about abortion in public before the Second World War. Now our values system must emulate what Himmler said in private regarding his Master Plan East. American racialists, whether Christian or secular, are light-years away from this way of seeing things. We need young people who are capable of shattering the Tablets of Stone currently followed by both Christian and secular racialists in America.

Tags Transvaluation of all values

Deranged altruism Racial right Schutzstaffel (SS)

SS vs. WN

Post author By C .T.
Post date May 5, 2022

On racialist forums some reproduce the statistics of Jews in the US compared to Jews in, say, Weimar Germany pretending, by that simple comparison between two countries and two eras, to understand why America is in such bad shape.

But that’s not a very scientific way of thinking insofar as, I understand, there are comparatively few Jews in Norway, and the ethno-suicidal liberalism of that country is as delusional as that of the US.

While I agree with both Nazis and white nationalists that Jews shouldn’t live in the West, it seems to me crystal clear that the root aetiology of Aryan decline must be sought in a factor that explains both Norway’s liberalism and, say, the miscegenation that occurred south of the Rio Grande when the Inquisition prevented avowed Jews from migrating freely to the New World. (A film shot in Mexico about what the Inquisition did to Jews in the city where I live can be seen: here.)

The root aetiology, Christian ethics, has so permeated the white mindset that even secular white nationalists like Greg Johnson use Christian pity to suggest that we should side with the main victims of the recent war: the Ukrainians. And if that’s not enough, Johnson flatly speaks of Ukrainians as ‘white’, as if the images we get from the war don’t show them as mudbloods. Just compare Johnson’s pity, who in 2010 was still talking about Jesus in his San Francisco church, with the SS piece I included in The Fair Race:

Racial differences

Races differ not only in their natures, but also in their values. Some races have great creative gifts; others over the centuries never raise themselves above the most primitive level. Think of the fruitful plains of the Ukraine, and imagine what German industry and German ability could have done with them! Compare them with the sandy soil of Mark Brandenburg. The smallest village there displays a culture that towers over Bolshevism’s model cities and collective farms.

Caption: A Russian Village in the fertile Ukraine,
a German farm on land wrested from the sea.
The environment does not form people…
…people form the environment.

The accomplishments of the Nordic race are the highest of any race in Europe. This is shown in many splendid cultural monuments, not only on European soil, but also deep in Asia and Africa. The investigations are at an early stage, but we already know that there is hardly a nation in North Africa, the Near East, Iran, India and as far as Turkistan that does not show wonderful evidence of Nordic cultures. It must fill us with pride that in our own homeland, in Germany, culture has bloomed in unbroken lines for more than 5000 years, created by people of our blood, our nature, our ancestry.

Until Christian ethical injunctions in secularized form are seen as the primary aetiology of the current value system, many white nationalists will continue to blame Aryan decline solely on the Jew. If someone wants to be a monocausalist, let him be monocausal!: but please regard the Christian problem as an epiphenomenon of the Jewish problem.

Tags Ukraine

Monologe im Führerhauptquartier

Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, 15

Post author By C .T.
Post date May 5, 2022

Führerhauptquartier

8. 1941, abends H/Fu.

Wenn man, wie Rußland, sein Land abschließt, dann nur, um keinen Vergleichs- Maßstab zu geben. Stalin mußte in den baltischen Ländern den Bolschewismus einführen, weil das Leben dort seiner Besatzungs-Armee einen unzuträglichen Vergleichs-Maßstab bedeutet haben würde; zunächst wollte er es gar nicht.[1]

Wir wollen Deutschland so gestalten, daß, wer zu uns kommt, von seinen Vorstellungen geheilt ist. Auf zwingen will ich den Nationalsozialismus aber niemandem. Wenn einer sagt, die anderen blieben ja doch Demokraten, gut, sie sollen unter allen Umständen liberale Demokraten bleiben; die Franzosen zum Beispiel sollen ihre Parteien behalten, je mehr Sozialrevolutionäre Bewegungen sie besitzen, desto besser für uns; es ist schon ganz recht, wie wir es jetzt machen: Viele Franzosen werden sich nicht danach sehnen, daß wir Paris verlassen, sie sind ihrer Verbindung mit uns wegen den Vichy-Franzosen verdächtig; wie Vichy umgekehrt vielleicht nicht ungern sieht, daß wir in Paris sitzen, weil man mit revolutionären Bewegungen zu rechnen hat.[2]

Bei der endgültigen Gestaltung der Wirtschaft werden wir darauf achten müssen, daß die animalischen Bestände an Umfang zunehmen. Sehr wichtig sind 400 000 ha Gummipflanzen zur Deckung unseres Bedarfs.[3]

Die Ausnutzung der Wasserkräfte ist bei uns auf Grund der Macht der privatkapitalistischen Interessen noch ganz in den Anfängen. Die Großwasserkraft muß sich in erster Linie an die Großabnehmer, die chemische Industrie zum Beispiel, halten.

Im übrigen wird aber geradezu prämiert werden müssen die Gewinnung jeder Pferdekraft im Stil unserer früheren Mühlenkraftnutzung: Das Wasser rinnt, man braucht sich nur eine Stufe zu bauen und hat, was man braucht, während die Kohle eines Tages zu Ende geht, ist das Wasser immer neu da. Das kann man alles ganz anders auswerten als jetzt. Man kann Stufe hinter Stufe bauen und das kleinste Gefälle nutzbar machen, erhält dabei einen gleichmäßigen Wasserablauf und man kann bombensicher bauen. Das neue Fischer’sche Verfahren ist eine der genialsten Erfindungen, die je gemacht worden sind.[4]

Norwegen muß für uns einmal eine Elektrizitäts-Zentrale werden für Nord-Europa. Dann haben die Norweger endlich einmal eine europäische Mission zu erfüllen. Wie es in Schweden ist, weiß ich nicht. In Finnland geht es ja leider nicht.

Wenn alle unsere Städte das Münchener Faulschlamm-Verfahren zur Gas-Gewinnung ausnutzen würden (12% vom normalen Gasbedarf werden in München damit gedeckt), so machte das etwas Ungeheueres aus. In der Welser Heide kommt das Gas aus der Erde: die Stadt Wels ist davon geheizt; ich würde mich nicht wundern, wenn dort eines Tages auch Petroleum erschlossen würde.

Aber die Zukunft ist sicher: Wasser, Winde, die Gezeiten; als Heizkraft wird man wahrscheinlich Wasserstoffgas verwenden.

machte das etwas Ungeheueres aus. In der Welser Heide kommt das Gas aus der Erde: die Stadt Wels ist davon geheizt; ich würde mich nicht wundern, wenn dort eines Tages auch Petroleum erschlossen würde.

Aber die Zukunft ist sicher: Wasser, Winde, die Gezeiten; als Heizkraft wird man wahrscheinlich Wasserstoffgas verwenden.

___________

[1] Im geheimen Zusatzprotokoll zum deutsch-sowjetischen Nichtangriffspakt vom 23. 8. 1939 war die nördliche Grenze Litauens zur Grenze der Interessensphäre Deutschlands erklärt worden. Lettland und Estland fielen in den Interessenbereich der UdSSR. Die Regierungen der baltischen Staaten sahen sich in der Folgezeit gezwungen, dem sowjetischen Druck nachzugeben und Verträge abzuschließen, in denen sie den Sowjets Flotten- und Flugzeugstützpunkte einräumten. Im Juni 1940 nutzte die Sowjetunion die außenpolitische Konstellation zur Aufhebung der Souveränität dieser Staaten. Am 15. 6. 1940 gab die litauische Regierung ihre Zustimmung zum Einmarsch der Roten Armee, am 17. 6. rückten sowjetische Verbände in Lettland und Estland ein. Ende Juli war die Umgestaltung der Staaten in sozialistische Sowjetrepubliken vollzogen. Philipp W. Fabry, Die Sowjetunion und das Dritte Reich. Stuttgart 1971, S. 95 ff., bes. 145 ff.

[2] Nach dem Waffenstillstand, der nach der militärischen Niederlage Frankreichs mit Deutschland geschlossen wurde und am 25. 6. 1940 in Kraft trat, blieben drei Fünftel des französischen Staatsgebiets (vornehmlich die Nord- und Ostprovinzen und ein breiter Streifen der Atlantikküste) mit der Hauptstadt Paris von den Deutschen besetzt. Das unbesetzte Frankreich wurde durch eine Demarkationslinie vom besetzten Gebiet abgetrennt. Die Regierung Petain verlegte ihren Regierungssitz am 1. Juli 1940 in den Badeort Vichy.

[3] Weiter unten, Dok. Nr. 19 und 29, spricht Hitler jeweils von 40000 ha Anbaufläche für Gummipflanzen

[4] Das im Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Kohleforschung 1926 entwickelte Fischer-Tropsch-Verfahren.

PDF backup

WDH – pdf 429

Post author By C .T.
Post date May 5, 2022

Click: here

Free speech / association

Twitter

Post author By C .T.
Post date April 29, 2022
2 Comments on Twitter

On Ann Coulter’s account I just responded to the question by another woman, ‘What’s the Biggest Lie you were sold by society, previous generations, the media, or our leaders?’:

That the Nazis were the bad guys in the movie and the Allies the good guys. They hid from me the Holocaust that the Allies committed after 1945 (link).

Will free speech really come to Twitter?

Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Merovingian dynasty Monarchy

Christianity’s Criminal History, 144

Post author By C .T.
Post date April 28, 2022
3 Comments on Christianity’s Criminal History, 144

The fall of Brunhilda and the first peak in the Christianisation of the idea of kingship

(Left, pen drawing from the earliest manuscript of the Chronicle of Fredegar which is believed to depict Eusebius and Jerome, 715 AD.) On the death of Childebert II, he was succeeded by his two sons: Theudebert II (595-612) in Austria, and Theuderic II (595-613) in Burgundy. Brunhilda was the first to rule in the name of her grandchildren, who were still minors, and who only gradually began to intervene in the struggles with the royal house of Neustria after they had reached majority.

In Burgundy, of which she soon became the true ruler, she continued the struggle against Chlothar and, to take revenge on her Austrian enemies, instigated Theuderic against his brother Theudebert of Austria, who, she kept repeating, was not the son of a king but of a market gardener. As late as 600, the two brothers had jointly inflicted a heavy defeat on Chlothar II, who was then only sixteen years old, and had sacked his kingdom, reducing it to a narrow coastal strip around Rouen, Beauvais and Amiens. And still in 602 they had jointly fought the Basques and ‘with God’s help’ had subjected them to tribute.

But afterwards they fought each other fiercely and bloodily. The Chronicle of Fredegar recounts that

never since time immemorial had the Franks or any other people fought so fiercely. Such was the deadliness between the two armies that, where both sides began the battle, the corpses of the dead had no place to lie, but the dead were so crowded together among the other bodies that they stood upright as if they were alive. But Theuderic, with the help of God, defeated Theudebert once more; and the vassals of Theudebert during their flight from Zülpich to Cologne were put to the sword, covering the ground in stretches. On the same day Theuderic came to Cologne and seized all the treasures of Theudebert.

In Cologne, where the Franco-Burgundians entered, Theuderic had his brother tonsured and then cut off his head and annihilated his entire family. ‘Even a very young son of his was grabbed by the foot by order of Theuderic and beaten against a rock, until his brains fell out of his head’, says the Chronicle of Fredegar.

It was the end of one of the innumerable purely Catholic fratricidal wars.

The victor then attempted to seize control of the whole of Gaul and immediately advanced on Neustria. But when he was at the height of his triumph he died unexpectedly, still in his youth, in the year 613. His sons were also killed by Chlothar II of Neustria. But not his godson Merovech, whom Chlothar imprisoned in a monastery, but ‘whom he continued to love with the same affection with which he had taken him from the sacred font of baptism’ (Chronicle of Fredegar).

On the death of Theuderic in Metz, Brunhilda immediately had his eldest son and great-grandson, Sigibert II, who was about ten years old, proclaimed king of Austrasia and Burgundy. But the Austrasian grandees betrayed her. Led by the glorious ancestors of the Carolingians, the two traitors, the steward Pepin of Landen and Arnulf—the future saint and bishop of Metz—, went over to the side of Chlothar II. And after the high treason of the Austrian aristocracy, the queen was also abandoned by the feudal lords of Burgundy under the steward Warnachar. They had decided it beforehand ‘and of course both the bishops and the rest of the great lay lords, according to the contemporary chronicler… resolved not to let a single son of Theuderic escape, but to kill them all and then annihilate Brunhilda and to promote the sovereignty of Chlothar’.

This sealed the queen’s ruin, the exclusion and even the elimination of the Austro-Burgundian branch of the Merovingian dynasty, as well as the triumph of the nobility over the crown.

Brunhilda’s army deserted without resistance. She fled to the Jura and tried to sneak into Burgundy, but at Orbe (in today French Switzerland), by Lake Neuchatel, she was taken prisoner by the Frankish steward and handed over to her nephew.

Chlothar, as God-fearing as he was cruel and thoroughly ecclesiastical-minded, and who as the first Frankish king compared to David, whose ‘piety’ the Chronicle of Fredegar exalts, was a ruler who granted the clergy new rights and abundant donations, guaranteed them freedom of episcopal elections, exempted them from all the burdens of ecclesiastical property, was ‘clement and full of kindness to all’. The queen consort of Chilperic I, Fredegund, subjected her to torture for three days in the year 613. (Note of the Ed.: queen Brunhilda of Austrasia was Fredegund’s sister-in-law.) This happened when Brunhilda was already almost septuagenarian; she then had the soldiers ride her on a camel, and finally tied by her hair, one arm and one foot ‘to the tail of the wildest steed’ and dragged her to death, until ‘her limbs were torn off one after the other’ (Chronicle of Fredegar). Her bones were burned. And her offspring were also eliminated up to her great-grandchildren, with the sole exception of Prince Merovech, Chlothar’s godson.

(Left, Brunhilde is dragged to her death.) But a modern researcher writes: ‘It was precisely under this ruler that, as can be clearly demonstrated, the Christianisation of the idea of the king reached its first peak’ (Anton).

Pope Gregory had miscalculated. It was neither Brunhilda nor the Austrian branch that emerged victorious from these massive atrocities: the victor was the Neustrian Chlothar II, to whom Gregory had sent only a single letter of his 854 letters that have been preserved. In 614 the king convened a national synod in Paris which marked the beginning of the national Frankish Church, independent of Rome for a century.

Tags Karlheinz Deschner, Middle Ages, Roman Catholic popes

Conservatism Darkening Age (book) Feminism Liberalism Sponsor

On Agustín Laje

Here we can watch Nicolás Márquez and Agustín Laje in their video yesterday discussing Laje’s new book.

Agustín Laje Arrigoni (born in Córdoba in 1989) is an Argentine writer, political scientist and lecturer. He is co-author of El Libro Negro de la Nueva Izquierda (The Black Book of the New Left) and author of the recently published book La Batalla Cultural: Reflexiones críticas para una Nueva Derecha (The Cultural Battle: Critical Reflections for a New Right).

Laje is the founder and president of the Fundación Libre, a conservative think tank. In Latin America he has been labelled an ‘ultra-right-winger’ by various media. Remember that Latin America subscribes to the egalitarian madness of the West, but since miscegenation has already been consummated here, there is little talk of race, hence racial issues are not discussed by Laje. Although his remarks have been labelled homophobic by the Spanish-speaking MSM, Laje subscribes to the liberal paradigm of ‘let him live’ regarding lifestyles, and only rejects third-wave feminism, not the first two waves. Despite this, Laje calls himself a paleolibertarian, anti-feminist and opposes euthanasia, abortion and homo marriage.

Given that La Batalla Cultural has just been published by HarperCollins, it’s perhaps worth saying that Laje quotes a writer as his conclusion: “Todo lo bueno de la civilización occidental, desde la libertad individual hasta el arte se debe al cristianismo” (‘Everything good in Western civilisation, from individual freedom to art, is due to Christianity’). Obviously, like racialists north of the Rio Grande, Laje is ignorant of the history of Christianity even though Catherine Nixey’s book, which we have been quoting here, has been translated into Spanish.

I have already said a couple of things about Laje on this site, albeit casually (here and here). But I would like to say something else. In the last-linked post I said:

Compared to the neighbouring country to the north, I consider Latin America the continent of the blue pill. There is nothing in MSM that resembles, say, Tucker Carlson. One has to search social media to find the voice of an Argentine, Agustín Laje, and his YouTube channel: a kind of Latin American Tucker who in the Spanish-speaking MSM would be inconceivable.

I mention this only because the experiences I have had with racialists in the UK and US concerning Latin America have been surreal. When I spoke to Jez Turner in London, for example, he asked me if there were no nationalist movements in Latin America. His question left me cold, because any nationalism in this part of the continent is preached based on a consummated miscegenation—never based on Aryan preservation! Also, when I corresponded with Tom Goodrich, I noticed that he had an infinitely naïve view of Latin Americans. He told me that, unlike Americans, they would give me juicy donations here. The truth is that, in all the years I have received donations, I haven’t received a single cent from a Spanish speaker!

I’ve already written about these things in my review of David Duke’s trip to Mexico seven years ago. But I am still surprised that English speakers haven’t realised that there is no such thing as a red-pilled activist in this part of the continent. Not a single one. They all sleep in the matrix that controls us. Still, if I read Laje’s new book that is turning into a bestseller, I will be reviewing it in the Spanish section of this site (although it is the Catholic Laje who should read Nixey’s book).

Psychology

Deepest

Post author By C .T.
Post date April 26, 2022
2 Comments on Deepest

Editor’s Note: In 2018 I posted ‘William James’ principle’:

Behind the groupthink is the great finding of William James, ‘The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated’. It is this principle that moves whites to the phenomenon of virtue signalling: if I join the ethos of the masses, I will be appreciated, even if it is a suicidal ethos.

Counter-Currents’ recent article ‘Unlearn Your Views’ by Bill Pritchard reminded me what I said in 2018. Pritchard said:

______ 卐 ______

Leftists from conservative backgrounds insist that they changed their minds because they ‘thought for themselves’, and order all Right-wingers to do the same—or else.

The claim that they ‘thought for themselves’ is easily disproven. Truly thinking for oneself is difficult. Shedding old beliefs in the pursuit of truth is an arduous, even painful process, like summiting a mountain. Anyone who has embarked on this path would realize that beliefs cannot simply be discarded overnight…

In most cases, people who reject the value system instilled in them by their upbringing did not arrive at their views through reason. They were simply initiated into a peer group/subculture whose ideology they absorbed, or they consciously decided to rebel against their parents. Swapping one ideology for another via peer pressure or rebellion is relatively easy. It’s akin to memorizing a formula instead of actually deriving it oneself and understanding why it works. This explains why Leftists scoff at those who struggle to leave old beliefs behind and proclaim that ‘it’s not rocket science’…

if you really cared about timeless truths, you would be indifferent to social fads and would not invoke the Current Year as an argument. Many Leftists from conservative backgrounds are upwardly-mobile strivers afflicted with status anxiety who prize their social standing over truth…

The reason why formerly conservative Leftists strayed further from their upbringing than I and many other White Nationalists is not that they are smarter or more independently-minded, but that they were subjected to peer influences and social pressures to which we, being loners, were not…

If the vast majority of people will never be able to independently and organically experience a radical shift in their worldviews, then telling them to do so amounts to telling them to find a new peer group.

Henry Picker Martin Bormann

The Führer’s monologues (v)

Post author By C .T.
Post date April 25, 2022

If this rather light-hearted handling of the texts—and the examples could be multiplied—already suggests restraint about Picker’s tradition, the critical reserve is reinforced by two marginal notes by Bormann. In Picker’s record of the conversation of 12 May 1942,[1] the head of the Party Chancellery complains: ‘This transcript is in many cases quite inaccurate, since Dr Picker, when he took notes during the very long conversation, did not add to them who held this or that view!’ Quite obviously, then, Picker does not seem to have been sufficiently successful in reliably distinguishing Hitler’s views from those of his dinner guests or of party leaders not present who were quoted during the conversation. Even if the validity of the statement can no longer be verified, it must in any case call for caution. There is no evidence in the available material for Picker’s assertion that Bormann ‘blatantly corrected’ his notes. The objections are measured rather than sharp and unobjective. For example, Bormann found the note of the conversation of 4 July 1942 ‘in many cases not quite accurate’, for in a conversation about the Concordat, Hitler had stated: ‘In the case of a Reich regulation, we would have to go by the area that was furthest behind ideologically, i.e. particularly favourable to the enemy’. Picker must have considered this correction by Bormann to be justified, because he included the sentence in his text in a slightly modified form—without, of course, marking it as an addition by another hand—which in no way made the passage in question more precise or unambiguous.[2] In other respects, too, Picker seems to have found notes dictated by Bormann worthy of attention, for he incorporated them very generously into his edition of the Tischgespräche and did not always mark them as someone else’s intellectual property.[3]

Since Picker considers his transcripts made for the NSDAP party chancellery to be private property, a historical-critical edition of all the records from the Führer’s headquarters, as Eberhard Jäckel and Martin Broszat have repeatedly called for, is not to be expected in the foreseeable future. Given the deficiencies of Picker’s records, such an edition would be urgently desirable in the interest of international research.

A discussion of the insightful value of the source must first start with the motives that determined Martin Bormann to have Hitler’s monologues recorded. When he took over as head of the party chancellery after Hess’s flight to England in May 1941, he was aware that the political influence of the NSDAP in the country had dwindled because it lacked ideological unity and a clear course. He wanted to remedy this. Since he knew the close ties between the National Socialist elite and Hitler and was well aware that even the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter had not developed an independent position, only the party leader himself came into question as an interpreter of the world view. Bormann hoped that by fixing Hitler’s statements he could create a kind of compendium for the intellectual-political orientation of the NSDAP. Based on the party leader’s comments on concrete events and his declarations of intent in connection with domestic and foreign policy decisions, he wanted to coordinate and activate party work. To secure for the NSDAP the role of the ‘will-bearer of the nation’, which was always aspired to but never achieved, Bormann tried to immediately translate Hitler’s thoughts and views into political practice and incorporate them into the decrees and directives of the Party Chancellery. In possession of clear directives, the political leaders in the country had to succeed, he hoped, in emphatically reasserting their claim to leadership vis-à-vis state authorities, offices of the Wehrmacht and influential business circles.

Martin Bormann, left.

In some cases, the head of the party chancellery passed on Hitler’s statements as directives. For example, Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, received by letter on 23 July 1942 everything that Hitler had developed in conversation shortly beforehand in terms of views on Ostpolitik.[4] In another case, there is evidence that a note by Heim was made available to the responsible Reich Minister. Following the reception of the newly appointed Minister of Justice, Thierack, and his State Secretary at the Führer’s headquarters on 20 August 1942, Hitler abandoned the customary practice of not discussing at the table the matters under discussion. He criticised the administration of justice, which in his opinion was due to a lack of political insight, and then very firmly formulated his views and demands. Bormann gave the monologue transcript prepared by Heim to the minister so that he could familiarise himself in detail with his Führer’s thoughts and make them the guideline for his actions. This is what happened; in any case, Hitler’s formulations can be found in the speech that Thierack gave to the directors of the higher regional courts and the attorneys general on 29 September 1942.[5] What effect this speech had, whether it impressed or even influenced the judges, cannot be proven, however. Doubts are permitted here, because Hitler was repeatedly dissatisfied with the judiciary even later.

In general, the political effectiveness of the system should not be inferred from Bormann’s intentions and restless activity. The head of the party chancellery by no means immediately transformed every thought Hitler expressed into an order,[6] but kept precisely to the limits Hitler set for him. Thus, among other things, he was fundamentally forbidden to take a harder line against the churches, as he wished. The Reichsleiter also had no power of action in personnel policy. Hitler reserved the right to decide in all important cases. The Gauleiters of the NSDAP in particular, as well as the leaders of the branches and affiliated associations, knew this and therefore decided very high-handedly whether to heed or ignore Bormann’s directives. For example, the Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann, weakened Hitler’s criticism of the judiciary by explaining to the judges in his Higher Regional Court district that they had given no cause for complaint, that the criticism was primarily directed at the Ministry and not at the individual judge.[7] But precisely in this way he contradicted the opinion of the party leadership, without being reprimanded for it. He was not required to drop the considerations and steer a harder course.

Bormann’s intimate knowledge of Hitler’s views undoubtedly enabled him to reinforce the party’s influence in important decision-making processes at the highest level. However, he was not able to bring the party onto a unified and clear political course. The distance from the Führer’s headquarters to Berlin and the Gau capitals was too far for that, and the war in any case considerably narrowed the scope for action. Joseph Goebbels, the Gauleiter of Berlin, later gave vent to his growing annoyance in his diary: ‘Bormann has turned the party chancellery into a paper office. Every day he sends out a mountain of letters and files that the Gauleiter, who is now in the thick of the fight, can practically no longer even read through’.[8] Ultimately, precise knowledge of Hitler’s worldview was primarily to Bormann’s advantage in that he strengthened his reputation by expressing the same views. Despite his restless zeal and the comprehensive information he received, he remained Hitler’s first assistant until his death.

____________

[1] Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche, doc. 114, p. 283.

[2] Ibid., doc. 168, p. 414.

[3] Ibid., oc. 43 (24. 2. 1942), p. 135, clearly bears Bormann’s dictation mark.

[4] This was first pointed out by Alexander Dallin, Deutsche Herrschaft in Russland 1941-1945, Düsseldorf 1958, pp. 15 and 469/70. Letter from Bormann to Rosenberg, 23 July 1942, ND-NO 1878.

[5] Detailed references in Lothar Gruchmann, Hitler über die Justiz. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 12, 1964, p. 91.

[6] Jochen von Lang, Der Sekretär. Stuttgart 1977, p. 229.

[7] Werner Johe, Die gleichgeschaltete Justiz. Organisation des Rechtswesens und Politisierung der Rechtsprechung 1933-1945, dargestellt am Beispiel des Oberlandesgerichtsbezirks Hamburg. Frankfurt/Main 1962, p. 176.

[8] Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher 1945. Die letzten Aufzeichnungen. Hamburg 1977, p. 514. Similar complaints from other Gauleiters are also available from earlier times.