Adolf Hitler on Conflict With the Red Front, part Two

FROM MEIN KAMPF, CHAPTER SEVEN OF VOLUME TWO, pages 217 to 265 of the Thomas Dalton dual-translation. (See here for series introduction.

This completes Chapter 7. A lot here for dissidents to learn about a confident attitude and fearless organizing.

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7.6 Marxist and Bourgeois Meeting Techniques

The Marxists always exercized the most rigid discipline, and thus the question of breaking up a Marxist meeting could never have originated in the Bourgeoisie. …

Therefore the moment a bourgeois meeting was announced a howl of rage went up from the Red press. …

One simply had to witness such a bourgeois meeting, and see its leaders in all their miserable fear! Very often, such threats were sufficient to call off a meeting at once. … The chairman … did his best … to welcome a visit from men who as yet were not in sympathy with them … also assured them that the meeting had no intention whatsoever of interfering with anyone's professed convictions. No indeed, everyone had the right to form and hold his own political views, as long as others were allowed to do so likewise. He therefore requested … the speaker be allowed to deliver his speech without interruption—the speech wouldn't be long, in any case. …

The brothers on the Left had little if any appreciation for that; before the speaker had even begun, he was shouted down, and not seldom, one had the impression that such speakers were grateful to Fate for quickly ending the painful procedure. …

Therefore, it was something quite new to the Marxist when we National Socialists organized our first meetings. They came to our meetings in the belief that the little game they had so often played could be repeated on us. “Today we'll finish you off!” How often did they boast this to each other upon entering our meeting, only to be thrown out with lightning speed before they had time to repeat it.

In the first place, our meeting committee was entirely different. … We simply stated that we were masters of the meeting, that we would do as we pleased, and that anyone who dared to interrupt would be unceremoniously thrown out. … This in itself astonished them.

7.7 National Socialist Security Troop

Secondly, we had at our disposal a well-organized hall guard—or better, security service—... composed chiefly of young men [who] had been trained and instructed to realize that only terror is capable of smashing terror—that only courageous and determined men had succeeded in this world, and that we were fighting for an ideal so great and noble that it was worth the last drop of blood. They were trained to realize that the best means of defense was attack, and the reputation of our security troops marked us as a combat group and not a debating club. …

And how eagerly did this youth yearn for such an order! …

Thus it became clear to everyone that the Revolution had only been possible thanks to the disastrous bourgeois leadership of our people.

[…]

Already in midsummer of 1920, the organization of security troops was gradually assuming a definite shape, and by the spring of 1921 they were partitioned by hundreds, which in turn were sub-divided into smaller groups.

This was urgently necessary because our meeting activity had steadily increased. … In the autumn and winter of 1920-21, our meetings in the Bürgerbräu and Munich Kindl-Keller had become more massive; NSDAP demonstrations were always overcrowded, so that the police had to close the doors before they even began.

7.8 Old and New Black-Red-Gold

[…] After the War, I was at a Marxist mass-demonstration in Berlin, in front of the Royal Palace and the Lustgarten. A sea of red flags, red scarves, and red flowers was in itself sufficient to give that huge assembly of about 120,000 persons an outward appearance of strength. I could feel and understand how easily the man in the street sucumbs to the hypnotic magic of such a grandiose spectacle.

The Reich was formed without the aid of the German bourgeoisie, and the flag itself was born of the War. Hence it was merely a State flag, possessing no importance in the sense of any particular philosophical mission. …

Until 1920, then, there was no flag to confront Marxism that would have represented its philosohical polar opposite. … At best, [the bourgeoise parties] had in mind a reconstruction of the old Reich.

The black-white-red banner of the old Reich is indebted to this ideal for its resurrection, as the flag of our so-called national bourgeois parties.

[…]

Unlike our bourgeois politicians, I've always adopted the standpoint in our movement that it was true good fortune for the German nation to have lost its old flag. … The [Weimar] Reich of today, which sells-out itself and its people, must never be allowed to adopt the honorable and heroic black-white-red colors.

As long as the November outrage endures, let it continue to bear its own external sign and not steal that of an honorable past.

7.9 The National Socialist Flag

[W]e National Socialists recognize that hoisting the old flag would not symbolize our own activity. We had no wish to resurrect the old Reich from the dead, which had been ruined through its own blunders, but to build up a new State.

[…]

After innumerable trials, I myself decided upon a final form: a banner of red material with a white disc, and a black swastika in the middle. … Along the same lines, we immediately ordered armbands for our security squad: similar red material with a white disk on a red field, and a swastika in the middle. …

The new flag appeared in public for the first time in midsummer 1920. …

As National Socialists, we see our program in our flag. In red, we see the social ideal of the movement; in white, nationalism; in the swastika, the mission of Aryan humanity to fight for victory, and at the same time, for the victory of the idea of creative work, which has always been anti-Semitic and always will be anti-Semitic.

Two years later, when our security troops had long since grown into storm troops [Sturmabteilung], incorporating many thousands of men, it seemed necessary to give this defensive organization of a young worldview a special symbol of victory: the Standard. I also designed this, and entrusted it to an old party comrade, master goldsmith Herr Gahr. Since then, this Standard has been the distinctive symbol and battle sign of the National Socialist struggle.

7.10 First Meeting in the Circus

… [B]y the winter of 1920-21 we could already be regarded as a strong party in Munich. … The Munich Kindl Keller, which held 5,000 people, was more than once overcrowded, and there was only one other hall that we hadn't yet used; this was the Circus Krone.

At the end of January 1921 there was again great cause for anxiety in Germany. The Paris Agreement, at which Germany pledged to pay the insane sum of a hundred billion gold marks, was to be confirmed in the form of the London Dictate [also known as the London Ultimatum or the London Schedule of Payments]. … A Munich working committee representing so-called folkish groups wanted to call a public meeting of protest. ...day after day went by … the working committee couldn't decide on a definite date …

On Wednesday (2 February 1921) … I lost all patience and decided to conduct a protest demonstration of my own. … [I] hired the Circus Krone for Thursday, 3 February.

… I hired two trucks … had our new flag hoisted on [them] and filled with 15 to 20 party members … to canvas the streets thoroughly.

[…]

I arrived at the Circus at 8:02 … The hall was before me, like a huge shell, packed with thousands and thousands of people … More than 5,600 tickets had been sold and, allowing for the unemployed, poor students, and our own security men, there must have been 6,500 present.

My theme was “Future or Downfall'... I spoke for about two and a half hours. ...only when the last word had been spoken did the applause thunder forth, culminating in the “Deutschland” song, sung with the greatest fervor. […]

And to dispel all doubt that the meeting was merely an isolated success, I immediately arranged for another at the Circus for the following week, and again we had the same success. … I decided to hold a third meeting in the same style. And for a third time, the giant Circus was packed full of people, bottom to top. …

The result was an ever-increasing number of supporters and members for our movement.

7.11 An Attempted Disruption

Naturally, such success did not leave our opponents inactive. At first their tactics fluctuated between the use of terror and silence in our regard, but they soon recognized that neither could hinder the progress of our movement. …

It was eventually decided to interrupt one of our meetings planned for the Munich Hofbräuhaus Festsaal, at which I myself was to speak.

On 4 November 1921 … When I arrived in the entrance … at 7:45 pm, the hall was filled, and therefore the police had it closed. Our opponents, who had arrived very early, were in the hall and our followers were for the most part outside. The small SA guard awaited me at the entrance. I … made it clear to the 45 or 46 men that, perhaps on that evening … not one of us would leave the hall unless carried out dead. I was greeted with a triple Heil, which sounded more robust and violent than usual.

I then went into the hall and assessed the situation with my own eyes. Our opponents sat closely huddled together, piercing me with their eyes. … Yet we were able to open the meeting, and I began to speak. … After about an hour and a half … the leaders of the disrupters became more uneasy … suddenly a man jumped on a chair and shouted: “Freedom!” … In a few seconds, the entire hall was filled with a yelling and shrieking mob, above which flew—like howitzers—innumerable beer mugs; amid this uproar, one heard the smash of chair legs, the crashing of mugs, groans, yells, and screams. …

I stood my ground and observed my boys thoroughly doing their duty. …

Like wolves they threw themselves on the enemy again and again, in packs of eight or ten, and began to steadily thrash them out of the hall. After five minutes … hardly one of them wasn't streaming with blood. …

The pandemonium continued for 20 minutes, but then the opponents, who numbered 700 or 800, were mostly dirven from the hall or thrown out headlong by my men, who numbered not even 50. Only in the left corner, a big crowd still held out against our men and put up a bitter fight. Then two pistol shots suddenly rang out from the hall entrance, toward the platform, and now a wild din of shooting broke out.

At that moment it was impossible to identify who had fired the shots; but at any rate I could see that my boys renewed the attack with increased fury, until finally the last disturbers were overcome and driven out of the hall.

About 25 minutes had passed; the hall looked as if a bomb had exploded. Many of my comrades had to be bandaged, and others carried away, but we remained masters of the situation. Hermann Essen, who was chairman this evening, declared: “The meeting will continue. The speaker has the floor.” And so I went on with my speech. …

That evening we learned a lot, and our opponents never forgot the lesson they received.

As of the autumn of 1923, the Münchener Post never again mentioned the fists of the proletariat.