The Racial Awakening of the German People by Dr. Rudolf Frercks, parts 1-3

Because I think it represents, in general, the correct N-S position on race and refutes incorrect positions that have been put forth, I have reposted this from National-Socialist-Worldview  -cy

This booklet by Dr. Frercks was originally published, with the approval of the NSDAP, in 1935. The edition on which this translation was based is dated 1942. Translation by Hadding Scott, 2014.

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Liberalism

The Delusion of Human Equality

The liberal age's picture of the world is based on the one important premise, an assumption  promulgated as dogma in the French Revolution of 1789, that humans are by nature equal. Human reason [Vernunft] was allegedly the very thing that would unite all humans on the Earth and make them ready -- some sooner, others later -- to take part in the great ideal global culture, its blessings and its peace. The laws of logic, so one said, were everywhere the same and were valid not only for Europeans but also for Negroes. That however implied the duty of educating humans more and more into clever beings guided only by calculation [Verstand]. The appeal was made to the individual and his insight that had been given to him, whereby he was supposed to overcome the dark drives of emotion and of the will to live, which stem from an earlier stage of development and are unworthy of a modern man.

Individualism

As a result we find in the bourgeois world the private citizen who lives far from the political affairs of the state, pursues only his cultivation into a harmonious and knowledgeable world-citizen, and is at home to the same degree in New York or in Paris. In the Marxist world it is the proletarian who proclaims himself in solidarity with the class-strugglers of all countries and lives in the faith that the one big global world-revolution someday will bring a distribution of goods that is orderly and just for all workers of the world. From this thinking arises in the life of the state the liberal party-system, which in the 19th century advanced its claims against the conservative forces of hereditary nobility, but itself inwardly rejects the state as a whole and after 1918 finally began gradually to treat it as an object of plunder for particular interest-groups.

The Mirage of Eternal Peace

The individual, liberated from all ties to family, clan, and nation, represents the center of the world. As a free "personality," untroubled by the downward-dragging forces of a dark destiny, he is supposed to follow the path of pure knowledge, which will make him ready as an enlightened and knowledgeable creature to live together in a great federation of humans governed only by reason, in which the ancient dream of humanity, eternal peace, will be realized. A great fantasy truly, for the realization of which many millions of humans have made the ultimate sacrifice. It was an entire century's faith in progress that caused the thought and action of humans, the culture and politics of states, to be placed at the service of this striving directed toward unity in all fields. In politics Pan-Europe was the goal, which was supposed to be followed by the United States of the World. International world-economy, world-literature, and international scholarship mark other stages on this path.

In 1918 the final goal was believed to be closer than ever, and the realization of these dreams was expected from the League of Nations. Addressing the world-community in Geneva Gustav Stresemann called for a European postage stamp. Marxism and Jewry rejoiced. What would folk mean to them? At most a transitional stage on the way to the world-republic, or, in case an explanation was necessary, an aggregation of individuals that accidentally live in the same space and thus necessarily speak the same language....

Part 2

The Racial Doctrine in Politics

Race signifies Destiny

The organic, racial mode of contemplation has caused us to recognize that the most essential and most important indicator of a people is its race. The explanation of a people as a community of language and of culture no longer suffices, since today we have acknowledged the person and his race as the most essential vehicles and structures of history. With the doctrine of race and its heredity-bound values the liberal world has been deprived of the prerequisite for its striving after international unity in politics and culture.

Although calculation [Verstand] and the laws of logic may be the same in the whole world, these are only one part of life. That is because during a logical sequence of thoughts not only what I think but what I feel and experience, and above all what I do with it, is very likely different in a German than in, for example, a Jew, and indeed so different that we can conclude based on our experiences that there is a very wide range of differences in the hereditary proclivities and racial composition of these two peoples. Liberal thought called this conclusion unscientific because racial differences, especially in the mental and psychic areas of life, cannot be measured, weighed, or counted, and consequently rejected the evaluation of racial differences among humans and their significance for the course of history and cultures of peoples. The National-Socialist says: "Race is reality, since whenever I go through the world with an open mind I daily observe it and live it, and feel its effects.

The so-called Environmental Theory

When differences between humans could not be lied away, the old world made environmental influences responsible. The external differences between say a Negro and a blond Frisian lad were traced to the environment, which in the one case burned the skin brown and kinked the hair through the effect of the Sun, but in the other case is supposed to have bleached the hair and skin through the salty tide. This assumption applies not only to physical differences but likewise to the world of the mind. and has yielded the basis from which all political groups from right to left rejected National-Socialism and its racial thought, since they instinctively had to regard the racial idea-world of National-Socialism and all practical and ideological implications of it as an attack upon their own existence.

Social milieu, class-affiliation, economic conditions ("Economy is destiny," says Marxism), upbringing, education ("Knowledge is power," says the liberal bourgeoisie) are supposed to be what determine and define the person. The man of the right would ask the person about his father's profession,about examinations, and membership in a student-association. If this all corresponded to the social requisites, he believed that he could justly request for him a position of leadership over the people, which to him would appear as sluggish and dull-witted masses far beneath his so-called level of education. Thus for decades the people [das Volk] was regarded as something that did not belong to the whole, to the nation, but only represented a subordinate part.

On the left side it is said, not that the mind and education are the criteria, but belonging to and  being born into a particular class. The battlecry was "class-consciousness"; it called for the ungovernable will to impose a better configuration onto the material world, onto economic relations, and it was believed that in this way mankind would be led to a better future.  The word "people" ["Volk"] became a term of the class-struggle.

It is in principle the same, whether I judge the person by his knowledge, his education, or by what he owns. In both cases the world of yesterday was unanimous that humans are fundamentally equal, and that it is the environment, sometimes good, sometimes bad, that decisively influences the person. Both interpretations however National-Socialism rejects, since they both represent only a way of emphasizing external conditions and environmental influences while saying nothing about the value of blood and race, and about the value of the character that results from them.

The Racial Awakening of the German People

"If essentially Marxism called for an International and denied the essence of race, it was on this crucial point.that the conflict was initiated." (Rosenberg.)

The fourteen years of the struggle were practical racial policy for the salvation of the German people, which was threatened in its substance. In the Jewish Question a whole generation had to think racially again and learn to reject the Jew as someone alien and different who was trying, with his strongholds in the form of banks and warehouses, to bring an entire people under the yoke of international finance-capitalism. In vast swaths especially of the bourgeoisie, racial consciousness had dwindled to the point that they immediately branded this struggle as gutter-anti-Semitism [Radauantisemitismus], even as a cultural disgrace [Kulturschande]. It was the battle for the extinction of a political leadership that did not correspond to the feeling of the German people and was racially destructive through its alien manner of thought and action.

The struggle of these years had as its deepest and final content the people's introspection and retrospection [Selbst-und Rueckbesinnung] upon the type that is most fundamentally their own, the rediscovery of the people's soul and its natural instinct; in the age of materialism and individualism this soul was overlaid with many alien ideas and hindered in the unfolding of its own essence. It was the belief of the movement that the people in its inmost core was still healthy enough to understand the appeal to the forces of blood and race. The call was directed therefore not to a class, to a profession, or an interest-group, but to the valuable instincts of the entire people, which are present in every person regardless of education and knowledge. It was the call to the blood and to the bearers of its best and most heroic properties. "National-Socialism professes an heroic valuation of blood, of race, and of personality, and of the eternal laws of selection, and thus steps consciously into irreconcilable opposition to the worldview of pacifist international democracy and its ramifications." (Adolf Hitler.) 

The National-Socialist State is Made for the People

The new and revolutionary part of National-Socialism is that it has led politics back to its proper meaning and purpose, namely to protect and maintain the life of the people, judging the value of the state only by how well it is suited for this task. The state receives its value and meaning only from the people, and from the benefit that it accomplishes for this people. The foundation for the National-Socialist state is the existence of the people [die Existenz des Volkes], and the new state has no higher task than to represent the best possible form of political organization and to give to the people the form appropriate to its kind. For this state, the strength and health of the race again constitute the center of history and politics. According to the National-Socialist view it is not the state, not the economy, not the individual that is worth preserving; rather it is always only the people that is worth preserving.

Racial Politics Secure the Peace

In the same way, National-Socialism has no goal externally apart from preserving its ethnicity [Volkstum]. As it claims this right for itself, it also accords it to the other peoples. It knows no goals that lie outside of its ethnicity. Therein lies simultaneously an acknowledgement of the right to life of foreign peoples and of their character and custom, as [wie] we generally see in the peoples the building blocks of human society. They [the other people] all have their natural entitlement to life, but also their own honor. The more the other peoples are biased in their liberal assumptions, the harder it becomes for them even to understand this conception of ours.  Recently our Leader for the first time declared this clearly and unambiguously to a Polish press-correspondent: "The racial doctrine of the National-Socialist idea rejects so-called denationalization. It sees in this forced annexation of foreign population much more a weakening than a strengthening of its own ethnicity. We keep in mind not to continue what earlier centuries committed in the way of mistakes." 

"The National-Socialist racial idea and the knowledge of race that lies at its foundation leads not to a contempt or lowered estimation of other peoples, but rather to an acknowledgement of the assigned mission of a uniquely efficacious management and preservation of the life of one's own people. It leads necessarily therewith to a natural respect for life and for the essence of other peoples. It dissolves therewith the undertakings in foreign policy that try to subject foreign persons so as to be able to rule them or to incorporate them through the coercion of the state as pure quantity into one's own people. This new idea obliges a great and fanatical commitment not only to the life, and therewith to the honor and freedom, of one's own people, but also to the respect and honor and freedom of others." (Adolf Hitler.)

For the National-Socialist state therefore the highest purpose remains the preservation of its own people, and not the rule and subjection of any foreign peoples. It therefore sees all the more danger in a warlike dispute where it is conscious of the enormous bloodletting of the best of a people that a war must bring with it. That is because such biological damage always affects the healthy and strong of a people, while the sick, cowardly, and incompetent are spared. The World War has therefore also in this sense  yielded  disastrous consequences and caused losses that our people's compelling biological will to live has still not to this day been able entirely to offset.

Part 3

Race and People

The old values of a liberal and unbiological way of  thinking collapsed into rubble, and now, as we ask about inborn character, about the biological value of man, we stand at the crossroads between yesterday and tomorrow. The new, essential values of heredity and blood determine our racial world-picture and have fundamentally changed the individual's relationship to the whole and, moreover, our conception of the people.

The Present-Day Position of the Individual

National-Socialism opposes the extreme individualist worldview with the idea of the community of the people [Volksgemeinschaft]. However gladly someone might always like to position himself outside of his people, he nevertheless remains with his destiny, bound to the destiny of his people. How far this great destiny of a people intervenes in the life of the individual was shown to us by the war, and even more the years that followed, when every individual had to experience the distress of the whole people literally in his own body. In our thought and action therefore we take only the totality of the people as our point of reference. The value of the life of the people is given precedence over that of the individual; likewise the nation's will-orientation over that of the individual. For practical life however this means that the individual may speak of his right only when he has fulfilled his obligation to the people as a whole. This conception may seem harsh, but ultimately this alone secures also for the individual his life-possibilities.

For decades in political life the word "people" ["Volk"] signified nothing unifying, no shared destiny, but was an expression of the idea of class-struggle. To the people belonged the so-called "commoners" that, lacking property as late-born sons of farmers, came into the cities and lived from the labor of their hands in the factories. As a young and upward-striving stratum of the people they struggled against the existing order of the state and of society. They founded people's newspapers and people's associations. The concept "people" was thus still only a part of the whole and no longer embodied the idea of the people as a totality.

On the other side stood the so-called persons of wealth and education, who claimed the terms nation and national for themselves and kept their distance from the ordinary people outside on the street, whom they despised and regarded as subject to their leadership.

National-Socialism means Community of the People

This assumption of the dichotomy of the German people collapsed into nothingness during the gray front's fighting in the field. We experienced in a mysterious way the miracle of becoming a people. It was the experience of community of destiny from which no individual could escape; it was there that the awareness grew that the individual is nothing compared to all others. Yet this experience seemed to be suppressed again through mutiny and stockmarket-transactions. Ethnically and racially alien traitors to the country went among the people as apostles of agitation, set them into conflict with each other, and sowed dissension into German hearts.

Among the millions of unknown soldiers, destiny had selected one to take up the struggle for the creation of the German community of the people and to restore freedom and honor of a nation as a people's highest good. For 14 years Adolf Hitler directed his appeal to the German people: "You are both parts of a great community, but so that this may be actualized, you must give up your pride and snobbery, and you on the other side must give up your class-based perspective." Many misunderstandings in the political struggle of the last years are only comprehensible by the fact that one did not notice on both sides that the world of National-Socialism did not limit the concepts people and nation to parts of the state but again grasped that wholeness of the people and likewise no longer equated the nation with certain upper strata but led it back to its original meaning, namely to the community of blood that herewith extends to the last German folk-comrade and destiny-comrade who devotes himself to Germany. Meanwhile we do not want to forget that the National-Socialist people's state [Volksstaat] of Adolf Hitler emerged from the revolutionary struggle of members of the middle-class, of farmers, and of laborers, who only yesterday had no share in the pre-war German state, but today have become the bearers of the national idea.

Racial Doctrine and Community of the People

Every people has its own face, its own manifestation and character. A bygone age wanted to explain to people that all external differences were irrelevant and depended on the environment, on the soil, on the climate, and on other things. The new world of the people's self-contemplation [Selbstbesinnung] sees again the inexpressible inner core of man, his nature and authenticity. Into essencelessness perish those colorless, pallid, and rootless types of the big city, and our love goes to that ancient blood of the Germans, which until today no power in history could cause to perish. Through National-Socialism the people again today has heeded the secret voice from within. Alfred Rosenberg says: "If a German movement wants to actualize the values of our soul in life, it must also preserve and strengthen the physical prerequisites of these values. Racial protection [Rassenschutz], racial cultivation [Rassenzucht], and racial hygiene [Rassenhygiene] are thus the indispensable requisites of a new age. Racial cultivation however, according to our deepest searching, means above all the protection of the Nordic component of our people."

The racial core of the German people is constituted of Nordic and Phalian persons, whose main area of habitation we find around the basins of the North and Baltic seas, and in Lower Saxony and Westphalia. Branches extend therefrom into all German areas and, along with the effects of the other related races, determine the special character of our people.

We are indeed today composed of several related racial elements, but despite these circumstances we are still far from representing a chaos of races. For the German people, the Nordic share of blood even today is the common bond that ties us all together and determines the essence of every manifestation of our life.  In the great and decisive questions of our people, whether it must decide itself for honor or disgrace, for freedom or slavery, for life or decline, among Alemannians and Tiroleans, among Dithmarschers and among all other German tribes, the same voice of the blood is heard, which only permits one answer.

Were our people not so preponderantly Nordic in all its parts, it would never have arrived at the mighty turnaround in the spring of 1933; it would never have been able to understand the National-Socialist call to the forces of the blood. The test by accomplishment is a much more precise standard than external traits alone can be. The proven performance in struggle and distress has always selected the best characteristics, and we can never fear for the future of our nation if we continue to make accomplishment and the value of character into the principle of selection. Then we may hope that Nordic blood, which has formed German destiny from the beginning, will provide the common ground of German life also in more distant ages.

More to come ....

Go to Parts 4-8