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| The Phalian (left) and Nordic (right) types constitute the racial core of the German people, says Dr. Rudolf Frercks. The image is from Carleton S. Coon, The Races of Europe, 1939. |
Originally published with official approval of the NSDAP in 1935. Translation by Hadding Scott, 2014.
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 a 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.
Out of 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 a nation’s freedom and honor as a people’s highest good. For 14 years Adolf Hitler directed his appeal to the German people: “Both of you are parts of a great community, but for this to be actualized, you must give up your pride and snobbery, and you on the other hand 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 consciousness of itself (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 choose honor or disgrace, freedom or slavery, 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.