NATURE AND FORM OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM [Wesen und Gestalt des Nationalsozialismus], a pamphlet by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Berlin, 1935. Pages 12-13, 19-20 Shortly before we took over the power, science tried to prove that this or that revolutionary move was not in accordance with the existing laws and people were not afraid to hand over state political decisions to the supreme court. We only smiled at that time, because while science asserted that it should not be as it was, things have come through long ago. Science only has the right to establish a new set of laws from existing conditions and therefore the condition which has arisen by transposition of our National Socialistic set of laws to the State is a law.
It represents the normal condition of the people and is beyond criticism. Revolution has become a reality and only crazy reactionaries can believe that anything we produce can be cancelled.
National Socialism is now in the process of slowly stabilizing the new legality in Germany which was created by revolution. This is basically different from the former legality and is also beyond the possibilities of criticism, which National Socialism could itself apply in the old system. When democracy granted democratic methods for us in the times of opposition, this was bound to happen in a democratic system. However, we National Socialists never asserted that we represented a democratic point of view, but we have declared openly that we use democratic methods only in order to gain the power and that, after assuming the power, we would deny to our adversaries without any consideration the means which were granted to us in the times of opposition. In spite of this, we can assert that our government meets the rules of an ennobled democracy.
We have been sovereign masters of criticism and are allowed to assume unanimously the standpoint permitting the right of criticism. With this one difference: The right to criticize, provided that it should make sense and not democratic nonsense, in order to be useful to the people which after all has to stand above all political matters. This right can be granted only to the wiser people over the more stupid ones and never the other way around. It remains only to be proven that we National Socialists were apparently wiser during the opposition. * * *
We would commit a grave error if we would place National Socialism on the same level on which formerly the bourgeois and Marxist parties stood. From its earliest beginning, National Socialism aimed at destroying all the other parties and at withdrawing people from their inveterate influences. Therefore today nothing can be changed in the essential prerequisites of the
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program of the National Socialist movement. The outlook for the future remains undisturbed and, unanimous in the shaping of the contents of its own program, it leans on the intrepid and is not thrown on the changing and swaying strength of the character of the masses.
Extracts from a pamphlet on the consolidation of the Nazi revolution, including the abolition of democratic institutions
Authors
Joseph Goebbels (Dr., Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda)
Joseph Göbbels
Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
- Born: 1897-10-29 (Rheydt)
- Died: 1945-05-01 (Berlin)
- Country of citizenship: Nazi Germany
- Occupation: autobiographer; demagogue; diarist; journalist
- Member of political party: Nazi Party
- Member of: Wissenschaftlicher Katholischer Studentenverein Unitas Stolzenfels zu Bonn
- Significant person: Adolf Hitler
- Position held: Gauleiter (of: Berlin; period: 1926-11-09 through 1945-05-01; replaces: Ernst Schlange); Q104164731; Reich Chancellor (period: 1945-04-30 through 1945-05-01; replaced by: Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk; replaces: Adolf Hitler); member of the Reichstag of Nazi Germany
Date: 1935
Literal Title: Pages 12-13 and 19-20, "Nature and Form of National Socialism"
Total Pages: 1
Language of Text: English
Source of Text: Nazi conspiracy and aggression (Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946.)
Evidence Code: PS-2412
Citation: IMT (page 255)
HLSL Item No.: 450177
Trial Issues
Conspiracy (and Common plan, in IMT) (IMT, NMT 1, 3, 4) IMT count 1: common plan or conspiracy (IMT) Nazi regime (rise, consolidation, economic control, and militarization) (I…
Document Summary
PS-2412: Goebbels Spech "Nature and Form of National Socialism" Berlin 1935.