1st June
My name is Bor.
They say I am a descendent of a courageous German Nazi officer of low rank. I have never met my parents, and thus the story remains unverified.
My closest friends, had I happen to have any, would consider me a loyal subject of the crown and the past can make no claim on the present.
However, my circumstances have slowly veered off course. It so happens that I occupy a small lighthouse situated on a minuscule island very close to the coast. It used to be a tidal island, but water conditions have changed and now it is permanently accessible only by boat.
Enigmatically my outboard motor fitted on the island’s only vessel has started to display periodic failures. Some kind of electrical error sporadically plagues it and turns me into a shipwreck for sometimes weeks at a time.
As I am of poor financial means, I have come to accept the conditions of my existence.
Returning to the subject of my heritage, it should be said that I have a large pile of German World War 2 newspapers in my possession. An inheritance from my deceased parents which indeed points to the possibility of some truth to the story of my Nazi past.
I, Bor. The Nazi.
The thought repulsed me, and made me blush whenever the subject was brought up as a sore point by my acquaintances.
That is, until I wound up stranded here. The sound of waves soothes all wounds and furnish the island’s inhabitants with a demeanour of acceptance.
It was at this point I decided to find out what kind of Nazi I really were.
I went to the attic with a knife and cut the cotton string wrapping the first bundle that I stumbled upon. I took a handful of papers down to the living quarters.
It read Völkischer Beobachter — Wiener Ausgabe — 1938, 25. März
Rudolf Hess had an article printed. March 25 was briefly after the Anschluss of Austria into Germany. There was in other words plenty to talk about the following days.
In einem Tempo, das geschichtlich ohne Beispiel ist, hat Adolf Hitler vielhundertjähriges Sehnen der Deutschen erfühlt: Das großdeutsche Reich ist Wirklichkeit geworden. Was Bismarck 1871 begonnen, hat Adolf Hitler 1938 vollendet. Er har es vollendet, er hat die Einigung vollzogen, weil er im Volke selbst die Voraussetzung der Einheit schuf, weil er das Reich Bismarcks in sich einigte über alle kleinen Eigenheiten, über Länder- und Stammesgrenzen hinweg und hinweg über alle Klassengegensätze. Wohl ließ er den Deutschen jedes Stammes und jeder Landschaft ihre Eigenart, aber er gab ihnen in der Einheit des Volkes und des Reiches Kraft und Stärke.
At a pace unprecedented in history, Adolf Hitler fulfilled the centuries-long longing of the Germans: The Greater German Reich had become reality. What Bismarck began in 1871, Adolf Hitler completed in 1938. He completed it, he achieved unification, because he created the prerequisites for unity within the people themselves, because he unified Bismarck’s Reich within himself, beyond all petty peculiarities, across national and tribal boundaries, and across all class differences. While he allowed the Germans of every tribe and every region to retain their individuality, he gave them power and strength in the unity of the people and the Reich.
I can’t say that I share his enthusiasm. History’s central problem: We loose the connection to the past. For decades a certain idea can possess thousands without loosing its powers of persuasion. Then the last voice dies out and the opposite happens. We cannot resurrect the dead. Is there someone somewhere in the world sitting on top of a political anthill with the explanation as to why we no longer care about issues we previously were ready to die for? Or are we all shut out, high and low, educated and layman?
Nationalism is still alive. But as in xenophobia. We don’t want “them” into “our” country. Is that what produces “our”? How many individuals on the continent can understand the rest of the Nazi dream? A unified, greater Sweden or Latvia? The thought is ridiculous.
Either we have excavated the limbs of the past in the wrong order or we are missing important pieces.
Wait a minute! Who says that Rudolf Hess isn’t simply a bad bloke to acquire insight from? If he was the sycophant, his perception of his Leader triumphed over any latent agony that perhaps motivated others. Or did it? In the end, isn’t nationalism just an odd pastime? Something you do because work is boring.
I’m already dismissing the whole thing. Read again.
Rudolf Hess touches on the whole name of National Socialism, which is at least refreshing.
Er bat die Menschen gelehrt, Daß Nationalismus und Sozialismus nicht einander ausschließen und notwendigerweise einander bekämpfende Begriffe sind, sondern daß wahrer Nationalismus und wahrer Sozialismus einander ergänzen. Er hat sie gelehrt, daß das eine ohne das andere nicht einmal denkbar ist. Denn Töchter Nationalismus ist höchste Liebe zum eigenen Volk; wenn man aber das eigene Volk wirklich liebt, muß es möglich werden, daß dieses Volk in allen seinen Gliedern so gesund wir nur irgend möglich ist, daß es jedem einzelnen so gut wir möglich geht.
He taught people that nationalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive and necessarily conflicting concepts, but that true nationalism and true socialism complement each other. He taught them that one is not even conceivable without the other. For nationalism is the highest love for one’s own people; but if one truly loves one’s own people, it must be possible for this people to be as healthy as possible in all its members, for each individual to be as well off as possible.
Solidarity. With your own blood, not internationally.
This confuses me. I originate from an age where socialism and communism are lumped into the same pot. An American would bark at the very thought of tainting their political system with socialism.
But a member of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, NSDAP, praises the solidarity within national borders. Socialism brings solidarity which is at this point in time seen as the panacea against anomic dissolution. Socialism was attractive in the burgeoning modernist society.
It takes a communist trained in theoretical thinking to see a conflict between worker’s solidarity and nationalism in an age where corporate globalism was already thriving.
Und deswegen hat die Eingliederung der alten Ostmark ins Reich die Deutschen Österreichs mit solchem Jubel erfüllt, weil über die alte Sehnsucht nach dem Reich hinaus bei ihnen der nationalsozialistische Gedanke so weite Kreise erfüllt hat, daß ihnen die gemeinsame Nation, das gemeinsame Volk und der gemeinsame Führer über allem steht.
And that is why the incorporation of the old Ostmark into the Reich has filled the Germans of Austria with such jubilation, because beyond the old longing for the Reich, the National Socialist idea has filled so wide circles among them that for them the common nation, the common people and the common leader stand above all else.
Yes, Rudolf, I can hear you say it, but I don’t think you mean it. You are just connecting the talking points of the town. You love your Führer, but that is just an emotion. It produces no eternal words embodying the general anger festering around you.
There is something disingenuous about Hess. His hatred appears cold. Was he simply a dreamer?
After reading the article slowly, I put it aside. Perhaps if I read it again tomorrow things will look different.
In other articles, other currents can be detected. I need to build a catalog of emotions.
The night is young.
PARADISE LOST