. NMT04-T0385
Volume IV · Page 385
| around it, found this spiritual, religious,
political, and social decay having a deep effect. There were no values for them
which were not immediately attacked and opposed by different groups. Thirty or
more parties fought for power in the state. They represented a number of
opposing interests. This generation was not offered any idea for learning to
live as human beings which was not contested. Their social future was without
hope. It is understandable that under those conditions this generation did not
regard wealth as their aim, for material wealth had become a questionable asset
after inflation, financial crisis, and years of economic stress, during which
century-old properties dissolved into nothing. They were longing for spiritual
support, for a goal behind the social order into which they were born, a goal
which promised them true human dignity, firm human objectives, and a spiritual
and religious center for their development into human beings. This generation
had become too realistic in their suffering to believe that by fixing their
eyes at the beyond they would find the moral and social basis for their
existence as human beings at this period in history. Confronted with daily life
and social existence they found both these elements to be too clear cut not to
be the touchstone of human existence. Indeed the split into a "Sunday" and
"week-day" man appeared as one of the deeper causes for spiritual and material
suffering. Thus, it becomes understandable that this generation searched for
new religious values. Also, the dependence of every individual on the constitution and condition of the society, the nation, and the state in which he lived was far too obvious for this generation not to look for ways and means to replace the changing rule of group interests by an order which was based on the conception of totality in relation to every single individual irrespective of his social status. In National Socialism we saw this idea and we expected it to furnish the basis of a new order. It was not in the spirit of frivolity that we spoke of The Thousand Years Reich because we knew that great developments of humanity take centuries, nay, thousands of years, until they mature and give rise to yet newer developments. Therefore, our minds were not impatient, but we looked at the history of mankind, including their religious history, and that of the ups and downs of states and nations in order to find the guiding ideas in the growth and decline of the peoples in order to find the indications which would make it possible for us to fulfill justly the requirements of our time for the experiences and sufferings of history. From our search in history, we acquired the certainty that the great religious aims, the great moral and ethical issues always flank the actual historical events. Both prosecution and defense have at the beginning of this |
